The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ […]
Christian leaders go wrong. We should talk about it. A few unstructured thoughts from a Cafechurch session.
In a video on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Brene Brown talks about how she “fell in love with the faith and the mystery piece.” However, over time her experience of church, “became less about faith and mystery, and more about politics and certainty.”
What does it mean for a church to live in “faith and mystery” rather than certainty? What is the relationship between “certainty” and “mystery” in a community of faith? Is the preacher really quite as certain as she or he seems? What lies behind the drive to certainty, and is there another way for a church to live with faith and well-honouring the mystery at the heart of life?
It’s been quite a while since I blogged last. The reason? I’ve been very, very, very busy putting an exciting project together for Cafechurch and Carlton Church of All Nations, called Spiritus et Locus. It’s an interesting challenge – how do you reimagine the ancient practice of the examen for today’s distracted, wired, socially-connected generation? […]
I’ve come across a couple of articles on Bivocationalism recently and, as someone who has been a bivocationalist for a number of years now, pretty well acquainted with the good and bad of it, I though I might get my 5c worth in. First things first: What does this ugly word refer to? In my […]
I’ve been struggling with finding some sort of way to write interestingly about my experience of being involved in Caféchurch. The problem it is unlike \anything else I have ever done. It is entirely all consuming, and has been amazingly rewarding and deeply costly – the most fun, and the most pain, I have ever […]
What does it mean to be a questing church? That idea can sound like saying that there are no truths, so that any and all beliefs are OK, spawning some sort of dull, relativist quagmire which has nothing much to offer its members, let alone anyone outside. It can feel a little as though the […]
It’s been a little while since I worked on my apologia pro vita sua thread – more than time to return to it. I had a bash at this article over the weekend, and ultimately didn’t like it much, which is why this is a bit later than usual – I’d rather be late with […]
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 […]
Alister Pate