sustain:if:able kiwi

Theological education 2.0

There is a lot of talk about Web 2.0; that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. I have just written the following for the Course Outline of a new course I am pioneering this year: Missional Church Leadership:

This is designed to keep you in context. In other words, you read not for class, but for your missional context. At the same time, the use of on-line community and tutor engagement is designed to encourage you and give you a sense of being part of a learning community even while engaged locally.

Missional church is about the future of God among the people of God. And since course design must follow course theology, that means you can never teach missional church as a theory or set of ideas. Rather, you must allow learners to pay attention to the work of God among the people of God.

The missional church leadership course also arose because I had pastors saying to me: “Steve, how do we put these missional ideas into practice.” So the first draft of the course, starting next week, is as follows:

a : name a context: (defined broadly as a place that a person can regularly return to, listen among and start to imagine God’s future). This could include a work place, a community ministry, a local café or regular social gathering. It could equally include existing student fieldwork or recognized church ministry

b : gather monthly: we will gather around a set of practices, to hear what each other are learning, and to receive input and coaching. This places people in an accountability group and ensures we learn from each other and the gathering is shaped by what we each bring and contribute. This is not a conference or lecture, but a year of habit building. We will physically move these gatherings out of the classroom and around each participant’s context.

c : read in context: people will read in their context and name their learning using e-technology. Reading is thus grounded, yet a person remains in a collaborative learning relationship as the lecturer/tutor gives them feedback. (The next step will involve making this learning public and allowing other groups, on the same journey, to interact together. So my dream would be run this course in say Christchurch, Melbourne and South Auckland at the same time. Participants are in context, yet part of a collobarative enviroment.)

d : projects : two major projects include firstly, listening in context, asking students to identify the narratives of God at work and secondly, to name an action project that cultivates the missional imagination in their context. These projects will be shared with the group, for feedback and learning.

So I wondered as I worked and typed, is this a step toward Theological Education 2.0?

christmas journey in the news

The 06 Christmas Journey, run by Peter and Joyce Majendie and Opawa Baptist and supporters, is making the printed press this month; an article in the February New Zealand Baptist and an article written by Jonny Baker (full article is on his blog), which appears in the Church Times (UK). I have suggested to Jonny that he should get Pete over to Greenbelt to do his containers and run a seminar on “Church outside the box.”

For more on the Christmas Journey: go here for Christmas 05; some missiology here; New Zealand Listener article here; photos of Christmas Journey 04 here.

I also have a DVD; 4 hours of Pete and Joyce Majendie explaining the whole installation process from start to finish. Drop me a line if you want some resourcing input in doing some art outside the church in your community.

Lenten resource: together or separate

The Lenten 7 pack went to the printers today. They look absolutely grand; 7 handdrawn images + 7 Biblical texts (following the journey of Jesus toward Jerusalem) + 7 practices + 7 questions, each on a wallet-sized card, to be carried by people out of church and into work and play.

(We are also producing accompanying study guides to allow small group and study group interaction. We have 3 other church groups partnering with us, so it’s nice to be resourcing in this way).

Now here is today’s question: Do we give all 7 out at once? Or, do we give them out week by week?

All at once suits when people are away, eg on weekends, but takes away the element of anticipation and makes it easier to peak and rush head, rather than savour each week. What do we do? Pros and cons please …

questions for an absent friend

On this your 23rd birthday:

where are you?
are you wiser?
is your view of God’s Kingdom larger?
does your car go?
does your music sustain your life-gift?

the gospel according to the treaty of waitangi

This week, on Tuesday, New Zealand celebrated Waitangi Day as a public holiday. Some of you would have slept in and gone to the beach. Others of you would have had a barbeque and caught up with friends. Or watched the cricket as New Zealand lost to England.

Waitangi Day honours the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, in 1840, at Waitangi, in the Bay of Islands. It is a very moving, almost spiritual, place, an invitation to consider what it might mean for humans to show hospitality to strangers, to practise justice, and for diverse cultures to be one people.

The Treaty of Waitangi, when leaders of two peoples, Maori and Pakeha, negotiating a way to live as one people. Which sounds just like the gospel of Jesus, according to Ephesians.

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the place of emerging church in theology, critique and seminary

I am in Auckland for the next 24 hours, delivering a paper at a Bible College of New Zealand Curricular Conference. I have been asked to speak to the topic: how to express emerging church in a seminary curriculum.

In my paper I attempt the following:
a) to define the emerging church. I use Luke 10:1-12 to highlight themes of missiology and contextualisation.
b) to outline a model which integrates context, Biblical text and community mission action.
c) to apply this to three papers I teach – Emerging Church; Missional Church Leadership and Gospel in a post-Christian Society – explaining how and why I teach and reflect the way I do.

The paper, if you are interested, is here (208KB). It might be of interest to anyone wanting to critically engage with the emerging church and to those teaching in seminaries.

valentines day spirituality

A number of people have noted the significance of the Opawa Baptist Church annual meeting being on Wednesday 14th February. It will be Valentines Day and all over Christchurch city retailers will be lurking, keen to remove hard earned cash from guilt-ridden and last minute planners.

Here are my top 5 romantic tips for Wednesday 14th February
1. Start the evening before with a special chocolate placed on top of the pillow.
2. In the morning, slip your own, hand-made Valentines Day card, with your own hand-written words of appreciation, under the pillow.
3. Ring your loved one at unexpected times throughout the day.
4. Become a year long romantic by taking out your diary and writing “buy red roses” on the 14th day of every month for the rest of 2007. You will get much more rose for your dollar.
5. Finally, full of romantic cheer, proceed to the Church annual meeting to enjoy live love songs, coffee and dessert, and a celebration of God’s activity past and present at Opawa Baptist Church and a message for us all from a secret admirer.

The Opawa Baptist annual meeting is free and open to anyone in the church. If you want coffee and dessert, you need a ticket, costing $5, available from the Board or church office.

workplace spirituality

This worked well.

We printed a map of Christchurch city onto brown paper bags and people were invited to mark where they ate their lunch and 3 words to describe what they did. (Work can be viewed as a term that excludes the retired and homemakers, so we hoped that a focus on where you eat your lunch would prove more inclusive).

I then preached on Ephesians 4:1-16 as a workplace text, a challenge to use our gifts and ability for the sake of the Kingdom come where we eat our lunch during the week.

By way of response, people brought their paper bags to the front of the church and pegged them up. We will make these into a banner, and perhaps even a prayer mat for people to walk and pray over, with the words from Ephesians 4:16; when each separate part works as it should, the whole body grows.

the good old days

We all have memories of the good old days. Which means that any change process challenges the past. Take on a missional church leadership challenge and you face the history of a church and the values and habits of it’s members.

But don’t think this post is irrelevant if you are part of a flash, new, emerging startup. We planted Graceway Baptist Church, aged 25, thinking we were the newest thing on the church block. We had gathered a team, workshopped our core values, prayed, listened in the local community. I was washing clothes at the local laundromat, incarnating myself in the local narratives.

Week 2 and I left a message, asking one of our team to lead worship. He rang back, “So what’s the pattern, Steve.” Bright, young, one week into a church plant and he is searching for memories.

Every person that enters your church has memories and carries notions of what church should look like. They might get it from Mr Bean or a priest on TV. They might get it from previous church participation. But we all have memories of the good old days and change challenges these memories.

What to do with the good old days?

Visit one on one. Shows you are a listener, but takes time.

Ignore them. This can make things look good on the surface and serene in your office, but you might just be corking an explosion.

Shout louder by using the pulpit, or your knowledge, or your use of the Bible, to maximise your own voice. Again, this can make you feel good, but you might just be corking an explosion.

Our staff team has a pattern of gathering around Scripture. We are all part-time, committed to living and working not only in the church but in other forms of work. So we need a way to be gathered and scattered. Our current pattern is to share a common set of lectionary readings, to pray on Tuesday and every second Friday we gather to drink coffee, read the lectionary text and engage in some form of lectio divino.

Hence a 4th idea: New and old listen around Scripture. This Friday I invited some our older members, with long memories to join us. We read Scripture together. I then invited those with long memories to share one memory of one time when the church had come close to living out the Scripture that had just been read. The new on the block pastoral team listened. And then we prayed for each other.

How might this help a change process? For a start, the Scriptures, rather than the good old days, or a shiny new emerging idea, start our conversation. New and old are sharing time and text together. The work of God in the past is honoured. The voices of those often marginalised in a change process are heard, but in a context of Scripture and affirmation, rather than complaint. And if the new staff listen carefully, they might just begin to sense more clearly the historic pathways by which the God who began a good work in the good old days might carry it on to completion into the changing world that is our tomorrow.

angels are biblical

Lynne and I have a trust called Angelwings, from which we run various projects.

I received a letter today, making a whole range of nasty accusations, including the fact that this trust was “new age.” Unfortunately the person did not leave a return address. (I am not sure whether this is deliberate or an oversight).

So I would just like to clarify, because this address-less person does claim to read my website, that the reason we chose the name “angel wings” was nothing spooky or sinister or for any new age reason, but simply because in the Bible, angels bring messages and blessings from God and we set up the trust praying that we (Lynne and I) might be agents of blessing from God. And that the trust simply provides census data to help church’s with their planning for mission, to provide an umbrella for my various speaking things and to allow us to develop research interests and Christian resources.

Sorry to disappoint, but “angel wings” neither intends, nor plans, anything sinister or “new age”.

has anyone used Elgg spaces?

One of my projects for this year is to seek to integrate some of my lecturing (in particular my teaching on Critical Missional Issues: Emerging Church and Missional Church Leadership), with my research.

I want to draw together in one place
:my catalogue of on-line emerging church (articles and blogposts I have collected that I think are important in the conversation)
:a database of emerging church communities (building on the emerging church postcards) and thus helping to move the conversation toward emerging church as living communites of practice.
: any class groups that work with me, both in New Zealand and overseas), in terms of researching emerging church and dialoguing around missional church texts (the missional reader project).

The aim is a collecting place for research and conversation on the emerging church. I would welcome co-creators and co-agencies.

Some one suggested Elgg spaces to me today as a Web 2.0 software tool. Anyone out there used it? Any comments?

7 practices, 7 images, 7 texts = Lenten 7-pack

Lent is coming fast, with Ash Wednesday February 21. Here at Opawa we are developing a Lenten 7-pack. These are being offered across our 5.4 congregations, giving us a way to talk about the practices we share as one church in many congregations.

The Lenten 7-pack will include;
: 7 spiritual practices (for the 7 weeks leading up to Easter),
: 7 hand drawn art images (in the Si Smith 40 genre. Here is a sample image

: 7 Biblical texts (drawing from the gospel of Luke and the journey of Jesus toward Jerusalem),
: 7 questions.

The 7-pack will be supported by study guide questions, so that groups and congregations can engage around text, image, practice. The 7-pack will also be supported by Si Smith’s 40 as a worship aid.

We are planning to print the 7-pack business card size, so that people can carry around the practice of the week in their wallet. We go to the printer on Monday February 12. If any groups want to partner with us (sharing costs), get in touch or leave your details by Sunday February 11.

my students love me

the 2006 exiting class at my seminary BCNZ just rolled in with this …

what a spot-on gift — 21st century, chill-out, Lemon Jelly, Nitin Sawhney, Chicane — makes me wish I’d been far more generous to them in my marking 🙂

And it certainly sets a high bar for every other year! 🙂

the star from the east

If the wise men followed a star, what is the place of astrology in Christianity? This was a recent question that started discussion at the espresso congregation. A great topic for Epiphany (the season following Christmas).

And is this the type of star the wise men could have followed (Comet McNaught, visible over New Zealand duing Epiphany 07)?

Link