way out west

How Deep?

I have a post currently on the Fresh Expressions - Share Blog - Here

Graham Cray told General Synod last week that a crucial factor in the spread of fresh expressions has been 'a new imagination about the form or shape of church'. He is right. We have seen over the last half decade an exploration emerge which concerns not just the stylistic aspects of our gatherings - music, dress, structure, location, etc - but concerns the very substance of what it is to be church. The question is, if this is good, how deep are we willing to go?

At the heart of the matter is how we have sought to be community and how this journey has led us into a new romance with the God who is by nature community. We have had a new encounter with God as Trinity, not a hierarchical Trinity with God the Father as the CEO, Jesus as middle management and the Spirit on the factory floor, but with the Trinity as the root of radically mutual community ... of the meal table, not the boardroom table!

This is changing how we see and do leadership within communities, where we put the emphasis on the flow of gifting rather than the authority of a title or position. Each of us surrenders our gifts to the community and so each of our gifts, rather than being lost becomes animated from use and spreads through the community. When a prophet is willing to give their insight then all our eyes are opened in new ways; when the artist creates, we all find new ways to express ourselves.

So, how deep are we willing to let this change affect us? How much of our systems and structures are we able to challenge? Can we let a 'ground up' shift impact how we think about every part? Can it change the way we think about leadership, about ordination, about our structures? Can it change the way we think about leadership, about ordination, about our structures?

A colleague of mine from Lichfield Diocese, Revd Richard Moy, challenged Synod why it 'locked its trainee clergy away for three years in a place full of other Christians'. I agree. We need to reflect on how we train our leaders, but have we got to go deeper? In this changing world, which will force our church to change, is it time to release leadership, to give it back to communities, to create a new way for sustainability which does not rely on a professional body but on equipping and resourcing communities to lead themselves?

After a recent visit from our new bishop, one member of safespace said how great it was to share with him as he was not at all 'bishopy'! Is it time to reflect the shift from hierarchy to community, not only on the ground but can we as a church become a community of communities, where we rely on each other, where we support each other and allow the quietest voices to be as significant as the most powerful ones?

Technorati Tags: Blogging: Christianity: Church: Church of England: Community: Emerging Church: Fresh Expressions: Leadership: Missional: Pioneer Ministry

Carrot or Stick

Sheer Genius!

Technorati Tags: Humour

Pirates and Privateers (in praise of half baked ideas!)

...our faith is always under threat from blockage, from those who would control access to forgiveness, to grace, to truth. We need good Christian pirates to plunder and raid these places, to demand that these goods are released for all.

From Kester Brewin's entertaining and challenging series of blog posts "A plea for Christian Piracy" to which Richard Sudworth writes a critique...  I do find the writing and thinking of Kester and Pete Rollins helpful and in many ways inspiring and I have great respect for Richard and am in no place to argue (I'm no way near intellectual or academic enough!) with his critique... so I'm not going to try!  I would say that both Pete and Kester are helpful for me not just for what they say but for the way they say it... they both dwell in a narrative world, they speak in stories and ideas which translate... I can grasp what they are saying and in doing so I can even critique them myself... someone once said that all the best ideas where at some point "half baked"... it seems to me that these blog "discussions" often assume that each speaks in complete and formulated theories and it becomes a case of "which camp are you in" (some of the comments to Richard's post for example)  I like half baked ideas, I guess that's why I find Pete and Kester helpful, not because they offer a complete package for me to adopt or not but because they tell stories which leave space for me to reflect, to work through.

Technorati Tags: Blogging: Christianity: Culture: Emerging Church: theology

St Brendan's Day tomorrow

Great post from Rhymin' Simon on St. Brendan - here - a section of which I've plagiarised!

1) Adventure: without adventure, our lives become dull and empty. Today we’ve attempted to rule out any element of adventure or risk in our lives, because we’re afraid of potential disaterous consequences. (’Don’t go out on your bike, you’ll get hurt’; ‘dont play out in the street kids, you get snatched by a paedophile’; ‘dont eat that plant, you might get ill.’ ‘Don’t pee on an electric fence…’ – actually that last one is right.)

But life without risk and adventure is dull, it becomes the antithesis of itself, lifeless. Certainly in church we’ve lost the element of risk and adventure which saw Christianity spread like a virus across the world hundreds of years ago. Now we’re safe, secure, and a bit fearful – what a rubbish way to live.

Why are we so afraid of risk? We’re too sold on our consumer culture attitude of safety and security as provided by banks and belongings (ha!) – well perhaps that notion is changing…

2) Dream: without dreams we’re nothing. To dream is to transcend the present reality, to enter a place where the impossible is possible, and to live a life full of hope and mystery. My kids have crazy dreams, they make no sense, they are impossible, but when they tell me about them, their eyes burn with excitement, and their minds expand. I want them to make their dreams come true (except that one about the flying elephant.)

With dreams we need the first element too, adventure, risk, the ability to suspend disbelief long enough to just give it a good try. I’m obviously not talking now about those crazy childish dreams of flying elephants and so on, I’m talking now about the kind of dreams we all harbour in our hearts, the things we’d love to do, the places we want to go, the adventures we want to take. To see dreams come true, we need to risk them not coming true too, we need to invite risk back into the equation.

In the navigatio Brendan and his monks make an impossible journey, with all kinds of adventures along the way. If we manage to engage our sense of adventure with our dreams, and suspend our disbelief long enough to take a few risks, then we too may just see the impossible become possible, and have a blast along the way.

Technorati Tags: Blogging: Celtic: Christianity: new-monasticism: Spirituality: St Brendan

Sensual Jesus "God rid me of God"

A very interesting post from Brittian Bullock on Religion-less Religion... worth reading and reflecting on.

I’ve taken up the Augustinian question, that Caputo alliterates, “who do I love when I love my God?” And I’m trying to find a working articulation of what exactly I mean when I speak of God. Personally, I am coming to the Johannian (as in the epistle writer) view, that the first name of God, is love. That love, in all its forms, pure love is God. Love is something intangeble…always drawing us into action, but never quite resolving in that event…it requires more of us. God is that which we desire, but also that which desires us and pulls and propells us towards the event of love. Love in this case is so deeply intimate that to describe it impersonal, or unrelational, would be to demote it. Love requires such relating and such personhood.

Technorati Tags: Blogging: Church: theology

The Passion Twittered

A New York Church is Tweeting The Passion today - Follow Here

Technorati Tags: alt.worship: Christianity: Church: Easter: Prayer: Twitter: Web 2.0: Worship

Scouse Guerilla Worship

Our good friends from Dream Liverpool - who incidentally we will be working with at Greenbelt this year on a collaborative worship day (along with Grace and Feig) get featured on Ruth Gledhill's Times Blog doing some Guerilla Worship

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church: Media: Worship

An Upside down ecclesiology?

These are the people who conspicuously share instead of consuming. They practice Jubilee rather than accumulate wealth....They give without expecting a return...They love without regard to label or obligation. They penetrate boxes marked "Stigma." They express an unequivocal concern for the poor and destitute. They look and move down the ladder. They don't take their own religious structures too seriously...They serve instead of dominate. They prefer invitation to force...Love replaces hate among these folk. Even enemies are loved. Basins replace swords in this society. These people share power, love aggressively, and make peace. They flatten hierarchies and behave like children. Compassion replaces ambition among them and equality supercedes competition and achievement.

From  "The Upside-Down Kingdom" (Donald B. Kraybill)  quoted by Ginny Hunt  (NextReformation)

Technorati Tags: Books: Christianity: Church: Community: Emerging Church: Missional

Paul Fromont does it again - this time on community

I'm thinking about having a typelist of Paul Fromont nuggets (kind of like Jonny's Worship tricks!) ;)  we seem to share some weird global wavelength... here in safespace been wrestling with how/what it means to be a community of diverse people/"churchmanship"/even theology (hence the long post below) as he does regularly Paul comes up with a quote which spookily speaks right into our conversations with this from Henri Nouwen...

The word community has many connotations, some positive, some negative. Community can make us think of a safe togetherness, shared meals, common goals, and joyful celebrations. It also can call forth images of sectarian exclusivity, in-group language, self-satisfied isolation, and romantic naïveté. However, community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another. Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own (see Philippians 2:4). The question, therefore, is not "How can we make community?" but "How can we develop and nurture giving hearts?

...thanks again Paul. 

Technorati Tags: Blogging: Community: Emerging Church: safespace

Something Beautiful...

A few days a go I had a long conversation (via Skype) with Thomas (@headphonaught) Mathie for the Something Beautiful Podcast... little me following in the illustrious footsteps of Frank Viola and Andrew (@tallskinnykiwi) Jones... Thomas even had me giggling by calling me a hero! it's nice to get a bit of flattery from time to time (just as long as one doesn't start to believe it ;-) )  anyway it was fun and hopefully Thomas managed to draw something interesting from my ramblings... It's not up yet, will repost the link when it is.

Technorati Tags: Blogging: Christianity: Emerging Church: Media: Missional: Podcast: safespace: Sanktuary: Web 2.0