I had a great time at Greenbelt with Mark, Lou, Nathan and the rest of my family, Tam, James, Callum and Abi. There were some magic moments and some tragic moments but, overall, a thoroughly positive experience! It was really good to meet the people behind the names that Mark keeps talking about! I have come away with loads of questions, some of which I'll share with you (feel free to respond!)...loosely based around fruit.
The last thing I did before we came away was to write a lead article about fruit, based on the familiar passage in Galatians, for our church newsletter. (I'm also one of the leaders of a charismatic church in another life...still another kicks off again tomorrow when I will be sitting back in front of my computer at work getting 1400 A level students onto the right courses and into the right classrooms...ugghh!) I digress. After an amusing couple of hours pitching our tents on Thursday evening - including a 300 metre steeplechase carrying a half-erected tent over various fences - we found a nice clear area to set up camp. The following day we were surrounded by a large church group (Church of t' Martyrs) and flags with giant tomatoes became our homing beacon! Fruit again.
It was interesting spending time in and around the New Forms cafe and getting more of an insight into emerging church. It provoked some thoughts - most of the worship was pretty similar - probably not surprising - but what does/should the fruit look like? How is it preaching good news to the poor; proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; releasing the oppressed; proclaiming the year of the Lord's favour? - or is it merely providing a space for those who would already class themselves as Christians to gather around a different expression of worship? - a constant feature of church history. I'd love to have heard/hear more stories of changed lives and communities - I'm sure they exist! - or am I looking at it in the wrong way?
As ever, Pete Rollins and the Ikon guys provoked cerebral activity and spiritual disturbance. I really value their free expression and am particularly grabbed by the idea of "faithful betrayal". I'm busy trying to burn the box I've put God in (probably I'm the one in the box!) and move into the open spaces of freedom to exist with the Truth, knowing that it is far greater than my understanding.
I've gone on too long, but I'll finish with a fruity analogy that was planted in my mind as I woke this morning...There comes a time in every child's life when they meet the betrayal that a tomato is a fruit. Their whole mental framework for classifying fruit has to change when they understand that it is not about sweetness, but how the seeds are carried...
Very astute observations Mr Sheene! There is definitely a tension between two perspectives (of the many) of the 'Emerging Church' - how much of it is Church for the de-churched, disenfranchised, post-churched, deconstructed, post-modern believer etc. etc. alot of which has grown from the alt.worship world and how much is 'fundamentally' missional in nature... ie. where does the Emergence begin... is it a 'new'understanding of Church emerging from traditional church, the seeds being formed in dissatisfaction... or is it church emerging from a community of spiritual seekers, for whom the 'starting' point is a question and maybe an encounter with an unknown God... the third perspective may contain a bit of both, that it is Church in the context of a culture ("post-modernity') that it is emerging itself... my emphasis would be on the latter two, but would still include a degree of the 'internal' deconstruction that is evident in the former. For me the core value would be that the Church should be Missional and therefore seek to enable an expression of community to emerge, in order to do that though there does need to be theological and ecclesiological deconstruction of where we, the Church, is and what we hold to.
BTW I love the final paragraph! You are bang on... it is not about the surface, the style, the visible expression... it should surely be about the seed... therefore we need to engage in an exploration of just what is the essential seed... interestingly when one takes a seed from a Tomatoe if you do not strip it of all the jelly/flesh that encompasses the seed itself... it will not germinate!
Posted by: Mark Berry | 30/08/2006 at 11:27