The Teaching of the 12

Tony Jones calls the Didache “the most important book you’ve never heard of” but for me it was more a case of it being “an important book I’ve heard of but never read”. So Tony’s latest book The Teaching of the 12 was as much an opportunity to address that oversight as it was to hear Tony’s thoughts on what this early Christian document has to offer to the Christian in the 21st century.

First of all the Didache itself: it is an eminently simple and practical guide to Christianity that builds on several Jewish documents and traditions to most probably help those new to the way of Jesus understand and practice their faith. It shares much in common with the New Testament and at first feels overly familiar and even redundant but underneath the surface reveals a great deal about the community it was written to serve and the formative days of what came to be called the Christian Faith.

Tony Jones’ approach to the Didache is similarly simple and practical. He starts with a bit of his own journey with the text in chapter one and outlines its rediscovery and the basic outline of the book. Chapter two is taken up by the Didache itself. In Chapter three He explains something of the Community that produced the Didache and another modern community that is engaging with the text. Chapters 4-7 each unpack a section of the book outlining sources, making comparisons with the Old and New Testament and explaining historical contexts. This section is in no way academic but is scholarly. Each section includes reference to the real world implications of the teaching in the Didache and concludes with the very straightforward perspective of “Trucker Frank” (a well know figure to anyone who has followed Tony’s writing or activities online).

This was a fantastic introduction to the Didache. It didn’t answer all my questions about this ancient document, if I was going to criticise The Teaching of the 12 at all it would be for the few times it outlines a section of the text that has some ambiguity and then doesn’t make any effort to explain the possible meanings of the passage, but this criticism would be unfair given the tenor of the book and the gentleness with which Tony treats his subject.

I tend to judge books by one standard: When finished, do I immediately begin thinking of people with whom I wish to share the book? By that standard The Teaching of the 12 is a excellent book.

Linky Dink:

Tony Jones
The Teaching of the 12 (Koorong)
The Teaching of the 12 (Amazon)

THE IDIODYSSEY by Cam the Poet

Claimed by God for Mission: The Congregation Seeks New Forms

Here is a sample from a book I found this week, much of this will no doubt sound familiar to those conversant with the EMC conversation but read on for the plot twist.

Chapter 1: Some present congregational structures can justifiably be termed heretical, as they separate the church from its Lord and from its mission, persons from one another and the gospel from its social implications.

Chapter 2: Many present congregational structures are renewable, provided mission is central to their life: a mission that is comprehensive, open to the future, and intentionalistic.

Chapter 3: The development of relevant, renewed structures hinges upon our understanding of what God is doing in the history he created, in which he reveals himself, and which he promises to fulfil. A congregation's decision to participate in history forces it to ask the question: What is god doing in history?

Chapter 4: Relevant structures for the congregation in our twentieth-century world must be responsive to what God is now doing in our shifting, surging, secularized, suffering, and searching world.

Chapter 5: Renewed structures must be responsive to God's word as recorded in Scripture. This Word portrays a variety of congregational forms in constant change, orientated to the outsider. They are to be orderly and infused with genuine hope.

Chapter 6: The Search for new congregational forms is aided by the projection of new images that help envisage the goal towards which we may move. The dual-centered ellipse, the intruder, and the boundary-crosser are such images.

Claimed by God for Mission by Eugene L. Stockwell published 1965

Missional Prayers #6

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

Prayer of Saint Francis

Lux umbra Dei

Listen carefully, through the stillness
listen, hear the songs of angels glorious
ere long it will be heard
that His foot has reached the earth.

God the Lord has opened a door.
Christ of Hope, door of Joy!

Though laid in a manger,
He came from a throne:
on earth though a stranger
in heaven He was known.

from Christmas Liturgy, Northumbria Community