Convergent Friends - Gathering In Light (Page 3)

Tradition, Mission and Innovation (OYM)

This past friday Martin Kelley, David Male and I all talked about Convergent Friends: Seeking a Deeper Spiritual Experience Across the Branches of Friends at Ohio Yearly Meeting in Barnesville. David Male and Shawna Roberts, both from OYM, were the brains behind the Convergent Friends Workshop that Robin and I

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(un)Programmed: Towards the Program of the Spirit | YQ Article

About a week ago I had an article come out in Young Quaker, the publication run by Young Friends General Meeting in Britain (See volue 53,number 6). This edition was the last one for Jez Smith, a friend of mine who currently lives in London, and who I worked

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Convergent Friends An Introduction by Rachel Stacy

Rachel Stacy, a young Quaker woman and soon to be graduate from Earlham School of Religion, with a double major in religion and chemistry, recently finished her final school project for a class in contemporary religious movements. She decided to do the final research project on convergent Friends and has

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An Apologetic for a Quaker Theology | Do We Need It (or want it)?

This is a response to a comment I received yesterday about Quaker theology. The comment was good enough that I decided to write a post about it, because I know that many people have the same questions and challenges it brought up. Theology should be done in a way that

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Meeting House Innovative? | Visual Arts and Creativity in Quakerism

Recently I had a great talk with a woman from Essex, and she goes to a Quaker meeting that’s doing some really cool stuff. I asked her about her meeting and she told me that there are about 35 people there and they have unprogrammed worship every week. But

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Towards a Post-Foundationalist Quaker Theology: Slavoj Zizek, Quietism and Pink Dandelion

Accepting the whole of a tradition and not just the parts I found Slavoj Zizeks opening to his book The Fragile Absolute, to be instructive for a present day study of Quaker theology. He begins by presenting the challenge of two choices: How is a Marxist to counter all

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Open Anabaptism and a Community of (in)outsiders

I’ve been meaning to comment on Jarrod McKenna’s thought worthy post which looks at the “Emerging Peace Church Movement” or what he likes to call “Open Anabaptism.” Through his various travels and meeting with all kinds of Christians McKenna writes, What people might not be aware of is

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Orthodoxy As An Event and Questions About a Quaker Orthodoxy

Tony Jones, recently discussed a paper he read at Wheaton. In the paper he talks about the prospect of being an “anti-theologian,” (a designation I too find attractive) and orthodoxy as something that exists within particular events but not as an objective reality out there somewhere. I found some troubling

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Loving Ourselves To Death? A Theological Reflection of Jesus, Self-Love and Modernity

[This is cross-posted from the BYM blog] In the context of talking about Quaker work, one of our sessions yesterday, something was said about loving ourselves before we can love others. In this dualistic perspective the inward comes before the outward and there is no room for a circular interplay

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Allelon: Video Interview with Ryan Bolger on Emerging and Missional Churches

There is great half-hour video of my PhD advisor, Ryan Bolger, where he discusses what emerging churches and missional churches are. During the interview he discusses with Alan Roxburgh of Allelon, and author of the Sky is Falling, some of the major points of similarities, differences, and some possible connecting

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Quaker-Ranter: Martin Kelley Puts A New Face on An Old Tradition

Chris M is hosting our first Quaker carnival, an event where everyone connected to this community is invited to write about a given topic. The topic this time around is Martin Kelley, the brains behind the the incredible Quaker-Quaker blogging community. These posts are meant to thank Martin for all

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Trends within the Convergent Friends Conversation

Last week I went to a Friends conference (FWCC) in Rhode Island, and have already talked about it at some length. But the point of this short post was to point out a number of trends, or characteristics that I saw beginning to frame the overall conversation of convergent Friends.

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An Emergent Manifesto Of Hope: A Brief Review

A couple days back I purchased all my books for next quarter (or at least most of them) and one I am really excited about is “An Emergent Manifesto of Hope” coedited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. The book is a collection of essays from emerging church leaders, the

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Online Communities and Radical Reformation Perspectives

Today the Urban Connection of the Mennonite Mission Network has published an article on web communities. I am really excited about the article, Online Finds: Web Leads to Real Communiy by Ryan Miller, for a couple reasons. First it shows that the Anabaptists are also asking questions about the global

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Winds of the Spirit: Convergent Friends Workshop (Providence 2007)

As most of you know by now I spent the end of last week in Providence Rhode Island helping with a workshop about convergent Friends. I wanted to give an overview of what we did there so that those of you who are curious can be in the know. There

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I am Heading (Providence) Rhode Island: FWCC Convergent Friends Conference

This weekend I have a great opportunity to spend some time with a group of ecumenical Quakers. I am flying to Providence Rhode Island to participate in the Friends World Committee for Consultation, an ecumenical group of Friends who have been trying to help bridge the gap between the various

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Transitioning in A Global Information Age: Questions For Church Traditions

As a follow up to my reflections on Quaker Heritage Day I wanted to post a list of Questions I’ve been thinking about, many of which came because our travels to the north and many because of what I have been studying over the past quarter. The Church in

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Learning a New Language While Building a House: Reflections on Quaker Heritage Day

Psa. 127:1 Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. This past weekend my wife and I visited Berkeley California for a gathering called “Quaker Heritage Day.” It’s not unlike any

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5 Streams of The Emerging Church and Convergent Friends (?)

My Friend Jarrod McKenna sent me a link to this article the other, it’s written by Scot McKnight, professor of religious studies at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. The Article is called “Five Streams of the Emerging Church.” Here is a long quote from the article: To define

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FAQs: What is Worship? (Pastoral Quaker Perspective)

In reading Thomas Hamm’s absolutely wonderfulQuakers in America I came across a good quote about how virtually all pastoral Friends today would agree on what the Richmond Declaration says about worship, the statement comes from the Declaration which is actually highly disputed but Hamm believes most would get behind

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Jarrod McKenna and the Peace Tree Receive Quaker Peace Award

Just today I got an email from Jarrod McKenna, a Christian activist who lives Down Under. He says of himself, “Im a lapsed vegetarian wholl now eat happily my daily bread from dumpsters (but secretly longs for the flesh pots of evil big corporation burgers.) I spend my

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FAQs: What are the practices of Quakers?

“Frequently Asked Questions” is a segment on this site where basic questions get answered from people with theological training. If you’re interested in asking a Question you can contact me, otherwise you can visit the FAQ category or it’s corresponding wiki for more information. This week’s question

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Convergent Friends Google Group Now Open

I’ve done a little work and got a google group going for convergent Friends and it’s up and running. There are some pretty neat features that this group offers: 1. It’s got a built in list-serve email, where you can subscribe and send emails for larger conversations.

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Queries from the Gathering

Well in short our meeting last night was wonderful, there was a group of about 13 adults, 4 children (and a few lovely mennonite-volunteers) and I think it would be safe to say we all enjoyed ourselves and learned a lot from each other. For now I thought I would

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Schedule for Convergent Friends Gathering August 5th 2006

Chris and I powered out a schedule of sorts for this coming saturday so that we have something to work off of. I have also discussed this with Robin so I am confident that our gathering will be fruitful and a lot of fun. The reason we planned something out