faith forward 2014

framing a converstionlaunching a revolution

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This CartoonChurch.com cartoon by Dave Walker originally appeared in the Church Times

The Universal Unwritten Sunday School Curriculum:

1. We want you to be a good child and church-goer.2. To be a Christian is to believe certain teachings.3. We (the church) are here to teach the correct interpretation of the Bible.4. Jesus told us how to be nice, be successful, and go to heaven.5. Because God is watching, you should be very careful (and afraid).6. We are sinners and need forgiveness.7. You love God by being a good child and church-goer.

What’s missing today is a high-quality discourse on rethinking the design and evolution of the entire system from scratch.

- Otto Scharmer

Death Resurrection

Burial

Letting Go Letting Come

Letting Be

A Revolutionary Children’s Ministry Curriculum:1. We want to help you become a life-long follower of God in the way of Jesus.2. To be a Christian is to join Jesus in seeking justice for all, peace for all, and joy for all.3. God is greater than anyone can explain or imagine.4. Jesus gave us good news of a better way to be human, individually and together.5. Because God loves (likes) you perfectly, you don’t have to be afraid.6. We all make mistakes, God forgives, and we can learn from our mistakes.7. You love God by loving all creation with God.

1. We want to help you become a life-long follower of God in the way of Jesus.

Disciple - life-long learner.Anticipating stages.Listening to “testimonies” - stories of faith.Telling stories of what you’re learning now.Opt-out option, with an opt-back-in escape clauseJesus - the Word of God with a unique and needed message and example

2. To be a Christian is to join Jesus in seeking justice for all, peace for all, and joy for all.

Romans 14:17 - For the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of justice, peace, and

joy in the Holy Spirit.

Training a new generation of contemplative activists/ reflective practitioners

Joining Jesus - “follow me”

Goal: Christ-like people

Kids as agents of mission in their worlds....

3. God is greater than anyone can explain or imagine.

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The Bible is the family scrapbook showing how our ideas of God have grown and changed through time ... and we are part of that unending conversation.

Isn’t it confusing that there are so many different understandings of God, when only one can be right?

Isn’t it confusing that there are so many different understandings of God, when only one can be right?

Isn’t it wonderful that we live in a time when so many are developing fresh ways of imagining God?

Isn’t it confusing that there are so many different understandings of God, when only one can be right?

Isn’t it amazing that Jesus opens up

a beautiful window into God’s heart?

Isn’t it wonderful that we live in a time when so many are developing fresh ways of imagining God?

4. Jesus gave us good news of a better way to be human, individually and together.

How to be human in a world of ...

-- Violence, war, conflict, hatred, weapons of mass destruction, religious hostility

-- Global climate change, overconsumption, toxification, ecological destruction, greed, sea level

rise, extinction of species, soil depletion, waste

-- Poverty, mass migration, 1% vs. 99%, growing gap between elites and masses, bought elections,

political corruption, unaccountable corporations, vulnerable minorities ... and majorities.

Good news of the kingdom of God ...

The world as God dreamsit to be ...

Ecosystem of God

Community of God

God’s circle of friendship

5. Because God loves (likes) you perfectly, you don’t have to be afraid.

5. Because God loves (likes) you perfectly, you don’t have to be afraid.

5. Because God loves (likes) you perfectly, you don’t have to be afraid.

6. We all make mistakes, God forgives, and we can learn from our mistakes.

-- The art of failing wisely and well

-- The joy of being wrong

-- The joy of receiving and giving grace

-- Not a forgiveness market, but a whole grace economy

7. You love God by loving all creation with God.

7. You love God by loving all creation with God.

What is God’s stance toward all creation?Damning hostility?

Saving love?

Hell

Salvation

History/

The world

Fall

HeavenEden

Hell

Salvation

History/

The world

Fall

HeavenEden

Minor Adjustment 1: Inclusivism

Salvation

History/

The world

Fall

HeavenEden

Minor Adjustment 2: Universalism

Salvation

History/

The world

Fall

Heaven

Eden

Is it time for a paradigm shift?

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Exodus: Liberation & Formation

Exodus: Liberation & Formation

Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation

Exodus: Liberation & Formation

Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation

Isaiah: Peaceable Kingdom - Justice and Mercy - Beloved community

Exodus: Liberation & Formation

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Isaiah: Peaceable Kingdom - Justice and Mercy

Stories in conversation ...

David, Goliath, and the Temple

Two Arks

Pharaoh, Hagar, Solomon

Joshua, Jesus, and the Canaanites

Ezra versus Ruth

Jacob, Esau and Prodigal Son

7. You love God by loving all creation with God.

Training children and youthto become protagonists (reflective

practitioners/contemplative activists)in the story of God’s healing love

for all creation.

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Fr. Vincent Donovan:

Religion is our own creation. Its horizons are necessarily limited to our horizons. Since it is our creation it will serve us. In a time of social, political, and economic upheaval, we look to it as that one, solid, taken-for-granted basis to our lives. It leads us to cling to the forms and structures with which we are familiar and which we have found comforting. At the dying of an age and the birth of a new one, religion will be in the forefront of those institutions clinging desperately to that immovable rock of unanalyzed assumptions.

But revelation shatters that rock, disturbs our horizons, presents a God who is not like us at all, a destabilizing and surprising God who cannot be used to justify all our projects; instead, One who asks us questions we do not want to hear. (The Church in the Midst of Creation, p. 118)

Never accept and be content with unanalyzed assumptions, assumptions about the work, about the people, about the church or Christianity. Never be afraid to ask questions about the work we have inherited or the work we are doing. There is no question that should not be asked or that is outlawed. The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all. (Christianity Rediscovered, 146)

Critical CommunitiesDangerous Conversations

Movements

Revolutions

Transformed Institutions

framing a converstionlaunching a revolution

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