Curious Christian

The Emerging Church blogosphere seems to be buzzing with Mind Body Spirit chatter this week with the London Festival about to start so I thought I would post a few cursory thoughs and observations about exhibition outreach as a former exhibitionist (well some may say I’m still an exhibitionist but ….)

Sally writes:

… on one level I think this is great because it is where I believe churches must go, we must put ourselves into the spiritual supermarket alongside all the other spiritualities on offer. On another level I think that big and well resourced projects like this can make  smaller less well off groups feel that this is something though interesting, that they simply cannot do.

This brought a wry smirk to my face. Why? Well because if the truth be known this MBS exhibition outreach thing started with two guys, zero funding and zero training. In Jesus and the Gods of the New Age, Philip Johnson writes:

In 1990, the two of us, independant of each other, visited a major crowd-drawing New Age Festival that had just opened in our home town. We entered the venue and were staggered: this was culture shock.

Get it? two guys! Philip obviously leant from the experience and went on to forge a team that road tested some very innovative approaches to missional communication (such as tarot-based gospel exercises) but the point I want to make is we (I joined later) were always hopelessly underfunded throughout the entire decade we were at the festival. So I can say from experience that what matters most is not your external resources but your inner resources (theological, emotional and spiritual) and willingness to learn. Small groups – don’t be discouraged!

[BTW Sally has an interesting run down of some of what’s going on in the UK here. My Aussie readers may want to check out dekhomai which is associated with Moot and Jonny Baker]

On a tangent I might add I was a little surprised to see Graham Wilson is still behind the helm of the London festival. He pulled out of the Sydney and Melbourne festivals years ago and sold them off to more commercial interests. Always thought that was a pity as he brought a real life to it.

LOL, I just searched for some fresh images, typing “Mind Body Spirit Festival” on google images, and came up with my own stuff on the first page. Huh? That’s old stuff. Isn’t anyone putting up any new images?