Re-imagining Mission for a spiritual Age

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Re-imagining Mission for a spiritual Age

• Listening to the Spirit of the Age

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Double listening (Mission-Shaped Church)

• Two ears one mouth
• Use accordingly in mission
• Failure to enter the other persons world leaves
  us like the tourists who keep speaking louder in
  their own language

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Post-modernity? Modernity to
Postmodernity
I tell my story
I choose my beliefs
truth as fact
truth as experience
I buy my identity
The logic of consumerism
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Post-Christendom?
Church attendance 2005
76 of New Christians Come from 26 De-Churched
finding faith today 1992
65 Non Churched
This section of the population is older and
decreasing over time
26 De Churched
9 monthly
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Post-Christendom?

• Not just about church attendance
• Grace Davie,
• - Believing without belonging and vicarious faith
• But changing belief
• Fading of occasional office
• Decline in Christian identity
• Stages in the decline of Christendom not a new
  way for it to persist

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Belief in God
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Infant Baptism C of E 2007
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Church Weddings 2007
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Christian Affiliation UK
10
Christian Affiliation 2001
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Christian Affiliation
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Not belonging to any religion
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Builders (born 20s30s) in 2005
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Boomers (born 40s50s) in 2005
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Gen-Xers (born 60s70s) in 2005
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Gen-Yers (born 80s90s) in 2015?
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Post- Secularism?

• Post-modernity - multi-faith in a post-secular
  age
• Post-modern move from truth as fact to truth as
  experience - From universal truth to true for me
  may be different to true for you.
• Rejection of objectivity for subjectivity
• Personal belief re-enters the public square
• Any and every belief . All are equally
  unprovable
• All of this much to the annoyance of Richard
  Dawkins.
• and Christians?
• Religion once more on the agenda but any religion
  with no way back to Christendom ..indeed is
  Christianity disadvantaged compared to the
  alternatives?

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The Media

• Growth in TV shows on the supernatural, spiritual
  and paranormal
• Fiction supernatural, sea of souls, Buffy,
  demons, Hex, charmed, Sabrina the teenage witch,
  apparitions, treu blood, the vampire diaries
• fact..haunted homes, most haunted, healers,
  Britain's psychic challenge, documentaries on
  mediums, Pagans, teenage witches etc
• Move from Scooby Do approach where the ghosts
  are found not to exist to an approach where the
  balance is to believe in them
• Replacement of the priest with the medium,
  investigator or demon hunter.

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Spiritual experience in 2000 Vs 1987
1987 48 report a spiritual experience - 2000
risen to 76
25 the presence of evil up 108
But what are they experiencing?
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Belief in God or higher power
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Children to be raised with belief in God
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Believe in the soul
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Believe in an afterlife
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Believe in restless spirits
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Believe in Karma
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Experience of fortune telling, Tarot, astrology,
psychics, palmists
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I have more faith in astrology than organised
religion
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Believe in magic
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Australian Gen Y like Britain?
Rationalist humanist
Non believing 14
Moral relativism, pick n mix, truth in all
religions but not just one, something out there
occult and paranormal experienced BUT open rather
than committed or seeing as important
Includes neo pagans and followers or frequent
participants in the esoteric/occult
growing
shrinking
new spiritual 23
Religious 17
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Japan Britain
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Consumer Christianity?
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Consumer Christianity?

• God the cosmic therapist?
• Cruise liner or Battleship?
• John Wimber
• Church shopping?
• Looking for what I get out of it
• Looking for the one that does things my way
• Buying religious product?
• Occasional offices
• Rosaries
• Retreats
• Spiritual direction