Romans 12:13
(From the LB)
Rhythm and Ritual
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of finding rhythms, and of the important balance between rhythm and spontaneity. Today I thought I’d bring you some of the inspiring thoughts of urban theologian Paul Grant:
...Rhythm and Ritual. The two words have essentially the same idea behind them. Both describe an event, or pattern of events, which happen at regular intervals in order to facilitate something bigger to happen. Rhythm is usually heard in a musical context and ritual in a religious context, but it seems to me the word ritual has very negative connotations, and that actually what we are trying to achieve as Christians is not Ritual, but Rhythm.
Rhythm is organic, it is natural. Without rhythm, the orchestra will not play beautiful music. Without rhythm, the dancer cannot stay in time. Without rhythm, the farmer doesn't know when to sow and when to harvest. Rhythm is breathing and heartbeats. It is sunrise and sunset. Rhythm is seasons and rainfall. Rhythm is beauty and growth. When we tune into God, when we dance to his rhythm, we grow. When we breathe in and breathe out in holy rhythm, we discover God...
...This is what it is like for us and God. God has set the beat. We may all respond to the rhythm in different ways. Some of us may decide that our beat might be to pray three times daily. Some of us might want to spend half an hour singing to God every day. We need to find out for ourselves how we can engage with God, when we do that, we contribute to the great holy rhythm and we grow with God.
Ritual is what happens when we forget why we are doing something; when the thing that we are doing becomes the reason for doing it. Do you come to church on a Sunday? Why? Do you come to YF on a Sunday night? Why? Do you read your bible, or pray or sing? Why? When we lose our motivation, when we do something because that's what we've always done, or because we think we should, or because someone else tells us we should, our actions become empty ritual. God doesn't want ritual. God created us to dance.
Philippians 2: 3-4
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
12 Marks of New Monasticism
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.
May God give us grace by the power of the Holy Spirit to discern rules for living that will help us embody these marks in our local contexts as signs of Christ’s kingdom for the sake of God’s world.
1 Peter 4: 8-9
Dietrich's Day Off
"...the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this..."
"Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.
By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hinderance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intetntions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the cirlce of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily. And is not what he has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together - the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship."
1 Peter 1: 22
You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart.
Dietrich's Dream
Dietrich Bonhoeffer had watched the silent compliance of his church in Nazi Germany. He coined the term 'New Monasticism'.
'...the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this...'
Extract of a letter written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his brother Karl-Friedrick on the 14th of January, 1935.
(Source: John Skinner, Northumbria Community).
1 Peter 2: 12
Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.
Thoughts from Brian 3
Final blog from Brian Heasley on what can go wrong in Christian Communities of all kinds, and what makes it better.
Atrophic communities
I was listening to a talk by a great friend of mine called Graham, who when he was young had a really bad motorbike accident, this led to his arm being in plaster for many months. The doctors became very concerned that his arm would suffer from atrophy, actually I think it did.
Graham likened communities that didn't connect with the worlds they where placed in to a limb suffering from atrophy!
Atrophy is the partial or complete wasting away of a part of the body. In the case of his arm it was what is known as disuse atrophy!
Interestingly if something isn't used it partially or completely wastes away. I wonder if communities can become atrophic if they don't flex their community engagement muscles? Or in old school terms communities that aren't evangelistic will waste away partially or completely.
Resting inside the plaster caste of the churches we may have created are the rotting disused limbs of a once vibrant, fit and healthy body.
Interestingly atrophy can be turned around by exercise.
Just more thoughts, on a roll here......
You can check out Grahams talk HERE
Thoughts from Brian 2
Thanks again, Brian
More on community living
Community is such a broad word, it comes in so many different forms and we all experience community in a variety of ways throughout our lives. The communities of large and small families, the communities we experience in school, or at work, the communities we meet in pubs the communities that are villages or towns. All sorts of community.
Anyway, what am I looking for in community? Which in itself is a strange way of phrasing it. Instantly the question becomes about what I want not about what I can contribute.
If I approach community as a consumer and not a contributor it will never really leave me with any sense of fulfillment.
1.
A place where I can be myself but not a place where myself won't be challenged to change. Although I need to be accepted for who I am, I need to feel secure enough to be vulnerable and allow people in, to challenge and help me grow.
2.
True community will not allow you to be invisible. Which is scary. In the condensed forms of christian community I have experienced here in Ibiza invisibility is the one thing I have found different from being part of a larger church community, when it's small you can't hide.
3.
Community with a purpose. One of the things that gives our community life is its sense of outward focus. We live for something beyond ourselves. A community that just exists to worship and pray and feed the christian sheep, will ossify and lose ground. The momentum of mission will sustain christian communities.
4.
Community need an emphasis on growth, which is almost the same as purpose. Although you can get a community that is involved in social justice and has great purpose without a sense of looking to be added to. A community that is seeking to make disciples is a true christian community.
5.
A prayerful community, this goes almost without saying. Although we can get so caught up in the work that we forget to pray. I heard one christian leader say he thought we could do 85% of what we do with the holy spirit!! A prayerful community should lead us to become a Holy Spirit dependent community. I love liturgy but this is also the thing that scares me about liturgy, the words without the spirit can become dead and just vane repetition. Even daily rhythms of prayer can be become dead lifeless acts and if we are not careful we get a form of pride that comes from us being repetitive and persistent.
6.
A generous community, a willingness to share and give. A willingness to sacrifice. If a community is generous this will affect its outlook in so many ways. When you come together instead of it being about your needs a generous community will be looking out for others needs. Generosity has so little to do with money and so much to do with heart.
7.
A community has to learn to rest. A restful community will give space for people to rejuvenate and truly live. I have been in churches where everyone is so busy they just don't appear rested, the programme grinds them into the ground. Sabbath for most churches can be a very busy time. The art of rest is something we must perfect if we are going to be truly counter cultural. We live in a cash rich time poor society, community must give people time, value time and allow people to take time out.
8.
A learning community, we must always have a willingness to learn. A community that can't be told from outside that it needs to change or thinks it has got it all right is in danger of being arrogant. Yes we must be confident in the path we have chosen but we must marry that confidence with the humility to learn. Knowledge speaks and wisdom listens, we must be wise enough to listen. We don't have all the answers.
9.
Communities need mothers and fathers. Without the input and help of older wiser more mature people we will never grow up!
10.
Communities must love and keep loving, show grace and keep showing grace. We will never arrive we will always keep growing, evolving but we must do all this in the spirit of love. We can't sacrifice people along the way. Love has to be the centre if we keep loving we'll keep growing.
You may have noticed I haven't mentioned Jesus, well not by name, but He's there He's in all of these points without His example community wouldn't work.
Hebrews 10: 22-25
So let's do it—full of belief, confident that we're presentable inside and out. Let's keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let's see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.