sustain:if:able kiwi

first ever nz emerging church course?

Friday and Saturday, 23-24 September, I’m teaching what I think will be New Zealand’s first ever course on the emerging church, set within the context of cultural change and discipleship.

I will specific examples of current emerging trends; including online religion, Christian festivals, spiritual direction, social justice – and explore how they are affected by culture and what it means for discipleship today.

Anyhow, the reason I post this is … have you read any good books on on-line religion, cos I have a bit of hole in this area of my bibliography?

motorcycle diaries at film church

Tonite we’re watching Motorcycle Diaries at Gospel and film class . (Plot summary here.)

Since one of the aims of the course is to identify ways in which film may be utilised as a point of engagement for the gospel within contemporary society, and since the assessment includes a piece of work on how a Christian church could use and interact with the medium of film in communicating the Christian message, I’ve put together the following questions for a “popcorn” discussion.

[9 Q’s on Motorcyle Diaries for Film Church]

(more…)

– 14 were the number of Opawa people who enrolled to do a small group leaders training course
– 5 were the number of sofas brought, as part of making the church foyer more of an inviting place to hang

I should go away more often. Things happen when I leave and I like that.

can’t comment

if anyone is having trouble posting comments on the blog, please email me;
steve at emergentkiwi dot org dot nz

roger – i have sorted the problem with your comment and “posted” it for you … last week i had unwittingly blacklisted the letter “m”; so any word starting with “m” was considered out of bounds!:) sorry.

Why can’t we dream?

Written at LAX airport: Friday 29th April

In Douglas Coupland’s book, Polaroids from the Dead, is a wonderful story of a skeleton who visits a dying city. There is no water, the buildings are decaying and the artists and creative’s are dying. The skeleton visits and cries, over and over, “Your city is dying because you have no vision of the afterlife.”

I often use the story in my classes, to reference the fact that firstly, even in modernity a spirituality exists and secondly, the power of dreaming, imagining, to release new life, a prophetic imagination.

If we have lost the power to dream, are we in fact enmeshed in a dying and decaying city? Has modernity so corroded our souls, have our insecurities so overwhelmed our creatives, that the skeleton now cries alone.

Or, is it rather that exile is a time consuming process? It took years of grieving before a new way of living, a new spirituality of synagogue and Mid-rash could emerge. Is it too early to dream? Are we still in a time to grieving?

worship: reasons for voyaging

I led opening worship at the consultation for forming leaders in emerging churches today.

I introduced and explained an artwork from outside the Christchurch Art Gallery. It is called Reasons for Voyaging and features 7 sculptures, in the shape of canoes, honouring the different ways people have travelled to New Zealand.

I introduced, with space to pray, around 4 topics:
1- our voyages here – thanking God for those who gave us space to come
2 – our spiritual voyages – honouring those who taught us to read, write, think, create, who have mentored and believed in us
3 – bumpy voyages – praying for those in the emerging church going through bumpy voyages at the moment
4 – voyages home – recalling what God is birthed in us that is not yet realised, our dreams, future leaders, future communities.

And we used a verbal refrain:
Wind of God,
unpredictable
breath on us.
to commit in community our private prayers to God.

I then gave everyone a postcard of the artwork and invited them to write a prayer for someone they are “voyaging” with as a spiritual takeaway. I had a Jack Johnson surfing video in the background, specially for the Opawa Jack Johnson fans (Danielle, Shawn, Lynne, Amy, Roanna, Andrew and Mel).

I then introduced the hongi, a Maori ritual of greeting, and invited us to share it with each other, respectful of its origins and as a prayer that the Spirit of God would blow, unpredictable, through us.

It seemed to strike a chord with some.

Update: Rachelle gives a punters perspective here.

centres and edges

I had lunch yesterday with a group of leaders from New Song Church. It was a good time. Over tacos and huevos rancheros and “soda,” we batted around some ideas. One of the things that struck me was the following irony: that so much of the postmodern debate emerges from the edges and welcomes the voices of the Other, the marginalised, the non-Western.

So it is quite ironic to be talking about post-modern mission in a country that is very much a centre, a centre of Christianity, a centre of global control and marketing. Just an interesting twist for me as I digested my Mexican beans.

(Of course, one of the ethical questions is whether this conversation with the edge is in fact yet another colonisation by the centre – and for more on this try Ziauddhin Sardar’s book, Postmodernism and the Other.) I’m not convinced by Sardar, based on the cultural work of Michel de Certeau, but Sardar’s is a voice that won’t go away.)

And of course, all the more sad that emerging churches are struggling with the role of women in leadership.

ground hog day 5 years later

It is wierd being here, at a place I first stayed 5 years ago. It was 1999 and I was wanting to do a PhD. I had wanted to study with John Drane and had written him. Once, but the second time I got no reply. “Busy overseas lecturers” I muttered and went looking elsewhere. No luck. Everywhere I turned I met blockages.

I gave up on doing a PhD. The next day, a letter arrived from the UK. Yep, John Drane. Wondering why I had not replied to his second letter. It turns out that his letter to me got lost in the post. “Useless overseas mail” he was probably muttering.

So it was back on again. I worked to link University of Otago, Mike Riddell, and John Drane.

By another set of (God) coincidences, through Tom Sine, I was invited to be part of a Young Leaders Network (early incarnation of EmergentUS) thing at Seattle, and John and Olive Drane were teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary as John completed McDonaldization of the Church. I could fly through Los Angeles. I could met John and Olive at the Fuller Bookstore and give a lecture at John Drane’s D.Min class.

Afterward, John and Olive and I headed back to the Fuller Guest House and talked. And talked. And talked. Swapping “worship” ideas and stories. John told me that my speaking at the D.Min class was him testing whether it was worth his time to supervise me. I told him I was glad he told me that after, and not before.

5 years later I’m back. So are John and Olive (arriving today) and once again I’m hoping we’ll talk and talk and talk. Ground hog day – 5 years later. Although I now have a PhD.

writing for koder: theology and art as looking

I have completed my first writing project for these few days. I have just sent a 2,500 word piece to a German publishing company. Earlier this year, I was really delighted to be asked, in honour of an 80 year old German artists birthday, to write something for a book, on his work. I loved the boundary crossing such a request represented: English to German, young to wise, PhD theology of emerging church research to article on artist.

What did I write? Well I traced some links around an art piece (great view here). I noted the way that discipleship in John 1 is framed around the verb “to look.” And how looking at Jesus unsettles, or displaces, our identity. I then explored American Beauty, and what we “see” as we accept it’s invitation to look closer. I then made some link with art historians and philosophers like Lacan, Barthes and Freedberg, who argue that the gaze is in fact a dialogue, with the potential to encounter us, resurrect (to use the words of Barthes) us.

So I concluded that looking is in fact a life-changing act. So now go back to Koder’s art and look closer, at that face in the cup …. and it looks back at you, asking where you are in relation to the table of Jesus and the bodies of Christ… looking as a life-changing act?

Anyhow, it should all be published (in German and English) in August. I wonder how I will sound in German?

New pope on the emergent radar?

Perhaps the new pope has already bleeped onto the emergent radar? Miroslav Volf wrote a great book on being church, called After our likeness. The book compares Orthodox theologian John Zizoulas, with Catholic theologian, and now new pope, Ratzinger, with a more “free church” ecclesiology.

It was a wonderful book for me as a Baptist to read, and to see one of my church planting forebears, John Smyth, compared theologically with Catholic and Orthodox ways of being church.

And so the links with the emerging church?
1. A free church ecclesiology is (at it’s best) a much more bottom-up, grassroots way of being church, in contrast to hierarchical traditions. That should offer much more room for experimentation and innovation, all held within a Trinitarian ecclesiology.
2. Miroslav Volf is the main speaker at the 2006 US Emergent Theological Conversation.

a dream flight to heavenly sunshine

I had a dream flight to heavenly sunshine. Let me explain.

First, it was a full flight. I got a middle seat and my heart sank. My heart sank further at the sight of one of my travelling companions, who looked like they would need quite a bit of my seat in order to be comfortable. The companion toddled off to the toilet to get changed in their pyjamas (!), and never returned. So I got a window seat and a spare seat to sleep in!. That was heavenly.

The sunshine is the weather in LA, a stark contrast from Christchurch, where our conservatory roof was holed by hailstones on Saturday evening.

But the real heavenly sunshine – is that my accomodation has wifi – and the connection is named “heavenly sunshine.” So I can surf and receive email (but not send). Such are the selfishness’s of international travel – seat room and internet access.

Los Angeles bound

I will be here quite a bit this week;

Allelon and Fuller Seminary are organising a consultation of leadership in the emerging church April 27-29, with people from UK, USA, Australia and NZ. There are lots of blog names I’m quite excited to meet in person.

My church community also allow me a week a year to write, in recognition of that area of my gifting. So I am going to be here quite a bit this week.

two contrasting missional opinions

It appears that Al Hirsh and Frost are busy shaping things yet to come, down on the emerging church in Pittsburgh. Holly reflects here “what threw me for a loop was how so many folks did not equate the emerging church or emergent with being missional.

Contrast the angst in Pittsburgh with Scott McKnight, commenting here:

Fundamentally, the Emergent movement is a “missional” movement and it is holistic in its mission, and until it is addressed from that point, it won’t be addressed centrally … Not long ago I spoke with a Christian leader who speaks quite often to Emergent churches and this person told me that the Emergent movement does not have that many conversions. Now I don’t know if this person was accurate, and it does not matter, but I still think the issue is missional in the sense that the Emergent is trying to work out the gospel in a postmodern context – and that context exists and it is worth letting the gospel have its way in that context.

Personally, I warm to Scott’s breadth of missionality, with the focus on culture rather than church growth statistics in China. I wonder if the emerging church is now such a large elephant that people grasp an ear or a tail and pronounce themselves “emergent experienced.” I also wonder if the postmodern shift is so deep, so profoundly disorientating, that the need for deep mission demands a focus on context, that might yield very little fruit for many years. After all, it took Isreal over 70 years to emerge from exile, let alone rack up the “conversions.”

its my book launch

Today, Friday 22nd, 7:30 pm,
Manna Christian Stores, 103 Manchester St.

I’d love to knock off work at 12:30, and spend the afternoon in the sun, relaxing, preparing …
but it’s been a hell week and the weekend is packed.

Update: The launch was neat. Nice mix of people from many of my walks of life. Amy and Kaleb played some live music, including some Jack Johnson requests. Oh yes, the juice ran dry and the books sold out. Now I’m trying to get Manna Christchurch to tell Manna Auckland and ….

View image: trying to spell my name: 74K

View image: live local talent: 70K

View image: the duel of the cameras

(thanx Jas for the pics)