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Something new, exciting and hot is happening in the Austrian alps. Young adults will see a new camp this summer in the shape of the first ever Burning Church conference.
The camp was organised in response to many young adults who are connected to the church but don’t feel that they have a creative outlet in which to voice their questions about God, faith and the church. It is an opportunity to come together, to be church together and to ask questions about the traditions we have received, the way we do things and what is important to us as Christians.
The camp combines a worship training camp with a summer Bible school, an art conference, a sports camp and simply the opportunity to relax. In the evening, everyone comes together discuss questions such as “how does the church react to the challenges of our time?”, “how does the church respond to people who surround it?”, and “how does the church engage with the things that people are actually talking about?”
Make no mistake – it isn’t called Burning Church for nothing. The German bi-line is “Die Kirche brennt” – the church is burning. This is to be a positive forum, an exciting forum, a dynamic forum – but one that does not seek to hide from difficult questions and challenges but engages them with honesty and integrity.
Mission in our own community can be hard, especially in a nation like ours. It can be easy to think that mission is something you do in another country, that problems that matter to God – and should matter to us – like homelessness, a lack of food and poverty, is something that happens somewhere else.
Despite our country’s economic problems, the UK is still one of the wealthiest nations in the world – and it’s easy to dismiss these kind of problems, think they are too big for us and that they aren’t anywhere near our doorstep.
However, the reality is somewhat different.
The Big Read started off as an initiative in the North East of England in 2009 as Christians from all denominations started reading the gospel of Luke together in local groups. This grew over the last few years and the project is just gearing up to launch #BigRead12 – this year, reading through the gospel of Mark. Today, I am pleased to feature an interview with @drbexl who spends some of her time working on the Big Read.
In 2010, in North-East England, The Big Read emerged as an ecumenical initiative, which brought together Christians from across various churches to study Lent for Everyone: Luke – a book written by the former Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright. Rev Dr. Pete Phillips, Director of the Centre for Biblical Literacy and Communication, a part of CODEC (Christian Communication in a Digital Age): a research initiative based at St John’s College in Durham exploring the interfaces between the Bible, the digital environment and contemporary culture.
In July 2009, Bex and Pete got talking – on Twitter, before/during/after #digisymp, an event held at the College. As Pete watched The Big Read – and Biblefresh – emerge, he saw the potential for there to be a national event, and contacted me to see if I’d be interested. In July 2010 I came on board with a brief to “do something digital with Lent for Everyone: Matthew.”
Every year ‘back to church Sunday’ happens, the intention is that we invite people ‘back to Church’, back to a Sunday meeting. When I chat with my team leaders at church, the conversation revolves around how we can get people ‘in’. Christmas is seen as an ideal opportunity to invite people to a church run event.
When we were planning our Carol service this year, we asked two community leaders to feedback what they would come to; as they planning process went ahead, however, it became clear that they did not want to come to something, but wanted to run their own thing.
In Matthew 13 verse 33 Jesus says “The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven (yeast), which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.” The nature of the Kingdom therefore is to be hidden in this world until it has brought the change that society (the dough) so desperately needs; a transformation into something alive; a new culture. As churches then, our expression of the Kingdom should be that (within the resources that God has given us) this societal transformation should be taking place at every point of contact. This is the story of how one man encountered the yeasty Kingdom of God. Read more
Tim Keller is always an interesting voice to listen to. Although I don’t always agree with a lot of him (especially his more systematic theology!), he is very hot on new ways of doing mission that really impact the area around the church.Recently, he has been developing a thesis of “Gospel Ecosystems”, which he explains on a podcast. Here’s a summary of his thesis.
Basically, he argues that a Gospel Ecosystem is people coming together from all churches, from across all denominations, to seek the welfare of the city, without any one church monopolising it. The vision means that the church as a whole should increase, not just members shuffling from one side to the other. This is aimed not a critiquing what individual churches do (which he sees as good) or to negate the value of the work of the local church, but to raise churches’ eyes and see the higher horizon of what the whole body of Christ can do on campus.
