sustain:if:able kiwi

three month “project” anniversary

It seems a most appropriate marker

of three months of hard labour on our “project” ready for pick up by the Council tomorrow morning. It includes urine stained carpet from two rooms, a gutted entrance way, gib and ceilings into family room, back entrance way and a bedroom.

It’s had moments of unexpected spirituality – a perfumed blessing and renovation spirituality.

Tomorrow the electricians return and if things go well, we might have lights that switch on and off in the family room, back entrance way and one of the bedrooms.

On Friday the electricians found yet another surprise. The service fuse (from the road to the house before it gets to the metre board) kept tripping. ETSA was called, lots of head scratching and the fault was eventually traced to the presence of wires attached to the power line incoming from the road, with the potential to draw (sans) power into the roof cavity.

Not sure if that’s an entry for my Dictionary of Everyday Spirituality in that – other than the risks some people are willing to take (attaching wires to live 240 volts), in order to pursue their indoor gardening hobby.

Review of 9/11 film Extremely Loud and Up Close

Each month I publish a film review, for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Here is the review for the movie “Extremely Loud and Up Close.”

Extremely Loud and Up Close
Last year was the 10th anniversary and they had to come, the Hollywood gaze settling on the shock of 9/11 and the horror of the aftermath.

In “Extremely Loud and Up Close,” the tragedy that is the twin towers is viewed through the eyes of 9 year old, Oskar Schnell as he struggles to make sense of the death of his father. Threads of further mystery are woven into the plot line, driven by the key Oskar finds in his fathers’ jacket and the unexplained appearance of The Renter, suddenly living with Oskar’s grandmother in a nearby apartment.

The movie, adapted for the screen by Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), is based on a novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is directed by Stephen Daldry. Each of his previous movies (“Billy Elliot,” “The Hours,” “The Reader”) gained nomination for the Academy Awards. “Extremely Loud and Up Close” was no exception.

Despite the accolades, the movie struggles. Perhaps it is simply because we know the ending. A similarity would be the Jesus movie genre. How to generate tension when we all know what happens, whether death and resurrection in a Jesus movie, or shock and grief in the aftermath of the Twin Towers?

Perhaps it is because the metaphors are so cliche – the vase shattering on the first anniversary, the key triggering a search both physical and psychological, the answerphone unblinking in its silent reproach.

Perhaps it is because at times, the plot seems less than believable. How can a child so young wander so easily all over New York? How can his mother find the time to work, to mother and to tread ahead of him? Why, really, can The Renter not speak?

A saving grace is the cast. Thomas Horn is sensational as Oskar Schell, mildly autistic, highly imaginative, caught in a trauma not his making. So also is Max Von Sydow as The Renter, so remotely human and Tom Hanks as the creatively engaging father.

The movie employs the zoom lens, wanting us to be up close, to focus on one child and one family. It means that every emotion is played extremely loud, evoked in the montages of bodies falling and sidewalk shrines awash with people grieving. It makes the film feel like pure opportunism, a commercial piggybacking on human tragedy.

In being extremely close, what inevitably gets lost is perspective. The focus on one story obscure the unique grief that surrounds the other 2,594 who died at the World Trade Centre. The focus on New York overlooks the many Iraqi children who now wander their bombed out streets looking for their dead parents. Oskar’s mental health, his struggles with autism, are turned into comedy simply to keep the tragedy light.

In the midst of these failings, a credible theology of grief is presented. Oskar’s self-harm is believably palpable, as is Linda Schell’s patient acceptance of Oskar’s unthinking, tearful anger. Time can heal, but only when the cycles of guilt, shame, anger are engaged, up close and extremely loud.

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is Director of Missiology, Uniting College, Adelaide. He writes widely in areas of theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.

Jesus the great contextualiser

““let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak” (James 1:19). How wise! In inculturation the most important quality of the evangelizer is the gift of listening.” (Arbuckle, 164)

More from the wonderfully accessible, deeply insightful Gerald Arbuckle’s, Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians: A Postmodern Critique. As I posted earlier in the week, Arbuckle is concerned that the failure of the church to understand culture is making us naive at best, dangerous and destructive at worst.

In Chapter 10, he explores what we can learn from Jesus the Inculturator. First a definition

“Inculturation is a dialectical interaction between Christian faith and cultures in which these cultures are challenged, affirmed, and transformed toward the reign of God, and in which Christian faith is likewise challenged, affirmed, and enhanced by this experience.” (152)

Then a note on how similar is Jesus culture to today’s postmodern notions of culture:

“There was nothing discrete, homogenous, and integrating about [Jesus’s] cultural world because it was filled with all kinds of tensions, fragmentation, and subcultural differences.” (153)

Then analysis of how Jesus used social drama, how he used moments when relationships between groups break; to encourage liminality; and open the possibility of growth.

Example – Mark 10:46-52 Bartimaeus. Arbuckle notes how

• inculturation is person-centred – Jesus speaks directly to Bartimaeus, socially a non-person
• inculturation is collaborative – “by his [Bartimaeus] actions is himself an agent of inculturation, challenging in collaboration with Jesus the crowd’s culture that rejects people who are poor.” (155)
• inculturation requires spiritual and human gifts – “The gift most needed in evangelizers is the ability to listen and converse with people in a way that respects their human dignity.” (155) This is based on Mark 10: 51, the cry of Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus does not assume what type of help is needed, but instead listens.
• liberation is an integral part of Inculturation – healing is social, cultural, economic, spiritual. Bartimaeus is not only healed of blindness, but finds he is given voice in the community of God, is respected as a collaborator in healing.

The chapter continues with analysis of the SyroPhonecian woman in Mark 7:24-30 and the Samaritan woman in John 4:1-42.

Finally he concludes with Jesus use of parables “Probably this is his [Jesus] most important method of inculturation.” (162) He notes how these emerge from an attentiveness to the everyday world of those he serves.

“Simple and ordinary circumstances of daily life such as eating, walking, and even a request for a drink of water often become social dramas of special importance for Jesus in his ministry of inculturation.” (159)

my study leave world

This is what my world has been reduced to … the lived experience of everyday people (Cityside survey data) being placed alongside mission, methodologies of how to read living experience, theories of curation. Locked in a concrete box called an office, removed from distractions, my world is now smaller, yet, strangely, larger.

icons as spiritual practise

Last year, as a thank you gift for their ministry here in Adelaide, I gave John and Olive Drane an icon I had “written.” They now want to use it as a resource, both in worship and in a class they are running on worship later this year. So they asked if I might shoot a “homemade” video, reflecting on the spirituality of icons.

I thought I’d also place it on the blog, in case any of my readers are interested – why do I “write” icons? what is a “pioneer” icon? how do icon’s work as theology and for spirituality? how to craft an icon?

A short personal reflection on the icon as spiritual practise.

Two most helpful books in getting me started as an icon “writer”:

And for those who can’t access the video, here are my notes in preparation to speak (more…)

the stories we tell, the implications for change

I’m currently reading Gerald Arbuckle’s, Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians: A Postmodern Critique, 2010. It is an accessible overview of culture and the implications for mission. His argument is that issues around gospel and culture is the drama of our day. And being an anthropologist by training (as well as a Catholic priest), he is concerned about how poorly the church understands culture and is aware of the massive shift in contemporary analysis of culture.

Which makes us naive at best, dangerous and destructive at worst.

Anyhow, Chapter 5 Culture as Narratives Negotiating Identities (63-80) is really insightful. Arbuckle begins by arguing that while myths help a culture clarify a past, stories clarify the present. He then suggests seven types of narratives often present in cultures.

• composure – stories that, for the sake of peace, overlook painful parts of a past
• romanticism – stories that not only overlook a painful past, but do so in ways that re in fact inventions
• nationalism – stories that manipulate history in order to impose a current purpose
• minorities – stories in which identity is founded by placing oneself as on the edge, as marginal
• refounding – stories in which the past is told in a way that brings founding energy into one’s future
• marketplace – stories in which new insights are added to a past, often for the commercial advantage of a certain group
• grieving – stories in which loss in acknowledged

While Arbuckle is not explicit, my sense is that in terms of the church and change, he would encourage stories of refounding and stories of grieving, but is uneasy about the others.

As I read, I began to think of what stories the church is currently telling about itself.

• an email overnight from a colleague, expressing concern that his church was overlooking a painful present, in a sort of “it will be all right” type of process
• books that argue if we just return to the New Testament church, we will be alright, a romanticism that ignores the conflict in Corinth, the ethnic tensions in Acts 6 or the lack of response in Athens
• the placing of American flags in a church as a sign of nationalism
• a realisation within myself that I have placed myself (downunder Kiwi), and the emerging church, as a minority, in order to gain traction
• the commercialism of Christian music as a story of marketplace

And I think of the work of Andrew Dutney, who in the Uniting Church has offered a story of refounding, explored the Basis of Union as a mission document, around which much energy and potential for renewal has occurred.

urban theologies with visual power

Two wonderful contemporary urban theologies emerging from UK cities at the moment. I love the way in both these projects urban space is being mapped, the way the visual sparks possibilities, the fusion of prayer with concrete realities.

Lou Davis
pioneering in Edinburgh
mission crafter
lino cuts, sound track: City of Stone
for prayer

Ric Stott
minister to Sheffield
mission as artist
curating Soul of Sheffield

“The Cross is not enough” book review – Chapter 3

As part of my post-resurrection Easter spiritual practice, I’m reading Cross Is Not Enough: Living as Witnesses to the Resurrection by Ross Clifford and Philip Johnson, Australian Baptist thinkers. I thought it would be a good discipline to blog as I read my way through the book. Chapter one is here, Chapter two is here

Chapter three

Most Baptists, after clearing their throat as to the purpose of their book and stating their main point, reach for the Bible, then consider the mission implications. Not Clifford and Johnson. In Chapter three, they turn to mission. Specifically, apologetics. More specifically, their experience of apologetics, especially among spiritual seekers.

When most Christians think about sharing about the resurrection they are immediately drawn to the truth question. A better entry point, however, is exploring what difference the resurrection makes in people’s lives and showing that it really does work.

The chapter argues for mission, and especially apologetics, that balances both the experiential and the intellectual. This is based on their experiences with spiritual seekers, whom they have found want both. It is also based on personality types. People are diverse, so we need a diverse church, offering both experience and intellectual.

In making this argument, they take aim at sections of the emerging church that have argued that in the wider cultural shift to postmodernity, we need a more experiential, communal apologetic. A particular target for Clifford and Johnson is Pete Rollins. They point out places in which he has derided intellectual apologetics. To be honest, it felt a strange critique, given that Rollins also writes intellectual books, enjoys name dropping European intellectuals like Zizek and seems to me to be seeking to articulate a robustly intellectual faith for a contemporary world. Have I misheard Rollins? Or have Clifford and Johnson?

The chapter is highly practical. It offers stories of how they use experiential tools like the Wheel of the Year (for an example, tied to Christ’s mission see here), a neo-pagan ritual calendar, in which they seek to highlight the dying-and-rising myth within the Wheel. They also describe their use of aromatherapy, massage and the Jesus Deck. This practical “experiential” missiology is then followed by a practical “intellectual” missiology in which they summarise the ‘logic’ of the resurrection: how they respond to questions like

• Can we trust the NT Gospels?
• Did Jesus really die?
• What circumstantial evidence exists for the resurrection?
• What evidence for resurrection lies outside the Bible and Church teachings?

It’s clear. It’s accessible. It’s based on lived experiences of mission among real people.  To sum chapter 3:

Do our personalities truly embody and express all the life-changing and empowering realities implied in Jesus’s resurrection?

ordination and the future: a question of mission

An email I sent to a friend, that I realised as I wrote it that I want to place on the blog for my ongoing reference. It is a processing shaped by the unique location in which I find myself – trained a Baptist, ministering as a Baptist minister, now serving in a Synod of the Uniting Church of Australia. In doing so, I point to the byline in the header of my blog “steve taylor … in process … all thoughts personal and provisional.”

I don’t see ordination as a functional thing tied to existence, or otherwise, of funding models via church.

I see ordination in the future as being a sort of mission order of the church. As families and society get more and more complex, we need a “training bar” that encourages self-awareness and skilled ministry. As society gets more individualised, we need networks that encourage catholicity, apostolicity and mutuality.

So I see ordination in the future as encouraging this sort of missional ordering – a way of being that exists to encourage training, to develop practices of collegiality and accountability, to enhance peer support and reflection, for apostolicity (starting new things).

Many ordained will be bi-vocational or voluntary, but then ordination has never surely, been simply a function of Christendom’s imagination of church as a building and a full-time presider.

We will also have non-ordination missional orders – and perhaps the Uniting church ministry category of “Pastor” is an ideally container for this. It too encourages training and points toward a sort of learning community in mission.

But this missional ordering is expressed as a more localised expression, more likely to emerge in one location and remain in one location. (Rather than ordination which seems to reference a belonging to the whole church in terms of placement).

So ordination beyond Christendom has a future, as one expression of the church in mission.

encouraging better practice in teaching: snapshots of learning

A few days ago, following conversations with visiting family, I was reflecting on teaching. How do we encourage teachers in their teaching? One suggestion was the use of a journal, shared with a peer, in which together regular reflection on practice occurs.

There were some really helpful comments which have kept me thinking during the week. Plus the fact that my (temporary) “study leave” office is close to a classroom, so I get to hear the occasional lecture as I write.

And this week came news of the sale of Instagram to Facebook for 1 billion.

Which got me thinking about snapshots. A moment of time. A visual media rather than a written media. So what if rather than a journal, you invited teachers to take a snapshot? One per class. Not a literal one. But they are given a blank piece of card, perhaps in the shape of a “polaroid”? On which they have are invited to note down the best teaching moment of that class.

And then teachers meet as peers, spread their “snapshots” and reflect together about what they’re learning about teaching.

Which sparked another possibility. What if you invited teachers to take snapshots not of their teaching, but of their students learning?

Let me explain.

At Uniting College, our mandate is to form leaders. What if each teacher was given a “snapshot” (a blank card), one for every student in their class. And at some time during the semester, they were expected to take a “snapshot” (again not an actual picture, but a quote made, an interaction, an essay, a moment of caring) of that student displaying leadership and ministry. This is based on appreciative inquiry, looking for strength, rather than weakness, in a student.

Imagine being given that at the end of the semester. A fulltime student has 4 topics per semester, 8 per year, 24 per degree. By the end of your time, the student has 24 snapshots of them at their best in terms of leader development.

One of my guiding principles is that ministry and leadership are unique. Each person has a unique fingerprint and our task is to work out how our unique personality and experience form us into leaders. So by the end of the degree, the student has 24 “snapshots.” Spread those over the table, reflect with a mentor on your 3 years of study and I suspect you would have a pretty good mirror on who you could be as a leader. There could even be degree topic toward the end in which you enter a process of leadership reflection – on the snapshots, on your life experiences, on your passions.

What do folk think? Might “snapshots” encourage better practice in teaching? And learning?

wanted dead and alive: UK alt.worship communities

As part of my PhD research (what became “A New Way of Being Church”, University of Otago, 2004), I conducted research during March – June, 2001 into mission experimentation in the UK. This was focused on alternative worship communities and included both participant observation and interviews with both leaders and laity.

Some ten years on from that research, I have been reflecting on sustainability. As any parent will know, it’s one thing to birth a child. It’s quite another to do the early mornings and late nights, to piece your way through the ups and downs.

So I have begun a “Sustainability in new mission initiatives” Research Project. This first part has focused on the church that was the major focus of my research, Cityside Baptist. I have returned to participate in worship, to interview key leaders, to re-survey the congregation, and to conduct focus groups in response to reflect upon their data. Currently I’m writing up the results.

The next stage of the project involves wanting to explore the sustainability of the UK alt.worship communities I had researched back in 2001.

Here I need some help.  Some initial website research has revealed that of the twelve I researched, four six continue today (two three under another name). Two Four appear closed.  I remain unsure about six two of the communities. They look to have little web presence and so perhaps are closed.

So I have two requests. First, can any of my UK readers check the table here and provide any further information on the current status of any of these groups. I’m particular after information on

• Late Late Service, Glasgow
• Sanctuary, Bath (Updated: website found)
• Resonance, Bristol (Updated: renamed as Foundation in 2005. Thanks Paul )
• The Bigger Picture, London
• Graceland, Cardiff (Updated: according to a blog comment (thanks heaps), has closed, although relational connections continue.
• Holy Joes, London (Updated: Maggi Dawn thinks this group is currently in recess)

Second, I am interested in trying to interview all these groups, or representatives (whether dead or alive!). We need to learn from all our experiments, no matter their current status. I am working toward a research visit to the UK (December 2012-February 2013).  So I would like to locate folk, particularly from those that are closed, or appear to be. So can any of my UK readers provide any followup or contact details?

Thanks, in hope 🙂

“The Cross is not enough” book review – Chapter 2

As part of my post-resurrection Easter spiritual practice, I’m reading Cross Is Not Enough: Living as Witnesses to the Resurrection by Ross Clifford and Philip Johnson, Australian Baptist thinkers. I thought it would be a good discipline to blog as I read my way through the book. Chapter one is here

Chapter two

This is a wonderful chapter. Since the main argument is about the importance of resurrection, not just for belief, but for life, it proposes 12 resurrection zones for living

• forgiveness
• whole person
• empowerment
• future hope
• eschatology
• Eden breaks in
• confidence
• face of God
• ethics
• judge/justice
• new community
• mission

Each zone is explained, linked with Scripture and often accompanied by a story that clarifies and applies. It is great stuff.

The section on new community is a standout, with a side bar exploration of the stories of Genesis and how they allow healing for people treated as non-persons, how “the gospel reverses nonperson status, declaring that in order to be right with God one must be right with one’s neighbour. In Christ there is no nonperson status.”

On the basis of these 12 resurrection zones, Clifford and Johnson call for a “resurrection culture”, which should shape who we are as leaders, as followers and our environments.

Despite it being a wonderful chapter, it did leave me pondering a few questions. As I thought about each of the above 12 zones, I realised that all 12 could be applied to Incarnation. And many of the 12 could also be applied to Ascension. So is there a danger that we will need a book in a few years to argue for the Incarnation in theology and life? Followed by a book on the Ascension? So is the argument of this book simply about a needed corrective? If so, could it actually end up making the same mistake it is seeking to correct, that of imbalances in theology? Further, can any part of God’s theology be isolated and then argued that it is pre-eminent? Or might it be that theology is a weave, in which every strand is both individually rich, yet so much the richer when woven together? So yes we need resurrection for forgiveness, yet forgiveness that also weaves into resurrection themes of creation, incarnation, ascension and Spirit is even richer still?

I look forward to the next chapters, as I continue to ponder the questions. In the meantime, I’m left saying to myself and God’s creation “Alleluia. Christ is risen!”

Hunger Games and atonement theology: a short film reflection

This post has been further developed into a 500 word film review for Touchstone magazine here.

Hunger Games is a deeply disturbing movie. The movie is set in a future in which each year, 24 children are selected to fight in a televised death match. Roman Gladiatorial style human-tertainment is repulsive enough applied to adults, but to conceive of it for children takes a particular chilling imagination.

To live in a society in which children are sacrificed annually for the sake of peace beggars belief. That said, it should make worthwhile discussion for those who hold to a Christian faith, have just journeyed through Easter and believe in the sole primacy of substitutionary atonement – Jesus dying as a substitute for others.

The Hunger Games is built on substitution, the willingness for some to die for the peace of all. Is this really the best, the only way, that God could conceive to deal with human rebellion?

What is interesting is how the actions of the heroine, Katniss Everdeen, offer other ways to frame atonement, in particular the scene in which Katniss buries her friend, Rue Roo.

(Substitution is only one of four better known understandings of the cross held through church history; the other three being Christus Victor, satisfaction and Abelard’s moral theory of atonement).

The flowers laid so lovingly on the chest of Roo began a moment that sparked a riot among those watching. Grief stricken, they protest against the powers and forces that oppress them. In Katniss, we see a desire to live differently, a questioning of the values that shape her world, a willingness, even unto death, to seek another world of possibility. Her act, the laying of the flowers, spark a communal desire for freedom.

On Easter Sunday, I was part of a church service in which the cross was flowered. Flowers laid lovingly (yes on an empty cross, not an dead body). This is the possibility buried (pun intended) in Easter, a questioning of the values that shape our world, a willingness, even unto death, to live differently, to work toward another world of possibility.

All of which refuses to be futuristic sci-fi. On the way home one of Team Taylor wondered if the way our planet today treats the poor in Africa is much different from The Hunger Games. You could sense the ache – that in our generation, justice and equality will be made concrete. May the flowers she, and so many others, laid on the cross this Easter, spark a very different sort of atonement, a renewed willingness to make plain “God’s Kingdom come, God’s will be done on earth, as in heaven.”

Further posts on film and atonement:
– Never let me go: atonement theology at its best and worst here
– Inception: dreaming of atonement here
– Harry Potter as a Christ figure here.
– Holy week atonement theologies here.
– Atonement theologies: a short summary here.
– Edmund Hillary and atonement here.
– and a sermon I preached on atonement, referencing Whale Rider and Edmund Hillary, made it into this book (Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of the Atonement), a really practical resource, filled with atonement sermons, none of which are substitutionary in tone. Me alongside CS Lewis, Richard Hays and Brian McLaren! 🙂

“The Cross is not enough” book review – Chapter 1

As part of my post-resurrection Easter spiritual practice, I’m reading Cross Is Not Enough: Living as Witnesses to the Resurrection by Ross Clifford and Philip Johnson, Australian Baptist thinkers. I thought it would be a good discipline to blog as I read my way through the book.

Chapter one

This introduces the book. Their argument is simple – that Christianity has neglected the resurrection, to its detriment. The opening quote by George Beasley-Murray puts it well.

If the Church had contemplated the Empty Tomb as much as the Cross of its Lord, its life would have been more exhilarating and its contribution to the world more positive than has been the case.

Clifford and Johnson do this by exploring across the breadth of the Christian church

• the gospel presentations in Acts which all focus on the resurrection
• Luther, who is his writings urges the priority of the resurrection
• the work of evangelicalism, including John Stott and the Lausanne movement, which they critique as being so focused on the cross that the resurrection is lost.

While this breadth is commendable, at times it felt too broad brush. Notably, the attempt to cover Roman Catholicism is done by noting a quote from two Roman Catholic theologians. Catholicism is such a large and broad part of the church, any attempt to engage them as dialogue partners needed more attention.

This chapter also introduces a second part of their argument, that the doctrine of the resurrection must be so much more than an intellectual agreement. If resurrection is central, then it must also be able to be integrated into “practical areas of theology and church life, such as in healing ministry, pastoral care, and spiritual development.” Which suggests an intriguing book, as the authors indicate they want to explore the resurrection in areas like popular culture, new forms of spirituality, inter-religious dialogue.

The writing style is accessible, with stories helpfully sprinkled through. These give the impression that Clifford and Johnson are no ivory tower academics, but are themselves deeply involved in mission and cross-cultural encounter.  Alongside the readability of the book is an impressive set of footnotes, suggesting a depth and quality of research.

From Chapter one, this looks like being a really rich post-Easter read, and I’m looking forward to chapter two – The resurrection effect.