Exploring Identity
by Chris Lorensson on 17 October 2011 with
I’ve written a lot about the topic of identity, and it’s even the topic of my first book, Mirror. If I had to guess at the main reason I’m here, I’d say it was to excavate our history in order to uncover the truth about our identities. Jesus’ teachings walked a fine line between selflessness and identity in Him. To gain our lives, we must lose them. To lose our life is to gain it. His disciples reeled at this seemingly contradictory philosophy, and I would argue we have only a few examples of a life which exemplifies this principle.
I believe our identities are a sort of lost key to the locked door of community’s progress. I believe God made us each for a specific purpose, and that purpose is written in our identities. But speaking broadly—as the Community of Christendom, do we know who we are?
Sure we do—we’re the bride of Christ, children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus, beloved, cherished, treasured. Hang on a second—when someone asks me what do you do, I don’t reply with I’m a full-service design agency, specialising in user experiences on a digital platform because to say that would be to describe my company, not myself. I think that what we call ‘identity’ nowadays largely is a description of our company—our community. It’s what we do and who we are as a whole— rather than as individuals. When I’m asked that question I reply I design experiences, and when I’m asked who are you? I reply I’m Chris because I have a name, a purpose, a father and a community around me, wherein my functions and purpose are exercised. My point is that I am not my community— I am an individual who makes up a key part of my community, but there are two identities here, not one.
The Joy of Prioritisation
by Chris Lorensson on 10 October 2011 with
I want to talk a little bit about prioritisation. Not really in a heavy sense, but just practical little things that I’ve learned the hard way.
For the past 6 years I’ve carried a memory of a span of time in my life when I felt closest to God. The more I recall this memory, the more romanticised it becomes in my mind. Now, the reality of it is so far from me that I’m not sure it happened at all. But I’m not quite ready to let it go, yet, and this post is all in the dim light of that distant memory, which I will refer to hereon out as the good ‘ol days.
The Good ‘Ol Days were simple—God had broken through my desire for significance by simply replacing that hole inside me with Himself. The Good ‘Ol Days lasted, for me, about 3 or 4 years. I spent a lot of time walking and talking with God. I was constantly starved for the Bible. In everything I did, I thought of Him.
The Bristol Festival of Literature – 14th – 23rd October, 2011.
by Geoff Hall on 21 September 2011 with
From October 14th to 23rd Bristol is to hold its first Festival of Literature. Being a writer, I was excited by this and thought the City Council must have had an epiphany about developing the Creative Economy in Bristol. I eagerly got a shot of hypertext markup language and visited their site to confirm my expectations. I clicked on numerous links and tried various searches to tease out the information from their site and came up with…nothing!
This was not particularly surprising, considering Bristol for all its swagger and self-imaging as a radical city, has a very conservative, provincial mindset. As far as a distinctive policy for developing the Creative Economy, Bristol isn’t even a member of the Dance Consortium, whereas radical cities like Bradford and Milton Keynes are! Figure that one out. Bristol seems to get its radical self-image from rioting, which isn’t radical, but misplaced self-indulgence. Go figure! If you are working-class or black in Bristol you will experience a greater sense of marginalisation, this doesn’t mean the power of the place is radical, (unless radical = tense?) it informs us of a city which is diverse in its cultural makeup, but which doesn’t embrace difference too well, as diversity threatens the conservative well-being of Bristol. Read the rest of this entry »
The Upside-Down Kingdom of Releasing
by Chris Lorensson on 10 September 2011 with
My wife Ruth brought an interesting principle to my attention a few years ago. She was in the middle of co-leading our community, LoveBristol, and as a group we were keenly studying the various principles of The Upside-Down Kingdom (of God). You know— the way things just seem to work so differently.
This principle was the principle of releasing others. Standing on the shoulders of giants, if you will. It’s the concept that, from your own favour and accomplishments, you can exercise that favour by giving it to others. Giving them a leg up, so to speak, so they might get a bit further than if they hadn’t received a little help. For example, Ruth has been preaching & teaching at our church for years. She’s become quite well-known throughout the city and wider because of it. She’s built a reputation on it, and that reputation gets her a lot more speaking engagements. But often if Ruth gets a call asking her to speak, she’ll suggest someone else—perhaps someone who hasn’t had so much opportunity, and often they’ll go for it. Someone else gets to speak and share their what God has put on their heart, they build a reputation and the cycle continues. It’s an interesting way to do things when you consider that, without these types of opportunities—people giving you a bit of their favour—you might not be as far ahead. It’s an uncommon break in daily terms.
This was a concept that fascinated me.
Dissatisfied, disaffected, disenfranchised and frankly…completely dissed!
by Geoff Hall on 30 August 2011 with
With the publishing of ‘When is the right time to give up?’ I received lots of personal messages asking me not to! That was very comforting! At least people were reading what goes on in the ‘Neosphere’, as Marshall McLuhan called it (I think). (The Neosphere is a new virtual repository of human knowledge).
What we know as the World-Wide Web is nothing less than a storehouse of human knowing. We may not agree with much of it, but hopefully the more knee-jerked, bigoted and ill-educated comments on YouTube which can be filtered out and need not attract our attention the better!
In this Neosphere you have to be careful how you talk, tweet or update your status, because you could end up in jail. Talks of rioting are strictly forbidden and so if you wish to overthrow your Government you have to be careful how you phrase it! It would seem that any form of resistance is undesirable and when we don’t give in to rather basic urges of rioting, looting and burning down other people’s businesses, our silence or inactivity is presumed to give tacit assent to what our Governments get up to in the ‘name of the people’.
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Affirmation for the world, the flesh and the rebel
by Geoff Hall on 22 August 2011 with
“Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents in a dimension incompatible with society.” Jacques Ellul
My! How far we have fallen short of this? Jacques Ellul, a critical, perceptive writer who was once a member of the French Resistance and author of such classics as ‘Propaganda’ and ‘The Technological Society’ kind of stirs things up for us with this little thought. We immediately reject it, don’t we for we are not called to be troublemakers, but peacemakers, creators of certainty and not uncertainty, aren’t we? Agents of incompatibility? What is he driving at? Surely this is hyperbole, right? He’s said it just to make us think and then we can run back into the safety of our churches? Isn’t the world unsafe enough already?
It seems to me that Ellul’s call is for the artist, for those with subversive gifts, artists of the subtext, in other words artists of uncertainty. The clue is in his former job title, ‘Member of the French Resistance’. Think about it.
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When is the right time to give up?
by Geoff Hall on 17 August 2011 with
Is there such a thing as a theology of ‘giving up’, or of ‘calling it a day’?
When those around you tell you it should’ve worked out by now if God was ‘in it’, are they correct?
When no matter what you do ends up with nothing coming into your bank account, is that how you measure God’s blessing on your life? Who is your first commitment to? God, Church, Family, Career, knowing how much your services are worth?
What do we mean by ‘calling and vocation’? Do we think in terms of sustainable income? How come in the same breath as we mention discipleship, we qualify it as something affordable, like a good career choice, or something we do for the church (institution)?
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So, this is what Atheism looks like, up-close and personal?
by Geoff Hall on 9 August 2011 with
If there was any doubt about the true face of Atheism, look no further than London, Bristol and Liverpool. Far from being a cultivating force for good, it simply strips away any sense of the value from human life and social well-being and replaces it with ‘naked force’. It is wilful in the Nietzschean sense of the word; it only seeks its own through brute force. ‘Superman’ is simply a lawless thug on the streets of Britain, the cape and tights substituted by the hoodies and jeans of youth culture! Take a look at the evidence.
Modern Day Saints: 4 (St Dave Everitt of Cambodia)
by John Jensen on 7 August 2011 with
I was standing in the back of the church waiting to pray for people. As one of the elders (A rather silly designation for my 22 year old self) we would pray for anyone who had needs during the musical worship time. A man I had never seen before just happened to come to the front of the line as I had a vacancy. As you can see from the picture he has Rutger Hauer ice blue eyes and has a habit of looking directly into your eyes which can make you want to hide. As I was uncomfortably being looked at, or through, he shared about his need for prayer. He had been doing work in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Santa Ana California, among the Cambodian community. He was particularly successful in leading a group of Christian young people. But he had had a break through with some of the local Cambodian gang members, and they began to give their lives to Christ and come to the bible study he was leading. The problem was the Christian kids and their parents didn’t want the gangsters there. In my immaturity I tried to give him a little advice, but then prayed for him.