Rod did an interview with me the other day regarding Forge and our mission here in Brighton.
It was on Sonshine FM tonight (I had forgotten) and will be on tomorrow evening at 9.30pm as well.
free pitch black free friday the 13th
If you are overseas and would like to listen to it then you can do it via the net.
It turned out pretty good! Thanks Rod.
Here’s a thought for you to ponder while I am away in that wonderful city of Melbourne…
Is the Emerging Missional Church movement nothing more than the Jesus movement of the 60s and 70s revisited?
Its a question that has been tossed at me a few times lately and I’m just now doing some research on the answer to it.
I was born in 1964, and grew up in a fundamentalist Irish Baptist church so I didn’t have a lot of exposure to the whole scene, nor would I have made a lot of sense of it. A couple of older somewhat cynical pastors who were around then tell me we are just re-inventing the wheel and painting it a different colour. My gut says we aren’t, but I have nothing to base that feeling on.
I read this
short blogpost of the same question here and have also been reading here, here and here.
Here’s an interesting quote:
"By most accounts, the Jesus People Movement began in 1967 with the opening of a small storefront evangelical mission called the Living Room in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district."
Did you know that Darren?
I have been very inspired by Keith Green, Larry Norman (watch the vid intro – he looks olllldddd!) and other products of the movement, but my sense of it all from an uninformed distance is that while there was an emphasis on reaching the lost in contextual ways, the end result was to get em back into fairly stock standard organised churches. There was a mission focus but not neccessarily a missional ecclesiology.
Am I right on that or wrong?
If you are 50 or over you might have more insight than me into this question. Of course chances are if you are 50 or over you won’t be reading blogs 🙂
The Jesus movement did produce some interesting characters. Lonnie Frisbee (is that a real name ) is being remembered here and this bloke gave whole new meaning to Jesus call to take up your cross daily and follow me. He did, and he’s still doing it. He even gives instructions for making your own cross!
If I ever get round to doing my masters I reckon this could be an interesting project.
To finish a quote from one of my heroes:
"The only music minister to whom the Lord will say, "Well done, thy good and faithful servant," is the one whose life proves what their lyrics are saying, and to whom music is the least important part of their life. Glorifying the only worthy One has to be a minister’s most important goal!" – Keith Green
A few months back I stayed with John and Raquel Jenson in ther Footscray home while I was over visiting with the Forge boys.
Well – John’s gone and got himself a blog and if he writes as earthy as he talks it’ll be worth a read!
Look forward to catching up this weekend again John.
I am puzzled by several things at the moment as we navigate the path of mission and church and try to keep life simple. Here’s one for you to chew on…
It seems that life in Oz society is already quite complex and being part of a church only complicates it further…
Here’s what I see as well as some relfections on my own situation. If you are part of a church we would hope that you would:
1. Have an active relationship with God that you are nurturing – spending some kind of regular time with him and getting to know him whatever shape that takes. I have been trying to use the ‘Bible in a year’ stuff, but its just too hard to feel connected with it. I much prefer Sacred Space and so will probably revert to that. As much as I am able I try to escape the kids from 7.30 on for an hour or so and get some God time. Its hard… and I probably have it easier than many of you.
2. Be spending good slabs of time with your wife and kids. These primary relationships really need the best of our time. For the 8.00-5.00 worker this time is very much limited to after work and weekends. This is one of the things I really love about flexible working hours and having a home office. I see a lot of my family and I think we are richer for it.
3. Be well connected with your wider family – parents, brothers, sister, in laws etc. That’s not too hard for me with just a brother and mum and dad here in Oz, but Danelle has 5 bros and sis’ along with a humungous number of nieces, nephews etc. We could spend the rest of our life just hanging out with them! At times this gets stressful, but at the moment most of them live up bush and its not so tricky to manage. For while when all were in the city, it seemed that every weekend was another birthday, anniversary, etc etc
4. Have a few close friends who you connect with regularly and deeply and share life with. Now its gets more selective… There is a level of connection with family that is at times dutiful. However I reckon these people are the ones who are ‘soul mate’ types, the ones who would do your funeral… People who have travelled the journey of life with you for a long time and who you feel that heart connection with. I probably only have two or three people in my life who belong here at the moment, and its probably all I can handle. I doubt any of us can sustain many relationships of this kind.
5. Be connected with your church community. For most people that means being in a small group. For us our church is a small group 🙂 We want to be well connected with each other, which is tricky when you look at all that is already happening in life. At times we have spoken about how we don’t catch up with each other enough, but not only do we have these relationships… we also have
6. The people in our local community – the folks we live amongst, our neighbours who are becoming our friends. We came here to get to know them and to grow some genuine friendships. The problem is that the relational grid is already pretty packed! What gives?…
7. Then there are work colleagues, ministry acquaintences, sporting friends, old friends you don’t often see, local networks…
Is anybody tired just reading that list?!
I honestly wonder how we do it. How do we live like that? How do we keep so many plates spinning?
I know I have all those ‘categories’ in my life and the last two are huge. Perhaps another question is how do we prioritise where our time goes?
I know we have made a decision that as a missionary family we will prioritise spare time to be with our neighbours and that means trading off some time in other places. It means we don’t spend as much time with our team as we would like at times. It means we see less of our families at times. Its always a balancing act.
Now…
Its not just that we want you to have all these relationships functioning and healthy.
We also want you to come to church, serve in the church, be in a small group and be involved in your neighbourhood.
Are you kidding?!!!
Is this really how we live but just don’t realise it?
Tonight at our leadership team meeting I was asking the question ‘what can we legitimately expect of the full time worker in a local church, especially given the above expectations which are pretty much part of life?’
Can we ask them to sit on this team and that committee and be out 4 or 5 nights a week? Being out three nights a week feels like all I can manage at the moment.
Phew… I’m done… Its 12.15 and well past bed time.
Hope that made some sense
I had a really good conversation today with both Ross Clifford and Phillip Johnson the two authors of Jesus and The Gods of the New Age.
They were both very helpful in explaining how to connect with people at the upcoming healing festival. After 13 years of involvement in this field they really did have some excellent ideas for making connections and engaging people. If you are interested in new age spiritualities and how to relate to people in this ball park then their book is a must read.
Some of the ideas included:
I am excited about the opportunity to be in a forum where people are genuinely seeking spiritual solace and healing. I imagine we will learn a lot this year and may be better placed next year to enter with some degree of confidence.
The danger is that in a ‘pick and mix’ consumeristic religious climate we may become simply another option to throw into the mix… which is why when push comes to shove Jesus is not just the healer… he is the one who calls us to deny ourselves take up our cross and follow him… and him alone.
If there is anything that frustrates me as a leader in what is being called an ’emerging church’ (I don’t call it that by the way) its the suspicion I often seem to encounter from those in more established churches, especially, (but not only) big churches.
I have hit it a few times recently and it disturbs me. I understand people have had bad experiences with those who may have cast their lot in new expressions of church, but to say we are all ‘anti-church’ is utter nonsense. To stereotype us as rebellious finger pullers is myopic in the extreme. It makes no more sense than me bagging all established churches for their various problems.
So I’m looking forward to this event:
download officer and a gentleman an movie
threat of exposure dvdrip Scott Vawser is pulling it together with Steve McKinnon and we’ll be using Steve Said for some input. At this stage I think I’ll be on the panel that is getting ‘interviewed’, (but I think that could change)
The idea is that we get a bunch of people who do church in different ways in the same room and we talk about what is really happening… what is actually going on… we don’t stereotype and we don’t throw just throw rocks. We listen, talk and learn from each other.
I am hoping we’ll have a few of big church guys willing to give their time to it, so that we can actually engage in some serious debate about the questions that are floating around out there.
I sense that while we will defintely have differences, we will also have a lot in common and it will be great to celebrate that rather than suspiciously ‘wondering’ about each others motives and practices.
I was at the swimming pool on Friday with Ellie and Sam and I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen since I was 20 and doing volunteer youthwork for YFC. We were on a team together.
She asked me if I was still going to church…
Notice the question?
Not which church was I part of, but was I still part of a church. I have often thought this is a more legitimate question for 20-40 year olds than mine. It shouldn’t be that way of course, but the exodus from our churches by that demographic is really disturbing.
I was at a champagne breakfast today for one of our team and while there I met several people who were part of our youth ministry at Lesmurdie who now don’t associate with any church, and aren’t all that concerned. I’m not sure who’s ‘fault’ this situation is, but we certainly can’t look away from it.
Will they go back?
Maybe, when their kids need some decent grounding etc, but somewhere in there we have missed something in the discipleship process.
Tonight I fly to Melbourne for a gatheirng of the State Forge Directors. It’ll be good to catch up with all the crew again. When you live as a far away as Perth (the world’s most isolated city) it is only normal that you end up feeling a litle removed from the action.
It is also my final day of teaching students… You have no idea how ecstatic I feel having just written that sentence!!
It’l be good to spend the weekend with other like minded guys and then on Monday I have booked some time with other church planters so I can pick their brains and hear what they are learning. It was a real toss up between spending Monday with these guys or coming home before my kids go to bed. A few years ago it would never have been an issue, but now I find myself very toey about even short periods of time away from home.
Today at our final Forge session Stu asked us to draw an icon that depicted where we saw ourselves at in regard to the dreams and ethos of Forge.
This is mine…
Initially I drew a face with two eyes both looking in opposite directions. One is looking back the other looking forward. I believe we need to be able to look back and see the good in what we have come from (not just the bad) and look forward to be able to imagine a future that does not yet exist.
I drew the ‘smile’ afterwards because I realised that I am very happy doing this.
I think the ’emerging church’ has all too often been typified as disgruntleds pulling the finger at the church and going off to start something that is ‘true to scripture’ etc etc. My experience of this scene is not that at all.
There is an appreciation that all is not well on the good ship Christendom, but I don’t sense anger in the movement over here – more a spirit of adventure and excitement as we explore ways to reach the people the established church may never reach.
Still running!
Its amazng how tired you can get when you are simply running a conference and not even doing a lot of speaking.
Darryl Gardiner, our kiwi guest and a fantastic high energy communicator arrived on Saturday night and spoke at our open night, preached twice on Sunday AM, spoke at Forge twice on Sunday arvo and then again Sunday night.
barbie in the 12 dancing princesses free
We came home and sat around chatting until 11.30 and now he has two more sessions today before flying out to the Victorian Forge.
We’ve been having a ball – and no one could ever say that Darryl doesn’t do his share!
