Wednesday, September 28, 2011

UK Adventures 7 – mission research with Cliff College

Yesterday I had a great afternoon/evening with the Master of Mission students. I rolled out what for me was some new stuff, providing a global ie non-Western frame on new forms of church. It was a good chance to develop something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but lacked the time. A mix of storytelling and history, it seemed to provide a lot of energy and stimulus and move the emerging/fresh expressions conversation into some really animated mission type discussion.

Today I am with the PhD students. I have been asked to reflect with them at two levels. First to provide some of my recent research and second to reflect with them on the research journey ie the processes by which it all emerges. For me, this quote captures my approach

“I am an inquisitive and chaotic traveller … I have not attempted to devise or discover a systematic method … My only excuse is that I was guided not by an theory of art but merely by curiousity.” (Alberto Manguel, Reading Pictures: What We Think About When We Look at Art, ix.)

I only have 2 sessions, so I am having to select from some of my recent work (some published, some in process, some conference papers that need some time to write up), which I have sorted under four headings. It ended up being quite a list. For those who are interested

1. Mission history

2. Emerging/fresh expressions of church

  • “Finding fresh expression ten years on?”
  • “Evaluating Birth narratives: A Missiological Conversation with Fresh Expressions”

3. Worship

  • “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table”
  • “Baptist Worship and Contemporary Culture: A New Zealand Case Study”,  Interfaces: Baptists and Others. Studies in Baptist History and Thought, (forthcoming)
  • “Feeling for a theology: “sense-xegesis” in theological interpretation”

4. Culture

Posted by steve at 05:09 PM

1 Comment

  1. inquisitive chaotic traveller … I love it … and what a privilege that some of our journey these past two days has been together.

    Comment by lorna — September 29, 2011 @ 5:26 am

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