Community?
At the risk of this blog becoming a quote repository, here's one that struck a chord today, as I tried to get into reading, whilst still feeling a bit "dentised out" after my extraction yesterday :
"Oddly many Christians find their fellow congregants play no more crucial a role in their daily lives than the people they walk past in the grocery store. They share a common experience from time to time and receive goods from the same organization but little else" (Doug Pagitt Reimagining Spiritual Formation, p28).
Speaks for itself I think. How do your or my experiences of church compare?

Extraction
After gold crowns before Christmas and emmergency trips from Cliff College, the saga of my tooth took a new twist today. It was still troubling me, so today the dentist decided it needed to come out. So I now have a large row of vacancies on one side of my mouth - it'll be few months before we can discuss replacement options!

Passion
Found myself dipping back into Kenda Creasy Dean's fantastic book"Practicing Passion" yesterday.
Full of good stuff, why youth ministry needs to be shaped by the "passion of Christ" (and I don't mean Gibson's movie!). Why "nice" youth ministry isn't enough.
Here's a quote that hit me again:
"A passionless church will never address passionate youth. It is highly questionable whether a passionless church addresses anybody, or if it is even a church in the first place...Passion both human and divine, challenges the language of modern rationalism and ushers in a way of life that subverts the basic assumptions of an anesthetic culture with therapeutic goals" (p69)

Discipleship & Leadership
Just doing some reading/thinking around discipleship for my next MA assignement.
Came accross this quote from Alan Hirsch's Forgotten Ways:
"the quality of the church's leadership is directly proportional to the quality of discipleship"

What he seems to be saying is that if you want to raise up leaders then you've got to do the discipleship thing well. But it could also be read in a way that says "churches get the leaders they deserve". Is that true? Or do "leaders get churches in thier image" or both - depending on who has the "power"?

(on a seperate note - anybody know what the deal is with Blogger's spell check? Seems to be not working - so sorry if this post has errors!!!)

The week that was
Another great teaching block at Cliff.
Good teaching, as well as good space for reflection, conversation, worship and ministry.
Lots of good stuff, although a session this moring on "Postmdern Discipleship" was particularly inspiring. Instead of rehearsing the usual arguments Phil Meadows focused on discipleship as participation in God, living in the Divine Embrace.

The picture on the left is the river in the picturesque town of Bakewell. My discovery of Bakewell was not so pleasant though, as it was where I needed to go for a emmergency dental appointment - apparently an infection under a tooth I had crowned a couple of months ago. Always amazes me how something so small can cause such distraction.

Back at Cliff
I'm back at Cliff College for my 4th intensive study week. It's the second "Leadership, Renewal and Mission" module: "Renewal: Spirituality and Discipleship"
I was greeted by snowy scenes from about junction 28 of the M1, but all cleared here now.
Looking forward to another challening and thought provoking week.