Eric has a well articulated, and as I read it, passionate plea for Christians to stop placing so much trust and awe in what our liberal democracy has been presenting to us as “the public square”. I left a comment. One of the highlights that Eric raises, is summed up nicely in a quote from William Cavanaugh (I assume this Continue Reading
I just realized that in using Windows Live Writer, and clicking on my “BlogIt” button while viewing the page titled “Becoming the Authentic Church”, LiveWriter creates a new post with the title “[Post Title] at Theoblogical”, thus creating a post with the title of “Becoming the Authentic Church at Theoblogical”, which communicates something I know to be utterly false and misleading. I cannot, no matter how Continue Reading
I have placed all of my posts from November and December 2005 where I posted entire sections of the booklet Becoming the Authentic Church, into WordPress “pages”, which are available in the WordPress system for “non-blog” type posts, which can be hierarchically arranged, which makes this format an ideal way of keeping such “reference” type pages up front, so that Continue Reading
This is a portion of the post for today over at inward/outward, a daily blog from the Church of the Saviour “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.†Isaiah 9 We are called to live in the Beloved Community – in a place where we practice the reality of the end of war and racism and Continue Reading
This portion from a post on the Ekklesia Project blog strikes a chord in me, when it speaks of “real friendship” and ” the ‘friendliness’ that typifies our relationship with our fellow Christians.”. Parishioners are usually asked to “prayerfully consider†what they will give to the church in the coming year, but this is assumed to be, and indeed encouraged to be, Continue Reading
I remain hopeful about the idea that someday, via all my “reaching out” to ideas of “authentic church” that have inspired me over the years via The Church of the Saviour, that some local connection might emerge wherein I and others might venture out and “start from a clean slate” so to speak (the “blank piece of paper” from the Continue Reading
The following, from a post by Deborah Campbell , describes beautifully the importance and neccessity of the prescence of a people who are about the work of reconciliation; knowing that we are “recovering cultural addicts”, and that new structures are needed to replace the ones that foster anonymity, isolation, and those that aim to keep us “dependent” on the “answers” Continue Reading
Scripture that is lived into by a body of believers comes alive in new stories –Fitch, The Great Giveaway, p. 57 This is why I have been so attached to The Church of the Saviour, and to such experiments as Koinonia Farms begun by Clarence Jordan. The Church of the Saviour has continued to provide accounts of their journeys, most Continue Reading
A couple of posts back I was responding to some of the discussion Steve Bush’s post (the church and postmodern culture: conversation: Applied Radical Orthodoxy), and there I delved back into some stuff concerning some initial problems I had been having with some criticism of Wallis by Jamie Smith. In responding to Steve’s post, I wanted to express how I Continue Reading
After seeing Eric’s link to Hauerwas’ talk on Bonhoeffer last night, I went and watched it I took down some notes, then realized that the talk was probably online somewhere (at least the article he wrote that he was reading from). It was. It has some rather pointed things to say to the church, especially those that find themselves in Continue Reading
The matter of “what this ecclesia looks like” is the matter that drives me constantly back to the models of community and practice and embodiment that have been molded into a “tradition” in The Church of the Saviour Communities (the church tradition behind the inward/outward site). It’s “structures” with which they are constantly engaging in order to depart from the cultural patterns of relationships are the most effectively articulated “narratives” that I have ever encountered. Those stories related by the books of Elizabeth O’Connor such as Call to Commitment, Journey Inward/Journey Outward, The New Community, and Servant Leaders, Servant Structures, are all history, written out of the experiences of a people engaged in this struggle to form with each other, and in the prescence of God, an alternative mode of life which challenges the lies of consumerism, individualism, and what have you, and pays a good deal of attentions to such matters as discernment and call , mission, and gift. To this end, the Church of the Saviour communties talk of discipline and accountability, something that is a bit of an anathema to today’s cultural churches. Continue Reading
This from the start of the conversation over at The Church and Postmodern Culture We are using the postmodern authors to unveil the huge shortcomings of current church practices all because of our indebtedness to modernism and all its manifestations. The response we both offer, however, is not to contextualize a church to postmodernity, but rather to reinvigorate an ecclesiology Continue Reading
A comment by James K.A. Smith summarizes a key point of how postemodernism can be a “catalyst” for change rather than the prescription for change: the church and postmodern culture: conversation: Postmodernity vs. the Gospel? Neither of us are taking about “updating” the faith or making the church “relevant” to contemporary culture, and thus advocating everybody buy a ticket for Continue Reading
Once the weekend arrives (I have a busy day tomorrow and the next, but look forward to the weekend when I can dive into this stuff)….but I’ve already seen indications that I will be seeing a lot of stuff from which I will derive much to affirm that vision of church which is always about teaching us the meaning of Continue Reading
Eric pointed me to this post from Dan, which is touching in all kinds of ways, profound, and confrontive and ultimately challenging. poserorprophet: Go Forth in Peace What is interesting is the way in which Wittgenstein’s claims overlap with the claims Jim Wallis makes in his book The Call to Conversion (IMHO this book, and not God’s Politics is Wallis’ Continue Reading