here's the tender coming

Really enjoying 'here's the tender coming' by the Unthanks. Brilliant. Thanks Cara.

ways into small missional community [9] earthy good news?

Here's the latest in the series of posts I'm doing for the Small Missional Communities project on starting and sustaining new project-communities

This latest post in the ‘ways into small missional community’ series is an exercise in [re]discovering roots and imagining the future.

The great story of Jesus is known as ‘Gospel’ - which means ‘good news’. So it may be important to ask how Jesus could be good news where we are, in this place, for these people and for this setting.

It can be helpful to break this down into two questions:
first [and here’s the return to roots] ‘why is Jesus good news?’
then second [and here’s imagining the future] ‘so what could this good news look like here?’

We may have lots of responses to the roots question. But what might that lead to? How is the good news felt and tasted, lived and experienced? In the task of creating Christ-following missional communities we need to discover earthy ways of expressing and living the good news where we are.

An example: one of many possible answers to the roots question might be to say that Jesus is good news because he shows us that God is love. Now there’s wonder in that idea - it’s perhaps the most beautiful of all equations - but how do we say it and live it in ways that are more than cliche or jargon? The imagined future question takes us into the earthy business of how God’s love could be lived and experienced here. What might that actually look like ‘on the ground’? How could 'God's love' be shared and encountered in real ways in this neighbourhood or network? What can you imagine happening?

So why is Jesus good news for you? And what could the good news look like where you are - in, around and through the community-project of which you are part, or of which you are dreaming?

StillPoint meditation

Matt will be hosting a StillPoint meditation happening tonight 9pm @ssMary+John on Cowley Road Oxford - will be really good!

freefallin

Have just started to learn to play mandolin again - well for the first time really, previous attempt was not a success. Our friend Jackie wants to do the same with guitar so we're teaming up. Plan is to learn a song a week, starting with 3 simple chords. First song: 'freefallin' by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - simple chords, slow pace, and a fine song. Pic is from the TP gig at Knebworth which I went to back in the day with my buddy Mike.

Third Space

I've been working together for a while with a group called Third Space in Matlock, Derbyshire, and they are now linking in with the Small Missional Communities project and CMS, seeing this as their primary place of belonging - the first group to do so 'formally'! They are very good news, doing imaginative stuff and really wanting to be and to make a difference in the way of Jesus the change-bringer where they are. A very big welcome to Third Space people: may you be blessed and may you bring blessing... peace to you Ian

ways into small missional community [8] finding a name

Here's the latest in my series on creating and sustaining community for the small missional communities group - all about finding a name:

What’s in a name? Cumbrae, Emerge, hOME, Ithaca, mayBe, Sanctuary, and Third Space are some of the names that are represented on this network at the moment.

The process of discovering a name for your community-project can be a really important part in its creation. The imaginative conversations, the prayers and the waiting that are part of the journey towards a name take us right into the reasons that we are setting out on this course. The process will make us think through what the big idea is, it will immerse us in the spirit of the community [see earlier posts in this series of ways into small missional community], and it will help us understand how we can serve the people around us in the name of Jesus.

My experience is that an interesting thing sometimes happens in this process. You may find that the name is somehow waiting for you, that the name in some sense discovers you and your friends as much as you discover the name. If you don’t have a name yet, it’s a really good idea to make sure that everyone who is with you is involved in the process.

Although Jesus doesn’t seemed to have named the little community he created, he did give a new name to the disciple we know as Peter - which means something like ‘stone’ or ‘rock’ - and in so doing perhaps Jesus enabled this disciple to become more fully the character that he could see was within him.

So what’s the naming process like for you? If you have a name, how did you discover it? And how might the name be helping to shape your life as a small missional community of the world-changing Jesus?

artistic director for Moot

Moot are looking for an artistic director. Sounds like a great role at a really exciting time for the community.

How can we avoid becoming like what we fight against?

How can we avoid becoming like what we fight against? That’s the nagging question I’m left with after Question Time last night.

Most of the ideas and policies of the BNP, it seems to me, are a mix of the ridiculous and the reprehensible, the delusional and the dangerous. So I’m really concerned that the manner and the actions of the audience, the panel and the chair may have served to portray Nick Griffin and the BNP as victims. Now he can say with some justice that he was bullied, and bullying is of course a fascist tactic.

Fr Richard Rohr warns people of liberal politics like him and me that we can ‘become as power-seeking and controlling and dominating as our oppressors’. My hunch is that Nick Griffin would have revealed the extent to which his policies are based on fear, division and untruths of his own accord last night, if he was given space. Instead he was kept from answering truly important questions by some of the very tactics that most of us deplore and which we identify with far-right parties.

How can we avoid becoming like what we fight against? Perhaps it starts in the area of our own personal transformation. The teacher Jesus seemed to suggest that we need to learn to resist evil with stillness, mercy and even love. Tough stuff, particularly because, I suppose, it needs to start here, now, with me.

end of the line: tonight on More 4

I blogged before about the excellent movie end of the line. It's on More 4 tonight at 10pm. Really worth seeing- about the threat to the world's fish stocks - but with a positive message that we can fix this if we have the will..