So – its been quite sometime since I’ve written a person blog, instead of updating what I’ve been learning in class. Attempt to recount the past few weeks, I shall. Let me first start by saying that I have two, count ’em TWO weeks left in the regular quarter! Then onto finals week! I am kind of starting to freak out a bit, not over the work left to do, but the fact that I am actually going to be full-swing into this Seminary thing. I kinda like it 🙂
Last week was the week of special speakers…well Wednesday, really. I went on Veterans Day to hear Shane Claiborne speak at APU chapel. I was SO excited to hear him, because his books have really given flesh to a lot of ideas I had been pondering the past few months and years of my life. So, being able to sit in the front row, and next to Bryan Taylor and Jenny Elsey, was GREAT! 🙂 But it really was SUCH a fantastic speech. Knowing a bit about what had been happening around the APU campus the past few weeks, I knew Shane was coming into the frontlines of fire among the students. But I can honestly say, that man was filled with the spirit of the Lord because he was able to diffuse some stuff, in a really healthy way, as well as bring the WORD! First of all, I forget how southern he is! He is such an east Tennessee boy 🙂 Secondly, the man has got some of the coolest, and neatest (in terms of appearance) dreadlocks on the face of the globe. Thirdly….he is powerful for the Kingdom. I wish I had time, or the typing energy to recount for you all of what he said, but I would recommend going to iTunesU and listening to it on iTunes. Last time I checked, (just two minutes ago) it wasn’t up yet. But I’ll keep checking and let you know when it is. Also – I think if you talk to Seth, you should ask him about what he took from Shane. He’s got a lot to say about it, and got new insight for the Media Ministry at church. Let’s just say, “TechMissions” 🙂
Then, I had the privildge of hearing from Bishop Graham Cray from the UK and the Fresh Expressions Movement. Check out what he does here: www.freshexpressions.org.uk.
Essentially Bishop Graham is reinventing the church in new ways for the UK. You might find this surprising (or you might not, I dunno) that estimates are that something like over 90% of the people in the UK are unchurched, or have fallen away from the church. So this movement is using new expressions of the church to bring those people back to Christ. This is difficult because we are living in such a different society now, as opposed to when the church first came to be prevalent in the UK. In the UK, we are seeing a new imaginations of forms of the church, a new area of permission (being allowed to do things that were previously not allowed), as well as seeing new resources coming to fruition. All this is movement no longer just from the top down of church, but also from the bottom up! Another thing I found interesting was he highlighted a bit on the values of a missional church. They should be: focused on the Trinity, Incarnational, Responsive to the act of the Holy Spirit in community, Transformational, Disciple-making, have life long discipleship, raising up of indigenous leaders, relational and functional as a community, doesn’t stand alone, reproduceable, and part of the local community. I know…it’s a lot…and those are just the ones I managed to scrawl down. Basically, we MUST HAVE CHURCHES THAT ARE CULTURALLY RELEVANT!
Oddly enough, we were talking about this a bit in Biblical Foundation of Missions today. We see that we need to have a delicate balance of continuity and discontinuity. This breaks down that if the church looks TOO much like the culture around it, it doesn’t mean anything different for it’s witness. However, if it is too lofty and it becomes too unattainable, the outside world will not bother trying to find out what it is about.
SO – that’s kinda what I’ve been pondering lately. As always, I’d love to hear what you think, and discuss these things a lot further, if you are interested. I am heading off to Academic Advising to figure out what I am taking next quarter!!
Also – if you feel led, please pray for me and OAM. We are in the middle of trying to get new stuff printed and sent out, as well as new printed materials for Urbana, and we honestly, just have NO money to do all that. Please pray that God would provide finances, because I really do feel called to do all this stuff, and reach these students at Urbana. Thanks, friends 🙂