I was planning on achieving quite a lot of things this week but ended up in bed for the most part due to a nasty flu bug. Not nice at all, I must add. Well, I have occasionally been able to browse around the Internet and there’s been quite an interesting and at times heated discussion about emerging church and postmodernity on Stefan Swärd’s blog Allt mellan himmel och jord. (You find the postst here and here and here, all in Swedish though). Stefan is the chair person of InterAct/Evangelical Free church in Sweden and I really appreciate that he, first of all, takes time to get his head around the subject, and secondly, that he does so in a very good and willing-to-understand kind of way, although he doesn’t necessarily agree with everything he reads and hears. He’s also actively working to reach the younger generations in Stockholm with the gospel, being involved in a ministry called Ungdomskyrkan Konnekt. Good stuff!

However, as with many other blog discussions about emerging church it tends to frustrate me in some ways – many who comment have only a vague understanding about the subject and dismisses the whole phenomenon because they read one book critical to the conversation or they’ve seen one or two YouTube-clips about the matter. Another frustrating thing is that people too often tend to forget that emerging church is so much more than a North American phenomenon (I know I’ve written this on a number of occasions and repeat myself, but if we are to do the whole conversation justice we need to keep this in mind). 

Moving on, last weekend we attended Sammankomst 09, a gathering for alternative/house churches and communities inspired by the neo-monastic movement. We didn’t manage to take part in the meetings as much as we initially hoped to do, but it was great being there when we were and I especially appreciate catching up with David Åhlén, who co-hosted the gathering and together with his wife leads a community in Bagarmossen in South Stockholm. Its a small group of Christians which at the moment is made up of four households that live on the same street, with a vision for a common purse-lifestyle, simplicity, hospitality, community, healing and daily prayer. I’m looking forward hearing more about how their communal life develops and what God is doing in their lives and in the neighborhood. The theme of the gathering was helhetssyn (sort of “embracing or seeing the whole”) and for you who understand Swedish have a look at their website where you can read more about what was said and what happened during the weekend.

Lastly, last Sunday there was a gathering of people part of or inspired by the Anabaptist tradition (I wasn’t able to attend the meeting, but as far as I understand quite a few of those who were there were also attending Sammankomst 09). There’s talks about setting up a network in Sweden, inspired by the Anabaptist Network in the UK. Really interesting stuff and Jonas Melin has written a post about this on his blog Barnabasbloggen, which you find here. Enjoy!