way out west

Doing an Andrew Jones...

• I'm off to Dublin tomorrow to contribute to a gathering organised by Brandon Wellcome... back Monday
• Tuesday I'm visiting the Skinny himself in far flung Orkney, for a CMS gathering and to take part in a panel evening he has entitled "Emerging Church: The latest move of the Spirit or another trendy quick-fix?"... back Friday
• Monday I head off up to Durham to do some seminars at The Community of Aidan and Hilda's summer school on "Celtic Christianity and the Emerging Church'...  back 2 weeks today!

See you all in a couple of weeks (unless I can do some wifi blogging along the way!)

Technorati Tags: Celtic: Emerging Church

I saw the Emerging Church round the back of the bike sheds smoking a spliff!

I don't normally read the "Emergent-No"/Fundie type web-sites, but this particular "non-article" popped up because of the tags... Link... and it made me roar with laughter...  Silva seems to be saying...

I'm not saying that the Emerging Church advocates smoking pot... but they do say having a beer is OK, and some of them talk about community in a way the Hippies used to, and Hippies smoke Pot... so therefore we can make a wild leap and suggest that they might do... now we can say people should steer clear of the Emerging Church because they might just use dope... but I don't know if they do, but they might, but I have no evidence, but it would be helpful to me and my view if they did, or at least if people thought they did, so I'll write an article, full of disclaimers of course, that suggests a possibility that they might, and you never know people might get confused and believe that they actually do... Hey isn't the Emerging Church evil!?

... its enough to make anyone turn to drugs!

[update] Ken Silva has asked me to link to the article which he sites as his evidence... OK, it is here at 'The Ooze' I quote a section of the article below...

Now I know there are the folks that attempt a mix between dedication to Christianity and marijuana, but those are few, at least in my circles. What I get is folks that smoke and give slight attention to Christ and church. That is not surprising because it is consistent with everything else marijuana has done in their lives. They are passionless and ambitionless, so their slight attention to church and Christ fits in with their lack of drive for everything else.

... so as far as I can tell his "evidence" is one commenter who confesses to occasional use...

Some people unwind after particularly bad day at work with a glass of wine or a beer when they get home. 1 glass, every couple of days after work...is that what you would consider a problem? I wouldn't. I just happen to prefer a small "hit from the bong".

Fair enough Ken you found one voice to support your hypothesis, I saw a documentary recently where a family of fundamentalists advocated polygamy and violence towards homosexuals... fortunately I am not so silly to believe that that means all fundamentalists do likewise!

Technorati Tags: Blogging: Church: Emerging Church: Humour

Mosaics

As part of our Greenbelt film (probably) I'm making a few image mosaics of Jesus using a generator which uses images from Flickr... example...

Technorati Tags: Art: Blogging: Greenbelt: Worship

Attractional or Missional?

Some interesting questions from Matt Stone's Journeys inbetween

In attractional churches, the church services are the primary context for evangelism and the primary gateway through which people are connected into cell groups and other aspects of the community life. The services dominate and mediate the life of the community. There is consequently great pressure on services to be as accessible to non-Christians as possible if they are to grow. Is it any wonder they have become entertainment driven ... audience driven? And cell groups have little incentive to engage with the world beyond, their only "missional" job is to invite their friends to hear the professional evangelist at the service. Is this really the way things are supposed to work?

In missional churches a different dynamic comes into play. Because the church is engaged as a community in the wider community of the culture, other times become the primary context for social action and welcoming non-Christians into experiences of Christian community. Less expectations need be loaded onto a single hour each Sunday. Resources may be freed up. There is space for the rites of the church to resume their original status, as the inner mysteries of the church.

Now I want to introduce some other stuff I have learned from engaging with other religions. The fastest growing religions in Australia, Wicca and Buddhism, reserve many of there deepest mysteries and rites for initiates. They do not water their rites and practices down to make them accessible for casual visitors, yet these movements are growing far faster than even Pentecostal Christianity. Is that not sufficient demonstration that welcoming services may not be as universally expedient as we have been led to believe?

Technorati Tags: Church: Emerging Church: Mission: Missional: Religion

Pilgrimage, a state of mind? Blah Sheffield

For more details - Blah online

Technorati Tags: alt.worship: Blah: Celtic: Culture: Emerging Church: Spirituality

Arbuckle on Re-founding

Following on from the "Entrepreneurs" and "Resonating" posts, I have been reading Gerald Arbuckles "From Chaos to Mission - Refounding Religious Life Formation" (1996) He talks about the need to respond appropriately to the place of chaos Religious life finds itself in.  He says that it isn't a case of 'renewal' - modifying old methods but of 're-founding' - going back to first principles, allowing the imagination to dream of alternatives, radically rethinking the way we do things, a creative quantum leap, owning the chaos and returning to the sacred time; the stories, the fundamental questions and the founding vision of the group... Re-founding is then a collaborative action/state.

Arbuckle talks about three stages; 1) Initial unease, the separation stage.  One could talk about a sense of disconnection and a growing awareness of the dissonance between the action and the foundation story of the community/group.  2) The liminal stage or reflection stage "that moment between old patterns of reality and new ways of looking at reality".  In this stage Arbucle says there is a point of choice; do we seek to retreat, to wallow in nostalgia, to cling to past securities, do we try to stand still and maintain the status quo, to be paralysed by the chaos or do we "move forward with risk and hope in an uncertain world"?  3) Re-aggregation, or re-entry.  A new application of the vision and story of the community.

Arbuckle does recognise that with re-founding go two rituals "the ritual of grieving, that is , of letting o the irrelevant, and the ritual of initiation, allowing new life to enter".  He relates this process to the idea of 'Pilgrimage' ,

Refounding is a risk filled journey of faith and hope, whereby we enter into the heart of the paschal mystery itself to unite with Christ and his mission, thus being energized to be ongoingly creative in bringing the kingdom message to the world of our times.  As it is a journey demanding personal and group conversion, it is a slow and hesitant process, the outcome of which is ultimately in the hands of God... (it) has deep biblical and historical roots.  Its formation process invites candidates to join with God the first Pilgrim in a journey of personal and group transformation

There will be more thoughts on this as I'm doing a Blah in Sheffield on Pilgrimage next month... see above!

Technorati Tags: Books: Emerging Church: Mission: Missional: Religion: Spirituality

Resonant or Relevant?

So, what did I mean when I said we (the church) need to learn to resonate rather than seeking to be relevant... a few people have made mention of the words I wrote in the "Entrepreneurs and Mission" post... I guess it is a simple idea really, rather than seeking to emulate culture in a desire to be acceptable or attractive (wearing the clothes of culture) at best superficial at worst abusive, of both culture and people... to say nothing of false advertising... we need to resonate, to live by the rhythms of the culture we live in, to understand the roots of culture and the context of individuals (not just seek to meet needs), Paul in Acts 17 sets a pattern for us on his trip to Athens;

a) He takes time to walk around the city, looking, listening and learning (I'm always reminded of the advice given to children when crossing roads - Stop, Look, Listen!) ... it saddens him not because they are so far away but because, I believe, he sees just how close they are, how close God is (he goes on to tell them this)

b) He doesn't just look for 'needs to meet' he tries to understand the story, the history, the roots of the culture

c) He dwells in their place, a 'third place' actually - public, organic, a community place/space

d) He affirms them, their spirituality, their culture and yet challenges them to take it to a radical new place... BUT, not his place but God's place

e) He speaks to them not just in the words of their culture (the superficial) but in the language of their culture, their poetry - the  cultural blood that bubbles in their veins, the narratives that underpin their identity

f) He encourages/challenges them that all orthopraxy is human and cannot encapsulate or contain God, that all structures and edifices - material and cultural - are flawed.  He calls them not to a Religion, or a sacralised cultural expression (or even culture) but to a God who is closer than we ALL think!

g) Paul seems to have had a deep understanding of the people, their story, their context and when and where people held out there hand (from where they were!) and new communities emerged they truly reflected their context and Paul argued for their right to stand as followers and communities of Christ in their own way - indigenous communities seeking and relating to an incarnate God.

For me Matthew 13v33 [The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.] also gives a sense of being so enfolded in culture that we are almost invisible to the naked eye, in order to be transformational, and in doing so being combined at a deep level with culture and individuals and being transformed also!  To resonate therefore means being truly and deeply incarnational in order to be transformational... for the Kingdom of God is close at hand!

Technorati Tags: Mission: Missional: theology

Sir Francis Drake Prayer of the Week

Maggi Dawn has written an article for the Church Times (Link) about one of our "foundation" prayers (we first posted here)...  She says...

Drake’s prayer is an invitation to discomfort, as much as an expression of longing to stretch out into every corner of possibility. But, given the alternative — a dull Church and a diminished life — I think that it is a risk worth taking.

Technorati Tags: Worship

New-Monastics/Claiborne pod-cast

Shane Claiborne is an original voice, a creative spirit, in a gathering movement of young people known as the "new monastics." With virtues like simplicity and imagination, they are engaging great contradictions of our culture — beginning with the gap between the churches they were raised in, the needs of the poor, and the "loneliness" they find in our culture's vision of adulthood.

A pod-cast that's well worth listening to when you have the time from speaking of faith public radio -  Link

Technorati Tags: Church: Culture: Emerging Church: Mission: Missional: Podcast

Girl keeps growing

Juli Allen is one of the most creative writers/liturgists I know, I was fortunate enough to spend some time with her and her community, Wellspring in Houston last Autumn and I'm looking forward to catching up with her and others at Greenbelt... reading her blessings (soon to be published I think and hope) is a real blessing itself, this is the bit that really caught my eye today...

blessings on you
who stand in the tension and flux
of understanding God.
in the struggle to understand what is
and what isn't,
what was and what will be,
what we are
and what we should be.

I just love the word "flux"...

• a flowing or flow.
• the flowing in of the tide.
• continuous change, passage, or movement.
• the rate of flow of fluid, particles, or energy.
• a quantity expressing the strength of a field of force in a given area.
• to melt; make fluid.
• to purge.

Technorati Tags: alt.worship: Prayer: Spirituality