Church in everyday life

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Church in everyday life
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(No Transcript)
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The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are
few, therefore ask the Lord of the harvest
to send out labourers into his harvest.
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• The nature of the church
• 2. Discipleship

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How can we seek to re-imagine what it means
to be the Church and create new communities if we
lack the language and ability to talk and
reflect about what it means to be the Church in
dialogue with Scripture and our tradition.
Steven Croft, Mapping Ecclesiology for a
mixed economy in Mission Shaped Questions.
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Church as four sets of relationships.
up
of
out
in

Moynagh, Church for Every Context p 106.
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The missionary church will not aim to
spread its own form. It is not a subsidiary of
the old one. It is a new church of the same
apostolate. It preserves its unity when it
fulfils Christs apostolic mission to its own
historical situation.
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And so from the start , where Jesus is, there
is the church, the church is the assembly of
those who are finding their relationships, their
lives transformed by the presence of Jesus.
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• do not try to call them back to where they
  were, and do not try to call them to where you
  are, beautiful as that place may seem to you. You
  must have the courage to go with them to a place
  that neither you nor they have been before.
• Vincent Donovan

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not leaving the tradition but driving to its
heart Gerald Arbuckle, Refounding the Church
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1. The nature of the church
2. Discipleship

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  Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to
the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.
When they saw him, they worshipped him but some
doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given
to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations, baptising them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you. And surely I am with you always,
to the very end of the age.
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a disciple is simply someone who decided to be
with another person, under appropriate
conditions, in order to become capable of doing
what that person does or to become what that
person is. The Divine Conspiracy, p309.
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How to combine faith with obedience is the
essential task of the church.
Dallas Willard
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• How we see God
• How we see ourselves and others
• How we see our community
• How we see creation and society

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What kind of people are we called to be? What
kind of community is capable of raising people
like that?
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We have done everything right and it hasnt
worked!
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• What way are
• we facing and why?

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Visible
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Communal
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Purposeful
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Prayer
Love
Relate
Create
Prayer
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Reproducible
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Learn from the spider
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Find a suitable starting point
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Bridge the gap
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Stephen Bevans Roger Schroeder, Prophetic
Dialogue
how did the Spirit lead them to respond
creatively continually in new and surprising
situations as they preached the gospel.
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Create an anchor point
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• The nature of the church
• 2. Discipleship

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Church as four sets of relationships.
up
of
out
in

Moynagh, Church for Every Context p 106.
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Basic questions of church

1. Who?
2. What?
3. Why?

Maybe we should ask Where from? Where to ?
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the theological doctrine of the church cannot
be simply expressed in abstract terms about the
churches timeless nature. It will have to provide
points of departure for reforming the church,
for giving it a more authentic form.
Faithfulness and the fresh start are not
antitheses in the history of the Spirit.
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• Two models of mission
• Mission station model-gathered and static
• People movement- organic, indigenous
• spontaneous

But the truth not often seen or stressed is that
Christianity, like electricity flows best where
there is good contact.
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• The nature of the church
• Discipleship
• Withdrawl
• Engaged

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• What might this mean for leadership
• development and training?
• 2. What might be gained and
• what lost?