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I was inspired by Jason’s outlining of some of the key values of deep church by the one on reflective practice. I find this especially striking as I like to think/reflect/write but at the same time I am wired for action – if i am passionate about something i will start doing it straight away without stopping to think (whereas if i am not passionate about it i can reflect for a v long time – much to my wife’s disgust when it comes to me actually cleaning the bathroom rather than just be thinking about it!).
In other words I often bounce from “reflective” to “action” and in doing so i get frustrated at times, especially where it feels like there’s too much thinking going on and not enough action and vice versa.
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I moved to a tag based archive on my site here, but have just had a new facility installed.
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So as per my last two posts, I am off to Frankfurt & Marburg today. I’ll try to post more from my time at the Emergent Germany event, when I can.
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So my theme for my time in Germany, of Deep Church, comes from my PhD research, and my association with Kings College London (see www.deepchurch.org.uk).
I’m particularly keen to help connect academics with the concrete reality of church, and to help church leaders interact with the reflective and theological aspects that arise from the notions of ‘Deep Church’.
In this post I want to suggest some aspects of what Deep Church means for me. Rather than reducing deep church to one way of being church I see it is about setting out principles that lie within the spirit of deep church. So below are a number of these principles in no particular order.
Deep Church as…
1. Pathological & Wellness: Whilst we need to address the problems and shortfalls of church, we need to do so by moving away from pathological descriptions, based on ill health, to ones of ‘wellness’.
Deep church for me is a way of us finding the best of church through out history, to take us forward into the future. We need to do so without a blind naive sentimentalism of the past but also avoiding the fostering of a negative and bilious cynicism that invalidates everything that has gone before us? (I’ve written on this before here).
What will we have as our measure of church? We will continue to pass judgement on their form or whether in the variety of their context/function they bring others to know and follow Jesus as a way of life with others?
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I’m trying to get some thoughts together for the input/teaching I am giving at the first public Emergent Germany event next week, along with Brian McLaren.
I’ve been asked to give some input into the topic/theme of ‘Deep Church’ and ‘Consumerism, Culture & Ecclesiology’, at the various days and conversations.
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This video of Sir Ken Robinson, speaking about education and creativity (which is short and superb), reminded me of how great the online resources of TED are.
My chances of every being able to afford or be smart enough to get into a TED conference, are as likely as getting tickets for an Arsenal football match. But hey, most of the events and speakers are online.
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After doing some very serious reading on spatial, emotional, cultural, linguistic differences between countries, and the effects on leadership behaviors, I thought I’d bring that down to earth.
After all the criticisms of how academic research fails to connect to real life, imagine if you will, a blog meme sent around the world: What is the emerging church?. What titles for our posts might we get?
British: Some suggestions for emerging churches, possibly, that you might not even consider to be churches, or be offended by.
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I came across Albert Hsu’s blog, based around his book ‘The Suburban Christian’ a few days ago, and after listening to his video summary of the book, ordered a copy.
It really is a superb book. If you have ever wanted to understand why trying to form stable and impacting missional christian communities in the suburbs of a town is difficult, this book will be a big help.
You can read a summary of the book and download a free PDF extract here.
Some of the things I really like about the book are:
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One session on the writing course I was on this week, was on ‘idea generation’ and ‘creativity’.
A background idea to creativity that I have often heard and believe, is that creativity is something to be practiced, and that you learn with practice.
Some of the highlights/tips from Nick Page for practicing creativity that you could use for blogs ideas, talks, books, anything, were:
1. Bisociation: Make use of bisociation, a term coined by Arthur Koestler to describe how two different semantic fields produce a different meaning.
In other words combine things from different worlds, and see what it produces. Do this with words, ideas, themes, topics. We see this with inventions, where someone observing a fly on a ceiling, gets the idea for velcro. Ideas and inspiration come from association.
Evangelism and mission involve bisociation, the entering into of other people’s worlds.
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I’ll get the rest of my notes from the writing course posted this week. Meantime, a request for help from you, gentle blog readers.
I have a ton of video’s and recordings from emergent UK events, many of them include Brian McLaren materal.
We want to get them online, for people to download. So if any of you are proficient at converting quicktime movies into smaller files, and posting MP3s, we’d love your help.
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