mightychurch.com

A brief comment about who the site is for. Is it aimed at Syd Ang. Is it aimed at just Syd. Is it open to all. I expect this will be fleshed out a bit more in Mighty Mouse’s ;)  “About Mighty Church” page.

I found it hard on the previous site to know who I was dialoguing with. Was I dialoguing with a Christian, a non-believer, or someone who was searching.

It makes a HUGE difference to the tone of my reply depending on their individual circumstances.

There is a lot of assumed knowledge in my replies when corresponding with other believers. There is a basic set of principles that we assume other Christians know and live by.

If this website is open slather ..... then I’m confused about how to participate. I may not enter into a discussion at the very beginning of a thread…. which is the point when someone might state their position.

Could there be a spot in our “profile information” to say .... maybe a bit like facebook ....

instead of “looking for friends/relationship/love”

have looking for “christian friends / wanting to believe / religion is baloney”

These options would need a lot more work. I don’t know if this is a real suggestion anyway.

But how have others managed to work through the issue of the faith (or non-belief) of a person you are in dialogue with?

Heather.

Hey
How about a theological profile kinda thing.

You know;
Atheist
Agnostic
Christian
Non-Christian
Trinitarian
Calvinist
Arminian
Liberal
Sacramentalist
Fundamentalist

(you can have sub-cats such as RC, High Church, Orthodox… running off sacramentalist for example)

also;
Jewish
Muslim
Hindu
Buddhist
Grodspotlian…

How about the facebook equivalent. ;)

In a relationship with God//Jesus.
Looking for a relationship with God/Jesus.
Out of a relationship with God/Jesus.
Relationships are highly over-rated

or this one

Bound for Heaven
Think I’m bound for Heaven
Hope I’m bound for Heaven
Bounding Out of Heaven Fast
Thrown out of Heaven.

all suggested with humour. no seriousness. is most likely an impossible discussion thread.

How about a simple musical division ;)

Bound for Glory
or
Highway to Hell

Hmmm
Jesus is:
Liar
Demon
Poached egg man
Son of God
a Capricorn
dead
Mushroom

This is a good topic Heather!

I think this will become more of an issue as the community (hopefully!) grows and evolves. At the moment the idea is just to get most of the active Syd Ang members over here who are broadly on the Syd Ang wavelength, though you certainly don’t have to be in Sydney or in an Anglican church to fit that bill (and there’s a bunch of people I’ve invited who aren’t, but I certainly want to be a part of the community). So to that end everyone is more or less a mature Christian.

However sooner or later we’ll get new people coming through with no idea of where they’re at, and capturing a bit of information in their profile could certainly help (user profiles are something I want to make more use of with the new site), but I think just having the regular members encouraging newbies to introduce themselves would definitely be very helpful, as that gives people a chance to explain where they’re in more detail than just checking a box (though a checked box is better than nothing).

So to get that info, my thoughts are:
- Get users to indicate in their profile
- Have the community encourage new users to introduce themselves
- Encourage new users to introduce themselves in the sign up process.

I’ll give some thought about the best way to implement that in a future update!

Hi Heather. I’m interested in what you mean exactly by the tone of your reply? Do you have different criteria in how you respond to others, as in being kinder to some and sharper to others?

Sydney Anglicans is a diverse mix any way, made up of Anglo Catholics, Charismatics, Evangelicals, Reformed Evangelicals, Liberals etc.

Then in the old forums we had a mix of Pentecostals, Anglo Catholics who attend Pentecostals, Liberals, none believers, some Muslim, Roman Catholics, Baptists..Methodists. Presbyterians etc.

Yet within those groups there is a wide and diverse range of belief and opinion and I think there a danger of forming a stereotypical view of a person if they state what or where they fellowship, which in reality could be a straw man.

For instance… many would believe all Roman / Anglo Catholics are not saved and then want to convert them….or that all Pentecostals are guilty of believing a prosperity gospel.

I think true community is all about listening to what the other person has to say without first forming a pre-judgement about them, and responding to what they have said and not what you think it is they have said.

Hi and thanks Craig for your thoughts. Yes I made a poor choice of word in that previous post.  And I’m learning all the time about trying not to paint one person with the same theology brush as another. But its jolly hard don’t ya think? In some ways though it does give us a starting point at which to engage in discussion.

But no matter how objective you think you might be, we all fall into the trap of putting people into a theology box. People are at heart subjective beings.  We have to make the conscious choice to act and think objectively. I believe being objective is a skill that is learned and only mastered by constant application. Some people are better at it than others. (In this online community I constantly fail to be objective. Because this site is a place to share my point of view. If I was acting as a “moderator” then I would behave and reply to discussions differently.)

So what am I really saying? I seem to have “reacted” to your comment:

Sorry about that! Maybe I should go back and read what you are really trying to say. (not meaning to be frivilous. just showing that I’ve fallen into the trap again of reacting instead of thinking objectively).

I have re-interpreted your statement above as meaning we should try to be more objective in our replies. Is this so?

;)

Yes I think you are right in that we should be more objective in our replies, and treat what people say with dignity and respect.

I think when it comes to Theology we need to understand what is Doctrine, what is Dogma and what is what ever :-)
Often people are dogmatic over their doctrine, which causes them to be defensive and wanting people to think, believe, act the same as they do.
This I believe comes from a fear that what we know is the truth and the only truth…..and in doing so doesn’t allow us to interact with grace with others… from other denominations / theological bases.

For instance it is Ok to hold to and believe a doctrine of the 2nd coming…but its not ok to be dogmatic about it and deride some one who doesn’t believe your doctrine of how it works. The same comes to how people can be overly dogmatic about the doctrine of the Atonement.

Its not the belief in how the Atonement works that gets us saved, its belief in Christ dying for us, that does.

It has been my discovery working alongside many Christian denominations that basically we all believe the same things….we have 90% in common….Paul says there is one God, one Spirit,  but many outworking’s of that Spirit.

I like Paul’ approach in Acts…when he went around the city and discovered what made them tick… he never derided them for their idolatry, respected them, built a bridge between them..told them he could see they were religious people….didn’t tell them they were wrong or dirty rotten sinners going to hell…. said let me tell you about the unknown God.