Tag Archives ⇒ northwest

Quaker Emergent Church Planting

May 4, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Over on the Evan­gel­i­cal side of Friends is “Sim­ple Churches”:www.simplechurches.net, a move­ment of “organ­ic” church plant­i­ng. It’s a project of Harold and Wendy Behr, record­ed by North­west Year­ly Meet­ing and now work­ing with Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west. The core val­ues are ones I could cer­tain­ly sign off on: Lead­er­ship over Loca­tion, Min­istry over Mon­ey, Con­verts over Chris­tians, Dis­ci­ples over Deci­sions, Peo­ple over Prop­er­ty, Spir­it over Self, His King­dom over Ours. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like their site’s disclaimer:
bq. As your peruse the links from this site please rec­og­nize that the Truth reflect­ed in essays are often writ­ten with a “prophet­ic edge”, that is sharp, non com­pro­mis­ing and some­times rad­i­cal per­spec­tive. We believe Truth can be received with­out “curs­ing the dark­ness” and encour­age you to reflect upon find­ing the “can­dle” to light, per­son­al­ly, as you apply what you hear the Lord speak­ing to you. In Body life, often the most pow­er­ful oppo­nent of the “best” is the “good”.
They’re lead­ing a con­fer­ence next month in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, with mem­bers of Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. How tempt­ing is this?

h3. See also:
* “Emer­gent Church Move­ment: The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and Quak­er Renewal”:/Quaker/emerging_church.php

Evangelical Friend’s Take on the Postmodern Church

March 1, 2004
· Martin Kelley

I’ve long been curi­ous about whether any­one in the Evan­gel­i­cal branch of Friends has been fol­low­ing the “emer­gent church” move­ment. Now I find that Bruce Bish­op , for­mer Youth Super­in­ten­dent of North­west Year­ly Meet­ings, has writ­ten a primer called Post­mod­ernism: Taste and See that the Lord Is Good
bq. “Post­mod­ernism” – we see that label bandied about quite a bit these days. And like the once-frequent phrase “Gen­er­a­tion X,” post­mod­ernism is often seen as anti-Christian and some­thing that the church needs to fight. I would beg to differ.
I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like the term “post­mod­ern,” as the philo­soph­i­cal and pop-culture def­i­n­i­tions almost com­plete­ly con­tra­dict one anoth­er, but he’s talk­ing phi­los­o­phy, so MTV watch­ers should lis­ten past the words. (Bish­op is in good com­pa­ny in his con­tin­ued use in the term: “Here’s Jor­dan Cooper”:http://www.jordoncooper.com/2004_03_01_archives.html#107896665936703076 and “Bri­an McLaren”:http://www.emergentvillage.com/index.cfm?PAGE_ID=797 talk­ing about the prob­lems with the term and their expla­na­tions of why they’re still using it).
I real­ly _really_ hope Bruce Bish­op writes a follow-up address­ing how Friends might relate to this move­ment (“see my thoughts here”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/emerging_church.php).

North by Northwest

October 27, 2003
· Martin Kelley

One of the joys of the web is that you can think you’ve seen every­thing and then sud­den­ly stum­ble across some­thing new. This hap­pened to me this morn­ing with “West by Northwest”:westbynorthwest.org, a great web-only pub­li­ca­tion focused on pro­gres­sive issues in the Pacif­ic North­west. Orga­nized as a ecu­meni­cal project by area Quak­ers, it’s a jour­nal of “arts & let­ters, ecol­o­gy, and peace & social jus­tice.” I espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend their “Voic­es of Peace”:http://westbynorthwest.org/artman/publish/peace.shtml selection.