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Just got off the phone after talking with Matt Rees, and we had a great chat about how from our limited perspective much of the emerging church seems either post-charistmatic, or formed by people who were never charistmatic in the first place.
Not a bad thing, just the way it is. But for people like Matt and I, who who might be post-evangelical in our theology (and even using that term is asking for trouble), but we aren’t post-charismatic. By that I think we mean, that we still value and practice, laying on of hands, expecting people to experience God, and hear from him, using the gifts of the spirit, etc.
So what does it mean to engage in our emerging culture, and be charismatic? Answers on a pneumatological postcard please.
Anyhow Matt and I wondered who else was asking this and if any of you wanted to get together early autumn to ask that questions, to share what we are learning and doing? Some of us vineyard pastors are making a go of this over at http://vineyard.emergent-uk.org/.
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I downloaded the new itunes, and have embraced podcasting*. This is going to be one of those things we ask, how did we live without it before.First on my podcast subscription is ‘In Our Time’ with Melvyn Bragg, and the BBC International News Service.
So what are you going to subscribe to?And I switched to Safari for all my RSS/news feeds and blog reading this week.
*(“Podcasting” is making audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) available online in a way that allows software to automatically download the files for listening at the user’s convenience.)
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“The Journey So Far” (Peter Hicks) buy in UK“The Journey So Far” (Peter Hicks) buy in USA
(Download a chapter here thanks for the link Maiken)
One thing christians often find it hard to believe is that they have a philosophy and world view. I’m just being a ‘biblical christian’ they say, not realising they have enormous philosophical bias. We all do.
Then we can become enamored with post-modernity and declare ourselves post-modern, or maybe we change how we do church and start to think we have got it right/better than the modern church. We wouldn’t say were being ‘biblical’, but we might use the words, ‘authentic’.
So maybe we need to understand our philosophy/worlview better, and want to dig deeper and make sure your not just replacing ‘being biblical’ with being ‘authentic’, but how do we do that without reading some incomprehensible books by philosophers?
Well Peter Hicks, has done most of the work for us in this book. If you want one book that traces world views/philosophies from the time of the bible until today, that’s comprehensive and yet very readable, this book is it. Rather I should say this book is a must have.
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I was having a conversation with Fredrik, when I was in Sweden, about the growing popularity, of making ‘private god spaces’, of being post church, and making church something about not being church.
In this expression, we see a reaction to the idea that the church has so often seen sundays as the only valid space for God to be. In this paradigm, sundays are church, and the kingdom, only the sunday service is church.
So now we regale the congregation, and sundays, and see church as when I play golf, go shopping, play football. In this paradigm everything is church, and I don’t need church anymore, I’m post church.
But in the old model where nothing is church, surely it’s so restrictive that we have to say no! and find God elsewhere? And in the second model, where everything is church, then ultimately nothing is church, a kind of pantheistic ecclessiology.
A church that does not naturally lead to people connecting to God, in the places they work, and play, and live, isn’t church at all. Conversely when church becomes just the place where I chose to connect with people who do just what I want, like football, I have stopped being church, just as completely.
In the reaction to church being so disconnected from the world, we think we are being radical by moving church outside of church, but we can end up not being church at all.
So where do I see church? What about the football guy, who finds God in his football sundays, and the water-skiing woman, who finds her time with God there. When they get together and ask, how are we going to talk about our faith, how are we going to celebrate christianity together – I hate football and you can’t water ski – how are we going to connect together outside of our own exclusive narrow spheres of interest…then they get to start being church.
If sundays was all about me, jesus as my girlfriend worship, my blessing, my needs, lets not be fooled and think that church on my terms, on my interests, with fewer people is anything better, or different, it’s just the modern church on steroids, hyper modern church.
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Just got back from seeing a good friend, Laraine Cole graduate LST.Lord Carey, former Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, is now the President of The London School of Theology, and he was at his first LST graduation. So it was very cool to see him shake hands with Laraine today as she received her Theology degree.
And Laraine we are so proud of you!
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One of my favorite writers (churchless faith, stories for the journey), and people in the emerging church sphere is Alan Jamieson. He’s just gotten into blogging, teaming up with Paul Fromont on Prodigal Kiwi.
This is a must to bookmark, and add to your news reader, here.
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New site for people involved in Vineyard churches around the world, who are exploring what the emerging church, and emergent means for their tribe.
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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results
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If you get a chance to read the notes from our planning/discussion day you’ll see we talked about the name Emergent and confusion with the title ‘Emerging Church” as well, as the need for a name that expressed who and what Emergent in the UK is.
I describe Emergent as a ‘clearing house for conversations’. Conrad who was at the day has some description of the need to look at a name change and suggestions for why it might help, here. I like his suggestion of ‘Conversation’ of ‘Wavelength’.
So please read Conrad and then come back here and let me know what name you think might be better, or more helpful, or to leave it the same.
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We had a great day yesterday for our first emergent UK planning day, to take time to explore who and what is Emergent in the UK, and what should we doing and not.The group who came from all over the country, at their own expense, and were asked along because from previous interactions they had shown kindness and care for Emergent, a willingness to be identified with Emergent, had helped others regularly as part of Emergent, and the people involved hand insights that we think would be very helpful from their expertise and experience.
So this group were from varied church/tribal streams, with a breadth of experience from psychiatry, the arts, management/leadership, theology, social action, and church leadership. We had a great conversation, and I wish we had more time.
I will blog the outcomes in more detail as I get time, and some of the outcomes will make there way into the Emergent UK web site and newsletters, soon.
Meantime you can listen in on our conversation from my notes. These have some notes I took of our conversation, they are my summary, they are incomplete (much of what was said is not noted), and will be clarified by the group later and re-posted. But we thought you might want to start listening sooner than later.
The notes start with our conversation, and the end has the outline of how we ran the day.
