How do we as Christians relate to our communities?

I went to an excellent day of seminars led by Rev Dr Phil Meadows from Cliff College on Shaping Up for Mission. Phil is part of a new project called Inspire and they are re-imagining John Wesley's spirituality in a 21st Century context. It is amazing to see how much of Wesley's strategies still apply today.

To learn more about Inspire go to the web site. There is a national conference on July 3rd that I will be going to.

Jonny Baker has also blogged about a 'gathering' he attended with other folk from various emerging churches and communities this weekend, and in his post he shared some of the prayers they used as part of one of worship times and is based on a well known prayer but with some added explanations....

For God so loved the world - may we naturally follow suit,
That he gave his only son - may we learn the wonder of sacrifice,
That all who believe - may our love for one another be the crucial evidence,
May not perish - may we work to halt the collapse of lives, of communities and of creation,
But have eternal life - may we point to the hope you bring now and for the future.

Jonny also links Mark Berry's site which has more of the prayers they used - all very thought provoking stuff.

What language to we use to describe God?

Jonny Baker is his blog has posted a very interesting article on the words we use to describe God.

grace on saturday night ( yes i decided to go and watch the football later...) was really good with lots of stuff to chew over for months to come i suspect. we've been having a few discussions on the language we use in grace and how it can be used to include or exclude often unwittingly. speaking of god was the first service where this has been picked up. jenny has written the service up in the grace archive, with links to prayers, confession and so on...

I do thoroughly recommend you take a look at this but please do it with an open heart. It has really made me think about the language we use to describe church and how open or closed we make God in the language we use. Do take a look at the archive, I found it very interesting the words the congregation at Grace decided to 'park'.

The whole use of language and moving away from some of the standard phrases we trot out (like those that Grace chose to park) got me thinking about musicians and some of the work we do with Wellspring helping them to free themselves from the music put in front of them and improvise.

Once you start to improvise you have to listen to what everyone is playing to make sure what you are playing fits with what others are doing. You need to listen. When playing the 'dots', you don't need to listen in the same way, you have the security in knowing that someone else has worked out that what you are playing will fit, so you don't have to think for yourself. But when improvising you have to listen, think and then decide if what you are doing is working.

Thanks Jonny and the folk of Grace for making me think.