Pub church Brighton

An old friend of mine from vicar factory has been appointed to a new job in Brighton, and is being supported by the diocese to plant a new type of church in the city centre. They are meeting in a pub, and have a focus on the sort of people who would not normally go to church (sound familar?) They have a website here: Christ Church Brighton . Please pray for them - I am sure these first months will be hard but exciting.

Chaos Theology: Power

"The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!"
Friedrich Nietzsche.
A right theology of power understood through the Bible narrative and exercised in our real lives is the intention of this sermon. We all have mechanisms for dealing with the use and abuse of power, but I suspect that we don't always recognise them or express them coherently. Power, whether at work on the global scale or in our own relationships needs to be understood and used for good not evil. And Jesus astonishing relationship with his own power is a unique point of engagement with a world obsessed with power. This fourth talk in our chaos theology series can be found here. If you have comments or thoughts add them below.

An A to Z of Alternative Worship

This is a lovely piece of work on aspects of creative worship, even if it starts a bit cheesily. A is for Ambience, good. B is for Beanbags... hmmm.
Bible, bravery or brokenness would be my immediate suggestions. I like K is for kleptomania and G is for Graceful particularly.

Chaos Theology : Wealth

What are you worth? What is it that makes us rich? We are treading on dangerous ground when we raise questions about wealth and money, and a working theology of wealth is not going to be easy. But it is the subject that Jesus talks about more than any other than the kingdom of God itself, and our christianity is shallow if it doesn't effect our attitude to wealth.
The sermon in our series can be downloaded here. Comments and questions below!

Billboard Jesus

You might have spotted on the BBC website the new christmas poster campaign by the Churches Advertising Network continuing the revolutionary theme from the che guevara poster. There is a Q&A about it here. What do you think? Not your conventional christmas image. I am kinda liking it.

Meaning

The second sermon on our Chaos theology series, on the theme of meaning from last night can be found here

beingyourself.info

Jeremy just sent me the link to his new work site at beingyourself.info which is a fantastic looking mission project based on Psalm 139, and the toolbox page which explains how to use it. SGM (Scripture Gift mission) is apparently going through the process of reimagining its identity and methods to better serve the gospel in an information age. Exciting stuff.

Getting out there

'Start with Church and the mission will probably get lost. Start with mission and it is likely that the church will be found'

Mission shaped Church 2004

The subtext to our attempts to do real world theology this term is the conviction that we are to be an urban church, engaged with the lives and ideas that form our city. John Stott said many years ago that the work of proclaiming the Gospel required dual listening; listening to God, and listening to Culture. We intend to prioritise that this term and beyond.

One of the ways that will happen is through homegroups, where we are combining a series on the early church discovering its mission, with some recommended reading.

Below are links to some of the books we are suggesting. Have a flick through and choose one that appeals. If you have already read one of these perhaps try something else. Any other suggestions of good books?

Out of the Saltshaker A thoughtful and at the time groundbreaking approach to relational evangelism. The Shaping of things to come; fascinating and sometime uncomfortable work on church and mission. Emerging Evangelism John Finney's excellent book on theory and practice for 21st Century mission. Know and tell the Gospel. Australian John Chapman on good form with a clear and simple approach to telling the Gospel

Identity

The opening sermon of our Chaos Theology series is now online. The theme is identity. You can find the Beauty in the Breakdown video here and the sermon audio is here.[Sorry about the quality - working on that]

Chaos Theology

I am excited and a little nervous about our teaching programme for this Autumn. We are thinking about big issues. The principle behind it we introduced at the end of last term, that the next step for Church on the Corner is to step outward and to engage with the culture that we are part of. And to do that we need not only to understand the Gospel, but to understand our culture too.

This series, inspired by some of the central themes of life observed in art, philosophy, literature and film aims to both inspire and equip us to see what we believe worked out through the whole of our lives, and to be better equipped for dialogue.

Chaos theology is theology for the 21st Century, the belief that in the midst of all the mess and brokeness there is meaning, connectedness and hope.