Audio from Swedenborg Colloquium on the Future of the New Church

On October 9th there was an awesome event. It's lengthy title was “‘Behold I Make All Things New’ — How? The Future of the New Church, Swedenborg Colloquium.” The advertisements for the event simply said,

The public is cordially invited to hear 12 Swedenborgian speakers present a variety of visions for the future of the New Church.

If you couldn't be there, the best way to get a sense for what the event was like is to listen to the recordings of the speeches. To listen to or download the audio recordings, go to Independent Voice for the General Church Community (ivotgc.org), specifically to the Swedenborg Colloquium Audio page. The files are all in MP3 format.

I'm also going to put links to the individual talks below with a few scattered notes from me. If you were at the event (or just listened to one of the recordings) and want to add some comments, please do. My notes do not adequately represent what each speaker said.

Everything to Do with "Pause: Make Space for God"

The most recent New Church spiritual growth program, "Pause: Make Space for God" just launched last week so I thought I'd let you know about all the different resources that are available for this program.

The main URL for all things Pause is newchurchpause.org. Almost everything is there I just want to highlight some of the things that you might not find otherwise. In particular I want to let you know that there are ways that you can participate even if you're not near one of the participating congregations.

Videos

First, here's a little video introduction to the program:

Help Create an Accurate Picture of Present Day Thought on Swedenborg's Writings

Wendy Soneson is working on an article about what people these days think about Swedenborg's Writings. To this end she's created two short surveys to get input from people about what they believe. I took the "Defining Faith" survey and found it an interesting exercise and I'm even more interested to read the article that she writes. (I'll be sure to post a link to the article once it's written and published.)

Here's an introductory note from Wendy and links to the 2 surveys.

Dear Friends of Swedenborg,

I am collected data from two anonymous surveys for an article on present day thinking and belief among those familiar with Swedenborg’s Writings.

If you like to think about questions concerning your belief system, and have five minutes for either of these anonymous surveys (you would only be able to qualify for one), I would so much appreciate the information for my article. I will not know the names or emails of anyone who participates, or if you participate or not. Thank you.

Defining Faith
This survey is for those who are familiar with the Writings and think of themselves as generally in the category of a main stream General Church thinker.

That’s Me in the Corner
This survey is for those who are familiar with the Writings but do not think of themselves as mainstream General Church thinkers.

Contact Wendy with any questions at wendysoneson@mac.com.