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
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