Category Archives: emerging church

Mark Berry- missionary to deepest darkest Englandshire!

Posted on by
Reply

I have been enjoying Mark Berry’s blog for a while- ever since hearing him speak @ Greenbelt festival

mark-berry

To my surprise and pleasure, I found that he was the subject of a programme on Radio 4 called ‘The most Godless town in Britain‘.  (You can listen again to the programme via the BBC 1 player on this link for the next 7 days.)

Mark is based in Telford, a Shropshire new town in Middle England. I have spent some time there as a friend lived in Telford and asked me to lead worship at his church a few times ten years or so ago. It is a strange place- a planned new town, with integrated transport and industrial units surrounded by scrubby planting. To the uninitiated, it all looks the same, and it it very easy to get lost.

Telford apparently has the lowest per capita Church attendance in the UK, and the Church Missionary Society sent their secret weapon- personified in Mark.

Except the secret is out- thanks to this interesting radio programme.

For those of us who have been part of this emerging/missional conversation- it is all in there. The call to live for Jesus in a post-modern context, and engage with people who are ‘Spiritual’, but not Christian.

How is he getting on- well, check out his blog, which records some really interesting projects, including ‘Safe Space Telford‘. I think these things are a living example of missional living, now displayed in the national media.

Will exposure like this be helpful, I wonder? I reckon Mark will need some people to stand close with him, as I would think the pressures and strains will be considerable.

The radio programme gives a mixed bag of a conclusion- the presenter seems to be interested, but bemused- returning ultimately to a measure of faith and success that is based on numbers primarily.

Well worth a listen though…

Phyllis Tickle- The great emergence… and emerging church.

Posted on by
Reply

Following on from my earlier post about this word ’emerging’, I thought I would get hold of this book, that has been doing the rounds for a few months, by the wonderfully named Phyllis Tickle. I think I passed it by earlier as it seemed to be engaging with an issue- the step shifts in culture, and how faith engages with it- that was one I felt I had talked to death.

the-great-emergence

However, I came across a post today (thanks Corbus!) that contained a publicity clip, and so I hit Amazon. Here is the clip;

And for a bonus- here is a bit of dsicussion between Pete Rollins and Phyllis…

And finally- this one is very much worth listening to- it captures something that I have been chewing on for a while.

There seems to me to have been a retreat from the early radicalism of the ’emerging church discussion’. Is the’missional’ thing a way of making this safe- bringing it into the safe folds of organisation, and so neutering those who would bring disruption?

Or is ‘missional’ rather a conduit for life giving fresh air for the body of Christ?

So we decided to stick with the E word (for now). How about you?

Posted on by
2

Over the weekend we had a meeting of our embryonic ‘Emerging Scotland’ group. This began on Facebook, and has slowly gathered momentum towards real connections as well as on-line ones. If you are interested in such things tartan, there is an account of our last meeting here.

One of the issues at hand has been what on earth we should call ourselves? The name ‘Emerging Scotland’ was coined prior to the time when many of the earlier users of the word emerging began to distance themselves from it. Do we start to use this new word ‘Missional’?

Here is a selection of answers to a questionnaire;

4. What’s in a name? We set out using this word ‘emerging’- although it seems to be a word that is being abandoned by many of its early users. What does the word mean to you?

“A useful word to catch lots of different ideas and activities.”

“New ways of doing things.”

“Living life with people where they are and in the course of life, and living/sharing the gospel.”

“A label that speaks about what we are not, but not what we are. It evokes an emotional response.”

“The birth of something new from an old foundation.”

“Exploring/questioning/seeking.”

If this network is to call itself anything, is it time to find a new name- ideas?

“Emerging- necessary as an interim description- we can’t denote ourselves until we can define ourselves.”

“ Possibly need new name- but most names that convey significant meaning will become outdated as things move beyond them.”

“It’s fine for now.”

“Emerging implies something is HAPPENING.”

“ It speaks to me of hope, whereas ‘missional’ speaks to me of obligation, and organisation.”

So we will stick with ‘Emerging’ for now- even if what we encourage is activity that might also be described as ‘missional’.

How about you- are there others out there who are also wanting to stick with the E word? Is it still meaningful as a descriptor of something?

St Arbucks meet, ‘Emerging Scotland’- the skinny for those who could not make it…

Posted on by
7

emerging-scotland

Mins of the meet yesterday- get in touch if you wnat to know more- or if you have your own answers to the questionnaire!


Emerging Scotland meeting, Starbucks, 24th January 2009.

This was the second meeting, with an open invite using messages to members of the Facebook group, as well as spreading the word using blogs and word of mouth…

ATTENDANCE

10 people attended.

Dunoon- 5

Kilwinning- 1

Irvine- 1

Easterhouse, Glasgow- 1

Edinburgh- 1

Several other people sent apologies, or were unable to make it at the last moment.

FORMAT

Informal social meeting, with a chance to share stories and encouragement. We also used a short questionnaire to inform the potential future shape of the group. I think it is important to check and recheck this as we go along…

QUESTIONNAIRE A summary of answers given;

1. What brought you to the meeting?

“A desire to meet with other Christians wandering and wondering on the edge of established church.”

“Hoping to meet folk- share ideas and find mutual support etc”

“A few years back read ‘A new kind of Christian’.”

“To speak with people without having to spend 80% of my time justifying/repeating the argument.”

“Needing to connect.”

“To give and get support.”

“To find out what’s going on elsewhere.”

2. What use might a network be to you? e.g. companionship, theological discussion, sharing of ideas, practical support for project, retreats, website and contact lists, other stuff…

“All of the above.”

“Sharing, encouraging, pulling together.”

“Discussion, ideas sharing, meeting point.”

“Meeting other parents of kids not in organised church.”

“Safe place to explore ideas free from fear of guilt and accusation.”

“A sense of not being alone.”

3. Do you have skills you might offer? Hospitality, organisation skills, webmaster skills, mentoring, prayer guiding, counselling, carpentry, mime, cake baking, whatever- please be brave, we will not impose unless you are more than willing!

  • Counsellors
  • Youth workers
  • House church pastor
  • Music, writing, alt worship
  • Theological training/university education (“might make me a liability”!)
  • Experience of weird and wonderful things over the last 30 years.
  • Mentoring young leaders, missions consultant.
  • Modesty!

4. What’s in a name? We set out using this word ‘emerging’- although it seems to be a word that is being abandoned by many of its early users. What does the word mean to you?

“A useful word to catch lots of different ideas and activities.”

“New ways of doing things.”

“Living life with people where they are and in the course of life, and living/sharing the gospel.”

“A label that speaks about what we are not, but not what we are. It evokes an emotional response.”

“The birth of something new from an old foundation.”

“Exploring/questioning/seeking.”

If this network is to call itself anything, is it time to find a new name- ideas?

“Emerging- necessary as an interim description- we can’t denote ourselves until we can define ourselves.”

“ Possibly need new name- but most names that convey significant meaning will become outdated as things move beyond them.”

“It’s fine for now.”

“Emerging implies something is HAPPENING.”

“ It speaks to me of hope, whereas ‘missional’ speaks to me of obligation, and organisation.”

(The consensus of the people at the meeting is that we should stay with EMERGING SCOTLAND for now.

WHAT NEXT?

There is still a formal request for people to host events in their locality. Chris is happy to gather info about these and circulate them.

The dates we have so far are as follows;

28th– 29th March- Weekend retreat/open house- Chris and Michaela’s house, Dunoon. Tel 01369 707009, or contact Chris on chris@goan.fsnet.co.uk

Come for the weekend or for the day.

1st May weekend- an open invitation to the more hardy of us to a wild camping weekend on Scarba with Aoradh. Again- contact Chris for more info.

16th May weekend- family weekend- TBC- hosted by Nick Smith- details to follow

We pencilled in other dates- and though several people have said they offer something, we have not filled these yet-

27th June.

12th September

21st November

If you have other stuff that will ‘fit in’ already happening, or if you want to suggest an alternative date- let Chris know.

Hopefully we will pursue some of the broader organisational things as we go along…

Blessings

Chris

25th Jan, 2009

The legacy of church in the lives of children of the fundamentalists…

Posted on by
1

I met with some friends yesterday as part of our on-going attempt to get a supportive network for people who are interested in emerging/missional stuff in Scotland (details here for those who are interested- I will post an account of our meeting later.)

It was a great day- with many interesting conversations, and capped off with a visit to Glasgow to see some live music (Welsh language band 9Bach and The Broken Family Band- brilliant both.)

godstop1

One conversation we had was about kids and church. Like me, quite a few of my friends have grown up in church situations in which narrow belief systems and codes for living were espoused. For me it was to be part of an evangelical/Charismatic tradition, in a difficult family context. For a couple of other friends, their history comes from Lewis, and the stern austere, almost puritan, Free Church of Scotland. Then there are a few Baptists, or Pentecostals, and Catholics.

For many of us, the journey of faith ever since has contained an attempt to come to terms with some aspects and attributes of God- and what he expected of us- that were given to us by our backgrounds. When I say ‘given’, I include things we were told, and a wider way of seeing things that we just internalised though socialisation, if not indoctrinisation.

Some of my friends came to a point where they rejected church, because they could no longer live with some of the narrow and judgmental views that it represented for them. In losing church, it was difficult not to lose God too- at least for a while. Add the abusive actions of some of  the servants of Jesus in churches we are familiar with, and it perhaps makes it all the more difficult for people to find church again, or even to hold on to faith at all. (There is some more stuff about abuse in churches here and here and here.)

businessman-voodoo-doll-giclee-print-c12350887

But my friends and I- we remain drawn by the wonderful person of Jesus- and he leads us back to God the Father, God the Spirit- and the ecclesia- the collectives of the agents of the Kingdom of God.

As previously mentioned, yesterday, the discussion turned to children in Church. We all grew up with Sunday schools, and weekends regulated by attendance at a series of mostly boring services. The question concerned how much of this we felt we could inflict on our own kids?

Can we protect them from our experiences?

Where our experiences actually bad?

If so, in the balance of things- was there more bad than good?

The interesting thing was that all of us came to the conclusion that despite the difficulties, our church backgrounds, with all their guilt-and-confusion-inducing narrow viewpoints, brought to us mostly good and positive things.

Perhaps this was because we are a limited sample- people who still try to follow Jesus, rather than the many who have lost him entirely. These people are the prodigal lost sheep the Church may never return to the fold. My prayer is that Jesus will still bring them to him…

But I wonder if there is also something of a generational passing of the baton towards the new post-modern generation. We represent a punk generation, who later find an ironic pleasure in prog-rock, whilst also being drawn to Madrigals and Gregorian chant. There has been the necessary rebellion- but ultimately, there is nothing new under the sun, and the next generation will need their points of departure from ours!

Time will tell whether what they inherit from understudying the whole missional/emerging experiment equips them for their own journeys of faith more than our own childhoods.

For their own children’s sake- I hope so.

kids-in-church

One size fits all film…

Posted on by
Reply

I just ordered a copy of this film.

I thought it worth checking out as there seem to be some parallels between Canada as a culture and Scotland. And because these clips suggested it might be worth while…

The next one kind of hits the spot with me- the reason why I blog and use a website, and why I am persevering with the Emerging Scotland thing

A shift in church (or just a shift in me?)

Posted on by
Reply

cimg0665

Thanks to Brad Sargent, aka futuristguy, for this intriguing insight into a shift in emphasis within the Western Church. He blogs from the USA, but it rang true for me…

It seems to me that the focus or integration points have shifted from ecclesiology (with its inherent concern about methods and models for relevant church planting), to doxology (worship as the key thing to unlock the Kingdom), to theology proper (tinkering with a series of theological issues, like open theism or reforming the reformation), to Christology (with an emphasis on incarnational ministry), to missiology (with an emphasis on being missional and “culturally relevant”).

See here for more on this… but be prepared for some stuff that will hurt your head!

What do you think?

As far as I understand, I think Brad is suggesting a development in the way that radical church movements have sought to engage with the world around us, in this kind of progression;

  1. A technical focus on models and shapes of church- the way we meet and greet, the way we structure ourselves etc (perhaps resulting in a renewed interest, for example, in the House Church movement)
  2. Then a move towards worship (particularly the large praise and worship gathering) as a way to bring us together in an experiential encounter with God, and thereby equip us through a ‘soaking’ in the Spirit of God, which filters out into our lives and communities. I suppose this strand is still alive and well, stereotypically in churches such as Vineyard?
  3. A re-examination of the theological underpinnings that arose from Modernism and enlightenment thinking- particularly around the whole ’emerging church’ conversation.
  4. A return to the centrality of the person of Jesus- interpreting scripture, life and mission according to what we know and see of Christ. A renewed understanding of what Jesus meant by ‘The Kingdom of God’ and a rich understanding of ‘Incarnation’- as a way of literally embodying Jesus in our streets. This seems to me to be the active ingredient that releases the ’emergents’ above into the real world…
  5. And finally we come to that word again- missional. Brad sees this most recent turn as a focus on church engaging with the real world around the mission of God- however we might come to understand this mission. He also refers to a wide concern to understand the context and culture that we are part of, and to be relevant within it.

Now simplistic models of change such as this can never be complete, but as I look at this list- it interests me, as in many ways it mirrors my own journey over the last few years…

7 years ago, I was part of a (mostly) thriving church in the North of England, where I led thecimg0709 worship team. We had this thing for Scotland, and eventually headed up here in 2002.

In Scotland we attended a small Baptist church, which had rigid structures and traditions that I always found ill fitting. I became more and more interested in looking at the way we did ‘church’, and frustrated at the servicing of a set of dysfunctional systems at the expense of any real engagement with the town we were part of.

However, I was still involved in leading worship- and spent a bit of time in America and in Europe leading worship at conferences. My motivation in worship was very much to sing with all that I could bring to bear so that we might encounter the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. I longed for those moments when the air seemed to crackle with the electric presence of God- but with hindsight, I am convinced that often, we sought to manufacture them, and to overstate our experience to validate our practice… Our group Aoradh started around this time- as a very different animal than it is today.

The small church in Scotland I attended had some real problems, and eventually, sort of ate itself alive. We decided that we had to leave about 3 years ago, and in and around this time, I found myself desperately re-examining the building blocks of my faith and doctrine. I read incessantly, just about everything I could that would enable me to relate again to what this Christianity was all about. I discovered Bell, and McLaren and all sorts of other Emerging Church stuff, and it totally blew me away- before ultimately allowing me once again to adventure with God.

And the central part of this adventure- was Jesus. I fell in love with what he was and is all over again. I read the gospels with eyes wide open, and wept over the sermon on the mount. I am still there really- seeking to find ways to live in community and connected to others, so that I might better be able to celebrate and display the person of Jesus, and serve the people and place I am planted within.

All this time there was talk about post modernity and the need to engage with context in a way that is relevant and appropriate. I worried at times that this mixed in with a stream of folk who just wanted to make the church trendy and hip- which I think has always been beyond me! But I came to believe clearly that we could not longer keep trying to engage in a way that suited the 1950s (That quote from someone who said this comes to mind- If the 1950’s ever come back, we are ready!)

So where am I with this? I know myself to have been on a journey. My hope and prayer is that this journey has many places to visit yet.

May we meet along the way.



Branching out…

Posted on by
Reply
Header image

This Fragile Tent

Just another Missional Tribe weblog

I have been posting a selection of stuff from this blog onto the Missional tribe weblog (here)- which is throwing up some interesting connections.

I will continue using this blog as my main one, but will paste over stuff as it appears relevant.

Some of the group discussions are well worth checking out too…

Missional tribe- check it out.

Posted on by
Reply

I am determined to keep chewing on this word to see if I can find some flavour…

(Check out this previous post in which I express some skepticism.)

One of the blogs I read is Brother Maynard’s Subversive Influence. I was intrigued by a new project that he is part of called Missional tribe.

mt-earth-logo

In case you think this is another jump onto the trendy Christian bandwagon, here is what Bro Maynard has to say here…

Do a Google search on the word “missional” and you’ll get 1,200,000 hits. Search “missional” at Amazon and 1,238 missional products appear before your very eyes. It’s the Western Church word of the moment. The key to all that ails the church. The promise of a bright future – beginning with a bold tomorrow. That is, if we only knew what it meant.

Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody and Seth Godin’s Tribes helped to inform our discussions. Missional Tribe’s first iteration was as a Wiki. Then the mini “blogstorm” around Out of Ur’s Dan Kimball Missional results post convinced us that what the conversation needed was a place to discuss, share stories, watch videos, ask questions, and grow together. Where all of this can easily be tagged and indexed for rapid access in the future. The Missional Tribe social network was born (www.missionaltribe.org).

Less than two months after the decision to launch a social network, the beta of the Missional Tribe site launches today — Epiphany, on the church calendar. We would like you to join us in being a part of this non-hierarchical network.

From simply reading and commenting on posts and in the Forums, to creating your own Missional Tribe blog or posting a video — Missional Tribe is a place to track and expand the missional conversation – as we follow the Lord back into the neighborhoods where he has strategically placed each one of us.

So, I think I will join in for the ride, and see where it takes me…