How to Deconstruct Your Church

Don't worry about what 'deconstruction' means - what do you think of the following 10 ideas (from David Hayward) for doing church:

1. Determine in your heart that you will do all things out of love, compassion and patience.
2. Make sure this is what you want no matter what the cost (because often the cost is high).
3. Are there any leaders or elders who are in agreement with you and will endure with you for the long haul?
4. Start speaking honestly about what you are feeling and thinking. Begin with your closest group and move out to the whole community.
5. Allow people to see you at your weakest. Then allow them to reveal themselves at their weakest.
6. Let things die that require coercion, manipulation, begging or controlling others in order to live and continue on.
7. Welcome diversity in belief, thought and lifestyle (they are already diverse, you are just welcoming its open expression).
8. Change the teaching/ preaching time to a shorter teaching time with discussion following. This is scary at first, but you’ll get used to it and eventually prefer it. This levels the playing field really fast.
9. Challenge only those who are judging, abusing, and controlling others.
10. If people decide this is not for them, bless them as they go (because they will eventually go).

Which do you agree or disagree with? Why or why not?

Sucked into Life's Crap? (by Jim Palmer)

Truth always sounds good when sipping a White Mocha at Starbucks, but does it hold up when the shit hits the fan in life? Hmm…maybe this is the perfect time to live what’s true and real.

Maybe the crap has hit the fan in your life. Are you fighting it or reacting against it on the surface? Fighting fire with fire? Or are you aware of another nature deep below that is undisturbed and responds differently? From a Christian perspective you might think of that nature as the Christ-nature or the Spirit. Is that another ‘you’ twenty thousand leagues under the sea? Could we be helping each other by pointing to and affirming that nature within each of us? It’s easy for that reactionary-you to be hooked by the crap that hits the fan. Can you learn to create a space between you and the situation in order to find, connect with, and respond from that deeper nature?


Read more from Jim's blog.

The Gospel According to U2

Description

“Who among us has not experienced hearing a song that moved us deeply, that spoke to us in a truly spiritual way? Millions of fans around the world have found that inspiration in the music of U2, arguably the biggest band in the world today. Now, on the heels of their latest studio album No Line on the Horizon, comes this engaging and informative examination of the spirituality that drives the band and its music.

The author, who interviewed the fledgling band on their second U.S. tour, takes us from their upbringing in Ireland, to their dominance over the music scene in the early 1990s, and then to their role as spiritual ambassadors to post-9/11 America. Throughout we get a picture of the spirituality that flows out of U2's music and how their influence has spread beyond music into issues such as AIDS activism, debt relief for developing nations, and the crisis in Darfur.”

"U2's private practice and public presentation of Jesus' good news are often discussed, but almost never are they subject to sound critical and theological analysis. In this book, Greg Garrett has corrected that situation handsomely. Bringing to his task the tools of both musical and ecclesiological scholarship, Garrett also writes with the humility of genuine affection and gratitude. If you care at all about the role of music in western Christianity today, you'll want to read this book." - Phyllis Tickle, author of the Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why...”

Emerging City Innovation

What does the church have to do with the city? What can new humanity say to old urbanity? What steps can we take to bring the City of God to the city?