I'm a minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, with two congregations: one in Northcote / Chalice, which now includes Cafechurch Melbourne, and one up the road in Reservoir, confusingly known as Preston High Street. I am
I was hoping to post something today, something which added to my thoughts from last week. However, yesterday I was totally knackered after the Cafechurch weekend away, and I’m now stressed out with, among other things, getting my nanowrimo word count up to 50k by the end of the week, and I’m only at 40,797, […]
One of my issues with the liberalism of someone like Peter Rollins is that I feel like it doesn’t create anything positive. Doubt is a powerful solvent, which is good and right, and some things need to be dissolved. The whiteboard needs to be wiped clean before something new can be created. But something new […]
I originally entitled this article “Why Peter Rollins Gets On My Nerves” (actually, my original title was even less polite than that, but in deference to the delicate sensibilities of my gentle readers, I restrained myself.) It’s still a kind of unofficial subtitle, but I think what I want to write about goes deeper than […]
One of the most helpful books I have read to explain what I am observing in Cafechurch is A Churchless Faith, by Alan Jamieson. I think it is a really helpful model of what happens to people as they come out of what he calls EPC (Evangelical, Pentecostal, Charismatic) churches. It is interesting, not just […]
Last week I posted about the situation of the Christian churches in the West as I see it. I posed the question “What does Christianity have to do with real life?” I, rather rashly, promised to share my thoughts about What Is To Be Done this week. All my thoughts are based on reflecting on […]
I had a really interesting conversation yesterday, with a friend who comes from a very conservative Christian background, from which she has escaped. I have a lot of friends like this, but she put the issue in a very striking way: What has Christianity got to do with the real world? Out there in the […]
One of the tough things to explain about how a Fresh Expression (Emerging Church, whatever) like Cafechurch works is the dynamic between the leadership and the community. How do you get from a situation where there is no community, to one in which there is? Firstly, I think you need a bunch of you. I […]
Something I’ve been mulling over recently is the difference, and perhaps the similarity, between “proclaiming the gospel” and being part of some sort of self help group with a bit of a spiritual bent. The cause of my reflections is the series we have been doing on Faith Development, understood as spiritual growth, using John […]
When I first started studying theology, lo these many years ago, I was intending to do a doctorate in the science and religion debate. I went to talk to an academic about it, and he, wisely, said “well, we tend to recommend that people who want to do a doctorate in theology study some theology […]
No matter how bad the future might be, the exact second now is OK. This has been my watchword for a number of years, but especially this week. I will spare you the details, but it has been a pretty stressful week chez Pate, waiting to hear whether I got a temporary developer job with […]
Alister Pate