sustain:if:able kiwi

the wednesday of easter

On the Wednesday of Easter week, in the Easter evangeegg, the colour is purple. Purple is the colour of royalty and inside the Easter evangeegg, a purple coloured card is perfumed.

Today at our 7 pm service, we will reflect on perfume, the act of expensive love, as what was likely a family hierloom was poured onto Jesus head. This costly act of love invites us to reflect on how we are loving Jesus this week of Easter.

Note re colour: It was Olive Drane who helped me find colour in ministry. We sent her some of our Pentecost Spirit cards (for examples see here and for explanation of the missional context go here and read the side-bar, titled Practicalities at the bottom). Olive and John had a worshipping group who met at their place. They showed them the cards and one woman was stopped dead by the colour red used in one of the cards. Colour alone evoked powerful connections.

This week my 5 year old is navigating the Easter evangeegg by colour – today is …..

tuesday of easter week

On the Tuesday of Easter Week, in the postmodern evangeegg, the colour is brown. Why brown? Because during Easter week, Jesus announced that unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it can not produce many seeds.

Today, at our 7 pm service, we break open a brown (painted) piece of polystrene. Inside is a seed, which we plant in the earth. And we reflect, as we walk with Jesus toward Easter … What needs to die in our lives this week? What needs to planted in our lives this week?

Note re environment: This is a very organic image. It reminds us that what Jesus did at Easter, the atonement, is more than Jesus dying for individual sin. Jesus journey connects us with our environment, with the cycles of birth and death. As we feel soil and seed tonight, we are earthing ourselves with God the Creator, and Jesus the Re-Creator, dying for planet as well as people.

the monday of easter week

Today, the Monday of Easter, in the postmodern evangeegg, the colour is red. Inside a folded red card is a coin. Why red? Because on Monday (in Mark’s gospel), Jesus got angry, red-faced, and trashed the money changers in the temple.

Today, at our 7 pm service, we lay down a coin, as a prayer, that as we too walk with Jesus toward Easter, we will walk with a similar passion for speaking and acting with justice.

Note re Maggi: Maggi Dawn reminds us that historically, traditionally, this week is Holy Week, not Easter Week. My problem is that in New Zealand, a cultural memory of “holy week” is absent. I can either use the term “holy week” and know that it does not connect, or I can use a term followed by an explaination of the term, which makes publicity more clunky.

Or I can make what I think is a logical connection in the minds of the public – that this is the week of Easter ie “Easter Week.” It’s an interesting issue — when does a church surrender what is potentially out-dated in the task of trying to communicate?

postmodern evangeegg?

Part of our commitment to being an inter-generational community at Opawa is “Take a Kid to” services, in which we all, adult and children, explore the Jesus story. We had over 190 people in attendance, including 50 kids, a good number from the community. At the risk of being called a postmodern Ned Flanders, by the tallskinnykiwi, as part of our walk to Easter, I unveiled this today.

Inside each “egg” is something to open, break, suck, for each day of Holy week. I’ll post about each one as we go through Holy Week. Our kids got the “egg” after the service and are invited to open it each day of Holy Week, sharing the story with their families.

So why, tallskinny, might I not be more cheesy than Ned Flanders?

1. This is designed to let people enter the story, for families to sit together and tell the Jesus story. I know a church that did something similar, but all the activities were focused on inviting people to church. This is the opposite. It invites families to enter the story amid the fabric of their own lives.

2. It is tactile and experiential – there are things to break and suck and smell.

3. It is integral to the life of our community. We are having a short service each day of Holy Week that takes the same symbols and the same readings. Together, we walk the Scriptures with Jesus.

4. Help me ….

Updated note re evangelism: I like the distributed nature of the postmodern evangeegg. An egg has gone for use in a school class in Auckland, for a school class in Christchurch, and to give to a family of migrants in the community.

expresso

(Further on here). The expresso leadership team met last nite. 5 of us gathered to talk about how we are finding God spiritually, what is church and what a new congregation at Opawa could look like.

Excellent discussion. My summary:
– We’ll meet weekly; with a cycle of 3 weeks of discussion, 1 week of mission, 5th week of fun.
– Looking at Tuesday nites, 8-9 pm, in a local cafe.
– Discussion nites will have an opening ritual and a closing multi-sensory prayer. In between is discussion, with the group choosing the topic/question and different people taking turns to “kick-start” each evening discussion.
– We’re not yet sure about how often we should do communion.
– This will be a congregation of Opawa, seeking to offer a complete church experience, yet seeking to develop it’s own life that could look very different from existing ways that Opawa is church.
– We talked about the tension between small group and being church. How good can a conversation be amongst more than 12 people? If we talk around tables, will that still give us good conversation with a growing mix of one yet many, big yet small? (Any thoughts out there? Can you experience good community in a cafe with 50-70 people clustered around tables talking about one “kick-start”?)

We have gone away, with different individuals working on opening and closing rituals, others on logo’s, others on “group guidelines for a healthy learning experience.”

postmodern monastery in amsterdam

Karel, from Amsterdam is asking for prayer for what could be a cool new adventure.

Hey Steve,

I’ve been very intrigued and fascinated by a lot of the writings on your website. Especially the paper/dream about ‘the postmodern monastery’ really spoke to me as it so much look like the dreams I had over the past few years.

(Karel is probably talking about a rant I did about postmodern monasteries here, which still gets lots of visits. It’s also updated and put in a larger missional context; alongside festival spirituality, art collectives and house churches in postcard 7 of my book. Anyhow, back to the email)

This leads me to the following: At the minute we’re talking to the head of a Franciscan fraternity in Amsterdam who have their monastery + church up for sale. It’s going really quick now as we’ll have a meeting to discuss our proposal next friday. It would be the best place ever to start a postmodern monastery – in the heart of the old city and with the history of a Franciscan fraternity. We want it to be a place for new media, visual arts, community, and for people working together on social justice … pray with us for God’s guidance in this process – both for us and the brothers from the fraternity who have to make the decision … pray to our God for guidance in this project…

Praying for you Karel as I type …

film quiz – Jesus as movie star

Every few weeks in the gospel and film class I am teaching this semester, I have a film quiz. The class are in teams: Fox, Bollywood and Sundance. I fire 5 questions at them, and the overall winner at the end of the semester will receive a BCNZ Academy. Lots of fun, good crowd breaker, and often the information makes good teaching points.

Here’s the questions from last week.

Question 1: The longest film ever made, at 6 hours, is Jesus of Nazareth? True or False

Question 2: Which religious film – The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Story ever told, Ben-Hur – was a Top 10 film for the entire decade of the 1920s?

Question 3: Ben Hur was a box office smash in 1959. Made for a then unprecedented $15M, it earned more than $70M at the US box office. Did it win 7 or 9 or 11 Oscars?

Question 4: Put the top 3 movies of 2004 in the correct order:
Shrek 2, Spider-man 2, The Passion of the Christ.

Question 5: Less than 0.1% of people who watched The Passion of the Christ came to faith? True or false.

Update: For the curious, the answers are …

(more…)

church notices

I’m still processing whether church notices are curse or gift.

A sacred vs secular divide would see notices as secular, mundane, needing to be rushed through. An integrated view of God in everything would discern notices as just as spiritual as prayer or worship.

All groups have them – if you’re small in number it might be which pub after the church service or notice of a house warming. If you’re larger in size, they can be long and tedious. They can also be manipulative, guilt-inducing sales pitches. Yet if done well they can be creative and insightful.

Are they an impediment to worship? Should they come at the end of a service, after the benediction, as part of the movement of God’s people into the world?

Or they actually an essential part of community? A chance to “peek” into the mission life of a church? An opportunity to participate?

Still processing.

In memorandum

I ate fish tacos with Stan Grenz in San Diego last month. I, the young theologian, had emailed, seeking lunch, keen to stir the older theologian about the contrast between his post-foundationalist theology of community and his individual writing projects.

Stan was gracious enough to humour my impudence. The conversation quickly shifted. I, the young stirring academic, began to appreciate a depth of spirituality. We shared career call stories; for me a white rabbit to Christchurch, for Stan a cold snap and ice roads back to Vancouver. This was no academic theologian. This was a humble and passionate follower of Jesus.

Stan Grenz
Called home 12 March 2005.

Leaving behind the inspiration
To love God with all our minds
And live our careers with all our humility
And our spirituality with all our passion.

Grey
comes in soft cotton waves
and sharp email

Show me your fruit? the choir man asks
Measure for measure

Cats pat
adequacy, and his leading twin
in
from personal paw to personal palm

Who am I?
Single spark in turgid grey

The shoes of the liberator
are ill-fit

Text is black. Margins are white and wide
Context is sharp, Edged
And never the twain shall meet

Problem
Yours, mine, ours, hers
And with a gently smile
we play,
naked

5 people signed up for growth coaching 2 date.

How often do we meet in the forming of community?

How often does “church” need to meet to be church? Here at Opawa I’m tossing around the birthing of another emerging congregation – expresso101. One of the questions is timing – how often do we meet? Here’s part of an email I sent a friend. Any web wisdom out there for us?

for a number of months I have been wanted to start something a bit different at Opawa. Sunday morning is a singing monologue. It’s got some really good things, but Q/A and discussion will never sit easily with the majority of Sunday morning punters.

People could also still be part of both Sunday and Espresso (or Side Door or Digestion), but I am reluctant for espresso101 to meet less than weekly.

is church as boring a healthy motivation for creativity

“I went to the Easter Vigil service at the Anglican Cathedral in Pittsburgh. It was snowing, and I was aware of the proper setting for a tremendous religious experience. But the people in the church seemed bored, and the clergymen [sic] seemed to be hurrying to get it over with. I left with the feeling that, rather than rolling the rock away from the tomb, they were piling it on. I went home, took out my manuscript and worked it to completion in a non-stop frenzy.”
– Tebelak, creator of the 1973 musical/movie Godspell.

(In Tatum, Jesus at the Movies. A Guide to the First Hundred Years. Polebridge Press, 1997)

worship leader blog list

A US magazine (I’ve never heard of) called Worship Leader has a feature of emerging church, and the little wee emergentkiwi blog gets a mention. So there we are. Maybe its time for me to release my worship DVD!! Tee he. Or is it that they think I can sing!

(thanks Will for the heads up – I wondered why there was traffic from your site to mine!)