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I feel like I have had a crises of faith. My sensible reasons for switching are:
1. Pragmatic: some planning and bibliographic software to connect direct to my university was unsupported on Mac.
2. Simplicity: All I need to do is surf net, write, and e-mail, and all the other great mac apps I have were distracting me.
3. Connection: I needed with travelling to connect (yes I can do this on my Mac) but access to 3G data cards (and no the Vodafone one doesn’t work properly I tried it!) etc is open to me now.
4. Tablet PC: interface, it recognises my writing (which is a miracle), and adds so much to my writing process and planningLess sensible:
1. Am I rebelling against the Mac cult of emerging church?
2. Does a tabelt PC let me change without being back in the main PC fold?
3. I still have a mac at home for my imovies, itunes, idvd, iphoto and things I enjoy.
4. God needed to break my Mac addition, and let me see the world with different eyes?
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When we get Brian McLaren to come over for our Emergent events, we get a shed load of e-mails from groups asking if he can visit before or after. This year one invitation was from Graham Kendrick and the Songwriters Consulltation.So after Brian arrived yesterday, we drove up to High Leigh (north London), and are here with Matt Redmond, and most other worship leaders I’ve ever heard of, with Brian Being asked to speak on ‘Does the worship song have a future’. So I’m going to be a fly on the wall and take some notes for you all.
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Something I posted to my doctoral cohort this week about why I value being ordained.
—–Now I confess, I see things functionally. You are only a pastor as long as you are pastoring. But I’m not ready to give up ordination. Yes, a leader is leader, and no more valuable than anyone else, and I hold
to the priesthood of believers.Yes ordination isn’t in the bible.
So why do I want to keep it:1. Pastors are valueless: in the UK there is an anti cleical move, to see pastors as parsites suckin the life and money out of church…I hear it regulary, but most pastors are not in it for the money but to servce christ.
2. When I marry people, bury them, pray with the terminally ill, they want a priest/minister, the role of a priest, and yes in theory anyone can do it, but why do they want me as an ordained priest/minster…there is something about the office of priesthood.3. Right of passage: we have so few of these, and I look back to my ordination with fondness and it sustains me when I want to quit and go make a shed load of money without all the crap of church.
4. Calling: having people remind me like marriage that I made a committment to something for the rest of my life as best as I can…I am a pastor…
So I’m not arguing for the elite of ordination, I’m arguing that for some it
is of value and for me life giving, and I don’t see it as making me any better than anyone
else.Jase
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With one Click Dialectizer can change your site into cockney, redneck, hacker, moron and jive amongst others.
To see our church site made super cool for the hip and with it go to here
To see my blog jive, go to here
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Buy Reviving the Tradition & Renewing Evangelicalism hereI bought this book a few years ago, and it was so helpful in understanding how someone from a low church background like myself could embrace much that my tradition had thrown away. If you looking to do more than just plunder church tradition for things to copy, and want to reflect on the nature and purpose of tradition this is a great book to read.
A few thoughts I have about tradition, now that our church has many of it’s own, and we use liturgy, creed, confessions, church calendar in old and new ways, as well as many of the low church forms of church that our part of our heritage (and let’s no kid ourselves and think that any of us a post-tradition, we all have them).
1. So often we play with these traditions picking the ones that are immediate and most accessable. I am sure we are missing out on much of these traditions by just taking the easy bits we like.
2. We get people who have tried something once on a retreat to teach us how to use liturgy, when maybe we should be getting people whose life is this, and history to teach us (to avoid more of number 1!)
3. We must not make the same mistake an throw off all our traditions, just as the low church forms threw of everything. By this I mean I hear of churches abandoning their evangelical charistmatic worship experiences wholesale to embrace a completely new way of worshipping, seeing their old way as invalid. Sounds like the same mistake we made when we abandoned much of the church traditions in the first place.
4. If we don’t take these cautions we are on a never ending cycle of re-inventions, superficiallity, and of being faddish, and missing out on the real value of tradition.
5. I suspect the real value of traditon is not to be ‘cool’, ‘relevant’, but to anchor us to something that confronts our consumerism (as much as I am refreshed by these traditions that are new to me).Past
So for our church, as we try to retell the christian story to a church full of new christians, we reach back through church history and find the church calendar a great wat to help our people pick up the outline of the life of christ and the early church.
As we try to affirm our faith in a pluralistic culture, we use creeds and confessions, to remind ourselves that our faith is not 5 years old in a school hall. We remember all saints day to connect to the church Catholic.Present
And as we move forward we also hold onto the tradtions we already have. We are a Vineyard church, we have a heritage that we dwell in and don’t abandon, we don’t re-invent ourselves into oblivion from that identity. We tell the stories and use the forms of our tradtion we inherited and experienced directly.Future
We look to the future for new tradtions, new forms, new ecclesiologies, and embrace the value in them.
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After talking with Winn Griffin on why christians use the bible for fortune telling, he sent me this great paper by N T Wright, How Can The Bible Be Authoritative?
Download as PDF here here
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Heads up from Jason Smith on a new book. It’s good to dialogue with people who see the world differently to you, I’m off ot buy this.
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Reclaiming The Center
I purchased this book today. Should be an interesting read and a refreshing, yet harsh, critique of many of the things Emergent is espousing.
To learn a little more about this book, go here:
http://www.gnpcb.org/product/1581345682To read a little reflection from Brian McLaren, which, in my opinion, was trying to be proactive, vs. reactive to books like these, go here:
http://emergentvillage.com/speak_out/newsletters/newsletters.cfmAnd join the conversation!
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Just got back last night from a wonderful time in Norway. The people were wonderful, the food amazing, and it was encouraging to talk about church with people in context like the UK. It also snowed very heavily, so I am now feeling very christmassy.
Some pictures below. Also national new paper interviewed me on Emergent. I have no idea what the article says, but they got my name right :-)
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Coming in May 2005… Date Created: Nov 15, 2004, 03:01 PM 
Mealtime Habits of the Messiah: 40 Encounters with Jesus Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. Thicker than Jesus Asked in every sense of the term and just as chock full of attitude. Coming to a bookshop shelf near you. Where it will sit and sit and sit, no doubt.
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Final programme schedule for main sessions and seminars is now on line here
