Irreverent Reflections

It is 2017. I haven't touched this blog for almost a decade. But I'm starting again. So, I've rewritten the introduction (slightly). Go  here . And all the posts below this one will be revisited and re-presented - but I'm going to leave the originals here for reference - maybe just for me, but also, maybe, for someone else ...

OK - so it's over a year since I wrote anything. And (again) this won't be a long piece. It arises from meeting with several leaders in UK missional-emerging-somewhat-trendy-but-all-very-dedicated church communities over the last fortnight. And while my summation of that experience will wait until I have had more time to reflect, one short phrase occurs: "divine uncertainty". In the midst of all that has been good, and passionate, and wonderfully godly, in the people that I have met, I have detected a (sometimes unacknowledged) uncertainty that I have found beautifully healthy. Frankly, no two expressions of church among those I have met with have been the same. Occasional similarities have arisen - and some common themes. More on those later. But generally, among the six or seven communities that I have engaged with (however briefly), flux is the common factor. Some with a greater anxiety about change might even term it chaos. But I have come to wonder whether this i

Is the bible "true"? It starts to occur to me that this is a very dumb question in the context of our culture, where truth is so variable in its definition. But it might also be a dumb question theologically - premised primarily as it is on the mistaken notion of a one-to-one relationship between the Scriptures and the word of God. The only possible one-to-one that we can make with the word of God is Jesus - even if we take the bible as "infallible" - hence John 1:1. So I reckon that the word of God is a person, not a thing. And that correlation in itself seems to me to be much more readily identifiable as God's way of establishing, maintaining and developing relationship with his creation - his intention to converse, connect and create. A better question than "is the bible true" might be - does the Bible accurately reflect the sort of relationship that God might want with us? And this leads to a core premise - that if the answer to this last questio

OK, I've finally managed to add to this - inspired by a seminar I attended today that was a reminder of the power of story . And, in the period since my last (first) post, the church I'm leading has taken large strides towards what I would term reality . A simple statement - propositional truth is the basis of religion. Relational truth is the basis of faith. And, at least in my definition, relational truth is founded in the dynamic experience and mapping of a relationship. And relationships are defined by stories - by the tales of the growth, flowering and maturing of the relationship - and by the accurate retelling of the struggles and pitfalls of that relationship as well. The Bible, for instance, is first and foremost a story. A story about the relationship between God and humanity, that certainly encompasses those aspects of story mentioned above. Part of the redefinition of who we are as a church includes the following understanding of how we best examine our walk of fait

The introduction below was written when I first thought "blogging" would be a good idea as I processed my thinking on the nature of my faith (Christian) and my faith community (the church). I have traveled quite some distance since 2007 - in life shape, in location, and in thinking. I am no longer at that "small Baptist church". In fact, that church no longer exists - at least, not in the form it was in when I first wrote. And that is part of the story that I will begin to tell in this blog (in 2017). I now work in one of the most exciting missional opportunities available in Australia - and so I will be taking a much larger risk whenever I touch on the "heretical" stuff referred to below. But I still am committed to the notion that "It's always about Jesus". And that will be something I will be constantly exploring in this blog. I am leaving the original introduction pretty much in tact. It appears that it still pretty much applies, as