After Sheron's excellent session last night I got thinking about how it might be useful if we had a statement of our values as SofaChurch. Not in any sort of sign-up-or-else manner, but as a reflection of the sort of things that most of us believe.
To get things moving, Susie and I had a think and came up with these ten statements, which we'd love your feedback on. If you have any suggestions for alterations or additions then please please let me know (preferably via email at andy@sofachurch.com rather than as a blog comment). If you like it please let me know too, don't mind that done in public through blog comments... We'll discuss it in person one evening too, for non computer people, and hopefully come up with a consensus.
God
1. We try our best to follow Jesus - his actions and words
2. We welcome challenges that sharpen our understanding of God and are not afraid to ask difficult questions
3. We look for traces of God in the everyday, including the secular media, and encourage creativity as we recognise that God is creative
People
4. We welcome, accept and listen to everyone regardless of belief, sexuality, background or anything else that might lead to alienation in some churches
5. We are not judgmental as we acknowledge that we are all far from perfect ourselves
6. We value friendship and express our faith in our care for each other
Church
7. We recognise the importance of the Bible but have different opinions as to how we interpret it and how literally we read it
8. We try to create a physically comfortable space
9. We deconstruct man-made church traditions and avoid practices that exclude people without much church experience
10. We are open to being wrong about any of this
9 comments:
I feel very strongly that a defining feature of the group should be that we accept everyone without exception. It makes me furious when people are turned away from churches because they don't fit the mould for whatever reason.
Which of us is perfect in every way? Who of us are living our lives in such a way that God can't find fault? Who are we to say that certain individuals are not welcome in the church until they clean themselves up?
I'm sure it's mostly about becoming a middle-class 'acceptable', non-threatening person. The church says, "You're welcome along, but you will need to change and become like one of us." You're required to dress a certain way, behave in a certain way, think the same thoughts as everyone else. Or else you upset the status quo.
Jesus' disciples weren't acceptable. They were rough-as. And why do we assume that Jesus was such a squeaky clean mummy's boy?
Any one of us could fall into trouble and become homeless. Or make some poor decisions that find us in trouble with the law.
And as friendly as we are, the fact is that we don't know each other's deep secrets. We don't know who might have had an abortion in the past or have a prison sentence. We don't know the truth about anyone's sexuality, whether they're married or not, or whether pre-conversion, they carried out abuse or did drugs. We don't know who's struggling with porn or addicted to gambling.
It's fine and healthy to have different views on issues, but let's make certain that we don't exclude anyone with our words or actions, because we're none of us sorted, and SofaChurch has to be a safe place for everyone - a lifeboat.
By way of an interesting synchronicitous occurence, this ASBO Jesus cartoon popped up in my feed next to this SofaChurch post.
Andy and Suse, this statement of faith is fab.... so inclusive, so accepting. Thank you.
Thanks, Jo for your encouraging feedback. Really glad you're happy with our ideas!
Have added this to the Facebook Group, and mailed it to the members.
WOW! I think this is amazing... So reflects where I think we're at... I never understand Xnty that is exclusive - ultimately God is God are we aren't - so we shouldn't be so judgmental (remember the sheep & goats...)
I love the way we seem to agree at Sofa Church that God is in everything... So I wonder if there's value in putting something intentional in about God being the creator & author of all things - therefore we find him in all aspects of life & experience?... A bit like value no.3 but a bit sharper & more intentional?...
I think there's also something about the way we engage with postmodern culture which is such a positive about sofa church... So much Xnty is actually trapped in modernity and believes it is an essential part of Xn faith, not recognising it as simply a vehicle... I love value 7, and personally speaking, I'm glad we're not in the narrowness of some evangelicalism which actually pretends to hold the bible in high regard, but by reducing it to a guidebook/manual for life (a la modernity - see above) actually insults it and fails to grasp the depth of it and its fundamental nature of being a narrative of God, the world and interaction between...
And completely endorse what Suse says about middle-class identity - I read that and went 'yes'
I also love the way in these values that we've identified ourselves positively too... I think there would be a danger that Sofa Church defined itself more by what it is not (clique-y, judgmental, has a statement of faith etc) than what it is - so I'm really pleased we've come up with something positive :)
Thanks for your usual insight, Geoff - I'll incorporate your suggestions into version two.
Good grief, GeoffE, that's an amazing, sharp post. I might just have to copy that somewhere and think more on it. What a blast of fresh, clear thinking to augment what I thought was already good.
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