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Steven has again raised such a wide range of ideas and insights that I hardly know where to start. In picking out just one or two for comment, I don’t want to divert attention from other parts of what he’s said (so I’m glad people have already commented on other aspects – hopefully that will continue).
The cultural wind of ‘freedom’ that was blowing from the 1960s onwards may not have been entirely coincidental, in influencing the ingress of freedom themes into our Christian consciousness and church practices. After all, one would be naive not to recognise culture’s impact upon theology. Not, I hasten to add, as a compromise of the latter to the former, but a recognition that to be effective within culture means that theology must speak to contemporary society’s actual concerns (not what those concerns used to be, or even – in our Christian opinion – should be).
As An Aside … It is disappointing when Christians seem more concerned to say what they believe people ought to be hearing, and to insist on saying it in a certain way, rather than being concerned with what people need to be hearing and how they need to hear for it to be meaningful to them. Our calling is not to speak the gospel, it’s for people to hear the gospel. The concerns people had in bygone eras are not the concerns of people today. Our right answers are not right answers, if they are answering questions no-one is asking, addressing needs that are no longer felt.
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Last week I left off with the people of God historically seeking relationship and an experience with God through various means (the monastic impulse, the mystic impulse and the impulse toward sacred space). I promise next time to get right into our present context, but today, if you will allow the historian in me to emerge again, I want to venture towards more modern times but continue in another little exercise in contextualization. In this bit, I want to peek into the context of the 1960s following onto the present, but the perspective from which I will focus will be my own tribe, the Vineyard movement.I agree with Phyllis Tickle in her book The Great Emergence, that the Vineyard movement has been one that has broken new ground in terms of freedom that has lead to a greater emergence. In fact, I might go so far as to say that freedom is a core expression of who the Vineyard is. Within my own faith community (the Central Maryland Vineyard), finding ourselves within the tribe of the Vineyard movement, we have been radically re-digging at the root.
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(I wrote a short post and reference to a post by Richard Sudworth, a few days ago, and took part in the discussion over there. Orion Edgar who is a student at Nottingham, read the post here, and at Richard’s site, and wrote a response, that another friend sent onto me. So if you are completely lost with that breadcrumb trail, after reading Orion’s response I asked him if we could post it here in full. I think it adds to the discussion and will give you something that’s helpful to engage with. So Orion’s post is below, and you comment will go to him – Jason)
In Kester Brewin’s recent series of blog posts entitled a plea for christian piracy, he asks why pirates are popular figures, suggesting that they represent the stirrings of a culture addressing what is truly wrong, ‘blocked’, in the workings of the prevailing orthodoxy.
His point has an affinity with that I heard made by Pete Rollins in a recent talk linked to his book, The Orthodox Heretic. Both Brewin and Rollins have presented their material in ways that are attractive and stimulating, and they both clearly have significant contributions to make at the juncture of contemporary philosophy and theology, and are voices that have commanded attention among a significant number of people, particularly those associated with the emerging church movement.
For this valuable contribution to thought and practice within the church I want to applaud them. But several things worry me about their general position.First of all, it seems to repudiate concrete content in terms of what is being proposed – rather than commiting itself to any substantive vision of the world, or of Christianity, in the valorisation of heresy or the piratical seems to lie a rather unsubstantial affirmation of a kind of oppositional thinking, a commitment not just to continually interrogate but, further, to rebel against the prevailing authority, come what may.
This position, popular amongst some on the radical left for the last 40 years, is clearly anti-political, since it really commits never to co-operate with others to achieve its goals.
Whilst this stance, which has its genesis in a reaction to the horrors which resulted from the organised political projects of National Socialism and Stalinism in the 20th century, might grant its possessor immunity from direct blame for any such wrongs resulting from totalitarian projects, it also makes her impotent to oppose them, and, more substantially, prevents her from enacting any particular vision of justice.The pirate may rebel against the tyranny of his capitalist masters by turning against them and stealing from them, but he does so at the price of losing any opportunity to oppose them legitimately. He is free to satisfy his greed by his misdemeanors, and even free to justify them as revolutionary acts. But this comes at the expense of the power actually to further the revolution, to actually affect the workings of trade in such a way as to make them more just.
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Steven Hamilton’s post on Deep Church earlier this week has raised some great questions. Let me contextualize my response in some passing comments by Jason, when setting up this series.Firstly, “how little there is within emerging church resources about the Holy Spirit.”
Secondly, how Jason’s own church plant within Vineyard has “tried to explore our emerging identity and remain within our charismatic tradition” (my italics).
Thirdly, that many of his longstanding emerging church friends are “post-charismatic.”
These suggest two related tensions at work. One, a loss of confidence in the ‘received wisdom’ about the Spirit bequeathed to us by the 20th Century charismatic movement and Pentecostalism. The other, a discomforting awareness that while we may no longer feel able to embrace 20th Century charismatic understandings, a fresh pneumatology with which we are comfortable has yet to emerge.
The combined result is an ‘unfilled space’, precisely where a vibrant theology and praxis of the Spirit ought to be located.
It’s like an empty lot, that we drive past each day, on our journeys to and fro other places, with no reason to stop by.
It’s time to rebuild, but many of us find ourselves in reaction: Continue reading »
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It’s an honor to join all of you on this series and hopefully an adventurous conversation into re-imagining the Holy Spirit. Before jumping into a full-blown exploration of re-imagining the Spirit, being charismatic and spiritual gifts, as one trained in the craft of history, I want to begin by taking a few steps back to get some context, and tease out some questions after reflecting on our deep church history. There are several undercurrents in our deep church history that I want to appeal to and then propose some linkage with our present context and see what we think. The three undercurrents in deep church we want to take a look at all have a few things in common. The commonality is in the experiential factor: the seeking to connect and experience God. The undercurrents/movements I want to cover are the monastic impulse, the mystic impulse and the impulse toward sacred space.
Without getting blogged-down in too much detail, I think we can historically understand the development of monasticism as reacting against the corruption of the world and the Church while seeking depth and an experiential relationship with God in the harsh environs first explored by the Desert Fathers and Mothers (yes, there were women hermits!). They sought freedom from worldly entanglements but more significantly, they embraced depth of experience and relationship with God. This impulse is witnessed again when the undercurrent emerges more fully in the mid-to-late medieval period with monastic cloisters and even later with monastic orders being founded. We witness this with most clearly in the Cluny reform movement which sought to separate from a church that had become corrupt and from wealthy benefactors.
Continue reading »
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I’ve known Richard Sudworth for several years now and bumped into him a various emerging church events over the years.
I’ve always valued his positive engagement that runs alongside a measured critique of so many ideas that get proposed for church life. So time to introduce you to Richard’s blog and his latest piece that picks up a popular idea at present, of the Christian as rebel/trickster/heretic and now ‘pirate’.
Richard responds to some ideas by Kester Brewin and Pete Rollins graciously but vigorously.
I left a rather long comment over there, that is my echo of concerns about these metaphors for the Christian life.
I suspect that they arise from something other than a vision for an embodied and moral life lived in Christian community with others, and are the fruit of, and have more to do with, the enabling of a life of self creation and isolation from others.
And in that sense I think they are are distinctly lacking in Christian identity and formation. But take a look and see what you think.
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Further to my last post on the Holy Spirit, I’ll be hosting a blog series here on the Holy Spirit for several weeks, starting monday 21st September.
We’ll be exploring who is the Holy Spirit with regards to our emerging and missional contexts. What does it mean to be involved in emerging and missional church and still be charismatic?
The format will be that Steve Hamilton, a vineyard pastor and theologian, will post one item each week for a few weeks here. Then I and Steve Burnhope, who is in the UK with me, will post an item in response to those posts.
The three of of us will also be commenting on each other’s posts. So please do join us for this conversation and exploration, comment and if you want to guest author a response as a full post, let me know.
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You might not have noticed that I have replaced the Tweet This word press plug-in under each post, with a shiny new Tweet Meme button.
This still makes it easy for you to sent a post you like straight to twitter, but also tracks how many people have done the same.
So if you find something you like and want to share it via twitter just click the button at the end of the post.
You can also use the facebook button to share the post there.
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Christianity magazine in March last year published an article on the decline of the charismatic amongst Christians.
I’ve previously referenced this development along with Robbie McAlpine’s excellent book (that explores this in detail) ‘Post Charismatic?’ with regards to how little there is within emerging church resources about the Holy Spirit.
My church plant is located within The Association of Vineyard Churches that was founded in the ‘third wave‘. Whilst many of my long standing emerging church friend are post-charismatic, we have tried to explore our emerging identity and remain within our charismatic tradition.
Starting today, I begin a series on sundays that I hope will sum up our beliefs, understanding, and experience of the Holy Spirit from within our church community.
It’s not an academic series, and is aimed at helping christians understand the Holy Spirit, and sets out why and how we are still a charismatic church.
By way of research, I’ve been reviewing early Vineyard Church source materials, drawing on my own studies/research, and the experience of 12 years of the planting and day to day life of our emerging church.
You can find the series on our Church site here, or on itunes here (please give us a few days to get the first talk online, subscribing to the podcast means you’ll get them automatically as they are loaded each week)
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I’ve been asked to speak to 180 Anglican priests at the Leicester Diocesan Conference, 20th January 2010, on the topic of ‘The transformative possibilities and challenges for worship in contemporary culture?’
Looking at the schedule, I see Maggi Dawn will be there. Maggi has a new book, ‘Giving it Up‘, that I’ve just ordered. I’m looking forward to this event and to hearing Maggie.
