Jason Clark

Broad daylight, suburban London, across the road from a primary school, a young man is hacked to...

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:49:41 +0100

Broad daylight, suburban London, across the road from a primary school, a young man is hacked to death and into pieces, whilst his murderers encourage others to take photos and film them.

“The apparently random target is not random, buts its appearance as random causes public anxiety and fear and change in behavior, which is exactly what the terrorist wants to accomplish. Terrorism is also a public act. The act must be such that the greater society will see it and react to the attack. The terrorist will choose targets that have symbolic value and/or economic value (WTC for example) or targets that have public value (buses, restaurants, etc.) in order to get public attention and public behavior change.”

—-

“Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I find myself as I live in London, sickened, angered, and in shock. At the same time I hope and pray communities in London, people of all faiths and none, can come together, to work together, instead of reacting in anger.

May real people of real faith lead the way.

What is Theology Good For?: Graham Cray - Theology symposium 7th and 8th June

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:41:42 +0100

Vineyard Churches UK&I are holding our first ever theological symposium as we explore the link between good theology and healthy churches. It’s open to any one with an interest in that topic.

We have Graham Cray heling lead our explorations. So to find out more and book for the event, see here.

Also Neal Sweatman who is organising the event has made this blog post explaining more about what we will be doing.

I will be speaking and presenting/leading at the event too.

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:13:00 +0100

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley:

Superb Ted talk by Ken Robinson on education and 3 principles for better education processes and experience.

Dallas Willard: 1935 - 2013

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:45:38 +0100

It’s been wonderful to see some of the tributes pouring in for Dallas Willard, after his death yesterday.

Back in 2000, I got take part in a conference organised by Vineyard Churches US, that had Brian McLaren, Stanley Grenz and Dallas Willard as speakers. They also led us in small group seminars.

It was one of those events that change the course and direction of my life and ministry. In particular Willard spoke about atonement, and the problems of reducing the gospel to penal substitution. Then in my seminar group with him, one phrase from him stuck with me (at least this is how I remember it); ‘there are facts and we have theories about the facts, but we must never mistake our theories for the facts’.

My wife asked me on the phone if the event was worthwhile and I replied that just hearing Willard at the start had made the trip worthwhile.

A few years ago, I got to meet him again and say thank you in person and share how he had impacted my life. He was warm, gracious and kind in response.

A life so wonderfully lived, and a man who died so well.

I was asked back in 2008 to design a D.Min program for George...

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:17:12 +0100

I was asked back in 2008 to design a D.Min program for George Fox Seminary. The Leadership and Global Perspectives (LGP) D.Min then launched in 2010.

I was overcomes with joy and delight at seeing the first LGP students receive their doctorates last weekend. It was a privilege to spend 3 years learning with this first cohort, at the intersection of their lives, ministry and research.

Thank you LGP1 for taking the risk of being the first students in the LGP, for being guinea pigs for much of the program, and helping us make it even better for new students. You rock.

The current and incoming students to the LGP continue to be some of the most amazing people I have met. I look forward to being at their graduations!

Massive Open Online Courses (Free): MOOC

Wed, 01 May 2013 07:53:16 +0100

Some exciting developments in online learning and education with the development of massive open online courses (MOOC).

‘A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aiming at large-scale interactive participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for the students, professors, and TAs. MOOCs are a recent development in distance education.’[1]

Take a free class in Music, Film and Audio, Management, Genetics, Philosophy, or Robotics, and many more.

Then there are the sites Canvas and Coursera collating MOOCs.

All this caught my attention because the Doctor of Ministry I lead, in Leadership and Global Perspectives is available online for anyone to follow and take part in for free.

Overegging the Relational Pudding | Blog | Think Theology

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:37:00 +0100

Overegging the Relational Pudding | Blog | Think Theology:

Great blog post by Andrew Wilson, about the problems of focusing on relationship for church in a way that undermines the very thing our relationships are about.

Worship as re-narration: The unique problems and possibilities of Charismatic Evangelical Worship

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:12:00 +0100

I wrote and presented this paper at the Society of Vineyard Scholars last week.

It’s shared under a creative commons licence, so please do reference/cite it, if you use it.

Emerging Adults and The Future of Missions: International Bulletin of Missionary Research

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:26:13 +0100

Very interesting article by Rick Richardson on ‘Emerging Adults and the Future of Missions’ in the latest IBMR. You can download it free here (you will need to enter your email to receive it, but it is free).

Do take a look at their free back issues too.

The Future of Evangelicalism: respectful conversations

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:11:16 +0100

I’m looking forward to this conversation that starts online 1st of May for several reasons.

1. Respectful Conversations: Harold Heie has hosted some previous conversations around a model of respectful conversations. The mission of Respectful Conversations is to create better ways for those who disagree to converse. The topic of Evangelicalism’s future needs such conversation spaces.

2. Contributors: No doubt people will complain at the line up of primary contributors as lacking something, but they are great people, engaged in the future of Evangelicalism and able to contribute great discussion starting materials. The focus is by their own admission US centric but many of the issues will translate across to UK, and other western contexts.

3. Sub-topics: The topics up for discussion within Evangelicalism look wide ranging. It is a shame that ecclesiology (the church) is not one of those topics, however!

The Gospel After Christendom: New Voices, New Cultures, New Expressions

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:36:57 +0100

Copy of this book just arrived at my office. Looks like some great content, and in particular a brilliant chapter from my friend Peter Aschoff.

Society of Vineyard Scholars Annual Conference 2013, Anaheim, Conference Program

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:18:28 +0100

I’m looking forward to participating and presenting at the Society of Vineyard Scholars annual event this week. The full schedule of presenters is here.

Will be good to catch up with friends in my tribe, hear their theological refections and try out some of my ideas on them.

I’m particularly looking forward to Ken Wilson’s paper on homosexuality on Friday. I’ve just read it and it really is superb, in terms of theological engagement and pastoral reflection.

Then I am a respondent to Amos Yong friday morning. His work has found it’s way into my PhD research, and it will be great to interact with him.

My own presentation is Saturday morning and is titled, ‘Worship as re-narration: The unique problems and possibilities of Charismatic Evangelical Worship in late capitalist society’. I’ll upload it here later this week.

The Marks of a Renewed Church: John Stott

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:17:16 +0100

Wonderful sermon/talk by John Stott on the marks of a renewed Church. Text and audio available from Preaching Today here.

Why the Easter, Christmas, Christening, Crises Christians won't be back

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 13:28:00 +0100

Leadership Journal have highlighted this week an article by Tom Shultz over at Life Tree Cafe. It’s titled, ‘Why the Easter Christians won’t be back’.

Tom’s focus is on the special services US churches put on for ‘guests’ at Easter, in the hope they will return. The suggestion by Tom is these special service have the opposite effect and make it more likely people will never return and be involved in those churches.

His reasoning is simple and compelling. People like the special event of a special service and won’t come back until the next one (i.e next year), they get a shot of comfort in the Easter message that keeps them going for another year, and they like the status of being a special guest and don’t want that to change.

It made me reflect my own direct church planting experience and observations. I’ve noticed the same, and not just for Easter, but also for Christmas and other special life events for Christians with no church.

1. Exiles: There are a whole group of Christians who are post-Church and will remain post-Church. Alan Jamieson in his ‘Churchless Faith’ and ‘Stories for the Journey’ tracks and highlights a growing group of Christians who grew up in Church, but are now well outside it. They enjoy and establish themselves in a beyond/post-church identity. Festivals and special events are where they get an annual fix of christian input with others.

2. Vampire Christians: Luke Bretherton highlights in Remembering Our Future (Deep Church) the irony of a whole generation of Christians who grew up in church, who had the training from regular church life and worship to access the resources of the Christian faith, who no longer need church to access those resources.

The irony is they often advocate for others to pick and mix a bricolage of christian resources. But unless one has had considerable training by a church in accessing those resources, people are unable to do as they do, especially non-Christians. If church was about dispensing religious goods and services, it has been further instrumentalist by those who feed off church resources whilst producing none themselves.

Dallas Willard highlights where this began for many christians, with an understanding of salvation that was about getting into heaven when we die. He called these vampire christianity, people who get just enough of the blood of Jesus to get into heaven. How they live now has little affect on their daily reflections and interactions with Christianity.

That instrumentalising of salvation has simply been extended to new levels. People can now download and pick and mix their Christian resources for getting through life, without the trouble of engaging with others over them.

3. Crises Christians: This group turn up at church when life overwhelms their ability to cope on their own. Usually serious illness, major work crises, relationship breakups. Instinctively people in this stage reach for something they cannot download easily; the comfort and support of others. However while church provides an ‘island of social care’ in a crisis once the crisis has passed, church engagement returns to nominal and life as usual away from Church involvement.

4. ’Authentic’ Christians: At present in the West we might see the desire for authenticity at an all time high, with the almost complete disablement to experience any authenticity. The most real thing we can experience seems to be a feeling. If we aren’t feeling it, it’s not real and if we are feeling it, it’s ‘so’ real. For many the most authentic thing about faith is their feelings about not-being part of a church community.

Conversations about church, convictions about what church should be have been traded for the taking part of and in church. It’s enough to feel right about what church should be, without any need to participate in one with others.

5. Alternative Lifestyle Christians: For many Christians, the real religious orientation of life takes place around anything and everything other than any missional life with others. Evenings and Weekend are the time religiously given to dreams and aspirations of life, that seem to have little to do with a life in Christ with others. The myth and lie of secular humanism has been swallowed by many Christians who console themselves with the axiom ‘I don’t need to go to church to be a christian’. Whilst in the rest of their life, they give themselves regularly and at great expense to the things that make up the rest of their lives.

No-one asserts vigorously “I don’t need to go to a football match, or watch football to be a football fan”. We know that logic is nonsensical for the rest of life, yet all to often apply it to the practice of the Christians faith.

Telling Stories: The unique problems and possibilities of Charismatic Evangelical Worship

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:38:00 +0100

I am woefully behind on completing my paper for the Society of Vineyard Scholars event that takes place later this April. My abstract and outline for my paper are below.

Abstract

My paper addresses the current situation of where Evangelical belief and worship practice is understood by many, as intrinsic to and giving rise to the most pathological practices of late capitalist society. Within this Evangelical worship is often viewed as the apogee of this problematic; something irredeemable and to be turned away from. My own denomination is often cited as an example of such worship practices. I suggest that despite its many culpabilities, Evangelical worship, and in particular that of my own denomination as Charismatic Evangelicals, offers the greatest potential to remedy and respond to these problems.

My paper establishes the need for an insiders re-telling of Evangelicals in relationship to Capitalism to understand these pathologies, and as a re-parative act. I suggest such a narration is well made through the methods of Charles Taylor’s social imageries and Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities. Then with the work James K.A Smith I show how concrete worship practices within Evangelical social imaginaries, have set up pathological resonances with late capitalism, perfecting the practices of the market place.

I then propose how we might deploy Oliver O’Donovan’s ‘four movements of the Christ event’ as an Evangelical social imaginary. Such a social imaginary is thoroughly Evangelical, able to work with the logic of Evangelical worship practices and resist the pathologies of late capitalism. Here I make my claim for the unique potential of Evangelical worship and of how my own charismatic Evangelical Worship might be able to powerfully and constructively respond to the very problems it has caused.

Rick Warren's son dies aged 27

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:44:14 +0100

Sad news that Rick Warren’s son Matthew committed suicide this weekend. Copy of letter Rick Warren sent to his church family is here.

May our prayers, love and support be with the Warrens and their church community.

Right Now Media: great new discipleship video streaming service

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:34:29 +0100

Very comprehensive streaming video resource library from rightnowmedia.org. It might seem a little pricey, but if people in our churches were using it regulary it would be very cost effective for training. Also people could subscribe together through their church for access.

I’ve asked for a demo and will take if for a spin and then review it more here.

Home for good: the UK church making a difference

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 07:44:10 +0000

The Home for Good campaign, spearheaded by Care for the Family, CCPAS and Evangelical Alliance, is encouraging and equipping churches to make a difference to the lives of children in care.

There is a crisis in the UK. There are 4,600 children waiting for adoption, and 9,000 more foster placements are desperately needed. Together, we’re in contact with 15,000.

Imagine what would happen if one family in each of these churches decided to foster or adopt, and other families in their church wrapped around them to offer support? Find out more at www.homeforgood.org.uk

Now this is amazing….

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:00:44 +0000

Now this is amazing….

There is a very different kind of Pope in town

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:25:00 +0000

There is a very different kind of Pope in town:

In a sudden announcement this morning from the Holy See, Pope Francis has yet again turned Vatican protocol on its head – shredding the earlier plan of beginning the Easter Triduum in St Peter’s Basilica, the new pontiff has instead opted to go to a juvenile prison in Rome to celebrate Holy Thursday’s Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, at which he’ll wash the feet of 12 inmates…