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.

Todd Hunter ex Alpha National Director and thief ;)

I haven't been so devastated since I was fourteen and designing a land based windsurfer, only to see a soft drink ad staring a land based windsurfer almost exactly identical to the one I was designing. The other day I was listening to a podcast by Todd Hunter ex US Alpha National director talking about his "three is enough" groups. These groups are based on the idea of "prayer, grow and serve" which is pretty much identical to my idea of "connect, grow and serve". I couldn't believe someone else had come up with exactly the same idea as me. After 10 minutes of devistation I got to thinking that since I think the whole "connect, grow and serve" thing is a good idea and that hardly anyone would listen to me but heaps of people will listen to him it's probably not such a bad thing. None the less he'll be hearing from my lawyers soon. ;)

Connect, Grow and Serve, the Small Group

A group of friends and I have started a Connect Grow and Serve small group. Connect Grow and Serve (cgs) for those of you unfamiliar cgs is a way that I think about my Xn life. Basicall,y that I want to...

• Connect with God and with others
• Grow as a Xn and as a human
• Serve God and others

As a small group we looked at...
What cgs things we are doing now?
and
What cgs things we have some expertise in?

Then we looked at...
What cgs things we would like to start doing?

and
What cgs things would we like to learn about?

Finally, we worked out what to do for the next few sessions, the "living simply" Tear study. The document with all the thoughts from this session will be made into a Google document that we will keep updating.

Time Return to A Churchless Faith. Part 2

My toying with timetables and thinking about the idea of dividing life into the areas of Connect, Grow and Serve. Has lead me to the kind of break down of my life outlined below. It is all about trying to work out how to live as a Xn and what that means in a more practical and tangible way rather than something less tangible like "love God and love others" as well meaning as that might be. Below is what I now try to do and check each fortnight. Somethings are slightly more self explanatory or not worked out than others the rest I've added some notes to.

Connect with People

• Family: For me this means making sure I have a cup of tea with the wife every day
  
• Friends: For me that's going to start by inviting different friends over to dinner more often
  
• Geographic Community: At the moment that means walking around the neighbourhood and slowly saying hi to people
  
• Christian Community: At the moment that means connecting with people at the church I'm at.
  
• The Poor: At the moment I'm doing this through work
  
• Stranger: This is something I can't plan
  

Connect With God: this is closely connected with growing as a Xn, so things like reading the Bible I could put he but for the sake of simplicity I won't

• Pray: This is not structured but something I look back on just to check that I'm regularly praying
  
• Meditate: I try and make sure that I take time out at least once a week to do this.
  

Grow as a Christian

• Read the Bible / Xn books
• Listen to the Bible / Xn talks : At the moment I've been listening to a fair bit of Tom Wright. Mostly I do this on the way to and from work
  
• Go to the Space: The Reflective service I am involved in
  

Grow as a Human

• Read
• Listen to podcasts
• Play Guitar and Busk
• Blog
• Exercise

Serve

• Family
• Friends
• Geographic Community
• Christian Community: Mostly doing stuff at church
  
• The Poor: My Job
  
• Stranger: Writing Letters for Amnesty
  

Time Return to A Churchless Faith. Part 1

This Blog is a bit meandering at times. In my mind, at least, I have been trying to crystallise things a little of late. I'm starting to rethink what it might mean to have a churchless faith. What it would mean to have a holistic, self contained, independent faith. Before I get to this I thought it might be helpful to go over my own history to how I got this current point in my life.

1982 - 1998: Happy regular church going dude. Maybe occasionally radical compared to some but always really safely in the church mold. In 1992 I moved to a new city where all of my new friends were non Xns. About halfway through 1992 I found a church to be a part of. Six years later in 1998 all of my friends were Xn and my entire life felt like it was self contained in what was a quite comfortable Xn ghetto.

1998 - 2001: Mid 1998 I moved to a new city with the intention of getting to know more people than just church people, which I did. I still wanted to be involved with Xns in some way so I became involved in a High School Xn outreach group. Now as far as these things go this group was pretty cool (even if I may say so myself). None the less, as the group we went through schools suggesting that students "Burn their plastic Jesus" and showing them how what Jesus said had more in common with Marilyn Manson and Kurt Cobain than they did with Fred Nile we started asking each other "Where are we sending these people to?" Often what we said then non church kids seem to like it more than the nervous church leaders. Throw into the mix that it was impossible slight loss that outreach was costing us we decided to call it a day and we became involved in "the church" hoping that somehow I could bridge the gap between mission and church.

2002 - 2005: I started work for a major denomination and studied theology at Uni. I learnt a lot from that job and have a lot of respect for those in the denomination but I'm not sure I did much to bridge the divide between the average Sunday pew sitter and those Nirvana listening high school students I met years before. The job was always part time and the second part time job I had to make living possible wanted me to work full time for them or quit. So I did.

2005: In 2005 I decided to try living a churchless faith. I hadn't really been going to church since 1998 but working for a denomination meant I was at a church most Sundays and studying theology meant I was always wrestling with my faith. Both these things had now ceased. I had heard of many people ticked of with "the church" who leave to do the stuff they wish their church was doing yet they end up doing less once they were out of church. So I decided to start this blog as a way of keeping myself accountable.

2006: In 2006 I started going back to a church because I thought it would be good to hang out with Xns again..

2007: I started getting frustrated with church, particularly the Sunday morning service so now looking at rethinking the churchless faith thing. I'm thinking what might an independent holistic churchless faith look like. Something that might naturally fuse church and mission but yet be something that other people frustrated with church or even the Nirvana listening high school student could follow without having to be needlessly frustrated. I know that Mike Frost thinks mission and Xy should be done with others but sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes everyone you knew in your early 20's buys houses in suburbs you can't afford to live in or they move to the distant corner of suburbia that is nearest to their relatives and they are just as burnt out as you when it comes to trying some kind of Xn community again.

Personally I get my energy from being solitary rather than social and I'm sure there are others out there who can relate to this and feel odd and alone and are too burnt to risk throwing themselves into a Xn community again whether that be missional, churchy, emergent, both or whatever groovy label you care to name.

So, how can I live an independent churchles faith where I have the energy to connect with others, grow as person and serve others. My ideas on that next time.

Christians meeting in Large Groups?

Monday night some friends and I spent some time lamenting over the Sunday morning service, both as a concept in general and what it's like at the church we attend. We talked about much of the usual stuff I have whinged about here before. Including...

• How church excludes those under 18
• How the sermon is not a great way to learn
• How it's a lot of effort by a small number of people
• How basically the whole thing is some kind of compromise that, in the end, means everybody is unhappy with the final result but at least as unhappy as each other.

I mentioned my Connect Grow Serve idea. Where there are basically three areas of things that I try to do in my life as a Xn (1. Connect with God 2. Grow as a Xn / human 3. Love / serve others). I think this is pretty much true for all Xns and some of these things we do as individuals, some in small groups and some in large groups (examples of this here). This all sounded fine and dandy until someone asked this simple question...

What's one thing that Xns do better in a large group?

This got us thinking with no good answer. After a little bit more thought (post conversation) I started thinking things like...

• Action for social justice (like all protesting in the one place for the one issue)
• Listening to a world famous speaker (just because it's more efficient, then again podcasting is probably even more efficient)
  

None of these are things that happen at a regular church service, and everything that usually happens at a regular church service is probably done better by a small group anyway.

So why do Xns pursue with big church? Could it be simply that it makes it really easy to just sit up the back and not be involved. This makes it as easy to go to church as it does to go to the movies. This in turn makes it as easy to invite someone to church as it might be to invite someone to a movie. The problem with this is that all this makes Xy look like something that requires as much commitment as turning up to the movies on a regular basis. It makes it look like something that is more of an inner thing than requiring any action, something that apart from a regular Sunday morning commitment won't interfere with your life. Is this what Jesus said to the rich young ruler? (Mark 10:21) Is this what Xy is about? Is it time we started pushing to scrap the Sunday morning service?

Tripping the Light Monastic

Last weekend I got to spend a day at the New Norcia Monastery. One of my best friends invited me to join a weekend away with some men (aged 12-80) from his church. Personally, I think my friend should go down in the youth leader hall of fame purely for being able to get high school aged boys up at 5am to pray with monks! Incredible feats of improbability aside, I'll definitely be back to visit the monastery (for at least three days next time).

Whilst I was there I could feel myself slowly slip into the rhythm of the Benedictine Monks, who keep a strict time table praying 7 times a day (they go through all of the Psalms in a fortnight).

Their timetable looks like this...

5:00 Rise

5:15 Vigils (Prayer)

Breakfast

7:30 Mass (Prayer)

9:00 Work

12:00 Sext (Prayer)

Dinner

2:30 None (Prayer)

5:45 Lectio Divina (Prayer)

6:30 Vespers (Prayer)

Supper

8:15 Compline (Prayer)

The rhythm of the day reminded me of meditating with a mantra. The rhythm slowly fills the space where the usual distractions of my mind reside and my mind and soul start to clear. I could feel myself about to fall into their rhythm when I had to run a session for the camp, which not only jolted me outed of any spiritual relaxation but also reminded me that I hadn't done that kind of thing for a while (it was a bit rusty).

Other highlights included

• The Olive oil - hand made by the monks the old Spanish way.
• The reading of a book critical of Karl Ratzinger (the Pope) during dinner with the monks (which is other wise silent)
• A monk saying "You won't get bored but you will wonder is this all we do." when referring to his monastic life and "There's no room for creativity or imagination" with a smile when referring to their prayer times.
• The realisation that the rule of St Benedict Prayer, Work and Study mirrors my ideas of Connect (Prayer) Grow (Study) and Serve (Work) that I have mentioned before.

Rest and retreat is not something I do well, I can't wait to return to the monastery to give me that opportunity. I can't wait to go back and get more than just the brief taste I got.

1 of 101 things to do as a churchless Xn - Adopt a Grandpa/ma

I feel like for the last few posts I have gone a little bit theoretical so now's time to get practical. I want to make a list of 101 (or more) things to do as a churchless Xn. All posts like this will fall into the either Connect (with God) , Grow (as a Xn / human) or Serve (others) Category and Solo, Small (2-6 people) and Large (7 or more people) Size. I'll try and get an even spread. First up I'm going to start with something a little obscure to get the ball rolling...

Name: Adopt a Grandpa/ma
Category: Serve
Size: Solo or Small
Description: This is not always an easy one, but if you live some where where there are lots of older people around at least try talking to them. This is something I have had the pleasure of doing. It started one Christmas when I met my soon to be adopted grandpa walking our street looking for a friend (who lived on the street) to give a small Christmas present too. They weren't at home so my housemate (a Christmas orphan like me) invited him in for a cup of tea. We had a bit of a chat and said come back again if you are in the area, and he did. Pretty soon he was coming over just to say hello to both of us. It wasn't something I set out to do it just happened, so it's not a recipe for success. None the less there are plenty of people who could do with someone to talk to in our crowded world.

If you have any other ideas let me know!

Step 3 in having a churchless faith

Step 3: Living out your faith - Connect, Grow and Serve

I have already described Connect Grow and Serve previously – you can look here for that. None the less I think it’s good to do these things on 3 levels…
1. solo (by yourself),
2. small (with a handful of friends)
3. group (with a larger group of people).

I don’t think that you need to do every single thing on these three levels but you do need to do each thing and you do need something on each level

Connect

One of the things that church can provide is a place to connect with God each week. A place and time where we consciously connect with God. Connecting with God doesn’t just happen automatically (or though it can do), so we need to set aside times and places to do so.

Examples include…

1. Solo
A. Meditating
B. Reading the Bible
C. Praying
2. Small
A. Go for a prayer walk with some friends
3. Large

Grow

Growing as Xn. Church can provide some great ways to do this, Bible studies, Sermons etc… But it is possible to do this outside of church.

Examples include…

1. Solo
A. Reading books – particularly authors who you don’t agree with or lots of Xns don’t agree with. Recently I read a Spong book and although I agreed with some of his conclusions his way of approaching scripture really frustrated me.
B. Reading blogs / websites
C. Listening to Podcasts
2. Small
A. Deliberate conversations with friends about spiritual issues
3. Large
A. Enrol in theological studies
B. E-Groups

Serve

It’s pretty easy to knock pretty much any church about how inwardly focused they are and that they should concentrate more on serving the community around them. Problem is once you leave, you realise how difficult it is to do by yourself. None the less it is worth doing.

Examples include…

1. Small
A. Adopt a grandpa/ma – there are plenty of older people who have no family or don’t get to have a family.
B. Write letters for Amnesty
C. Give money to a Charity
2. Small
3. Large
A. Be part of Xn para-church organisations

These lists are anything but exhaustive. Feel free to post further suggestions and I’ll update the list accordingly.

A Church Emerging ?

Okay so as well as the occasional church surf and long periods of starring at my theological naval I have also been meeting with friends interested in doing some kind of church.

Here is the dilemma...

We all live a long way apart and most are also involved in some kind of church / home group / inetntional community / something else.

We're thinking a monthly meal and quite reflection together to start. The quiet reflection may well be a reworking of the adult godly play idea I mention early in this earlier post.

I think I like this idea as I've been trying to work off my connect, grow and serve model and realising that I want to do these three things plus I'd like to do some or all of these things solo, in a small group and in a large group. At the moment I'm doing all three solo, and I feel I should write more about this perhaps to help any of the solo flyers out there who are trying to work out how they keep their faith alive without being connected to a church. The small and large group stuff is much harder, traditionally people find a large church with smal groups. However there are lots of Xn groups doing good serving stuff so it's not too hard to do some serving as part of a larger group, and finding a small group to meet with is something I have done before without being attached to a larger group, so that's possible but at the moment difficult.

Grr Arrgh I'm not sure if this is making things more compilicated or simple or even if this comes close to filling the "church" holes I have in life.

Connect, Grow and Serve where do new Xns fit in?

Connect Grow and Serve is starting to work as a really nice way of framing things for me. This along with the concept of doing things Solo in Small groups and in Large groups. Basically my premise is that as Xn you need to Connect (with God) Grow (in faith & as a person) and Serve (others) and that this can be done solo and in small and large groups.

Basically I'm doing lot's of the solo variety at the moment and I'm keen to do more of the Small and Large group variety.

What is interesting (I think), in a recent conversation with a friend where we looking at setting up some kind of church service type thing and perhaps some sort of intergrated network of Xns, (that wasn't quite the intent of the original conversation) most people who don't identify as Xns connect with Serve and Connect type activities. Serving might be things like giving food for the hungry - I think they look at stuff like that and think "yer this is what the world should be doing more of, I want to hang out with people who want to do that kind of stuff" . People also connect with the Connect stuff things like a prayer work or a meditation, things without a prescribed theology.

The problem is that we tend to really major on Grow things where we teach people hey this is what we believe kind of stuff. We tend to start with this and then say now we'll connect with God or go and serve some people. So we might start by telling friends "hey why don't you do an Alpha course". Where as perhaps we could start by giving people a chance to connect with God or to serve others first and then secondly offer them some kind of theological understanding with which to frame those experiences.

Connect, Grow and Serve

Well the Blog has been slow but life has been fast. Connect, grow and serve has become my new mantra. As a Christian I want to connect with God, grow as a Xn (and as a human) and serve (love) others. The worship service I devised is getting close to fruition and I'm not sure that I want to go ahead with it. Very few people get the oppurtuinity to dream up a worship service after only being involved in a church a short while and then have them pretty enthusiastic to take it on, yet I'm feeling throughly nonchalant about the whole thing. My concern is the economics of time. I'm worried that the hours that I and others will spend in getting the thing together and my be better spent in other ways. I just feel that there must be easier ways to connect to God and easier ways to offer others a meaningful connection with God. There must be easier ways to grow and I am certian that there are easier ways to serve. I'm not sure if I can get to the end of my life and say I created a groovy worship service at the expense of catching up with a lonely pensioner friend or chasing up a homeless guy I met the other day. Grrr Aggh

Where is this blog going?

I set this blog up a year ago as a "diary of my journey, trying to work out if I can and how I can be a Xn without being part of a regular Sunday morning or evening church. I know people who are part of home churches, alternative worship services, and more besides. Yet for me and many others I talk to there is something about these new ways of doing church that just doesn't seem to sit right." (quote from my first entry)

And things have deviated some what. I find my self in the throws of planning a church service which while putting a radical spin on a regular church and is perhaps the best way I could think of doing church at the moment. I'm starting to wonder do I actually want to go even if I have thopportunityty to make it as good as I want?

Really there are three things I want to be able to do.

1. Connect with God

2. Grow as a Xn / human

3. Love / serve others

Does it matter if I don't connect with a tradition - that is a prior way of doing things, or just learn from them

Does it matter if I don't "worship" with other Xns - instead growing with and serving others with them?

My greatest struggle is still "How do I introduce others to what I believe?" or, "How do I disciple someone outside of a church withopatronizingtronising?" At the moment I'd say something like "Go to an evangelical church when you are young get jaded with that then go to a liberal church for a whilewithouted wiithout. Now that you've learnt enough from both, go on by yourself."

Perhaps, I need to write a book "How to be a Xn without going to church".

Mmmm...