After a few months of blogging absence I feel urged on by some restlessness. My reflections on church and the life together we seek to establish are still dominating though less specific to my concern today. I am slightly more pre-occcupied with the questions that are thrown up by spending time 'away' from my spiritual home (which means the presence of God everywhere!).


If I have not been at home, this does not mean I have not been living at my normal address (though I have been on holiday). A clear connection is established for me between actual physical place and the presence of God in a particular way. This can only be true if God is especially present through others that are significant. So being away from home in the sense I am exploring does not mean being away from my home (where God normally lives, which is palpably nonsense) but being distant from the relationships with which God blesses me with the spirit of his Son, the Spirit of Jesus (which Bonhoeffer notes is always stronger in the heart of the other).



So back to church, christian community etc. I enter back into the dialogue and frustration of debate with those whom I love but with whom I seem to disagree on some fairly serious matters. But I trust that we are building community together, in the power of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of the loving Father. I may yet have to express hard opinions and likely listen humbly to rebuke myself, but I determine that the love of God is greater than life.

Back again after a baby arriving. Not best described as an interlude, the blog is more an interlude with life as the main attraction. What continues to pre-occupy me about church, when church is problematic and not agreeing on basics, is the amount of theological (popular in particular) hot air generated around the postmodern context. The notion of a journey is critical to an understanding of church as a dynamic thing, that implies movement, change, etc. The issue is - where are we 'journeying' to? The other problem with the journey metaphor is that it is incomplete without a balancing metaphor such as body or society or priesthood of believers. In our church expression (local church, or maybe not church depending on your view of church etc, etc.) we talk rightly about sharing and journeying, and more and more about 'intentional community'. I am really keen to know where we are going and what we are sharing. I am also keen to 'intend' to do it together, not alone. we are still expressing anxiety about provinding even the most basic definition of church. We are in danger of being distracted and isolating one another from the tradition. In all the search for a 'postmodern' church paradigm we are failing to agree at a level sufficient for even the most basic ecclesiology, while we look elsewhere at what everyone else is doing, we don't do it ourselves.

The question of definition at a local level stands on the matter of leadership'authority. This will be where the biggest debate will be had. I fear we have been to level for too long to submit leadership. Our charismatic individualism and bourgeois liberal values giving us to much trouble in this most fraught of areas.

I am considering the importance of 'security'. On the cusp of a moment of change and new life, I think about the need to be a disciple, with the costliness that Bonhoeffer observed to be the quality of this relationship with Christ and each other. My part of the emergent church has often talked about the need to embrace a form of insecurity, indeed I have felt this to be an important challenge to us as followers of Jesus. Yet I am also aware that Jesus wanted to gather his people together like a mother hen. I sense that the church without this commitment to a common care in the power of the holy spirit is not so loving. One of the problems lies in the conflict between innovation and creativity on the one hand (which is human endeavour, however, blessed), and a basic need for fellowship with one another and God, on the other. Of course these two things need not be in conflict. I just sense that the encounter between church and postmodern culture (postmodern church?) is something that needs to be reflected on, that a measured view of the benefit of postmodern cultural sensibility would say that we need to continue to meet regularly to worship, praise and encourage one another to carry the cross we have been given. That cross is a paradoxical burden of suffering that blesses and frees from sin. The significance accorded to culture is influenced by a renewed theological interest in creation. However, it needs to be recalled that creation is what God makes/has made; culture is what human beings make/have made. The radical difference between the church and the wider culture should lie in the practices of a common life that is premised on the saving and creating grace of God. Creativity and innovation can be amazing signs of the life of God, but they are not as important as meeting often, praying all the time and praising God in suffering and joy (together).

Continuing my emergent church theme today. We met on Saturday evening and worshipped and then prayed for each other, we broke bread and it felt like church. The question is can we do this each week, or is this a treat? I am still too tired and committed to my family, demands of my job (God called me to both these things) and my friends to give anymore time to discussing what we should be as church. There are occasional 'prophetic words' being circulated, but I am not sure, even if they are Godly insights into church, whether I have he patience to weigh them. On this subject (as good as any) the issue of authority and leadership are tested. It seems to me that it is impossible to weigh prophecy without some kind of 'procedure'. By this I don't mean a complicated theoretical hermeneutic model, I just mean an agreed way of listening to and appraising the views of christians who are claiming an authoritative voice on some matter.

The other concern for me is that meeting to worship and pray for each other is food and life in Christ. There are other questions for other entries that are terribly traditional, but I have to balance the need for blog-therapy with going to sleep. But just to remind myself for the next entry/ whet the appetite of anyone without anything better to do that read this, these questions concern - discipleship and Christ-like character, teaching, and practices such as confession and communal prayer/devotion. The big question remains: what does a redeemed community need to do to continue to be able to be called 'Church' or when does church cease to be church and become a loose association of christians of like social class and shared political/artistic/cultural interests? Good night

It's a sunday. A day marked out throughout western history as a day of respite from the rat-race. As part of a church that dissolved into conversation and friendship (both good and godly things) 2 years ago I have begun to miss the Sunday routine. I thought, like many, that pairing back the routines and making life together somehow entirely voluntaristic and dependent on the whim of individuals of great enterprise would be liberating. Actually, for a while, it was. Now, as I embrace the faltering first months of my 5th decade on God's earth, I realise that my sinful laziness and childish ignorance of my own condition means I need to do some things just because they are a good thing to practice/repeat. I mean that Sunday is looking more and more traditional again. I am part of an emergent church, yet, to voice disquiet about this: I am deeply concerned that some parts of the emergent movement are moving into a radical individualism and obsession with passing all christian practices through the filter of postmodern critique. Postmodernism being one thing, postmodernity quite another. and both are as much representations of the age (which we need to be wary of) as they are anything to do with the many Christian traditions that form the postmodern church. Can we reclaim the sacrificial cross of Christ in all this? I am afraid that I haven't got the energy to keep reinventing church life and pratice. Does giving up meeting, rather than liberate, actually mean the end of church? And how on earth are decisions made without leadership? To be continued.....

Today has been a busy day inside my head. Moving between discussing issues related to harmful sexual behaviour in children and adolescents, to considering plans to make a toilet into a shower room and maximise the use of space in a utility area, I went to the bank, and so on... I continually struggle with the work that a social worker has to do these days. In child protection you work to assess the referrals, disclosures, queries from warring couples and people in schools and health workers about vulnerable kids... just for starters. What is the relationship between the art of social work, steeped as it is in theories of human behaviour that struggle to find a place for external agency (God), authentic personal freedom (humanity) and, perhaps most important: sin. I am currently wrestling with the meaning and use of theology (quite theoretical) and the practice of life and social work. Particularly interesting is the functionality of most assessment and the use of language to describe behaviour. These procedures are at the heart of social work/psychology. The quality of the description has a considerable impact on the outcome in assessment. With children who display behaviour that is sexually inappropriate (i.e with relation to their age, and/or in relation to coercion and the intention) there are so many questions to reflect upon.

The principle reason for 'theologising' harmful sexual behaviour is to try to put it into a wider context than is possible within existing frameworks. Such frameworks are - cognitive/behavioural; psychodynamic ( about which I know little); child developmental models amongst others. There are specific criminological and offence focused models, and there are others borrowed from drug treatment etc. There is also attachment theory which has a big following in social work but still seems to lack rigour. The models also continue to diversify and multiply as if the questions are all being reduced to a single problem 'atom' with its own unique core definition and solution. Hence the single biggest problem in this area of work: the lack of a comprehensive model of explanation (one that brings it all together under one discursive roof), everything seems to be somewhat tentative. all I know is that the opportunity to live in hope of redemption and with the reality of the healing power of God is where it begins and ends. The day to day reality, however, needs some thoughtful reflection. The main thrust of much theology now is context and method. the biggest and most significant movements seem to tend toward an understanding of 'community' and sociality as the starting point for understanding and knowledge.

Can there be an expansion of the work of theology into all fields. After all theology does nothing if it does not ask questions? there is a significant opportunity for theological critiques at a time when postmodern theory has upturned the bloated (and un-self aware) confidence of instrumental rationalism. Yet when I search the web for theological critiques and methods in relation to specific subjects such as my own I find a void. We should be able to be salt and light in the academic forum, where the minds of the generation are battling for truth and influence.

I have returned to this journal. Inspired, I was, by my wife who jumped to set up her own blog after a dinner conversation over christmas. Thus I responded out of a childish sense that I needed to establish my credentials: first blogger in the household. Unfortunately a journal that hasn't been entered for nearly 3 years(!?) isn't evidence of a sound blogging habit. I shall return in the future with some more considered reflections on theological matters. I am not wont to restrict myself to what I know about, so the boundaries of my monologue will know no limits. I expect that I shall write more about emerging church forms and how to establish true humility and unity in the church without making any statements about the literal inerrancy of the bible. I will invite some controversy. and no-one will read this anyway.... I shall not in any way avoid politics and films and literature. I work in child protection as a social worker in my spare time so i have a passion for seeing emotional healing and justice in the lives of ordinary and vulnerable people. Anything goes, but the glory must go to God.