sustain:if:able kiwi

brian mclaren session 1

Opawa Baptist has wifi. So these are notes, what I heard Brian say, [with a few editorial comments by me], as Brian spoke for a day on the topic of spiritual formation. First he is talking briefly about the emerging church.

Defining emerging church using Gibbs and Bolger’s emerging church.

Too much emerging church talk is talk about church, church, church. If we keep the kingdom at our centre, it reminds us of the world and saves us from talking only about ourselves.

The emergent church should not mean looking for the one new model. Rather we are in the middle, in cultural transition, and moving toward the churches of tomorrow.

The emerging church is not a slice of the existing church pie – evangelical; pentecostal etc. Rather, think of a tree. It is a new ring emerging in a new climate.

Brian is raving about tallskinnykiwi [praising New Zealander’s in New Zealand — very cunning 🙂 ], and the term “deep ecclesiology” as a way to honour the church in all of it’s forms. This is part of the true ethos of emerging church.

Apartheid Museum in South Africa; to illustrate the need to move beyond historic polarities and colonial patterns, to a new mission statement with new values. And so we are needing to rethink spiritual formation.