Posts Tagged ‘missions’

Links: Ritual and Missions

June 26th, 2008

I recently came across two articles on rituals and particularly on how rituals should interact with missions. I found these articles to be really interesting. I have for a while now believed that God can and does use ritual, myth and symbolism to speak in a very deep way to his people and these articles spoke more to that belief.

Here’s a link to the first article

Here are some quotes from this article that I really enjoyed:

 “To neglect ritual is to ignore a holistic way of deepening people’s faith in Christ. It also ignores the fact that the human person is a ritual being. Ritual brings order to communications; builds a sense of security and belonging, and opens people to a sense of the sacred.”

“Since ritual works on the trans-rational level it generates wholeness because it engages the whole person and in the active engagement through myth and symbol, gesture and movement transformation occurs.”

Here is a link to the second article

This second article was much more scientific and talked about research that biogeneticists have done on ritual and how people relate to rituals. Very interesting. I really liked at the end though when the discussion turned to “Two Threats to Ritual”. The article commented that those two threats were “an ideology of intimacy” and individualism.

I found both of these very interesting and will definitely be thinking more about the role of ritual and symbolism in the life of faith communities…

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

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The Identity/Personality of a City

March 20th, 2008

Today I was talking to my friend and she was sharing with me a conversation that she’d had with someone about how cities have personalities, or identities you could say and how do we recognize that and work with that when starting ministries in different cities, etc. The person she had been talking with before had said that Seattle is a very entrepreneurial city, as well as a very benevolent (I think that’s the word she used) city – think of all the companies that have started here and all the charities that started here as well. Anyway, it got me thinking about a conversation I’d had with someone a while back about a theory that a friend of theirs had about how different cities have different struggles – they were sharing how Prague’s seems to be fear and people struggle with fear a lot in Prague. Then I got to thinking about something I had recently read about a study that ranked different cities in the nation in terms of the seven deadly sins (Go here to see an interactive map ranking the cities).

Anyway, I was thinking about all this and thinking about ministry and business and all that. I think in a lot of ways in past years people in the church and people in business have treated cities like they are all the same (and in some ways treated people like they are all the same) – but it’s becoming more and more clear to me that cities are not the same. They have a personality and an identity and a focus all their own and they also have unique struggles and problem areas and sins all their own. A city really is like a unique individual person. It’s false to treat people like they are all the same – each person is a unique individual with a unique history and story, unique victories and struggles. So, why should we treat cities like they are the same? Why should we set up a ministry a certain way in a city just because it worked in another city? For that matter why should we set up a company a certain way in a city just because it worked that way in another city? If each city is unique (which I believe they are) then shouldn’t we attempt to take into account the unique identities and struggles of each city when we set up a ministry, a church or a business there? Shouldn’t we try to play to the unique strengths of that particular individual city and try to be aware of and fight clearly the struggles and sins of that particular city? Just some food for thought for you today…

Rejoicing in the journey –
Beth Stedman

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