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BlogHere are the thoughts and news of the people in our community. Leave a comment as you wish. If you want to join the blogging ask Mark.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005Organic Church Round Table 3 I think a couple of guys have been along to the organic church roundtable conversations over the last 2 years. Well there is a third - "the return" or something. This one will be pretty special, i think. We have got Stuart Murray-Williams coming to help the conversation. Stuart has writen a few books on church, church planting, tithing, post-Christendom , and anabaptism. I am sure he will be a great conversation partner! The topic will be something along the lines of "making disciples in a churchless age", but more detail will be available nearer the time. Posted by: Mark | 3:12 pm |
Monday, January 24, 2005Community, a Quality of the Heart 
from Henri Nouwen Society eletters Posted by: Mark | 11:14 am |
Monday, January 10, 2005Discussing Tsunami Last night a few who wanted and were available gathered to discuss the Tsunami (about 13, I think). The idea came from Mark Hill talking about his friend asking how God could let this happen. It was great to have the opportunity to have an open discussion on how we felt about it, the questions that it realised for us and how we can deal with it. We started by talking about how we felt about it and the questions it raised for us. We talked about feelings of grief, of being overwhelmed by the scale of it all. And certainly "where is God in all of this". We talked about some of the stories and some things that we had heard in reports. It was helpful to air those in such a forum. It helped us to keep feeling and not shut ourselves off from it all. We talked about possible ways of looking at it theologically. Was God a passive observer, allowing things to take their course, was God the active instigator sending it. It what sense is God in control, and is there REALLY any difference between the two. Adrian dismissed the possible option of this being God's judgement on a country as not making sense practically, never mind anything else, given the scope and place of impact of the disaster (Luke 13:1-5, John 9:1-5, Luke 6:37, Matt 7:1 can all be helpful in thinking about that issue, if you are interested). We talked about what would make a death or number of deaths from a natural disaster 'significant' enough for us to expect God's intervention - is it one person, is it 100,000, or should we view even 150,000, in the context of human history, insignificant. We soon realised that that line of reasoning doesn't get very far. Our discussions on this landed very firmly in Romans 8:18-27. Here we found it talking about 'creations groanings as in child birth' and the 'creation was given over to decay' by God. It seems that sin, death and decay that entered into the human race with the fall, also entered into creation. We discussed what it meant to be 'given over' - did that mean 'abandoned' or 'allowed to run its course'. What about a God who sustains the world by his word, rather than one who kicked the whole thing off and just lets it tick...? We wondered whether these destructive 'design faults' [?!?!?] were there in God's 'good' creation? What was clear was that the fate of humanity, and more specifically for the future, the fate of God's family was linked into the fate of all creation. The sense of groanings, and struggles that we feel, are also similar to the struggles that creation is feeling. The passage is pointing the way to hope - that birth pains result in birth, they are signs that resurrection/new creation is coming for creation in a similar way to the way it is coming for God's family. This, we decided was a great promise and a great hope... BUT we also decided that it wasn't much comfort for those who right now had lost so much. "Ah, it'll be alright in the end" seems a cold comfort. We decided that maybe the answering of the "why?" in the end isn't the most helpful thing. Maybe a better question is "what now". Adrian asked us a great question: "What questions has the Tsunami asked you?". People answered: "The fragility/shortness of life - we need to regain perspective"; "How consumerist we are in this country, when you see possessions just swept out to sea, never to be seen again, in the context of our consumerist Christmas as well!"; "the issue of third world debt, and how we give with the right hand and take loads more with the left hand"; "the issue of world poverty and the imbalance of wealth". Much conversation was had around these issues too. I guess we realised that it is one thing to get shaken up by a huge event such as this, but it reveals that maybe we should also get upset about many thousands of people dying each day due to poverty, preventable diseases etc. The Jubilee 2000 campaign was mentioned, and we felt we didn't really understand enough about this, so we are going to find out and see if there is anything we can do to help. I thought the conversation was good and helpful. Definitive answers on the question of God's sovereignty were not nailed down but not ignored; revelations on the nature of God's grace and compassion were identified in the incarnation, the God who has suffered with us. We found ourselves happy to commit ourselves to this God and to join Him in his mission of love to the world. [Thanks to all who took part. I hope I have given some kind of representation of the discussion - I know I won't have captured it all, if I have missed or misrepresented some bits let me know and I will update! Thanks also to Adrian for guiding us through!!] Posted by: Mark | 1:41 pm |
Thursday, January 06, 2005Tsunami I haven't blogged about this. I should. But to be honest it is too hard. I have some thoughts to add in for Sunday, and I am looking forward to an open conversation about it on Sunday night. A response of mercy, compassion and grief must be our first response, it seems to me. You may have heard about the Archbishop of Canterbury's contribution in the Telegraph. I think that is pretty helpful. Have a read and let me know if it works for you. I love this bit: "The only words that made any sense came from the then Archbishop of Wales, in a broadcast on Welsh television. What he said was roughly this: "I can only dare to speak about this because I once lost a child. I have nothing to say that will make sense of this horror today. All I know is that the words in my Bible about God's promise to be alongside us have never lost their meaning for me. And now we have to work in God's name for the future." Here is a response on radio from Tom Wright. The question is a cracker... There are some quite incredible [i hope that is an ok word] before and after photos here. For example:  
[thanks to conrad for the link] Posted by: Mark | 5:06 pm |
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