sustain:if:able kiwi

the richness of our shrinking world

The internet has some downsides. But it also has some amazing upsides.

I am currently working on some distance material, around the theme of Jesus Christ today. The aim is a course to help lay folk as they prepare to exercise their gifts, including in leading worship and preaching. Being a course by distance, the challenge is not to prepare pages and pages of words, but to encourage a range of ways to engage.

On Tuesday night I was working on the section on Jesus Christ in history. I came across the Theologians Trading Cards, on the disseminary website. Could people arrange the theologians in various categories – geography, time, Christology from above/below? Could people play variants of snap or top trumps with their friends? A way to engage Jesus Christ in history in which the cards create interaction and question. A query email to the site owner and overnight there was email reply in regards to the Creative commons license.

On Wednesday I was working on another section. I love the story in pages 3-4 of Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement about the impact of Christ on a person’s actions/witness. (The whole book is an excellent resource, which I found helpful a few Easter’s ago in framing my preaching input over a Thursday, Friday, Sunday). A story opens up different ways of engaging. What is more, the story could then be used as an exercise, inviting folk to work out how the sources of theology – Scripture, tradition, experience, reason – are all there and are all at play.

The story in McKnight’s book mentioned the title of a song. I googled the title, but could find no song with exactly that title. So I decided to email the author with my query. He replied with the contact details of the actual person who tells the story.

Another email to her. And a reply, including some more detail, which will make the story even more helpful.

In less than 48 hours, three conversations with three people on the other side of the world. Our shrinking world can certainly be full of richness.

Oh, for those wondering what the song is (more…)

To mend the world: art and theology downunder

One of my (distance) teaching colleagues, Lynne Baab, has asked me to mention the following:

To mend the world is intended as a dialogue between art and faith. The hope is to bring painters, poets, musicians, together with theologians, to explore a particular theme; can there be repair? Can there be a mending of the world, wounded as it is by war, by hatred, by exploitation and by neglect?

The theme comes from the Hebrew phrase ‘Tikkun Olam’ – to mend the world. It assumes that both art and theology can learn from one another. Speakers include William Dyrness, Professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary, California. Dates are 29–30 July 2011, at Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, Dunedin.

For more go here.

emerging responses to For the Parish, chapter 4 – segregation

“For the Parish”, by Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, is an extended critique of fresh expressions. Always good to listen to the critics, so I am engaging the book, chapter by chapter. The Introduction is here, Chapter one is here, Chapter two is here. Chapter 3 is here.

There is much that I applaud in this chapter (The Flight to Segregation). This includes the call for conversion to be radical, the call for reconciliation to be made present in local faith communities, the call for a faith that challenges politics and ethics. There is an even-handed and thorough discussion of the Homogenous Unit Principle (that people are more likely to find faith if they don’t have to cross cultural boundaries).

I think that Fresh expressions would do well to keep some of the quotes from this chapter for ongoing evaluation. For example

• Bad examples of church practice need “not doom everyone to reproduce these patterns.” (80).
• “Expressions of the Fall in late modernity are particularly nasty.” (page 84, footnote 29)
• “There is almost no sense (in Fresh Expressions) that the Church might take a political stand against the errors and tragedies of contemporary society, not least in offering practical resistance through its forms of life.” (91)

It is easy to take the best of what you fancy and the worst of what you dislike. I’ve seen it done often in emerging/fresh expressions circles. However I suspect it’s also being done in this book. This chapter suggests that one particular facet of the parish church is that it is a “mixed economy ” (64) For Davison and Milbank, this is linked theology, linked to “a message of reconciliation, forgiveness and peace.” (64) Apparently, “The parishes of the inherited church are heterogenous communities.” (64)

Well, try telling that to my kids, for whom their experience of a mixed economy means continuing to do church the way another generation likes it done. Or tell that to a migrant struggling with English, for whom their experience of a mixed economy means doing church in English.

I remember once a 90 year old churchgoer telling me that the kids were being too noisy in church. Their turn (to sit quietly like the adults), would come later. For now, they should be somewhere else.

This simply assumes the church does not yet belong to “the little ones.” It’s about privilege fused with power. For Davison and Milbank, “the cultural interests of church members [in a parish] can be valued without having to structure an entire church around them.” (77)

So let’s reverse this. Imagine the “parish” offers messy worship. Or sings to drum and bass. Now imagine telling a visiting baby boomer that their cultural interests can be valued without having the drum and base music and chatter of kids needing to change! Because this is a “heterogenous” church.

So what to do with church next Sunday? Establish something new for the visiting aging babyboomer. Which Davison and Milbank consider “a recipe for segregated congregations.” (65) Or continue the status quo (in which the boomers like it or lump it, because in essence this church is in fact already segregated)?

Or does not Acts 15 give us some way forward? A dominant power group lays down it’s need for assimilation, and instead sends some pioneers to encourage what is new, requesting only a willingness to grow in a shared commitment to mission and justice.

Davison and Milbank might charge that this runs the danger of being seen as choice, a bowing to consumer culture. But isn’t it surely part of the Spirit’s work in the early church? Consider these two verses from the same Bible book In 1 Corinthians 1:10 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. Place it against 1 Corinthians 9:20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.

Do you start with mission-as-contextualisation ie 1 Corinthians 9? Or mission-as-reconciliation ie 1 Corinthians 1? If you start with either, it seems to me that you need to see them not as the endpoint, but as the start of a life-long spiral toward justice and transformation.

Further:
(I have written elsewhere about the place of social justice and the poor in Fresh Expressions)

emerging churches 10 years on: progress update

Today was another step in my research into emerging churches 10 years on. This is involving interviews, surveys and focus groups.

Today I visited Cityside Baptist in Auckland. They had very kindly offered me their “sermon slot.” So I took some time to introduce myself and my research with them 10 years ago, and then gave them some space to fill out a 22 question survey form.

The questions are grouped in three categories

• some are taken from the national census and thus allow comparison of the congregation against their suburb, city and country
• some are taken from the National Church Life Survey and thus allow comparison against their denomination and the church in general
• some are uniquely related to questions about faith and culture today

At the end of the day, 47 people completed survey forms. 

What is amazing is that ten years ago when I conducted a similar survey at Cityside, guess how many people completed survey forms?

You guessed it. 47!

Amazing.

The next step is to start to analyse the data. The plan is to return perhaps in the middle of the year to run some focus groups – to present the survey data and invite them to help me interpret it.  Plus I am aiming to present the research more formally at an Ecclesiology and ethnography academic conference in Durham, UK, in mid-September. And then, if all goes really well, I’ll roll it together with my PhD and look for a publisher.

But for today, I thankful for Cityside and pondering with amazement the number 47.

a theology for friend me? a review of social network

The Social Network
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee (in the Gospel of Mark), he saw Simon and his brother Andrew. Come, be my facebook friend, Jesus said, and you can welcome new members into my social network.  Later (in the Gospel of John) Jesus said, Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s facebook friends.  Such is the RFV, the Revised Facebook Version. (more…)

lament: the conference in one corner, the colloquim in another

Here in Auckland I’ve been attending the theology of lament academic event. We’ve bounced between Isaiah, Maori lament, new media, rock concerts, liturgy and responses to Middle East. We’ve got folk from Scotland, England, US, Australia and New Zealand.

What I’m loving is that this event is a colloquium format, in contrast to the traditional conference. The colloquium format asked for a full paper, ideally a month prior. This gives time to read the papers prior. Come the colloquium, there is time for a brief 5-10 minute introduction of the paper, which is then followed by 20 minutes of discussion. This starts to allow significant time for interaction and cross-fertilisation. Common themes begin to emerge. Repeated questions surfaced. Motifs recur.

The input I shared in seemed to go well. Got to show a U2 and a Paul Kelly videos 🙂 I love being a serious scholar :). It produced a really rich discussion.

• how to tease out the fusion in Biblical lament of nation and faith, with the fact that contemporary society separates sacred and secular?
• is protest another space in which contemporary lament is occurring?
• is the occurrence of lament outside sacred space in danger of reducing lament to a commercial transaction?
• how important is it to ensure the space for multiple responses and postures within lament?
• is lament a genre in terms of a form, or function in terms of common human experiences of unique episodes of human suffering?

The goal is a book, not of disparate papers pushed together under a theme, but coherent threads, links that enable the chapters to keep talking to each other.

The take home memory is of rich discussion that moved constantly between Biblical (OK Old Testament) material, human experience and pastoral practice.

Living libraries: a way of thinking about research and learning

Two words that I’m using with our post-graduate programmes that seem to really capture people’s interest and enthusiasm.

It’s based on an idea first developed in Denmark in 2000 in which people are able to borrow a living person rather than borrowing a book. This allows a conversation, in which communities are brought closer together and attitudes are changed. The idea came to Australia in November 2006.

In our post-graduate Master/Doctor of Ministry degree we have topics called Guided Readings. They are basically “boxes” in which a student can pursue some reading on a set topic and in order to be assessed, write a reflective response.

What I am suggesting to our post-grads is that they remain open to borrowing people not books. If you want to reflect on leadership, sure you can read books. But be open to the fact that you can also interview some leaders. If you want to learn about the emerging church, sure you could read. But you could also develop an immersion experience and visit a few communities. Obviously some guidance is needed to ensure as much time goes into reading books as reading “people.”

But it is surely too limited an approach to learning to assume that only books have wisdom. Especially for those interested in the practice of ministry, which, as I have written previously, is about a craft (here and here). As such, I suspect that for some (many?), deepening in this craft can come from interacting with people as well as books.

For more on the origins of the human library idea, see their website here.

emerging responses to For the Parish, chapter 3 – mission and church

“For the Parish”, by Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, is an extended critique of fresh expressions. Always good to listen to the critics, so I am engaging the book, chapter by chapter. The Introduction is here, Chapter one is here, Chapter two is here.

Before we plunge into round (chapter) 3 of For the Parish vs Fresh Expressions it is worth gaining an overview. Chapter 3 is a crucial chapter, which in a nutshell, battles over the relationship between church, worship and mission. Did Christus propter ecclesiam venit (Christ come for the sake of the Church)? Or the world?

Before I explore this chapter, I wanted to gain an overview of current debates on the relationship between church and mission. I turned to the The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church. Nearly 700 pages, of which chapter 36 is on the theme of church and mission (Ecclesiology and World Mission/Missio Dei, by Paul Collins, 623-636.)

Collins offers some history. First a history in which mission has been understood, based on Matthew 28:19-20, as going. By implication, mission becomes a task performed elsewhere. Second, a history in which the context of Christendom, which meant that “conversion and salvation, church and mission became inextricably bound together.” (624).

Collins urges the “understanding of the world church today [be] rooted in the experiences of the colonial and post-colonial periods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (623). He then links six themes – salvation, partnership, missio Dei, relationality, inculturation and pluralism – in dialogue with major church councils like Vatican 2 and World Council of Churches. His conclusion is that to be church is to be sent, to participate in God’s mission in the world. “Ideas of ‘mission’ in terms of conversion and recruitment to church membership need to be re-evaluated in the light of God’s cosmic mission: ‘that God may be all in all.” (633, drawing on 1 Cor 15:28)

This overview of global trends in thinking about church and mission, gives us some way to understand For the Parish. The book makes no reference to trends in world Christianity, nor to the conciliar councils. Instead the authors draw on European theologians like John Robinson, Sergei Bulgakov, Henri Lubac. They acknowledge the place of the Kingdom in the Gospels, but choose to place priority on the Pauline epistles to argue that “the goal of salvation … might even be said to be all church.” (48) They conclude that to suggest mission is a proper ultimate goal is “the ultimate heresy within the contemporary Church of England.” (54)

Heresy. A strong word indeed.

They critique Fresh Expressions for having

the fervour of devotees casting around for increasingly precious things to offer up to mission. The favoured sacrifices are the practices and traditions of the inherited church. To mission, every and any treasure must be sacrificed. (For the Parish, 54)

This chapter opens up a crucial, crucial debate. What is the relationship between church and mission? Does church exist for mission? Or for worship? It seems to me, given the overview provided in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church that For the Parish is urging is simply continuing a Christendom, European understanding of church and mission.

Whether Fresh Expressions is doing any better is an equally valid question, which will occupy us in Chapter Four. But first, back to the piles of paper on my desk.

kindling a new wave in mission?

Interesting news just out that Amazon are launching Kindle singles. I love the tag line –

Compelling Ideas Expressed at Their Natural Length.

The current book has a certain genre – it needs to be so many words to be taken seriously and to make economic sense. Yet quite a few books I read are simply puffed and padded to meet the genre. Much better surely to let the idea dictate the size, rather than the various expectations.

They are talking about prices of less than a dollar and seem to be suggesting that anyone can submit a piece for inclusion as a Kindle Single.

So the Kindle single concept opens up the market for a different type of writing, the short story, the pithy essay, the developing case study, the storytelling of local mission in local communities, the short course – and thus some new possibilities for sparking mission thinking, reflecting, storytelling.

(Hat tip mighty (:) ) skinny Kiwi). For other commentary see Wired and Tech news.

PS What I don’t like about Kindle is the way that it is so linked to one seller. Why can’t we have open source e-reader? Wouldn’t that be a good investment for a number of sellers to pool R & D over?

PSS What would also be really useful is if Kindle allowed books to be unbundled. I sit here preparing distance material. Often I want folk to read not the whole book, but one or two chapters. It makes no sense to pay for the whole but I’d love to pay for a chapter plus distribution rights that I could then distribute to students.

creationary: Waitangi Day Resources

For folk in New Zealand, Sunday worship this week falls on the 6th of February, which is also Waitangi Day, a day to reflect upon the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between Maori and the Queen of England’s representatives in 1840 and the implications for our life as a nation going forward.

For those thinking about the implications for worship, here are some resources that I have created in previous years that might be of some use.

• a daily prayer service (20 minutes) here
• a sermon I preached in 2007, making linkages between Ephesians 2, Jesus and Waitangi Day.
• some worship ideas (here), including an interactive call to worship, a medley of Scriptures and a song suggestion
• a Waitangi day communion liturgy I wrote for Waitangi Day. It is published in Gerard Kelly’s, RetroFuture: Rediscovering Our Roots, Recharting Our Routes, 178-9.

Female: Waitangi Day
Where Maori and Pakeha wanted to be one
Hoping for security
Dreaming of biculturalism

Female: We who are many are one body
Male: Ka whatiia e tatou tenei taro.

Male: Communion,
Where God wants us to be one,
Hoping for restitution,
Dreaming of full and final settlement

Female: We who are many are one body
Male: Ka whatiia e tatou tenei taro.

Female: Communion [raise bread]
Take this and eat it. This is my body,
Jesus, broken, that we might be one.

Male: Communion [raise cup]
Take this and drink it. This is my blood.
Jesus, broken, that we might be one.

Female: We who are many are one body
Male: Ka whatiia e tatou tenei taro.

Female: Waitangi Day – Divided Day
We hear the protest from our margins.
We hear the rage of the disillusioned.

Male: Communion. And so we are God’s body,
Caught in the projection of bread and wine,
We are bringers of peace. We are messengers of hope.

Female: Communion – brokenness that we might be one
Take this and eat
Take this and bring peace

Male: Communion – brokenness that we might be one
Take this and drink
Take this and live hope

Together: We who are many are one body.

(It works best if you have a large projected visual image which people walk into to partake of communion.)

a fabulous Lent and Easter resource

I’m working on a distance course for lay folk on the subject of Jesus Christ. In preparation, I’m reminded again of what a fabulous resource is Richard Harries The Passion in Art. It is part of the Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts, which means that you not only get 33 full colour art pieces, but also a few pages of written reflection. Some words that probe theology, provide background to the piece, offer information about the artist and their techniques.

So in looking in this distance course for examples of people reflecting on the relevance of Jesus and suffering, what better resource than a few pages reflecting on the Isenheim Altarpiece, linked to the Holocaust.

In looking for ways people find hope in Jesus and reconciliation, what better resource than a few pages reflecting on Supper at Emmaus by Ceri Richards and the call to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

In looking for Jesus as liberator of all creation, what better resource than a few pages reflecting on the Carolingian Bookcover, depicting all of creation being integrated around Jesus.

I brought The Passion in Art a few years ago. At the time I was about 10 years in preaching Easter. I was getting a bit flat and needed some fresh resources. The Passion in Artbeen a fantastic help ever since, opening me visually, deepening me theologically, broadening me through exposing me to the global church.

whinging with U2 and Paul Kelly in Auckland

I’m in Auckland later next week, at a research conference exploring the cultural and theological implications of lament. The two day conference (Thursday 10th and Friday 11th) involves discussion of a range of papers on themes including:

• Spiritual Complaint and Lament
• Lament in the Global Village
• Job the Lamenter
• Lament in Music
• Lamentation and Liturgy
• Lament and Penitential Prayer
• Contemporary Conceptions of Lament

I’m co-presenting a paper with my Old Testament colleague here at Uniting College, Liz Boase. We are bringing contemporary lament into conversation with Biblical lament. Specifically looking at how U2 (responding to the Pike River tragedy) and Paul Kelly (responding to 2009 bushfires in Victoria) “whinge” publicly before God.

I’ll also be catching up with one of the D.Min candidates I supervise, taking another research step in the emerging church 10 years on project and sharing a K1 Shiraz 2008 with good friends.

It should be a busy, yet rich time. (Apart from the humidity – Auckland in early February can be pretty awful)

the craft of ministry takes practical shape

Ministry is a craft:

• as technique. Not mindless procedure, but the cultures in which we might flourish
• as a unique and individual blend of skill, commitment and judgment
• as the aligning of head and heart, intuition and intelligence, history and innovation

I’ve blogged about this themes last year, interacting with Richard Sennett’s book The Craftsman. And I then made some links to ministry training, ways to help leaders and their churches in their craft of thinking and acting in mission

Over the next few days, ways to grow in this craft begin to take practical shape here at Uniting College. Tonight (Feb 3, 5:!5-6:15 pm) there is an information evening that gives an overview of the Master of ministry. A chance for folk to kick tires.

Over the next weeks I am booked to sit with 13 individuals, existing “crafters” (students). I will be trying to find ways to turn what they see as their growing edges – their questions about their craft – into learning opportunities. Our Master of Ministry has such flexibility in this regard. We are not offering blocks of information taught by overseas experts, but able to flexibly craft unique assignments.

On Monday the Research intensive begins. We are partnering with other local post-graduate providers, which we hope will provide a richer experience. Research methods is a demanding course. But so essential for “crafters” to explore their tools of the research trade.

It looks like we will double our post-graduate numbers in our post-graduate ministry programme this year. This includes a jump in our Doctor of Ministry programme and interest (from around Australia and even New Zealand) in the new missional cohort we want to explore the craft of missional leadership.

God the crafter
enliven the craft of all who wish to craft with you,
Amen.

hard questions about Christian mission

Every generation has challenges. One of the challenges for our generation is how we respond to the injustice of the past. Last Wednesday was Australia Day, which is a celebration of a nation with a history of dispossession of indigenous people. Sunday in New Zealand is Waitangi Day and the subsequent failure by settlers to honour that treaty.

This has implications for being Christian. We talk of a God of reconciliation who heals the past. How do such claims make sense for this generation?

In recent days I have been reading Remembering Jamestown: Hard Questions About Christian Mission, which explores how the church in North America might live in the face of historic injustice and mistreatment of indigenous people.

The final chapter is by Amos Yong, a theologian, Malaysian born, now working at Regent University, USA.  I have engaged in this blog previously his extraordinary book on Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity and also his excellent Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor).

Yong argues that “it is important for us not to quickly forget the offenses that were part and parcel of the missiology” of the past. (163). He advocates a post-colonial theology of mission based on the many tongues of the Pentecost narrative.

1. “As many tongues were empowered by the Spirit to speak about God’s deeds of power … so also are many languages required to bear witness to the glory of God today.” (164)
2. This requires us to listen to many voices as a first move in mission.
3. The expectation is that the encounter with those different than us will lead to “mutual transformation” of both parties (166).
4. The many tongues of Pentecost assume a multiplicity of missionary modes of engagement, a diversity of approaches to being Christ today. “We need to creatively participate in the work of the Spirit to develop many more liturgical forms and other social practices that facilitate the healing and salvation needed to respond” to the past (166). (Anyone else hear echoes of the call to fresh expressions!)
5. It expects a theology of hospitality in which Christians become not hosts, but guests. (Anyone else hear echoes of Luke 10? – for more on this go here and here and here and here and here and here)

Thought provoking stuff for all those who care about mission in Australia and New Zealand.