sustain:if:able kiwi

still blogging 10 years on

Apparently Saturday marks my 10 year blog-versary. I say apparently because my original webhost is long gone, so there’s no “public” record of birth.

My midwife was blogger, which after a few months, got hosted in as part of the Graceway church website. When I transitioned city (Auckland to Christchurch) and churches (Graceway to Opawa) at the end of 2003, it seemed appropriate to leave the resources of the blog at Graceway, but I continued to blog, using wordpress (first entry here). Going back through blogger archives, this is the earliest post I can find is dated 9 June, 2002.

Ten years ago. Before Facebook, iPhones and twitter.

I remember the day I put my first post up and within a few hours, had comments from Andrew Jones, Prodigal Kiwi and Rachel Cunliffe. That sense of amazement over a digital word and how strangers become linked.

All 3 remain friends – Rachel visiting us this Easter, Andrew stayed at our house last year, while I enjoyed a beer in Auckland with Paul last August. A virtual world, yet with enduring relationships.

I’ve often pondered whether to continue blogging. And then there will be another random connection – a comment in response to a post that gives me fresh vistas, a email asking to borrow a prayer resource. And I will be reminded of the gift of connection, the new worlds made possible through the web-verse.

I can’t picture a world in 10 years time, nor whether I will still be blogging. But I still like to remain open to the sheer wonder of human connection.

Local Adelaide folk can you help? I need a PA

The Uniting College for Leadership and Theology has a part-time (0.5 FTE) 3 year fixed term opportunity for an energetic, enthusiastic and highly organised Personal Assistant. The role is an interesting and varied one, which involves a wide range of secretarial and administrative responsibilities. Additionally you will manage and coordinate projects, provide research assistance, and develop promotional materials. (Position re-advertised)

Enquiries to Peter Gunn at peter dot gunn at flinders dot edu dot au

Kony 12: An optimist, a cynic and a theologian ..

Each month I publish a film review, for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Here is my most recent.

Kony 12
An optimist, a cynic and a theologian sat down to share a latte and change the world.

The optimist wanted to do something…anything. He left the cafe and flew to Africa. His heart broke, bled in a thousand pieces in a country he didn’t understand, among a culture that was never his.

Being a Westerner, he came armed with a video camera. He used it to shoot footage of crying children, dense bush, and men with guns.

He returned to form an organization, and coined it ‘Invisible Children’. He gathered donations – a third for film, a third for expenses, a third for programmes grounded in Africa.*

He began to recruit, drawing together a staff skilled in film-making and media industries. Carefully they edited the video, manipulated the sound bites, added graphics and sourced the emotional background music. And so was born Kony 12.

The cynic snorted when he saw it. A lifetime exposed to world hunger and media manipulation had left a well-practised sneer. He googled ‘Kony 12’ and pressed ‘like’ on all the criticisms.

What is the budget? Who funded this? Where is the conspiracy? What if it fails? Is the US there simply because of oil? Will this simply inoculate people against the next tragedy?

While he complained, ‘Kony 12’ became a media sensation, watched on the Internet by nearly 90 million views.

The theologian’s teenage child suggested she watch the video on YouTube. Pressing play, she smiled at the gospel echoes in the sound bites – ‘the value of all human life’, ‘a bunch of littles could make a huge difference’, ‘the unseen became visible’.

She pondered the difficulty of fitting story, slogan, sound bite into the words ‘nuance’ and ‘complexity’. She recalled the words of challenge from African youth leader Teddy Ruge: “Did I ask you to sell my story for an action kit to make uninformed college students feel good?”

Time went by and later, the optimist, the cynic and the theologian bumped into each other once again on a crowded city.

Proudly, the optimist noted how Kony was now a household name. ‘We’re making the world a better place,’ he said.

The cynic was unconvinced. ‘Surely there must be more to life than making Facebook a better world.’ He mentioned the ‘S’ word – ‘slacktivism’ – the idea that sharing, liking or re-tweeting across the social web will solve a problem.

The theologian pulled a book from her handbag and read from Teresa of Avila. “I particularly notice in certain persons … that the further they advance … the more attentive they are to the needs of their neighbours.”

Which means, suggested the theologian, that Kony serves a purpose. It is a way to pay attention to the needs of our neighbour. Yet Kony must advance. Eyes that watch a video, and hands that ‘like’ a link, need feet that carry them to meet their needy neighbours face to face. Wouldn’t that be a video worth making!

*Publicly available financial accounts of Invisible Children suggest nearly 25 percent of its $8.8m income last year was spent on travel and film-making and about 30 percent went toward programmes in Africa.

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is Director of Missiology, Uniting College, Adelaide. He writes widely in areas of theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.

Female atonement images: Hunger games film review

Each month I publish a film review, for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Here is my most recent.

The Hunger Games
“The Hunger Games” is a deeply disturbing movie. The camera opens on a bleak future, a life of subsistent, subservience in slavery to a wealthy Empire. Annually, as some sort of depraved atonement ritual, 24 children are chosen by random ballot, to fight for life in a televised death match. Roman Gladiatorial style human-tertainment is repulsive enough applied to adults, but to conceive of it for children takes a particular chilling imagination.

The film is based on a teenage novel written by American television Suzanne Collins. The transition from page to screen suffers from the common problem, of how to express in a visual medium complex written internal monologue. The result is a beginning too long, followed by a middle too short, shorn of the internal dialogue that makes intriguing the heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence). Some redemption is provided, in an ending twisted enough to ensure suspense despite the seemingly inevitable Hollywood style good girl wins.

Technically, the film gains four stars. Well directed by Gary Ross, the acting is tight, the musical score fitting, the scenes a dramatic contrast of high-tech beauty, subsistence squalor and bush-leaved prison.

Conceptually, the dimensions of reality TV ensure this sci-fi future feels uncomfortably close to home, while the giving of gifts by a watching TV audience evokes complex levels of participation in us, the watching film audience.

So what sort of role model is Katniss Everdeen? First, she is a woman. In a film industry dominated by the macho and male, it is pleasing to watch a quick-witted woman emerge a star. Second, Katniss embodies care and character, a willingness unto “death-do-us-part,” to seek another world of possibility.

So what sort of mirror is the film for a watching church? It should certainly provoke discussion around how to understand that central Christian symbol, the cross.

“The Hunger Games” is built on substitution, the willingness for some to die for the peace of all. On screen it beggars belief. What sort of society would sacrifice an innocent few for the sake of many? On screen we are faced with the moral repugnancy that is substitutionary atonement.

Is innocent death really the best, the only way, that God could conceive to deal with human rebellion? Thankfully, even the quickest flick through history is a reminder that substitution is only one of a number of understandings of the cross held through by the church. (Others include Anselm’s satisfaction, Gustaf Aulen’s Christ the Victor and Abelard’s moral theory of atonement).

Intriguingly, the actions of Katniss provide further ways to frame atonement. In a scene of tender drama, Katniss loving lays white flowers on the chest of Rue, one of her dying Hunger Games competitors. Unknown to Katniss, her care for another, an enemy made friend, sparks a riot among the watching. Love liberates, releases a repressed communal desire for freedom.

This surely is the possibility buried in Easter. Love liberates, questions the values, attitudes, paradigms that shape one’s world. In the willingness, even unto death, to live differently, we find another world of possibility.

(For other cinematic reflections on female atonement images, see Kathy in Never let me go and Sue Lor in Gran Torino.)

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is Director of Missiology, Uniting College, Adelaide. He writes widely in areas of mission and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.

An Australian migrant theology?

In Robe (where I spent the weekend) when you enter West Beach, you are invited to beware of migrants. Specifically, migrant birds.

What sort of migrant theology might emerge from this type of posture?

It would expect migrants to arrive exhausted, recognising they have travelled far, they have seen much, they need lots of space to “conserve their energy.”

It would expect migrants to “rest and feed”, to find resources to renew them, to prepare them for the next stage of their journey.

It would offer them space, be willing to change direction and “walk and drive below the high tide mark.”

A pattern that has been happening for thousands of years before any white fella arrived, a pattern in which the land of Australia has sought to serve, renew and restore migrants.

(This is another entry in dictionary of everyday spirituality, under the heading M is for migrants).

refreshed by Robe

It was a rich weekend just gone. The destination was Robe, a holiday beach town 3.5 hours drive south of Adelaide. The occasion was the invitation to Refresh, to explore mission with rural churches from the South East of the state. With a theme of refresh and with the destination a holiday place, I decided to go early and stay on. Which meant I woke on the Friday to this

and on Saturday to this

The theme of Refresh was Getting on with mission. I did three sessions, one on what is mission, another on the place of church in mission and a third on engaging the community through practices of listening and presence. Plus I lead worship and communion. (This was one result, folk writing in liquid chalk on the lovely chapel windows a word that summarised their weekend.)

I talked about the importance of asking “What is God up to in the world?” which was picked up superbly by one of the other worship leaders, who invited folk to make a windsock, writing on it where they were seeing the Spirit in their community.

They made such a bright and beautiful addition to our life together. It was probably one of the most enjoyable groups I’ve worked with in a long time. I’m still trying to reflect on why. Perhaps it was that I was more rested, being on study leave and going early. But I think it was also their honesty and realness.

Which still gave me time on Sunday to tuck up in bed, listen to the pelting rain, read The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, before getting up to appreciate this

en-robe-d for mission

I’m heading south for the weekend to enjoy the beautiful Robe. When not enjoying the beach, the great local coffee or wine tasting at Coonwara, I will be joining the Uniting Church Rural resourcing team. They visit 3 centres around rural South Australia each year, offering training, encouragement and resourcing. This year the theme is mission and I’m doing 3 teaching sessions for them

• What is mission?
• What can mission through church look like?
• Engaging our community (in which I’m offering a mission-shaped ministry module, as part of promoting the 2012 Adelaide msm course).

I’m also leading worship, in which I will try and model some creative ways to engage the weekly lectionary text (Isaiah 6 in Trinity Sunday).

It has been a really intense week, as I’ve juggled study leave (alas very little), preparation, plus chairing the Joint Nominating Committee as we look for a Director of Missiology/Post-graduate Co-ordinator. So a bit of space away from the city and the email will be appreciated.

I was meant to be heading with one of the children, but alas they have been bitten by the flu. Nevertheless, wine, coffee and walking can still be enjoyed.

Trinity worship stations

Creationary: a space to be creative with the lectionary (in this case, visual images on themes of pilgrimage). For more resources go here.

On the weekend, I am leading some worship for a group of church leaders in the South East of the State. It is Trinity Sunday and as I reflected on the lectionary readings, and in particular Isaiah 6:1-8, a number of stations seemed to suggest themselves – ways to confess, to intercede, to respond, to commune.

Introduction:
There are many ways to engage the Word. Around the room are a number of stations. You can stay with one. Or you can move. After about 20 minutes a bell will ring. We will gather. If time, there will be space for a few people to share in insight that emerged from engaging the Word around stations. We will then move into communion together.

Confession and absolution station: Coal station
One way to respond to Isaiah 6 is to take time to examine “our lips.” In this Bible passage, the coal becomes a symbol of forgiveness that follows confession.

Take some time to reflect. In what ways have you been a “person of unclean lips”? In what ways do you “live among a people of unclean lips”?

Silently confession any areas of uncleanness that come to mind. Do this by touching the coal to your lips. It might be appropriate to touch your lips more than once.

Please take a coal from the bag and once you have finished, place your coal in the basin provided.

As you end your time at this station recalling the words from Isaiah: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

Mapping station: “Here I am, Send me.” But where?
Take some time to look at the map. It is laid out, using stones, in the shape of South-Eastern South Australia. Take time to see if there is a place that God puts on your heart. You might like to light a taper and place it on the map in a place that you would like to pray for.

Eating station: “touched my mouth.”
Make yourself a savory snack.

Now enjoy eating your snack. As you do, reflect on the following. The three elements – crackers, cheese, gherkin – invite us to think about the three persons of the Trinity.

What happens if one is left out? What does each distinctive “person” add to our faith? What does each person and the faith of our church?

If you want, make yourself another. And keep tasting, reflecting …. This weekend we have focused on mission, on our taste in the community.

What might your church taste like to those in your community? As a result of this weekend, are there any different flavours you want to add into your church “taste”?

Drawing station: “And I said” What are you “saying”?
This weekend we have asked: What is mission? What does it mean for my church? Isaiah asks us how we will respond. He asks himself the question: “And I said” …..

As a result of this weekend, what do you want to say?

Take some liquid chalk. Write a word or phrase that might capture what you want to say.

(by writing it on the window. The chalk does come off. Promise!)

Take a second colour and write a word or phrase you want to pray that your church might start to say?

Colouring station:
Colour in the icon. Simply enjoy it. As you do ask God to speak to you through the activity.

Does the Trinity and Rublevs Icon prioritise worship over mission?

Does Rublev’s Icon encourage a church gathered in worship, rather than a church scattered in mission?

Such is my question as I prepare to speak on mission, including leading worship, amongst leaders of the Uniting churches of the South East on Saturday. It is the only speaking engagement I’m doing in the 3 months of sabbatical. I had said yes before the sabbatical option came up, so I felt it was a commitment I had to honour.

In preparation, I’m aware that the Sunday coming is Trinity Sunday. So the obvious place to go is to Trinity and mission. Here’s what I wrote in 2004.

At the heart of the Trinity is three persons – Father, Son and Spirit – in the giving of love. Love is shared between persons, in an unlimited, ever-spiraling flow of love. The church fathers used to call this perichoresis – the divine dance of love. It is a beautiful metaphor; fluid, whole-bodied, dynamic.

What makes this missional is that this dynamic, fluid, flowing love is shared with the world, in creation, in Christ, and in the activity of the Spirit. This flow of love refuses to remain self-centred.

When God breathes breath into humanity, created in the image of God, we see the relational love of the Trinity shared. Love is never self-indulgent. In Christ, the relational love of the Trinity is shared. The sharing is so radical, so complete, so life-giving, that one person of the Trinity will die for the Other. The affirmation that the Spirit is in our world reminds us that love is always calling us, always inviting us out of our circles, out of our understandings of community, out of our walls and set practices. In this sense the Trinity is missional,

Further, the Trinity offers us unity and diversity, one love shared between three distinct persons. This also guides our mission. The missional church will be an expression of the shared love of God. Equally the missional church will be locally distinctive, a unique, grounded expression of the God-head.

Thus talk about church and mission needs to be grounded in our understandings of God as Trinity. A “missional church” is not new, but a recovering of very ancient understandings, in which we live, we create, we emerge, as an outflow of the shared love of God. We seek to express fluid, whole-boided, dynamic love. We honour the unity with other expressions of church, we applaud diversity, we celebrate uniquely grounded differences.

I’m still happy with that, some 7 years on. But how to express such concepts – intellectual and theological in worship?

One option could be to invite them to draw in the beautiful sandy beaches around Robe, like here. Another could be to adapt the Rublevs Icon children’s talk, which I did with such positive feedback when I preached last year at Brighton Uniting on Trinity Sunday.

But it raises the question with which I began: Won’t contemplation of the icon simply leave me sitting at the table with Jesus? Doesn’t it encourage a church gathered in worship, rather than a church scattered in mission?

Pentecost gifts: pioneering and Graham Cray

Graham Cray, Archbishops’ Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh is currently in Australia, speaking at Clergy Conferences in Adelaide and Canberra/Goulburn. He rang on Saturday and it was great to be able to connect with him for a quiet wine yesterday. (No photo this time :)) Of course, Sunday was also Pentecost and it seemed so appropriate to be talking mission, pioneering and future church on this day of Spirit celebration. Four things have stayed with me.

First, the God of fun and surprise. It was Graham’s wry conclusion as he noted that there are now over 1000 Fresh expressions among Anglican churches in England. And that latest results just coming in from the Methodists in the UK indicate that when you add in the numbers attending Fresh expressions, they have grown as a denomination.

Second, the ratios. During the conversation Graham noted that there are now around 130 Ordained pioneers being trained in the UK. Coming home, I did the math. Adelaide has about a 1 million people, while UK has around 50 million. Comparative numbers would have us here in South Australia, having training 2-3 ordained pioneers. I thought with gladness of current candidates and recent graduates at Uniting College including Titus, Sarah, Karen, Amel, Peter Riggs and Mandy. It made me glad of what God is doing among us in South Australia. Yet with 6 it is still hard to generate a sense of community and cohesion. As I thought about ratio’s, I began to wonder if it will be sensible for every State, and every Denomination in Australia, to be training their own pioneers? Or do we need a few co-operative ventures among Colleges? And even, heaven forbid! among States?

Third, the sheer intentionality of the change project. As we talked about training of lay pioneers, selection processes for ordination, supervision structures, networking of Diocesian leadership teams in mission learning networks, it was a reminder that this is a whole church reformation. Such is the pioneering Spirit of Pentecost, birthing and re-birthing the church.

Four, the phrase leaders in mission. The UK expects all of their clergy in training to develop their ability to be leaders in mission. All clergy, not just pioneers. A nice re-focusing for me, as I think about the task of being Principal at Uniting College come 1 July, and the call to train leaders for a healthy, missional church.

Thanks Graham and thanks Spirit for Pentecost gifts.

when the day of Pentecost came: the visual in worship

When the day of Pentecost came. Mark A Hewitt, Pastel & pen. 26 May 2012. (Mark provides a weekly visual for worship here).

Got it

Looks like we’ve caught the mouse that was in the house.

🙂 lol

@pentecost mission is for the geriatric

This is a fascinating video, either at Pentecost or for anyone working with a mainline, declining, aging denomination in mission, leadership and change. Fuller Theological Seminary lecturer Mark Lau Branson shares a contextual reading and interpretation of the Pentecost story in Acts 2 in which he suggests that those gathered in Jerusalem were mainly retirees and it is amongst the faithful elderly that God’s surprising spirit turns up.

Mark is author of the fantastic Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change, which explores the use of Appreciative Inquiry in church life, excerpts of which I invariably use when talking about mission with local churches. Mark is also co-author of Churches, Cultures and Leadership: A Practical Theology of Congregations and Ethnicities, of which Part 3 especially is a superb resource, offering practical skills of leadership by using a case study of real change.

the Pentecost practice of small growth

In February, I gave the three favourite women in my life flowers. Not cut, but living. Each plant was different. One was given an indoor orchid, another a outdoor flowering native shrub, another an outdoor native tree.

The period around Valentines Day in Adelaide is hot. It’s summer and things are dry. It meant that a gift of the day also demanded ongoing care. Each morning I could be found, hose in hand, watering the outdoor natives.

Moving into March, I became quite concerned about one. The soil was dry, the sun hot and significant die-back had appeared.

Yesterday, warming down after my morning run, I was delighted to see new growth, the first fragile signs of life taking root.

And to notice that the indoor orchid was preparing to flower again, a beautiful white and lavender about to emerge.

This week we celebrate Pentecost and move into a season in which we pay particular attention to the work of the Spirit. For me, the miracle of the Spirit, and the task of paying attention, is captured in the fragile new life I see in my garden.

For a while in my late teens, I linked Pentecost with great signs and wonders. I’d leave church looking for the miraculous, the dramatic, the extra-ordinary.

In doing so, I would walk right past what was small, the fragile in my garden, the miracle that is any growth, any sign of life, especially in a hot and barren climate. But the Kingdom that is God’s at times seems to pay more attention to the humble, the small, the insignificant. As Jesus welcomes children, as he avoids the crowds seeking miracles, it becomes a reminder that in God’s economy, all growth is worth celebrating, any new leaf worth paying attention to.

This for me, is the Pentecost practice of small growth.

(This is another entry in dictionary of everyday spirituality, under the heading P is for Pentecost).