I’ve been following with interest Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, where he’s recently begun working through the rather contentious book: The Evangelical Universalist. Since it’s such a controversial theological issue, but also one which often sparks huge interest, I thought I’d draw your attention to Scot’s discussion of the book’s main arguments.
It’s that time of the year to look back over another year of blogging, and begin to form plans and ideas for the next year.
The most viewed blog post in 2009 was actually written in December 2008. Missional engagement and reflective learning was an explanation of some quick observations I made about the link between engaging in mission and the reflective learning cycle.
Here’s a quick quote from the original post (after the jump):
Caught up in the Christian understanding of mission and particularly evangelism, is this concept of salvation and what it means. In recent times, the Church’s understanding of salvation has been fairly straightforward and in some ways quite a shallow image. Will a deeper image of salvation help to propel us towards a deeper understanding of the mission of God?
How does the image of mission as liberation help us in understanding how God is at work in the world around us, and how we can get stuck in alongside him?
I’ve been thinking recently, inspired by some stuff from a recent lecture at CYM, about the whole biblical meta-narrative – and in particular this idea of the story beginning with the garden and ending in the city. Beginning with Eden and ending with the new Jerusalem. I think I’ve read a few authors who have pointed this out and tried to draw observations from it – in particular recently Rob Bell’s new book and NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope.
It’s really interesting to see how we can play around with the interaction between this little bit of theology and all kinds of ideas about the way society and culture develops.
I’m currently working my way through Mark Sayers‘ book The Trouble about Paris (well worth reading), which has been causing me to think a lot about this concept of hyperreality and the effect it has on our lives and our spirituality.
Hyper-reality is this idea that our culture is constantly causing us to buy into a “larger than” life – the dream life which we see epitomised by our images of celebrity and success, and ultimately happiness. This hyperreality claims to provide us with happiness and fulfilment, but leaves us living in a kind-of denial of the actual reality we live in.
The main, most obvious way we can see the effects of this “larger than” life is in consumerism and the effect it has had on our culture and our spirituality. The hyperreal myth that “just one more” will bring happiness leads us to become both material and spiritual consumers. Hence the Church finds itself having to attract and cater for a generation of Christian consumers – who are after maximum result (perceived value) for minimum investment (cost), and are always looking for the best deal.
Sat trying to get my brain back into neutral after today’s day of lectures. Not that the five hours of biblical studies weren’t good. They were amazing. Just really need to detune my brainwaves so I can relax and get to sleep okay (didn’t sleep too well last night – my brain was moving too fast).
Maybe writing about my day will help debrief my mind.
Continued looking at biblical interpretation today – mainly criticism: historical criticism, form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, textual criticism and hermeneutics. It all sounds pretty complicated but when you actually understand what the different forms of criticism mean you realise it’s just a load of posh words for some pretty simple processes.
Then Chris, our theology lecturer, gave us an outline of the bible in about forty minutes to an hour – outlining the main themes, background and giving us a basic biblical timeline to build on with the rest of the module which is basically a detailed look through biblical history – grouped by historical significance rather than book-by-book, which makes it easier to get to grips with the culture and background of the bible.
Then in the hour or so we made it through pre-history, the patriarchs, the exodus and the judges in more detail, drawing out important themes and tracing the story of the people of God. Looking forward to starting with Saul, David and then Soloman next time.
Phew, feeling less hyper-brainilated now… obviously the writing thing worked.
Looking forward to the same again tomorrow but with Youth Work Principles.
Oh, said I didn’t sleep very well last night – well I’m pretty much there with the whole Luke 9 thing from Saturday, but left my notebook at the college so will have a go at organising my notes for the blog sometime when I get back from Bristol. That passage really caught my inspiration…
Welcome to the blog of James Henley. I'm a young church leader / youth worker and student based in Newport, South Wales.
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