Sanctus1 and The Message

I was speaking at the Manchester Centre for Public theology last thursday, we were exploring how the church engages with young people. I spoke about Sanctus1 (although the average age is prob 30 and the oldest person is probably in their late 40's, but that's young in the eyes of the church) and Anna spoke about the Message and their work with the eden teams in manchester.

I've never been in a place where we're being compared with The Message before, mainly because we're a very different animal. However, Anna spoke well and, although i'm not a big fan of The Message's large scale events, i think that the work that they do with The Eden projects is fantastic.

Chris Baker from WTF, was summing up and had some really interesting thoughts, highlighting the difference but complimentary nature of Sanctus1 and The Message. The first one, and the one that I've been pondering on is that one is far more focused on 'the word' the other is focused on the image. The image can be interpreted in a number of ways, the word, in this example, is fairly straight forward. We are very image focused in Sanctus1, whether film or Art, and i think that that beauty of that is that we have a variety of interpretations. However, i think that we were all once individually in a place where we needed it straight down the line...

Technorati Tags: Manchester, The Message, Sanctus1

Comments

[Fat Roland]

There's an organisation called WTF?

WTF??!?!?!!?

[Ben Edson]

LOL...It's the william temple foundation!

[David Booker]

"i think that we were all once individually in a place where we needed it straight down the line..."

I know what your saying Ben, but if that is true does that mean that emerging church needs a pre-exsisting christian worldview in its members so that they have the tools in interpret the images in a christian way?

I guess it comes back to the old issue about whether emerging church is about mission or keeping those fed up (maybe for very good reasons!!) with more traditional ways of being church. Do you think in practice emerging church is mainly about reaching the outsider in new and relevant ways or is really a hospital for those sick of church as it has been?

[Matt]

Hi,

When Jesus describes the Kingdom he often holds seeming opposites in tension, e.g. Salt in the Earth vs City on a hill, Yeast in the dough vs Big tree in a garden.
That's the way we understand our ministry at The Message. There's the everyday invisible stuff like Eden and our Prisons teams, then there's the big wow factor stuff like the concerts that our bands do.
It's not either / or, it's both / and.

;-)

[Ben Edson]

Sorry, i missed a couple of these comments...

David - i think that the questions about whether the emerging church is a hospital for Christians is about 15 years out of date. Post-evangelicalism was is some ways a hospital - a place of healing - but you cannot stay there for ever, or you become instituationalised. The emerging church has moved on significantly from there and is engaging massively with the missonal agenda. However, people will always need healing.

Matt - The kingdom is broad and diverse, and at different times different models are appropriate. However, i also think that we need to read the culture and which models of mission are most appropriate. There are three forms of religion growing at the moment, one is fundamentalims, one experiential and the other new age. Each one is obviously addressing a spiritual need in people, how do we as Christians offer forms of mission that scratch where people are itching? I would suggest that the message connect with two of these, the fundamentalisms and the experiential and sanctus connect with the new age and experiential.