Category Archives: Heretical imperative

echos

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I have been reflecting around the issue of Flow and christology recently. Jonny pointed me to this great article “God inside out – towards a mission theology of the Holy Spirit”. It challenges the adage that the father sends the son – the Father and son send the spirit – and the trinity sends the church and unpacks the centrality of the spirit.

The article started me thinking about the Trinity as an echo. For a while now I have had the vague idea of church being an echo of the trinity of coming from God and continuing in the unfolding revelation of God. (if the spirit sends the church what does this say about the divine nature of the church).

The reduction of G-d to the trinity is problematic and avoids the transcendent nature of G-d beyond our understandings (not mention the other characteristics of God within the biblical narrative that do not readily fit the Father Son Spirit image).

G-d echos through the creation, all our images and encounters are echos of G-d that we are swept up with (missio dei) and join the echo of G-d towards the fulfillment of creation. The power of the echo can transcend the blocks of institutions and break beyond the walls of our imaginings, it calls us forward, beyond and out of what we know, to be more and less (at times) of what we are, towards unity as the bride of christ.

An orthodox view

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Years ago when Off the Beaten track was first published I did a training session, and described a street based communion (coke and crisps style) and asked participants – Is this church? Oli was present and has been thinking and working on his eccelesiological position in response to the question. He has published an interesting short read exploring the need for orthodoxy around the issue of eccelesiology and communion that is well worth the read and download. Find it here.

I really like the fence model he proposes and it presents a good challenge, but before I post my responses i would be interested to hear others views.

awareness and orthodoxy

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Over the past few years much of my reading has been on the more radical theology side, raising questions over perceived orthodoxy, mission etc. Much of this has given good arguements about why we need to question our approaches and offered a lot of questions about how we are shaped by culture into our orthodox views. Every few years I try to read the bible cover to cover and over the years picked some of the main examples where the text challeneges the percived orthodoxy of the day (Peters vision), but even though I have done a cover to cover reading in the last few years it is only now that I am picking up more nuances in the text and even more explicit examples (samson) where God encourages/allows the perceived orthodoxy to be broken.
Obviously there is the role of reader and what I am bringing to the text, but I am left wondering two things, how much is God directing these perceptions and how do we open ourselves up to the breadth of the text when the position of the reader plays such and important role.

DOA: Dead or Alive movie download

The Rock rip

Missional church heresy

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For my post grad I am looking at how we have separated church and mission, but reading through much of the missional church stuff I still think there remains a problem because the old definition of church that centres on church as the body of believers still remains as a part of the missional church definition (would you say this is true or do I have the wrong end of the stick) which in reality counteracts and limits the mission dei understanding at the heart of missional church as we know it.

Missional church if it is to be true to the sentiments of missio dei is more about people of faith and of no faith being on a journey of discovery (towards fullness of life for themselves, their community and the world) together and WITH an equality in this process that enables mission (the sort that Donovan describes in Christianity rediscovered) and mission dei to truly be the core of church. This means us becoming more powerless about our ideas of what church and if we are not we cannot be missional church. The example I would use is Flow church where the young people I work with call God Flow, and have agreed to come on the journey of being church, which in itself means discovering what Flow and church is, even though they are not believers in the way most people would understand believers to be.

for back ground check out how the word intentionality

is used in relation the being and growing church.The Golden Compass buy

Commitment and new monastics

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James posts some good stuff on commitment and the link to contemplative faith and covenant. Whilst I agree with issues of faith communities needing time listen stuff BUT (borrowing from Petes new book) I wonder if some of the approaches in the new monastics that the current idea of commitment to one another is an idea we need to betray in order to discover something new. We assume covenant is a two way street, and so enter into covenant relationships with those in our faith circle (I recognise that for many this also has a service to the world element) but have questions on this.
Is the centrally of covenant to one another within (however you define this) a return towards closed set models. Does this investment towards others in church/covenant

return to a weak ecceliosiology that again separates missio-dei or annexes mission to a project or task. If Gods covenant was to the world not the church and the church was the way of fleshing out that covenant post Jesus, how do we enter into covenant with the world as the central element, recognising that we need one another to help with this.Naked Weapon movie full