"The edge of a trend whereby religious communities focus on the meaning-making by gathering up the past and re-presenting it through both story and action in ways that help people connect with God, one another, and the world outside the doors of the church buildings." p. 4
"Custom refers to what people do, actions in accordance with precedent; tradition refers to that which accompanies the action." p. 39
"Without the chain of memory, congregations become institutional amnesiacs, lost without identity or vocation." p. 45
"Contemporary culture suffers from collective amnesia...mainline Protestant congregations have fallen victim to the larger cultural amnesia by forgetting who- and whose - they are." p. 51
"Key to fluid retraditionaing is the idea of memory, of passing on the faith." p. 53
Craig Dykstra quote - "There is in the Christian churches and in the United States as a whole, a profound spiritual hunger for something...[people] yearn for coherent, thoughtful guidance as well as fresh access to the deep veins of wisdom that at least some of them suspect are still there to be mined from historic religious traditions." p. 58
Zygmunt Bauman quote - "To be rational in the modern world meant to be a pilgrim and to live one's life as a pilgrimage. To be rational in the postmodern world means to be a vagrant or a tourist, or to act as one." p. 59
"In an age of fragmentation, it may well be the case that the vocation of congregations is to turn tourists into pilgrims - those who no longer journey aimlessly, but, rather, those who journey in God and whose lives are mapped by the grace of Christian practices." p. 60
"Narrative theology assumes that scripture tells a story, that faith communities live into and interpret that story, and that individual believers make sense and meaning in relation to theose stories." p. 96
"congregations define themselves in narrative, they communicate by narrative, and they interact with the larger world through narrative." p. 97
"Pilgrims, either an individual or group, who have journeyed into the place of imagination and risk, must be able to come home and relate the tale." p. 99
"the meaning of Christian community is found in the imaginative journey and the renewal of tradition - the pilgrimage of creating church." p. 101
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You know as I reflect on much of the thread running through this, I am brought back to the ever nagging idea of "identity" for me, and I wonder (this time outloud) are we are a church (both 'denominationally' and globally) suffering from loss of identity? Or maybe it is just a loss of identity in 'western society'?
Identity is coming up again and again for me in readings, classes, conversations, and preaching - maybe I best be reflecting and meditating on that for a bit.
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