4 thoughts on “Emerging from a desert place”

1. Romans 14:23:
   But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

   To me, the second half of this verse (which seems to fit well with the rest of the Gospel), shows that we shouldn’t be here to try out our clever ideas, but we should be willing to retreat to our limited faith and grow our faith from where we are at. This sounds like a desert place because it means giving up our traditions, assumptions, opinions etc.

   Perhaps the church has been a desert, but it has been a desert full of skyscrapers (man’s idea of what to do) rather than a lush oasis (of God’s provision)?

2. Sorry for the length of this… hopefully it will make some sense..

   The great movements in church history were accompanied by great sacrifice, death and accusations of heretic nature. Now it would be good to think that in the 21st century culture has moved away from this way of being. The desert fathers / mothers headed out into the desert because the Roman culture had imposed a Christian state that didn’t seem very God centred to them. Peligius the great British theologian and celtic pioneer and Practitioner was denounced as a heretic, St Francis was relegated as being mad etc, these people and others contributed to major shifts in the church. I feel that recent Church movements- new churches etc have been ‘fresh expressions’ of the same structure and basically the same theology, and many of these have either imploded or split again and again which often seems to be based on the power / ego of the leader.

   I remember engaging with the alternative movement in the 1990’s and the question was asked what are we alternative too? Were we just being creative? Or was something more significant happening? I think something significant was happening, the beginning of questioning. In my mind the Nine O’clock service in Sheffield were doing some amazingly creative and primary theological restructuring which I personally found extremely powerful and challenging. Unfortunately the internal structure of power was abusive. So it was theologically creative and raw but flawed because individual ego structures and need for power were not changed or challenged.

   My sense is that we need to let the present form of Church die and grieve and allow a time of grief. My sense of something new emerging will include addressing the following issues….

   1. Embracing the feminine. The Church is rooted in a patriarchal system and is based on masculine power structures. My question for the emerging church is Where are the women leaders / guides – perhaps we need some good midwives to give birth new a new church ?? (not necessarily female but feminine) Most of the voices from the emerging church seem to be masculine.
   2. Embracing our Shadow and letting go of the old. The desert leads individuals to do battle with ego, power and selfishness or the inner demons. To create something from a new consciousness, we have let the old consciousness go.. For something really new to emerge something internally has to die. Before we can be born again, we first have to die!
   3. Moving form head to heart. The modern church is rational and head / book centred (masculine centred) – creating an avoidance of the heart and the here and now. Heart and feelings lead us to feel out of control and the head keep us in control –

   Finally an important quote for me in this area

   We must try to understand the meaning of the age in which we are called to bear witness. We must accept the fact that this is an age in which the cloth is being unwoven. It is therefore no good trying to patch. We must rather, set up the loom on which coming generations may weave new cloth according to the pattern God provides

   Mother Mary Clare SLG

3. Richard… I have posted some thought in response to your comment and link here…
   http://markjberry.blogs.com/way_out_west/2006/10/here_there_or_e.html

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