sustain:if:able kiwi

Got it

Looks like we’ve caught the mouse that was in the house.

🙂 lol

@pentecost mission is for the geriatric

This is a fascinating video, either at Pentecost or for anyone working with a mainline, declining, aging denomination in mission, leadership and change. Fuller Theological Seminary lecturer Mark Lau Branson shares a contextual reading and interpretation of the Pentecost story in Acts 2 in which he suggests that those gathered in Jerusalem were mainly retirees and it is amongst the faithful elderly that God’s surprising spirit turns up.

Mark is author of the fantastic Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change, which explores the use of Appreciative Inquiry in church life, excerpts of which I invariably use when talking about mission with local churches. Mark is also co-author of Churches, Cultures and Leadership: A Practical Theology of Congregations and Ethnicities, of which Part 3 especially is a superb resource, offering practical skills of leadership by using a case study of real change.

the Pentecost practice of small growth

In February, I gave the three favourite women in my life flowers. Not cut, but living. Each plant was different. One was given an indoor orchid, another a outdoor flowering native shrub, another an outdoor native tree.

The period around Valentines Day in Adelaide is hot. It’s summer and things are dry. It meant that a gift of the day also demanded ongoing care. Each morning I could be found, hose in hand, watering the outdoor natives.

Moving into March, I became quite concerned about one. The soil was dry, the sun hot and significant die-back had appeared.

Yesterday, warming down after my morning run, I was delighted to see new growth, the first fragile signs of life taking root.

And to notice that the indoor orchid was preparing to flower again, a beautiful white and lavender about to emerge.

This week we celebrate Pentecost and move into a season in which we pay particular attention to the work of the Spirit. For me, the miracle of the Spirit, and the task of paying attention, is captured in the fragile new life I see in my garden.

For a while in my late teens, I linked Pentecost with great signs and wonders. I’d leave church looking for the miraculous, the dramatic, the extra-ordinary.

In doing so, I would walk right past what was small, the fragile in my garden, the miracle that is any growth, any sign of life, especially in a hot and barren climate. But the Kingdom that is God’s at times seems to pay more attention to the humble, the small, the insignificant. As Jesus welcomes children, as he avoids the crowds seeking miracles, it becomes a reminder that in God’s economy, all growth is worth celebrating, any new leaf worth paying attention to.

This for me, is the Pentecost practice of small growth.

(This is another entry in dictionary of everyday spirituality, under the heading P is for Pentecost).

Do women do it – ministry and leadership – differently?

Do women lead different?

No.

And yes.

That is the conclusion from those who write in Presiding Like a Woman – Feminist Gestures for Christian Assemblies, a collection of 20 essays and 2 poems, reflecting on what it means to “preside”, to offer leadership in ministry, as a woman.

The argument of the book is that gender can be rejected – “Oh we’re all the same.” Or ignored – “It’s awkward, so let’s not talk about it.” Or explored, because, in the words of Ali Green, “By honouring sexual difference we can encourage and inspire others who … have felt excluded by their own culture, both within the Church and in wider society.” (109)

As I read, a number of themes seemed to keep appearing.

First, an embodied spirituality – for example the connection in so many essays to experience. In the words of Gillian Hill “women’s experience and an embodied approach challenge any retreat into abstract ideas.” (155)

Second, the whole of life – and to illustrate, a great example by Ali Green

“As well as being childbearers, woman are also oftentimes the carers and homemakers who look after the very young and old and put food on the table. Essentially, the Eucharist is a meal of companionship where everyone is invited to the table, and where the priest, representing Christ, feeds the guests. The woman presider offers a reminder of this very concrete and humble connection: the transcendent, unsearchable God, through the incarnation, becomes known to us in the basic staples of life.” (Green, 107)

Third, participation – a desire for interactivity and mutuality. A chapter by Nichola Slee explored this in depth, arguing that mutuality flourished when responsibility was taken up to attend to the care of the group.

“whether shared or exercised by one person, attention to the power dynamics within the group and careful management of those dynamics is essential if the community is to function well.” (160)

Four, leadership as gentle space-making – Grey describes how the presider is a midwife “that hears into speech, especially the inarticulate, the invisible, the excluded.” (55) This space-making is facilitated by an ethos of empowering leadership and the deliberate creation of safe space.

“The [teacher] does not create the community, but she is frequently the one to call the community together and to issue the invitation to the risky, adventurous process of learning.” (159)

What was fascinating was the chapter by Brian Barrett (one of the two male contributors) who placed this within a lovely mission frame. He argues that the traditional image of church as circle is not Biblical. Neither is the one person band.

Rather leadership is about movement, the constant shift between attending to the congregation and to the stranger on the margins;

to “move back and forth across and to the very edges and doorways of the space, enabling and encouraging the movement of others, and, in the process, making visible and tangible the ‘incarnational flow’ within the ‘space between.’” (Barrett, 173)

Much to think about in this book, as I lay it alongside Faith of Girls, Women’s Spiritual Development (here and here) and the emerging church data I am working with.

why twitter is good for little blogs like mine

“Brilliant,” was the comment.

This week in the calendar of the church was Ascension Day. In honour of the day, I placed a quick note on Twitter, pointing to a number of historic “Ascension Day” posts on my blog:

Ascension day in worship http://t.co/r4hzmm8I And theology http://t.co/XVHSIcVj.

One post (Ascension day in worship) was an interactive worship service I had offered back in 2010 – Ascension Day and the footprints of Jesus – as a resource. Another post (Ascension day in theology) was a short theological reflection that I blogged back in 2007. (Please note the date. 2007 was some 3 years BEFORE Jeremy Begbie, at Wheaton, declared that the emerging church needed to pay more attention to the Ascension. Three years. Obviously Jeremy Begbie didn’t read my blog in doing his research. LOL!)

Anyhow, none of these posts rank anywhere on google, presumably not because they are bad, but simply because my blog is so small/does not know how to manipulate google rankings.

We are told that google is great for democratisation of information, but it also feeds a very fastmoving, temporary society, in which if you’re not on page one, you’re off the digital radar. Which means that for little blogs like mine, what you post as a resource has a very short shelf life. Which, if you post things hoping they might resource others, becomes self-defeating.

Until twitter. One short tweet this week led to a “brillant” comment by one person and a request by another to use the resources in worship. It put the resource back in circulation, by-passing the google gatekeeping and achieving the purpose of the blog – to share creativity, to pass on resources.

Which makes platforms like twitter more important for little blogs like mine, more important if the web really is meant to enhance connection and resourcing, a subversion of the hierarchies that have developed so quickly in this so-called “flat” networked digital world.

midway marker, in days and words

While Steve is making pleasing progress, he can be easily distracted

As of today, I’m about halfway through this 3 months of study leave.

There have been a few distractions. In the first week of study leave I was involved in the group that appointed Sean Gilbert as the new Ministry Practice Co-ordinator to the Uniting College Faculty. In the last few weeks we’ve begun the selection and interview processes for a Principal’s PA (0.5), a Director of Missiology (0.5) and a Post-graduate Co-ordinator (.0.5). These are not yet filled, so they will continue to be a “study leave” presence.

So what else have I done?

I’ve had afternoon coffees with a range of interesting colleagues, getting me out of my little head in my little writing cave, building the networks.

I’ve written for publication one short 850 word article, on “Diaconal Ministry and Fresh Expressions.”

I’ve lodged one 5,000 word funding bid, seeking $25,000 to do research on Social innovation in religious organisations in Australia.

The major focus has been the book project – “Emerging ten years on: durability and sustainability in fresh expressions.” I’ve written a 4,500 word outline of the entire project, mapping out all 13 chapters, which I’ve sent to a few friends for feedback.

With that big picture in place, I’ve got stuck into four of the six new chapters I want to write. This has involved analysing the focus group interviews – trying to make sense of written transcripts of around 50,000 word in total. Plus analysing the data from 47 survey forms – in particular looking at gender differences between how males and females grow in faith in emerging churches. I am not yet ready to make any conclusions. But I am loving the twists and turns the project is taking me (especially the reading on gender (here, here and here), loving what the data is showing.

All told the word count for these four chapters now totals around 20,000. Not necessarily good words, but words. You can’t edit what’s in one’s head, but you can edit what’s on paper. I reckon I need about 45,000. So I am almost halfway. Today. A day which also marks the midway marker in this three months of study leave.

So, 6 weeks on, at the mid-way marker, a full book manuscript is still a possibility by the end of study leave, 29 June.

a big day: social innovation research funding bid

Today I ticked off one of my study leave goals, submitting a funding bid to do some research into pioneering (social innovation) in Australia. It has involved a lot of work, a few late nights, some 5,000 words, spread over 26 pages of application and pulling together support from 4 different partners.

The bid is titled “Social innovation within religious communities in Australia.” The aims are “to undertake an analysis of quantitative data, and gather further qualitative data in order to analyse the skills and capacities required to catalyse and sustain innovations that build social capital and enhance the public good in the not-for-profit sector.”

It has involved negotiating with various partners, trying to think about their needs and how they might link with the aims of the University (research). The intended outcomes (if the bid is successful) will include a mix of articles, book, video and help in our post-graduate research.

It’s a highly competitive process, so I’m not holding my breath.

But it’s been fascinating to try to explain pioneering and fresh expressions in publicly accessible language (almost mission in itself perhaps?). And it’s been great to have the space of sabbatical to write and re-write. It’s allowed me to met some new people, be stretched in new areas and be very glad that Uniting College has a relationship with Flinders University, that makes such collaboration even a possibility.

But it’s left me stuffed.

is religion better or worse for society?

A range of opinions regarding the public social good of religious institutions exist.

• an “ivory tower” perception, in which religious organisations are judged to have no earthly focus, and thus little practical public good

• a “culture destroyer” view, in which religious organisations are considered to be of toxic value to tolerance and goodwill of society

• a “public good” generator, in which religious organisations are investigated as potential contributors to public social capital.

The rationale for this “public good generator” position is that religious organisations currently exist as a significant contributor in the not-for-profit arena. Some research has indicated that church adherents are more likely to serve as volunteers. For example, church attenders are more likely to be volunteers in local community groups (43%) than the wider Australian population (32%). Across all denominations, volunteering within the congregation has a strong positive relationship with volunteering in the community. Rather than being only church-focused, church volunteers are outward-looking and active in their community. (Source: NCLS Research/University of Western Sydney joint study on volunteering (2001))

However, existing religious organisations face significant challenges, in regard to adaptation to new technologies, how to participate in a pluralistic and multi-faith society and strategies in the face of declining membership and a shrinking resource base. These factors suggests that social innovation for religious organisations will be an imperative, in order to sustain their existing contributions to public social capital. In a changing world, how might historic values of compassion, respect and justice (Uniting Communities Vision, http://www.unitingcommunities.org/?q=About-Us) continue to be enacted?

This study will seek to provide research data that might guide religious institutions in addressing such questions today.

This is something I wrote for a University/Partner organisations funding bid I’ve been putting together over the last week. (One page of an 17 page).

A theology for the ‘wild things’

I want to place two “life moments” side by side, in order to help me reflect on the place of a theology of ‘wild things.’

During the last few months, I’ve been part of a religious group exploring the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience. The list is such a positive, life-affirming list and the resources have been challenging and helpful.

During the last week, Maurice Sendak, the writer of “Where the wild things” died. In memory, on the spur of the moment, on Saturday evening, we invited friends to mark his passing by watching the movie, “Where the wild things are.”

We missed it when it came out. It seemed an appropriate way to mark a man who had such an interesting ethos to ponder — “I like interesting people and kids are really interesting people.” And who wrote a book about a child and the ‘wild things’ that include fear, anger, grief. “Wild things” which Max, needed to learn how to live with, yet also “wild things” that made him a “really interesting” kid.

Which got me thinking about a theology in the ‘wild things.’ How, when, where, do communities of faith ponder not only the “fruits of the Spirit”, but the deeper emotions that make us human: anger, sorrow, denial, betrayal?

What about sermon series on these?

I mean, they were all felt, or experienced by Jesus. (See for example, some of my thinking/feeling from last year on the feelings of Jesus. And here). So Christianly, we should have plenty of resources. Often the emotions are tucked into Holy Week. (And part of what makes it so exhausting.) Watching “Where the Wild Things” are made me wonder if we need other places, beside Holy Week, in which to explore these emotions theologically?

A mighty totara tree has fallen: death of Walter Wink

Kua hinga he totara i te wao nui a Tane. A totara has fallen in the forest of Tane.
A totara is a huge tree that grows for hundreds of years. For one of them to fall is a great tragedy. This proverb is said when someone of importance passes away. The Totara is a native tree of New Zealand. (Ref here)

Sad news overnight, with the death of Walter Wink. His trilogy on the powers – Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament; Unmasking the Powers; Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination – was hugely helpful to me while training for ministry.

I had come from a charismatic background and was struggling with the intellectualism of theological training. Wink helped me find a way to integrate my charismatic roots with an intelligent justice and to pursue a spirituality that was neither all head, nor all heart, but an integration of mind, body, spirit.

No ivory tower this man and his writings. His was a deeply rigorous scholarship, yet remaining attentive to the world beyond what is seen and constantly engaged with a real world of violence.

It helped to open me to the work of Te Whiti, at Parihaka, and to appreciate his spirituality of non-violence (for more on what I’ve written, see here and here.

It also began to shape much of my thinking about change and leadership. Before Wink, I had often seen change as individual – one person holding back an idea. After Wink, I began to appreciate change as an organisational and systemic, that you need to introduce practices that destabilise a system, and nourish the conversations that then occur around the resultant anxiety. That conversion is not simply a reference to an individual, but can be to a group, a church, a community, a movement, a society.

It gives a neglected dimension to the work of the Spirit. Not a Spirit as privatised and individualised. But a Spirit in the world, the Spirit of surprise who redeems groups and institutions, who offers to each generation gifts new and fresh, not for their sake but for the sake of mission as radical justice-making.

Last year I was back reading Wink again – Transforming Bible Study – in research for conference paper on sensegesis.

Walter Wink is more abrupt, arguing that historical Biblical criticism is bankrupt, incapable of interpreting the Scriptures in ways “that the past becomes alive and illumines our present with new possibilities for personal and social transformation.”

Walter Wink. Thankyou.

2 great mission shaped ministry video resources

Following the success of mission shaped ministry Adelaide in 2011, a creative and hardworking team are beavering away, working on a course for the 2nd half of this (2012) year.

Venue: City Soul (13 Hutt St Adelaide). This facility offers a casual cafe set up which will ensure a communal, creative and interactive environment.

Cost: $400. This includes 11 evenings of input plus 2 weekend gatherings.

Credit: The course can be taken for credit in the Adelaide College of Divinity Bachelor of Ministry degree. Enquiries to Steve Taylor.

Dates:
– 4 Thursday evenings, July 26 to August 23, gathering from 7:00pm, input from 7:30-9:15 pm.
– Weekend Retreat 1, West Lakes Resort, Friday Night and Saturday, 31 August and 1 September.
– 3 Thursday evenings, September 6 to 20
– 3 week pause between Sept 20 to Oct 18 is given as a chance to put legs on some of the content in your local community
– 3 Thursday evenings, October 18 to November 1
– Weekend Retreat 2, Old Adelaide Inn, Friday Night and Saturday, 9 & 10 November

This includes a number of great video clips. Like this, a short 1 minute long video clip – single shot, creative use of an object, short script.

Which really nicely compliments another excellent 7 minute long video, with course participants from last year sharing what they valued about the course.

It’s a joy to see this type of creativity at work. Go mission shaped ministry Adelaide 2012.

“Finding Faith” and the serendipities of study leave

An odd set of serendipities yesterday.

I arrived home to find Richard Flory and Donald Miller’s Finding Faith: The Spiritual Quest of the Post-Boomer Generation waiting for me. John Drane had recommended it to me, in light of some of my recent posts about faith and gender. On that recommendation, I ordered the book and it was waiting for me as I arrived home from work.

A quick flick through a book recommended by a colleague, and I find myself (The Out of Bounds Church?: Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change) being summarised over half of page 35.

[Taylor’s] is a journey that is both descriptive of what other churches are doing, taking full advantage of both digital and live networks of innovative church leaders, and prescriptive in what churches can do to better minister within the emerging postmodern framework.

An interesting serendipity.

What was even more interesting was that during the day I had been reading Tony Jones The Church Is Flat: The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church Movement (perhaps more on that soon). And I had been appreciating his use – without realising it was the book I had ordered – of Richard Flory and Donald Millers Finding Faith.  Another interesting serendipity – to hold a book that I’d just been reading about, wondering about – during the day.

Such are the moments that make up my study leave. (Yes, I probably need a life!)

Flory and Miller propose that we can understand the contemporary post-boomer spiritual quest under four headings

• innovators – those who represent an evolving approach to religious faith and practice. (BTW that’s where my book is placed). Their focus is on building community and engaging with culture.
• appropriators – those who seek relevance by appropriating, or imitating, from surrounding culture, ultimately forming “a particular from of pop-Christianity that is primarily orientated toward an individual spiritual experience.” (14)
• resisters – those who resist incursions of the culture into what they see as historic Christianity.
• reclaimers – those seeking to renew their experience of Christianity through ancient forms of Christianity. “These are converts, either from other nonliturgical forms of Christianity or from nonexistent or lapsed faith communities.” (15)

Flory and Miller use a “snowballing” sampling plan, following leads, networks and recommendations from those they initially contact. The result is 10 physical site visits and 100 individual interviews.

They conclude the book with a chapter looking toward the future. They argue that religious groups that practice an embodied imagination, and that organise organically, from the grass-roots, are more likely to have a future.They affirm the role of the

“organic theologian … [who] understands the importance and role of popular culture in the shaping of ideas and the communication of values” (190)

They conclude that while Appropriators have a greater natural audience (and thus a greater surface appearance of success), Innovators have the most potential for nourishing the contemporary spiritual search.

As long as they can survive the threat of routinisation.

the haiku theology of Rowan Williams

For a while last year, I tried a spiritual practice, of making a 1 sentence prayer from my first waking experiences. It was an attempt to pay attention to God in the everyday, to (try and) keep me centred in simple places. Well, I am a babe, compared these six haiku offered by Archbishop Rowan Williams.

A million arrows, I
the target, where the lines meet
and are knotted

Inside, hollowness; what is
comes to me as a blow, but not
a wound

Not only servicing the lungs, the air
is woven, full
of needles

The first task: to find
a frontier. I am not,
after all, everything.

The strip of red flesh
lies still, absorbs, silent; speaks
to all the body

Each door from the room says,
this is not all. Your hands will find
in the dark

The six haiku are in Sense Making Faith. Body Spirit Journey (which I’ve reviewed here). The following explanation is provided.

“To guide our thoughts and ideas we asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, if he would offer us a creative meditation for each of the chapters on the senses. He has responded by sending us six haiku. A haiku is a poem, based on an ancient Japanese tradition of poetry, which is set out in 17 syllables in the space of three lines. The economy of each poem means that each word has layers of meaning and asks the reader to engage deeply and imaginatively with the world it invokes.”

It is one type of charism to write dense theology crowded with footnotes. It takes a rare gift to pen theology in 17 syllables. My favourites are the last three, the way the senses push us into new spaces, new encounters, new experiences.

spiritual direction, mission and what the heck then is church?

Natalie Weaver, a 25-year-old musician who lives in Roxbury, does not go to church. But every three weeks or so, she visits a white vinyl-sided building on Dorchester Avenue, a former convent, to meet with her spiritual director.

Fascinating article in Boston Globe, looking at rise in popularity of spiritual direction. It notes

• a rise in the numbers of spiritual directors, from 400 in one organisation in 1990, to 6,000 today
• the popularity among young adults, including those with “little religious background [who] find themselves undergoing a spiritual awakening and do not know where to turn.”

Why the popularity? The article suggests it could be the increase in coaching relationships in general in our culture. It could also be the way direction is freed from organisational claims – “no pressure to join a group, make a weekly offertory pledge, or endorse a specific creed.”

So what are the implications for mission and church? Directors see their role as an outworking of mission:

“We really see ourselves as a safe mooring, a place where people pull their ships in, in good shape or bad shape, draw down their sails, unpack their stuff, and begin to restock up for the journey out” said one.

While participants see it as discipleship:

“It has really helped me understand what I believe in when I say I believe in God.”

But is it church? Well not if church is the gathering. Spiritual direction is simply another expression of modern hyper-individualism.

But if church is in the connections, the networks, the interrelationships – that the director themselves have, that are being nourished in the activity of direction – then perhaps this is church. (Applying here the work of Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory which I’ve been reading today. Plus Dwight Friesen, Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks).