sustain:if:able kiwi

everyday spirituality of ironing

One of the neat things about ironing,
is the chance to pray for those who wear the clothes,
in a whole range of life and work situations.

why are ministers important

OK. So the guest preacher gets up to speak. Good friend, so no bagging him.

He challenges the church to pray for me every day. “Steve would not ask you to do this, but I want you think about praying for him every day.”

He’s damn right Steve would never ask that. Why me? What about the person next to me, who cleans tables. Why not pray for him every day? Why is the church, the minister, more important than anyone else.

I’ll take my share of prayer, but surely this is just a pedestalising that denies the importance of the Kingdom, of life spent in Incarnational mission in the world God loves.

with a passion for community and discipleship

“Congratulations on just appointing a great, great pastor.”

Opawa unanimously, yes unanimously, voted to call Jason King to join the team and focus on developing people.

endings and beginnings

it is finished. the end of semester. the end of my first year of lecturing at Bible College of New Zealand. no need for preparation until February 23. it’s been a hell semester, way overloaded. my desk is a mess, my brain is fried and my notes lie in messy piles.

time to repile.

time to speak, three times in Auckland next week.

time to write; an article on place and theology (the foreshore and seabed issue), on globalisation and alternative worship, on contemporary mission images. and if i go well,

time to work up a second book proposal.

media times they are a changing

Waiting for a take-away coffee today, I picked up a copy of a free magazine called the cityscape. The cover article concluded “For the full story, see” and pointed to the magazine url.

Normally print based media are very slow to adapt to internet technologies. Web use is the poor cousin. Articles are limited, wait listed or non-existent.

It’s the first time I’ve seen print media used to point to web media. Watch out magazines, the times they are a changing.

sheep and worship

Sometimes worship experiences just click. I preached on kingdom KPI’s today, a process I have been spinning about over the last few days.

As people came in the door, they each got a plastic sheep, about 1 cm. (thanx to Renee for the spark of the idea). Small enough to lose.

I spoke about the lost sheep and at the end of the sermon I invited them to name their sheep …. I mean, to name a sheep. Full sermon here if you can be bothered (of if Kingdom KPI’s in postmodernity are bothering you)

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life transitions and resourcing spirituality

This week, Beth, part of the church, turns 5. Last week, Matt, part of the church youth group, got his driving license. A month ago, Helen and Ray, church stalwarts, went into a retirement home.

These are significant life transitions for each of them: new environments, new freedoms and responsibilities, times of change and letting go. The question is how the church honours these transitions. On Sunday I am planning to give Beth a sticker, for her to put on her lunch box. In the shape of a heart, it can remind her of God’s love and the love of the church community.

going to school
getting a driving license
retiring and retirement homes.

What other key life transitions should the church be honouring?

If we live in a spiritually alert world, then part of the mission of the church can be to resource the spirituality of these life transitions. What about “retirement packs,” filled with resources to engage the spirituality of those going into aged care?

And how? I know about 5 year olds. What should be done to spiritually resource first time drivers, or to let God be part of the saying goodbyes that are part of retiring?

the kpi cringe

KPI = business = modernity = vomit.

Yet cringing at the cringe, nose wrinkling in distaste, still begs the question …. what is important? When you pour your life into something, what makes it worthwhile?

If we go organic, and reject modern KPI, surely we are still faced with “what is important?” Bodies do grow. The doctor can, externally, check my internals … take my blood, pump my pressure, ask me to pee into a little yellow pottle. So organic images can still be bodily tied to external indicators.

Such indicators can be harder to assess, but surely they are still part of our discourse, modern or postmodern?

key performance indicators in postmodernity

There was a delightful piece in a local newspaper on Wednesday. The employment section was titled “working for the ultimate boss,” and explored ministry as a employment prospect! Tongue in cheek, it asked what where God’s Key performance indicators (KPI’s). Which got me thinking.

In modernity, I would suggest the KPI’s of the church were:
: church attendance
: offerings
: members.

In postmodernity and with a more renewed theological vision, what might the KPI’s be. I am proposing:
: influence in wider community, leading to transformation
: generosity in time, talents and money
: wholistic growth.

Am I missing any other KPI’s?

dislocation

I have slept in 5 different beds in the last 5 nights. I find this a profoundly disorientating experience.

Place is not just environment. Place is the familiarity of routine.

the wearing of underwear when preaching

Exegesis is like underpants. It makes the preacher feel secure and comfortable wearing them when up-front. Indeed, the more creative the sermon approaches, the more the need for the security of underwear. Further, approaches like storytelling or inductive work best over the top of underwear.

A few years ago, the fashionable preacher was advised not to show their underwear. It was considered distasteful and inappropriate.

However, in these changing times, I am now suggesting that a certain amount of underwear needs to be shown. Letting the audience know that Biblical text and culture is valued and explored adds a certain “holy~ness,” a certain sensual promise of more.

spiritual spaces

I sat at Te Papa on Saturday. I was surrounded by 5 metre high panels, including a beautiful en-glassed image of the Treaty of Waitangi.

It was a space both spacious and enclosed.
It was a space to think.
It was a spiritual space.

gone

i am off … a weekend with my wife in Wellington. The Church Board said I was working too hard and ordered a weekend off.

I hear and obey…. coffee … Te Papa … movies ….. tee he…

spirituality of place

I visited the arthouse here in Christchurch this week, where a local New Zealand artist, J.S. Parker, is exhibiting. The exhibition is a series called Plain Song: referring to medieval Gregorian chants and the fact that his work captures a spirituality of place, drawing on the Plains of Canterbury and Marlborough. (It’s also an allusion to Parker’s painting techniques; in which he uses the 2-dimensionality of planes as a core motif.)

I have been reflecting recently on the relationship between spirituality and place, both given my geographic moves this year, and given that I am working on a theological article on indigenous landrights in relation to the New Zealand sea-bed and foreshore issue. I suspect that Western theology has been placeless due to its abstract notions of the Trinity, and so we are divorced from a spirituality of place.

A final quote from the Parker exhibition stood out for me: Parker “has always had a spiritual basis to his work and feels this may be one explanation for the recent, strong resurgence of interest in his paintings.” It is nice to see resonnance between my ponderous theological ponderings and the contemporary New Zealand art scene.