That's me, not you reader. And the reason for my confusion? Well its probably all in my head. I started out this blog to tell people of our experiences in setting up BCLC and then I started doing the local leaders training and that is throwing up so many thoughts that I am not sure which I am blogging about at any one point.
I will stick to something that happened in the LLC for today and then post a BCLC post later (it's a good one btw so do come back to read).
Well we were on a day looking at Pastoral care just over a week ago. Brilliant day run by a brilliant man, Jim Hollyman. If any of you have come across Jim on your travels you will know what I mean. His take on Pastoral care and the experiences he shared with us really made me think about the whole thing afresh.
It was more a side issue that I wanted to discuss today though. We were looking at someone's theory on the stages and ages of faith and I was saying something about how poeple of a certain age have become stuck in a certain stage and no matter what life throws at them they feel that their faith has never been, and will never be, altered by it. I pointed out that this was so different to my experiences and, I suspect, others of my generation for whom their faith is contantly challenged, thought about and reviewed or revised. We then discussed the usual poles in the church being liberals versus fundamentalists and therein comes most of the tension. It occured to me that what we have in the URC is the situation where we have a group that are dedicated (fundamental) to the reformed tradition (liberal) , in effect 'fundamentalist liberals'. They are certain that whatever happens church isn't going to encroach on their real lives. I know this is a over generalisation but how else can you explain how families with parents with the faith I describe manage to bring up children in such a way that they never darken the churches doorways for the rest of their lives? Could it be that the children see something hollow and not worth their time in the practices of their parents and want nothing more to do with it?
One of the main aims I have for BCLC is to take church from it's special 'golden hour' on a Sunday and try to make it more a part of people's everyday lives. This doesn't mean just giving old people somewhere for a cup of tea or divorced parents a place to see their kids (as important as these services obviously are) it's about giving people the chance to explore how a belief in God and faith in the teachings of Jesus can really impact their lives to the good.
When I was a teenager I used to go to Jim's house with my friends on a Sunday evening and we talked about all sorts of 'issues'. This made a massive impression on me and it is something I have missed in the intervening years. So now with BCLC we are giving poeple the chance to do the same.
So Jim, thanks, I owe a lot of this to you.
Tags: belief, local leaders, Religion
May 6, 2006 at 8:57 am
Stages of faith and how people see their faith can be viewed as a generation thing, but I guess it’s also important to realise we are all different , and that’s not always a bad thing.
Some people, young or old, are happy when challenged, to explain their faith, to openly discuss it, or in my case to question it regularly!Others see it as ‘private and personal’ and feel uncomfortable when asked a s basic question like ‘What does having faith mean to your life?’
When we ran the Emmaus course 15 months ago, we started off with 20 or so and ended up with about 12 on the Sunday evening and 4 more during the day, the others deciding it wasn’t for them. For those of us that did complete the course it gave us a fantastic opportunuty to talk about our faith and share with others as we journeyed. So Emmaus 2 will start hopefully in September and for those who are willing to, our faith journey will progress further. We could view this as disappointing, given that we have about 50-60 members, so does that mean they have thei faith ’sorted’? Are they spiritual enough? Are they simply not interested? No, numbers are not relevant here, it’s more about offering the opportunity for those that want it.
May 8, 2006 at 6:30 pm
I sort of agree but the problem I have is that most of what churches do is aimed at the people who are settled and contented with their ‘faith’. We are missioning to the wrong people, we are preaching to the converted and, in the main, doing it very badly.
November 4, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Alot of confusion in the Churches is they have gotten away from scripture, they are teaching false Doctrines.
For example if you traced the foundations of the churches and how they received there doctrines you will see the following.
The Cathoic church is a mixture of Christainity and Paganism, you can trace it back to 312 AD, THE Catholic church knows it is wrong, but they still do it, they are comfortable with it, the mormons rewrote there own bible based off the claims of Joesph smith and his dream in the late 1800’s, Charles Tazz Russle who founded the Jehova witness started a church off his opinion, Bible cleayl states do not add to or take away from his word, God elected 40 authors to write the scriptures and John of Patmos being the last, everyone who was elected by God also was executed.
Follow the scriptures and God will see that you will not be confused!