Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 October 2010 12:44:22
Kester Brewin was up in Durham yesterday talking to students at the vicar factory(s) and various blaggers who find their way into the discussions up there sometimes ;) . I’d managed to fail to catch up with Kester at Greenbelt or anywhere else and so it was good to be able to join the q&a / conversation yesterday. He was talking about community and it was a follow up to the session he did up here last week where he outlined the ideas in Other. These are the links to some of the posts Kester and I put up when we were engaging in our discussions on the content of Other. My First Post, The big blurb, My final response, Kesters response to my big blurb. Basically if you want to get your head around it read Other and some of the discussions that Kester was having with Jonny Baker on the subject. The focus of what he was saying yesterday revolved around the theme of community and aimed at people who were going into Pioneer Ministry. He outlined some of the key points within his books about the way “other” is challenging to self and the way that separation and binding have to be held in tension. The most important point I think he made was that we need to be careful because we’re never going to be able to describe fully what we’re doing and if we try we can kill stuff. The points he reiterated about there being a time for things to die were also really important. However, for me the most interesting bit of the discussion took part afterwards when alot of people had gone off to lectures or whatever. A small group of us continued the discussion including a really interesting guy who’s involved in environmental and transition stuff. He was pushing on what community actually is and whether it can be an exclusionary force rather than one fostering inclusion. This led on somehow from looking at some interesting stuff on the nature of the incarnation and the importance of Holy Saturday. All in all a really useful discussion which for me highlighted two main points of thinking: 1) The benefit of allowing those who aren’t training into these discussions. The most challenging and useful contributions came from the geographer. 2) There are no right answers. We are all involved in exploration and ongoing struggles, but these struggles and explorations should have a creative purpose which benefits the whole. We are not called into spiritual self-harm, which includes knowingly heading for burnout. If that’s where we’re heading it’s ok to stop and walk away from stuff.