Wisdom of Jean Vanier
In this months moot podcast, there is a remarkable recording of the wisdom of Jean Vanier, one of the most important new monastic inspired activists in the world. To listen to it, click here
Category Archives: Theology
Interesting post by Mark Lindores
Recently I spoke at the Resource training course weekend representing the Moot Community, where we explored mission to a post secular culture of spiritual seeking and new monasticism as a particular model. Mark kindly bought my book I think to follow up what I talked about.
He has now written a couple of blogs concerning my book “The Becoming of G-d” exploring what I looked at last year. To see what he has written click here
I am currently attending a residential training course on preparation for incumbency through the DIocese of London. It is an excellent course, and I found it interesting how the concept of managing chaos and complexity returns to the themes of a fluid understanding of life, and some of the elements of a Trinitarian Ecclesiology which was so elemental in the book “The Becoming of G-d”. So very interesting how our learning takes us similar cycles revisiting things as life and vocation changes.
New Books in Preparation – New Monasticism & Spirituality in the City
Well its now a new year, and I am now well on the way to completing the manuscript for my next book exploring New Monasticism, which I am writing for Paraclete to be submitted by the end of February 2010.
Writing this book has really helped me think quite deeply about this important model of church, and I have enjoyed interviewing a number of people including a Benedictine Abbot, a Franciscan Friar and a number of new monastics including Shane Claiborne, Mark Berry, Ian Adams and others.
I have also written a chapter in a book exploring spirituality in the city, which is a multi-authored book which I think is being published by Continuum. In this chapter I explore the increasing phenomena of post secular spiritual tourism, and in particularly that evidenced by the many flower shrines you see where people have died. It names something very important symbolically. So I hope that contribution assists people to explore the subject.
I am also pleased to let people know, that I am involved in three other books. All three are all multi-authored books in the Ancient Faith Future Mission series published with Canterbury Press. These will cover Fresh Expressions and New Monasticism, the Kingdom of God and Small Missional Communities.
So I seem to have become involved in a number writing projects!
Christ of the Spirit
I was really moved by a blog entry by Heather Cracknell concerning my book the becoming of G-d. She talks about re-appropriating an understanding of the Trinity to open up the gospels. To see the entry see here.
New Monastic approach to Mission
I think this vid is quite helpful, yes it is very American, but I do think it marks out the issues.
Dave Fitch – the Cultivate Talk on Missional Orders from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.
The point of Ecclesial communities – friendship with God friendship with others
It has been good for us in the Moot Community to get the input from Jemma Allen, on the whole focus of the Christian life on friendship. Rightly she has come and challenged us Brits about our language for God and the faith, which remains still very much based on power language and Christendom. I for example, was quite immune to the number of times we use the word Lord. Sometimes it takes an outsider to help you see what is right before your eyes.
What Jemma has reminded me of, is the connection for the need of deep friendships as a sign of a healthy ecclesial community, and the core focus of the Christian faith. it is the depths and commitment to relationships and seeking friendship that is an outward sign of the Kin-dom of God, and follows some of the approach of Christ in gospels. Friendship then is the medium for transformation, hope giving care. It is therefore the work of God, through friendships that we become more human, taking off our masks and pretending to be other people.
It reminds me of the work of Ryan Bolger, in his PhD on the Emerging Church, where he summarised the qualities of the emerging church as: the desire to imitate the life of Jesus; transform secular society; emphasise communal living; welcome outsiders; be generous and creative; and lead without control.
So the significance then of Church is not right teaching, or about perfect worship, or the slick liturgy, it is about the people and their relationships to one another as a medium for the outworking of God. So many churches have lost this focus. I am reminded of this in the call of the Ministry of Reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5 11-21:
11 We know what it means to fear the Lord, and so we try to persuade others. God knows us completely, and I hope that in your hearts you know me as well.12 We are not trying again to recommend ourselves to you; rather, we are trying to give you a good reason to be proud of us, so that you will be able to answer those who boast about people’s appearance and not about their character.13 Are we really insane? It is for God’s sake. Or are we sane? Then it is for your sake.14 We are ruled by the love of Christ, now that we recognize that one man died for everyone, which means that they all share in his death.15 He died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but only for him who died and was raised to life for their sake. 16 No longer, then, do we judge anyone by human standards. Even if at one time we judged Christ according to human standards, we no longer do so.17 Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come.18 All this is done by God, who through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends and gave us the task of making others his friends also.19 Our message is that God was making all human beings his friends through Christ.[a] God did not keep an account of their sins, and he has given us the message which tells how he makes them his friends.
20 Here we are, then, speaking for Christ, as though God himself were making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf: let God change you from enemies into his friends!21
Jesus, Trinity, Mission & Inclusion in John 4:1-42
Last Wednesday, Jon Oliver, (author and training Ordinand for Pioneer Ministry on placement with Moot) led our Quest Evening, designed to explore biblical texts and open them up as Stanley Hauerwas says to ‘an interpretative community’. Well we looked at John 4:1-42 and the Samaritan Woman at the well.
This text is always challenging and beautiful. It expresses the mission of God to blur boundaries of the sacred in the secular, challenging cultural taboos, and gives us a palpable foretaste of the Kingdom of God.
I love it that God seeks out the excluded and the lost, those that are hated within their own cultures. Why it gives me a hope that someone like me can be acceptable to God with all my faults, insecurities and complexities. But this time there was more. The Woman, was exposed to the reality of the Trinity. Christ is present as the Redeemer. Then in verse 23, But the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. Beautifully Jesus finishes off the Samaritans question about the Messiah as coming with the words ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you’.
So in this encounter, the Woman experiences Jesus as the Redeemer, empowered by the Holy Spirit, in the worship of the Father. It doesn’t get more Trinitarian than that, with a woman he was not supposed to speak to, and with a people the Jews despises as unclean. So what does Jesus do – he goes into mission mode, loving them into understanding, and then stays with them for two days – something a Jew was banned from doing. I love it. This is the radicalness of Christ and the New Testament. A radical love that seeks to restore all things into restored relationships. This is the context of real mission, and it inspires me to keep going when I feel so inadequate and crap so much of the time, in a dysfunctional church and a broken world. It is the hope of this Jesus that keeps me alive, in this Missio Dei of the Holy Trinity, and the love of the God Human Jesus, that my life has meaning and purpose. Without this God, I don’t know where I would be….
Are most churches Trinitarian?
Came across a great blog post today by Andrew which explores the issue of Trinitarian informed approaches to Christian worship. I really like what Andrew has to say. Continuing in my addiction of Trinitarian theology, I am reading Paul Fiddes book ‘Participating in God’, a pastoral and theological response to the doctrine of the Trinity. Its a good but dense book. One thing I am hearing loud and clear from reading, is the need for Ekklesia not only to imitate God in how it is a relational community, but further and more importantly, the call to participate in God as a life of Christian discipleship. It is this shift from imitating to ‘participating in’ that has really got me thinking.
My community Moot as a new monastic community I think has focused on imitating through its relational and participative approach to worship, mission and community, but I still think we have only been scratching the surface. It is this call to shift from imitating to participating in that I think is the greatest challenge. So not only do we have a Rhythm of Life, but that we need practices centres on praxis as participation which is the next step… food for thought and stuff I am reflecting on at the moment.
Attractional v Missional Models of Church
I have now finished two out of the three lectures I am giving at Carey Baptist College in Auckland. Today I explored the socio-cultural forces behind neo-spirituality driven by information technology and consumerism, and then explored a Trinitarian Ecclesiology as a basis of Christian Spirituality to engage with a context of neo-mysticism. Finally, we looked at issues around leadership as all the denominations face the challenge of reframing from a Christendom to a post-Christendom context.
It was a good day, I forcused on the need to let go of an attractional model of church born of Christendom as incompatible with a post-christendom context of neo-mysticism, and the importance of a missional relational model of Christian Community. Matt Stone has written a great blog on this, so check that out. So my use of New Monasticism is a form of missional model, where the communities Rhythm of life lies at the heart of the community. So offer the model below of a more new monastic missional model.
My reflections on the training morning with Baptist Pastors, is just how entrenched the attractional model is. There is still a desire to form sexy forms of worship to get people in, but as I said then, this just recycles Christians rather than makes an impact with unchurched people. It is hard to conceive of the missional model if you are operating within a model of attraction within a worldview of Christendom. My hope is that the training will play a small part to enable people to shift their worldviews to be able to see the need for an incarnational and missional model of church.
So I think the world church has much to learn from the likes of Missioners such as Vincent J Donovan of an Incarnational model of church, that seeks to use a methodology using a synthetic or transcendent contextual theological model. A good day, but we so need need to help people get beyond an attractional model of mission.
Developing an Anglimergent network in Australia & New Zealand
I am really pleased to say, that I think my small contribution to exploring new ways of being church in the context of Australia and New Zealand, has created some fruit, through some increased energy and interest in developing specifically Anglican and missional new ways of being church to engage with our post-religious, post-Christian, post-secular culture of spiritual tourism.
Accordingly, and following discussions with people, I have just set up a new Anglimergent Australia and New Zealand group which I hope will encourage the development of new networks in Australia and New Zealand, to then develop this indigenously.
So if you are interested in joining this and contributing to developing this new network within a global network, please click here