The Top Ten Myths About The Emerging Church

Just read an amusing list of myths about the emerging church.  Not sure that I have heard them all used in the UK context.  I think I may have added a few of my own to the list.

What do you think are the most unfounded things you have heard about the Emerging Church?

The Bible Meets the X-box

Ruth Gledhill at The Times has written an interesting article called “Bang! Crash! Kill those Canaanites! The Bible on your X-Box”. 

This got me thinking about how this fits into the emerging conversation.  It is clear that the scriptures are of great importance to our faith.  My experience over the last ten years is that people invariably have little or no contact with them.  Even in churches they are becoming more and more difficult for people to engage with.  Personally I love the feel of a book in my hand, the smell of the paper and ink.  I love that slightly exhilarating feeling of being the first person to open a book.  The  first to cast my eyes upon its contents.  I like it when someone (usually my wife) has to wait for me to pass it on to them.  However, for many, reading a book is not a common activity. 

This has led many to reimagine how people can engage with the text itself.   I have previously blogged about “The Book”, a project that produced the New Testament in the format of a magazine complete with stunning photography.  Instead, here we have the X-box being used as a vehicle for the text.  To me it looks like “Study Bible +”.  It seems to whiz around the text and give lots of aditional information if you want it.  It looks like a very familiar modern world experience as one thing zooms off and another zooms on.  The “reader” is bombarded with a stream of information.  How very postmodern.

The real question I have is – is this new?  No doubt there will be detractors who claim this is a sign of the end times.  As we all know, God’s true intention in a restored kingdom is produced using the printing press and archaic language.  Modern technology is no doubt corrupting our young, corrupting the text and warping our doctrine…

…or is it?  Haven’t we been doing exactly this for years.  I remember starting my undergraduate degree over a decade ago and buying the Zondervan Step Reader with access to all sorts of different translations of the bible, commentaries and maps.  I remember whizzing from one part to the next, searching and comparing.  Then of course there is my current concordance.

So now that wireless controller has a little joystick and button a, b and c…. not much is different to this wireless keyboard and mouse I am using to do this. 

One more reason why my wife needs to let me buy an X-box =D

Photography by Blind People

In my spare time I am a keen photographer and take an active role in the Leeds Flickr Group.  One of the guys there pointed out this video at the BBC.  It is about how some blind or visually impaired people have been engaging with photography.  The results are stunning!

the church

This quote is taken from Jonny Baker’s blog.

church is always spelt with a lower case ‘c’.
church is always plural and never singular.
church is not the space we mostly meet in.
church needs neither prefix nor suffix.
church is as much a verb as it is a noun.
church is, for us, an aspirational name.

Everything we do in Church is Weird

Doug Chaplin has written a really thought provoking blog article on the “weirdness of Church” that seems pertinent to the emerging conversation.

Virtual Church on the Radio

I have received a brief email from Richard Staples about BBC Radio Leeds on Sunday.

Sunday morning just after the 8.30 News I am organising a virtual church service for people unable to get to church on Sunday morning. It will be a short 15 minutes or so to include a Bible reading, short talk and prayers as well as a hymn or two.

Now I need to find out if it is every week or just because of the Snow…

Speaking on the Radio

I got to speak on regional radio today (about 2hrs 19mins in and then again at 2hr 36min).  The world seems to have had a few feet of snow dumped upon it so they ended up asking me about the snow of all things.

The one complaint I have had from people* I know is that I didn’t plug my band!

*OK, it was the bassplayer!!