as far as our eyes can see

I've moved!

2005-06-25T17:48:00.000Z

OK, I've tried this blogging thing for several weeks now and admit to being totally hooked. I haven't posted since Thursday, because all spare time has been given over updating the server which hosts alternativeworship.org. Well, it's now up and running, and it's much faster than the old one.

Old Server: Pentium P75, Memory 16MB, Hard Disk 1GB, aged 12 years.

New Server: Pentium 4, Memory 512MB, Hard Disk 40GB (RAID2/Mirrored), aged 0 years.

Given the age of the hardware, it's a testimony to Linux and God that the whole thing ran for the past 5 years with only two downtime periods - in each case it involved other network hardware.

The net effect of all this is my blog has moved! I won't be blogging any longer at this address, but at http://alternativeworship.org/paulsblog . The reason for this is that I can run my own blogging software on that machine - and I've decided on WordPress. It's much more configurable than anything that Blogger can offer, it's free (so is Moveable Type, but only for single blogs), and it's under my control.

So, please update any link or blog-reader you may have for this blog, and if you haven't linked me, now's a good time. (BTW, I've copied all archives across from this blog to the new one.)

Prayer focus for G8 meeting

2005-06-16T18:43:00.000Z

Micah Challenge have issued this prayer resource sheet (PDF) for the G8 summit.

With evangelists like these...

2005-06-16T18:22:00.000Z

A London street evangelist, Philip Howard, who ended up in court for shouting at passers-by about their eternal destination was cleared today. Full story here.

As a born-again libertarian, I'm profoundly glad that Bro Philip was not imprisoned for this, as it would have been a major loss to free-speech (and Bro Philip's activities probably will be illegal in the future if the present UK government's bill on incitement to religious hatred gets through parliament).

However, I really wish the Lord could arrange to rapture Bro Philip early. With 'evangelists' like this, I think I might investigate whether there's more mileage in preaching Bad News.

My theology - scientifically evaluated

2005-06-16T09:07:00.000Z

Thanks to Andrew Jones for the link to this 100% accurate Theological World View Tester.

I came out as "neo-orthodox", which is reassuring, isn't it? I'm a bit worried that "Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan" comes up as my second highest score. Need to work on that...

My detailed results were as follows:

Neo orthodox

86%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

75%

Emergent/Postmodern

71%

Roman Catholic

61%

Classical Liberal

46%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

46%

Reformed Evangelical

43%

Modern Liberal

18%

Fundamentalist

11%

How long can you stand this?

2005-06-15T19:28:00.000Z

The BBC have put up what is probably one of the more unpleasant web experiences on the internet. You need to visit it with the sound turned up LOUD... Make your adjustment, then click here. Bet you'll be clicking the back button very soon!

Staring at the light

2005-06-13T18:12:00.000Z

Rachelle has posted a lovely meditation on light here.

Blog from the island (delayed)

2005-06-13T12:15:00.000Z

L’Île St Honorat, Thursday 9th June 2005

Three days of meetings finished this morning with a communion service in the Abbey church. The island it reached by a little ferry from Cannes, which runs up to 5.30pm. After the final ferry leaves, the only sounds on the island are birdsong and the chant emerging from the church. I now have ahead of me two days of silence and solitude. There’s no wireless internet, so this blogging will have three days’ time delay at least.

The community is very welcoming and hospitable. The brothers were very interested in our work. We were joined by Mgr Robert Le Gal OSB the Bishop of Mende who is the head of the Episcopal Commission for Liturgy in the Roman Catholic Church in France, with him was Brother Patrick Prétot who heads up L’Institut Superieur de la Liturgie in Paris. We were also joined by several of the brothers, including the Abbot, Dom Marie Vladimir Gaudrat. During the meeting we had session discussing Emerging Church that was based on a paper written by Peter Craig-Wild, which featured a visit to Contemplative Fire in Great Missenden. Our French counterparts were particularly interested in this, especially to hear about the way worship and church are engaging the challenges and opportunities of postmodern culture. Afterwards, I had an interesting conversation with Abbot Vladimir, who is very clear that there has been a massive culture-shift affecting the background of younger novices who enter the community over the past 20 years.

The Rule of St Benedict stresses that stability is key to the development of the spiritual life. For this reason, monks who follow the Rule rarely move away from the community that they first joined. This contrasts sharply with the increasing mobility of the surrounding culture – where relationships can be made and loosened with equal rapidity. It also entails a voluntary reduction of choice, that quality which has become the supreme fetish of postmodern culture. Of course, advanced communication offsets some of the negative aspects of this (we can stay in touch), but it also alters our experience of one another in quite drastic ways. All our relationships are based more on transitory choice than voluntary covenanting – of self-binding. I wonder whether this also alters our understanding of what it means ‘to have faith’. If one essential aspect of faith is a self-binding (eg. St Patrick’s breastplate: I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity…), then this can only happen when we discover that we are truly free to do this. But how can we come to such freedom? Only with sufficient self-respect, and in a full realisation of our dignity as made in the image of God, can we realise our true freedom to take this step of self-binding and consequent self-limiting. The sad part about the clinging onto choice, which I think we all suffer from to some degree, is that for the most part it is borne of a deep insecurity, lack of self-respect and lack of genuine freedom. But the greatest act of freedom is to limit oneself freely (Phil 2:5-7).

As for me, I am enjoying these few days of isolation (Italian: Isola = Island). It is possible to walk around the island in about forty minutes, and there are eleven chapels to visit. I had a ‘Franciscan moment’ on the first day: as the evening office ended, a bird just outside the Abbey church started to sing, almost as if it had been waiting for the end of the liturgy to begin its own praise to God. Perhaps the local birds know the office well enough from hearing the monks sing it day after day. The acoustics of the abbey church mean that the sound of the chant is amplified by the building and waft outside across the island. There are, of course, seven offices per day. I’ve decided that I’m not going to the night office (it begins just after 4am) but the bell rings loudly so I am always woken by it – but I drift off again very rapidly.

L’Île St Honorat, Friday, 10th June 2005

A strange day for the island. The monks have been away on their one day away per year (at least together). So there have been few offices, although there was a mass at the usual time. After a stormy night, today was sunny again, so I set off after breakfast to a lonely beach on the west of the island, and spent a lot of the day reading Steve Taylor’s The out of bounds Church? Steve sold me a signed copy in Pasadena. It’s a very economic book, getting adequate description in and then cutting to the key theological discussion. Well worth a read, and now funding my own thinking in regard to the need to make quarterly alternative worship services lead into something to which people can belong beyond the basic encounter. (Postcard/Chapter 7 is particularly helpful in this regard.) Steve, if you’re reading this, I reckon I get the prize for having read your book in the most idyllic location, sitting on a rock next to the sea, occasionally dipping in for a lovely swim.

Poor St Augustine. He stopped off in 596 at the monastery here in St Honorat after he’d been asked by Pope Gregory to evangelise the English pagan tribes. He had to be ejected from the island in the end at the command of the Pope because he didn’t want to leave. Just as well for England that he did in the end. Well, I know how he felt, because tomorrow I will be getting back on the little ferry boat which I’ve been watching all afternoon as it went back and forth to the mainland. I will leave St Honorat on the 10.30 ferry and watch this lovely, holy island slowly get smaller as I move back to Cannes, then take the bus to Nice airport, and arrive back in Bristol by late afternoon.

It's work, honestly...

2005-06-05T13:49:00.000Z

I've just returned home from a few days' holiday with my parents in Swansea - which meant a few days walking and lying on some of the most beautiful beaches that I know. Tomorrow is journey time: flight to Nice, then bus to Cannes, then boat to l'Isle St Honorat to the monastery of Lerins. There's been a monastic community there since the beginning of the 5th century. It adopted the Rule of St Benedict in the 7th century, and presently is part of the Cistercian Congregation of the Immaculate Conception. Over Christian history it has been home to the following: St Patrick, St Cassian, Sts Hilary and Caesarius of Arles, and Sts Maximus and Faustus of Rietz. The most famous long-term resident was Vincent of Lerins, whose famous dictum quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus (to describe orthodox Christian belief: that which has been believed everywhere, always, by everyone) was drilled into me when I first did Christian doctrine as part of my theology degree more years ago than I now care to remember.

The list of famous former residents is a long one and sounds like a name-check for some of the key western theologians of the early middle ages. As for me, I'm going for a meeting of the Liturgical Commission, when we'll spend most of the time locked up in a room, pouring over papers. (Lest you think I'll be having even a slightly nice time!) However, I've booked myself in for an extra night, just to spend time wandering around the island, dipping my toes in the Mediterranean and soaking up the atmosphere. I'm still wondering how many of the seven daily offices I'm likely to get myself along to.

Gordon Brown moves on world poverty

2005-06-03T19:30:00.000Z

... and guess which head of state is likely to oppose! I guess relief of poverty isn't biblical enough. Story here.

Greenbelt website

2005-06-02T08:00:00.000Z

I had an enquiry via alternativeworship.org this morning from someone from North Carolina coming to UK for some sabbatical research. I wanted to direct her to the Greenbelt festival website, so I had a visit - as a GB regular, I go to Greenbelt 'anyway', so rarely look at the site. However, this time I did.

It took me 10 minutes of looking before I found any reference to worship on the newly-designed website. Now I'm quite prepared to admit that this was an accident of my own stupidity, but I was trying, I really was! For a more casual viewer, or a first-time viewer, I'm sure they could easily assume it was not that kind of festival. Maybe it's because I'm a non-linear thinker (I like diagrams, not bullet-point hierarchies), but I normally randomly hit links on the first page to get an idea of a site. The GB site is strictly linear and hierarchical.

OK, you do the test: How long did it take you? How many clicks from the front page? What do you think of the information when you eventually found it?

Maybe it will turn out that I'm stupid after all.

Postscript: I've just tried the test on Sharon, my highly-linear-thinking spouse: Time to find worship=5 minutes; score of content usefulness once found=1/10.

Post-postscript: Whether you find what you're looking for on the website or not, Greenbelt is BRILLIANT! Heaven struggles to surpass it. Be there.

Post-post-postscript: Stephen posted the following comment (but I've had to cut it because part of it gives the game away...): Stephen said...

About 5 minutes too and I'm normally pretty good at finding stuff on web sites. The site map didn't help and in the end found [here's the bit I've edited out: PR]

I kept going because you'd hinted there was something there. If I didn't know then I'd have given up and just emailed someone. Their statement on the contact page "It's often quickest to just send us an email in order to make an enquiry or a suggestion." seems apt.

I can't believe they don't have a search option either.

(Note to future commenters: don't give away the answer in your response, it spoils the test!)

+Rowan Cantuar on the Rule of Benedict

2005-06-01T22:15:00.000Z

Benedict's rule gets its third namecheck on this blog. Paul Fromont has unearthed a link to an excellent talk by Rowan Williams on 'Shaping Holy Lives', given in 2003. It's good thinking stuff for all you budding or practising Monkey Monks out there...

Geek ecclesiology (i)

2005-06-01T21:55:00.000Z

Over the public holiday on Monday, I took the opportunity to start setting up the new server to host alternativeworship.org together with a few other sites. Amongst the various tasks this entailed was setting up the firewall. Setting up a firewall for a 24/7 internet server requires a lot more thought than the commercial firewalls many people run on their PCs. This is because these servers run 'services' (like HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and so on). Therefore these must be accessible to the outside world, but not to anything, otherwise there's a strong likelihood they'll get hacked.

The way this setup works is for the firewall to be set up with all its 'doors' initially closed. Then the designer gradually opens them up, by intention, one by one, in order to allow in the right kind of data through certain 'doors' (literally: ports) in the firewall. There are two kinds of doors: ones to go in, and others to go out. Both can be locked, or opened up. So all in all, this is can be quite a fiddly task, and it requires a fair bit of thought. Then the configuration has to be programmed, and that's another matter again.

This got me thinking about the way churches open doors (or keep them shut) to different kinds of people. There are a very small number of churches who keep all doors shut. I guess these are cults. But most churches have some kind of 'admission policy' to full and effective community membership, whether it be stated, or unstated. eg. No troublemakers, no lower-class, no gays, no people of the wrong colour, no liberals, no evangelicals, no children, no disabled, no uncool-dudes, no elderly, no unintelligent, and so on. This amounts to locking down the firewall to this kind of entrant.

I guess my instinct is to have a church which is completely unfirewalled - although to do this on an internet computer would be insanity. And there's the rub, because just as a firewall protects from the possible entry of a malign stream of data, so some of the church 'policies' (deliberate or not) are there in part to protect what is already inside. But against what?

There's a double challenge here: to churches which lock-out - to question why they are doing this. But also to me - is there really such a thing as an unfirewalled church? Or do all communities have some kind of firewall preventing entry to someone who might pose, for example, a danger to some of the more vulnerable members of that church? A realistic view of a church (my church, your church) has to reckon with this perhaps. And another blog post would be about how different churches should do this, once they've owned up to the fact that they do...

Lastly, my geeky thoughts wondered off over to John10:1ff: Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. I wonder what kind of an ecclesiological firewall would let Jesus in, and keep bandits out?

Feeling a bit cross? Shout to the Lord!

2005-05-30T22:26:00.000Z

I really, really love Jesus. But that doesn't mean that I don't get really annoyed with my Lord at times. Such is the priviledge of all disciples (and OK, he's usually right and somewhere along the line we've got it wrong, but...) This approach is well-enshined in the songs of protest and lament which can be easily found within the psalms. Sadly, we rarely exhibit a similar honesty about our relationship with God in our worship.

If you're feeling really annoyed with Jesus, you might like to try out this song of worship by Marcus Curnow - you know the tune, just go ahead and sing it! If we can't get annoyed with Jesus, what image of him do we really have?

The WinTel User’s Prayer

2005-05-26T16:31:00.000Z

O Lord won’t you buy me
an Apple iBook?
Emergents all have them
wherever I look!
It’s not bein’ consumptive
- just caught by a hook.
O Lord, won’t you buy me
an Apple iBook?

Or even a PowerBook?
Please?
A ----- men.

(last line played to an r’n’b drawn-out ending).

Poetry is the true window to the soul.
Pray for me!

What would Jesus eat?

2005-05-23T08:46:00.000Z

Wondering? Get this on the BBC news website. Good stuff for the body as well as the soul. Be 'Slim for Him'. (Does anyone remember that immortal 1970s Christian book title?)

Mind you, Simon Taylor, my colleague, is at this very moment ranting and raving at how 'criminally stupid' the whole thing is. He's not best tolerant at this time on a Monday. And I guess he likes pork pies...

States of the mind

2005-05-21T21:58:00.000Z

It’s Saturday night. It’s been a long day – this morning, for my sins (ie. being on the General Synod of the Church of England) I attended our diocesan synod. However, the morning was made worthwhile by an excellent presentation by Professor Glynn Harrison, Professor of the Academic Unit of Psychiatry from the University of Bristol. In 20 minutes he briefed us on public policy on the care for people with mental illness in the UK. Then he handled some amazing questions. In essence, if the 1990s were about dealing with mental illness through a drug-therapy paradigm, the 2000s are about a return to context-analysis arising from the way scientists have realised (from work on the human genome) that genes respond to environmental stimuli. In other words, our genes don’t ‘pre-programme’ us from birth. They are responsive to the things that happen to us. In discussing the role of hallucinations, I was led to reflect on the blurred boundary between hallucination and religious experience. I have spoken with a number of people over the years who have experienced psychotic episodes, some of a religious nature. Glynn Harrison began his talk by stating that psychiatry tends to talk now in less polarised terms of the mentally ill/healthy. All of us experience stress on our minds from various sources, but for some this means that normal life functions are disrupted to a degree which requires treatment. For those who I have spoken with, it is clear that these are in a continuum with religious states that many of us who are Christians would relate to. It is therefore difficult (and I would say, ‘wrong’) to rule out all experiences in a period of mental illness as produced solely by the psychosis. For example, during periods of mental stress, I believe that we are often more open to encountering God than when things are running more ‘normally’.

This afternoon, I attended an open day at St Paul’s (one of my two churches). The chuch was hosting a exhibition of art work and sale of fairly-traded goods as part of its response to Christian Aid week. John Hoyland had put together are really cool compilation CD of tracks which were playing over the PA throughout the afternoon. Nice one John!

In the evening I went to a concert back at the church by the ‘rhythm and blues’ orchestra of my daughter’s school (the head of music goes to St Paul’s). It’s difficult to describe the overwhelming sense of pride when you see one of your kids concentrated, focussed on producing really good music. She’s 14 years old. She’s really embarrassed about her dad being the minister and that… But I’m just so proud of her – watching her play is one of the most renewing experiences I can describe. Then I thought: I guess this is a pointer to what God feels like, looking at all of us, when we create, concentrate, think, organise, bring things into the world which, without us, would not be there at all.

Political graphics site

2005-05-20T14:34:00.000Z

I was caught in a summer shower this morning, wandered into a shop, and bought a few good postcards from gatheredimages.com. (Warning children, this site is rude, blasphemous and very funny.)

Monks banned from Kent shopping mall shock!

2005-05-20T06:53:00.000Z

The Bluewater shopping centre in Kent has banned the wearing of hooded tops, baseball caps and swearing as part of a crackdown on antisocial behaviour - and it seems to be working, with numbers of visitors now going up. Does this mean that our friends from Worth Abbey (of the Monastery fame) will no longer be allowed to do a bit of retail therapy there when the urge to do so becomes overwhelming? (I'm referring to their hooded tops by the way, not any "habit" of wearing baseball caps and swearing...) Are any of the brothers going to try this out? And what if they do? ASBO?

(And correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the Church Commissioners own the Bluewater shopping centre?)

"I'm sorry Brother James, but after the recent incident at the mall, the Abbey Chapter no longer consider that running an intergalactic army of overwhelming force and brutality is compatible with the Rule of St Benedict..."

Fatal ignorance

2005-05-19T16:39:00.000Z

Sharon, my S.O., made a comment the other day while we were watching coverage of the bloody farce following the Newsweek article alleging that acts of disrespect had been carried out at Guantanamo Bay, with the deaths following the protests. She said, "that's what happens when you ban religious education from the curriculum." My friends from the US are amazed at the idea that religious education is compusory in UK schools. It's nothing like the kind of mind-control thing that the secularizers fear so much. It covers all world faiths. It aims to bring a wide appreciation of different faith perspectives. But, crucially, it helps people understand others who are *not like them*. Anyone who had done any basic religious education would have realised either:

a) why abusing the Koran would be such a stupid thing to do to radicalised Muslims

(if that really ever happened, or...)

b) why running a story in Newsweek that alleged such a thing would lead to bloodshed

Ignorance is surely the greatest enemy of all, irrespective of culture.

Sin is sin is sin is ...

2005-05-19T12:04:00.000Z

Brian Turner, from Dothan, Alabama has an interesting OOZE piece on what happens when ‘being real’ in our identification with culture is actually an excuse for indulging in, well let’s face it, SIN. His basic point is simple – however important it is for Christians to engage more fully with the (postmodern) culture of which they are part, that does not mean that issues of sin, right and wrong behaviour are not important.

OK – I’m against sin too, so Amen to that. But does this discussion need to go a bit further perhaps? To step outside existing well-established social patterns of being Church and move into new ways of being a missional community inevitably brings with it a challenge to the moral, ethical narrative inherited (or not) from older established church forms.

To take an obvious example (because it’s about sex!): in a society which has largely forgotten the biblical reason for marrying and has adopted, instead, a consumerist model, what do we say to people who have been living a faithful, sexual shared life without taking on the razzmatazz and cost of a wedding? And at what point in their missional/formative journey would the question be raised? And who by? The Pastor? The community ethical council? A reformed perspective would be looking for a discipline structure within emerging churches as a keynote of their authenticity. But how many groups have developed ethical structures in a contextualised way, rather than falling back on existing models from the previous culture?

Once Church life moves outside the social boxes of existing forms, these ethical questions are neither posed nor answered in exactly the way that they were in the previous context. One would hope that an emerging community would go back to the Bible and work out what its values of faithfulness, love and total union mean in practical terms for contemporary sexual lifestyles. Somewhere in the background to their search would be the existing example of more usual forms of Church, but should we assume that these would be modelled identically by the new community?

Another question arising from Brian Turner’s article is the way we engage with sin once we’ve named it as such. Like many churches, his article seems to be concerned with there ‘not being sin’ around in the community. But in fact, the presence of sin in all Christians is a given. Sometimes, it’s not merely a case of saying sorry to God and trying not to make the same mistake again. Often, repentance involves learning to love our sinful self as much as God does. (ie. a reflexive form of ‘loving the sinner and hating the sin’). Instead of running from our sins, they can often teach us things about our inner selves and our relationship with God that too-hasty a turning away and moving on would obscure. That’s not to say we should indulge in sin, but we can love ourselves as sinners and through our sin learn more about ourselves in the light of God’s love. I would hope that emerging communities are providing more scope for this kind of growth than the all-too-superficial engagement with sin provided by many models available in the mainstream.

Recovery from a happy Pentecost

2005-05-17T07:15:00.000Z

Sunday was a busy day, and to be honest I’m only really now surfacing enough to blog about it.

Morning worship – and I was racking my brains on how to put together two themes in the preaching. With the start of Christian Aid Week, we used this Sunday as the opportunity to launch our churches’ response to Make Poverty History. So my homiletical challenge was trying to link Pentecost with the crazy endeavour of hoisting an enormous Make Poverty History banner up the church tower, where it’s going to be very visible along the main roads which encircle Cotham. So I cheated. I changed the Old Testament reading from the lectionary to Genesis 11 (the story of the Tower of Babel) and talked about the power, for good or evil, of human organising – of how God confused the tongues, then used the diversity of those tongues to show a new vision for the human race. This includes the justice and relief of poverty which God dreams of, because poverty destroys humanity, and has no place in God’s kingdom.

After the service, we hoisted the banner up the tower. The organising team had done their homework in regard to publicity, and we had a photographer from the Bristol Evening Post show up on cue. Great plan. Then I got attacked by some of the members of the youth group who tied me up in Make Poverty History event tape. The photographer was delighted. I’m now nervously watching the newspaper to see the results… (POSTSCRIPT: And, yes, it was duly published. You can read the story here, but fortunately, the pictures aren't on the web!)

Down at my other church, they had invited Nick Park (him of Aardman Animations and Wallace and Gromit fame) to ‘launch’ their MPH banner which is hanging over the front door. He’d been at the Cannes Film Festival all last week, and pointed out that St Paul’s was pretty much the same as Cannes, only a bit more glamorous. The local TV news came and it was broadcast on the evening bulletin. My colleague Simon said later that they had a good number of people along and it was a fun service.

Evening – and our big alternative worship service. Previous years’ Pentecost services were notorious for things going wrong (I won’t go into it), so when I was reminded about this by email, I had circulated an ‘email exorcism’ with LOTS OF WORDS IN CAPITAL LETTERS and EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!! before we started the planning. Most of the service had been put together while I was in Pasadena, so when I got back it looked like a good event was in the making.

It went better than we ever could have imagined. The planning was leisurely, we got time for a proper run-through and had half an hour to gather our wits over some tea before returning to open up. Great singing of a new song written by Richard and Tracey Wheeler, a huge frame suspended over the service holding white fabric trailers onto which were stapled spirals with prayers people had written. Then candles were lit underneath to create an updraft, and they spiralled in the wind of the spirit. Had about 70 people along, wine served after the service and then took off down to the pub. Good links, motivated attenders, lots of questions about what else we should be doing. Need to think our next move through properly. Pub meeting? How should we further seed community?

So it was lively Sunday. Some weeks at church it all feels like we’re doing something right. Evidently capital letters and exclamation marks work wonders, so HAVE A NICE DAY!!!!!!

Criticisms of alt/emerging church

2005-05-12T13:43:00.000Z

Andrew Jones’ blog is currently carrying a fascinating dialogue between himself and Michael Horton, who has offered some friendly criticism of emerging churches from a reformed perspective. Although most of the discussion is of particular relevant to the situation in the US, some of the criticisms sound strangely familiar.

- Sloppy philosophy: inadequate appreciation of and criticism of postmodern thought
- Demographically separated: ie. not for older people, therefore inadequately reflecting the diversity of the body of Christ (at least in age-range)
- Anti-seminary – perhaps more accurately, anti-academic theology
- Vague and avoids certainty – this seems more a comment on tentative spirituality than on intellectual approach

I found myself resonating with some of these friendly criticisms, even though I have been involved in emergent-type groups since 1993. The manifestation of some of these potential weakness in British contexts indicates a need to take them seriously.

Philosophy – the high-water-mark of postmodern philosophy has been passed, and it’s difficult to see what the abiding value of its critique really is. Certainly, there was far too much being published about postmodern thought in the 1990s. These days, the philosophy section of academic bookshops looks quite different. Perhaps given that the dust is being allowed to settle in philosophical thinking, the Church needs to realise that the postmodern critique of modernity isn’t the last or latest word (indeed, Lyotard’s seminal The condition of postmodernity is over 25 years old now.)

Demographically separated – from my experience, I think this is one of the most limiting factors on the authenticity and long-term viability of alt/emerging groups. The story goes like this: the group sets up with people mostly in their 20s. They have lots of time and energy and much creativity ensues. Then some move away. Others decide that the disenchantment which led them out of ‘ordinary church’ is deeper than that and they need to leave church altogether. Others have kids (or a more intensive job) and find it difficult to raise them in the alt/emerging setting. What’s missing in all of this? - age diversity and range of life-experience. To what extent are we working out a delayed adolescence in the face of other churches where leadership and vision is being steered by an older generation?

Anti-seminary – I think the UK groups tend to be less dismissive of theology than perhaps our American counterparts. Indeed, there seems to be a higher incidence of theological (over-?) qualification within alt/emerging groups in UK than other, more ‘normal’, church forms. Whether this is a good thing or not, I am less sure of. However, I have enjoyed a more thorough experience of theological exploration within alt/emerging churches than in all other types of Church to which I have belonged.

Vague, and avoids certainty – perhaps we ought to plead guilty m’lud. The kind of certainty which drives a lot of growing, mainly boomer-type churches locates the certainty ‘outside’ the experience of the person of faith, in some kind of shared fiduciary deposit box. This does not cohere well with most contemporary understandings of authentic existence, so it is not surprising that alt/emerging is reacting against this: many big-church-dropouts are to be found within our number. It doesn’t really cohere with the gospel call to follow Jesus, focussed as it is more on conceptuality than exploration and the challenge to obey him relationally. I reckon that one of the best reasons to take Jesus seriously is because life is complicated and confusing, incapable of being addressed by a prior set of answers. I’d rather follow him than trust to some prior-digested form of ‘certainty’, which someone else has put together for me. This exploratory approach does not rule out certainty, but perhaps ‘conviction’ would be a better word for it, which is nurtured through doing, rather than reading-up in advance of living. Those who accuse alt/emerging groups of vagueness have perhaps missed the point about a dynamic action-listening-reflection which is located within the ‘liturgical’ heartbeat of alt/emerging Christianity. To have one’s ears open to hearing God in the midst of a life lived ‘raw’ is inevitably going to involve asking questions all the time, as well as learning to live faithfully with some of the answers.

Firstly...

2005-05-11T20:14:00.000Z

We watched The Monastery on BBC2 last night. I don't watch very much TV - partly because evenings are generally work time for me, and partly because there seems to be little worth watching. This one was an exception. Jonny has already blogged the background to the series (sadly just three shows). Two things stood out for me: the first was the variation between the outlook of the younger volunteers and the older ones. Two of the younger ones were from very secular backgrounds and both were high-earning and quite hedonistic. Initially, they seemed the most bemused by the benedictine environment. The challenge for them seemed to be to move from the almost deliberately-chosen superficiality of their lives to take themselves more seriously. The third younger volunteer came over as an obvious monk-in-waiting (former buddhist, now anglican returnee). However, as the programme continued, it seemed to me as though his challenge was to rediscover a commitment to community, not just the personal focus on God in separation. The other thing which stood out came towards the end of the programme, when a conflict broke out between two of the younger volunteers. It took place within a group meeting, in the presence of the abbot. Some direct speaking took place, and neither of them found it easy. The others, together with the abbot, stayed silent while the interaction took place. Afterwards, we saw the abbot listening to both of them individually. He carefully helped them discover more about themselves through the conflict situation, pointing out that it is through rubbing up against others in community that they can give us the gift of knowing ourselves. I found this very challenging. It was this conflict, and the way it was handled, that created a huge contrast between this programme and Big Brother. In BB, conflict is encouraged and stimulated between the 'contestants'. However, it is exploited for cheap entertainment purposes, with others in the house encouraged to 'take sides'. The benedictine community used conflict as an opportunity for deeper healing and greater self-knowledge. BB uses conflict to entertain the onlooker, so that the whole programme becomes a kind of amphitheatre of human misery, incomprehension and brokenness. It is rare to see one television programme act as an unintentional judgment upon another.

I'm also left wondering whether the benedictine and other religious communities realize what is likely to be unleashed by the programme: I'm sure there'll be many people wanting to try out the novitiate, or at least stay on retreat at monastic foundations, as a result of the impact of the programme. Perhaps copies of The Rule of St Benedict will run out in the bookshops - quotes from it appear throughout the programme. For what it's worth, there's an online copy at: http://www.kansasmonks.org/RuleOfStBenedict.html.