an alt.church would be one that is creative, not locked into church subculture, based on growing human and spiritual potential in discipleship, a learning organisation with a celebratory and life-affirming ethos, where artists, dreamers, social activists and workers for justice and mercy would feel at home and find stimulation and growth. It would be participatory and the leadership would not be heavy. spiritual-life coaching would be a big part of it’s pastoral life and outreach.
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2 comments:
Caroline, thank you for the appreciative tone of your comment. I assume that you were commenting on this at your own blog at http://celtic_difference.typepad.com/a_difference_that_makes_a/2005/05/celebration_of_.html -which other readers can now follow up too by virtue of that link. I am very sensitive to your concern about the 'non-creatives' and the "ugly" [being one of life's less beautiful people]. Actually I don't think that I specified how creative was understood but I can see why you might take it as you did. Nevertheless I think that the tone of what I wrote and the inclusion of dreamers, social activists etc gives a hint [I hope] that I'm not just thinking of the beautiful people.
I do believe that everyone is creative, just not in the same ways or to the same degrees. I would want to see a church which gently encourages people to unlock their own creativity -even if it's unconventional. Actually, a church that simply recognised the real creativity that goes on in a lot of ordinary life would be a major step forwards, and I'm up for that.
t has been said that "The artist is not a special kind of person, but every person is a special kind of artist" (J.E.Park as found in The Torah: A Modern Commentary). What kind of artist are you?
I have no doubt you'd be 'alt' enough, the real question would be do you want to be?
In short, you're right on my likelihood of agreeing. I re-read your blog post again after posting my reply and realised that I had neglected the maintainer [=sustainer, upholder?] thing entirly and I do think that is is important to affirm that and, in fact, to celebrate it. It's not glamourous very often but it's darn important. I like to think of the sewage system; it may not be pretty and it is certainly not thought of much but actually it is probably the single most important thing holding our civilisation together and so it means that the possibility of producing great pictures, poems and paintings is held intact.
Part of the point of including social activists is that they are the kind of folk who are likely to be interested in empowering and affirming the marginalised ... so I'll hold out too: for saying that this was implicit in what I wrote ;-)
Yes, I guess that is about having a community of people who are into creating ways for others to be creative or even maintainative if that's where their gifts and calling lie. Actually you often have to be quite creative to be a good maintainer!
At my best my vision is for lots of churches to be like this. For me the point is that I don't find one hereabouts and I think I may have what it takes to help give birth to one ... I'm weighing up the call [or not] just now. But helping an existing church to move into that kind of way of being is good; but I know from experience that it's hard to do, in fact.
It shouldn't need great resources and I would really like to see it done all over the place. I suspect that models are needed to 'cascade' the idea, though.
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