The document discusses the history of dancing in early Christianity and the church. It notes that early church leaders wrote about circle dancing around altars, and there were no pews in churches until the 15th century. Dancing was common in churches until complaints in the late Middle Ages. The document suggests labyrinths in medieval churches may have been used for sacred dancing rituals. Dancing was eventually driven out of churches by church hierarchy who saw it as disruptive and lewd.

1. light fires

2. 2

3. 3

4. 4

5. tipping point
most exciting time
anxiety dropped away
statistics of decline
signs of hope
something
happened to
me ...

6. light fires

7. light fires
of hope
of concern
of courage

8. light firesW
ET
BLAN
KETS!

9. light fires
beginning with your own

10. light fires
issue permission slips

11. permission to dance

12. Did early Christianity have this kind of ecstatic ritual?
Oh, yes. It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that
Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some
of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what
seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.
I was surprised to learn that there weren't even pews in Catholic
churches until, I think, the 15th century or so. But in the late Middle
Ages you start hearing the church fathers and the hierarchy
continually complaining about the custom of dancing in churches.
You wrote something about labyrinths in medieval
churches being connected to sacred dancing.
That is a conjecture of one historian I was reading. He said the
labyrinths were meant to be danced through in a sacred dance--
perhaps initiating new priests and nuns.

13. Reformation, where a number of interesting things take place. One is
the dancing manias of the 14th century and later, where whole towns
seem to be seized by this irrepressible desire to get out in the streets
and dance. It’s been a puzzle to historians for a long time. I think you
could rule out any biological causes like some toxin causing these
things, which is what historians thought for a long time. It was
contagious, but it was visually contagious. Bystanders to these
crowds of dancers would be propelled to join in by the music and the
dancing.
Why do you think dancing was driven out of the church?
Who drove it out?
The hierarchy of the church, because it was thought to be disruptive,
for one thing. It was thought to be lewd. That word is used again and
again to describe ecstatic dance rituals of many people throughout
the world, as European missionaries found them in the 17th through
19th centuries, or the church fathers viewed women dancing in
churches in the late Middle Ages. They always said, "Oh God, this is
gross or obscene."
Another thing--if the dancing that was going on in the churches was
ecstatic, then that presents a threat to organized religion. Whenever
people can access deities directly without the intervention of a
religious hierarchy, they don't need to have hierarchy so much. So
you have a long fight in the Catholic church to suppress what they
call enthusiasm, from the Greek meaning "possessed"--having a god

14. a time to pace
a time to march
a time to dance

15. permission to dance

17. What’s missing today is a
high-quality discourse on
rethinking the design and
evolution of the entire
system from scratch.
- Otto Scharmer

18. permission
to dance to
a new tune

19. the
melody
of
creation

20. words from vincent
donovan

21. After some time among the Masai, Donovan
described, with some disillusionment, the
version of Christianity he and other
Western, Euro-American missionaries had
imported into Africa: “an inward-turned,
individual-salvation-oriented, un-adapted
Christianity” (8). He became so
disillusioned with this approach that he felt
the need to move away from the term
salvation altogether. One paragraph in his
book especially intrigues me:

22. “Preach the gospel to all creation,” Christ
said. Are we only now beginning to
understand what he meant? I believe the
unwritten melody that haunts this book ever
so faintly, the new song waiting to be sung
in place of the hymn of salvation, is simply
the song of creation.
To move away from the theology of
salvation to the theology of creation may be
the task of our time”

23. a new tune
“salvation” =
God’s saving love
for all creation.

24. Question 1:
What is the shape of the
biblical narrative?
(A pre-critical question)

26. Hell
Salvation
History/
The world
Fall
HeavenEden

27. Hades
Atonement,
purification
Aristotelian
Real
Fall
Into
Aristotelian
Real
Platonic IdealPlatonic Ideal

28. Destruction,
defeat
Civilization,
development,
colonialism
assimilationBarbarian/
pagan world
Rebellion
into
barbarism
Pax RomanaPax Romana

29. Is there an
alternative
understanding?

30. Liberation
Reconciliation
Creation

31. The ever-expanding story space of creation ...
Liberation
Reconciliation
Creation

32. 32
permission to dance
to a new rhythm

33. The urgent rhythm of mission in a world facing -
- Environmental catastrophe
- Unprecedented privilege and inequality
- Social, religious, political tension - with
unprecedented weapons.
- Breakdown in institutions, including religious
ones

34. we don’t dance to celebrate being out of danger
we dance to survive the danger.

35. They dance and sing as we arrive.
Dust rises ‘round us like rusty smoke.
Our dancing crowd moves like a swarm
Up the hill, through the village, to the center.
Short men smile and clap their welcome.
Women sway in tattered skirts.
One old woman leaps and spins,
Breasts flapping like out-turned pockets,
Arms arcing out like wings.
She dips, leans this way, that,
Eyes wild and alive as a dare.
Boys around me fuse like pistons
Into an engine of percussion.
They jump and stomp, rise and fall,
Feet in complex rhythms
Beating the earth-drum with themselves
As one.
We share the ecstasy of tribal and tribeless finding one
another
After a thousand centuries
Apart.
Led by the hand, I stoop down, crawl sideways,
fingerprinting red dust,
Into a Batwa hut of sticks, vines, mud, grass.
I, a visitor here, a stranger welcomed, strangely warm,
Adjust to the dim and humane light:
Reed mats, a torn mosquito net, dirt floor, three stones,
A cooking pot and gray embers from the morning fire.
I turn, push out, and squint, delivered back into stark
midday sun.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

36. A baby cries in fear,
Mine the first white face his eyes have ever seen.
In light of what has happened, he is right
To cry,
In this, his sad world, and mine, of light
And dark.
These little people, small as splinters in the palm of
Africa’s pain -
Their poor neighbors despise them: smelly, dirty, poor,
simple.
They have too little water to drink,
None to spare for washing.
They sleep on dirt, in huts,
On land they do not own.
When it rains, they get wet.
Unowned, they even lack the value of slaves.
They do not count.
In school, Tutsi and Hutu alike make fun,
Reconciled in their shared disdain,
And so Batwa seldom last more than a year or two
In school,
If that.
The chief, named No-Name by his parents,
Gathers us beneath a kind of trellis.
Speeches are made. People clap.
Eyes meet eyes. Shy smiles form.
Gifts exchange. My eyes brim.
Somehow they know I am here
To keep a promise and save
My soul.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

37. They sing and dance again as we depart.
For a while I join them stomping in the rising dust,
Wishing I could stay.
What are they singing? I ask.
The translator by my side leans toward me:
They are singing a good-bye song, he says.
The Batwa sing and dance when guests arrive
And when they leave.
They sing and dance when they have food, he says,
And when they hunger they sing and dance.
They survive, he says,
This way.

38. The rhythm and dance of mission ...
Joyful singing as defiance
Upraised hands as protest
Movement as resistance.

39. permission to dance with new
partners

40. old silos

41. Imagine an
emergence/convergence
- Progressive and post-
Evangelicals
- Missional mainliners
- Progressive Catholics
- Activated Anabaptists
and peace churches
- Ethnic churches
...organizing for
collaborative action!

42. permission to dance
with new freedom
new joy

43. improvisation
in ecclesiology
liturgy
catechesis
formation
governance
ministry

44. permission
to dance
to a new tune

45. 45
permission to dance to
a new rhythm

46. permission to dance with new
partners

47. permission to dance with new
freedom
new joy

48. light fires
issue permission slips

49. light fires
issue permission slips
invite others into the
interpretive community

50. Interpreting what
Christian faith will
mean, be, and do
after the fall of
Christendom and its
structures ...

51. What our faith will
become ... what it can
be ... is not pre-
determined. Our
choices will affect
the outcome.

52. The kingdom of God is
not a matter of food
and drink ...

53. The kingdom of God is
not a matter of food
and drink ...
circumcision, holy days,
priesthood, animal sacrifice, holy
temple, holy city, dietary laws,
isolation from the other ...

54. The kingdom of God is
not a matter of food
and drink ...
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions

55. The kingdom of God is
not a matter of food
and drink ...
doctrinal disputes
power struggles
desperate attempts
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions

56. The kingdom of God is
not a matter of food
and drink ...
doctrinal disputes
power struggles
desperate attempts
fear
playing it safe
running for cover
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions

57. The kingdom of God is
not a matter of food
and drink ...
doctrinal disputes
power struggles
desperate attempts
fear
playing it safe
running for cover
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions
personal ambition
political games
trivial pursuits

58. The kingdom of God is
not a matter of food
and drink ...
doctrinal disputes
power struggles
desperate attempts
fear
playing it safe
running for cover
personal ambition
political games
trivial pursuits
hostility
conflict
anger
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions

59. The kingdom of God is
not a matter of food
and drink ...
but of justice
peace
and joy
in the Holy Spirit

68. light fires
issue permission slips
invite others into the
interpretive community

69. light fires
issue permission slips
invite others into the
interpretive communitybeginning
w
ith
yourself!