Emerging Church Vision Made Easy.
(Originally Published April 21, 2006 on http://www.wkinchlea.blogspot.com)
After strolling around on the internet the other day, I found myself upon the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator.
Some of my regular readers (and by some I mean the vast majority) have no idea what Web 2.0 is, and for the matter at hand, that’s ok. The point is, I found it funny, and I thought others would too.
So I emailed the Tall Skinny Kiwi, thinking he would get a kick out of it, too (he does know what Web 2.0 is). A week later, I get an email saying he enjoyed it as well and thought there should be one for the Emerging Church too. (Y’know, lighten the atmosphere, add some humour….for kicks) He then asked me to see if I couldn’t hack it and come up with my own.
Having never touched Javascript before, naturally I said “why not?”, and began to reverse engineer the website to create The Emerging Church Vision Generator. Originally, I had just sent Mr. Jones the html file for his own amusement and usage, (I didn’t have my own extra website hanging around) but I got impatient and decided to publish it for free at Bravenet.
For those at all involved with talking about Emerging Church junk, I hope you find this funny!
This entry was written by , posted on April 8, 2008 at 3:08 am, filed under Church, Humour, Internet and tagged Church, Emerging, Humour, Vision, Web 2.0. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
What’s Wrong and What Makes it Right.
Christians really boil my blood sometimes. And this time, it stems from one simply sentence: they always have to be right about everything.
And I’m not even talking heresy, here. In Christianity, our core doctrines (take, for instance, the Apostles creed) are pretty loose and limber.
Apostle’s Creed:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into the dead.
The third day He arose again.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.Amen.
See? Lots of wiggle room. The problem is, hard denominationalism seems to liken people towards dogmas.
*Definition time* dogmas = denominational creeds - A particular interpretation of a doctrine. For example, the Church has always believed that our Lord is truly and really present in the Sacrament of the Altar. This is a doctrine. Transubstantiation, which is a explanation of how He is present, is a dogma. - www.theadvent.org/liturgy/glossary.htm
Dogmas tend to divide people – see the worship post from Saturday – and a divisive Christianity is a useless Christianity. Adherence to universal doctrine that the Church has been able to hold on to since the 4th Century AD/CE is what we need to shoot for, not the details. I think I disagree with the idea of RC transubstantiation vs. an easy symbolic communion but I will still embrace my Roman Catholic brother, because his community has an ethic of sin confession that my presbyterian background sorely lacks.
Now, it’s important to differentiate between hard denominational dogmatics and tradition. Tradition is great. Without tradition, we wouldn’t have our creeds, the deep meanings of Christian symbolism/liturgies, or even the realization of the Trinity! The Church Fathers are deep thinkers; check out Athanasius – cool guy. The problem is, people tend to throw out ‘tradition’ because they are pushing toward an ‘openness’, but they keep hard to the dogmas, which were the problem in the first place!
So. Conlclusion: Tradition = Good, Hard Denominational Dogmatics = Bad. Let us embrace tradition, while casting off our closed-ness to other dogmatics.
-WK
This entry was written by , posted on April 7, 2008 at 3:13 pm, filed under Church and tagged Apostle's Creed, Christianity, Dogma, Tradition. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
The Thing About Doing Church.
For the sake of clarity, let’s define church in a really narrow way today; in about the same way that we say we are going ‘to do church (insert descriptor here) today.’ In other words, today, church is going to mean communal times of worship, fellowship and learning, the norm being the Sunday service.
Depending on your faith tradition, church can mean something very different to you compared to your christian neighbour (whom you are to love) down the street. Take, for instance, the difference between your general post-brethren community bible chapel vs. your general Canadian Reform church. Big difference. At the former, you will generally find full-band worship music (generally contemporary works by Hillsong, Matt Redman and a whole slew of others worship artists), lots of talk about evangelism through community projects and maybe, if you’re lucky, a drama before the sermon. At the latter, on the other hand, you’ll find organ-and-piano-singing of the psalms (with a few hip new hymns that were written 60 years ago), rigid liturgy, lots of talk about the covenant and piety, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get out after an hour, to come back after lunch for round 2.
Are they both right in the way they do church? Yes. Wholeheartedly Yes.
People do what their traditions and passions guide them to do. I’ve run the gamut from attending Roman Catholic Mass weekly to attending Conferences at Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (the Toronto Blessing, for those in the charismatic ‘know’). I’ve found meaning and a love for our Lord in both. Personally, I like new takes on hold hymns – the re-working and refining of tradition to blend the old with the new. Now, few people do that in their entirety (well, none as far as I have seen, at least), but it works.
What doesn’t work, however, is when people impress form on others to suit their own views. A Presbyterian goes on about those heretical Pentecostals. The Heretical Pentecostal goes on about those dead Baptists. The Dead Baptist goes on about the Devil’s Roman Catholic. You can see where I’m going with this. This impression of form on others oppresses the content as a whole.
The thing that people should keep aware of, when being concerned with another faith tradition laying claim to Christianity, is through adherence to doctrine (Nicene, Apostolic or Chalcedon – take your pick) and through the fruits of their labours. And the latter you can’t really weigh too heavily upon, as each tradition has their own preconceptions involved with that as well, but that’s another post. Let’s go with love as a standard, that’s a good one.
Ultimately, I’m just saying that everyone needs to leave each other alone and quit griping about the church down the street. Do your thing; they’ll do theirs. Maybe you guys can get together and bowl or something. Bowling is a neutral, christian standard for fun.
Or so I have been told.
-WK
This entry was written by , posted on April 5, 2008 at 1:53 pm, filed under Church, Essays and tagged christians, Church, denominations, worship. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
The longest day.
For those few who don’t know, I’m going to be Student Council President of my University College for the next scholastic year.Today, the former President and VPs, my VP’s and I interviewed 10 people for various positions on council, from Student Activities Coordinator, to Worship Coordinator to Secretary/Treasurer.
I woke up at 7am.We began at 8:30 and went on through, with minor breaks, until 2:45.
At this point, I worked for an hour, went to class, had another interview, had a quick bite to eat and then off to work on a paper. I’ll probably be done around 2-3am, tonight [EDIT: make that 4am].
Yay for being the new president!
-WK
This entry was written by , posted on April 1, 2008 at 3:15 am, filed under Life and tagged Life, Student Council, Tyndale, Will Kinchlea. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
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