The Shape of things to come

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The Shape of things to come

• Loanhead
• Saturday 23 February 2013

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Were not in Kansas Anymore
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Post-Christendom

• Post Christendom is the culture that emerges as
  the Christian faith loses coherence within a
  society that has been definitively shaped by the
  Christian story and as the institutions that
  have been developed to express Christian
  convictions decline in influence.
• Post-Christendom Church and Mission in a
  Strange New World, Stuart Murray, p 19

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Change of Age?Phil Hanlon, Professor of Public
Health, Glasgow
Structural Economic collapse unsustainable models Cultural Anxiety, depression, addictions
Biological Obesity Epidemic Inner Life Fragmented Identity (fatherlessness)
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Travel Hints for the Journey

• Three horizons look beyond the first horizon to
  the third horizon, but travel towards the second
  horizon.
• We are good at migration and adaptation.
• We need a paradigm shift a change of
  consciousness ( new eyes rather than new ideas)
• We need to introduce a second curve of
  innovation.

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Second Curve Innovation
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Church in Bereavement

• Denial
• Anxiety
• Anger
• Yearning
• Acceptance
• Moving the investments

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The Transition Zone

• Jeremiah uprooting and planting (Ch 1)
• The Temple clinging to false security (Ch 7)
• The Potter offering a second chance (Ch 18)
• The Baskets of Figs seeing exile as a positive
  - I regard as good the exiles of
  Judah. (Ch 24)

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The Letter to the Exiles (Ch 29)

• This is Gods doing that we are where we are -
  those I carried into exile (4)
• This is Gods place where we are to share Gods
  blessing - seek the peace and prosperity of the
  city (7)
• This is Gods timescale to wait where we are
  seventy years (10)
• This is Gods plan that we are to seek God again
  I know the plans I have for you (11)

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Pause Point

• Where do you see Hanlons symptoms of society in
  your community?
• Where is your church on the journey of transition?

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Web 2.0
USER CONSUMER
PRODUCER
http//blog.centopeia.com/
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Web 1.0 was about reading, Web 2.0 is about
writing Web 1.0 was about companies, Web 2.0 is
about communities Web 1.0 was about
client-server, Web 2.0 is about peer to peer Web
1.0 was about home pages, Web 2.0 is about
blogs Web 1.0 was about wires, Web 2.0 is about
wireless Web 1.0 was about owning, Web 2.0 is
about sharing Web 1.0 was about Netscape, Web 2.0
is about Google Web 1.0 was about dialup, Web 2.0
is about broadband
http//joedrumgoole.com/blog/2006/05/29/web-20-vs-
web-10/
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Web 2.0
USER A PERSON A PERSON lives in GROUPS
COMMUNITIES
http//blog.centopeia.com/
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Church 2.0
EARTHED SPIRITUALITY AUTHENTIC
COMMUNITY MISSIONAL PRACTICALITY
http//blog.centopeia.com/
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Coracle

• Young Adults (20-40)
• Couple as Leaders
• Journey in, out and together
• Faith and Action Group
• Mums and God
• Two Halves Group
• Male Spirituality

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Raven Community

• Night Club Chaplaincy
• Exploring Church for Club Culture
• Project to community
• Whats in a name?

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Post-modern Church

• EH1 - cafe connector
• Urban soul chill out or dance
• Soulspace clubs or flats
• Round table talk truth, trust and risk
• Key Words
• Liminality and Communitas

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Clay Community Church

• Urban Expression incarnational communit
• Four couples no salary, no house
• Intentional community life
• Join in with what God is doing
• Anonymous musicians Jesus is the song

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Pause Point

• If these illustrate some of the marks of church
  2.0
• Which of these marks do you recognise in your
  church?
• Which ones stand out as the greatest challenge
  for you?

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Church The Long View

• Biblical, Historical, Contemporary Models of
  Church

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Acts of the Holy Spirit

• Story of Migration and Adaptation
• The story of the continual conversion of the
  church from Jerusalem to Samaria
• The story of a Jewish plant adapting to Gentile
  soil from Jerusalem to Antioch
• The story of a minority report on God at work in
  the world from Pentecost to prison cells

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The First Communities

• Starting points synagogue or prayer points
• Homes the dominant setting (40-50 people?)
• Meals together
• One-another-ness
• Multi-voiced worship
• Male and female leadership
• Plural leadership
• Messy church! Messy lives!
• Underground church the catacombs and the
  catechesis (3 years Lent Easter)

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Morphing Church

• Constantine public recognition, public
  buildings
• Desert Fathers and Mothers solitude and
  monasteries
• Celtic communities doodlers and dreamers,
  poets and pilgrims, heart, home and hub
• Roman model - Cathedrals, dioceses and parishes
• Monastic Communities
• Settled Church and Orders or Missionary movements
  (St Francis or Moravians or The Salvation Army)
• Modalities and Sodalities (Ralph Winter)
• Institution and Charismatic (Howard Snyder)

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Beyond Congregation?

• Common as they are in several religious
  traditions, congregations have never dominated
  the totality of the worlds religious
  organisations.. The congregation is not as
  inevitable as church members might assume.
• Congregations James Hopewell p 12
• We are beginning to understand that the anomaly
  was the long historical period of performative
  congregations.
• The Missional Leader Alan Roxburgh and Fred
  Romanuk p 100

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Leadership Mirrors the Culture

• Elders Jewish communities
• Priests Greek and Roman temples
• Pope and Cardinals Roman Emperor and Senate
• Theologians and Apologists Rhetoricians and
  Philosophers
• Leaders of New Orders knights and soldiers
• Episcopacy king and court
• Presbyterianism rise of democracy
• Charismatic leadership entrepreneurial business
  culture
• Institutional leadership managerial models
• Cultural relics resonance and distortion

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Pointers?

• Edinburgh Central Baptist Missional Communities
• St Andrews Boness Social Outreach Programmes
  and Sanctuary First
• Glasgow Whiteinch Urban Monastery
• St Andrews (Holy) Trinity Minster Model
• Garioch Baptist Church Church in the home
• Musselburgh The Lighthouse

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2000 years young

• Christianity is young and if it lasts for as long
  as humanity is expected to last on this planet,
  it has futures of at least 2000 million years
  ahead of it.
• We are a primitive church. All our theology is
  immature. All our organisations are experimental.
  Almost all our spiritualityhas been at its best
  adolescent.
• The psychology of youth has always been the
  character of this faith. The theologians call
  this eschatological.
• David Edwards

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Church in Transition

• The Church is essentially en route, on a journey,
  a pilgrimage. A Church which pitches its tents
  without looking out constantly for new horizons,
  which does not continually strike camp, is being
  untrue to its calling.....It is essentially an
  interim church, a church in transition, and
  therefore not a church of fear, but of
  expectation and hope a church which is directed
  towards the consummation of the world by God...
• Hans Kung

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Pause Point

• How does the long view of the churchs story
  help us face the future?
• What are you taking away from this session?