I read Dan Kimball's 'the emerging church' during my MA and enjoyed it a whole lot so I've just started 'emerging worship'.

I liked his little check-list at the end of the first chapter. He says that we've got enough information from the New Testament to be able to ask the following questions about our worship gatherings:

1) Did we lift the name of Jesus up as the centerpiece of why we gathered?
2) Did we have time in the scriptures learning the story of God and man? did we invite everyone to be part of his story today in Kingdom living?
3) Did we pray together and slow down to hear God's voice?
4) Did we experience the love and encouragement of being together as a church?
5) Did we take the Lord's Supper together as church regularly?
6) Did we somehow remind everyone of the mission of the church and why we exist?
7) Did we enable people to individually contribute something as part of the body of Christ?

we met for our weekly worship gathering last night so it's good to have read this this morning and to reflect on what we're doing. I think we're getting there...

went prayer-walking early with Dan and Joe. Found both Mosques today and focused on praying for the Muslim community here.
in the park we passed three guys sitting behind a bush who were draining 2 litre cider bottles at 8.45am.

good to spend a bit of time with Michelle Garland yesterday in the all-new 'Bishop's College'.
Michelle is the chaplain there and has also just launched Gloucester YFC.
Dan and I are going to do a Christmas assembly with Michelle in a couple of weeks. we'll do some sort of multi-media thing. should be good.

reading something today about NOS and wondering what happened to Chris Brain...
where is he now?
hiding?
leading a church in siberia?
leading a church in swindon, having changed his name?
working in Starbucks?

writing in this, Cocksworth says:
'1 Peter maintains, in a very natural, matter of fact sort of way, a dual reference to both the priestly character of the people of God and the particular ministry of those appointed presbyters (priests) in the early Christian communities.'

all Christians are priests but there are various functions within the body of Christ.
It's because we've all seen it done in warped ways that I think so many people have a problem with an ordained priestly ministry today.

Cocksworth goes on to say that in the NT: '...the appointment of elders (presbyters, or priests) was part of the missionary strategy of the early Church. After churches had been planted in different areas presbyters were appointed to tend and nurture their new life.'

the church today is emerging in a different cultural context, but I'm pretty sure this doesn't negate the above principle. the thing to be discussed is how ordained leaders function amongst others in the emerging church, not whether or not they should even be there.

am thinking a lot about ordained leadership in the emerging church.
I guess if the church is supposed to be continuously emerging and ordained leadership has a legitimate place within the church, then the emerging church (as we find ourselves in it now) must have space for those who are ordained.

adding to what I posted yesterday - the 'dress' thing - I have to say that, although I never expected to find myself in the Church of England, I am definitely appreciating getting to experience an old and rich tradition from the inside.

It's easy to dismiss what we see of the inherited church, but being made to inhabit it is stretching my horizons, broadening my ecclesiology, deepening my theological understanding and, I suppose, helping me to grow up a bit.

as I understand it, when emerging church writers have negative things to say about the institutional church, it's directed more at the newer mega-style Gen X, seeker type models rather than traditional church.

Also:
During a recent conversation, someone announced to me that they didn't believe in ordained ministry (at all).
I can live with this - particularly as the comment was intended to provoke a reaction rather than spark a theological debate.

Clearly there are right and wrong ways of perceiving and excercising ordained ministry, but to state that it is fundamentally wrong is to say that a whole lot of people have completely mis-understood God's call on their lives. That's a big thing to say...
Ordained ministry isn't for everyone - obviously. But I followed a path to ordination because I believed that was where God was leading me. I didn't want to be a vicar but I did want to be obedient. The selection process took almost two years and involved a whole lot of people. I'm pretty certain I haven't mis-understood God's call on my life.

The real problem I had with the comment was that it concluded: 'ordained ministry is not in the bible.'
Bad models of ordained ministry where the vicar 'does' and the congregation listen are not in the bible, but no thinking person would say that this model of ministry was right and good anyway.
Ordination by prayer and the laying on of hands is certainly in the New Testament (e.g. the seven deacons in Acts 6).
This is the church recognising the gift that the Holy Spirit has already given to the individual.

And the three-fold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons are all found in the New Testament.

In 1 Timothy, Overseers (bishops) and Deacons are given instructions.
1 Peter 5, the elders (presbuteroi, or 'priests') are instructed to: 'tend the flock that is in your charge, exercising the oversight (episcope)... as God would have you do it.'

ordination isn't for everyone (or even for every leader), but neither is it wrong or somehow un-biblical.
how leaders lead is another question altogether...

I had to preach in a dress (also known as cassock and surplus) this morning.
I survived.

it went well.
I think.
it was the thing about truth that I blogged about a couple of days back. good to be able to spend time this week thinking through the whole idea of truth and Jesus claiming to be it.

I spoke a bit to both congregations about what I'm involved in here in Gloucester. people were really enthusiastic. good to see. I'm encouraged.

life is busy eh? no day off this week and straight into another one. I'm not even a workaholic. there's just lots to do all the time and with kids and friends to manage on top of life in general, time gets pretty full.

earlier in the week Dan and Joe and I prayer walked the derilict area around the docks (above).
although alot of the docks has been developed, a fair bit of it is still empty and sad.
it's the kind of place you'd expect to stumble over a gang-land execution.

it's been good to spend time with new people this week:
Jonathan, the vicar at Churchdown,
Dave Keeper, the coffee magnate,
Ligia, the locum phd student,
Steve, the CMS dude,
and
George, who has just built a recording studio in town.

good also to continue the faith-conversation with Eloise and Gareth. We've been looking at the sermon on the mount as prescriptive for the way Christians live their lives.
every Christian should probably read it weekly.
(oh, excellent Jamie Oliver soup Eloise! thanks.)

exciting to be invited to be involved with some discussions in the coucil about art and culture in the city.

been thinking about names for what we're doing. George was telling me that the 18 year olds in the bands who use his studio are avoiding branding. names yes, but branding no. too corporate. apparently.

Rach and I are off to a supper-party at the bishop's place tonight. it better be good...

good to have Ligia and Lynne with us for church last night.

(excellent movie Dan. good use of liturgy too)

we were looking at identifying with Jesus. this quote was discussed pretty heavily:

'I began to think, maybe, in order to be true to what God called us to be committed to, we need to make it as difficult as we possibly can to follow Jesus, and go from there... Instead of trying to remove the difficult bits of Christianity, we put the challenging parts in the center.' (Mark Palmer, 'Landing Place', Columbus, OH).

In my first few months here I'm preaching at various churches in the deanery so that I can meet people and get a feel for the place and blah blah blah...
I'm working on a sermon for St Catherine's for this Sunday.
the text is John 18 where Pilot asks a bound, friendless, pitiful-looking Jesus if he's a king.
Jesus talks about coming to testify to truth and Pilot ends up saying that famous line:

'what is truth?'

Pilot and our culture have plenty in common.

I've been meditating on the fact that somewhere else Jesus said: 'I AM the truth'.

It's the sort of statement you live with for years but every now and then a new layer of meaning evolves in your mind.

I reckon for Pilot, Jesus' idea of the truth didn't look very convincing. For Pilot, 'truth' was whoever appeared to hold the power.
but the test of time shows that Pilot's version of truth didn't work.

so he was wrong.

and time has passed and empires and 'truths' have come and gone and Jesus is still saying 'I AM the truth'.
and our culture, when it notices, still says: 'You're joking, right?'

anyway, back to work on the sermon...

yet another new link added to sidebar
Ikon in Belfast.

look.

Andrew Jones' (aka Tall Skinny Kiwi) post on the New Atheism is worth a read.
link just added to sidebar

I was speaking to someone this morning about what we're doing in Gloucester and something quite important struck me.
It's this:
that all the meetings at pubs, and meals, and worship in our home, and creative thinking, and building 'community' blah blah blah isn't the 'fresh expression' itself. (I know there's loads of problems with that term and whether or not it means anything worthwhile but whatever...)

Yes, of course we are 'church' because we're the people of God meeting to worship and be missional etc etc.
But, because I arrived in Gloucester alone (albeit with the support and commissioning of the 'institutional' Church) the first task was to seek out the people who God was calling to be part of a core community.
This 'core' needs time to evolve and develop, and it's out of this that a 'fresh expression' will eventually emerge.

So, we're church, yes. But right now (not quite five months after I arrived here) we're a tiny, fragile emerging community, waiting on God to find out what we're going to be doing for Him in Gloucester.

pub space last night involved a whole lot of laughing.

laughing is great but I think you do more of it at secondary school than you do afterwards.
If I think about secondary school, I was laughing most of the time.


I've added a link to the 'fresh expressions' website in the side bar.
be interested to know what people think...
I'm saying nothing.

I spent part of this afternoon at a meeting with the bishop, a national mission guy from CMS and a few others.
we were discussing a pilot training scheme for pioneer ministry.

I know schemes can work really well and equip people to do great stuff BUT:
I reckon that if we want people to imagine new possibilities for the church, the best thing to do is enable them to spend time living and working and then reflecting with people who are already doing this.
That way they see it for real rather than talking about it in a classroom / living room / church hall, and they know it can work and they can be inspired to go home and do something creative where they live.
If they want...

or not.

maybe the training scheme will have all that. I don't know. If it doesn't then it definitely should...

in my opinion.

also, just an afterthought, but can you 'train' pioneer ministers?
what do you train them for?
presumably they are going to encounter a unique situation.
you could do some theology and a bit of creative thinking to kick off, but in the end the main things they're going to need are permission to do what's needed and support to make it happen.

I've been thinking about what it's possible to say on a blog.
I suppose it depends on what you think your blog is for. This blog is supposed to be focused on an emerging church in Gloucester. Obviously.

Because a blog is open to anyone to read, bloggers don't generally just blurt out everything that's happening. You have to be a bit shrewd, and you don't really want to mention your family, everyday stuff, anything too personal etc etc because anonymous readers are consuming bits of you that are precious.

In the end you just have to end up opting for a sort of minimalist approach. This means that your genuine friends and supporters aren't in the whole picture and others are perhaps more prone to making critical judgements based on the fragment of the picture that they're allowed to see.

Church in our home last night instead of wednesday this week as Claire and Ruth both had exams in the morning.
if only church was always this flexible...
Before we ate we poured a glass of wine each, thanked God for the meal and for each other, and drank together.
I'm pretty sure this counts as communion, which in turn makes us a Eucharistic community.

no need for the bishop to worry though. I didn't say any 'special' words...

Good to meet with other church leaders from across the city this morning.
We prayed for the city and, with Christmas looming, our focus was that Jesus would be visible through all the tinsle and debt.

The Elim pastor who was hosting the leaders gathering told us that he is leaving Gloucester next summer to move to Tibet with his family.
Crazy.
There are no words in the Tibetan langauge for repentance or salvation, so he should have an interesting time as a Christian if he's asked to explain his faith.
Exciting but crazy.

just added links to 'smallfire' and 'revive' in the sidebar.
both worth looking at

I just bought 'Stencil Graffiti' by Tristan Manco (link to website in sidebar).
Manco's documented over 400 pieces of work that are pretty inspiring.
One of the artists whose work is featured writes that stencil graffiti is 'breathing life into derilict spaces'.
Signs of the Kingdom?

On another note, good to have Eloise and Gareth over last night to eat and think and talk about a few of the things Jesus said about himself.
Looking forward to continuing the conversation over the coming weeks.

just a thought after posting on the bible...

I was discussing the bible with someone yesterday.

The conversation brought to a head some things I've been thinking about for a while.

Our evolving community has made an effort to look at what scripture has to say about church.
obviously we're trying to engage with scripture creativley rather than using it as some sort of blue print.
we're definitely no where near saying that it's only got limited relevance for our lives.

For Dave Tomlinson (The Post Evangelical), the bible has a central place but we must take care how we use it. he warns about sliding into ex-Christianity if it's not used.

Gibbs and Bolger (in Emerging Churches) write about this whole deal in a great way.
They say that God doesn't communicate with humanity through a series of propositions, but through a story illustrated by parables, riddles, sayings and folk songs. The story is still unfolding and we're in it. The Bible is an invitation to share the risk of a journey, not a book providing answers and a safe place.
It's not a jigsaw but a painting that has rich detail in some places and is more sketchy in others.

I think they do a great job of arguing for the importance of the bible, and at the same time for the importance of seeing what it is and what it isn't.

third 'pub-space' last night. it's good to be getting to know new people.
good also to be recognised by the staff and feeling more at home in the venue.
It already feels as if it's got a bit of momentum, which is excellent.

Prayer-walking this morning with Dan, Paul and Joe was also ace. It's good to pray in the city as it wakes up.
We always see new things that haven't been spotted before.
early breakfast in a proper greasy spoon. I almost felt out of place by not having a fag on the go.

I'm wondering how long it will be before we are approached by the police on our prayer walk. there are cameras all around the city and a group of men deliberatley hanging around strategic and iconic buildings can't go un-noticed for too long...

I spent Friday and Saturday at a retreat centre somewhere in deepest Summerset doing some training (with other curates) on the ministry of healing.

Great room. Great woods outside.

interesting to think about the difference between 'healing' and 'cure' and that not everyone who is 'cured' is also 'healed'.

we went over all the obvious stuff about why it is that sometimes God doesn't cure, in spite of people praying faithfully.
No easy answers there...

Also good to think about the ministry of reconciliation (confession) and it's place in healing generally.

It was excellent to pray for healing for each other in little groups. this is something I've definitly stuggled with over the years. The whole issue of trusting other people enough to pray with you (about really significant things) is a big one that needs genuine, not forced, resolution.

On another note, Guy Bridgewater, my boss, preached a blinder of a sermon at the cathedral this morning. definitely the best thing I've heard from the big old pulpit.
anyone who thinks the traditional sermon has no place in the emerging church definitely needs to listen to a few decent ones...

I've just finished a little article on short term mission for the January edition of *thoughts magazine.
good to think through the pros and cons of 'doing' mission.
I guess as an emerging Christian community, we're beginning to try to work out what it means to 'be' missional 24-7.

*thoughts is published by 'emerging culture', a Methodist national youth outreach team headed up by Andy Frost.

I'll stick a link to their website up later.

I bought this recently and am trying to read a bit each day.
Each day has a little biog of an inspirational Christian from history followed by a little something they wrote or are claimed to have said.

Today Leo the Great gets his turn. Leo was Bishop of Rome from 440 and was apparently a humble and wise teacher of the faith. He wrote:
"To fulfill the conditions of our inner healing, the man Jesus Christ, one and the same mediator between humankind and God, was able to die in respect of one nature, and unable to die in respect of the other."

Straightforward Christian stuff but good to hear again this morning.

On another note entirely, I've been involved in two meetings and one phone call this week from three different sets of people wanting to talk about pioneer ministry or fresh expressions in their own contexts.

If this is a (very small) gauge of wider activity then there's obviously energy and enthusiasm in more and more places for re-thinking how we've been church and how we might proceed faithfully.

last night was the eighth time we've met together to eat, worship and learn as church.
time is flying. relationships are deepening, and we are well into discussing what we are and where this might be going.

we talked about church needing three prongs: family (community), worship and mission.

we reckon we are a developing community who gather to worship and who resource each other in mission.

exciting times.
(I'm wondering about names... perhaps: 'the church of the three prongs'? it's pretty catchy)

I was told yesterday by a clergyman of many years that curates are not expected to contribute to the net mission of the church...
They didn't tell us that at theological college.
I thought every Christian was expected to contribute to the net mission of the church.

I was thinking we needed all hands on deck - so to speak.

shame I couldn't get this any bigger. it made me smile.

oh, if you have time, check out the new links in the left hand sidebar.

it was good to prayer walk early this morning with Paul Hobbs and Dave Keeper. Once again, walking meant that we discovered parts of the city we'd never normally come across.

This afternoon I went to visit my Muslim friend, Mustaffa. I had my two year old son with me.
Mustaffa was standing outside his bookshop with a few other men. As I greeted him they all exploded with delight at my son.

"How old is he?"
"Nearly two."
"Nearly two! He looks five!"
"Yes, we feed him well."
"Ah! Good appletree," (pointing at me) "makes a good apple!" (pointing at my son)

I smile. My son frowns at them all.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. (Theodore Roosevelt)

a lot of us need to hear this. especially if we're involved in thinking about where the church is going...

I was reading today what a guy called Dieter Zander has to say about traditional and missional models of mission.
It's good...
He reckons that the traditional model is a bit like a rubber band encircling the perimeter. Christians involved in this try to attract more people to church, and when they do they 'stuff' them into the middle of the rubber band so that it keeps stretching. The goal with this is to get the rubber band to stretch as far as possible.

A more missional model, Dieter says, uses the image of a ring.
He imagines a ring that maybe ten to twenty people can hold around the perimeter. With one hand they hold on to the ring, and with the other they reach out as far as they can, each one holding another ring for yet another to hold on to.
The goal isn't to bring more people into the small group but to add groups for those who respond to the Kingdom of God.
New believers join the contact person's outer ring, which in turn becomes the new believer's inner ring.

Good eh?

On my day off I discovered a secret spot just outside Richmond called Petersham Nurseries. It's one of those places you can't believe you've found.
classic old tables and chairs are scattered around in several ancient greenhouses which are full of amazing plants and carvings.
You can have lunch or whatever, sitting amongst the plants. All the food is grown on site or sourced locally, so it's all seasonal and organic blah, blah...

It's originality, individuality and quirkiness are a massive antidote to the creeping corporate blandness that we all have to put up with everywhere we go.
It was obvious that everyone there was inspired and excited (this picture makes it look more chilled out than it perhaps is - I have to admit it was busier than this when I went).
I reckon that life-affirming places like this are definitely part of 'the Kingdom of God' that Jesus annouced.

the little church met in our house last night. great food, open fire. Dan led our worship using music from an icelandic band and some liturgy he'd written.

Chris Coxworth (principle of Ridley hall) would be proud! (as would the bishop).

we looked at some stuff from 1 Corinthians (with major reference to Fee's '5-star' commentry).
Paul is teaching the baby church in Corinth to build itself with things that last. He is also reminding them to take care only to build on the foundation of salvation in Jesus Christ.
This has so much relevance for the emerging church, where there is a temptation to pay lip-service to Jesus as the foundation, but in reality the foundation looks more like 'friendship' or 'community' or 'social justice' or whatever else. All good things, obviously, but not as foundations for God's church.

On another note, I just passed a dude in the street with the biggest moustache I'be ever seen. This image is as close as I could get to reality.
I don't really know why this kind of facial hair isn't so popular these days...

Great to be praying with Joe and Dan up on Birdlip hill not long after sunrise this morning.
the view from up there across the valley that holds Gloucester is amazing. the sky was vast and clear. there was frost on the ground. God is good. life is rich.

The 'council of reference' for this project met for the second time this afternoon. Good to roll ideas around with some wise minds and talk about where things have got to and where they might be going.

On another note, I ventured into Second Life yesterday and discovered that the Roman Catholic Church has already arrived, with 13 members officially signed in...