What my church might learn from this chapter: week 4

Barker: Chapter 5.

Globalization already affect our churches, the easy example of worship music traveling all over the world and impacting the majority of evangelical churches (and others). The cultural settings of our days require now to work with new alternative lifestyle and identities, and I think that it is when we will be able to meet those that the church will have an impact in our societies. Hybridity in a way that it include people from every lifestyle/culture/"class"/haircut/....should be one of the maine character of our church today. Jesus was the one who was hanging out with the outcasts wasn't he? Aren't we called to walk in his steps?

Barker: Chapter 6
The idea of "the aestheticization of everyday life" is something that keeps my attention. I've been thinking a lot lately about the fact that we decompose as life in different fields (an heritage of the french enlightenment). We don't mix our spiritual life with our professional or emotional life.... The different forms of aestheticization apply mainly to arts and everyday life, but I want to see my faith as an art, and I want to practice that art in my everyday life/contact/thinking,...

James K.A. Smith "Who's afraid of postmodernism?" Chapter 1.

So many people are scared of the dangers of post-modernism, and try to keep the church away from it. But we have to face it because it is not something that we can avoid, it is herem in our culture, and if we want to be a church as the church is meant to be, we have to deal with it and bring the church in this new era. The first thing to do, and which is the point of this book, is trying to understand what post-modernity is. I like the phylosofical approach that the author takes and the bridges that he wants to build between secular phylosphers and christianity today. Looking forward for the next chapter...

James K.A. Smith "Who's afraid of postmodernism?" Chapter 2.
Since I arrived at Fuller, that idea that the gospels (and the rest of the Bible) were only interpretation was a pretty new idea, even if I could "sense" that before. That idea, brought questions about inspiration, infalability,... I really like the idea that even if we rely on interpretation (cause this all we have right?), those interpretations can be true. However I'm still convinced that there are some objective truth (like God is love,...) that don't depend on our interpretation of things... The european church, and me being a part of it, has still a lot to "deconstruct" in that field of interpretation, objectivity,....

Barker: Chapter 7
It is important as a church to think about identity (self identity and social identity) as something always in the process and also as being something individual and communal. The failure to approach some cultures, or some persons, is often grounded in the inability to let people express their true-self and trying to reduce them to an icon of the "perfect christian" or "perfect church member." Acceptation of the other/the outcast for who he is and building a true relationship is, I think, the first step to be able to reach our and share God's love.