A project of the Uniting Church SA
Dr Peter Mallen, Director of Discipleship Education for the Uniting Church, Victoria, has produced a set of Bible studies for Advent based on the lectionary passages. You can access them here.
Peter is a New Testament scholar who previously lectured at Tabor College in Melbourne. He is a member of North Ringwood Uniting Church.
We’ve just been promoting this site as part of our synod’s Resourcing Expo – so welcome if you’re a new visitor! Feel free to browse around. We’re about to review some new resources, particularly on sharing faith with newcomers and enquirers, since that seems to be a common request!
We are about to plan “Pathways” workshops for 2010, so if you’d like to host one in your region, email us. Please don’t confuse this with ‘Pastoral Pathways’! Click on the link above for more information.
Please join our e-group or Facebook group to keep in touch. We’d love to hear your stories about how you are seeking to grow disciples. And you’re welcome to comment on any post by clicking below the title.
Welcome to our community. We’re passionate about life-long, deepening faith in God, and learning the risky way of Jesus.
That’s the question? We’ve been looking at Edward Hall’s understandings about how different groups, people and societies use physical and relational space. (see previous posts) So let me describe the fourth kind of ’space’ and then look at ‘entry points’.
Private Space is our most intimate space, reserved for partners and spouses, immediate family or household members, and our closest friends. These are the people whom we unashamedly embrace, with whom we are willing to be emotionally naked and vulnerable. These relationships go beyond stated commitments, they are the people with whom we are most open – parents, children, lovers, deep friends. In fact, there is a mutual willingness to stretch each other, to expose our inner selves to one another.
It is important to say that not all of our relationships can or should be this close. We are highly sensitive to people who are inappropriately intimate with us or others. The church doesn’t ‘arrange’ such intimacy, although we can provide the conditions in which it can grow (how many youth camps produced all kinds of intimacy?), and more importantly, we can recognise, celebrate and support intimate unions (clearly a big issue in relation to relationships other than marriage). Continue reading →
Apologies for the gap in posting! We’ve been exploring some things raised in the Welcoming Church series – in particular the idea that people ‘belong’ in different kinds of spaces. See below for descriptions of Public Space, and Social Space.
The third kind of space is Personal Space, friendship space. As people move deeper into community life, they go from being acquaintances to becoming friends. All of us have friends and extended family with whom we are willing to talk about the important things in our lives, our inner feelings, our hopes and doubts. The cuppa conversation after church often stays on the surface. Personal space goes a step further. How do people move from ’surface’ relationships into deepeer, sustained friendships in your congregation or faith community?
Openness requires trust and authenticity. People can’t be forced into friendships. Small groups may provide a primary setting in which personal sharing takes place, but membership can’t be forced, only encouraged. Continue reading →
Following on the four kinds os belonging ’space’ that Edward T. Hall identifies (see previous post), Social Space can be though of as the informal and semi-formal spaces where we get to know people, mix socially, and often make new friends – for example a barbecue, morning tea after church, a party, a work social, gathering. Often there are ‘regulars’ who are good friends and others who are newcomers or occasional visitors.
There are varied levels of friendship and relationship in this space. This is the zone for everyday surface chit-chat about the sport, the weather, politics, etc. It is also where we meet people for the first time and choose what we will tell them about ourselves. Through casual conversation we decide with whom it is that we might wish to become better acquainted, where friendships are formed. Continue reading →
Last Thursday we started the first of four weekly sessions on being a “Welcoming Church”. About 60 people from across Adelaide are meeting at “The Corner” UC.
Week One was opening up the whole topic and looking at what people might expect from church and what we might have to offer them. I used a few video clips – “Bad Vicar”, “Me Church” and a couple from thechurchyouknow.com (”tithing” and “church”. Head over to my “Wired Church” Youtubechannel where I link to these things.
Shannon Short presented some findings from the research commissioned by the UCA SA into what people think about the UCA.
The Search to Belong
The key ‘input’ from me was some stuff from Joseph Myers excellent book, “The Search to Belong”. Myers quotes sociologist Edward T. Hall (I studied him once!) on four types of space – Public, Social, Personal and Intimate.