thoughts from the nickosphere

A new year lays invitingly before us like a newly fallen field of snow, daring us to make our tracks, full of a multitude of possibilities.

besides plunging recklessly and sometimes thoughtlessly into the future, merely repeating old patterns, we can give ourselves the chance to consider the tracks we want to lay down in this new year, and maybe determine some of the tracks we definitely do not want to lay down! those tracks usually comprise a mix of exciting possibilities towards which we look, but also ominous consequences we would dearly love to avoid. Traditionally this is a time to review priorities for the coming year, commitments we have made, allegiances to confirm or deny. I guess the most common form of this activity is the making of New Year’s Resolutions. The making of them is always comparatively easy; it’s the keeping that is the problem.

The commitments we make as followers of Jesus can sometimes share some of the same characteristics of these resolutions, easy to make, difficult to deliver on. We all need help and encouragement if we are going to make the changes that we see as being necessary in our lives. We all need people who will support us in our commitments, rather that persuading us to renege on them. For followers of Jesus the church should be that primary supportive community. Not church as institution or club, but church as reasonably functional family. A family who will be there for us with unconditional love, and for whom I will be there to play my part. Not a consumer-producer relationship, but an interdependent one where we are intimately and personally involved. Many of us are having to deal with experiences of church which was far different from the ideal I describe, and the reaction is often to disconnect or to maintain only a vague sentimental connection, this response is seldom satisfactory either to the individual or the community. One of the things all of us will have to take seriously as part of the emerge community this year is what are we individually willing to contribute if we value our participation in it. Emerge will be six years old this year. what shape will it take? what will it look like? These questions call each of us to serious thought and conversation, as together we develop answers.

I have recently started reading a book by one of my favourite authors, Eugene H. Peterson, (he’s the one who translated the old & New Testament into The Message paraphrase). The book is “The Jesus Way” and is subtitled, “a conversation on the ways that Jesus is the way.” You can read the introduction and the first chapter here. I am finding it to be a really stimulating book which addresses some of the real obstacles we have to overcome if we are to not capitulate to the dominant consumer culture, and live out a totally consumerised version of following Jesus which may not end up being a true following. I think that it is a book that many of us could do with reading and discussing the issues it raises. So have a read of the intro and decide if you would like to be part of a reading group to read and discuss this book together. Whether or not we read the actual book, I believe the issues it raises are pertinent for all of us, and are worth considering together as a community. so in the coming weeks and months we will be using the shape that Peterson gives us to guide our Sunday evening gatherings.