Barque: Thomas Moore's Work: Give up thought patterns for heaven on earth

Barque: Thomas Moore's Work: Give up thought patterns for heaven on earth

Tony Campolo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m584z5aE4Uc
The main bit is at 2:10 to 2:46 in the clip.....listen carefully

I can not deny how I got it wrong so many times when the priorty was not Matthew 25 but rather my own self righteous judgement (insecurities). The priority is love in action...and to that end I strive.

Compassion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s30ZKjNfRlU
I have met too many people hurt, rejected, struggling and broken who do not fit the stereo-type the conservative church would have you believe but people with tears in their eyes shattered by the words spoken in judgement. I heard a good friend say once, 'God aint gonna judge you for being too kind and compassionate...rather for not being enough'

Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity

'I am a Christian who no longer believes in Christianity'

This is an extremely provocative statement that Brian is making but I agree and understand what he is saying. For quite some time now I have been in conflict due to my own personal experience of God compared to my experience of institutional church. The two seems poles apart. What I have experienced is cold judgement, arrogance, elitism and many other negative gospel-denying characteristics. Too many, too many times to keep ignoring and excusing.

In fact, I would possible even take it another step further and not even label myself Christian anymore because when that label was given to believers in Antioch it was defining a completely different person compared to today what is understood by Christian.

Many may find security in the label, finding the label acting as a pillar which if removed will jeopardise the remaining structure. In my journey 'away from here' I have found that vulnerability extremely uncomfortable and exposing but as I begin to slowly identify new arrival points, the vulnerability has been worth it. See my next post as to some of those arrival points. Thank you for listening.

Thomas Moore

There are two ways to be spiritually secure: one is to attach to a fixed and uncomplicated teaching, leadership, and set of moral standards. Another is to be open to life, ever deepening your understanding and giving up all defensiveness around convictions. The first way offers only the illusion of certainty, an illusion that must be maintained by anxious inflexibility. The second is to live from a deeper source, with values that cannot be codified in a list of rules. Central among these values is love, understood as profound respect for others.
Writing in the sand, p.xvi

I am drawn and challenged by these words because as I stand aloof as an on-looker at my own faith, the tradition I am a part of, I see these two tensions exist in futile revelry. Not only do I straddle both these opposing worldviews and philosophies in my working context, I have also colluded with both like a harlot, guilty myself of the illusion it evoked until my reality and the 'shit that happens' rocked me into the reality of failure and rejection. And at that point of isolated vulnerability, it is the latter that has been the most accepting, restorative and the most honest option for me to pursue as a new deeper experience.

Performance and Auntenticity

Christian ministry somehow failed to professionalize:
the clergyman is a jack of all trades...there is nothing which he does that could not be done equally well by a lawyer or bricklayer in the congregation...He does not have a job at all in any sense which is readily understandable today, and today, more than ever before, a person must have a job in order to fit into society...p87

Performing priesthood made him less authentic rather than more: instead of finding unity in a variety of roles, he had come to believe that he was acting rather than being true to himself ...p88

Redefining Christian Britain

In a module on inter-professionalism the above statement hit me like a ton of bricks. My hidden status and profession as a minister, I suggested clergy could be part of this inter-professional discussion. Laughter burst forth as if I was the new comedian on the block. Have we 'de-professionalised' ourselves? Has society? Have we just been left behind, asleep?

I do feel we still have much to offer, some more so than others, but the challenge lay mockingly on the table...can we again be a part of society in a way that contributes and that is valued by society?

The gauntlet perhaps is more personal and boils down to authenticity?

Colin Morris

Perhaps Christianity became a problem solving religion when, instead of it converting Europe as is widely supposed, European culture converted Christianity from being a near-eastern apocalyptic faith into a western problem solving ideology to be harnessed to the needs of an optimistic and thrusting scientific civilization. p61 start your own religion

john shelby spong

Look at him! Look not at his divinity, but look, rather, at his freedom.
Look not at the exaggerated tales of his of his power, but look, rather at his infinite capacity to give himself away.
Look not at the first-century mythology that surrounds him, but look, rather, at his courage to be, his ability to live, the contagious quality of his love.

p16...in grief situations that i have entered as a pastor, it is inevitably the religious person who is insensitive, who feels compelled to speak surface assurances, who suppresses real feelings with homilies on faith, and who readily supplies pat answers for diffecult and complex questions.

p54...i am glad the realm of spiritual is no more. i am glad that the god identified with this realm is dead. we isolated the god of our religion in a system and located it in an otherworldly ghetto. Now the secular world has killed that god...but a god who could be isolated from the world could certainly not be either the god of the hebrews or the god of the bible. so perhaps the death of that god is only the death of an idol who masqueraded as god for almost 2000 years...for the first time since christianity escaped its jewish origins, we again perceive reality as a whole.

p164...orthodoxy will have no power unless honest heresy is a possibility.

Browning quoted by Drane

Most of us stand on the boundary: religious communities attract us; we may even participate in them; but we also wonder if they make sense.
The McDonaldization of the church

i-revtrev

Exert from new book:
I like to think that one day out side time and space (I know, that is a paradox!) there existed (another paradox because to exist assumes time) this ‘being’ called Love. This Love was not some ungraspable phenomenon like the wind but had a personality and other personable qualities and in its nature being love, seeking to love, Love decided to create a life that would be able to share in this life force of love but also be objects of love, experiencing and being loved by Love. However, understanding the complexities of this mystery love (and truly who today still understands love), Love gave Love a name…God and so we have: God is Love.

Desperate housewives does church

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xyVEEHidhGE&feature=related

Ronald Cole Turner

It is altogether likely that the church will marginalize itself in the role of chaplain, picking up the peices, caring for the bruised, mopping up the damaged, but never engaging the engines of transformation themselves, steering, persuading, and transforming the tranformers.

Richard Holloway

He understands the necessity of law and its origin in our fear of the chaos of our own undisciplined passions; but he also recognises that the law itself can only shakkle, never transform the passions; and it is the transformed heart that is his ambition because it alone can chnage the world ... doubts and love p194

Rumi

Come come whoever you are
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving,
It does not matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Even if you have broken your vows
A thousand times it does not matter
Come, yet again, come

John Caputo

But what then is the kingdom of God? Where is it found? It is found every time an offense is forgiven, every time a stranger is made welcome, every time an enemy is embraced, every time the least among us is lifted up, every time the law is made to serve justice, everytime a prophetic voice is raised against injustice, every time the law and the prophets are summed up by love.
p138...what would jesus deconstruct

Nude Christianity

http://www.emergingchurch.info/stories/nudes/index.htm

Rev Adam Sapple waves at me from across the sand dunes. "We’re over here mate!" he shouts, his Australian accent strangely at odds with this quiet Welsh beach. As I round the corner I see Adam and his team preparing for a days witness. He is wearing a traditional dog collar, pair of sports sandals and nothing else. Welcome to ‘Naturists Unashamedly Doing Evangelism and Surfing’ (NUDES) - the UK’s first naturist beach mission.
NUDES started their work in the area two years ago when Adam moved from his native Sydney to Wales after meeting NUDES co-founder Eve Ennsong at a clothes-free worship weekend in Norway. They discovered they both came from a background of surfing and Adam’s tales of his ‘Naked Surfers for Peace’ crusade down-under reminded her of a similar group she had contact with in her native Newquay. They decided that they absolutely had to take it to the next level and start a beach mission that combined their love of clothes-free watersports with their passion for spreading good news.
Finding the perfect location for this involved a summer travelling the UK’s surf spots and nudist beaches in a battered VW camper. "Obviously it was going to be a compromise", says Adam whose sun-bleached hair and deep tan is still more Bondi Beach than Barmouth, "We needed an officially sanctioned clothes free bathing area and some decent waves. Eventually we arrived here and found it to be perfect - it‘s paradise to us." ‘Here’ is Wyndup Beach in Cardigan Bay, Wales.
Since then the liberated duo have recruited people of a similar mind to help with the weekend beach mission. A typical Saturday in the summer months will see them set up in the centre of the naturist area with an array of irreverent banners such as ‘bare your bum and save your soul’ and ‘shed your clothes and sins’. Unfortunately the last ‘s’ of that sentence has peeled off the banner and as we chat is causing some inappropriate interest from a group of tourists. "Never mind," grins Adam, "it’s another great witness opportunity."
"Nakedness is crucial to what we’re about,’" explains Eve as she wedges a boogie-board into the sand as a makeshift pulpit, "once people get beyond the pretence of fashion and image they find that can be totally open with each other. It’s led to some revealing conversations." She’s also quick to point out that NUDES isn’t just about preaching and converts: "We’re very much part of the local naturist community. Our barbeques are a highlight of the week for many bathers down here, not just those involved with the mission." I later hear talk of an unfortunate incident at a previous barbeque although the naturist involved has returned to Wyndup and the beach mission after only needing minor medical treatment.
The NUDES team are largely in their 30s and 40s, many coming from a surfing or naturist background for whom church activities were something of a guilty secret. Here they gather unashamed under the group’s logo - a surfer with a halo. One recent convert breaks the pattern though - Sir Pentonville-Hastings is a retired General who caught the nudist bug whilst serving with the Highland Regiment in Borneo. He arrives just as Adam suggests the surf is high enough to start the days sport. Some of the team help with the large box the retired General is carrying - full of home grown fruit from his estate. The local newspaper’s lead story today is that the Ministry of Agriculture have warned locals to not eat any local produce after a potentially dangerous chemical cloud passed over the region last week. But ‘Sir Pent’, as he’s affectionately referred to, is having none of it and encourages Eve to hand round the delicious looking fruit.
Meanwhile Adam is running headlong into some impressive waves singing hymns at the top of his voice. As I discard my t-shirt and shorts to join in the collecting of driftwood for ‘the barbie’ I reflect that perhaps this is pretty close to paradise after all.

Just Perfect

Edwin Markham

They drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle that took them in

leadership

Whats makes the temptation to power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to own life than to love life....The temptation of power is greatest when intamacy is a threat
Nouwen quoted in Reviewing Leadership by Banks and Ledbetter

Symbols of divine presence

we should probably look for existential rather than conceptual criteria....life may be recognised to be larger than logic; love may take precedence over truth; the neighbour as a person may become more important than his belief. reflection on the work of the Spirit may be subordinated to a readiness to be led by the Spirit together with partners into the depth of God's mystery
Amos Yong