sustain:if:able kiwi

living the Bible in adelaide

I am down to teach a 4 day intensive Living the Bible, Sept 28 to Oct 1, at Tabor College, Adelaide (scroll down). It’s probably my signature course, exploring how to use the Bible from both a theological and missiological perspective, with heaps of case studies of what that actually looks like.

Enrolments are slow and Tabor are wondering about whether to cancel – which would be a pain, and have some cost, because tickets are already booked. So if any Aussie/Adelaide punters were contemplating it, can you please contact Graham Buxton (gbuxton at adelaide dot tabor dot edu dot au) ASAP.

u2 downunder

“Part of the tour will finish in Australia and another part of the tour will finish in South America, where people could use a nice concert pavilion in a park, which has an ability to take 200 tonnes of kit hanging under it,” Mark Fisher [stage designer said).

The article talks about how U2 want to see their innovative “claw” concert stage used as a local park concert venue, as their tour ends.

So on behalf of U2, this blog is taking nominations for parks downunder. Please leave your reasons in the comments section.

mission collective: living (night 2) reflections

Our second round of mission collectives has just kicked off. I’m just back from the living collective. (Creating meets tomorrow evening, then Loving gathers over Sunday lunch). The aim is to affirm the diversity of our life, gather in a conversational manner (4 times a year) around mission. Tonight I’ve been sitting in a shop, the workplace, of one of our congregation, collecting around the challenge of being salt and light with neighbours and in our workplaces.

In my bag is a blank card, with the words: Live your faith. Share your life, and a verse that encourages us to start by sharing life with people. It’s proved such an eye opener, a reminder of the need to be fully human, real, vulnerable with people.

During the evening P. shared how the off the map interviews we showed last time had inspired him to do an “off the map” interview with their neighbours, and the value and insight experienced in simply listening to the spiritual search of another. M. shared how God has changed her and her friends notice that, so she simply tells them it happened at Opawa and they come along. A. called me over to share that the “grandparenting” role I suggested he try two years ago is still going with one of our young adults. S. asked if I remembered the first time she came to church and how rude she felt she was and how my response lowered her defensives and now she’s an “apprentice” Christian.

I drove home, my heart singing. It’s been a tough week for me, people in my ear about this and that. But its nights like this that make it all worthwhile – honest people caring enough about mission to gather tired bodies and the stories of lives changed and changing.

stuff that’s making me weep

This makes me weep. It makes me want to hug my children, scream in anger and change my buying habits.

It’s also, intellectually, a superb example of culture-making, of poetic and ethical imagination amid the practices of everyday life. Let me explain. I’ve been talking a bit recently about culture making, drawing from the superb book by Andy Crouch , Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, to remind us that in response to cultural change, any and all of us can be culture-makers. Rather than condemn, critique, copy or consume, in echoes of Genesis 2, humans can be culture-makers.

I also want to add a number of nuances to this notion of culture-making. First, to add in Richard Kearney’s The Wake of Imagination in which he argues for imagination as both poetic and ethical. The first, poetic, relates to our commitment to create, as God’s image-bearers. The second, ethical, invites us to create in ways that focus on the other, on the least, on the marginalised, aware of the absent voices.

Second, Michel de Certeau’s, The Practice of Everyday Life and his insistence that culture-making occurs in the midst of the ordinary and everday.

So for me this Radiohead video brings these strands together. Consider that it arises from a pop-culture world which is now our globe’s ordinary and everyday. It is also set among the everyday activities of getting dressed for school, an activity which ‘000’s of Western kids, like my kids, do each day. Further, it is an act of both poetic and ethical imagination, a video clip that forces us to think about who makes our shoes, and how they spend their every day. Third, as a piece of music and as a video, it is an act of culture-making, refusing to condemn, critique, copy or consume, but creatively addressing an issue in our world today. In so doing, it offers us a challenge: as a result of that video, what will we do? Consume? or act?

Further:
For more on Radiohead videos.

old prayers, good prayer

Please give us, Father-God, a clean start for beginners, intelligence to the young, aid to those who are running hard, repentance to those who fall, a revived spirit to those who are lukewarm, and to those who have given their best a good ending. Amen.

Irenaeus of Lyon (died AD 202)

are you playing, or are you hiding, behind that gay card?

Big dust up in the New Zealand media while I was in Australia, as some (only some) of the allowances paid to New Zealand politicians were publicly named. In the midst of a recession, the Beehive residents have been made to look like greedy pigs, manipulating the public purse for financial gain, while demanding fiscal restraint from the suffering public.

Just this morning I was enjoying Colin Espiner’s opinion piece. “We may now know how much each MP has spent on travel and accommodation over the past six months. However, we still don’t have the details. We don’t know how much each MP spent on spousal travel. We don’t know how much was spent on international versus domestic travel (except for ministers). And, more importantly, we don’t know the reason for each trip. MPs have argued the public does not need that much detail, and to require it would be an invasion of their privacy.” (Paragraph 9, 10, 11). So there we are, a general comment on each MP (emphasis mine).

This was followed by turning the spotlight on specific MP’s. First to be mentioned was Wayne Mapp and Bill English. And then in paragraph 24, “MP Chris Carter is one of Parliament’s biggest spenders of our money, despite never having had portfolios that demand much travel.” No mention of sexuality by the way (emphasis mine).

Now I notice that the aforementioned Chris Carter is suggesting exactly the opposite. “Why was there no interest in any other minister taking their partner with them, only me? Why should that be? The only conclusion that I can draw from that is it’s because I’m gay, and that if I was a heterosexual minister taking my husband or wife with me, it would be of no interest.”

Well excuse me, Chris Carter, but as a tax payer I am interested in ALL MP’s use of travel. And so is the New Zealand media.

So from where I sit, I think you’ve simply pulled out gay card simply to shut down debate. You’re in the spotlight and rather than front, you’re trying to hide behind the gay card.

And that, frankly, IMHO is a pretty sad use of your sexuality. What’s more, it seems demeaning to all those who have fought so hard to remove sexuality as an excuse for discrimination. Step out of the closet Mr Carter!

we’re not as mature as we think we are

This morning’s sermon was a bit of a rework of my week. Since I’ve essentially given 13 different talks in the last 5 days, I thought there was some sense, being back at Opawa, in doing a recap. So I talked about how faith grows.

The Bible text was Luke 2:41-52, how does Jesus grow? We read the text through the eyes of a 12 year old, and then the parents of a 12 year old. Linked in with this, I contrasted the image of faith growing by passing through hoops – baptism, confirmation, ordination, with faith growing as a tree.

To quote John and Olive Drane: “our underlying theological starting points will to a large extent determine how we feel children can or should articulate faith. Those who prioritise the axis of Fall and Redemption, seeing people as irredeemably sinful until touched by the Church, are likely to view spiritual development in terms of jumping through hoops in order to conform to church order and discipline .. their real subtext is ‘you can be part of the community of faith, but we’ll let you in on our terms.’ If we are to prioritize the doctrines of Creation and Incarnation, however, our starting point will be rather different: ‘You are a person made in God’s image, how can we help develop that.'” (Family Fortunes, 119)

This suggests the image of trees; that all trees (young and old) are real trees, that trees grow in the right environment and in a slow, orderly way.

The ensuring conversation got pretty heated, as we wrestled with our images of Jesus as fully divine and fully human and of parenting. And the great (after church) question of what marks maturity? Are we as mature as we like to think we are?

With hoops, I guess it is simply have you jumped through the right hoops. With trees, what marks maturity? Perhaps the ability to give shelter, to be complex in structure, to be more likely to survive hard times.

What is it for you? What do you think should mark Christian maturity?

new mates, old friends

I feel like I’ve made a whole lot of new mates and shared a pretty special week with various leaders from around Australia. God took us to some deep and probing places and the final worship was a wonderful end, participative, joyous, attentive to relationship, weaving so many threads of the week around God’s grace in communion.

Which meant a trip back, and great to travel with Paul, who’d come with me from the pastoral team at Opawa/Angelwings end. Normally I travel alone, all exhausted and introverted and it was enriching to have time to hang, talk, laugh, reflect.

And now I type this sitting beside my youngest, who is also typing on her laptop. Home. And soon the hockey “lot” will rush through the door. Home. With best friends.

father abraham where art thou?

Rublevs Icon, painted by a 15th century Russian monk, is a well-known depiction of the Trinity. Based on the account of Abraham welcoming three strangers in Genesis 18, it is an attempt to express what the communing love of God. (A short (children’s) talk I’ve done is here.)

I’ve loved the Icon, finding it very helpful for connecting with God.

But in recent times, as I’ve been pulling the material together for this conference teaching topic of faith:full families, I’ve become disturbed.

Where’s Abraham? Why isn’t he in the icon? He’s been written out of his own story.

Which seems a great shame. Because it seems to me that Father Abraham needs all the help he can get from God, to be sitting among God’s communing love as much as possible. Father Abraham is an appalling parent, sending Ishmael away and offering his wife as a sexual plaything to Pharaoah.

Faith:full families desperately need to be able to imagine God sitting around their everyday, ordinary, kitchen tables and in that sense, Rublev does a disservice by making Abraham absent from the table of Genesis 18.

can the dry bones of this church in this city live?

I am speaking at a retreat centre called Nunyara. The food is fantastic, the accommodation hospitable and the Australians friendly. The retreat centre is based in the hills, and the chapel has a breathtaking view over the city. Yesterday it was clouded in fog, offering a mystical yet loving enclosure.

Today the sun was out, offering a breathtaking view of city skyscrapers and streets running into the sea.

Morning worship was expertly and creatively curated by Sandy Boyce. With the conference theme of Breathe – she offering a creative, tactile, spacious engagement with the Spirit as lifegiving breath to dry bones in Ezekiel 37. All participants were offered a stone, cold, hard, to consider as pray began.

Can these dry bones live? A provocative question to ask amidst a Uniting church conference, a denomination declining in number and growing in age. A poignant question to consider as I sat in chapel and gazed over the city of 1 million people. In the grace of God, can this church denomination, amid this city, live?

working hard, gaining lots

Here’s my current schedule in terms of speaking this week.

Monday – 2 hours + initiating small groups + initiating case study, then evening “interview/conversation”
Tuesday – 2 hours + 3.5 hour workshop
Wednesday – 2 hours + 3 hour coaching + meeting regarding book project
Thursday – 2 hours + debrief case study + meeting
Friday – 2 hours, then homeward bound (5 hour flight).

The evenings involve preparing for the next day, mainly powerpoint and getting my head around the material. It’s all new stuff. I’m enjoying it tremendously and the response has been very positive. There has been a lot of energy as the rawness of the Bible, the dysfunction of the family life of Abraham and David, has intersected our human stories and our family ministries today. But I’m working hard and would appreciate prayers for health and energy.

not noticed by Jesus

Every now and again a Bible lectionary reading jumps out at me.

Take the story of Peter and John healing the lame man in Acts. So 3:2 “Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts” jumped out.

Now Jesus was a regular temple goer. So he must have walked past this man lots of time. And the man remains unhealed. It’s not until Peter and John walk past, post-Pentecost, that something happens.

They do what Jesus never did, heal this man. Was Jesus not aware? I doubt it. Instead we have the mystery of God: a saviour who does not heal everyone and followers of the Saviour prepared to do what the Saviour never did.

faith:full families take a lot of work

I’ve just printed off my speaking notes for Adelaide. 74 pages, and 20,000 words in note form. That’s a lot of work! It’s something I’ve been working on for nearly a year now, using a range of places to workshop stuff.

Here is my introduction in the written material I have provided for participants:

Aim of week: To provide stimulation for our ministries as children, youth, family workers by weaving together selected Biblical narratives regarding families, together with contemporary missiology.

My context: I come not as an academic with a lot of well polished talks. Instead the material is tentative and on the run, shaped by 6 years helping an established church refind a heart for local community ministry. This conference has provided a chance to go back through my hard drive, trying to pull together key moments and learnings and shaping narratives, with specific regard to family ministry, and to realise this recurring theme of table. And so to offer the fragments to you, wondering what you will find as we sift life and ministry together. I am looking forward to that with you.

A more thorough outline is here. The angelwings research team has also cooked up some case studies – 4 different contexts in which ministry can be happening – and I’m looking forward to seeing what participants make of them.

While I am in Adelaide, I’m talking with a publisher about the possibility of this becoming a book. Just an exploration. But it seems to me that there is very little written on ministry across the generations from a Downunder perspective. Even less that is closely attentive both to Biblical narratives and to contemporary mission insights. So there might be a hole needing filling. It certainly would be nice to see 74 pages and 20,000 words find life not just for 1 week, but in an ongoing way.

(I’m also doing stuff here and here plus this lovely comment (final paragraph) here).

dreams around table

I’m thinking tables at the moment. It’s seems to be the most helpful metaphor for the Breathe conference I’m speaking at next week. I’m speaking to a mix of children, youth and family workers and it seems to me that all ages potentially sit at tables – children, mcdonaldised teens, young adult cafe dwellers, families.

The need for long tables as essential to a church foyer came up last week.

So a conversation this week got me spinning on another dimension of tables. A parent shared how tiredness, personality and family size made table talk over meals difficult for them. And their need for ideas and support in this very practical area of talking over food together.

It got me wondering about the place of shared family food.

Imagine a big long table in a church foyer at which families sat to eat, talk and catchup on the week. It would be a participatory table, in which everyone brought something, it might be food, it might be a joke or an item, it might be a willingness to set or clear the table. In other words, this was not a free lunch, but a family working together – not a nuclear family so beloved by Western culture – but a larger family. Surely it would be no more work than a meal at home. Meeting weekly, even fortnightly, I reckon that it would strengthen families and offer real, practical, tangible relational support, modelling inter-generational relationships and providing mentors and advocates.

Now, with Opawa’s building project still on track for a end of September completion, meaning a dishwasher, kitchen, coffee machine, all integrated into one sensible space …..