My last essay for part one MTh: An emerging theology of mission
During the summers of 2002-05 I was leading a team that established a summer event youth cafe in Hazlemere, High Wycombe: called Fresh Cafe.Some of the agenda for that first cafe was to have no evangelistic content, despite there being about 40% non-church-attending attendance. God had some slightly different agenda and out of going with what God was doing a theology of mission emerged that was quite different than what we had experienced and yet strangely familiar to our theological convictions.But before we get on to what emerged I need to explore where we were at the beginning, which brings me to my first question.Jason Clark bloged [back in September] about Salvation and Spiritual Formation in which he distinguished two approaches: Creation-Fall-Redmeption and Creation-Incarnation-Recreation.The first goes like thisCreation: God made the world; it was ‘perfect’ (perfection being a greek idea of static purity)Fall: humans fell, from this state of perfection.Redemption: and need salvation or redemption to a higher order of being (back to perfection).So my question is, if you know or use this framework, what are your influences? Where are your sources and how do you use them?I would be very grateful if you have a moment to comment.
When you say “use”, that’s how I think of things if I have to explain why we need redemption. As for my sources, well, er the Bible. I guess you’d say they are both there, but the Creation-Fall-Redmeption is the one that comes most readily to mind. As for my sources, it must just be all the stuff I’ve been taught and read over the years. Not much help I’m afraid! I can’t read Jason’s blog at the moment, so I may have more inspiration when that’s back up again.
On a tangent, you may be interested to know that I taught the incarnation to 5 and 6 year olds just before Christmas using Duplo figures. “Suppose I became a Duplo figure…”