gardening as a metaphor for the church
In my forthcoming essay on the next two mDNA components – Organic systems and communitas not community, I have been playing around with the gardening motif for leadership of faith communities.
Steve Addison posted up some interesting comments on the life cycles of movements and this paragraph caught my eye:
The Church is like a garden. New plants are sprouting. Others are growing and reproducing. Others are dying and decaying. Ultimately what matters is the health of the whole eco system rather than any one plant.
Read the whole post here
July 29th, 2005 at 8:54 am
stupid people and loud music - I found that in a lot of Uni Christian groups! I was a perfectly well-adjusted person with a strong Christian spirituality until I got involved in student Christian groups at Monash Uni. Not that I blame others for that, it was me that swallowed the rubbish I was fed.
That said, I have seen the most surprising people find faith through those groups. God works in mysterious ways.
I have more of a problem with certain churches in Melbourne that have 25-30 year olds without theology degrees calling themselves ministers, pastoring congregations of 500+ vulnerable youths, preaching to those youths or even worse allowing 21 and 22 year olds to preach to those kids. ESPECIALLY when those churches are part of a denomination that tends to emphasise the need for some kind of expertise if you’re going to preach. Now, I’m a fan of models of church that are non-hierarchical, where “power” is shared by “experts” and “non-experts” alike. BUT, if you MUST have a hierarchical church where people stand on a podium to preach, and a culture in which people look up to “leaders”, then only those capable of fulfilling that should be placed in that position. I’m yet to come across a 21 year old that’s actually capable of fulfilling the responsibilities that preaching entails.
August 8th, 2005 at 8:17 am
I came across this forum when I was looking for the definition of ‘wanker’ to confirm my own definition. It seems to me that the definition of a Church goer does not really fit into the way of thinking in UK, where a ‘wanker’ is a ‘tosspot’; an inadequate person who does silly, futile thing things to the annoyance of other citizens - the American way of ‘belonging’ to a church does not happen in UK, although I have seen the religous programmes on television - the rantings of the Pastors? is that the word? really scares me shitless - now, to me, they are wankers, and those influenced by with the brainwashing are wankers…Peter