From Knowledge to Wisdom

Quote of the day

"Perhaps all of us in wealthier nations in the 21st century struggle with the pace of our societies and with this loss of ends because of too many means. We have so many things to do, we forget why we are doing them; we have so many things, we forget why they matter."

"Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society", Marva J Dawn

Even a two week break from work over Christmas and New Year just evaporates because there are so many things to do!

(Thanks to J.R. Woodward for the book list.)

A Simple Model of Discipleship

This morning while reviewing the mess of my life in prayer, I was given the thought, "It is possible to act perfectly in every circumstance."

Whatever the circumstances and preceding choices and actions, it is nevertheless possible now to make the best of all possible choices and to take the best of all possible actions. I think that's what Jesus did. He lived among the real people and circumstances of His time and made the best of all possible choices and took the best of all possible actions as he moved through His days.

Last night we watched the second part of a Doctor Who story. As the story rushed through its climax towards the happy ending, Rose, The Doctor's companion, thought she had lost him for ever. The Doctor was deep down a pit on a planet that was drifting into a black hole. But Rose got over her grief and was doing her best to make choices and take actions on the basis of the maxim, "That's what The Doctor would have done."

She wanted to stay on the planet in the hope of reuniting with The Doctor "because that's what he would have done for her". But the team insisted on rescuing her and taking her in the escape rocket. Once on the rocket, making their escape, when it became manifest that the evil spirit from the pit was being carried by one of the team, Rose saved the universe, but put herself and the rest of the team in mortal danger, by shooting out a window so that the demon was sucked out into space to be consumed by the the black hole, "because that's what The Doctor would have done".

And so we have the components of a simple model of discipleship:

• seek to act as the Master would have done, even though it may seem you have lost contact with Him and it may involve extreme self sacrifice,
• keep the hope that it is always possible to make a fresh start in discipleship even though previous choices may have been wrong and the present circumstances look really bad.

Re-Incarnation of Church

A while ago Andrew Jones reposted Wolfgang Simson's 'Fifteen Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church'.

I remember being bowled over by these when I first read them some years ago. Some one around here had a draft of 'Houses that Change the World' printed on a pile of A4 paper. It was like a gale of fresh air bringing hope of release from the cage of institutional church, summarised into fifteen compact challenging statements.

So where are we now? Did that gale actually move us anywhere? Well, a couple of years ago a different blast moved us out of the institutional church. And for twelve months we have been gathering on Sundays twice a month in a home. The order for our gathering is very much formed by our lifetime experience of churches.

And Marc has summarised emerging church according to TSK into one PowerPoint slide. According to this, church "Happens on The Way" and making (and keeping) friends are one of the four processes in church planting.

So our church is happening on the way. A bunch of friends finding the way to be church, although our style and culture is somewhat different from TSK's. We don't meet in a pub where they have draught Guinness. (I hope meeting in a pub with draught Guinness is not normative for being Emerging Church). Nevertheless, we do carry a lot of traditional baggage - so there are probably other respects in which we do not conform to the classic emerging model, maybe we're traditional emerging.
 

Emerging Church - a Distillation

Tangentrider Laura is blessing us through her research on emerging ecclesiology and a distillation of the knowledge she is gathering. See EMERGING ECCLESIOLOGY abstract-esque for a collection of definitions of emerging church, some of the common themes and links to examples.

Thanks Laura!

Advent 1 - The Big Picture

Notes for a Talk on 2006-12-03 First in Advent

Theme the coming of Jesus

Lectionary Readings:

Jeremiah 33:14-16 Thessalonians 3:9-13 Luke 21:25-36

and references to parts of Col 2.

Intro - Advent 1 - New Year on the Church Calendar

Advent: we prepare for the coming of Jesus. Using today's readings and a couple of other references I want to try to put the coming of Jesus into the context of God's big plan for the universe.

The coming of Jesus is a momentous event. Jesus was there in the beginning of creation. (John 1:1-3 ) Jesus came to earth, born as a human child. Jesus sent His Spirit - the Comforter, the Spirit of God at Pentecost in Acts 2 and He continues to come as we receive His Spirit. Jesus will come again in glory. So Jesus has come, is coming and will come again.

The Big Picture
Now to try to explain what I mean by the 'big picture' that forms the context for Jesus' coming. This is a perspective which struck me in a passage of a book I have been slowly reading for some time and which I have referred to here before. Eugene H. Peterson "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" . This is the first in a series of five books laying a theological foundation for the 21st century. The next in the series is about reading the Bible and is entitled "Eat This Book" .

The idea which captured me is that the purpose of God throughout the history of the universe is salvation. It comes in the following passage: