Today, at Kerry’s invite, I met with the Emerging Churches Group which is a group of practitioners who are all involved in some way in something new or different from Canterbury Diocese that meets twice a year.
I was quite surprised by the number of people I knew at the day, and it was good to meet up with Sha Coburn, Karl Rudd, Mike King, Eric and many others. It was great to have a brief chat with Diana who is the nightclub chaplain in Maidstone and it seems we have been hearing about each other for ages. It was also a privilege to hear from Bishop Graham and have a chance to pray with him before the end of the day.
Today was a day of hearing lots of peoples stories, some more innovative than others but all new in their contexts. Today was a day to hear from people who are attempting new ways of being church and it was good to hear some of these stories. It was an informative day and yet I had many questions about some of the day – and that is not a negative as we should be challenging, asking and not always necessarily agreeing.
It seemed to me that there was a lot of examples of new ways of DOING church, but not really new ways of BEING church. There was, for me, still too much concentration of ‘music group’ for worship and ‘speakers’ as it left me thinking we were taking an old format, packaging it differently and calling it a new way of being church.
I don’t criticise this, merely challenge the thinking, as all the evidence shows that these initiatives are growing and bringing people into a relationship with God for the first time. I believe, though, that we need to break further out of this mould of ‘a worship service’ and look to different ways of worship and learning that are more organically connected with those outside the church.
The Shiny Headed Prophet 