Fifteen whole minutes

Last Sunday we spent 15 minutes in a guided meditation which meant a lot of silence.  It was based on an idea from The Art of Theological Reflection.  I will write it up under ideas.  The event illustrated how far we have moved in that there was evidence that people were being stirred by the Holy Spirit at least as much as if they had been involved in sung worship.  I need to collect some more feedback but it looked as though, for the people I talked to at least, it had helped them gain useful insights.

The issue for us is learning that there can be just as authentic an interaction with the Holy Spirit mediated through this kind of spiritual exercise as could be achieved by singing.  I think that we probably need to take seriously the role of testimony in doing practical theology.  If people are willing to get up on their feet and say what happened it will be a real help.

On the edge

Catching up with my blog feeds the other day and came across a post from Earl Creps in which he described the process of missional fatigue including a stage he described as: realizing that the stress of serving in a climate that one friend of mine called, “a miracle on the verge of a disaster every day” is never going to end .  That’s undoubtedly well observed and sort of meshes with the kind of revival fatigue that is leading a lot of people out of the charismatic movement.  (Just bear with me a moment.  I’m not talking about people reacting to the totally unjustified cultural crap and hype that so often is part of the deal.)  Earl is on the money here.  He is describing a feature of church planting/building that has characterised most of my adult life.

There’s a bit of me that sympathises.  Another bit that says, ‘Suck it up!’  It can’t be any worse than working in a start-up businesses.  There’s another bit of me that wants to ask why, if Jesus is building his church, I feel a sense of responsibility that borders on the inappropriate.  I’m spending more time than usual (which sad to say isn’t much) ‘waiting on God’ specifically meditating on the power and love of Jesus.  I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life stressed by the potential for imminent disaster and I certainly don’t want to pull back.  My thought is that, I, and the team of which I am part have the kind of abnormal personalities which make us less senitive to these stresses than your average.  The rest of the church may not.  Perhaps we ought to spend more resources mainlining the power and and love of God and passing that on rather than getting people wound up with our brinkmanship and thinly veiled complaints.

Trying to catch up

I have just started to use RSS feeds.  I wonder whether I will be able to keep up with some of the blogs that I feel are important but never get to use.

Just had a long weekend at Dayspring with Jenny Campbell, who has a prophetic ministry.  Friends had previously noted that often visiting prophetic men, however authentic tend to sideline women when dishing out personal encouragements.  We hoped Jenny would be different and she certainly was–the women members of our team are bouncing around like they have had caffiene to last a month.  One of the other things that was a real bonus was that she a couple of pretty good ways of using alt.worship styles–she may not think that’s an endorsement–for framing manifestation gifts, particularly healing and prophecy. It blended some elements of ritual, meditation, soaking prayer, anointing oil and laying on hands–lots of the stuff that I need with a background of folksy music which is just my kind of thing.  Some people found it easier to get down even when taking notes! See pix.  I found that it jump started my creativity in that area.  If any shape of worship doesn’t allow space for God to do surprises or for people to connect authentically, it don’t work.  I never got chance to ask her much about it, the weekend was so hectic.  I would like to know whether she feels the specific stuff can stay authentic if transferred under the right conditions.  We are just starting to process the stuff she brought.  Interesting times!

Suddenly or slowly?

Well! The session on Sunday was OK.  Not brilliant because I was thinking out loud.  But for those of us in the leadership team, its helped us to get a conversation going.  Revival is one (I hope there aren’t too many) of the elephants in the room.  We have been reflecting on the revival prophecies from round about the time of Diana’s death when we were a really new church.  But more of that when we have some conclusions.  Last night I was in the pub with some really knowledgable and thoughtful guys.  Pete Levenson referred to Steve Hollingshurst who is reaching into the New Age culture.  Steve meets lots of people who are into astral projection and have found themselves having revelations of Jesus.  He wonders whether this could be evidence of revival of a quite different kind. The immediate relevance of this is that it might support a rather different interpretation of the famous Diana prophecies– but that requires a whole other post when we have got further in our reflective process.  Ron Willoughby came and joined us later and spoke to the question of what revival might look like in our culture.  He raised some really interesting questions which centred on the idea that–while our praxis might be moving towards conversion as process rather than single decision point our mental images of revival have not.  He suggested that the Day of Pentecost might have looked very different if, starting from where our culture is today, 3000 people emerged into the light at different speeds over six to twelve months.

Cell Stuff

Just surfacing after doing a whole load of academic stuff so, while my wife is copy checking my last paper, thought I would set up a new page under ideas.  I gradually plan to post a load of stuff we use in our cells.  I used to write these things for a living but I still find them hard and really appreciate people who post this kind of thing.  So please use and let me know if you enjoy.