sustain:if:able kiwi

I’m probably in trouble but …

I probably just got myself in big trouble, but I made the following comment here, in relation to the APEPT model and so note the comment here (as a sort of obituary perhaps!)

I think the APEPT model is one of the more problematic things I have come across in the emerging church conversation. Read Clarke’s Serve the Church. It looks at the early church within its social setting. It argues that every one of Pauls’ letters has a slightly different take on leadership and that is because Paul is contextual. Leadership structure emerges from the mission context. To impose APEPT is therefore not true to the full range of the Biblical material; it is privileging one letter over the other letters. More problematic, it’s imposing a theoretical model that distorts the true contextual missionality that is the New Testament texts.

Thinking aloud

Every time I meet with the church board I have a thinking aloud section. This allows me to incubate vision and process ideas together, rather than being a top-down leader who presents ideas fait accompli/like it or leave it. Here is what I wrote today.

End of the year. How to end the year? We have our AGM which starts the year. But how do we evaluate the year and honour God for all that has been done? What is a sustainable (ie yearly) way for us to celebrate our life as a church?

I’ve begun to wonder about a day long “celebration”;
that starts and ends with worship (10:30 pm and 7 pm), that offers a barbeque lunch, that has coffee throughout the day, that has a bouncy castle and play area for the kids, that has a performance space where at regular intervals throughout the afternoon, people sing or do comedy, that has multiple “stations” set up through the church.
: each ministry department saying what they have done and what they need “resources” for next year
: with pictures and names of those baptized, come into membership, those who have left membership, newly planted congregations
: with video footage that we have collected
: with a thankyou space and cards to write to volunteers in our midst
: with a dream space for people to imagine about next year
: with time to walk through all the newly painted areas including the prayer room
: with an evaluation space where people can ask the Board questions
: ending with a praise and prayer wall, where people write up all that they are glad of, and all that they were dreaming of

This would enable people could take time, at their pace, to “wander” through the year. We could set the church up in “zones” based around our mission;
Enabling people to walk (blue)
: Evangelism
: Community ministry
: Worship

And grow with Jesus (green)
: Youth
: Children
: Spiritual growth
: Administration
: Property
: Small groups

Reflecting his love in our communities and beyond
: Missions
: Pastoral care

visual worship worth bookmarking

Christ is the image of the invisible God; Colossians 1:15. And so some useful resources for those who take the Incarnated Image (whether visual/video) seriously at this site.

And this site also.

trained to preach

On Wednesday and Thursday I hosted local Baptist leaders on the theme:
Mission and the DNA of the church.

Best quote for me, from a long-term minister, was this one:
I’m starting to realise that communication today involves preaching, being part of communal dialogue and allowing individual multi-sensory responses. But I was just trained to preach.

if i had time

If I had time I would write articles on:
: from movements to meme or why movements are an outdated overflow from modernity
: re:mission and Luke 10
: shaping indigenous worship, with particular reference to indigenous spirituality
: the simplicity of attraction vs. incarnation in contrast to the 6 epochs of mission history in the work of david bosch, transforming faith
: the missiology and resources behind a take a kid to faith service.

But I don’t. I have 2 day jobs and it’s hard enough doing that, let alone responding to the email — in the last week requests for advice from
: a denomination
: PhD students
: speaking resources for a ministry in the US
: a request to participate in a virtual seminary.

At times the amount of email generated around this site makes me it all feel unsustainable. Oh, you guessed, didn’t you. Yes it is raining today. But the irony, I’m listening to Lemon Jelly and it’s track 4 – don’t stop now!

reading the [biblical] text in a postmodern world

Prodigal is rehashing some theologising I did around Winnie the Pooh and reading the Bible. For those who are about to dismiss me as sacriligious (assuming you haven’t already:)), I was struck by the relationship between the inspiration of Biblical text and community memory in the Piglet Big movie.

“… As they [Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore and Tiger] start a process of communal re-telling, so they find themselves in a process of communal re-living… As we tell the story, our lives are changed … Re-telling and re-living cannot be separated.”

For those interested in more, I did a sermon once on Bible Sunday, exploring Pooh, Piglet and reading the Bible.

Maybe we should show Piglets Big movie for a film:church at Opawa? And now I am eagerly awaiting Pooh’s Heffalump movie for more theological reflection ( Quick time promo here).

the images say it all

I’m kicking off the conversation at our espresso congregation tonite. I’ve been handed the question “what does postmodern mean when applied to theology.”

I’m tired of words, so for fun I thought I’d google “postmodern” under google images. The first 20 images visually say it all really; the art, the language and the language games, the commerce, the architecture.

Now take those 20 images and think about how theology (God talk) is applied to seeing God and speaking of God and connecting God…

but what do you do when Jesus is attractional?

One of the big dualisms offered by some in the emerging church is that of attractional as against incarnational (here for instance). We are told that the church is attractional in Christendom and so a move beyond Christendom necessitates a commitment to incarnational.

So what do we do with Jesus and the gospels? I’ve been pondering Luke 15 today. Three things are lost – coin, sheep, and two sons. Twice the Jesus response is to go look – for a coin or a sheep. Sounds incarnational. So far, so good.

But once – for two sons – the Jesus response is to prepare a hospitable welcome and wait. Not to “Incarnationally” leave the house or the building, but simply wait. And in time, to find that outrageous love and hospitality will become mission.

The mission to one lost son is to offer love. The mission to the other lost son (the churchgoers who have never left) is to challenge them to join the joyous party happening in their building. Sounds like attractional mission to me. Sounds like mission to those using the building to me.

For a sermon I preached on the prodigal son last year go here.

written for church newsletter

I write on Friday and the events of the last hours in London have left us shocked and numbed. Once again our world is rocked by a terrible act of violence. It can be hard to know what to say and how to pray.

At such times, when I am looking for words to express my feelings, I turn to the Psalms. There we find prayers for all of life. There are prayers for happy days, when life is good and makes sense and we feel on top of our game (like Psalm 1 or 8 or 133). There are prayers for surprising days, when God turns up in totally unexpected days (like Psalm 40 or 93).

And there are prayers for sad days. At such times, Psalms like 13 or 137 allow us to be honest with God and ourselves, to voice our feelings of hurt, suffering, death and loss. To express our longing for justice and peace.

a poorly paid writer

Today I got paid to write. I am doing my first ever commissioned piece of writing. It feels very strange.

Today I have learnt that I won’t make my fortune as a paid commissioned writer. I would need to do 10 of these commissions a week and to work a whole lot faster than I have today.

women and the emerging church

Excellent post by Dan over at signposts, reflecting on women and the emerging church. After a thoughtful and sensitive reflection on a range of issues, she concludes:

I think that we probably have a lot more work to do with the role of women (and men) in the church, and in the new missional church particularly. I am encouraged by the fact that there seems to be a recognition that more work is needed. I am sometimes discouraged by the types of initiatives that are put into place. I am discouraged by the fact that women when they seek to encourage and mentor leadership seem reluctant to adopt and celebrate our most accomplished female leaders. I am discouraged by the way that discussion is often hamstrung by political correctness and the unwillingness to evaluate women in the same way as men.

the spirituality of dissent with poise

“It takes a while to dissent with poise.” A very elegant sentence. Spoken by Duncan, who describes the Forge flavour as one of antagonism; “antagonism towards ‘attractional’ church … There’s not a lot of interest in the engagement with postmodernity found in other quarters. Alternative worship is seen as just a tinkering with the gathered worship model.”

And then the profound sentence (which adds balance and nuance to what is perhaps the negative side of the positive strength in the prophetic gift that is Forge?) Anyhow, the sentence has become for me a breathe prayer for the week;

God, help me become better at dissent with poise. Amen.

getting a [preaching] life #2

Jordon posted a great comment about the freedom people have to walk out of movies in contrast to church. The irony is, someone did walk out on Sunday.

It happened like this:
I start speaking by giving out pipe cleaners – Make what you like with them during the sermon, but at the end, I will ask you to twist it into a prayer for your future.

I start reading from Book of God – I will give a candy bar to the person who 1st guesses who “my Bibical hero is”.

The answer is Nehemiah, so I talk for about 5 minutes about how Nehemiah has faith in a hard place – exile, pluralistic, influential. I give a contemporary example and then ask – so how do you sustain faith in a hard place?

Silence as people shuffle and think.

Tobacco, a visitor in the front couch announces. Tobacco. And gets up and walks out.

So, all you who judged me harshly/told me I was rude for playing with my email; do you extend the same judgement to this person?

For me, I think it takes real guts to do that, real character to be different from group norms. Surely the person should be honoured for showing real courage.

get a [preaching] life

Preachers take themselves far too seriously. I was at a conference, sitting at the back, listening and clearing my email. The visiting speaker tells me “I hope no-one ever treats you with that much dis-respect.”

It’s like get a life. It’s like have you never seen the back row of a youth service and watched everyone texting. It’s like have you never watched the way people watch TV, the way they tune in and out. Welcome to a culture in which people multi-track.

It might not be ideal, but it’s life. Get high and mighty, or work out ways to enculturate and participate in our multi-track culture. Earn the right to subvert.