Joe's Discussions
busy-ness and getting in the way
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Started this discussion. Last reply by Patti D. Apr. 11, 2008.
Joe's Page
Profile Information
- Location:
- Coventry, England, UK
- About Me:
- OK, who am I.
My name is Joe, I am 30-something (I gave up counting a while back) I live in a 3 bedroom terrace house in a post-industrial city in the middle of England. I have two degrees in Environmental Science and I have been working for a number of years on an ethical clothing co-operative called Freedom Clothing Project.
Basically FCP aims to go do the things that others can't or won't. To risk the unprofitable in search of the greater good, to make mistakes, hoping, yearning to build a better world.
We went to Palestine and started working with a T-shirt factory in Bethlehem. We bought back some organic cotton clothing we had made there, and although we haven't been particularly successful, we have been able to persuade other people to consider working there. One reasonably sized brand is now exporting regularly from the same factory, which feels like a success to us.
We also have a relationship with a small group of Sudanese refugees scratching a living in Cairo, Egypt and we are starting to think about working with Palestinian and/or Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan.
If that sounds impressive, believe me, it isn't particularly. We've made a lot of mistakes, some of them pretty big and we constantly struggle to make best use of the limited funds we have, not to mention the mountain of clothing we've bought but can't sell.
My background is from middle and mildly charismatic evangelicalism, but my main theological influences have been Ron Sider, Gandhiji, Dave 'Christi-anarchy' Andrews, Jesus and the minor OT prophets. My theology is essentially utilitarian - if it has no obvious practical use, it probably is not worth worrying about.
I've been married to my wife for 8 years - she is a statistics academic in one of the best universities in the UK. We have a 7 year old daughter who is into playing the recorder (is that called something else in the USA?) and practising netball. She is a bit too short to reach the net at the moment, but that doesn't hold her back.
And generally our lives are reasonably comfortable. Time drifts along as we do the things we need to do. We have struggled to find a church where we fitted-in for many years, in the end resorting to attending the closest and getting stuck in. But I'm knackered and I'm looking for more than the 'quick salvation sandwich and cup of sancti-tea' which we consume for an hour on Sundays and forget for the rest of the week. Church is broken, and we're so caught up in it that we don't even notice. Singing songs and sitting in pews has become an end in itself, and IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE LIKE THIS.
So we're taking a break, we're thinking how to get back to the authentic Christianity which demands no less than total sacrifice.
Finally, I am argumentative and opinionated. Please do not take offence if I challenge your words.
- Website:
- http://nosmokings.blogspot.com/
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shalom,
Leon
Of course there is a professional class of clergy that breeds a consumerist and lazy ethos in Institutional churches; in my view that does not mean we burn our New Testaments and start over since we know better than Christ, the Apostles and the church of the first 3 centuries of our common history.
It may be a "reductio absurdum" but if parents are poor parents and abuse their children or the children simply turn out badly do we abolish parenthood and the family? Or, do we strive to be the best parents and families we can be in spite of the abuses? Maybe the parent/child/family analogy only underscores your concerns and I should have used a different model but I think you can see the underlying principle.
Personally, I despise the Institutional Church so deeply that I must repent of sin regarding it frequently, still, Jesus wept over "sheep without a shepherd" and proclaimed the good news among them. I have decided not to run to a house church near me or withdraw to some idealistic ivory tower from which I can lob mortars at the IC but rather to embrace the tension of serving within it. And, for the time being we're able to keep our noses a little above the poverty line in doing so.
On a personal note, for 20 years my wife's profession has made it possible for me to serve in areas where we never could have, even with me working on the side so to speak. The bottom line is that even though I resonate with your concerns to this day I cannot do what I do with integrity if I tear the pages out that people abuse or misunderstand.
I've done volunteer pastor/teacher type ministry, I've done what we call bivocational new church planting and restart/revitalization ministry and I've served in a couple settings where I didn't "need" to work at a job outside the church I served.
Here's the condensed answer; all believers are the ekklesia or called out ones, no distinctions there plus theres the "body part" teaching in the epistles; then we have the model of the church being given apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor/teachers as specific ministries within the church and along with all the other "charismata" or grace gifts all of which are for the building up of the church and the equipping of the saints for the common good [syndicalist anarchism at its very best].
As a pastor/teacher all being paid does is free me up to serve more people in broader ways than if I was working on the side. A group of people voluntarily and modestly provides for my needs and my contribution to the community, both the church and beyond, is to serve their needs. This is not unlike communes where there are people that tend to the labors needful within the community and people that go out and make some cash for the community while all share in the labors and the fruits of those labors, as a pastor my labor is "in house" so to speak.
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