Lessons to unlearn...

"The question is whether the church as it is will be willing to unlearn what it knows so it can learn to become the church it must become…so as to be God’s witness in this future." (A is for Abductive Sweet, McClaren et.al)

I’m struggling with this debate.Yes of course there are things that need to be unlearned, but to go forward we need to re-capture the essence of church not discover it. It’s always been there. The church is being held down. Take the weight off and it’ll bob to the top as it will always do. To me the major weight today is not traditionalism, or even institutionalism there is a new burden. That of chasing the latest. With each passing ecclesiastical panacea that heaviness pushes the church lower and lower.

If we’re not careful the emerging church with all its positive, progressive, optimistism will be rock bottom alongside all that is wrong with the institutional church.

I wonder what it is that needs to be unlearned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit of sally bashing....

Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Read more

Lost Voices of Mission...Fred Brown

Image
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an...
Read more

Types of Christian Spirituality...

Image
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play...
Read more