Blog archive November 2016
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10.11.16 / 01 / future present
Jonny Baker was putting together a Pioneer Conversations Day 8th November 2016 at CMS in Oxford, entitled ‘Future Present: Dreaming of a Better World Now’:
Imagine what the future could be like. Now imagine it for a particular area of life - let’s say the city, or the workplace, the environment, the economy, a school, a church, international trade, banking, relationships between men and women. Another world is always possible, always dreamable. Everything created or made has been dreamed or imagined somewhere by someone. Now what would it take to act in the present on the basis of that imagined future? to make the future present? to embody a better world now?
Meanwhile, Richard Passmore, as Fresh Expressions Enabler in Cumbria, had asked to use some of my ’network church’ stuff for a youth church leaflet. I in turn was inspired by what was happening there, which shows that network church stuff can happen in a rural setting as well as a city if the denominational boundaries are dropped. Since Future Present is about envisaging alternative futures, I wanted to show what might be possible if we forget about the current structures for a moment.
So I created a new presentation which combined some old thoughts about alternative uses for church spaces, with the idea for using different buildings for different things inspired by Cumbria. I also threw in throneroom schoolroom living room as an introduction.
The slides here don’t have some of my explanatory stuff on the day, eg the intro was about me and my day job doing workplace design for large corporate clients, and how that informs my approach to church.
