Jason Clark

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

360 Degree Preaching and Leadership, 20th September, Oxford

360 Degree Preaching and Leadership

A unique opportunity to improve your preaching as the world renowned Michael Quicke, author of 360 degree preaching and 360 degree leadership makes a rare visit to the UK. Enjoy a day in an Oxford University college and a chance to sharpen your skills with other preachers.

Date: 20 September

Time: 10:30 - 4:30

Cost: £30 including lunch and tea/coffee

Location: Regent's Park College, Oxford

View Map

Download this e-flyer and pass it around!

 

Can you help us discover and tell a bigger missional story? #dmingml

Our new Global Missional Leadership learning community that I am leading for George Fox Seminary, kicks off September 1st.

You can follow along online, or meet up with us in person, with all the reading, lectures/teaching and conversations from the programme being made available online.  You can help us discover and tell a big missional story.

*** If this new learning community grabs your attention and interest, please do help us spread the word through your Twitter, Facebook, and blog networks.  Do add the tag #dmingml to you posts/tweets so we can track them, thanks.

George Fox have invested heavily in some ground breaking social media technology, enabling content creators from all over the world to tell a bigger global missions story. I'll write more about this in a post later this week.

Some big headlines for this week:

1.  dmingml.com is the site to visit and book mark, that pulls through all the blogs, Facebook, and Tweets that relate to the Global Missional Leadership community.

2.  Face 2 Face:  If you want to join us in person we are at these locations and dates, 2010.

1st September: Rippon College, Oxford.  
An afternoon with Martyn Percy at Rippon College.  Martyn will be talking about congregations and missions. Jim Belcher author of 'Deep Church', and Dr Michael Moynagh author of Emergingchurch.intro is also joining us for the afternoon.
To register for this event please email jason@jasonclark.ws

Dr Cathy Ross who is moving from CMS to LST, will be with us talking about missiology from a woman's perspective.  Dr Caroline Ramsey, lecturer in business management at the Open University, will be talking with us about the nature of 'reflective practice' itself within leadership and mission.  And we have Antony Billington, head of faculty at the London Institute of Christianity, talking with us about cultural hermeneutics, and discipleship in a post-modern context.
To register for this event please email jason@jasonclark.ws

3rd September: Ridley hall, Cambridge
We'll be meeting with David Male, to explore Fresh Expressions and mission, and with Dr Maggi Dawn, who will sharing about her new book.
To register for this event please email jason@jasonclark.ws

4th September:  London, UK
Social Media Boot Camp, hosted at London Institute of Christianity, in partnership with EA UK and, LST. The Social Media boot camp will explore, safely, personally and simply: What is Social Media, why is it here and why is it important; The main popular tools of Social Media including blogging, Facebook and Twitter; How you might better use Social Media for your own communication and life and How your organisations, church, and ministry might engage strategically and meaningfully with Social Media.

More details and registration for this event is here.

6th to 7th September:  Nuremberg and Erlangen, Germany.  
Meeting with Dr Peter Aschoff,and exploring mission, culture and church history.

So you are all welcome to join us at any of these venues to take part in the events scheduled.  Also around the events we'll be exploring the locations we are in. Making plenty of space and time to talk, eat and explore, to which all are welcome.

Holy Wars Movie: A tale of two fundamentalists?

Brett Jordan gave me a heads up on this documentary movie, Holy Wars.

The blurb from the site, describes the film as:

"Holy Wars is about two men with two different ideologies, both deeply rooted in fundamentalism - Christianity and Islam. The film follows Aaron Taylor, an evangelical Christian Missionary from the Bible Belt, and Khalid Kelly, an extremist Muslim Irish convert living in London. Both men believe that an apocalypse is inevitable, after which their religion will rule the world. Over the course of tracking their lives from the inception of the “War on Terror” through the election of Barack Obama, one of the men goes to the darkness of uncompromised hate, the other towards the light of a better understanding. Holy Wars is an extraordinary, thought provoking portrait of two radical believers who are transformed by events in our changing world."

Also efilmcritic carry a good review of the movie, that gives taste of how the film sees two men explore their beliefs and how they face up to exposure to each other and visits to the people and situations that they have had such strong opinions on.

Future of Evangelicalism?

My mate Antony Billington gave me a heads up on this resource.

Patheos have brought together some authors to write a series of articles on the future of evangelicalism.  The essays are organised by theme and are being released online over the next two weeks.  Scott McKnight is one of the contributors and you can find his paper which  'surveys the field, and finds the Neo-Evangelical Coalition is falling apart.'  All the papers ar here.

The blurb from their site says:

"A rapidly evolving tradition with deep historical roots, evangelicalism confronts abundant opportunities and abundant challenges. How will current movements within the church shape the face of American Christianity in the next ten years? What is the best way to influence culture while retaining the distinctive qualities of evangelical faith? How should evangelicals relate to other Christian traditions, and even non-Christian ones? How ought evangelicals to engage in politics? And how are evangelical ministries responding to the swiftly changing circumstances of life in the twenty-first century?

Patheos has assembled an extraordinary collection of essays addressing these questions. The essays are organized according to the themes listed below, and will be released on the Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays of the next two weeks. Come back often!"

What do you like to do on holiday/vacation?

I love learning, and action, and the worst thing for me to do on holiday is an extended time of 'nothing'.  It doesn't work for me, and it isn't about me being unable to disconnect, it's just not how I'm wired.

I love to get up early, go for a run, read a book, learn something new that I wouldn't normally have time for at home.

I've just discovered 'Great Courses', which are in DVD, CD and audio formats (UK site, US Site).  So I'm loaded up and ray to listen to a course on how sentences within good writing work and an overview of great idea in philosophy. 

Reclaiming the female half of God's image

I was reading earlier today the aims of this writing project:

Wikiklesia: Volume Two will re-examine and re-imagine the roles of women of faith. The purpose of "Taking Flight" is four fold:

* To inspire and challenge. Many in religious circles may agree with the idea of equality in theory and in theology, but often bias and discriminatory practice persists. Even in the most progressive religious circles, women’s leadership is not encouraged nor are women’s contributions acknowledged equally. Volume two, with integrity and grace, poses new perspectives for Christian leaders.
*  To inspire women to take flight using contemporary and historical examples. Women of faith represent a latent army of world changers and advocates, that if inspired could affect the world in dramatic ways. An unprecedented, historic window of opportunity is opening at this time.
*  To inspire balanced gender participation and representation within Christian community. Faith communities are undergoing change. People are slowly migrating toward a more experiential and participatory settings which de emphasizes hierarchically dominant structures. The opportunity to pursue and implement decentralized structures will not be fully realized without fully integrating women’s perspectives.
*  To offer a renewed apologetic to those outside the faith. It is abundantly obvious from “secular” practice that women are equally gifted for service and world leadership. The church must broaden and renegotiate its theological anthropology to recognize the radical nature of Jesus valuation of women and thus take its right place in the world.

Looks like some wonderful writing and work here, and you can read the detailed abstract here, and order the book from via here.

The Big Society: How should Christians engage in partnerships with government?

So David Cameron launched the new government initiative of The Big Society.  Where I live has been chosen to pilot applications by local communities for government money for their projects.  In the hope to devolve power to local communities, and to give them resources to do what Government cannot do, and in the current climate can't afford to do.

The Evangelical Alliance UK, have contacted UK churches encouraging them to make the most of this possible initiative.  I've just asked to meet my local MP to explore what this might mean for our church and its community projects.

How do churches navigate this initiative and think through some of the issues of what working in partnership with local government entails? Churches are the largest national group of volunteers in the UK, able to bring to every community, the most important important resources for community...people.

But how do churches avoid naively being swallowed up and hijacked by the dominant UK secular anti christian political agenda, and at the same time not miss out on what could be the most amazing time and space for engagement with community?

A great place to start is with the book by Luke Bretherton, 'Christianity and Contemporary Politics'.  I wish this book have been around when our church plant started it's community projects and partnerships.  But I think this work is almost prophetic for helping churches navigate this new possibility.

Churches need to do the hard work of reflecting carefully how they understand their role and place in society as they approach this project.  Luke maps out how churches are usually 1) Co-opted:  one self interest group in civic society, working with others 2) Competitive:  Using the language of 'rights' and 'freedoms' to express themselves publicly and 3) Commodified:  a private lifestyle choice, in the market place of clubs and societies.

Of course Luke argues that all these are unhelpful and that there is better way to understand church in relationship with society.  Luke shows how if Churches don't think through this role and relationship that when they get involved in local politics and government partnerships, several problems ensue.

1)  Co-ercive:  Churches are forced to stop religious practices and identity to enter into partnerships, losing their focus on people as whole and spiritual being, and losing integrity in the process
2) Mimetic:  Becoming like the state and other professional bodies, seeking to be 'effective'
3) Normative:  The people in churches who take the lead in these partnership become professionalised, and distant from the church communities that enable their partnership in the first place (this was the most painful example with a project in our own church, that broke away from the church once established)

In summary partnerships by the state with churches can cause social conflict rather than achieve a common good, with the aims and values of churches being undermined by them.

Read the rest of this post »

Idols: Surviving the Credit Crunch Part 2

Fresh and online from this mornings service at my church community, is the second part of two talks I gave, on surviving the credit crunch.

Surviving the Credit Crunch, new talks by Jason Clark

Last Sunday I taught part one, of a two part series on Surviving the Credit Crunch.  You can download the talk here, and catch part II this sunday in the same place.