Emerging-submerging-not so fresh expressions
Yet again I managed to forget to clean my rugby kit before playing in it. So what tends to happen is I open my bag (having been left in the boot for a week) I pull out a crispy pair of shorts, shake off the mud, and force myself into them. The sholder pads I now wear (im getting old need it) tend to be slightly damp and wiffy, again I have to force them on, and generally after five minutes and a layer of deep heat you cant tell the difference.
So where does this leave fresh expressions of emerging church? (13 years of youth work and yes Im going to link the two)
1.)We can, as a body otherwise known as the church, just keep doing the same stuff. Each week getting to 'the game' shaling off the mud and sweat and playing in the same old stuff. The implication of this route is eventually the kit will need totally replacing, or in some cases you wont be able to afford to replace it, or people wont want to play with you because you smell too much.
2) Or we can, as a body otherwise known as the church, keep cleaning the kit and occassionally replacing bits in need of repair or damaged. This tends to be what the emerging church network does. The long term implication is the team all wear different bits of kit from different seasons it all looks a bit odd and left you wondering if you play for the same team or not, and no-one likes the person who turns up with new kit every three months. In reality the emerging church movemet's heavy focus on technology and 'culture' makes for an expensive route, all be it a very creative one.
3) OOOOOr we can, as a body otherwise known as the church, physcially train and be transformned through training, diet, team building and start winning some games. You win some games people get interested and new sponsers come and pay for kit. I believe the 'fresh-expressions' (I dont like the title, because with comes a value judgement ie fresh or not fresh) The fresh ness comes from an intent to want to a) engage with God and b) through this engage with people not engaged with God - through whatever means, the music the structure to be be honest is dressing, so yes you can have 100 hymns old and mouldy in a fresh expression
3 Comments:
Ok so initial thought would be...
EEeeeeuuuuuUUUuuuuuugh!
Then you follow on with some cracking stuff!
Yes I agree WHAT you use does not determine the Freshness. If it's new to the context and most importantly RELEVANT to the context then it's FRESH. As you say Tim, FRESH is a bad term but it is the one we have (a fresh FISH may be lovely and fresh but not as appealing in its raw state as a fresh apple! I had a worse analogy but...)
I think FRESHness is about vision and revision. As you say its about ensuring that we aren't stuck. If doing the same thing over and over is actually team building the result is good but if doing the same thing over and over again is stale then its clearly a bad idea.
I think fresh expressions is about focussing not actually on the WHAT but on the WHY and that does mean you can use whatever old hymn book you like as long as you have consciously decided to do so because of your vision for engaging with people in bringing them into relationship with God and each other.
I love this blog... Mark B meets Tim S - knew it would produce debate!
Boys and their toys competition? Sounds like a bit of a stag mentality to me!
I think it is perfectly justifiable to draw ont he rich history we have of theological wisdom when we debate these thigns. It's one of the things for me which distinghuishes CE (whether EC or not!) from other denominations; we draw on history and spirt and scripture but in varying orders of dominance and priority.
It seems that there is a lot of negative feeling from non alt./EC/fresh groups against those that are alt./EC/Fresh and I think a lot of this stems from that inner circle stuff that Miz blogged about before. Some people, as evidenced at the Greenbelt bloggers panel, feel there is a kind of in crowd of EC of which they're not a part and they want to be. When Jonny Baker answered the question he seemed clearly unaware of that kind of antagonism because he and others feel, rightly, that they are fairly open about what they do and welcoming to all.
It's just so wonderful to be part of a church where we CAN be different and disagree and debate and (as shown in the other post with lots of comments) maintain a sense of proportion and humour about it all.
I like the Spiderman vs Batman thing and can recognise the Batman mentality in many middle class Christians. Question is how do we address that in them? How do we ensure they are BITTEN by the spider of faith? The Batman mode is so enticingly convincing as service. It produces results and you still get to drive a cool car. Living the Spiderman mission gives us new insights and new gifts if we accept them but it is also a life which is tough and financially poor. As Tony Campolo said at Matrix - "Christianity is not a photo-shoot!" no-one ever said it was going to be easy!
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