Ambient Wonder Autumn Term

Our autumn programme starts next week for Ambient Wonder.

This term our theme is Notice More - a different view. You can download some publicity here.

We're surrounded by immense creativity, in the natural world and in the culture we're part of every day. People express who they are through many media – writing, art, music, photography, new media forms, dance. In their self-expression its possible to experience their passions, doubts, questions, inspiration – in short their work expresses something of their spirituality. This can lead us to pursue our own exploration of meaning, wondering at the Divine.

With that in mind we'll be exploring image, word and music as gateways to experiencing more of God.

Emerging Church - Burn the witches

Apologies for absence - holiday, boredom, no inspiration. Usual stuff, you know.

Anyway, saw this on an apologetics site. Really funny that the emerging church is listed with Buddhism and other such faiths to combat. See here for a chuckle.

See here and the links for a down right wince and guffaw......

Now don't get me wrong, regular readers will know I'm all for a reasoned critique and theological debate around missiology, ecclesiology, soteriology, sociology and whatever ology takes your fancy. . . ironically all I could think of in response to the above was rather rude and dismissive, so I won't type it.

Bath Time Theology

I was in the bath with Rhianna this evening.

Dad, you're as fun as God.

That's nice, is God fun then?

Yes. And he's big. Bigger than a giant.

Why do you say that then?

Well he created the world. And God's in charge. He's in charge all the time. And he's in charge of insects. Can I have a shower now.

Welcome Back

Good to see Heather and Monty back in the blogosphere. :-)

Ambient Wonder this Sunday

The theme is the Supernatural. Should be fun, especially if like last time the ratio of people who'd call themselves Christians to those who wouldn't was 1:2!

More information here.

Research in Emerging Church

I've just had a nice email from a PhD student to people associated with ambient wonder and I thought I'd share some of it here if others are interested. You can see her blog here from which the following is amended.

She's moving into the fieldwork stage of her project, exploring the beliefs of individuals involved with emerging Christian communities. She's particularly interested in how contemporary Christians make sense of the world in which we live.

She would like to hear from you if you are interested in taking part in any stage of this research, but there are two fixed criteria:

• You must be resident in the United Kingdom
• You must be involved with an emerging church (however you define the term) and/or engaged in an emerging conversation between Christianity and contemporary culture

Her contact details are on her blog if you want to get in touch.

Feminism

Admittedly this is a lazy post...

Carl has started an interesting debate off the back of a radio 4 programme on whether there's a need for feminism any more. You can see his blog here.

I posted a while ago on the subject here and then here and here.

I quote from Elaine Storkey on what the premise is of feminsim:

"Modern Western society, argue the feminists, unlike its preindustrial counterpart, is a society in which women are dependent, manipulated, vulnerable, passive and exploited and men are dominant. Society is designed by men for men, and women are seen as functioning to uphold and support the male domination. Thus womens work, whether at home, in the factory, in the office or hospital echoes daily her total dependence upon and subordination to the man."

I find that hard to argue against.

On an aside I note that some of the biblical texts started to crop up in Carls comment. One of the theologians who has had the most influence on me is the late Stanley Grenz. He wrote an excellent book on women in the church challenging many of the stereotypical evangelical proof texts, although a bit dated now as written in mid nineties. You can order it here.

Paul Mckenna on Desert Island Discs

Caught the end of his interview today. Unfortunately you can't do listen again which is annoying as it sounded really interesting. Certainly his last to songs were cracking

I Didn’t Know I Was Looking for Love by Everything But the Girl and Movin’ On Up by Primal Scream.

He did this great quote near the end.

"I'm in the hope business. I don't know what's possible but I'm up for getting stuck in and seeing what is."

Amen