I loved this list of advice from nakedpastor :

1. Lead leaderlessly. That is, lead in a non-leading kind of way. Serve. Step out of the leadership position continually. Perpetually. Create the vacuum for others to lead and serve.
2. Don’t go anywhere. No goal. No destiny. No vision. Keep it real and keep it present. You either serve the vision or you serve the people.
3. Don’t ever think of the “church” as some kind of entity ASIDE from the real flesh and blood people that constitute it. The church isn’t the entity, even though it wants to be and constantly endeavors to be.
4. Allow worship and expression of all sorts to be indigenous. Never think of worship as instruction. It is God-ward, not human-ward.
5. If prayer is always in the form of a song and never said or read, so be it.
6. Allow freedom of expression, even if it’s going to be weird, uncomfortable, and questionable. Judge it afterwards. Yes, when done with mutual respect, we do get used to this honest and authentic form of dialog and learning.
7. Let sinners play too.
8. Question everything.
9. Never be overly impressed with another person. No one is good but God alone.
10. Don’t be afraid to kill the mood. Always be honest and free, no matter how uncomfortable you might cause others to feel.

I especially liked number's 1, 6 and 8. As for 2, I agree that I'm over the vision thing, but I do think it's important to hold to 'values' and it may well be that some of those values are future-focussed. I also worry a bit about the 'serve the people' line since I think that's what too many churches do and become big clubs for members. Of course if you take the broadest possible approach to 'the people' then that's better , although I still think our values need to include an orientation toward serving the 'non-people' parts of creation too.

A few more values that have come to me (mostly while in the shower) over the last couple of days.

7. Journeying together. There's so many important allusions in this phrase. The idea of journey immediately says that we're not 'there'. Epistemic humility. A sense of movement. Journeying together implies mutuality and equality. It seems to speak of questioning together rather than telling someone else 'the answer' which I have (and have entirely correctly).

8. Following God in the Way of Jesus. This phrase which Emergent types seem to use highlights the Christian character of the Way, but also its praxis orientation. It also seems to leave open the possibility that others may (genuinely) be following God in other ways - a notion that I am quite comfortable with.

In a comment on my recent post about Institutions, I said that for me there was an important balance in being part of the institution but never feeling wholly comfortable as part of the institution. So I was interested to read Pete Rollins saying what seems like a similar thing in the Introduction of his new book, "The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief" (Peter Rollins), the preface and Introduction of which are available for free here. I'm now really looking forward to this book (to be released in June).

I said I was going to post about the Uniting Church, and still plan to do that, but I've just been having some thoughts I wanted to capture about the things I do (or would) value in Church life. These are partly triggered by beginning to read Diana Butler Bass' book, "Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith".

These thoughts are fairly unformed as yet, but are still central to my thinking at the moment.

1. Reaching back — reaching forward. I think it's really important to value the whole, historic Christian tradition. Too many churches have lost a sense of their place within the broader tradition and have jettisoned any link with history or tradition. But at the same time, the past cannot act as an anchor, blocking us from moving forward into the new future into which God is calling us. We must be churches of today and even tomorrow — not churches of yesterday. I think one of the most important tasks for leaders in the church is to enable that creative tension between tradition and newness, between consistency with past visions and struggling into new visions, enabling the Church with integrity to reach back and reach forward.

2. Graciousness. Grace is clearly at the heart of the Christian gospel — what we experience from God and what we are called to. But for me the word 'grace' has so much baggage. Talk of 'tough grace' and 'cheap grace', and countless sermons supposedly on grace which seemed rather weighted towards condemnation, have all combined to sully the word 'grace' for me. But I find that reframing the central thoughts with the word 'graciousness', helps me to regain the sense of gentle kindness, strong self-giving, and absolute acceptance which is (I think) what grace has always been about. And so for me, a church ought, above all, to be characterised by graciousness.

3. Acknowledging historic and communal wisdom, yet being bound only by the law of love. I don't like the anything goes approach. I think it's important to hear what past generations thought was healthy and appropriate and acceptable. I think it's important to work out principles of living and shared understandings in community. But in the end, something in me rebels any time one of these historical or communal pieces of wisdom is solidified; when they become rules or regulations. In the end I think that flexibility to move within the law of love in any given situation is not just important, it's vital.

4. Hospitality. From welcoming the stranger, to living with the other, to caring for the enemy, hospitality is central to the gospel and to what the Church is called to be.

5. Involving. Church should be all about the encouragement of, use of and experimentation with the gifts of all God's people. Worship should be the same. I am so over the whole 'sitting watching people up the front do stuff' thing.

6. Breaking down the secular/sacred divide. Seeing God in nature, in culture, in others of other faiths and no faiths. A positive view of God's world and the future God is calling it into.

I'm sure there's a bunch more, but I wanted to get these out there.

HT to an old colleague, Fernando Gros, for pointing to an interesting discussion on emergent-us and ThinkTank about the place of creeds (or otherwise) in the emergent church.

It's a big topic (as some of the comments and Track-Backs on the two sites demonstrate), but my own top-of-the-head response is that the distinction related to the functions of creeds is important. One of the strong emphases of emerging church is relationship and I wonder whether the reality is that the proper functioning of creeds is to guide us in relationship - with God and with our co–religionists. That being said, the question then becomes whether a (theoretical emergent) creed or statement of belief is likely to lead to a deeper or richer relationship with God or with our fellow travellers on the emerging journey.

Of course these things always come down to a judgement call, but my own sense is that for many emerging church people who have been shaped (or perhaps mis-shaped!) by a programmatic and propositional approach to relationship with God, a more apophatic or agnostic approach actually enables a new appreciation for God and a new richness of possibilities in the relationship.

Similarly, my instinct is that our current situation is much less shaped by a previous sense of Christian isolation - the so called 'fortress mentality' - in which a statement of shared belief acts as a cohesive force within a group which sees itself as in some senses 'against' the outside world. Instead the kind of cultural optimism, and sense of the Misseo Dei as being much wider than the work of the Church, which characterises much emergent thinking is (IMO) much more likely to find nurture and sustenance in approaches which are always open to new ways of finding / considering / imaging the divine, even if they are not entirely consonant with the language of many Christian creeds, be they 'modern' or 'catholic'.

What then of the question of the emerging church's catholic tendencies? I guess I want to have my cake and eat it too, by saying that while we deliberately identify ourselves with the faith community which has derived coherence from the ecumenical creeds, we can continue to say that we do not regard adherence to those creeds as a necessary self-descriptor.

But then again, I may be talking nonsense - it often happens before my first coffee. :-)