Rev Dr Colin Greene, head of theology and mission at SGM Lifewords, reflects on the current financial crisis over on the Metavista blog.

In a wonderfully satirical article written for the July edition of Prospect magazine, Julian Gough likens the global financial crisis of the last few months to the equally calamitous events we read about in the book of Exodus. When Moses walked into the pharaoh’s court with an ultimatum that said the enslaved Israelites were just about to go on a God directed walkabout, the royal court had no idea that their great and revered military and economic empire was just about to lurch into its own version of financial meltdown.

Read the full article…

Colin Greene, theologian in residence at SGM Lifewords and co-author of ‘Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an age of Imagination‘, was recently interviewed by Paul Fromont. The conversation takes in the place of the Bible, the role of the church, and the nature of mission. All fascinating stuff, and here to read and discuss on the Metavista blog.

If you haven’t read Metavista yet, you can order a copy from Authentic Media or from Amazon.

Colin Greene (SGM Lifewords‘ Head of Mission and Theological Development) and Martin Robinson have just written a new book looking at the future for the Bible, Church, and Mission in “post-postmodernity” … Definitely worth a read. The chapters on Cultural Engagement and Biblical Theology are particularly thought-provoking. You can get the book from Amazon or Paternoster … or check out the Metavista website to find out more about the book, and the wider conversation around the issues.

Archbishop Rowan Williams gave an interesting lecture last week on The Spiritual and the Religious, articulating the differences between religion as “a matter of the collective mentality”, and the spiritual as that which “opens up and resources personal integrity at a new depth,” and allows “ordinary human activities to be understood afresh against a broader background of ’sacred’ meaning.”

The trend in our culture today is away from the structures and requirements of religion, to the more open territories of spirituality. It is a shift “away from the idea of a controlling narrative, a story about shared meanings and goals.”

Part of the problem, says Williams, is that religion is understood in power terms, as a matter of one truth over another. As a matter of thought, conviction and decision, this makes faith a private matter - a collection of personal conclusions that have little impact on public life. But this is not the way religion used to be viewed:

“Traditional styles of religious commitment were nothing much to do with resolving to think or do this or that: they were environments in which people were supplied with a set of possible roles within a comprehensive narrative, a set of possible projects shaped by the governing story. The aim of life was to act in a way that lets the story come through, that shows to the world what we believe is most real.”

Williams does not condemn the modern search for spiritual connection as a distraction. Neither does he seek to defend Christianity as a set of truths to be propagated. Rather, he advocates an understanding of ourselves as a community with a different story.

“The Christian alternative to the post-religious spirituality outlined earlier is not simply ‘religion’ as some sort of intellectual and moral system but the corporately experienced reality of the Kingdom, the space that has been cleared in human imagination and self-understanding by the revealing events of Jesus’ life.”

• You can read the whole lecture here, or watch a video here.