What would your “Letter to a Future Church” say? (a new book and opportunity)

The following is part of the Patheos Book club for Letters to a Future Church.

There’s a new book that I’m excited to tell you about called “Letters to a Future Church: Words of Encouragement and Prophetic Appeals.” This book is edited by Chris Lewis but has contributions from many of my favorite Christian voices: Walter Brueggeman, David Fitch, Ron Sider, Shane Claiborne, Rachel held Evans, Kathy Escobar, Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove, Peter Rollins, and many more.

The various letters are organized into categories based on the message or theme. Some wrote about mission, while others truth, yet others art, and finally some folks wrote about hope. Perhaps one of my favorite letters, which will be of little surprise to many of you, was written by Shane Claiborne. I think just giving you the title will create intrigue: “a dozen (or so) flags and seven piles of poop.”

I wholeheartedly affirm and recommend this book!

I have an extra copy I would like to give away. I figured out how I’m going to go about doing this.

I want to invite you to write a letter to a future church. What would your major themes be? What would you appeal to about the church that is good and should therefore stay as it is? Where would your dreams take you to exhort the future church toward helping her become something even more beautiful?

With those questions in mind I invite you to leave your letter to a future church as a comments here on my blog. I will read through them and will try to pick one but I think uniquely captures division of the kingdom. A couple of parameters:

First, try to keep your letter between 150 —  550 words.

Second, invite others to write a letter of their own by posting this blog link on Facebook, with a quote from your own letter.

Third, enter your letter to win a free gift package (beyond the book giveaway on my blog) which includes having your letters published online by Patheos.com’s main site! Go here to enter.

Even if you don’t end up with a free copy of the book or a letter on Patheos, I have a feeling, that reading the letters generated on this blog will be more than worth it!

Finally, I plan to write my own letter and to post it within the next week or so. At that time, I will invite your feedback on what I come up with.

So… How would you compose a “letter to a future church?”