I drew this for Laura Anne who is hosting a great blog series on community
A good thing to do is go to her blog and read it.
7 September 2011
tags: church,
community,
illustration
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Don't go to church
My friend Sarah heard an idea at a conference. Her enthusiasm for it turned out to be infectious. This is the idea: regularly have a Don’t Go To Church Sunday. The pastor tells people to stay away so they can spend time obeying the second great command, love your neighbour as yourself. Most everyone has stuff that they would like to do for others, but they never quite get around to it. What if your church explicitly gave you permission and time to go do it?
6 May 2011
tags: church,
community,
giving
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I'm special, so special / Gotta have some of your attention / Give it to me
I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes Christianity unique, because everybody wants to be special. I came up with a lot of things that aren’t unique to Christianity: community, a strong moral code, monotheism, heaven, hell, our own music, a linear understanding of history, instant healings, ecstatic experiences, prophecy, a historic human founder, a resurrection story, a proselytising impulse, a paradigm for understanding all of life, nonviolence, scripture (Plus fundamentalism, being Right, tribalism and killing for your god.) Etc. All this stuff is quite common in and out of Christianity.
Note: Could this be why denominations, religions, organisations and tribes are so intent on focussing on their differences? If you start noticing how much isn’t unique, you may become aware that you fear a loss of your identity. And your audience. And your income.
But there is something that I think is unique, or at least exceptionally rare: living and dying for the sake of, not just your friends, but also (especially!) your enemies. This is what Jesus did. This is what he invites us to do.
Lots of people will kill for what they believe.
Many people will die for what they hold dear.
Very few people are willing to die for someone who stands for the opposite of what they love.
Please tell me if I’m wrong. Tell me that there are a lot of things unique about Christianity. Tell me that there are other religions/philosophies/tribes for which suffering (with abandonment, with no guarantee of success) to save the life of an enemy is a core value.
?
25 March 2011
tags: church,
community,
jesus,
non-violence,
questions
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We live and die by good deeds
Here is what I mean. No matter what your theology of doing good is — I think the spectrum ranges from ‘It’s nice to be nice, but there’s not much point if they’re going to burn in hell’ to ‘Loving your neighbour through doing good is the core of the gospel message’ — in everyday practical living, you live and die by good deeds.
When your car breaks down and a friend loans you theirs, it really matters to you.
When someone Nastyfacebooks you, it really hurts.
When a stranger gives you a friendly smile, it lifts your mood.
When that jerk cuts you off in traffic and flips you off for existing on his road, life tastes sour.
When you are exhausted or broke and someone brings you a meal, you can cry for joy.
When your kid wants to hold your hand while you walk together, you can walk anywhere.
When your lover holds your hand in public, you are invincible.
No matter what you say you believe about good deeds the value that you place on the ones (not) done to you says they are actually some of the most important things in the universe.
The obvious next step is to place the same importance on the good deeds that you (do not) do.
4 March 2011
tags: community,
giving,
love
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Question: self worth
Do you think it is possible to have a healthy sense of self worth without the involvement of other people? e.g. If everyone around you is negative about your value, can you, through a relationship with God, positive thinking or some other means, develop a positive sense of self worth? Can you give any concrete examples?
25 February 2011
tags: community,
questions
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Greater than the sum
Today Google tossed this article by Barbara Sher onto my screen. I’d never heard of Barbara Sher. Apparently she invented life coaching, but I’m willing to forgive her because the story she tells is really good. Here are a couple bits:
In one of the groups, the Tuesday night group, I could tell that something very special was happening. One of the members, an unprepossessing fellow (he had been described as ‘Woody Allan without a sense of humor,’) had admitted to his first feeling: he was unhappy because he was lonely and wanted a girlfriend.
At first they shook their heads and told him to forget it. “Women hate you, Ronnie,” one of the members said.
“I know,” he said. “Fix me.”
They started to protest that everyone had to fix themselves when I interrupted and said, “It doesn’t look like Ronnie is going to be able to do that. Why don’t you all help him out?”
And they did! The Tuesday night group, instead of talking about their own problems, decided to get Ronnie a girlfriend…
Right then and there I got it: orphans don’t make it. Isolation is the dream killer. You can get what you want even if you don’t love yourself and don’t feel positive — as long as you have an ongoing team to help you think and back you up and help you over the hard spots…
Read the article, and as you do consider: abundance culture is one of honest recognition that I don’t personally possess every thing, talent or strength I need. God has designed humans in such a way that we need each other in order to thrive.
‘For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.’ (Romans 12:4-6, TNIV)
18 February 2010
tags: abundance,
community,
humans
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Us, actually
So this abundance culture thing — I think I’ll start talking about it from here:
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:32-35, TNIV)
Most of what I’ve heard and read about this passage has been explanations why we modern Christians don’t need to live like this because it’s not a command and they were in unique circumstances with people there from all over the world and it’s a different culture and blah blah blah.
The fact is, we like our stuff and quite like the idea of keeping our possessions as our own. I’m going to resist the urge to rant about how all our stuff is God’s anyway and we are just taking care of it.
Instead, I will drop one foundational thought: abundance culture exists in the context of community. There were no needy people in the very early church because ‘all the believers were one in heart and mind.’
This is massively different from the Bless Me religion of the western world. We all understand Christianity as being about God and me. Turns out, much of the time, possibly most of the time, it is about God and us.
13 February 2010
tags: abundance,
community
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Maybe not so dumb
I had this idea the other day about making a way for people to share stuff they own but don’t use a lot, tools, DVDs, etc. Enough local people have expressed an interest that I have decided to try to make it happen.
Hopefully, I will be sending oh-so-exclusive invitations to interested people who live in/near Conwy County by the end of the weekend. Hooray!
29 January 2010
tags: change,
community
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This might be dumb but...
I think that most people have a decent amount of stuff like tools and DVDs and books that they don’t use that often and would be happy to lend out to friends and people they trusted. The biggest obstacle to this seems to me that people don’t have an easy way to tell each other what stuff they are happy to share. The obvious place for a here’s-what-I-have-to-share thing is online. Do you know of anything like this that already exists, or does it still need to be invented?
23 January 2010
tags: change,
community
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Beware of bold pronouncements
Over the last few months I have enjoyed some serious world-rockage thanks to Surprised by Hope by Tom Wright, Starting a House Church by Larry Kreider and Floyd McClung, and The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, plus a bunch of podcasts from Greg Boyd and Rob Bell. Now it’s the bible’s turn.
Over the next three to five weeks I plan to read the New Testament. I will be looking specifically at what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, both individually and as a community of Christians on a mission. The purpose of this is not to know more stuff, rather, I want to make whatever changes are necessary to orient my life around God’s mission on Earth (John 3:16) and my place in that mission through the new birth (John 3:3).
This is more of a read-and-reflect than a study, so I will be using my handy dandy TNIV Books of The Bible. I plan to write about what I read here. And I’m off…
10 February 2009
tags: blogging,
books,
change,
church,
community,
kingdom of god,
nt
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My important blog
For me, life is about connections. Synapses in your brain, hugging someone you love, flying halfway around the world – it’s all about connecting. One of the ways I like to keep my connections interesting is to read widely online.
Using Google Reader I follow an archdruid, an open theist, a naked pastor, a koala in Scotland, one of Britain’s best designers, a senior karate instructor in Hawaii, a director at Acumen Fund and a lot of other great, intelligent, witty people.
I learn a lot from them. Because the Google people are clever, I can choose the best of what I read and share it on this page:
If you were subscribed to this page over the last couple weeks you would have learned about planting the gospel vs. planting churches, why trust is more useful to you than hard facts, a great free day out with your kid, the startling news about evangelical teens and sex, why previews are better than reviews, and much more.
Please have a look and a read. Maybe add the feed to your Google Reader. If your reading is interesting and varied too, why not start sharing? A lot of people are probably interested in the best of your blogroll.
4 November 2008
tags: blogging,
community
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I like you, i61
Hey, all you i61-ers, I’m really proud of the superb bonfire event you did tonight!
Two years ago Christine had the idea of a bonfire night with traditional games and quiet fireworks that wouldn’t scare the little kids. So we did it. We didn’t at ALL do it on our own, but we did a whole lot. I made posters and leaflets. I stuffed the leaflets into every letterbox on the Morfa estate. I bought the fireworks and the sparklers and the glow sticks and the doughnuts. Christine bought the apples. I arranged the layout of all the games. I assembled the supplies for the games. I (along with a few others) frantically put the lanyards on the glowsticks. Christine made the hot chocolate (along with a couple others). I lit the fireworks (along with two other guys). I rushed around making sure everything was working. I talked to the crowd about i61.
This year. I made posters and leaflets. I spent about an hour on the phone and writing emails. I bought some gaffer tape. And I ran a game. That’s all. You did the rest. (And from where I was looking last night, everyone seemed busy, but no one seemed stressed.)
You bought the fireworks and the sparklers and the glowsticks and the doughnuts and the apples and the hotdogs and the craft supplies. You choreographed the dance and rehearsed it. You organised the games. You made the apple crumble. You built the bonfire and put it out. You brought a TON of friends. You lit the fireworks. You manned the bar. You were the band. You directed the traffic. You talked to the (rather large) crowd. You cleaned up afterwards. You shared the life of God with our community.
I’m sure I left something out.
You probably didn’t even know that i61 Bonfire Night was Christine’s idea. That’s because this year it was your night. And I am really proud of you right now.
2 November 2008
tags: community,
i61
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I like Claire Richards
She runs parenting courses for Conwy Education Services, and she is a teacher. The courses are great. Christine and I went to one in 2006 and it helped us bring much more peace into our home and effectiveness into our leadership as parents.
The problem with the courses is that hardly anyone goes to them. Maybe not enough people know about them? Maybe there is a perceived stigma with attending a parenting course?
We know that that kind of stigma is silly. In no other part of life (except for maybe within the slacker crowd at high school) would you be stigmatised for wanting to get better at what you do. But calling stigma silly doesn’t get parents onto your course.
Claire knows that. Instead of shouting at the status quo…
Keep reading
23 October 2008
tags: change,
community,
leadership,
north wales,
parenting
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A sort of prayer
Floyd and Sally McClung are approaching retirement age. Not too long ago Floyd gave up the pastorate of a pretty swish church in Missouri, USA to go live in a crummy South African township and teach local people how to plant and lead house churches.
I would give up everything if I could know how to do that AND I could do it with my family in a way that flowed from and was swimming in grace.
It is not about location or travel. I’m perfectly happy to be in North Wales forever. It is about love for ‘the least’. It is about throwing a banquet and inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind instead of worrying about how good my seat is at the party I’ve been invited to.
I can see that I am selfish, critical, lazy and scared of people. I’m scared to talk to people about Jesus when I’m not performing on stage. I want to be rich and famous. But what I would rather want is to not care at all about those things. I would rather want to spend my life connecting the people that society doesn’t value with the life and kingdom of God.
To me the greatest gift in the world would be to be full of the love of Jesus and to spend the rest of my life with my family sharing that love with people that ‘don’t matter’.
Otherwise what is the point of my continuing to be a Christian?
4 June 2008
tags: community,
kingdom of god,
prayer
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If just one person was saved...
…it was worth it was the way organisers of failed evangelical Outreach Events liked to comfort each other in my hometown Tucson, Arizona, the site of many failed evangelical Outreach Events. We planted some good seeds was also popular. But to use those platitudes someone has to show up at your event.
10 minutes before our neighbourhood craft event was supposed to start my son went round to his three friends’ houses to remind them like they asked him to the day before. None of them were home. Also not home were our new neighbours who told me the previous evening that they would probably come over.
I’m pretty sure this was the conversation in all four houses:
Mum: Hurry up and get your shoes on. You need to go.
Child: Is it time to go to the Gill’s carefully planned and super-fun neighbourhood craft event already?
Mum: No! You’re not going there. Didn’t you see the invitation? It had the name of a church on it. They’ll probably try to make you speak in tongues.
Child: So where am I going?
Mum: I don’t care. Why don’t you down to the park and look for discarded syringes and porn.
It was probably nothing like that. I’ve never come across any syringes or porn in our park. I know that reality is almost always more benign than what goes on in my head, but I’m nervous that our desire to share the life of God with our neighbours could turn us into the local freaks.
‘Darn the dang nerves!’ I say. We carry on. Maybe a barbecue next.
Or maybe I’ll just huddle at my laptop and write essays on Emerging Into a Theology to Support Missional Praxis in Postmodern Semi-Rural (Non)Community. That could be even more comforting than a platitude.
Finally,
Are you, or is anyone you know trying anything like this or sort of like this? How’s it going?
This is a great article on making friends with people rather than making projects of people.
The photos are by the brilliant Marya Figueroa aka emdot.
29 May 2008
tags: community,
humans,
kingdom of god
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Too good
Seth Godin wrote a couple days ago about the importance of letting the evidence of human involvement be visible sometimes.
I think the promotion of the kids thing we are doing Wednesday is a good example. I made some fun and pretty invitations and laser printed them on card.
Front:
Back:
As I was distributing them about the neighbourhood, they started seeming too good. They weren’t quite right. I would have felt a lot more comfortable giving out pieces of paper with the details hand-written on them. That would have been inviting. Somehow what I was doing felt more like selling.
It’s okay. The reason we are doing this now is to start learning how.
26 May 2008
tags: children,
church,
community,
design
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Can we go back to theory, please?
Our church has done a very good job of making a place that is easy for non-church people to come to – for starters, we meet in a pub – and people do come. About half of the people of i61 didn’t go to church before they came to i61 or else they had not gone for a very long time.
Easy to come to is good, but for a while Christine and I have been feeling that it is very important for us to go, to share the life of God with people where they already are. Since we are the children’s pastors, we decided to do something with kids. Since there is no time like the present, we decided to do something this half-term week. The obvious place to start is Someone Else’s Neighbourhood. Unfortunately, the Someone Elses had to work all week, so we are doing it in our neighbourhood at our house.
It’s surprisingly scary.
I printed up a little invitation, and yesterday I went out in the rain and passed a bunch of them around. People I don’t know got them through their letterboxes. People I do know or have spoken to a bit got me knocking on their door inviting them. The response was tepid at best. People seemed to think of it as a thinly disguised wheeze to get their kids into church.
The response at last house I went to completely took the wind out of my sails. Our village shopkeeper lives there. He always seemed like a nice guy. We chatted once about the woes having BT as an internet provider. His teenage daughter babysat our kids a few times. But yesterday he said, ‘No, not interested,’ before I could finish one sentence. When I stuttered something about it being just some games and crafts for the kids, he cut me off again.
Like I was selling double glazing!
Or I was a bleeding Jehovah’s Witness!
At that moment I acquired actual empathy with a friend from church who went out for a Christmas meal with a bunch of mums from her children’s school. She didn’t drink because when she’s indulging in extra calories she prefers to get them from food. The real reason doesn’t matter though. She’s a Christian. She didn’t drink, so obviously she’s judging their lifestyle. Now they don’t want to be her friends anymore.
Jerks.
Actually, they are just being people who are living in the culture we live in. That’s not an excuse for other people’s bad behaviour; it is a reminder that we kingdom of God people still have a lot of barriers to move out of the way when we go where the people are.
I’m pretty sure some of Callum’s neighbourhood friends are coming. I’ll let you know how it goes. I think it will be good.
26 May 2008
tags: children,
church,
community,
humans,
i61,
kingdom of god
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How I succeed at barbecues
Yesterday, the Gill family was at the first i61 barbecue of 2008. i61 barbecues are famous for immense quantities of fun and food. Friends who accept the invitation to come usually find that before too long they are part of us and inviting their friends to barbecues.
People often ask me two questions at i61 barbecues. The first is: Did you make these chocolate chip cookies yourself? I reply, Yes, with an appropriate amount of honesty. The second question is: Can I have the recipe? Today, for the first time ever, the answer is, with a complete lack of modesty, Yes, you can have what is probably the best chocolate chip recipe in the world.
The ingredients are listed in a mix of American and British measurements, so you might need to use this.
Get a big bowl, and put this stuff in it:
- 300 g butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 2 eggs
Mix them all up. Don’t taste it yet; it’s too slimy and gloopy.
Now add this stuff:
- 1 1/2 cups plain white flour
- 1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour. This is important.
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- a bit of salt
Mix again. Tasting is good to do now.
Chop up 300 g of really good chocolate, 2/3 milk chocolate and 1/3 70% cocoa plain chocolate. If you are living in North America and you are tempted to use chocolate chips or anything that has Hershey’s written on the label, resist. Put the chocolate in the bowl and mix one last time.
Grab some dough, make a ball and put it on an ungreased baking sheet. Repeat about 35 times. Bake all those little balls for about 9 minutes at 190°C.
Eat all that you can within a couple hours. Store the leftovers in an airtight container.
Your results may vary.
You’re welcome.
5 May 2008
tags: church,
community,
food
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In praise of small churches
There’s a lot of talk about the size of churches.
Some people go for massive – the more people in a mega-church, the more people that know Jesus, right?
Others think tiny house churches are best – how can you have community and reality in a giant battery farm of a church?
It seems like the cool way to be these days is multi-site with the pastor live in every location via satellite or speedy car trip across town.
There is probably nothing/a lot wrong with these ways of doing church. There’s always room for something different though
At our church we may have stumbled upon a Something Different. It’s new to me, at least.
The pub where we meet has room for about 125 people. On Sunday morning it’s full. We’ve done all the expanding we can without tearing the place down and starting over, so the only way to fit in more people was to add another meeting.
Hanging out together is a big part of what we do, so we weren’t interested in cramming another meeting into Sunday morning. Making time for family life is also a big part of what we do, so we didn’t want to add a Sunday night meeting. We decided to go with Saturday evening.
Two weeks in, it’s going very well.
One of the things we realised very quickly was that before too long i61 Saturday will develop its own personality. The meeting has different childrens’ workers and a different band. We’ve even talked about different speakers in the future.
In a year or so, there may be two i61 congregations of about 125 people meeting at the pub. Then what?
I think a strong case could be made for starting another main meeting on another day. 125 or thereabouts is a good number.
- It’s big enough to have life and energy.
- It’s big enough to feel like you are part of something.
- It’s small enough to know everyone. I read somewhere that people are able to know about 200 people. If 125 of them are at church, that leaves relationship space for a good number of people outside of your faith.
- It’s small enough to have a good ratio of leaders to people
- It’s small enough to allow a high proportion of people to be involved in ministering during the main meeting.
- It’s small enough to fit the scale of town and village life in North Wales
- It’s small enough to be easily replicable
- It’s small enough to be able to meet in almost any public venue.
Put enough Small Enoughs together and you can end up with something very big – a lot of people knowing Jesus.
I don’t think 125 is a magic number, but I think 100-200 is a good size for a human-sized (rather than institutional-sized) congregation.
I am really excited about where we are headed.
UPDATE Christine just said, ‘What about when we build our bigger building?’ (We have plans drawn up for one that will hold about 250-300 people, 500 with rows, but we don’t do rows – too formal.) I remember Doug Pagitt or one of those emerging guys saying that 300 was about the right size for their community. Get back to me in five years; I’ll probably write that 1,000 is the ideal size for a church like i61. [insert smiley]
1 April 2008
tags: church,
community,
i61
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Community
I was 6 during the miners’ strike of 1984. I lived in a small mining village
I guess the strike probably affected me differently than it did my friends, whose dads worked in the mines. My father had been unemployed my whole life anyway.
It was one of the happiest times of my childhood…
Keep reading
9 February 2007
tags: community,
humans
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