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In 2009, some will know that the Fresh Expressions initiative in the UK sponsored a Symposium day to explore New Monasticism. This gathered a number of participants from traditional and new monastic communities. The papers presented on that day are about so to be published by Canterbury Press in the second of a series called Ancient Faith Future Mission, which will explore Fresh Expressions and New Monasticism.

Additionally, after discussions with a number of different parties, we have agreed to fund a New Monastics Network Ning for a year, to help build up the network of new monastics in the UK, and promote a number of new events and gatherings planned for 2011. So we are now encouraging people who are involved or interested in new monastic models of missional communities, to join with this Ning group – so follow the link and participate in what seems to be a growing and interesting new movement of the Spirit. Click here to go to the site, and join with what seems to be bubbling up. Let’s see what will happen.  Mooters – you are more than welcome to get involved in the Ning site.

POSTED 30.07.10 BY: ianmobsby | No Comments

In this the final of four podcasts recorded at the Moot spiritual retreat in May 2010, Mark Berry explores the theme of the nature of God concerning participation and being sent. Drawing on Gospel texts, Mark explores how Christian communities are drawn into this same nature – of participation and being sent, so that the church is called also to be a missional community.

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 Being Sent - Trinity - Participating in God by Mark Berry [40:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

POSTED 03.06.10 BY: ianmobsby | No Comments

Some of us from Moot are helping out at the Dekhomai stand at Body, Mind, Spirit Fair running from Wednesday to Monday in London this week.  I have just done two stints on Wednesday and Thursday and wanted to share some thoughts on what it means to practice hospitality and mission in this kind of public space.  The ethos of Dekhomai (which means welcoming place) is to be Christ’s presence, to listen to people, to offer hospitality, to offer everything as gift (we don’t charge unlike most of the other stands).  On the stall we offer  various practices from the Christian Tradition of spirituality: healing prayer, blessing prayer, making prayer beads, Jesus deck, massage for foot and hand, and some beautiful post cards on practices like ‘the examen, the jesus prayer, forgiveness etc.  I did this last year and was very encouraged by some of the interactions I had with people and this year my confidence in this kind of practice of mission has increased.  I have experienced forms of mission where the emphasis often feels like ‘trying to get a message across through a particular formula of words’, where both parties often feel uncomfortable and forced.   My experience at Dekhomai was very different and I felt completely relaxed and trusting in the Holy Spirit, which often means not saying too much!   When we offer hospitality our attention is turned to the other person, to hear their story and share something of our own, it is an exchange which enriches both parties, where differences as well as similarities are acknowledged and respected.

What came home to me was how the church of God is much bigger than we think. Two examples of conversations I had that illustrate this:

Discussing the practice of healing prayer with a man who is a healer in a spiritualist church: his practice was to ‘reach out to the cosmic energy of the universe’ for the other person, sometimes praying ‘in the name of Christ’ in his heart. His wisdom was  that people don’t get everything they ask for but they often receive what they need, that it does not work like a slot machine, that he felt that there is often too much pressure for healing to occur in pentecostal style services where results are pushed to the extent of being false.  His experience of the church was going to a Christian Union as a young man at university but being turned off when he found out that a group were praying for his conversion ‘behind his back’.

Another conversation was with an older woman who quoted the Kings James Bible: ‘fret not thyself because of evil doers’ and how hard she finds it to love those who are not loving or good.  She shared how an agonizing and crippling fall had caused her to pray in earnest and trust God in a much deeper way.  She was so pleased to find us doing the stall ‘for love’ and not for money.

Reflecting on the train coming home I realise that when I am at the stall I am open to God and others in an intentional way, that I step into the Kingdom of God in a way that is life enhancing, giving and receiving.  I reflect that I need to step into this kind of space with others as an ‘intentional practice’ at least once a week – in order to carry it with me into the rest of life.

I realise how much I want the arts cafe lounge to happen so that I can know more of this life and blessing.

POSTED 28.05.10 BY: Vanessa | Comments (4)

Ian Mobsby will be facilitating a one-day training event on Thursday 10 June on the subject of how all forms of church engage with mission and evangelism in the twenty-first century. This event for Ordinands, Clergy, Readers, Licensed Lay Ministers, Youth and Church workers aims to provide some social analysis, exploring the presenting spiritual needs to then explore possible approaches of engagement, drawing on the growing experience of new and old forms of church. To book a place, please email Dee Bennett. For more information, please James.

POSTED 27.05.10 BY: James_Vincent | No Comments

In this third of four podcasts, Mark Berry explores the importance of Communitas, how the Trinity challenges the church to be missional in its DNA.

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 communitas - Trinity - participating in God by Mark Berry [41:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

POSTED 24.05.10 BY: ianmobsby | No Comments

On the weekend of 14th-16th May 2010, the Moot community held a short spiritual retreat to explore the theme of participating in God. Mark Berry, Missioner and leader of the Safespace Community led the retreat. This is the 1st of 4 recordings. The handouts for the session will be uploaded shortly.

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 God's Way - Trinity - participating in God by Mark Berry [31:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

POSTED 17.05.10 BY: ianmobsby | Comments (2)

On the weekend of 14th-16th May 2010, the Moot community held a short spiritual retreat to explore the theme of participating in God. Mark Berry, Missioner and leader of the Safespace Community led the retreat. This is the 1st of 4 recordings. The handouts for the session will be uploaded shortly.

subscribe to podcasts in itunes |  subscribing to podcasts through RSS feed | other podcast subscribing | podcast player for your site

 

 God's Way - Trinity - participating in God by Mark Berry [31:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

POSTED 17.05.10 BY: ianmobsby | Comments (2)

POSTED 04.01.10 BY: admin | No Comments

I am pleased to say that the Fresh Expressions International Share Site has published a short item I wrote on their blogspace. See here

POSTED 07.07.09 BY: admin | Comments (1)

Last Wednesday, Jon Oliver, (author and training Ordinand for Pioneer Ministry on placement with Moot) led our Quest Evening, designed to explore biblical texts and open them up as Stanley Hauerwas says to ‘an interpretative community’. Well we looked at John 4:1-42 and the Samaritan Woman at the well.

This text is always challenging and beautiful. It expresses the mission of God to blur boundaries of the sacred in the secular, challenging cultural taboos, and gives us a palpable foretaste of the Kingdom of God.

I love it that God seeks out the excluded and the lost, those that are hated within their own cultures. Why it gives me a hope that someone like me can be acceptable to God with all my faults, insecurities and complexities. But this time there was more. The Woman, was exposed to the reality of the Trinity. Christ is present as the Redeemer. Then in verse 23, But the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. Beautifully Jesus finishes off the Samaritans question about the Messiah as coming with the words ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you’.

So in this encounter, the Woman experiences Jesus as the Redeemer, empowered by the Holy Spirit, in the worship of the Father. It doesn’t get more Trinitarian than that, with a woman he was not supposed to speak to, and with a people the Jews despises as unclean. The Jews hated the Samaritans. So what does Jesus do – he goes into mission mode, loving them into understanding, and then stays with them for two days – something a Jew was banned from doing. I love it. This is the radicalness of Christ and the New Testament. A radical love that seeks to restore all things into restored relationships. This is the context of real mission, and it inspires me to keep going when I feel so inadequate and crap so much of the time, in a dysfunctional church and a broken world. It is the hope of this Jesus that keeps me alive, in this Missio Dei of the Holy Trinity, and the love of the God Human Jesus, that my life has meaning and purpose. Without this God, I don’t know where I would be….

In the story, Many Samaritans became Christians, one of the first contextual churches to become formed, and the Christian Church in Samaria, became one of the earliest churches which still survives to this day.

POSTED 27.06.09 BY: admin | No Comments