Jason Clark

Trying to make safe spaces for diverse and healthy conversations about church, culture, mission, theology and motorbikes

Churchgoing stabilises after years of decline, research shows? #dmingml

via telegraph.co.uk

Just how low can involvement in the Church in the UK go? A faint glimmer in one piece of research is contained in this article

What is the Church? #dmingml

What is the Church?: Hebrew 10:19-25, podcast/audio from my teaching last sunday that tries to respond to that question is here.

Our church community is exploring the possibility of a major undertaking with a facility that we want to develop as a community centre, town hall, worship centre, arts centre, conference centre etc.  And our church community is located at a time and place when most people in the UK have little to do with Church, and when a large numbers of Christians think we don't need Church at all.  So why do we bother? 

Is there something about Church that we need and our community needs?  What is that? If we are going to undertake this next step as a Church community, we need to revisit this and be sure of what we are doing and why. 

I took the text of Hebrew 10:19-25 to start to explore that question, as we seek the welfare of our city/community (Jer 29).  Probably most most passionate plea and explanation of how I understand the nature and purpose of Church.

climate, humour, and the 'terroir' of Church

I'm just listening to Martyn Percy talk with our D.Min GML students about the climate, smell, temperature and 'terroir' of Church life.  You can catch the thoughts from Students at our 'Taggregator' site.

I'll post the MP3 and notes later, riveting and stimulating stuff.

Why we don't connect anymore?

The last two sundays I have done a two part series on 'friendships and relationships'.  

The first part was a more theological diagnosis of why we struggle to connect and have ups and downs with relationships, the second part was more practical with biblical advice about how to choose and build relationships.  And all this was done with an eye to Church community and the relationships we have there.

You can catch both parts here under 1st and 8th August 2010.

The Church: Love it, hate it, and what you can do about it

I just sat in a conference talk that centred on the nature of Church.  It was refreshingly self critical, whilst being hopeful and looking for the best in 'Church'.

I was reminded how weary church assessments being made by the most facile of determinants.  

On the one hand so many churches seem to behave in ways that seem as if they have a death wish, unable and unwilling to live out the call to radical commitment to Christ with each other, trading off habits and traditions, and self interest.

And I am equally enervated by the malaise of consumer engagement and critique of Church, that reduces all engagement to what I have time left for, and/or a pathological what 'works' for me. Church is measured by what I like/don't like, and takes on a permanent identity in opposition to the Church.  Or as my friend Phil Harold puts it, "What happens when the spiritual journey ends in little more than a prolonged rant against existing forms of religion.  Its all about dissociation.  There seems to be a stunning capacity to persist in that mode indefinitely today, and an equally stunning incapacity to find a spiritual home."

I am often staggered at how in our brokeness we can set ourselves apart from Church, and fail to realise the mess it is in is due to it being composed of people like us.

And so many of these conceptions are so often hydroponically rooted in consumer culturally values, or therapeutic self differentiation, and not in the language of scripture and practices of identity and mission in Christ, with others.

In the talk I was just in, a quote from Henri Nouwen about the Church was made, 'When we say, "I love Jesus, but I hate the Church," we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too.' 

I googled the full article, and it embodies a methodological examination of the Church, good and bad, that is the antithesis of the inveterate dichotomy above.  In short it's one of the best explorations of the nature of Church, good and bad, and our feelings and identity in relation to it, that I have ever read.  So glad I stumbled upon it.

I've attached the full text to this post.

(download)

 

Emerging Church falling into same three traps of Evangelical Church?

Another great blogger to recommend to you, David Fitch.

David has a three part series, in which he explores how the Emerging Church 'must avoid three dangers, three traps if they (we) are to elude the traps that evangelicalism has itself already fallen into.  That’s when I came up with these three clumsy terms, de incarnationalize, de-eschatologize and de-ecclesiologize.'

His latest post explores the possible de-ecclesiologization in the work of Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost.

I've been long convinced and I'm exploring in my PhD research how Evangelicals have had too low a view of Church.  Emerging Ecclesiology continues an evangelical missional impetus, but perpetuates the problems of its de-priorisation of ecclesiology, and separation of Church from Mission.

The Emperors New Clothes: Jonny Baker talking missional common sense

This is just in case anyone reading this hasn't hear of Jonny Baker, one of the most well known and long standing UK christian bloggers.

Make sure you catch this refreshing and perceptive post 'Romantic Tosh'.  It could just as easily have been titled, "The Emperors New Clothes'.

Jesus Manifesto: Len Sweet & Frank Viola

I was sent an advanced copy and asked to review the new Len Sweet and Frank Viola book, 'Jesus Manifesto', that goes on sale today.

The dust jacket commendations read like a 'whose who' from the Christian world, and there is little I can add to those luminary accolades.

Rather than a quick soundbite to recommend the book, I thought I would read it and provide a more detailed response.  

Len Sweet was the inspiration and lead teacher for my Doctor of Ministry Course whilst Frank Viola I don't know.  I have always been less than taken with Frank's previous writing seeing it as being historically and methodologically fatally flawed (for example see this critique).  And I write that not to be personal just honest about some of my interactions with these authors, before I crack the book open.

The premise of this book is bold and upfront, claiming to offer a third and forward way between the left and right of how Christians and churches are currently responding. Although it doesn't initially detail what those left and right ways are, given my own hopes for a tertium quid of Deep Church, it grabbed my attention and sympathies

That third way, is immediately offered as being the person of Jesus and suggestion that the book is 'fresh Christology', for that third way.  Plenty of Christians make the claim that all we need is a new focus on Jesus, so nothing new there, so what is the focus of their Christology that make this a real third way, and not an old way re-packaged?

In essence I heard two things with regards to that question.  Firstly that the existing church has too often had Christological heart failure, becoming about so many things other than Jesus, and that secondly many of the alternatives to traditional church are being shaped by so many things other than Jesus too.  

A Christianity centred around 'leadership' or 'worship' is just as much in danger as one focused solely around 'justice'.  There is a gentle and yet stinging critique of how we are using the language of previous cultures and now emerging cultures to shape who and what we are, instead of the language of identity in Christ.

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