Convergent Friends - Gathering In Light (Page 2)

A New “Convergent” Mapping Project hits the Web

Martin Kelley isn’t the only one really excited about the new Quakermaps.com project from Micah Bales and Jon Watts. While there are other quaker maps out there this is by far the coolest (IMO) because it is fully DIY, looks great, and is simple to use. As Martin

Convergent Friends

New Convergent Friends Article (Quaker Studies)

Next time you find your way to a university library you should pick up the latest copy of Quaker Studies journal (Volume 14, Issue 2 March 2010). My first journal article, “Convergent Friends: The Emergence of Postmodern Quakerism,” appears there. Here’s the abstract: Postmodernism is ushering in radical change

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One Take On the Importance of the Quaker Practice of “Open Worship”

Adrian Halverstadt, a Quaker pastor, asks this question on the QuakerQuaker forum boards: I have been thinking a lot about open worship these days. Many of the larger evangelical Friends churches no longer practice open worship in their big venues for many reasons. I guess I am searching for a

Church in Mission

A Thought for Quakers on Change

I am preparing my discussion for our Sunday morning meeting for worship and am thinking a lot about what Kester Brewin calls “wombs of the divine,” and creating the necessary space for something new to be born over time (See his book Signs of Emergence) It’s kind of a

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We All Know That Reality has a Well-Known “Conservative” Bias

One of the things my favorite (fake) newscaster Stephan Colbert says on a regular bias is that “Major media has a well-known liberal bias.” And this is definitely something many people believe. This perspective has cropped up again recently all over the web, and yes on The Colbert Report has

Blog Entries

Freedom Friends Church Faith and Practice

Freedom Friends Church in Salem Oregon is currently an independent meeting that has recently written their own Faith and Practice. A number of Friends, Monthly Meetings and Yearly Meetings, have been interested in reading about this unique meeting and some of the practices they espouse. I have done a decent

Blog Entries

Plan Ahead – Convergent Friends and New Monastics at Pendle Hill

Martin Kelley and I will be facilitating a weekend workshop at Pendle Hill this coming May (2010) that explores how tight-knit faith communities, such as convergent Friends, carry on and expand their witness via the web and participatory culture. The dates for the workshop are May 14-16 and there will

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Meeting New Challenges Through Repetition

In every generation the church faces new, as well as old, challenges. For many years, Christendom allowed a basic stability within the culture for the church to remain in tact. It was a false sense of security, human capital because people were expected to hold membership in a local church,

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Mind the Fire, Fan the Flame: A Message of Hope for Quakers

I’m currently digging through my research on Freedom Friends Church and found a blog post Liz Opp wrote awhile back that got my attention. In the post Liz talks about hearing Peggy (FFC’s pastor) and Alivia (Clerk of the meeting) present on their church. She makes some useful

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Blogging as Ministry in A Virtual World

Quaker blogger Robin Mohr has written a really thoughtful post, if you are interested in ministry in a web 2.0 culture this is a must read essay. Here are the three key points she brings up and then a few I add to the list: For me, the first

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Practicing Re-Collection (or Centering) Prayer

One thing that came out of our weekend retreat was a number of practices I want to work on and integrate into my life. This mostly came from the morning workshop on contextualizing the “testimony to plainness.” In other words, how do we cut out the excessive parts of our

Church in Mission

Stations of the Lord’s Prayer (A Worship Resource)

This past weekend at our convergent Quaker retreat we had both programmed (planned) and unprogrammed (silent) worship. For the programmed worship on Saturday morning I planned an interactive worship time based around the Lord’s Prayer (a topic I am deeply interested in). In this post I’ve included a

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Reflections From The Convergent Retreat 2009

Since Martin and Robin, the two co-leaders with me of this past weeken’s retreat, have already written their first I figured I better get on writing something because I’m already late! I really had a great time this weekend. Ben Lomond Quaker Center is up in the beautiful

Church in Mission

Three Features of Everett Cattell’s Mission Theology

In preparation for the convergent Friends retreat this weekend I have been putting together some discussion notes on Everett Cattell. I will be presenting him as a “convergent Friend of the past” on Saturday evening. Because of this I was reminded that I wanted to post some summary remarks about

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Following the Convergent Retreat This Weekend

I’ve mentioned a few times that a bunch of us are getting together this weekend in Northern California for a convergent Friends retreat at Ben Lommond Quaker Center. For those of you who won’t be able to join us, we want to be able to make at least

Ben Lomond Quaker Center

Join Us at the Convergent Friends Retreat in February

Robin, Martin and I will be co-leading a weekend retreat on convergent Friends we’re calling “Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism for the 21st Century” at the Ben Lomond Quaker Center this February 20-22. We’re getting pretty excited about the weekend. Basically, it’s going to be a

Church in Mission

MacIntyre And Church Renewal

I came across this Alasdair MacIntyre quote not long ago and thought it was a fitting reflection for the much-discussed topic of church renewal. Part of MacIntyre’s point is to say that if a tradition is to overcome its own crisis of knowing, it will be through the revision

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Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism for the 21st Century

Robin, Martin and I are leading a weekend retreat at the Ben Lomond Quaker Retreat Center this coming February on convergent Friends, we’ve humbly titled, Reclaiming the Power of Primitive Quakerism for the 21st Century. I’m looking forward to taking an entire weekend to focus on building community,

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Five Years Ago and Convergent October 2008

Martin Kelley has written a post giving a little back history to what happened five years ago. Five years ago he started reading Rober Weber’s book The Younger Evangelicals, a book that confirmed much of his thinking about liberal Quakerism and helped him verbalize what needs to happen in

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Remixing Faith in the 21st Century (Barclay Press)

I’ve posted my June essay on Barclay press if you care to have a read (it’s nice and long!). Here’s and excerpt: This past April Radiohead did another thing that sparked imaginations and challenged the preexisting structures of the music industry, yet again. They setup a website

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Douglas Gwyn and the Convergent-Covenant

Just came across these two quotes from Quaker historical-theologian Douglas Gwyn’s book “The Covenant Crucified,” and it got me thinking about some of the work I did in a previous project I’d never written about: Given its biblical frame of reference, the religious Right retains a more explicit

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Presenting on Convergent Friends at FAHE in June

So much for a really creative title! It was the best I could think of at this hour. Anyways, Last year at this time I was living in Birmingham England, away from my pregnant wife, finishing up my first year of doctoral studies and working on Quaker theology with a

Blog Entries

Interview with Sacred Compass Author Brent Bill

I decided to take part in Brent Bill’s recent contest to help get the word out about his book. I know Brent through my work with convergent Friends and have enjoyed following his blog and his interest not only in Quakerism but the emerging church. He is the author

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From The ‘Kitchen’ to the ‘Parlor’

This past spring I had the great opportunity to participate in leading a workshop on convergent friends in Providence with a dear friend, and some new friends we met there: David and Shawna. Afterwards Robin was contacted about writing an article for The Friends Journal on the workshop and she

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(Untitled)

Kevin Roberts, creator and editor of Conservativefriend.org, has posted an article I wrote for the site titled “Convergent Friendship and Playing With the Other Kids” it reflects upon my experience in Ohio as well as some thoughts on Quakers and ecumenicism. If you get a chance jump over and