Emmaus Road

"We had hoped." So much of church life these days seems to be wrapped up in that phrase. The church is changing and many of these changes have left us feeling lost, confused, and grieving, like the disciples on the Emmaus Road. The surprise ending to the Emmaus Road story, of course, is the re-discovery of the very hope the disciples thought they had lost. In their encounter with the risen Christ on that road, and later in the broken bread of a common meal, their eyes are opened to a new vision, to a new reality that changes their lives and their ministries forever. In Emmaus Road: Churches Making Their Way Forward, Donna Sinclair and Christopher White show us how we are heirs to that same hope - for the risen Christ is still with us, walking beside us and encouraging us toward new possibilities. This book is a sequel to Jacob's Blessing: Dreams, Hopes, & Visions for the Church, which explored alternatives to the mega-church and faithful-remnant models. Emmaus Road, in turn, discusses the role of the church in the new world, but with a strong conviction that congregations are once again waking up to the power and potential for the good they have within themselves. This power is not accessed through "magic formulas" or instant solutions. Rather, Sinclair and White draw us to the qualities of character displayed by those first disciples - alertness, hospitality, open-mindedness, and perseverance, to name a few. Those qualities enabled the disciples to move into the future with confidence. Likewise today, they are the building blocks out of which we can build the church of the future. For, above all else, the church is meant to go on walking its own Emmaus Road - encountering hope along the way. Book jacket.

Donna Sinclair is a senior writer with The United Church Observer Christopher White is the minister of Westminster United Church in Whitby, Ontario. He is a regular contributor to The United Church Observer, and has written both for newspapers and magazines. He has contributed to, or appeared on a wide variety of CBC radio programs