Flippin Spam...

Even got to ma blog. Grrr.

Well... if anyone wants to buy some timber or get into the timber trade....

And- does anyone know how to remove unwanted comments from your blog? lol.

Tata for now. Busy busy with flat sitting, house hunting, job changing and work. Will have more to say and more time to say it after Greenbelt I'm sure!

Spirituality and Spiritual Development in Youth Work

Following on from the National Youth Agency's consultation on Spiritual Development and Spirituality in youth work, (http://www.nya.org.uk/shared_asp_files/uploadedfiles/21889bba-403e-4bb8-a93f-314bdbd41238_spiritualitybook.pdf) Young People Now is carrying a story about Portsmouth Youth Service who are exploring links between Spirituality, Emotional Intelligence and Mental Health. (http://www.ypnmagazine.com/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=full_news&ID=8030).

What do people think about this?

Is it good that Spirituality is taking on such a broad definition, and so being able to be accessible to everyone, without the term being value loaded and 'claimed' and argued over by different faith groups?

Or is this an example of how spiritual development is becoming more and more blurred into personal development, so much so that 'spiritual' loses it's meaning?

Touching the Void

I've been reading Touching the Void by Joe Simpson.





It's fab. It's an amazing story told from the point of view of Joe as he is climbing in the Andies with a friend when he falls and breaks his legs. After sacrificing his personal safety to try and rescue him his partner leaves him, thinking he is dead, leaving Joe to crawl for three days at high altitude through snow with no food or water.

I don't know why I found it so amazing, partly the Mountain background maybe, but more to do with the need for human companionship and support that was met in such an instrinsic way by the two climbers. Something about the imtimacy that is found by needing one another, and thinking that you've lost one another. Something about the human spirit that can actually find an amazing amount of strength in order to pull away an experience of almost certain death.

Expressions of Church

Jason's blog is also carrying a conversation about being post evangelical but not post charismatic.

I am a fairly intuitive creative expressive person, and the way that I am most able to express myself and be me in worship is in the gentle charismatic tradition (note the difference between this and charismania or classic pentecostalism). I like to experience God in worship, I like to pray in toungues, I like to wait on the power of God, I like to pray for others and work with laying on of hands and stuff. But what I can't stomach anymore is the fundamentalism and hardline evangelicalism that tends to go with this. The trouble I come across in finding somewhere to be home however is that I've never found theology that I'm comfortable with and expressions in which I can be myself under one roof.

It seems kind of ironic that in the reaction against the big conservative line (We're right, everyone else is wrong, we do everything 'by the book') one of the other things which has been lost is the intuitive experiencing of God and cathartic experiences of worship which is often found in charismatic worship.

I heard a fab talk by Dave Tomlinson at Greenbelt last year 'Is speaking in Tongues a Right Brain Experience'. For me I realised that when I speak in tongues I am expressing something very deep and personal that I don't have the words for... but I wouldn't necessarily make it a big mystical gift, I'd say it was me expressing myself... which in fact does make it a gift of God as in my book an expression of who I am is an expression of the life giving Spirit of God within me. When I've talked with friends in various places who are musicians they've compared this feeling to the part of themselves they express through playing an instument. I wonder sometimes if the same can go for a number of the spiritual gifts. For example, I am a naturally intuitive person, and when praying for friends in the charismatic tradition have often have 'words of knowledge'.

I'm not doing God or the miraculous down in all this, but to me it's all very similar to how I would opperate normally, and how others opperate without recognising it as a 'gift of the spirit'. It's just as Christians we've found a name for it. That's not to say it's not a gift from God or a miracle, coz Him living and breathing within us is a miracle, but maybe the greater miracle is how naturally this all happens?

Model of Church

Thanks Jason http://jasonclark.emergent-uk.org/ for this link to another of 'those silly quizes'. I guess I didn't see this one as quite so silly as model of church is something I'm asking myself loads of questions about at the moment.

You scored as Servant Model. Your model of the church is Servant. The mission of the church is to serve others, to challenge unjust structures, and to live the preferential option for the poor. This model could be complemented by other models that focus more on the unique person of Jesus Christ.

Servant Model		84%
Sacrament model		55%
Herald Model		45%
Mystical Communion Model		45%
Institutional Model		11%

What is your model of the church? [Dulles]
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