It’s summer holidays here in Australia, so I’m going to take a break from telling my apologia pro vita sua, and talk about a new project I’m thinking of investing my summer in, in the absence of paid work over January, and the impossibility of doing anything about that fact while the entire world is […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I don’t want this to sound like Cafechurch is a drag, a place where people sit around moaning about how hard life is, but suffering is a topic which we come back to again and again. It is often at the bottom of why people leave their big churches, and what people who search us […]
“You aren’t an emerging church until someone eats dessert while you are trying to have communion” – Cafechurch saying. It occurs to me that this blog is supposed to be about doing church in post-modernity, and I have been mainly blogging about culture, not church. The problem is, it is so hard to start – […]
Alister Pate