Sunday, July 24th, 2005
It’s been a fascinating couple of days in the Emerging Church international movement. Forge Missional Training Network distanced themselves from Emerging Church movements in the United States and UK in their response to DA Carson’s “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church”.
Tuesday July 19
The pdf file, created at 6.52 am and modified 4.53 pm, titled:
Don Carson and the Australian Missional Church Movement: A Forge response. The nine-page paper’s aim was to help frame responses to the various reactions brought about by Don Carson’s critique of Emergent and how it might have an effect of Forge’s ministry and that of the emerging missional church in Australia which Forge serves.
Wednesday July 20
The pdf file was posted, 11.05 pm, at Andrew Hamilton’s site, Backyard Missionary
Thursday July 21
received a copy of the file by Forge Queensland, 10.37 am.
4.26 pm Andrew Jones posts at Tall Skinny Kiwi
11.28 pm Tony Jones, Emergent National Co-ordinator expresses concern in comments at Backyard Missionary and Tall Skinny Kiwi. Alan Hirsch responds.
Friday July 22
1.16 Steve McCoy of Reformisssionary posts on Drawing Lines. and again at Emerging SBC Leaders.
2.09 am Stephen Shields gives his commentary at Emergesque.
9.20 am Jordon Cooper points out that despite advanced technology, we do a lousy job of talking to each other. What might have happened if Carson had sat down and talked with McLaren? What might Frost and Hirsch’s paper looked like if they’d included McLaren’s input? He’s since deleted the post.
9.25 am Andrew Hamilton places an apology from Alan Hirsch and withdraws the pdf.
9.43 am Subversive Influence post
4.30 pm I finally get to read the document I’d printed out earlier. I post something here and then discover the conversation’s happened already. I delete the post when I get home later in the evening.
Saturday July 23
2.23 Radicalcongruency post on Forge and Emergent - lessons from the conversation
5.45 am Robbymac posts on Aussies and Centred sets.
12.41 Darren Wright suggests people drink more decaf.
In the meantime, I finally manage to read Brian McLaren’s “The Last Word and the Word After That”, and start on Don Carson’s “Becoming Conversant”. Reviews coming when I’m finished.
Tags: Alan Hirsch, Andrew Hamilton, Brian McLaren, Emergent, Emerging Church, Forge, Mike Frost, Tall Skinny Kiwi, Tony Jones
Posted in Emerging Church, Mission, Theology | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, July 12th, 2005
OK it’s been a year since I first read “The Shaping of Things to Come“, by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost. But back then this blog wasn’t in existence. And a number of people in Queensland are only now discovering this book.
So now I’m going back through the book, looking through the PowerPoint presentation I developed last year.
The first chapter introduces us to a ‘pagan environment’, Burning Man at Black Rock held in the Nevada desert. This is a festival that explores themes of belonging, survival, empowerment, sensuality, celebration and liminality. This year’s gathering, August 29-September 5, focuses on “Psyche: the Conscious, the Subconscious and the Unconscious”. It’s what I’d call a huge art installation community where people’s camps express another angle to the theme.
Hirsch and Frost point to Burning Man, and the movie, Fight Club, as expressions of a yearning for an experiential activist form of religious, mysitcal experience. I used this reference in a session with the Queensland Uniting Mission Advisory Forum earlier this year. There was a sense of excitement there as we unpacked the implications. We’re wondering where we might be seeing this kind of phenomenon in Australia. Perhaps in the Woodford Folk Festival? I’m not sure that picks up the element of multi-sensory experience developed at Burning Man though.
The first chapter is available to download in pdf form from Hendrickson the publishers. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to access the table of contents, chapter one, and the introduction.
Tags: Alan Hirsch, Mike Frost, Mission, Theology
Posted in Culture, Mission, Reading, Spirituality | 2 Comments »
Friday, July 8th, 2005
I’ve been thinking about Mike Frost’s critique of the “falling in love” approach to worship, expressed in his Saturday morning talk at the Forge Summit in Melbourne. Yes I share his concern about songs that talk about ‘falling in love’ with Jesus. These songs don’t seem to have much to do with an active lifestyle of faithfulness and mercy. However I’m not prepared to do away with songs that use the language of intimacy.
I’m thinking of Erik Erikson’s eight stages of growth and the ways in which they tie into approaches to worship.
1. Trust vs mistrust (infant)
2. Autonomy vs doubt (toddler)
3. Initiative vs guilt (early childhood)
4. Competence vs inferiority (primary school)
5. Identity vs role confusion (adolesence)
6. Intimacy vs isolation (young adults)
7. Generativity vs stagnation (middle age)
8. Integrity vs despair (older age)
In some ways a worship experience is an experience in which we are reparented and made whole by our encounter with God. People who have learnt not to trust their environment are invited to discover a God whose love can be relied upon. “Nothing I can do can make God love me more or love me less”. I think of people who have struggled to develop a sense of self-differentation or autonomy and doubt their own capacity to do anything without help. People who need permission to take initiative and express their imagination without guilt encounter the God who designed their creativity. People who struggle with a sense of failure and inferiority discover the empowering of the Holy Spirit. Those who long for a sense of affirming connection with the other discover in God a closeness that is life-giving and not abusive. People who need to make an impact on the world discover that God has not finished with them yet. And those who struggle to make sense of the world in which they live encounter the God of hope.
It sounds very utilitarian I know. Come to Jesus to allow him to meet your needs. But it’s deeper than that. Come to Jesus and be re-created as the person you were created to be. It reminds me of the answer Jesus sent to John the Baptist when he talked about the impact of his life on the lives of others.
So how does this tie in with worship songs? Songs that express a longing to be held in the arms of God - I see as an expression of a trusting relationship with God as caring trustworthy parent. Songs that express a loving desire to be close to God are likely to be helpful for young adults who are developing a capacity for intimacy. Only problem is when these are sexualised or romanticised.
What’s the problem with the romantic angle on worship? Legitimate passion and intimacy expressed in human relationships can be downplayed in super-spiritual settings. The emotional pressure to produce feelings for God can lead to a sense of terrible inadequacy or just plain antagonism in people who don’t see it that way. And those who do ‘fall in love’ with God will eventually ‘fall out of love’ with God when the infatuation ends in times of disillusionment.
Tags: Forge, Mike Frost, Worship
Posted in Emerging Church, Theology, Worship | 2 Comments »
