Thanks Terence I'll be quick because ive got a fair bit on the plate today, perhaps later tonight or tomorrow I'll enter into a more detailed explanation.
a) since when is christianity / belonging to a church about a mutually accountable relationship? The whole premise of the Incarnation and Easter is that its not about being mutually accountable, that this is not possible. Jesus told us that we are to love our enemies because thats what we do. Not because its about being mutually accountable In participation i see a need for mutual accountability, but not in belonging. b) I really meant belonging rather than participation. The Church has always confused the two, belonging and participation. Participation... "Ahhh Belinda's turned 18, perhaps she'd like to be a Youth Worker" "Ahhh Matthew's a musician, perhaps we could use him in the band" "Accountant? How about we use you on the finance and property committee?" Belonging is different... "Sam, want to come over for tea?" "Hey Jim, how has your week been? what kept you busy?" "A couple of us are thinking of going to the football, since you've been wandering around in your <enter club name> gernsey on occasions we were wondering if you'd like to come along" "Would you like to come back home with us after church for lunch? Meet my family and a couple people from church?" c) What our congregations need, and what is causing many of them to really struggle at the present time, is to understand that we are a community and that I don't just turn my belonging on and off because I don't like something. I think this might be a seperate issue for a couple of reasons. i) Its about how Congregations are members of a bigger thing, as a congregation/Presbytery there needs to be an understanding of the structure/relationship... Also in that I'm wondering when the last time the Presbytery, Synod or Assembly invited the congregations involved in these issues "over for lunch" and gave them the feeling that they "belong" rather than we were after something, ie we wanted them to participate instead of belong. ii) People are forgoing their "membership." I'd ask serious questions about if this is once again an issue of confusing belonging and membership... I can remove my mebership of a club, but its harder to remove my belonging from a community. Overall my issue is that we are very club-like in how we allow people to enter into the faith community. "People are far more willing to own us than we are to own them." Perhaps we need to remove the club-elements of our church and involve a more concentrated belonging way... So much for the short response, eh? For me its all about the words that we use and the way we interpret their meanings. Words like "Membership" invoke a beurocratic feel for me. Another possible formulae Beuroctatric = Seen as bad by community Membership = Beurocratic-type word Membership = Bad word to use with the communtiy Family or Community = Relationship based, belonging-type word Belonging = Feeling based word Feeling + Relationship = Seen as a good thing by community Confirmation and Baptism are expressions of faith to a Community that I belonged to and also to God, an expression of something that is highly important, to lower the acts to the level of being a pre-requisite for membership/belonging is doing something to the act that de-means it. I was confirmed to express my faith and make a statement, not to belong or become a member of this Church. Shalom Darren Wright Sinner Youth and Family Worker Canberra Region Presbytery --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.588 / Virus Database: 372 - Release Date: 13/02/04 ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
