Two new articles!
I've finally got around to adding two new articles to the Articles section. Both articles deal with hermeneutics: 'Don't You Just Read It' - Mark Norridge and Towards a Post-modern hermeneutic' - Graham Old.
Graham and Mark sent me these when we first added the Articles section. Sorry it's taken me this long to add them!
Happy Birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Jonny
Happy birthday to you!!
Mark’s post last Monday ties in with some thoughts I’ve been having about where we are as a community. One battle I’ve had over the last 6 months, (to use something Jason Clark referred to as) is the lack of public space in our community. Now we’ve tried all kinds of things, meeting up at cafes, going down the pub etc… but I find that ends up being more social than redemptive? In fact only half of folks turn up anyway. The fact is, and I know this goes against everything I’ve said and done in the last 18 months, but at the moment we need more of the public space element in our community.
One of the things we’re encouraged to do in the Vineyard is write a 2 - 5 year church planting proposal, it’s not a concrete plan, just some simple statements about where it is that you’re going, how you plan on getting there etc… In the summer before we moved I wrote one (about 12 months late I know), I found it really helpful to put dreams down on paper, something I’ve avoided doing for a long time. I think it’s because I can be a little bit of an idealist and find it hard to move on if something else isn’t in order, for me on the most part that’s been trying to get people thinking like “a new kind of Christian”. I kind of think “if we could just get this, then we’ll get here” forgetting this has been a 3 year journey for me so far. This kind of thinking often leads to a stalemate in our progression as a community.
Back to my point – on the most part my thinking about community and people belonging together, doing life together has equalled – doing church in small numbers (call it house church, cell church, home groups… whatever) now there is a lot of validity in that don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the only level that community is formed on. Joe Myers, in his book The Search to Belong (which I haven’t read yet, but have found his website), talks about community forming in four areas: Public Space, Social Space, Personal Space and Intimate Space.
Here is how he defines each one:
Public Space
Public belonging is experienced when we connect through outside influences.
Social Space
Social belonging is experienced when we connect by sharing a "snap-shot" or hint of what it would be like to share personal space/belonging.
Personal Space
Personal belonging is experienced when we share private (not naked) information, experiences, or feelings.
Intimate Space
Intimate belonging is experienced when we share naked information, experiences, or feelings and we do not feel ashamed.
Now the thing for us is (not knowing of these four areas) we’ve tried to make them all happen in the confines of our small house based community. Now and then we have people enquire about the church and nearly all the time, their first question is “where are you meeting?” (meaning public space). When we reply by saying “in so and so’s house on Thursday night”. Come Thursday when they don’t show we end up branding people wimps or church consumers, just because they haven’t wanted to connect with us in such personal space (someone’s home) now there are always people who will brake that rule I know, but not everyone is an outgoing or an overly confident person, which in my experience seem to be the only people who do!
So here’s something I’m thinking about, there is currently 14 of us in our community including kids. What if we were to forget our Thursday night church and start meeting in a public space on a Sunday (yes Sunday) for say the next 6-12 months. In that time we encouraged people to form small groups of 3-6 people where: (1) they express a mutual commitment and accountability to grow as followers of Jesus, (2) where they share a meal together as their expression of communion, (3) where they identify / recognized a leader/point person, (4) where they are committed to walking out the heart of Jesus by reaching out to others, especially remembering the lost, the poor and the broken. That kind of sounds like a house church to me!
The Sunday would then act as two things, a place for those smaller communities to meet together and a place for others, be it friends, neighbours, and phone contact to meet us! See if they like us, encourage them to join a small community in the week or even better help us form another one.
One final thing, one of the things I feel God is saying to us at the moment is that we need to build a beach head, we need more man power so to speak – And I think first off that’s going to come from those who are already Christians, be it people moving into the area or people already in the community who God calls to join us – if he still does that kind of thing – and no I’m not it to transfer growth. But we do need people to help us get the job done. I still believe we’re called to grow the church sideways and not upwards, by planting lots of simple expressions of church in our community, if you like that’s the end picture for me – the goal! – what I’m talking about above is simply the means by which may get us there. So if you want to send us your best people, your best leaders, your best worship leaders, etc – we’ll have ‘um we’re not too picky?
I stumbled upon this today: The Church of Wealth Creation! That is really quite scary. You wouldn't have to change too many words to make it sound like some other churches I could think of. They even have a blog. Still they say wisdom cries aloud in the street. Here is some of their's:
The essential thing is that nature never gives up. It has a quality of persistence, and a system of trial and error, called evolution. Nature is constantly experimenting, testing, and revising. Each generation produces new mutations. Some succeed, some don't. Those that succeed become the basis for the next advance, and so on. But it locates and develops its advances within itself.
That is the secret of success - not necessarily trial and error, although it sometimes may be, but rather persistence. Then, each tiny success becomes the basis for the next success, and so on. If one has persistence, and seeks in the right place, the riches are there to be taken.
Ignore the blimps on the internet globe. The fact is that most people who succeed in any walk of life do so not because they instantly discover a formula for success, but because they first learn how to deal with failure. Some of the wealthiest men the world has known have had their many failures, even been multiple bankrupts, before achieving their wealth and power.
Thomas Edison, when asked if he felt discouraged by the 1,073 failures he had before inventing the electric light bulb, replied, I did not fail 1,073 times, I found 1,073 ways not to do it.
There is no failing, but there may be a learning curve - and sometimes a very steep learning curve. That is why we and our brethren are here. We are here to help each other where we can. With our mutual support, we will all succeed, and, for so many, the learning curve will be dropped, and the achievement time will be so shortened.
Live long, live well, and prosper always!
Our church website is finally in a state where I am happy to announce it to you all! Community Church Northampton is finally officially on-line! It has taken a while to get things all updated, but thanks to Jonny, it is working. You will find our community blog and tag board in the community cafe, so go on leave us a message! If you look at More about us you will see a little more detail on the who-what-why's of what we are doing. I would be interested in your thoughts. Just to clarify for the suspicious, I came up with "a community of home churches" before I found vineyard central. In fact, I think they stole it from me [?!!] - they don't even call their churches 'home churches'!!
.Posted by: Mark | 12/09/2003 09:25:00 am |
My blog last Monday was a little raw, wasn't it!! I wrote it late on Monday night before going to see my 'mentors' in Derby for a debrief. Maybe it wasn't the best moment to blog? Or maybe it was the best moment? Aw, I don't know. Anyway it was good to get some things out in the open. It has made me think about leadership a little more. I began to think that the vision for something different to today, to what others have is a necessary characteristic for a leader. Imagining a different future is the first requirement for getting there. Maybe that requires that the imagining is different from those you are leading. There is clearly a tension there - a tension between what the leader sees, even dimly, and what others do not yet see. Maybe that tension is the very thing that results in movement, like two objects connected by an elastic band. The movement of the first stretches the elastic band, creating tension and then the second begins to move.
Now, clearly a leader with no one following is just taking a walk.
But maybe the future belongs to those who imagine it.
contact free 'evangelism' ..... fantastic.....
.Posted by: Mark | 12/08/2003 10:27:00 am |
Now this is funny! Here we have the solution to my Christmas present worries. I think Graham will particularly appreciate the ashtray!
.Posted by: Mark | 12/08/2003 09:38:00 am |
Simple Church
This whole simple church thing is hard you know. You see, I dream of a community of individuals all being followers of Jesus, all doing thier "One good thing". A group of people living for the glory of God, not getting their Sunday morning fix and singing 'til they feel good, hearing a preach that challenges them, but that is forgotten by the Sunday roast. But the reality the concept change is too great for most, maybe even me. Maybe if it was just one concept change it would be doable; I don't know, like "Christianity isn't about individual's getting to heaven, but God creating a people who can be his image on the earth". But it isn't, it is almost everything: worship, 'teaching', what church is, ways of cultural engagement, truth, epistemology, atonement, what the story is, who we are ..." I could go on with a couple more and probably a few more I don't know. All of these lie behind my concepts shifting. I wonder if I am asking people to make too many shifts at once. Maybe I am asking too much of myself. Maybe 'normal' Sunday mornings in a school hall will be easier, we could slot into them like an old pair of slippers, like the good old days. Or maybe I have gone too far already, maybe the hole in the slipper will just be too annoying now. Maybe I don't even have my new pair of slippers yet [this imagery maybe going a bit off!].
Or maybe there is a bit of fight left in me yet!
But I guess this is what I did struggle with out of the New Kind of church conference [I know, but I still thinking about it]. Brian talked about a need for leaders who have 'clarity'. But clarity about what? A clear direction? All the answers? or is it a clarity about the questions or the issues? I felt a lot more comfortable with this section of his article in Christianity today:
"Whatever new and varied forms our search for community takes will require new and varied forms of leadership. I expect that leader-as-CEO, leader-as-scholar, leader-as-therapist, and leader-as-hero/martyr will give way to less dominant styles of leadership, less dominant but no less important. Less like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, and more like young Dorothy, community leaders in the emerging culture will increasingly resemble the lead seeker in a journey, not possessing all the answers, but possessing a contagious passion to find a way home-and to bring others along in our common search for love, courage, wisdom, and home."
