blah|blether
on church, mission, worship + culture with Jonny Baker (CMS)
Friday 27th November – 5pm
The Crypt, Wellington Church, University Avenue, Glasgow

Jonny Baker is one of the best known Christian bloggers in the English speaking world. He brings a wealth of experience in Youth Work, Worship Leading/Curating, and Mission Support.

A prolific networker, over the years his blog has become a point of connection for many thousands of people involved in debates around emerging church, alternative worship and mission in the contemporary West.
This one-off blah/blether (named after similar events Jonny runs in England) begins with chat over curry + beer/irn bru, after which Jonny will speak and there will be time for responses and discussion.

All welcome, but booking essential by 26th Nov.
Cost £3 (£1 unwaged, £2 student) includes food – BYOB
Contact douggay@mac.com

This event is also on Facebook

I have it on good authority that the curry will be exquisite..! Hopefully see you there..!

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It’s interesting to watch the little trend of liturgical calendar + social media that seems to be developing. @twitturgies and @twiturgy make good use of twitter for this purpose and I think there’s plenty more creative mashups from where these came from: old/new, ancient/modern, ritual/technological In particular I’m looking forward to see what happens with the mainstream adoption of location technologies.. when hyperlinks aren’t just about screen based text links, and the connectivity and real world hyperlinking and networking heads out onto the street- pilgramage taking a digital turn.

A pint of your choice for the first person to come up with a creative ancient/future use for a QR code and implement it

Any other technologies up for liturgical grabs?

Just finished watching “Trouble in Amish Paradise” a BBC2 documentary about two families on the edge of the Amish religious establishment. An interesting insight into hermeneutics, culture, instituitionalism and all that jazz – Foucault could have a field day. (apologies for agricultural pun..)
Well worth a watch (available on iplayer for only two more days..)

From the BBC Site:

An extraordinary insight into the secretive world of the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
When two radical Amish men, Ephraim and Jesse Stoltzfus, start to question some of the most fundamental aspects of their Amish culture, they face excommunication from their church and total rejection by their friends and family.

that week someone who i didn’t really know very well asked to meet me for coffee to chat. they knew nothing of the experience i was having. but one of the things they said has stuck with me since -

you don’t fit and that’s your gift

it reminds me of a marshall macluhan quote – the role of the artist is to create an anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment.

(from the gift of not fitting in by jonny baker, italics mine)

So — “Christianity” founded on fear of “Fundamentalism,” what is that? Christianity powered by fear of “Liberalism,” what is that?

Richard Hall’s insightful post is developed further by Bishop Alan… both are well worth reading..

Doxology is not a hymn to be sung but a life to be lived.

[From The Church’s Language « Inhabitatio Dei]

 

N.T. Wright: In Christian theology, such phrases regularly act as “portable stories”—that is, ways of packing up longer narratives about God, Jesus, the church, and the world, folding them away into convenient suitcases, and then carrying them about with us. Shorthand enable [sic] us to pick up lots of complicated things and carry them around all together. But we should never forget that the point in doing so, like the point of carrying belongings in a suitcase, is that what has been packed away can then be unpacked and put to use in the new location. Too much debate about scriptural authority has had the form of people hitting one another with locked suitcases. It is time to unpack our shorthand doctrines, to lay them out and inspect them. Long years in a suitcase may have made some of the contents go moldy. They will benefit from fresh air, and perhaps a hot iron.

[From [Book Review] Becky Garrison: Rising From the Ashes — Rethinking Church : Subversive Influence]

love the metaphor!

Theology is always a network; more precisely it is a network of many theological concepts. In this manner, a particular theology is seen as a name given to a particular configuration of these concepts. However, this network is in motion; the network always changes. Even the most systematic theology changes over time. This phenomenon is common in computer networks: Systems dislocate and reorganize: link. This is the same effect in the theological network where concepts move to have the optimal connection. For instance, Luther’s reformation reconfigured theology so that the concept of salvation was detached from any kind of deed—sola fide!

[From the church and postmodern culture: conversation: Theological Networks]

One thing i find fascinating about living in another country is finding out more and more that the little stars in the swiss cultural sky join up into slightly different constellations than they do back in NI / Glasgow.. There’s crazy little societal connections between things (patriotism and the economy, church and state, alp horns and cheese.. ) on so many levels, and just as you think you’ve got your head around the general swing of things here, then another wee factor appears that modifies your oh-so-perfect conceptualisation of how you think the inner workings of the great big cuckoo clock of Switzerland ticks..

which is actually more an Austrian thing..