sustain:if:able kiwi

the emerging church and the wilderness of God

Christianity emerges from a wilderness spirituality;
John the Baptist, camel haired and with locust wings in mouth, emerges from the desert;
Jesus in preparation for ministry, walks into the wilderness;
Israel finds God in the desert, where in the wilderness Moses is called and a nation is shaped.
The rough places and tough spaces become the place of encounter with God.

So what is the place of a wilderness spirituality in the emerging church? A book like The Shape of Things to Come takes growth – in the early church, in China – as the benchmark. A history of vitality becomes the shaping spirituality. When the emerging church emerges from the evangelical church in the US, a history of vitality is the shaping spirituality.

So what of a wilderness spirituality? Where is the encountering of God in the rough and tough? How does the emerging church embrace the wilderness, rather than the myths and shadows of vitality.

Is it time for the emerging church to find new partners in its spirituality? Is it time to stop dreaming of early church glory and embrace God in the rough?

I wonder if this is where the experience of the de-churched becomes redemptive gift. Those who have entered the wilderness and have learnt to find God in the raw might have spiritual gifts to offer.

Wilderness God
Hidden in the deep valley
Obscured by rocky outcrop

This Advent
May we be found in Your wilderness.

how to dismantle an atomic bomb

Sometimes you can’t make it on your own; makes me cry, because I love my dad, and he’s not in the best health.

Love and peace or else; has got this great big fat base-line that begs to be played loud.

City of blinding lights; is classic U2 that affirms the Edge as the Original of the lead guitar species.

place, spirituality and mission

Dis-place-ment and participation in the Other as Trinitarian mission: A contemporary Pakeha theological reflection on the foreshore and seabed issue

Just sent an article, 6,000 words, to a journal, hoping for publication. The title sounds a bit of a mouthful, but a part of my gift-mix is the ability to think. For me its part of loving God with all of my mind, as well as creativity and work-ethic.

I spoke on this issue – the foreshore as an indigenous theological response at Kingdom Builders in Auckland in September. I got such a good response, I shaped it up for a journal. It’s been killing me for the last week. Big thanks to greenflame and beyond flatland, who chimed in with some excellent comments, and kelli, for an edit.

(And before you ask, no it isn’t a web journal, so no it won’t be up on the www. So go on. Start a revolution. Get luddite. Buy a paper journal!)

headspace

My head is full —- job reviews, exam marking, writing deadlines, conflict resolution, pastoral matters, speaking here and there.

The saviours are the headspaces —-
: the gutter, sunlit and warm, waiting for a bus
: the cafe, Groove Armada tunes and clear metal table, space to de-clutter and re-read.

The deadlines remain, the tasks tug at my sleeve, —–
but changing the space changes the headspace.

Is church/spirituality/this season a clear headspace or a cluttered tug at the sleeve?

symbols of life

We had another baptism on Sunday morning. It’s been our 7th in the last 3 months, our 4th in the last few weeks. The person being baptised, previously unchurched working class male, made his own shrine; symbols important to him – a dove, a roster, rose petals, an image of Jesus.

One of my increasing convictions over the last few years is that Christians have our symbols all wrong. I once turned up to an Easter Sunday service in a strange town. I thought it was a funeral. Such long faces. I wanted to yell, He’s alive.

But I was a visitor. Instead I listened to a meditation on death and sacrifice and pain. The church was trading on a death symbolic.

Yet Jesus was in the birth business and came that we might have life to the full. We need to trade in life images.

Stations of the Cross are quite popular among emerging churches. My worry is that they trade in the death symbolic.

And so around a baptism I anoint with oil and I get children to throw rose petals into the water. When the baptism is complete I crack open a bottle of sparkling and toast the first fruits of the Kingdom. For me, it’s a deliberate attempt to capture the life symbolic of Jesus ministry.

hugging the lampost

i am in one of the busiest pieces of time i can remember. one thing after the other. not super stressed, but constant. trying to juggle, trying to remain centred. i have heaps to process. heaps to talk about. and normally the blog is a space to do this.

but not today. i don’t seem to have the space to do that. i trust you understand. any spare time i am trying to spend walking with my two year. yesterday she gave me a purple flower, hugged a lamp-post and raced me to the corner.

first sunday in advent

Two years ago, I learnt to walk again. I used to walk from A to B. Fast. That was the Steve Taylor walk.

Kayli, who was two at the time, taught me to walk again. For a two year old, a walk around the block is never getting from A to B, fast.

For a 2 year old, a walk around the block
is to walk at a new pace
to balance along a block wall
to jump off the block wall to investigate a snail
to backtrack to chase a leaf
to pause because her legs are sore
to sprint for the corner yelling “race yah”
walking with a two year old is learning to walk at a new pace.

To walk with a 2 year old around the block
is learning to listen to the detail
to ask, Dad can I walk along the wall?
to ask, Dad how did the snail die?
to ask, Dad can you carry this leaf home for me, and this flower, and this stick?
learning to listen to the detail.

Two years ago, my 2 year old taught me to walk again. This Advent, we face the choice, to walk from here to Christmas fast, or to learn to walk again, with a new pace, and listening for the Christmas detail.

please read the white space

The most fundamental fact of human existence is that because people are embodied they are always ‘somewhere.’ Philip Sheldrake

I reckon that the internet rips away our margins and our contexts. All we see is text or image on a page. We forget the white space, that words and images emerge from somewhere. When those words are somewhere else, they are best understood from somewhere else rather than from your screen. Tricky aye.

We slam people, we get angry, we expect all the world to be like us. It ain’t. Sorry.

This is not a bad thing though. This offers us the gift of ‘somewhere’, the chance to move beyond our place to another place.

Next time you want to flame someone, practise the discipline of white space. Read the words again from somewhere else.

access

did any of you have trouble accessing my blog yesterday? i couldn’t (so couldn’t post), but thought it was problems with my computer. then a friend said emails to me were bouncing …

worship treat

I was quite pleased with this.

It took about 20 minutes to make;
Two boxes;
Seal a red light in the top box.
Cut a cross in the top of the bottom box.
And so the red light shines through the cross and falls on the communion elements.
As you reach in for communion, the light of the cross falls on you.
The idea was sparked by thinking about Moses and the burning bush. The fascinating thing is that the bush is not burnt. So the text carries that sense of God + nature rather than God denying nature.

God does not burn us up, but in love and warmth reveals who we really are. So as you reach for communion, let the love and warmth of God reveal who you really are.

resourcing spirituality this christmas

The Overview: Christmas is a hectic season and each year we are faced with the challenge, the opportunity, the question – how to wait, how to prepare spiritually, amid the end of year rush? The Advent Journal is an attempt to encourage personal preparation for Christmas.

The concept:

(more…)

three baptisms on Sunday

on the road again

I am flying up to Auckland for 2 days, to speak twice at a youth leaders conference: on
global youth culture, identity and implications for the church

and once at a theological educators conference:
applying the notion of midwiving to theological field education.

I feel quite unprepared, so if you are ironing ….

Update: feel free at any time to read my blog carefully, in other entries in regard to prayer I have been known to say “I’ll take my share of prayer…”

networking

The local school has a new principal, so we invited him down for morning tea today, to welcome him to the area. It was neat to have him sit with the rest of the staff, to talk about his transition and about the needs he sees in the community.

It went so well, that I am thinking of doing this regularly with local community leaders.