sustain:if:able kiwi

backpacking transitions

Lindisfarne was a great place to process transition. I asked the taxi to drop me off early so that I could walk in. With a heavy back pack, the act of taking it off when I sat down for lunch became a rich bodily reminder of what I am processing. I am taking off the Principal “back pack.” As I do, a certain level of weight and responsibility is removed.

Yet I’m still me, with or without back pack. I am still graced by God, bound by family relationships, gifted with certain insights. It was a rich insight to realise that I am still vital, still loved, despite the demands of the Principal placement over the last three years.

There was great joy over the rest of the day, walking back pack free, enjoying being me.

During the second day, the backpack was worn constantly. This was partly reality, that I had no where to store it. But I could have asked the pub where I was staying. I chose not too. The task of this day was to look ahead, to begin to hear God for this next season. That required the back pack on, for it is in the middle of things that God speaks.

Carrying a back pack produces initial soreness of muscle. But over time, the body will harden. This is encouragement for the next season. In a few weeks, having taken one back pack off, I will put on another one. It was helpful to realise that the initial days of new responsibility are in one sense a temporary soreness.

spirituality of transitions: Lindisfarne

Today I head to Lindisfarne, Holy Island. It has a rich and deep spiritual history. I went there in 2012 for a time of retreat at a number of significant life junctures. I was in a process of call to be Principal of Uniting College. So the time on Lindisfarne was important in terms of prayer and reflection.

On Holy Island, I encountered another transition. Here is what I wrote –

Inside the church, St Marys, I came across my fathers death. A lifesize sculpture, four men carrying a coffin stands inside the door. It is black, carved in stone. Cold, enduring. It is a confronting moment, facing death. Enclosed within ancient stone walls, it makes the church feel like a tomb.

The moment was more confronting, for my father’s name is Cuthbert. Entering that church, in that retreat of transition, I faced the reality that one day, I would carry my father’s coffin.

So, some four years later, I am returning. I’m wanting to place myself again in that rich and deep history. I go expecting to be prayerful about the ending of one season of being Principal (at Uniting College) and the start of another (at Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership). I go expecting to honour my father, whose name is Cuthbert and to be glad of his ordinary saintliness in my life.

I’m taking Praying Our Goodbyes: A Spiritual Companion Through Life’s Losses and Sorrows by Joyce Rupp. I’ve used this personally at times of transition, including to help me find God when a community I really wanted to work with said no. I’ve used it in ministry, to help communities process farewells and individuals engage with deeply buried grief.

Last Cab to Darwin: a theological meditation on outback place

Monthly I publish a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 90 plus films later, here is the review for September 2015, of Australian film, Last Cab to Darwin.

Last Cab to Darwin
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

Last Cab to Darwin is a visual introduction to contemporary Australian stereotypes. Indigenous men drink and fight. White fella Australians drink and fumble emotionally. English women tourists are blondes willing to sleep around.

Death strides into the midst of these caricatures. Rex (Michael Caton), a taxi driver from Broken Hill, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. With three months to live and afraid of hospitals, he hears of Dr Farmer (Jacki Weaver), advocating in the Northern Territory of Australia for the right to euthanise.

Last Cab to Darwin is based on a true story, including the gaps in Australian law between Territory, State and Federal parliaments. It offers the potential to dwell in complexity. The reality is that the road trip genre becomes an excuse to speed past rich cultural complexity.

Driving his cab to find Dr Farmer, Rex encounters Tilly (Mark Coles Smith), who proceeds to fight and drink his way with Rex toward Darwin. Their narrative journey is broken by a set of clichés, including watches that stop, feral cats hung from outback trees and Tilly’s salvation through sport, if he can beat the bottle. Speeding toward yet another stereotypical scene (Darwin sunsets), Tilly has a one night stand with English barmaid, Julie (Emma Hamilton), who wraps herself into their journey. These images, of indigenous men, white fella Australians and blonde English women tourists simplify the complexity that could ennoble Australia today.

I refer to the lens through which the outback is viewed. The desert landscape depicted in Last Cab to Darwin is simply a dusty red backdrop through which visitors pass, collecting experiences on a road to somewhere. There is no sense of another story, of “anhangha idla ngukanandhakai,” the indigenous (Adnyamathanha) understanding of living in memory.

This understanding of outback is beautifully depicted in the recently published Yarta Wandatha. It is a rarity, a theology book with colour photographs of outback landscape. Unlike Last Cab to Darwin, these scenes are never backdrop on a trip to somewhere. Rather, each is story, around which memory is wrapped. Interpreted in Yarta Wandatha by indigenous woman Denise Champion in creative dialogue with the Christian story, we find the unfolding of a very different outback story.

Last Cab to Darwin introduces two indigenous women. Polly (Ningali Lawford) is Rex’s neighbor, having an affair they are both scared to make public. Sally (Leah Purcell) is Tilly’s wife. The movie provides stereotypical similarities of these indigenous woman. Both are abandoned by their menfolk. Both approach conflict by shouting angrily at those they love.

Such is the simplicity of stereotype. In contrast, when Denise Champion tells the story of Awi-irtanha, the Rain Bird, we encounter a more complex story, in which indigenous resources, considered in light of Jesus, avoid the ugly consequences of unresolved conflict.

Watching Last Cab to Darwin I kept waiting for the road trip to engage these stories on the road between Broken Hill and Darwin. The only hint is when Tilly locates Sally’s mob as fighters against colonial invasion. Once again, 40,000 years of rich and storied memory is lost, replaced by the stereotypes of recent arrival.

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is becoming of Knox College for Ministry and Leadership, Dunedin. He is the author of The Out of Bounds Church? (Zondervan, 2005) and writes widely in areas of theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.

a parting gift: lecturer and Principal wordle

What words describe Steve as a lecturer and Principal? 22 random students were polled and asked to share three words each. Most responded and provided 40 words that create a word picture.

Steve, thank you for taking your call so seriously, and bringing your whole self to this placement. You have and will continue to be a profound influence on us all.

Built for change: Innovation and collaboration in leadership book contract

I was delighted last week to sign a book contract with Mediacom for what will be my second book, tentatively titled “Built for change: innovation and collaboration in leadership.”

It will be a book about innovation. There are many books of theory about innovation and many books from overseas about leadership. (Hence I deliberately sought out a local ie Australasian publisher). I want to write a book that emerges from a context of reality, from a real life situation of change. (Mainly the last three years as Principal of Uniting College). I want to provide some practical stories of change and then consider them, first with the wisdom of hindsight, second with the theological probing that is the gift of the Christian tradition.

I hope the book offers an understanding of change that is both practical and possible, in ways that celebrate collaboration, enhance equality and make access possible.

It is a project I’ve been mulling over for the last few months. My first days writing in June is described here. As I processed the shape of the project over two days in July with my supervisor, I asked myself “Why write?.”

My close of placement service

Close of Placement Service: Rev. Dr. Steve Taylor
Time: 3:00 pm
Date: Monday 7 September 2015
Where: Chapel of Reconciliation, Uniting College, Adelaide College of Divinity (34 Lipsett Terrace, Brooklyn Park)

Everyone Welcome.

Please join us afterwards in the College Common Space for drinks and nibbles from 4pm-5:30pm, where there will be the chance to say farewell to Steve, Lynne and Kaylee, to hear some words of thanks and enjoy a glass of wine or juice and some local cheeses.

RSVP 3 September 2015 to denise.boyland@flinders.edu.au

missional theology of sacraments and the church

Thesis 1 – The sacraments are about the Spirit, not the church. This initial move establishes God as the rightful author and agent of sacramental theology.

Thesis 2 – The Spirit can fall on who and whatever it wants. This is consistent with the Biblical data, in which God keeps surprising. We see this in the ministry of Jesus, most particularly the encounter with the Syro-phonecian woman. Interestingly, this has links with sacramental theology, in the reference to crumbs from the table. We see this also in Peter’s encounter in Acts. Again, I note that this also has links with sacramental theology, in the invitation to eat.

Thesis 3 – The role of the church is thus not to define sacramentality, but to discern sacramentality. The church remains essential to a sacramental theology, not as a definer and defender of boundaries, but as an ongoing discerner. David Ford, in Self and Salvation: Being Transformed notes that the Eucharist is “true to itself only by becoming freshly embodied in different contexts.” This is a way of understanding “rightly ordered”, as an invitation to authentic embodiment.

Thesis 4 – This requires a rich and complex set of tools. We see this move (struggle even) toward discernment, in both the narratives mentioned above, as Jesus affirms the great faith of the Syro-phonecian woman and Peter discerns freshly the work of God. Both of this moves require a process of reflection – in community, by grace, with coherence to the interweaving of experience and tradition. The role of missional theological education necessitates developing skills in these processes. It is this that will enable sacramental practice to emerge from those gathered in community gardens, around skate parks and amid the tables of messy church. The result will be that indeed, in bread, wine and water, Christ will feed the church.

Dunedin property owners

Our quick jump across the ditch has proved remarkably successful. We looked at 8 properties in Dunedin over the weekend. We were accompanied by a Dunedin local, who was invaluable in terms of local knowledge and insight. The upshot was that we made an offer on a property on Monday, which was accepted on Tuesday (subject to building inspection).

It’s a great place that all four of Team Taylor fell in love with pretty much from the moment we walked in the door. It is architecturally designed with lots of character spots to sit and connect. It’s got sea views over the Otago Harbour, yet is set in native bush. It’s close to work, yet has a drive home with harbour views that will be important in creating the necessary distance. It’s not got a lot of room for garden due to the bush, but a glass house should really help and there is plenty of room for chickens and perhaps even a beehive or 3.

Practically, it has 3 bedrooms and 5 different configurations of living areas, which should well suit the needs of our family. We expect to be able to take possession on the date we wanted – the 5th of October – which gives us a week to settle before I start at Knox and Kayli starts at her new school on the 12th of October.

It is a great relief psychologically to know where we are going, stopping and staying for this next chapter of our lives. It’s difficult to express how important this is for our family.

Wanted: Director of Missiology

This was my old job – with a nice twist – church engagement! The last two applicants have been Kiwi’s. Third time ….?

Director of Missiology

Uniting College and Mission Resourcing South Australia together partner in mission. We are seeking a lecturer and leader to develop missiology within the life of both the Uniting Church in South Australia and the College. This will involve forming leaders, educating in its best and broadest sense and fieldwork participation in applied missiology projects. Tasks will include:

1. Developing the Uniting College missiology stream at under-graduate, post-graduate and VET level

2. Lecturing in areas of missiology, contextual mission and innovation

3. Providing research leadership in missiology, including supervision at post-graduate level and connecting research with community stakeholders

4. Working strategically with Mission Resourcing to support and develop mission projects among congregations, communities, regions and networks

5. Strengthen pioneering and fresh expressions as contextual mission

6. Participate in the life of the College, including the formation of leaders in mission

The successful applicant will have a unique skill set that should include experience in education and formation, leadership skills in mission, community mission experience, post-graduate qualifications and an ability to innovate within the faith and polity expressed in the Basis of Union of the Uniting Church in Australia.

A position description is available from: either Steve Taylor, Principal Uniting College, 34 Lipsett Terrace, Brooklyn Park, SA 5032, steve.taylor@flinders.edu.au or Amelia Koh-Butler, Executive Officer, Mission Resourcing, 212 Pirie Street, Adelaide SA 5000, akoh-butler@sa.uca.org.au

Applications close 5 pm, 8 September 2015, with interviews Wednesday September 23 and expected commencement at the beginning of Semester 1, 2016.

Quick jump across the ditch

Team Taylor are re-uniting across the ditch for a few days. Friday is a flight from Adelaide to Christchurch, where we pick up our New Zealand recently purchased car and drive to Dunedin.

Over Saturday and Sunday, we are house hunting. (Hence the need for the car, to drive around a string of open homes). We have this idealistic little plan; that we would buy a house in Dunedin in time for us to move in when we start my new role as Principal at Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership in early October. To do that requires buying a house about 6 weeks prior, that is about now in August. To do that requires selling a house in Adelaide in late July. We’ve done the house selling in Adelaide, so lets see if the house buying in Dunedin part happens. No worries if it doesn’t, but lets at least have a go.

Then Monday through Wednesday, I get to connect with my new work team. They have an annual retreat about this time of year and have invited me to join them. It will be two days of getting to know and starting to build connections. It’s all part of the transition and I’m looking forward to starting a new role with this sort of relaxed, relational, future facing occasion. As a team, we will also be connecting with quite a few Presbyterian church leaders from different cultures around New Zealand, in particular Pacific and Asian. So that’s a very rich introduction to a new community I’m called to serve among.

However, it has meant an unbelievably late night at work, clearing the desk. This week has involved Monday through Wednesday facing our five year Finders Departmental Review, on top of a monthly Board meeting and lecturing.

It will be lovely to take that jump …

how to read: 4 tools that will enhance the study skill of reading

reading tools from steve taylor on Vimeo.

How to read? Four essential tools – pen, highlighter, texting, telling – are introduced and explained. But first, a 10 question quiz on Time Magazine’s 1962 Cover Story, Religion: Witness to an Ancient Truth, on Karl Barth.

A follow up to the theology tools video.

innovation in education paper accepted

My paper proposal, seeking to present at HERGA (Higher Education Research Group Adelaide), September 21-22, has been accepted. HERGA aims to bring together colleagues from the higher education sector to discuss best practice and new approaches to teaching in the tertiary environment. So it’s a great opportunity to present some of my action-research to a more general, non-theological audience. (When people ask me what I’ve gained from the move to Australia, things like this are part of the answer. The chance to be connected to a major University, Flinders, which enabled me to participate in the 2014 Community of Practice and now conference presentation opportunities like this that help me take steps outside the “theological” bubble.)

The conference paper proposal I put up was a followup to what I presented at ANZATS (Australia New Zealand Association of Theological Schools). An unexpected bonus was that in accepting, HERGA also provided me with the peer review feedback. So I have critical comment from two independent readers. I’ve had that consistently for journal articles submissions but never on a conference paper abstract. So that’s gold in terms of catching a glimpse of how my proposal abstracts are read.

Here’s the abstract I presented.

A class above: Evidence based action research into teaching that is connected, mobile and accessible in a higher education context

The Brave New World of higher education faces a number of inherent conflicts. Standardised frameworks encourage a one-size fits all approach to teaching and learning, while the makeup of the student body shows an increased diversity. This has implications for teaching and learning in higher education contexts.

This paper will explore a pedagogical innovation in teaching that was undertaken as part of a 2014 Flinders University Faculty of Education, Humanities and Law Community of Practice. This Community of Practice involved research into student experience in response to the implementation of teaching methods that sought to be mobile, accessible and connective.

E-learning technologies, including video conferencing and Moodle, were introduced. A shift in the use of contact time, from lecturer-driven content to student-centred small group activities, was made. Changes were made to assessment, shifting participation from face to face to digital in order to enable connectivity. Indigenous voices were introduced into the curriculum to enhance access. Bloom’s taxonomy was deployed as a theoretical frame to negotiate the change with students.

McInnis (2005) argued that education can be analysed using a three-fold framework that includes curriculum, learning community and organizational infrastructure. This research project engaged all three, with an infrastructure innovation making possible the curriculum change, and the results tested by researching the experience of the learning community.

Students completed a written survey at three points during the course. The results indicated that a significant shift had occurred in the class. Students had moved from an initial appreciation of content, to a consideration of how they learn from the diversity inherent among their peers. Students perceived that the changes had enhanced their ability to communicate effectively. They expressed a preference for choice, collaboration and diversity.

The research data can be helpfully theorised in conversation with Haythornthwaite and Andrews (2011) who have argued that e-learning is a social act that enhances learner agency. They draw on Preston (2008) who observed that students fill different roles in an on-line learning community. Some act as e-facilitators, others as braiders, others as accomplished fellows. These categories are evident in the research data generated by the Community of Practice.

It can thus be argued that the use of teaching that is mobile, accessible and connective reshapes the student learning experience. Flipped learning enhances student agency and increases appreciation for diversity among the student cohort. Such pedagogical innovations turn the student cohort into a class above, in which students find themselves inhabiting teaching roles among their peers.

A mechanism for this process, drawing on Haythornthwaite and Andrews, is proposed. This involves understanding how digital texts change notions of authorship and thus contribute to learning process that are more democratic and less hierarchical. The argument is that technologies, when underpinned by explicit pedagogical care, are essential elements in “re-humanising” the brave new world of higher education.

References
Haythornthwaite and Andrews, 2011. E-learning Theory and Practice. Sage. London.

McInnis, Craig, 2005. “The Governance and Management of Student Learning in Universities.” In Governing Knowledge. A Study of Continuity and Change in Higher Education, edited by Ivar Bleiklie and Mary Henkel. The Netherlands: Springer. file:///C:/Users/jong0009/AppData/Local/Downloads/0deec520376135d76b000000.pdf.

Preston, C .J. (2008). “Braided Learning: An emerging process observed in e-communities of practice.” International Journal of Web Based Communities, 4 (2): 220-43.

Europe study leave: Amsterdam, Durham, Holy Island, Adelaide

My tickets for Europe arrived this week. I have some study leave I need to take before I finish as Principal of Uniting College and I’ve been working toward presenting some of my research overseas for a few months. They come together in the following:

• Friday, 11 September – Fly to Amsterdam via Dubai.
• Sunday, 13 September – Research. Since I’m now a well-published U2 scholar, I need to keep up with a changing field. In other words, attend the U2 innocence and experience tour for the purpose of remaining abreast of a changing field.
• Monday, 14 September – Fly to Manchester, then train to Durham
• Tuesday – Thursday, 15-17 September – Symposium on Ecclesiology and ethnography, Durham. I am presenting a paper titled Activist research: an examination of lived practices in ethnography and ecclesiology. The abstract is here but in summary I want to explore some complexity that surround ethnographic research of the church today – when our participants are still shaping the research process. I will do this by examining a range of case studies from across the academic “habitus” – employment, writing, research and teaching. During this time I will also be connecting with a journal editor hoping to secure a “downunder” journal edition of empirical ecclesial research, linked to the ANZATS 2016 conference.
• Friday, 16 September – Visit to Holy Island, which was such a helpful pilgrim place a few years ago, as I considered a transition to become Principal of Uniting College. It seems appropriate to visit it again as I consider the move to become Principal of Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership
• Saturday, 17 September – Return to Adelaide via Manchester and Dubai.
• Tuesday, 19 September – Research presentation at HERGA Adelaide. Under the theme – Brave New World: The Future of Teaching and Learning, I hope to present a paper titled. A class above: Evidence based action research into teaching that is connected, mobile and accessible in a higher education context. I will be sharing results from my research into flipped learning.  This is a further presentation of the Evidence based action research paper I presented at ANZATS in Sydney in June, 2015.

I am grateful for the Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Faculty of Education, Humanities and Law at Flinders University that makes this possible, by providing provision for attending conferences.

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living bread stations

I was asked to lead worship twice this week. Monday was with our Certificate in Bible and Leadership ESL course, which has 7 cultures present. Wednesday was with our regular College chapel. I wanted to link them both, so I sought to mirror the worship.

I also wanted to engage with weeks lectionary texts, with the focus on living bread. I had this creative spark, to actually write on bread. Some cocktail rolls, slightly overcooked, worked well. This then allowed different activities at different stations, people writing different things on the rolls. They became living, shaped by our prayer and our memory. These were then collected up at the end from each station as part of closing the worship, so our living bread coming together. Even better, the bread from Monday’s worship was added into Wednesday’s worship. In so doing, both communities are reminded they are part of a bigger story, the many diverse ways that College is engaged in teaching and growing people.

The full order of service is as follows: (more…)