Why I moved to Cardiff

I moved to Cardiff to become a pioneer minister because I wanted to face the coming culture head-on.

If we're moving to a post-religious culture in western Europe I want to face it head-on.

If the future is empty church buildings being turned into restaurants and climbing wall centres, then I want to face it head-on.

If we're heading into the least religious culture planet Earth has ever seen, then I want to be fully immersed in that culture.

If the future of the church is 5 people meeting in a living room, then I want to start doing that now.

I don't want to spend the next 40 years serving a conventional church and seeing it slowly decline.

I don't want to spend my career managing decline.

If the future of religion is being a tiny tiny minority in a non-religious indifferent post-Christendom culture then I want to start working out how to do that now.

I don't want to try to outrun the coming tide of non-religious culture. I don't want to spend my life running away from it, with it slowly catching up with me over decades.

I want to run towards the coming non-religious culture. I want to face it head-on and run directly into it.

This is why I choose to leave a relatively healthy, relatively large congregation for a tiny one struggling to survive. Why I am investing most of my time in pioneer ministry to the unchurched culture of a large modern city.

It's because if this culture-change is coming I want to live in it right now, and work out where the calling of God is in it.

Comments

The dumbest thing about American Unitarian Univeralism

I'm glad Peacebang started blogging about this cos I was about to, and now it's like I'm joining in with a conversation rather than doing a big rant and having a go at Americans (though that is always fun ;-)). Why the hell do American (or is it just in New England??) UU churches take, like a quarter of the year off? In the summer they close. They CLOSE!! A church, closing. It's so bloody weird and wrong. Where does it come from? Why? Why? Why? Why do people need church less in the summer? Where are people supposed to go? Where is the Divine supposed to go? My church in Boston didn't close exactly, but moved to the smaller upstairs chapel, but the minister still had all that time off. Now I've spent most of my life around teachers and priests, both jobs where people think people don't put many hours in, when in fact they put in loads ('you only work Sunday mornings/9 to 3.25'). Teachers work hard and need their long holidays. Ministers work hard, a...

Is humanism theologically tolerant?

OK, well this might be controversial, but I feel the need to say it. Is humanist tolerant? Please note I'm not asking about humanism within society. Clearly humanism certainly believes in tolerance within society and I'm forever glad they are often the only people in the media calling for a separation of church and state. No, what I'm talking about is descriptions of Unitarianism like this and adverts like this , discussed at Peacebang here , which say that humanism is one option, Christianity is another, God is one option among many. The trouble is, humanism, by definition is theologically opposed to theism. This is very different from the relationship between Christianity and Buddhism. These two traditions may be vastly different, but Buddhism, by definition , is not opposed to Christianity, and Christianity, by definition , is not opposed to Buddhism. But humanism is consciously defined in opposition to Christianity and theism. So to say that humanism and theism can bot...

LOST and theology: who are the good guys?

***Spoiler alert*** I'm continuing some theological/philosophical reflections while re-watching the series LOST. One of the recurring themes in LOST is the idea of the "good guys" and the "bad guys." We start the series assuming the survivors (who are the main characters) are the "good guys" and the mysterious "Others" are definitely bad guys. But at the end of series 2 one of the main characters asks the Others, "Who are you people?" and they answer, in an extremely disturbing way, "We're the good guys." The series develops with a number of different factions appearing, "the people from the freighter" "the DHARMA initiative" as well as divisions among the original survivors. The question remains among all these complicated happenings "who really are the good guys?" I think one of the most significant lines in the series is an episode when Hurley is having a conversation with ...

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