Sabbath Rest and Neural Ganglia

Worship and Church need to be about Sabbath rest and wholeness. Church and worship are all about the seventh day of creation. They are rest from the work of life. We need to find ways to enter into the stillness God has called us into—out of the chaos of our worldly lives. The sacredness of Church and worship sets them apart as “Sabbath experiences.” Where is the rest in Church today? We cannot envelop wholeness without it.

Sabbath rest is also about telling tales. We reach into the ken of stories that emerge from our history as a people of God and we share them in a space rich in silence and stillness. The space provided by the silence and stillness enables us to hear how the tales interact with our own lives. We connect in a richer fashion when our tales our told out of rest, rather than constant movement. By removing these standard and routine practices from “Church”, “Sabbath”, and “religious” experiences, we have begun to dismantle structures in the neural ganglia of mankind. We are pruning out developmental culture and its place in our lives. This is dangerous.

Replicating our workplace environments in our Churches has proved empty. We really do not want to have executive meetings on Sunday, we just have forgotten that we are being called into something different. Making Churches into businesses has failed in the long run and we all feel that. Relegating growth to an “org chart” has left us hollow.

Eventually we are left with asking, “What happened to Jesus in all of this? Where has God gone in all of this?” Perhaps we have substituted our prayer practices with the distractions that keep us from stillness. As easy as it is to do this in our private lives, it is just as easy to do this in our corporate lives. We can eradicate healthy habits quite nicely in democratic cultures. I am afraid Church has become democratic—in ways that it has clearly not ruminated over long enough.

From Chapter 2 of Cairn-Space

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Appalling Nature of Church

It has become common knowledge that many of the mainline denominations are flailing and in disrepair.  Many seem on the verge of collapse.  When you dig into the chaos that exists, it appears that the greatest contributor to  possible ruin is finances.

It makes me wonder how we have gotten ourselves into this place.  It does not matter whether it is Orthodox or Free Church denominations.  They are all closing doors because of finances.  How have we allowed CHURCH to become synonymous with corporate structure and ownership?

The nature of CHURCH is the "called out ones" of God.  Called out of the world, CHURCH is allegedly the community of people who have opened themselves to the indwelling of God's Spirit - we are TABERNACLES of God.

It is up to the creative ones to figure out how to disentangle the two concepts so that true CHURCH is challenged to go on and meet the conditions of a new way of gathering and so that whatever the shape of that gathering becomes, it does not commit the same crime of seeing buildings as CHURCH and programs as CHURCH.

The shrinking and withdraw of support from institutions in this country has been going on for a long time.  Big business and consumerism is the new culture we live in.  As this shift occurs, many grass roots movements are being challenged to go back to their origins and reclaim the vital link they have with living the vision and mission they espouse without the "luxury" of bricks and mortar.

I hope people are starting to think about what the core values of faith are all about.  What constitutes spiritual life and growth.  And, how to become community without the abundance of property and wealth.

The option will be for these collapsing denominations to scrap what they have and all run out and find another "thing" that is similar in shape and size to what they knew; or, to re-envision what we may have been missing in the call of God.  Listening to the call requires the abandon of a Prophets heart and a ruthless audacity to shout out when we have fallen away from our connection to the Father of lights.

Times ahead will be prophetic to say the least.  It may be too simple a response to look at the churches that survive and say what are they doing right?  The Churches that survive just have more money.  Now is the time to find out how CHURCH and "luxury" are distinct.  Let's not rebuild something that falls apart on our grandchildren because we mistook abundance as a sign from God that we had found the WAY.

It is time people start asking themselves how house churches, small groups, and communities find their ways into the changing shape of CHURCH.

TJM+

The New Monasticism

When the dregs of depression over the state of the denominational churches takes hold of your hungry heart, have faith.  There is hope.  There is a whole new wave of spiritual life dawning for the Church Universal.  All over the nation, and the world, pockets of intentional communities are emerging and calling themselves a New Monasticism.

Combined with the crest of the Emergent Church, this New Monasticism is build on some simple basic rules of community.  They are:


1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
3) Hospitality to the stranger
4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities
combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.
6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the
community along the lines of the old novitiate.
7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
8) Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

WOW is this something, or what.

A community based on the sharing of things in common, prayer, poverty, intentional formation and contemplation - this sounds like the SECOND CHAPTER OF ACTS.  It is worth looking into.  Just google the words NEW MONASTICISM.

I am including a link to a publisher that is carrying some of the best mongraphs the movement has produced.  Check them out:  Wipf and Stock Publishers

Ciao!

+Tom