Straight into ‘mark’ number 4:- 4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation. These set of 12 marks have their context in the US, that melting pot of nationalities and races. I don’t claim to be up on the scene over there, but … More 12 Marks of New Monasticism: 4-6
I mentioned at the end of the last post the 12 Marks of New Monasticism. Now, let me start by saying that one of the reasons this thing fires me up is because I think that Primive Salvationism had the whole New Monastic thing going on long before Bonhoeffer coined the phrase and before people … More 12 Marks of New Monasticism: 1-3
Funny, I was watching Ugly Betty last night. I don’t know if you watch it, but basically one of Betty’s ex-boyfriends confronts her about the fact that she’s working in a fashion mag when she wanted to be a serious journalist. She’d forgotten her vision. Like I said, the Army stuff is difficult mainly because … More Looking to the years to come
I was messing around with one of those random facebook applications earlier. The one where it shows you your year worth of status updates and puts it into a pretty collage thingy. You ever wish you just didn’t do something? The status updates around the time of our leaving officership are so difficult. The conversations, … More Reflection on the year that was
I’m not one of those who’d say that I find prayer particularly difficult. God was very real to me from the beginning of my Christian faith and it always felt natural to develop a relationship through prayer. I remember in those months of searching before becoming Christian of uttering some very real prayers and having … More Shaped Prayer
I remember Dr Rory McKenzie saying in a Practical Theology class, back in 1998 at bible college, that ‘the unreflective life is not worth living’ and I have remembered that like a bolt of lightening these last ten or so years since I heard the words coming from his mouth. This, in many ways, is … More Taking Shape
For those of you who might want to ‘brush up’ on the thinking that accompanies how we might respond as a church after Christendom, Stuart Murray has a book called ‘Church Afer Christendom’ and one called ‘Post-Christendom’. They are weighty books, although very good. There are also others in the ‘After Christendom’ series. However, if … More After Christendom Summary
Now, I’ve gotten into trouble writing about this before (not that its going to stop me reiterating what is, I believe, a fundamental Christian truth). The fact is this: the Kingdom of God is a classless race of people. The divide between clergy and laity is a Christendom creation. Laity, and indeed ‘clergy’ , is … More Classless
Frank Viola in his book ‘Reimagining Church’ highlights that there were four different types of meetings evidenced in the pages of the NT. They were: Apostolic Meetings Evangelistic Meetings Decision-making Meetings Church Meetings Apostolic meetings were those where the apostles would ‘preach’ to an interactive audience. ‘Preaching’ was rarely monologius, mainly interactive. The aim of … More Types of Early Church meetings
I found this good article (below) which presents the model of ‘open participatory meetings’ very well in a condensed version. Enjoy reading. I will do a midrash on it, adding my comments on it over the next week or so. Additionally, you might want to look at the follow up to ‘Pagan Christianty’ by Frank … More Participatory Church Meeting
Andrew S M Clark 