benedson

Happy Christmas

Just to say Happy Christmas to all who read this blog because I've hardly sent any Christmas cards...It's been a busy time. We've gotta new car, sorted out the child care and half-fixed the boiler. We went to a beautiful wedding in brum on Thursday and at last, on Friday managed to get the tree up. We're off around the Uk visiting family from 26th, so this blog will be quiet for a bit longer....

Hectic weekend

Car died, Jude's birthday party, boiler died, sanctus1 Christmas party, child minder quit and just to top it off the cat walked across the sofa with sh*t on her foot...

One year on...

A year ago on this day at around about this time, Ruth went into labour and at 8:50 am on 14th December out came Jude Samuel Edson - our son. It was a crazy first few weeks Jude was in and out of hospital with jaundice and they did loads of tests on him, but fortunately he was fine and after the first month he started to gain weight and is now fit and healthy.

A month ago we had a service of Baptism and Thanksgiving, within the service we had a naming part and it was this part that i found the most moving. Here is a the liturgy that we used, we adapted it from something that Doug Gay had written:

Lead: What names have you given this child?

Ben: We have named him Jude, a Hebrew name which means praise. St. Jude was the brother of St. James and one of the twelve disciples. He is also the patron saint of lost causes.

Ruth: His middle name is Samuel, also a Hebrew name. Samuel means asked of God.

Lead: Let us be thankful for Jude’s birth

Men: We bless you Ruth, for bringing Jude to life; for carrying him and bearing him, for feeding him and caring for him.

Women:We bless you Ben, for bringing Jude to life; for giving your life to him, for sharing your life with him

Ruth: You are my son and I thank God for you. 
I love you and with God's help I will be a good mother to you

Ben: You are my son and I thank God for you. 
I love you and with God's help I will be a good father to you.

Lead: Jude Samuel, you are loved and wanted in this world, together we thank God for your life.

There was also a part in the service where people from sanctus1 wrote their prayers and aspirations for Jude and tied them to a bottle of water. They then emptied the bottles of water into the font and Jude was baptised in the prayers of the community.

Here he is now, what a year, what a blessing.

BBC Sport's Advent Calendar...

This amused me - The Pires penalty, Dudek's wobbly penalty legs and freddie's post-ashes celebrations...enjoy!

Laments

I love the theme of lament on Richard's blog. It's got me thinking about lament and the music that I would pick, and I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I have to go for a Spiritualized track again. If you've not listened to any Spiritualized then I'd really encourage you to do so, their music seems to encapsulate so much about contemporary spirituality.

The track that I'm thinking of as a lament is "Lord Can You Hear Me?" It's somebody crying out to God in hurt and pain...when you're in the pit it's often the case that all you can do is cry out in pain.

Lord, help me out
I'd take my life, but I'm in doubt
Just where my soul will lie
Deep in the earth or way up in the sky

Lord can you hear me, when I call?
Lord can you hear me, when I call?
Lord can you hear me, when I call?
Lord can you hear me, hear me at all?

All my life has left my side
Can't get enough out of life to keep me satisfied
I'm lost about everything
Lord look what state I'm in

Lord can you hear me, when I call?
Lord can you hear me, when I call?
Lord can you hear me, when I call?
Lord can you hear me, hear me at all?

Sect, Denomination or Church?

I was fascinated by kesters post a few days ago questioning whether the emerging church will ever become a denomination. It got me thinking about typologies of religion and particularly 'The Wallis Typology'.

Wallis helpfully uses an emic-etic model; emic being the perspective of the insider and etic that of the outside. He asks how members of an organisation how they understand it’s legitimacy, do they understand it as uniquely legitimate (ie the sole repository of truth) of pluralistically legitimate ( ie one of several legitimate paths to salvation). He comes up with this typology:

It helpfully places the church and denomination as respectable, and the cult and sect as deviant. However, I wonder what the relationship is between sect and denomination and whether the emerging church (whilst remaining within the Christian tradition) is a sect of denominationalism.

A sect usually forms when a person leaves an established religion and sets up another one which is perceived to be deviant. Christianity was first seen of as a sect of Judaism and I’m sure that through Christian history various respectable denominations have been seen as sects when they first started.

Charisma within the sect usually rest within an individual leader, a pioneer who has established it and who leads it. This is often unfortunately the case with the emerging church, a person will pioneer the church and the charisma lies with them and hence when the leader moves on there can be problems.

Within a denomination the charisma is relocated in an office, such as a priest or bishop. When new leaders come along they inherit the office and the charisma that goes with it. Weber refers to this as the routinization of charisma. Denominations and sects can be distinguished by the nature of their Charisma. In a sect it has often resided in a leader, with a denomination it is found in an office.

I think that the emerging church needs to move beyond these two models and relocated the charisma in the congregation. Yes, there do need to be certain offices, and some of these offices require training, external validation etc. but the congregation must own and inhabit the charisma rather that it being located within a person or an office.

love this video

Check this out...you'll need broadband.

II

Once a quarter Sanctus1 runs a night in a bar in the city centre. It's called II and is a night of Electronica and creative media, tonight was the night of II and it was fantastic! It's Eyan's baby and he does a fantastic job in promoting it and bringing in guest DJ's and artists

Great music, we had an 80's electonica theme going tonight, Tron playing in the background, some great visuals and Kolyn doing a bit of performance art. Great night all round....will blog on the missiology of it at some point but tonight I've had to many Hoegaardens...

Secularization and Re-enchantment...

Following on from my earlier post I want to suggest that rather than Secularization and Re-enchantment being polar opposites they are, in fact, intrinsically related to one another. Re-enchantment is a by-product of secularization.

Berger, in his recent revision of his secularization thesis says that to distinguish the religious impulse within humanity would require a ‘mutation of the species’. The religious impulse is intrinsic to humanity, it will not disappear. The religious appetite is always there, and hence this is why secularisation is a self-limiting process.

Secularisation will always be accompanied by an element of the formation of sects, (I wonder if the emerging church should really be called the emerging sect) as people seek to revive or form new ‘compensators’. Compensators are the large scale rewards that religions offer that cannot be found in a purely secular world-vie, (ie eternal life). There is a human need for compensators and hence in a secular world people, through new religious movements, will re-construct these compensators. It is interesting to note that over 25% of the population in the UK believe in re-incarnation (a compensator) and yet only approximately 2% are part of a religion that has re-incarnation as part of it's doctrine.

So, no matter, how strong a hold secularization has on contemporary culture there is still a human impulse for 'the other'. As secularization has taken hold of culture is leaves a gap, a God/spirit/mystical shaped hole, and it is here that re-enchantment is happening.

Re-enchantment, however, should not be seen as a wonderful opportunity for the church in it's current form. Secularization has largely effected the Judeo-Christian tradition, mainly because a large number of Churches embraced modernity and the secular world-view. Whilst embracing the 'priests of modernity' may liberate us from superstition it also leaves us with a dull, one-dimensional, unconvincing culture and Church.

This dull, one-dimensional, unconvincing culture is fertile soil for re-enchantment, and this is where New religious movements are flourishing. Traditional forms of church will evolve and mutate, whereas my hope for the emerging church is one of the sects that forms within the culture of contemporary re-enchantment.

The Trouble with the Straight and the Narrow...

I was in Gloucester on Sunday and went with my in-laws to their local church, the lectionary reading for this week was Isaiah 40: 1-10 and included:

A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God."

The vicar started talking about the straight path and from that moment on I was lost as I had these lyrics from Spiritualized going around and around in my head:

The trouble with the straight and the narrow
Is its so thin, I keep sliding off to the side
And the devil makes good use of these hands of mine

And if jesus is the straight path that saves
Then I'm condemned to live my whole life on the curb
On the crossroad to the devil, I'll dwell and I'll count my years

You know that I got a little something I should say
I guess that I'm just so easily led astray
It's alright because I know my own way back home from here

And I don't fall of the wagon you know
I take a dive and go as deep as I can go
Don't hold your breath because I'm coming up slow, this time.

And The trouble with the straight and the narrow
Is its so thin, I keep sliding off to the side
And the devil makes good use of these hands of mine

You know a little problem or two
I guess that I keep on taking a few
I've been told its not the best thing that I can do, right now

And I don't go looking for my sins you know
They come out waiting, and I just get on and go
Don't hold your breath because I'm coming up slow this time