Maggi Dawn » emerging church

blind spots and perspective

maggi dawn — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:39:56 +0000

A great account of an imaginative spiritual exercise here from Jonny Baker:

“… when you arrived you were given a set of home made glasses with either red or blue filters. an exhibition was hanging with a set of images and texts to look at and you had to keep your filters on. a discussion ensued and people found they were looking at the same things but seeing something totally different. for example one of the texts if you looked with red said blessed are the peacemakers and if you looked with blue said i have not come to bring peace but a sword

taking off filters isn’t a possibiity so we need people with other perspectives to help take our blinders off, to open up a fuller view of who god is, of the world…”

whole post here

Brian McLaren – a New kind of Christianity

maggi dawn — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:43:10 +0000

Brian McLaren’s new book is about to be released. It’s good … I got to read it a while back and wrote some recommendations for it. Brian is particularly good at identifying those issues within religious expression where the cultural accretions mask what’s good about spirituality – so much so that the religious epxression of Christianity can even end up contradicting what it claims to believe. This book is not so much a critique of the Church, but ten suggestions as to how Christian practice might be re-shaped into something that keeps its integrity. Well worth a read.

here are Brian’s own thoughts

10 types of emerging church that won’t upset your grandfather

maggi dawn — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:50:17 +0000

Tall Skinny Kiwi often hits the nail on the head. It’s 20 years since I was one of a small group of people that started Holy Joe’s, first in a basement and then in a pub on a Tuesday night in London. “That’s not church” was a fairly common reaction, and not just from grandfathers either. At least two members of that founding group are grandparents themselves now.

read TSK on 10 types of emerging church that will no longer upset your grandfather.

And then ask yourself what you/I/we might do in the next ten or twenty years (or maybe seven years) that would be really new. If somebody isn’t upsetting their grandparents, that’s not church either.

Why I’m not Emergent

maggi dawn — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:34:00 +0000

A while ago, I read a book called “Why we’re not emergent (by two guys who should be)”.(see below)

It’s an interesting read, by two young ministers who identify (to some degree) with the cultural issues that the Emerging/Emergent church have highlighted, but who don’t go along with the Emerging/Emergent narrative.

I’ve kept meaning to write a bit more about it in response, and never quite got round to it. But now Tall Skinny Kiwi has replied in a humorous but nonetheless thoughtful post, “Why I’m not a New Calvinist (by one guy who should be)“.

Both are well worth a read, if you are wanting to sort out these issues in your own mind – especially because the arguments are set up thoughtfully, and not with the kind of exaggerated and aggressive polemic of some other pro/anti-emergent church discussions.