sustain:if:able kiwi

your place or mine? hospitality as mission

I’ve been asked to offer some input to a gathering of church leaders in Tasmania in a few weeks (August 20-22). The title they’ve given me is this: Your place or mine: hospitality as mission. I said yes because I think it names a fascinating tension and one that has been nagging at me in recent days.

Back in April I was pondering mission in relation to the Zaccheus story in Luke 19. I was struck by how Jesus does mission at Zaccheus place, at his table, inside his home. Which, when I thought about it, was the dominant way the Gospel stories portray Jesus. He doesn’t give hospitality. He receives hospitality.

The exception is the Waiting Father/Prodigal Son in Luke 15, which has often used to frame mission and encourage the church to open it’s arms in embrace. Yet note the context in which the story is told – Jesus accepting hospitality, not giving it. Fascinating stuff.

I took this insight to my bookshelf and went through all my books on hospitality. Wonderful books on the banquet of God and the embrace of God at the Eucharist. But sure enough, almost all are about hospitality at our place. We are the host and they focus on how we give hospitality.

Which can so easily become occupied with mission as people coming to us, our turf, our churches, our terms, our worship, our welcome, our websites.

Which leaves a wonderful tension: How to integrate hospitality with the pattern of Jesus? What does hospitality in Western culture mean at their place, not mine! Any insights welcome as I begin my preparation.

one night while surfing: missio Dei on wikipedia

“Missio Dei as a term and concept became increasingly popular in the church from the second half of the 20th century and is a key concept in missiology being used by theologians such as David Bosch, Lesslie Newbigin, Alan Roxburgh, David Dunbar, Steve Taylor ….

From the wikipedia entry: (Missio Dei).

That’s some pretty humbling company to be among …. (but they are all male …)

global missiology and church change: updated with visuals

Updated: For those interested, here is my powerpoint (mission and innovation for web) and (here) are my notes. There was a LOT of energy around especially the mission stories in history.  It is so easy for Westerners to slip into mission as definitions and yet the use of stories in history brought a lot of energy and challenge into the room and ensured that discussion of innovation and leadership had a global God of mission framework.

Question: Where was the best place to train as a missionary in the 5th century?

I’ve had a wonderful few days, weaving up some new material for a pastors training day tomorrow. The theme is mission and innovation and I’ve had some time to do two things.

First, to integrate some current reading around innovation, change and leadership (see here for more).

Second, to add a global mission framework. It is so easy for church ministers to focus on church and so I’ve enjoyed exploring some global mission. Specifically to add a quiz, using the first thousand years of church history, which is an Asian, African and Middle Eastern history. And to add some stories, of wandering Celts and the first missionary to Vietnam in the 16th century. It is important to see fresh expressions and church change as powered by missio Dei and I’m hoping that this global mission horizon does that. This is in 4 pieces, so for those interested (more…)

developing change leaders book review – Ch 7 Developmental approaches

I’m speaking to a group of church leaders on Thursday on the topic of mission as innovation, and again in a few weeks to another group on change, so it’s back to a book review of Paul Aitken and Malcolm Higgs Developing Change Leaders: The principles and practices of change leadership development. (For the review to date: Chapter one here. Chapter two is here. Chapter three is here. Chapter four is here. Chapter five is here. Chapter six is here)

First, great (amazing really) to see an opening quote (from Dance of Leadership, The: The Call for Soul in 21st Century Leadership, by Kiwi author, Peter Cammock.

Leadership is a dance, in which leaders and followers jointly respond to the rhythm and call of a particular social context, within which leaders draw from deep wells of collective experience and energy, to engage followers around transforming visions of change and lead them in the collective creation of compelling futures.

This suggests a focus away from leader-centric models of leadership, to the relational aspects of collective change leadership. Collins is cited, that great leaders have two essential dimensions – humilty and persistence.

Then comes a fascinating section (165-173) naming ways leaders can develop. Things like move to a foreign culture, shadow an arbitrator, become a volunteer.

This is followed by a number of case studies of leadership development within organisations. Let me take one, that of developing emerging leaders in the New Zealand public sector. This involved a development centre and a leadership program. The focus was based around a set of leadership competencies. The focus was an experiential learning through peer challenge, self-revelation and team learning in a safe environment.

Each person developed a portfolio, to document their learning over 9 months through the following stages.

• Stage 1 involved identifying prior leadership experience
• Stage 2 involved some input (a 1 week course) combined with personal goal setting around “lever” activity (self-awareness, learning as a leader, values and beliefs, interpersonal intelligence, communication skills, behaviour modeling)
• Stage 3 involved leading a strategic change project

I can’t help putting all this alongside the leadership training I experienced, which was mainly lectures on the importance of vision and how it worked in a large church.

I begin to reflect that some of the “lever” activities are to some extent embedded in some dimensions of ministerial training, but need to be made more explicit and clear. I see the challenge of the modernist mindset that equates teaching with content rather than learning.  I see echoes between what we hope to do with our new Innovation stream in the new Bachelor of Ministry, especially Stage 1, the Introduction to Formation topic and Stage 3, the invitation into a practical project over the course of the training. I wonder what it would look like for a denomination to do this with their existing ministers and to think about the Missional Church Leadership course I offer, and did offer to ministers in New Zealand. What was the fruit and what changes could be made?

Joining in with God’s Spirit: a great missional resource

God’s mission is greater than any church, and it is in this wider movement of the Spirit that all the churches in the world participate. It is within the greater purposes of God that we find our unity. The missio Dei is not confined to any locality; it spills over, crosses boundaries and is carried across the world by the wind of the Spirit. It does not have a single origin or one direction but comes and goes as the Spirit wills. However, it is one movement because the Spirit witnesses to a unique person, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, crucified and raised, who reveals the Father in heaven, source of all things. We have yet to realize that the cosmic Christ is manifested in the unity of local churches in the mission of the Spirit. When we do, we will connect world church with local mission. We will be able to join with the Spirit who moves over the earth sustaining our world and our life – the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who is given to bring about good news in the whole creation.

Conclusion from Kirsteen Kim’s Joining in with the Spirit. It’s a great book. While I don’t agree with her analysis of Fresh Expressions, this is still a book rich in contemporary missiological insights.

Books like these are essential to the missional church conversation. They offer the Western missional church the gift of dislocation. When you read chapters that start with the insights from contemporary mission in Africa and Korea and India, you are offered a missiology that is so much richer than your own. You are reminded that the missional God is up to so much more than patching up a declining Western church. That mission is so much deeper, richer and wider than bringing back the young people!

So I used Kirsteen Kim’s quote as a devotional beginning at our Masters of Ministry class last Monday. Each of us were invited to sit with the quote and as we did, to identify the phrase that most spoke to us. After sharing, we then prayed for the person on our right. Then together we said the Lord’s Prayer. Just a few minutes, but a great way to place ourselves, each other and our ministries in the caring context of God’s globally local mission.

Made to play: Toy Story 3 film review

A (monthly) film review by Steve Taylor (for Touchstone magazine)

In 1995, a bunch of toys started a cinematic innovation. The toys (Toy Story) were to be followed by fish (Finding Nemo), rats (Ratatouille) and robots (WALL-E), all creations of Pixar Animation Studios. The credits began to roll, with eleven films in the next fifteen years garnering twenty four Academy awards and contributing to the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion. Such creative innovation was based neither on Hollywood star power nor on clever computer technologies. (more…)

planting fresh expressions down under: a tale of seven churches

Here in South Australia we recently enjoyed the visit by Dave Male. One of the big helps for me was when Dave talked about the size of the core team in planting fresh expressions. He was making the point that the smaller the team, the slower the progress, but the more likely it would be radical re-expression of missional life. In contrast, the larger the core team, the more quickly the plant might grow, yet the more likely the new plant can end up look like it’s planting parent.

It helped me make sense of my fresh expressions experience.

My partner and I planted Graceway in 1994. That was last millennium, when noone was talking about fresh expressions or emerging church. But we knew that our mates were dialling out of church, yet still were encountering God. We started reading the literature on cultural shift and out of that emerged Graceway. We had values of community and creativity and participation, so we met cafe style, always had food, had a barstool for open sharing and explored the whole-body in worship. The planting team was small and it was such a long, hard slog, real pioneering.

There was simply none of the infrastructure and conversations and books that there are around now. We endured at times quite active hostility. But we learnt heaps and plugged away. We made mistakes but we saw God move. We saw some unchurched find faith, developed a distinctive way of life, built networks with the community and found ways to serve and love people. After 9 years we moved on. Graceway was fragile but had some good leaders.

We moved to Opawa in 2004. We were at Opawa six years and in that time had a go a planting six fresh expressions. One per year is good going when you think about it! (I talk about the multi-congregational ethos, which gave this initial shape elsewhere on this blog).

First was espresso, a Tuesday night discussion community for those wanting to explore faith questions is a conversational, open way.

Then came the hymn service, soup on Sunday afternoon, choosing of favourite hymns, a testimony and a sermon. connecting with those for whom hymns was an important part of faith formation.

We tried a number of experiments for spiritual seekers, running a journalling course in a local cafe, offering Sense Making Faith course. Each was important in connecting us with spiritual seekers, but none developed into a cohesive congregation. (Still important, still a great learning, still saw folk baptised.)

We re-planted our evening service in two different forms. One was a monthly Soak service, as a time to “soak” in God. Not so much a pioneering work, but more a contemplative space for people to make time to engage (soak in) God. Sung worship, lectio divina and then a range of stations. Lot of attention paid to the space, which, being in main auditorium was always big and worked really well in terms of contemplation.

The other was Grow which used the table as the main metaphor. People gathered in groups and on each table was an A3 sheet of paper in which people were invited to reflect on two theological questions – who is God and who are humans. Grow had a three week focus and each evening used multiple inputs – video clips, interviews, during the week challenges, top 10 quiz, sermon, prayer.

Another trial was made with the Gathering, which used a local community cottage to work with folks local and close to the church building. Lots of food, gathered around a big wooden table, Bible open.

Looking back, using Dave Male’s lens, helped me see that Opawa was a totally different way of planting fresh expressions than Graceway. Rather than lone “ordained” pioneers, we were involving teams of lay people. (Which you simply don’t have when you are the lone pioneer). Each expression looked for 4-5 people who gathered around an “itch” to explore new possibilities. Each faced the downside, the danger, of becoming a new form of worship, rather than a genuinely missional new form of church.

As Dave says, both types have their strengths and weaknesses. Multiple congregational planting with lay teams is much easier, while pioneering is much more radical.

I’m not sure what the point of this post is. (In fact, I’m not actually often sure what the point of this blog is.) Perhaps someone might find some resonance in one of these tales of seven fresh expression churches.

talking mission head in the UK?

There is a UK research and networking conference I would love to attend in the UK on the weekend of 17-18 September. It looks a worthwhile conference, but it is a long way to fly for a few days. So I thought I would use the blog to flag the possibility and ask if any of my UK readers could use a talking “mission” head either before or after.

I have spoken in a wide range of denominational contexts (and can provide references – even a Bishop(!) – if wanted). I can engage at both academic and popular level. My interests are in mission, leadership, change.

More concretely I have recently been found talking on

• leading an established church through change, the practical and spiritual challenges of a “mixed economy”
• worship, and proclamation, as a creative conversation between installation art and the evolving live performances of band U2
• theology of pop culture, using pneumatalogy and Luke 10 as a lens
• cultivating innovation in leadership and communities
• hospitality as mission, particular as it related to their turf, not ours
• how colonised communities resist their colonising cultures, with a specific focus on Bible reading practises
• fresh expressions downunder, including use of lay teams, public art installations and spirituality2go

If you think I could help serve you, drop me an email steve at emergentkiwi dot org dot nz

Missional church, missional liturgy

“For several years, I have offered workshops and classes on “missional liturgy.” A frequent response has been, “How can I make my church’s liturgy missional?” As I listened to these questions and probed more deeply, it has seemed as though people were asking about techniques … I began to realize that it was the wrong question.” (44-45).

There is a helpful article in the latest edition of Theology today, by Ruth A. Meyers on the shape of worship in missional church, which I will be adding it to my list of compulsory readings for the Missional Church Leadership courses I teach.

The article starts with a real life story of a missional community. Always a good sign, because a key theology underpinning missional church is the focus on lived communities and their practices, in contrast to starting first with elaborate theories. The article then places their lived practices alongside existing understandings of worship.

• Inside and outside – gathered public worship builds up and resources Christians who then go out to serve in mission
• Outside in – gathered public worship is seen as mission, attracting people who are changed by the worship experience
• Inside out – worship is mission, not as an instrument to change people as with “outside in”, but as an full expression of God’s mission

The article then argues that all, and yet none, of these three categories describe missional worship.  After a helpful survey of recent shifts in mission – mission is a partnering with a Trinitarian God rather than humans taking initiatives – she then outlines a number of concrete practices, in which mission is worship and worship is mission. The list sounds traditional, yet has an intentional reframing.

• Reconciling community – the more diverse the worshipping community, the more worship is missional, showing forth God’s reconciling love
• Hospitality – welcoming those not yet active members with a focus on who is not here from our neighbourhood? Hence, what might need to change in us?
• Symbol – using language of the people
• Proclamation – seeing all the acts of gathered public worship as educational
• Intercession – praying beyond our narrow parochial concerns, which in turns open those who pray to transformation
• Offering – worship engaging the whole of life and all the people
• Thanksgiving – simple gratitude

Can I swap my pliers for your economic Trinity?

A charge often levelled against theology is that of inaccessibility. I heard it again a few weeks ago. Why do theologians use incomprehensible words and talk in ways that none can understand?

I’ve been pondering this and have now decided that fair is fair.

That from now one, when someone accuses theologians of incomprehensibility, I will ask if I can borrow from them a silver metal thing, shaped like scissors, that snaps shut and has plastic handles.

14 words.
14 words that can still mean at least a number of tools.

When one word – pliers – would do.

Yes, theologians use short hand, words like economic Trinity.

2 words.
2 words that summarise 46 words: “the acts of the triune God with respect to the creation, history, salvation, the formation of the Church, the daily lives of believers, etc. and describes how the Trinity operates within history in terms of the roles or functions performed by each Person of the Trinity.” (From Wikipedia).

I’m being smart. My point is simply this. Don’t we all use code words as short hand, as a way of speeding up conversation? Petrol heads have distributors, sheet metal workers have pliers. So can theologians have their economic Trinity?

a new semester postgraduate focus

A new semester starts here at Uniting College today. The focus for me this Semester is the post-graduate area and it’s so nice to be building on foundations, rather than heading into unknown and uncharted terrain.

First is the continuation of Program seminars. I’ve blogged about these before, noting with excitement how these build collegiality and are constantly developing people’s ability to reflect theologically on current ministry practice. We’ve got new students and a really rich denominational environment – Salvation Army, Anglican, Lutheran, Churches of Christ, Catholic, Uniting – at play.

Second is the continuation of Missional Church Leadership. Students are at the half-way stage of the course. That means that today we are gathering around presentations of their listening in their unique contexts. As they present, I am working with the class developing their capacities to engage in processes of discernment. This is not theory, but requires stepping into real, living mission contexts and together exploring what God might be up to.

Third, the icing on the cake, is the post-graduate distance course I’m co-teaching for Otago University. It’s a “foreigner”, on my own time as it were. The topic is contemporary preaching and I am looking forward to co-teaching with Lynne Baab. The students have set up their own blogs and with the wonders of modern technology, I in Adelaide, will be engaging with Kiwi students throughout Aotearoa. It’s nice to realise that I might have left New Zealand, but in the grace of God, I can continue to be involved in my home!

updated: Build-your-own prayer stool: some useful websites

I’m wanting to build my own prayer stool. Not sure why, it just seems a creatively, impulsive thing to do. Sometimes, creative impulses are worth following. A quick surf of the web reveals a few useful websites

• For best creative graphics go here.
• For softies, ie tips for padding, go here
• For a prayer stool that collapses down, due to the use of hinges, go here.
• For an ecological angle on the project, go here.

So the next step is to go and get the necessary pieces of wood …

Update 1: Here it is …

complete with hinges, so it can be folded …

I am happy to make these, at cost plus postage, for anyone who wants. Just leave a comment …

Update 2: And one of my students has just taken this a step further. They are wondering about starting worship by inviting those gathered to make their own prayer stool.  Wood and nails will be provided. And people invited to make their own, then use their own during the worship. (Then take their own away – the ultimate spirituality2go takeaway).

FOSMT (free and open source missiology textbooks)

Helpful post here by AKMA on steps to an open source theology. He is discussing the Old Testament, but so very easy to apply to missiology. In sum

• First, work out an overall structure and uniform presentation.
• Second, find authors to write initial chapters to flesh out the structure
• Third, edit chapters for uniformity and place on web.
• Four, arrange a PoD publisher to sell papercopy
• Five, encourage uploading of alternate points of view.

The result:

Bing, bang, bong, you have an open-source, free as in beer, free-to-reconfigure, free-to-supplement or even -alter (provided you give credit and don’t offer the altered version commercially without the author’s agreement) textbook. And that textbook is now useable anywhere English is read, for free. And that textbook is putting your name(s) in front of students and teachers all over the world, especially in places where they can’t necessarily afford the doorstop hardbacks that the textbook publishers love to charge so much for. And that textbook can easily be kept up-to-date. And if some agency were to fund it (and such funding needn’t even come to very much, in the world of granting — small to moderate honoraria for authors, editorial/production support, and so on), they could slap their name (or a prominent donor’s name) right there on the cover and on every title page

So I am wanting to develop for next year
a) mission-shaped course for Australasia
b) Mission then and now history and theology paper.

I wonder what these would look like FOSMT. Anyone want to partner in either step one, work out an overall structure and uniform presentation; or on step two, author a chapter; or on step three, being an editor, or on step zero – being the initial funder in order to position/brand your organisation as an innovative, missionary-focused, partnering type?

Formation panels as a process in leadership formation

If you arrived at Uniting College today, you would have seen a carpark full of cars and a steady stream of students coming and going.  Today is Formation panel day, when teams of 3-5 people gather around each   candidates processes for ordination. Practically the panel is carefully chosen to bring missional leaders, faculty academic advice and skills in adult education. The same panel meet with the same candidates three times over a year, in a process that might take up to five years and involve academic study, fieldwork and readiness to transition into first placements.

Formation panels, and the carpark full of cars, are a recent development for training here in South Australia and have been shaped by a number of theological beliefs that are worth naming.

First, that training for ministry is not intellectual, but deals with formation for discipleship, inviting the whole person into processes of integration. Thus a panel is a way of making intentional this belief and will be exploring with candidates anything from life to balance, relationships to academic study to fieldwork.

Second, that candidates are engaged in ministry with and among the church. Hence the church, and not solely the academy, should be involved in their formation. I love seeing that carpark full of cars, some people driving up to two hours, all people living in and among the demands and pressures of congregational life. This is the church at work, giving time and focus toward leadership formation.

Third, that each candidate has a unique calling. This is not about producing cookie cutter ministers, all following the same template. Rather time in Formation Panel is given to listen, listen, listen, and then seek to shape a unique programme around each student –  mixing study, fieldwork, supervision. Every programme is unique and is revisited in each and every Formation panel, wanting to be flexible to student growth and development.

It’s an exhausting, time-consuming, complex process. It is demanding for the panel and for the candidates. But it makes some important theological points about the formation of leaders for the church of tomorrow.