More Churchless Christians

I came across an old email from a blog reader saying thanks For the blog and telling a bit of his story. rereading it again two phrases stuck out for me were "check brain at the door" and "loss of community".

One of the things that attracted me to the evangelical church I grew up in was the way it challenged my brain. it still saddens me that many people feel that they need to leave their brain at the door. Any faith that's not willing to be challenged particularly by those who are exploring it is surely not a faith worth adhering to.

I’m wonder if the problem is that when any group of people start seriously thinking about an issue you end up with a divergent range of views. Many Xn churches especially evangelical ones tend to define themselves by what they believe. so any belief that breaks away from orthodoxy is actually a break away from the community.

How do you survive this? My thought is forget about community and focus on people. find yourself some people you can share life with and discuss faith with, no more than 6 friends (including spouse). then get involved in stuff, I’ve developed my connect grow and serve idea specifically to address this. I know I’m not going to get everything I need in life or for my faith from one activity / group / church, I get different things from different places, which has the perhaps unexpected result of being happy to be involved in a church community as I am no longer resenting how they fail to meet whatever needs I wish they would meet.

At the City of Churches to view a Big Tent

1000 years ago churches were built like this...

150 years ago churches were built like this...

Last week I went to Adelaide to have a look at a large tent. a bit like this...

only without the mad hatters theme. Why? to build a church. The church community I’m hanging out with is looking to build a church the structure of this type of building is like a big meccano set which makes it very easy extend or change around. Having seen lots of church buildings that had been purpose built to the needs of the church in 1974 (or whenever the church was built) and now fail to meet the current needs this is a great idea. I think it will be a brave experiment to see the building go up and how it might change over the years as the community changes. What I like to call "a big tent" is actually a Hoker structure. It's the structure that the cars and very rich spectators will be in for the Adelaide Grand Prix. See here for more info.

Happy Yobbo Day

It's that time day of the year where national pride swells people wear Australian flags as capes, drink as much alcohol as they possibly can in sweltering heat, polish up the f*** off we're full sticker on the back of the car and find a recent migrant to pick a fight with. I am so thankful that I get to live in Australia but it seems that Australia day brings out the worst of people. At least it does in Perth along the foreshore that lines the Swan river.

Next year I'll attach a one world flag to my car and put a "come in we're not as full as everywhere else" sticker on the back.

Books for the Bible

A while ago I was asked what books influenced the way I read the bible. I had thought this would be an easy question to answer, just a quick glance of the book shelf. But it wasn't quite that simple. I suspect a lot of the impact various books had really depended upon where I was in my journey. None the less I had a scan of the book shelf and these books stood out.

• Mark Strom: Days are Coming. This is a book I haven't read for a long time. In a fairly succinct manner it goes through different biblical themes showing how they link up in diff parts of Bible.
• Manuscript Discovery: This is a way of reading the bible that really really helped me to read the biblical text afresh. It really needs to be experienced rather than just reading how to do it and is best done as a group rather than solo.
• Dave Andrews - Christianarchy: This book really helped challenge and then solidify how I view people who live outside or Xn orthodoxy.
• Shane Claiborne - The Irresistible Revolution, Not revolutionary when I read it but would have been if I read it 10 years ago.
• An awareness of glasses: One thing that's good to be aware of is that all of us have cultural glasses that affect the way we read the bible. So I like to challenge my glasses by reading authors who I know I've been brought up to have different points of view to. Two of my favourites have been John Spong's Jesus for the Non Religious and John Carroll's The Existential Jesus.
• Currently I’m part way through Tom Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God which I’m really enjoying and perhaps a good refuge if you find your faith being battered by unorthodox thought
• Finally, podcasts have been a great way to hear new ideas. some of my favourite podcasts include the now defunct? Emergent Village, The Nick and Josh Podcast, Doug Paggit and Radio National Religion podcasts.

What have I been doing - not blogging

There hasn't been a blog post for a while and I thought I'd explain why. I've been using my spare time to play with guitar electronics. Specifically I've moded my amp (Peavey 50 watt classic) a little and built a all in one guitar pedal. The guitar pedal (pictures below) contains a tremolo, booster, fuzz face, tuner, mic preamp (for the mic in my resonator guitar) and a D.I. Well it's all finished now. So I'll be blogging a little more regularly I hope. Below is what the pedal looks like.

the outside of my box

the inside of my box