Yesterday I allocated the whole day to working in the local area for a very nice lady who was an ex UWA professor and a ‘church going’ lady and now retired. To give me a hand she had hired a local handyman and he was a ‘roughie’.
So I alternated today between discussing Christology and spirituality with R while lamenting the mess that Yanchep has become since all those f@$-in young couples and families had moved in with Z.
It was enjoyable and entertaining. But it also highlighted the diversity of the community we live in. Z has been in Yanchep renting the same house since 1990 and works as a handyman as little as possible, while R lives on a farm since retiring and comes home to her Yanchep properties on the occasional weekend.
R had identified herself as having ‘church heritage’ and seemed to enjoy discussing faith with me until it got sticky… She was talking to me about the importance of faith, but how all paths lead to God and it doesn’t matter which you take. Up to then we had found common ground, but on this I disagreed suggesting Jesus definitely claimed to be the only way. The conversation ended there – very politely mind you – but when R opened her wallet to pay me I saw her ‘Bahai’ membership card. Of course that explained why any kind of exclusivity would be a problem.
By contrast Z and I discussed the more blokey stuff of life as we worked. My favourite quote from the morning was him telling me about a conversation he had with tech support trying to fix his computer. The di*&^head said to me ‘Don’t you know how to re-install windows mate?’
I said to him ‘Will a rim off a VG Valiant fit on a HT Kingswood?’ And he didn’t know… ‘We can’t all know everything mate!’ said Z and I think he made his point pretty well… albeit in a way I would never have thought of…
It was a great day with two good people but it highlighted the cultural differences that exist within this little community.
OK question time Hamo … where has the ’emerging church’ gone?
Haha… That’s a bit more of a post in itself LF! Let me think about whether I want to open it up…in short I think it was a prophetic movement that did it’s job in calling the church back to mission – but now that the message has been heard I don’t know that it serves much purpose any more
Yeah – I was thinking about it … may be a good topic for a post and discussion. I had googled ’emerging church’ and was surprised that there are no recent articles.