andygoodliff

Emerging church book list

Emerging-church-type-people have been make their suggestions for those involved in church planting here. I think my suggestions might come from reading some of the following:

Practicing our Faith, ed. Dorothy Bass | covers 12 historic church practices for shaping church communitites
Practicing Passion, Kenda Creasy Dean | a book on youth ministry, but much can be applied to church
Colossians Re:mixed, Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmatt | a commentary on colossians which asks the political questions of paul's day and our own
Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas & Will Willimon | asks whether we want a church that accomodates to the culture or is distinctively different from it
Alternative Worship, Jonny Baker & Doug Gay | lots of practical and bedazzling ideas for worship without guitars and organs
Contemplative Youth Ministry, Mark Yaconelli | another book on youth ministry, but with much that can be applied to church
Church After Christendom, Stuart Murray-Williams | a british description of how to do church in post-christendom
The Complex Christ, Kester Brewin |  lots of intersting ideas  and discussion, especially of advent, gift and dirt
Liquid Church, Pete Ward | makes some interesting points and raises some questions, without in my opinion providing many of the answers
The Missional Leader, Alan Roxburgh & Fred Romanuk | not read this book completely yet, but looks at how leaders should lead and help churches become missional

I'd also look at Colwell's Living the Christian Story, Well's God's Companions and Improvisation, as well as books by Brueggemann and Hauerwas. There are of course lots of other books, some you'll find recommend by on page linked above by the likes of Jonny Baker, Kester Brewin, Andrew Jones and Brian McLaren.

Mark 10|46-52

Lawrence's weekly posts on the lectionary readings are fantastic, especially his reflections on the readings from Mark. This week's is no exception - read it here - I have found it very helpful as I prepare to read this passage with Bunyan's young people tomorrow. Here's a flavour:

The steep ascent from the Galilee to Jerusalem – the occasion for Jesus teaching his disciples about the Way of the Cross – mirrors the climb up Golgotha to crucifixion and death. These stopping places are the stations of the cross: time to pause and enter into the enormity of what is happening. It is the road of discipleship – the place of following. The further they travel it, the more the discipleship narrative unravels. The closer they draw to Jerusalem, the stiffer the resistance of The Twelve to the Way of the Cross becomes. And here, in the last stopping place before Jerusalem, the nature of true discipleship is shown, not through Jesus’ teaching, but through an encounter with a man who has become blind.

Magnetic North

   Iain Archer's new album is great. I've enjoyed Iain's music since I saw him first at Greenbelt in 1994. He released Playing Dead (1994) and Crazy Bird (1996), before taking a break from music. Then in early 2000s he joined Snow Patrol and co-wrote the hit 'Run' for which he one an Ivor Novello songwriting award. He released Flood the Tanks (2004).

Paris

Hannah and I spent a fantastic weekend in Paris. I'll make a link soon to Hannah's best photos. We did lots of walking, especially up and down stairs as we visited the Musee du Louvre, Musee D'Orsay, Centre Pompidou, Sacre Coeur, the Arc De Triomphe, walked down Champs Elysees, the Eiffeel, the Musee de l'Orangerie and Notre Dame. My french was appalling (nearly ten years since I took my gcse and got an A) and if we return to France I want to have improved.

Be bold

My colleague and minster Dave has recently started watching the US drama The West Wing, I've been a fan since its second season. The other week we were talking about an episode from season 1 called 'Let Bartlet be Barlet', where the president and the staff feel like their getting nowhere and the episode ends with Leo encouraging the President to be more bold and stop avoiding the issues. In other words start taking the fight to them. I watched it again this evening and just feel some of us in the church need to start to be more bold. So much of church ends up being reactionary and there is a need sometimes to boldly set the vision, to imagine what we want our church to be like, to start talking and acting on the things we believe are important. I look at the anglican church and I occasionally think to myself Rowan set the agenda, stop being forced into talking about homosexuality and start talking about what is important to you for the anglican church. Of course the reality is this is more than a little difficult, but it seems to me that both locally and perhaps globally as the church we too often get sidetracked from God's mission. We get forced into corners and places where it is difficult to move, whether its going forward or going deeper and I think we need to be bold.

Father, Son & Holy Spirit?

In a church staff meeting today we ended up discussing the language we use of God. Is God Father, Son and Holy Spirit or is this use of language merely just way of us speaking about God. Here is what Colin Gunton says in a paper dicussing the work of Sallie McFague:

'... First orthodox Christian theology has never held that the word Father pictures God or that it implies that God is of the male gender. Quite the reverse: the apophatic tradition has always insisted that all the connotations of the finite usage must be thought away if we are really to be speaking not of some projection, but of God. Second, the mainstream tradition, beginning with Ephesians 3, has not held talk of the Fatherhood of God involves the projection of patterns of human fatherhood upon God ...

... The fatherhood of God has nothing to do with maleness but has to do with patterns of relationality revealed and realized in Jesus.

... The matter of the Fatherhood of God is a matter not of maleness but of ontological discontinuity: of otherness.'

('Porteus and Procrustes: A Study in the Dialectic of Language in Disagreement with Sallie McFague' in Speaking of the Christian God. The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism, ed. Alvin Kimel, 1992, pp. 65-80)

Elsewhere in a review of David Cunningham's These Three Are One in the Scottish Journal of Theology, Gunton writes,

'Dr. Cunningham's proposal is that the words 'Father', 'Son' and 'Holy Spirit' are to be replaced by 'Source', 'sole Wellspring of God' and 'Living Water'. This turning of what has historically been a vestigium trinitatis into the conceptual heart of the Trinity has a far more dehumanising affect that even the perils of sexism it is meant to avoid. Quite apart from the problem that it makes it impossible to take scripture's way of speaking seriously - one would ever want to pray to a Source, even capitalised; can one grieve Living Water? - we see here again the problem of the economy and its implications. Are we or are we not as Christian people incorporate by the Spirit in the relationship with Jesus had with his Father? Lose that, and you lose gospel.'

Jonny Baker's book catch-up

Jonny Baker has been posting on a number of books he's being reading. There are some interesting titles. Happy in my skin by Simon Bell is on youth ministry with young people from minority ethnic groups. From Jonny's comments, this sounds like a must read for this involved in youth ministry. Whose religion is Christianity? The gospel beyond the West by Lamin Sanneh is about world christianity. Divine intervention by Tony Jones is a book about practising lectio divina. Words fail me by Teresa Monachino is about quirkiness of the English language.

New Books to Read

Since my birthday last week I have a number of new books to read.

1. The Doctrine of God and Theological Ethics (2006, T & T Clark International, eds. Alan Torrance and Michael Banner)
including
'What can ethics know about God?' by Oliver O'Donovan (Douglas Knight says he is a theological giant)
'The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement' by Miroslav Volf
'On Deriving "Ought" from "Is": Christology, Covenant and Koinonia' by Alan Torrance
'To Render Praise: Humanity in God's World' by Murray Rae

2. Trinitarian Soundings in systematic theology (2005, T & T Clark International, ed. Paul Metzger)
which is a collection of essays in memory of Colin Gunton.
including
'Prolegomena' by Murray Rae
'Triune Creativity: Trinity, Creation, Art and Science' by Stephen Holmes
'The Social God and the Relational Self: Toward a Trinitarian Theolgoy of the Imago Dei' by (the late) Stanley Grenz
'The Trinity and the Church' by Miroslav Volf
'Afterword' by Robert Jenson

3. Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision (2006, Paternoster, by Steven Harmon)

4. (on order) God, Truth, and Witness: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas (2005, Brazos Press, eds. L. Gregory Jones, et al)
with essays by Robert Jenson, George Lindbeck, Peter Ochs, Robert Bellah, Arne Rasmusson, Emmanuel M. Katongole, Nicholas Lash

5. I hope also to order soon How (Not) to Speak of God by Pete Rollins (2006, SPCK), which is also currently being talked about at the church and postmodern culture conversation blog.

6. I'm also currently borrowing Under a Predictable Plant by Eugene Peterson, and hoping to get the new John Le Carre novel The Mission Song and I've also discovered today that Robert Fisk's book The Great War for Civilisation is not out in paperback.

Douglas McBain | 1933-2006

I discovered this morning the news (via Simon Jones) that Douglas McBain, former minister at Lewin Road Baptist, Streatham (1968-1983), former general superintendent (the old name for regional ministers) for London (1989-98) and BU President 1998/99 has died. Douglas was a very influentional and well known Baptist minister. He was very involved in the beginnings of the charismatic movement in this country (see his book Fire Over Waters: Renewal among Baptists and Others from the 1960s to the 1990s, 1997, DLT). He was a founder member of the Fountain Trust. He founded Manna Ministries in 1982. He was the first visitor to the hospital to visit mum and dad when I was born, apparently he brought on all his sunday lunch guests with him. I remember hearing him speak at St. James the Less when I was part of the congregation during my time at King's. He will be sadly missed by many people in Baptist and wider church circles.

Baptist Ministers' website

The Baptist Minister's Fellowship website has had a relaunch. You can find articles by John Colwell - Mission as ontology and Ruth Goldbourne - Martha's Story from the Baptist Ministers' Journal.