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In the interview I conducted with each of our recent guest writers/contributors to the site I asked them how they would define the kingdom of God in five words or less. Well now I’d like to throw the question open for you to join in the fun. In five words or less how would you explain/define/understand/express/feel-about the kingdom of God…
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I’m off early to get the train to Birmgham, and am teaching a module on church, world and culture at a missions school. It’s a a whilst since I was there.
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here.
Two sundays ago our church began a series on issues of the environment, and social action, and consumerism. I wanted us to begin by taking a step back from the discussion on whether global warming is happening, and what can we do if anything, and look at the bigger issues of the ethics of Christian living. How should we live as christians and what is the context of consumerism we find ourselves in. The introductory talk is here.
The title is the suggestion that to be a christian is to live an ethical live (rather than ethics be something we can bolt on afterwards) and why and how consumer culture and christian culture makes it optional so much of time.
Also in gathering practical resources, for the action end of caring for the environment, one of the most helpful I have found (thanks Peter Aschoff for telling me about this) for tracking the environmental decisions we make is www.wearewhatwedo.org. This site gives you simple things you can do, and an online system to track them and see the effect they have. You can also track your actions through a group registration which we are considering, so we can measure in some way the collective impact of our community as we take action.
Are there any other similar sites you have found helpful for doing this?
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The very nature of God is both communal and other centred – God is in eternal community of one nature/will in three persons. They do not not try and hog the stage for themselves but instead turn the spotlight on each other. There is no hierarchy, there is no ego, there is no fear, there is no dominance – there is mutual acceptance, delight, laughter, creativity as each one bows to the other and loves to see the other lifted up.I have on my blog been reflection over a number of posts of Walter Wink’s thought that the kingdom of God can be expressed as a “dominanation-free order” and in particular what that might mean for some of our thinking around sexual conventions/mores, the bible/God and our own expression of faith.
In this post I would like to explore with you how we, as christian communities, can live out something of God’s eschatalogical future and of our origin as being God idols – created in the image of God. I would like you to imagine with me what it would be like to be communities where we could be open to each other in a way where it was other centred – not stuck in the hiarachies and domination systems that we as humans have created out of fear, or the need to control or be controlled. Instead let us imagine together how we were created in the beginning – in the image of this tri-une, fear free other focused God – and how it will be in the end when we are known and fully known. The hope now of begining to walk in a Spirit filled life that looks forward to when we receive our fully restored humanity in bodily form and finally experience an eternuty of liberated, dominion-free living.
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We joined in the ‘Amazing Grace Sunday’ and 200th anniversay of Slavery in Britain reflections this past sunday. We explored the history of the abolition of slavery, looked at the ongoing intenational slave trade, and Marc from our church community put the video reflecition above together. We finished exploring the theme of ‘Slaves for Jesus’, and Paul’s suggestion that we understand ourselves as slaves of Christ.
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“Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like a state of mind.”
Mike WattIt’s offensive to be pursued simply because someone wants to make you think like they think. Do you feel loved and cared about after someone knocks on your door and hands you some religous pamphlets? Every once in a while, maybe someone feels loved that way. But most of us want real relationships. We want to think that people love us for us, not because they are trying to make us into clones of themselves.
I remember eleven or twelve years ago when we used to go to Mardi Gras in Louisiana. We’d bring a bunch of thick socks and McDonalds coupons for the street kids (they loved it!) and then we’d hang out with them and/or play music on the street corner. We’d also put up a little table that said, “Free Lit,” and people would come up and take home-made papers and poems and accompanying art work that we’d lovingly written ourselves just for them.
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A friend of mine at the Causeway Vineyard Church, in County Londerry, Northern Ireland, asked me to pass on this position they are advertising for a paid pastor/minister, that might be of interest to many of you or someone that you know.
Download details of the role Causeway Vineyard Job Vacancy.
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I’ve noticed an interesting, if not disconcerting, trend within the Christian subculture. It may be nothing new, just something I was overlooking. If so, you can write me off as an imperceptive alarmist. But as I’ve been listening to people, particularly Christians, talk about Christianity, it surfaces over and over again. Whatever “it” is, it has a trans-generational quality. Initially, I thought it was a characteristic of the modern era and had very little hold on emerging generations. I thought that this was one of the great “sins” of my parent’s generation. Well, I think I was wrong, because it seems to be more of a human trait, not necessarily connected to a particular time, place, or culture. It’s also very hard to pin down, because it has a certain amoral peculiarity. And, personally, I don’t even know if it’s worth acknowledging, though it is something of an open secret, because it’s practice is so prevalent that it has become normalized within the Christian community. In other words, Christians, me included, cannot imagine life without it. Continue reading »
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Following on from this post on ‘blueprint church’, I thought I’d post some more thoughts about this issue. In particular paraphasing the ideas of Nicholas Healy, who has explored this issue in some depth. (Warning long post, with some theological reflection, and audio version is here)
Healy sees a 5 stage process that has happened in church history as people have tried to respond to their context with new forms of church. I have use it in outline, trying to apply it with my own words to the context we are in today.
1. Metaphor: We pick one word, or a phrase that ecapsulates the model/idea of church we are trying to conceive of, and in church history this might have been, ‘people of God’, ‘communion’, ‘herald’, ’servant’, and more recently we might add, ‘cell’, ‘networked’, ‘emerging’, ‘fresh expressions’ etc. As we seek to describe church we reach for these metaphors. Whilst these metaphors help us think about what church should be, and could be, it can so easily lead us to something unhelpful, the idealisation of church.
2. Idealisation: We begin to think of the church as existing int two parts/essences (bi-partite), there is the empirical church (the church we can see around us), then there is the better, truer church that we have conceived of (whether it exists or not, as yet). The dreams and aspirations we have for church can help us see the sinfulness of church, where it is failing to respond to our context, but this process can quickly lead us into a vision for church that is unable to deal with the realities of everday life. To do anything concrete immediately undermines the dream for the church. As soon as it connect with real people, the vision is polluted, corrupted, and we withdraw, or move onto the next conception of church.
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They seem to crop up in every police TV show/drama in the US and the UK. Clear, see through, upright drywipe boards. They are used for timelines, spider diagrams, mind mapping, posting images/photos and making connections.
I like to stand up when I am thinking and I like to make mind map notes to make and see connections. Now I could get a Drywipe Board, as in the image of this post to use for that. But I’d really like to get a clear/see through one. Problem is I have no idea what they are called, and I have tried every google search I can think off.
So if you know the clear screens I mean, and what they are called, and better yet someone who supplies them, please drop me a comment/reply.
