solomon's porch

one of the characters i met in nashville was doug pagitt - sadly we didn't get any long conversations but i think doug may be passing through london at some point to hang with tallskinnykiwi so hopefully we can chat more then. doug is involved in a missional community called solomons porch... lots of people at the emergent convention seemed to be in pretty standard churches as far as i could tell and i guess were at an early stage in the journey of rethinking mission and church for the emerging culture and trying to work out what to do with it. but solomons porch is definitely something edgier - an inspiring community...

one of the things about being delayed by a day at airports was that i read two books i was given - one of them was written by doug. it's called reimagining spiritual formation - a week in the life of an experimental church. what it actually does is lift the lid off solomons porch in a really helpful way. i found it an inspiring read. doug has got 6 members of the community to add comments from journals throughout the book and it really adds to the flavour. (i think it's actually a great companion book to the shaping of things to come - it seems to be a concrete example of the kind of missional communities envisaged by hirsch and frost). because it;s a story it's also an easy read...

i found it resonated with so many of the emphases i am passionate about - creative worship, engaging with and encouraging artists, engagement with cullture, creativity, concern for justice and the global church, hospitality... the book is one of the emergent line of publishing. i was alarmed to discover that zondervan who publish it are owned by rupert murdoch - not very emerging!!!!!! but we 'live after purity' and all that....

i am actually quite struck that four emerging church situations/communities that have grabbed my attention the most on this trip all have several things in common (the communities that karen ward, mark scandrette, geoff maddock, and doug pagitt are involved in respectively) -
they have deliberately moved to an area of a city that is poor/deprived
they have focused on relationships - meals, coffee, being there,
they have got stuck in to the local community
there is an engagement with artists and creativity
they are not doing 'evangelism' as such - just living stuff oput and wanting to bless those communities (which of course ends up being good news)
there is a passion about justice
a lot of the community life is quite fluid

the other one that grabbed me is spencer burke's community but i don't think it fits the categories above in quite the same way.... (his story is a brilliant read. it's in the other book i read today which is another emergent one - a collection of stories of individuals faith journeys called stories of emergence. spencer's was the most compelling story as far as i was concerned though i enjoyed some of the others as well.)

Comments

[john]

hey jonny

great meeting you at the emergent convention
glad you got a chance to read about Solomons Porch and were able to get over to Nashville.

[ben bell]

It’s really inspiring to hear about these communities and I’m intrigued to know who puts up the cash for them? Or to put it another way, how is their community life organised to enable the rent of spaces, providing of meals and technology etc? a practical question about what seem to be very practical expressions of church – let’s pray for more.

[jonny]

john good meeting you. sounds a great community to be part of...
ben i don't know the answer to that! but i think when these missional communities are getting started in the uk and aus/nz they are often led by people working part time and doing the mission stuff part time? maybe as it grows things change...

[Javier]

Hey Jonny,
I ment to meet you in Nashville, but I didn't make it to alot of the sessions...I am glad that you liked the SP book, it was great fun to be a part of it.

Ben, the startup money for Solomon's Porch came from the Evangelical Covenant Church. They are great people who let us do pretty much whatever we wanted. The money was for our first 3 years, and right now we are totally self sufficient which provides us with money for rental of space and paying staff.
The meals that we share together are the responsibility of the person hosting it. It becomes a part of how we share life and resources with each other...

If you guys are ever in Minneapolis, come on over....