I have just finished to read Reimagining Spiritual Formation, I was very pleased to be presented to Solomon Porch Community. Their description about their values and the journals of some members made me feel presented to them.
I sympathize with author’s uncomfort about doing church today with yesterday mind, I also think that I could not stand with regular church expression for 10 years, mainly here in São Paulo we still have a great need of new kind of Christian expressions that fit to our reality today (faith is the same, expressions may change).
I don’t know if I could get along with this community very well, but, as I have already told, I appreciated their efforts to find a community approach instead of applying today’s regular churching approach which somewhat are close to marketing and business administration. This effort made me think about how authentic I was when I used to ministry in church.
I have reinforced some general conceptions with this book. I am glad to find a community like SP that found their own life, and set their own history and personality, it is good SP reimagined how they would go and maintained a great respect for what have done in christian history, that is a very good example.
I am a lot eager to start a new history with a new community here; sometimes I think I have everything ready in my mind to apply in a new community, which is a great mistake. Though we must have very defined values to drive a community direction, community itself will set the path as long as needs and gifts show up.
This path will be better set if communities dare to create their own patterns. I think people are usually very lazy to discover their own path, they see examples and instead of getting principles, they read that as how-to-do church, applying models that fit another reality. That is why we have some good examples and lots of bad copies of these examples.
Monday, October 25, 2004
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1 comment:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on "Reimagining Spiritual Formation." It's interesting to hear your perspective on these emerging church issues and ideas! Keep it up!
Shalom,
Steve K.
http://www.knightopia.com/journal
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