In this week’s episode, Joe and I talk more about the nature of church. In particular we talk about the physical location of churches - does a church need to be visible? Does it need an identifiable location, times to meet, etc.?
Personally I think churches need a place and not only for practical reasons. Over the last few years my ideas about sacred places have changed entirely. I used to think that the church – as in the building – didn’t matter much.
In this episode Joe and I delve into his new theme of ‘nature churching’. In particular, we talk about what exactly constitutes a church.
I admit to being a little doctrinaire on this one. I think, historically and theologically there are some characteristic activities which define a church, as opposed, say, to a Bible study group, or even just a group of people meeting together.
Looking at the model of church in Acts, and accounts from the early years of the Christian church, it seems to me that the characteristic activities of a church are:
In this week’s episode, Joe and I talk about Pentecost. It’s one of the oldest festivals of the Christian church, having been celebrated at least since the third century.
According to the ever-fascinating Philip H. Pfatteicher, the English term Whit-Sunday may be from ‘white’ reflecting robes worn by new converts, or it may come from the Old English word wit, meaning wisdom, since the Spirit leads us into all truth.
In this week’s episode we discuss the article I wrote for Christianity magazine: How to be wise: Confessions of a recovering idiot.
In the article I proposed seven tips for gaining wisdom; things like finding a mentor, making a wisdom collection and most importantly, shutting up and listening. Obviously seven is a reductive, if nicely symbolic, number. There is much more I could say (and plan to say if I ever get to write a book on it).
Lots of interesting discussion this week drawing on feedback from listeners.1 We talk a bit about heresy, something I have written on quite a lot, because you can’t really do church history without encountering the concept of heresy, not to mention all the accusations, counter-accusations, excommunications and, tragically, executions.
The word first crops up in the second century AD, notably in the work of Irenaeus of Lyon who wrote a whole book called Against Heresies.
This week’s episode is a really good interview with Brian McLaren about his new book, Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart.
A few things really stood out for me. I loved how he argued that constant denial is exhausting. We often think it’s the other way – all this doom and gloom is wearing me out – but McLaren argues that, in lots of cases, once we face up to the issue, once we acknowledge the reality, then actually that can be a source of energy.
So, the question I posed was this: ‘Why does God get all the praise when I did all the work?’ By which I don’t mean that I necessarily need or want more praise (being English I find any praise rather embarrassing anyway. Not to mention ill-judged) but I was trying to explore the relationship between human skills, creativity and effort and the inspiration and work of the Divine. Of course all things come from God and of your own do we give you, as it says in the Prayer Book.
Lots of stuff in this week’s episode, but it seemed to me to have a common theme of depth.
We talk about reading the Bible not more widely, but more deeply – learning a passage, or simply taking one verse and dwelling on it for a long time.
And following on from last week’s recap on the idea of stages of faith, we discuss how the Mid-faith Crisis could simply be motivated by a desire to go deeper, to find out more, to go beyond the superficial.
In this week’s episode, we revisit the idea of stages of faith – which is really what this podcast is all about. The idea of Mid-faith Crisis was also behind my book The Dark Night of the Shed. During the podcast, however, we also touch on how this isn’t just a spiritual journey: you can see the stages reflected in stories, worked out in relationships and patterned in life itself.
In our latest episode, Joe and I discuss our themes for the New Year.1 (Our New Year begins on March 25 as was the custom up until the late eighteenth century.)
My theme for this year is focus. I’ve been struggling against the endless waves of distraction for a long time now, and I need to do something to arrest the slide. Moving to micro.blog was one way to avoid distractions of social media whilst still having an online presence.