hOME is "a new expression of church for an emerging culture in Oxford". I'd heard about them from a mate in Oxford but only looked them up after I was purusing the Moot blog today, which has a link from Ian to their site...
They have a nice site and their work looks like an interesting take on a fresh expression. But most of all, and given the internal discussions we're having in Sanctus1 at the mo, I was interested in this - their structure:
http://www.home-online.org/index.php?page_id=navstructure&title=Overview
Fascinating and ambitious! It's the sort of thing that I'd want to know how it's developed in a year or more's time, and how it devolve in the first place... In fact just the sort of Greenbelt discussion I hanker after (getting close now!), since it's rare to get that number of emerging church communities in one place. I presume there'll be a Zoo this year - anyone know if there's any plans?
16 comments:
Loved the structure. I particulary like the intimate feel of their huddles - single sex, invite only, and usually in someone's home over a meal. I get the sense that they place a lot of importance in this kind of communion, and that it is these human relationships that are more important than the structures that support them.
The horse before the cart!
Hazzuh!
....Lev
I was in a single sex cell group at uni and there were a lot of benefits to it - we had a lot of fun and talked about girl stuff (erm... boys...). But it wasn't deliberate - that was just how it happened - and I don't think I'd want to do single sex groups.
I also wonder what 'invite only' means and how that would work in practice.
Hmm... 'Missional Units'. Not sure how that would work at all in practice. It'd be interested to look at them 6 months down the line to see how it's changed.
There's definately shades of house groups in those huddles, except for the single sex thing (which to my mind would skew the relationships somewhat). I'm guessing by invite-only they just mean organised, not that they only invite the people they like and leave the unpopular ones on their own (which is what it sounds like at first reading).
I hear all those comments, but I suppose the thing that most fascinated me was that they would seemingly have SUCH a structured way of relating. I think it's rare, esp in emerging churches, and most prefer to do the liquid/ organic/ flexible thing to a greater extent that than this appears to be. Not that either of those ways mean that any of us have it totally cracked...
One other fleeting thought - after a conversation with someone at the end of last week - is that generally people expect fresh expressions to be "more perfect" or at the very least "better" than more traditional forms. I think that this is an idealised way to think about it - and a response to the fact that it's preceived as a "new start" and a break from the old/ established. Obviously we know that any community of humans (of whatever purpose/ function) will carry some established patterns and problems with them. But somehow we have to both manage and meet those expectations.
And while we are talking about rules in Sanctus1, here is hOME's
"Rules Of Life"...
"Drawing from the monastic tradition we seek to become whole-life disciples of Christ by living out a rule-of-life...
"Prayer: What are you doing to develop your relationship with God?
"Resources: What are you doing with the things you have been given?
"Mission: What are you doing to share in God's mission?
"Personal Development: What are you doing to help you to grow as a person?"
Scary, huh?
I stumbled across this a few days ago, via Moot's blog, and I thought it looked fascinating.
I'll be honest - I absolutely loved almost every aspect of it, including - in fact, probably especially - the rule of life... the details of which are actually worked out by each member according to their own lifestyle, apparently - which is the way of lot of these intentional/new monastic communities/churches seem to work.
But maybe that's just because I'm too enamoured with rules and structures! :-)
I think there's some stuff that bothers me about it and I'm not quite sure what. I think partly it may be the style of language that is used. Can anyone tell me what the deal is with the weird capitalisation - lower case 'h's and upper-case everything else? That isn't actually my main issue... I can't quite work out what is though. I think maybe it's a bit too cheerful for me...
Did someone mention 'sex groups'?
SAME-sex groups? Oh sorry.
I thought of another joke, but I'm not going to print it.
The idea of same-sex groups horrifies me. But I do like the site, maybe not as much as Dan who has a wild glint in his eye as he types, but I do like it.
They seem to play frisbee - as far as I can tell they have a whole group dedicated to frisbee-playing. Which appeals to me.
The structure seems similar to what happens at St Toms in Sheffield, I think. It looks like what a lot of cell churches do.
I think I'm a little bit frightened by the intentional mission groups idea. I've spent a lot of my life feeling pressured into being a good Christian and doing evangelism - doing things which I felt very uncomfortable with - because that seemed to be what we were supposed to do - they often seemed to be quite devious or manipulative. For example, wrapping up copies of a gospel and giving them out at Christmas. Personally, if someone was handing out Christmas presents on the street and it turned out to be a gospel, I'd feel cheated. Also doing 'faith surveys' for no purpose other than to invite people to CU, that were very heavily biased towards Christianity. "Can we do a survey? We're interested in what people believe" turns out to be, "let's talk about what I believe and how we can get you to believe it too". So I feel a little hesitant. I like the fact that now I feel happy to just be me and not devote every action and conversation to somehow sneaking in a mention of "the Lord Jesus himself" or trying to show that christians are normal.
Thank you for allowing me to share my pain.
Imagine the poor strategy group having to put up with this every ten minutes...
Just seeing the letters 'C' and 'U' in that order bring me out in a cold sweat... There are few organisations that make me more angry than the CU / UCCF, but I won't get into a rant here...
Just to say, I didn't pick up any impression that hOME had any sort of that manipulative, narrow-minded, one-way view of evangelism/mission evident you are so wary of (and me too).
But then I don't actually know any of them, so I could be wrong ;-)
I don't know if they do either and I wasn't really accusing them of that - I think it's more the association between a certain type of theology/christian worldview and that particular style of church set-up.
Hello there happy campers. On opening the link my initial reaction was to recoil from the words "huddle" and "hub", as they are very exclusive words. Also to be in a huddle you need to be invited! Saying that, I do really like their relational values.
Jules
there is a 'zoo' at GB this year:
http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/?l=380&pr=82
b
Organic beer tent?!
Mmmmmmmm....
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