Worship Resources

For those of you who are trying out emerging worship there are a number of helpful sites. The first is an Australian Anglican site we have set up for sharing of emerging worship ideas at http://kailo.net/worshipideas/- its a good spot to upload your ideas for others to use and there are also helpful links.  One of the major contributors to this site is Rev’d Chelle Wade; Chelle is a creative worship curator who also has a site reviewing books about the emerging church and theology which you can find at http://reddresstheology.wordpress.com/.

There are also a number of books around: Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball is good as is The Art of Curating Worship by Mark Pierson. I will also be leading an Emerging Worship Stream at the NSTM ministry skills days this year if you want to join in a learning lab experience. Details are here.

You may also be interested in this innovative fresh expression in San Francisco called Reimagine.

Happy exploring!

Emerging Communities

As you can see the site has a new name. This desire to change the name of the game comes from a variety of factors that have all come together for me recently. They include:

• The realisation that in our diocese some congregations that already exist want to make the journey into becoming emerging communities … some of them have been going for a while and may not even fit the description of “fresh expression of church”. There are two ways of forming emerging churches. One is to start from scratch, the other is to move a current congregation toward emerging principles.

• the word “emerging” is already part of our diocesan vision. It is one of our six strategic directions.
• Emerging is a great word to sum up what we are on about because it speaks to
  • Emerging from the local context
  • Emerging from the tradition of the church
  • The creation of church as a divine process rather than our pre-conceived outcome
  • Doing theology rather than learning theology
  • Worship that emerges from the creativity of the gathered community
• the need to link in with what is happening in the U.S. In the States the term fresh expression is hardly used and its important to realise that this is a movement across the world. Despite some predictions to the opposite I think that the emerging church movement is still growing there.
• To fit in with this name change I have changed my job description to “emerging communities networker” and my hope is that this networking of emerging Anglican communities can strengthen with the sharing of worship resources, ideas, workshops and workers.

Pax,      John

Networking church

I think you may find Steve Collins article Network church on the  networked nature of emerging churches interesting reading. I was in Melbourne last week and found that the emerging church movement is alive and well and increasingly networked across groups and individuals and not just parish focused. It reminded me a bit of what we are trying to achieve with the Kailo centres.

For those of you interested in Alt worship we will be running monthly gatherings to model and experience Alternative worship at Islington next year. You can find more about Alt worship here.

 

Kailo Centres

We have named our outreach  spirituality/ministry centres “Kailo” after the old Indo-European word for wholeness. You can find the sites at http://kailo.net Each individual centre has its own sub-site and can be found as a link on the right hand side of the front page. The emphasis of the Kailo centres is on the living Christian faith in our everyday lives and so includes opportunities to express faith in moving meditations, art, science and ecology. Have fun exploring the sites! The Kailo centres will be looking to run a joint weekend exploring living our spirituality in March next year – details to follow.

Ministry & Spirituality Centres

Ministry centres have been a part of the life of our diocese in various forms over the years and we currently have number of centres from those open full time with staff, such as St Alban’s ministry Centre in Muswellbrook, op shops to church halls open for coffee mornings once a week. The parish of MICA is also looking at opening a spirituality centre soon in partnership with Samaritans and the diocese.

All these ministry centres provide great contacts with the community that we can continue to  build on to provide a base for fresh expressions of church. In order to help all our centres and potential centres to grow we are forming a network of ministry centres in the diocese with the following aims:

• to encourage, develop and find specialist staff who will run programs in the spirituality of physical fitness, art, music, ecology and personal development
• to share ideas and provide prayerful support to one another
• to build community as a base for courses Introducing Christianity and for forming local fresh expressions of church
• to develop links so that people can be involved in a connected ministry centre when they move around the diocese

If you would like to add engaging programs to a ministry centre in your parish or establish one then please post a comment. Or you may be interested in being part of a networking team.

I will develop a new page on this web site to list the exciting new workshops that are being developed which you may like to see run in your area.