sustain:if:able kiwi

The durability of church in a culture of change

1 – I got an iPad a few weeks ago. In order to transfer files between my Mac and the IPad, I joined Iwork. Only to get an email saying the Iwork I joined was a beta programme, was going to cease soon. So if I wanted to retain the files, I’d need to download them.

2 – Swinton and Mowat, in their wonderfully helpful Practical Theology and Qualitative Research Methods mention an important computer programme for analysing qualitative data. A search of the web indicates the programme is no more. Probably brought out by a competitor.

3 – According to an article today in Advertiser, over 50% of restuarants in Australia have closed since 2007. To quote

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show only 51.7 per cent of accommodation and food services businesses survived the full four years from June 2007 to June 2011.

In sum, we live in a culture of overwhelming change. Which seems to say something interesting about church – where week by week, year by year – worship and mission continue. I go to lots of conferences that express concern about the health of the church. And missiologically, I’m not convinced that durability is the main aim.

Yet the fact remains, that when placed alongside changes in technology, computer software and restuarants, church remains a remarkably durable body.

faith development: more than a guy thing part 2

Yesterday I raised some questions about the place of gender in faith development. I noted the work of Nichola Slee, Women’s Faith Development: Patterns and Processes. Her work emerges from interviews with 30 women, which resulted in some 1500 pages of transcribed interviews. She then read these narratives alongside a number of conversation partners – faith development theory and women’s spirituality.

She suggests these women develop through a three part process,

• of alienation
• of awakenings
• of relationality

She then makes four broad applications, to those in formal theological education, to those involved in any educational or pastoral care context in church life, to women’s networks and groupings.

First, to ground practice in women’s experience. She suggests making a priority of more inductive and experiential approaches to education. She also suggesting bringing to greater visibility women’s lives. (A simple check list I used in this regard, when I used to preach regularly, was check my sermon illustrations and quotes to make sure I had gender balance, as many women examples as men).

Second, create relational and conversational spaces, for “women’s spirituality was profoundly relational in nature, rooted in a strong sense of connection to others, to the wider world and to God as the source of relational power.” (Slee, 173) Slee suggests we look at our environments, ways to create circles not rows, and processes by which everyone speaks no less than once and no more than twice.

Third, foregrounding of imagination, given “the remarkable linguistic and metaphoric creativity of women as they seek to give expression to their struggles to achieve authentic selfhood, relationships with others, and connectedness to ultimate reality.” (Slee, 175). She notes historically how much of women’s theology was embedded in poetry, hymnody, craft forms and popular piety. So we need to find ways to weave this into our “reading” and our talking.

“Yet educators need to go beyond the use of such artistic resources to the active encouragement of learners to engage in artistry as a way of exploring and discerning truth.” (Slee, 177)

Practically, this can include Ignation practices, working with the texts of Biblical women, seeking to recreate their lives “between the lines of patriarchal texts.” (177)

Fourth, of accompanying into silence and paradox. Faith development involves times when we find ourselves in places which have no words. “They require the creation of spaces for waiting, for silence, for apparent nothingness.” (Slee, 178) Helpful resources here can include Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Simone Weil.

Slee is aware that these suggestions are not new. But from her experience of (British) theological institutions, there is room for growth.

faith development: has to be more than a guy thing

Today I am working on a section of faith development. I began to reach mentally for my usual starting point, Peter. The journeyer – in the Gospels invited as follower (Luke 5); named as denier; commissioned as feeder (John 21). In Acts, the preacher, whom God’s Spirit calls out of the box. In Galatians, challenged for the ease by which he slips back into racist patterns.

But on the book shelf is another book on faith development, Women’s Faith Development: Patterns and Processes, by Nichola Slee. Who suggests that our notions of faith development can reflect a male bias.

Here is her summary of the usual model of faith development, that provided by James Fowler.

“where Fowler describes faith development in primarily cognitive terms, [alternative] models describe a broader, more holistic process of development shaped by affect, imagination and relationship as well as by cognitive structures. Where Fowler describes the process of development in terms of linear, sequential and irreversible stages towards a highest level of faith, these [alternative] models offer a more fluid and varied account of transition which, whilst demonstrating certain common patterns, can accommodate movement in different directions and can allow for regression as well as the anticipation of prospective growth. Above all, where Fowler asserts that faith development is uniform across diverse contexts, feminists insist that women’s religious development is shaped profoundly by the cultural context of patriarchy which is antitethetical to women’s full personhood and spirituality.” (Slee, 40)

So rather than turn to Peter, I sat back on my chair. And began to think about women in the Bible. Like Mary. And Joanna/Junia.

Two of my most helpful resources – Slee’s, Women’s Faith Development: Patterns and Processes and Bauckham’s, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels. What have been yours? What resources are you using to ensure your understanding of faith formation is not overly rational, overly “guy”-centric?

Visual in worship: weekly lectionary visuals

Mark Hewitt is a trained artist and a Uniting Church minister. As an artist, he’s deeply aware of the power of visual images. Tired of spending time each week looking for images for worship, he’s decided instead to stop browsing the internet and instead use the time saved to create an image himself. His goal, each week is to present that week’s lectionary text, visually.

The Vine by Mark Hewitt

Often creativity works when it becomes confined. Somehow the constraint – of resources, of time, of circumstances – results in innovation. Mark is letting the constraint of time – only having a few hours, and of the weekly lectionary text – be his seedbed for imagination.

Since the creativity is emerging from his church life, and the lectionary only rolls around once every 3 years, he wanted to make his work more widely available. He’s created a website, – Old Tractor Tin Shed – where he is posting his visuals in worship. It is on a Creative Commons copyright:

Mark A Hewitt of Panorama South Australia is the Artist and copyright holder of all visual art and photography on this site.

You are free to use these works for non commercial purposes
on the condition that Mark A Hewitt is made reference to as the artist.

intuition and anecdotes in theology

A playful moment today. I am working this week on a chapter on emerging church practices. In trying to make sense of how to proceed, I have been enjoying a book by Max Van Manen, Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy.

The book explores how to use lived experience – ours and others – not for mere academic interest, but to be part of transformation – in us and in our spheres of influence. In the book, Van Manen seeks a method by which to be systematic and critically rigorous about lived experience. One way he suggests is by the use of anecdotes. He notes how so often in conversations, people use short stories to make a point.

Anecdotes connect us to real life. They can provide concrete demonstrations of wisdom. They provide experiential case studies. Each anecdote is unique and particular, yet often each anecdote is addressing matters of universal importance.

So I have been looking through my interview data, looking for anecdotes. Surprise, surprise, I found that in the 5 focus group interviews I did, 45 anecdotes were used. Previously I might have dismissed these as examples, difficult to make into nice little sound bites. So probably I would have walked past them.

Instead, today I have grouped these 45 anecdotes and begun to analyse them, each particular, for the emerging practices present in them.

As I have worked, I have also been thinking about the Gospels. And I began to wonder if perhaps they too are in fact a collection, artfully chosen, of anecdotes about Jesus. In John 20:30, we are told that “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.” In describing these signs to each other, the disciples used anecdotes. Which John then declares that he has selected, edited and artfully arranged so that the reader “may believe” and “by believing … may have life.” I love that sense of the Gospel writer daring to tell a universal story by gathering a particular set of particular anecdotes.

But how to connect some anecdotes from an emerging church today with these Gospels as anecdotes?

So this afternoon I spread out the Jesus Deck on the office floor. The Jesus Deck has 52 cards. In other words, 52 anecdotes from the life of Jesus! I spread out these Gospel anecdotes alongside the anecdotes from my interviews.

It is certainly not an approach I’ve used in research before. But it has begun to generate some really interesting conversations. Whether they are dead ends or not, we will see in the coming days.

Amazing news. Go Justin. Go the Anglicans

Amazing news. Justin Duckworth, dreadlocked, 44 years olds, pioneer urban missionary for last 25 years, in recent years reforming that around new monasticism (story told with his wife, Jenny, in Against the Tide, Towards the Kingdom (New Monastic Library)) – has just been appointed Anglican Bishop of the Diocese of Wellington.

I remember attending an emerging church hui (gathering) in Wellington in 2005. At that time, some were dismissing the mainline church as dead. Others of us weren’t convinced. Theologically, we wanted to retain an openness to the God of surprise. It’s well expressed in the words of one of New Zealand’s best poets, James K. Baxter.

Lord, Holy Spirit, You blow like the wind
In a thousand paddocks, Inside and outside the fences

That sense that God can work inside and outside the church, in forms new and old. Justin was there, deeply involved in mission amongst the underprivileged and justice workshops. Now a Bishop! It’s moments like these that confirm those instincts, the joy of following a God of surprise, the celebration at the courage of the Diocese of Wellington.

I’ve written about Urban Vision as part of a chapter on the emerging church in New Zealand. Its in a book, edited by Ryan Bolger, that showcases a global emerging church, in continental Europe, Asia, and Latin American and in African American hip-hop culture. Titled: Gospel after Christendom, The: New Voices, New Cultures, New Expressions, it’s due out in October, and I hope that, given this news, they don’t mind if I post some excerpts. Under the heading “Mission.” I begin with another quote from James K Baxter.

Lord Holy Spirit, Heaven is with us when you are with us,
You are singing your songs in the hearts of the poor

Followed by:

Urban Vision began in 1996 as a group of people committed to serve the innercity of Wellington, through acts of Incarnational mission. Its origins were in a shared set of friendship, a suburb (Berhampore) and a commitment to quietly follow Christ among the poor and marginalised.

An important ministry feature was “the Castle”, an intentional community where people from the street could experience belonging and equality. There was also a willingness from individuals to deliberately relocate into public housing areas in order to support refugees and migrants.

Over the years, Urban Vision has morphed and grown in strength and outreach. It has seeded teams into other urban poor and marginalized suburbs around Wellington. Then in 2007, Urban Vision decided to reform itself as a contemporary independent Order, centered around a set of shared values. These include
• a prophetic call to seek justice
• a willingness to be sent as Good News
• an action/reflection spirituality
• a commitment to simple lifestyle and
• discipleship formation.
To quote from their website “we’re not simply copying something from the past … [Rather] … this similarity to the old missionary movements has come about because of the contexts we live, because of the times we live in and the prevailing culture of society and the church at this point of history in Aotearoa/New Zealand.”

This commitment to radical discipleship, along with their durability over a decade, are a fine example of experimental emerging praxis, of giving concrete expression to the Wind of the Spirit who yearns to whisper God’s “songs in the hearts of the poor.”

Here’s an interview with the Bishop-elect!

And here’s a fuller written article on Justin, Urban Vision and new monasticism here.

Jesus deck lectionary: spirituality of “wise men” as theology of family

I am using the Jesus Deck as my current lectionary. Every day I deal myself a card. Before Easter, it was Mark, as I ran through the drama that is Holy week. After Easter, Christians celebrate resurrection. A season of surprise. So the whole deck gets shuffled and dealt randomly. After Pentecost, I will use colour. I will keep dealing cards until I find some green. Growth. The colour attributed to the Spirit in Rublevs Icon. That will become my lectionary.

Today the Jesus deck dealt me Matthew 2. The text on the top reads “We have seen his star.” The text running along the bottom reads “Astrologers.” It’s a reference to the magi of Matthew 2:1-12.

It is interesting to engage this story outside Christmas. Although of course, given travel time, the story would have started months before.

Perhaps on a day in April.

A day like today.

Looking at this Jesus deck card, I am struck by how God uses hobbies – took the everyday passions of these “magi” and crafted through that a way to seek and search. So often spirituality is removed from the ordinary, and yet here is God inviting our hobbies and vocations, our passions and interests into a pursuit of divine. (Hence my Dictionary of Everyday Spirituality series).

Thinking of ordinary, I began to wonder if these magi had families. If so, what the star would have meant for their spiritual search.

You see, family is the perennial problem faced by all travellers. To take the kids and grandparents. Or to leave them behind.

The horns of a dilemna. To go alone. Or to drag in the innocent with you on an unknown search?

Either way, stay or come, relationships are being torn, domestic life reshaped. It’s a tough gig, seeing a star.

Which took me back to the Biblical text surrounding this particular Jesus deck card. Families in pain surround the magi narrative.

Jesus being wrapt in swaddling cloth and rocked to Egypt. That’s migration – forced to find shelter in a new language; look for work as your potential workmates comment on your accent; missing home; family not seeing the first Jesus smile, the first Jesus step. It’s a tough gig, carrying a star.

And let’s not talk about the screams that rent Israel. The nightmares of mothers screaming for their babies, dead at Herod’s knife. Families in pain surrounds this Jesus.

So what happens when we engage the story of the magi outside Christmas. We are invited to seek a star, to find God amid our ordinary. But as we peer at the spiritual search we ponder. Is it one of glamourous adventure? Or deep pain? Or both?

Time for a hug of those I love.

sacraments, mission and a really open table

When nothing is holy, everything is holy.

This is what struck me reading this wonderful, thoughtful post by Sally Coleman.

I am suggesting that there are occassions [sic] and contexts where we are able to share the story of God in the world, from creation to re-creation, the incarnation, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and we need to give people the opportunity to respond…

Imagine setting out to tell the story of God at a town festival, a music festival or something of that kind, tell the story in an imaginative and creative way, and people gather to listen. How then do we invite them to respond? They could come forward and recieve a tract, and prayer, and maybe those things are good, or we could break bread together…

She deploys Scripture

• the feeding of the 5000 (She’s right – the exact same verbs – took, gave thanks, broke) used by Jesus as at the Last supper.
• she also reflects on Pentecost (but does overlook the fact that there is no sacraments used at that point. Further than those who heard were devout Jews and thus came from around the Mediterranean with a huge amount of worldview already formed).
• and on the woman at the Well (although again overlooks the fact that there are no sacraments at that point eitther).

She uses missiology

• bounded sets and centred sets, the work of Paul Hiebert, to explore what a centred set understanding of sacraments would look like (there’s a few post-graduate theses in that question)

She reflects on tradition

• the very words and patterns used at communion (She’s right – the words are often so deeply theological that they do require knowledge of the story to unpick the invitation)
• but she might also want to turn to the pattern of the early church, who delayed communion, placed it on Easter Sunday, after a year long process of formation and understanding.

She uses reason

• the way that sacraments are “a tangible, physical way for people to meet with and respond to what the Spirit” and extends this forward into initial encounters with the Spirit.

To conclude:

So what am I saying about the sacraments? I believe that they open a door of powerful encounter with God, and that they can be used missionally, indeed that they are in some way;  for if it is the Holy Spirit who brings them to life

It’s a wonderful, thoughtful, probing post. It needs a response, not from the church, but from the culture. Sometimes, might those outside the church want to ponder precious things, to save the moment until their understanding might enable a richer feast. But it’s exactly the type of questions needing asking in our post-Christian context.

Thanks Sally. Just the type of resource to use in my next Church, Ministry, Sacraments class!

Updated: And Sally has blogged a 2nd time, with some more reflection.

stations of the rainforest as spirituality for tree huggers

Really interesting video, linking environmental themes with Stations of the Cross. The 14 Stations of the cross are woven around the death of rainforest. Interesting that they have included a 15th Station (yes Clifford and Johnson, indeed the Cross is not enough!) which looks out how we can live sustainably, environmentally, in lifegiving ways.

It comes from the Columban Missionaries of Britian, and has an accompanying written resource. (I’d place this alongside my experience of 7 words, 7 sites: an indigenous Tenebrae Service from earlier this year.)

Of course, it’s a video. Which leaves me pondering what an embodied Stations of the Forest would look like – actual nature based walks around Adelaide.

It also links for me with some of what I was exploring last year – outdoor stations as fresh expressions and how God’s second book, the book of creation, might be a regular part of Christian expression. Especially in climates as conducive to being outdoors as Australian ones. Especially if followed by hospitality and community afterward.

“The Cross is not enough” – the Hillsong excursus

As part of my post-resurrection Easter spiritual practice, I’m reading Cross Is Not Enough: Living as Witnesses to the Resurrection by Ross Clifford and Philip Johnson, Australian Baptist thinkers. I thought it would be a good discipline to blog as I read my way through the book. Chapter one is here, Chapter two is here, Chapter three is here, Chapter four is here

There is one comment by Clifford and Johnson from chapter four I’d like to pull out and reflect further on:

Perhaps one reason for Hillsong’s success is that the resurrection is celebrated in uplifting songs.

The comment reminded me of some worship work I did back in 2007. The church I was pastoring was doing an Easter evening church series on the topic of the real Jesus. As part of that, wanting to encourage the primarily youth congregation to think about what they sing, the pastoral team were each allocated a random contemporary song and asked the question – “what are we thinking when we sing this.”

I got given the Hillsong song, titled “For all you’ve done.” Somewhat to my surprise (and in an endorsement of the comment made by Clifford and Johnson) I found quite a well-developed theology of resurrection. Here were some of my comments on “For all you’ve done.”

The song has 3 parts. The opening is fascinating;
My savior
Redeemer
Lifted me from the miry clay

I hear echoes of the Old Testament. For example Psalm 40:1 -3; I patiently waited, LORD, for you to hear my prayer. You listened and pulled me from a lonely pit, full of mud and mire. You let me stand on a rock with my feet firm, and you gave me a new song, a song of praise to you.

Such echoes of Jesus are present in a number of places in the Old Testament. The most well known is Proverbs 8, with what I call a “Cosmic or Wisdom Jesus,” Jesus present at the birth of creation, giving wisdom to life. So “for all you’ve” done starts with a creation Jesus present redemptively within creation.

The middle of the song keeps the Old Testament theme going:
Almighty
Forever, I will never be the same

At this point, I become a bit uneasy, as there is the potential of Jesus being mushed into Almighty God. But then the song gets very specific.
Cos You came here
From the everlasting
To the world we live
The Father’s only Son

This is a good Incarnational theology. This Cosmic Jesus is God before time, that came to live. The life of Christ is essential. “For all you’ve done” includes every day of every one of those 33 years.

The good theology continues as the song moves to end:
And You lived
You died
You rose again on high
You opened the way for the world to live again

I find fascinating the echoes of resurrection and ascension. Jesus fully human and fully divine “opened the way.” The human body of Jesus ascends into God. In the Ascension, the way for humans is opened to God. What is more, God is changed as God embraces humanity.

In summary, “for all you’ve done” is a surprisingly broad song theologically. Christians often limit what Jesus does to the cross. Yet this song names Jesus, for all you’ve done as including creation, incarnation, life, resurrection and ascension.

So salvation in Christ is not limited to the work of the cross. It starts with God making the world, involves the sending of Jesus, God with skin on, moves through thirty three years of healing to the embrace of the cross, the surprise of Easter Sunday and the ascension, as Jesus opens the way. That’s the Jesus being worshipped in “for all you’ve done.”

(The original post is here) and if you check out the comments, quite some heat was generated!)

“The Cross is not enough” book review – Chapter 4

As part of my post-resurrection Easter spiritual practice, I’m reading Cross Is Not Enough: Living as Witnesses to the Resurrection by Ross Clifford and Philip Johnson, Australian Baptist thinkers. I thought it would be a good discipline to blog as I read my way through the book. Chapter one is here, Chapter two is here, Chapter three is here

Chapter four

The idea of the resurrection fills us with profound, deep, and for me at least, non-specific and extremely complicated emotions. Thus I do not want it represented in images that are otherwise. Above all, though, I do want it represented. That is, I want it, to paraphrase Luther, “spoken” but also “sung, painted and played.” I also want it molded, sculpted, danced. Linda Marie Delloff

And so this chapter takes up the challenge by Dellof, and explores resurrection in culture. It begins with the resurrection in art history. It moves to church music. It moves to contemporary music. It moves to pop culture, specifically film, comic books like anime, TV series and fiction novels.

I’m not going to be specific, because you really should get the book. It’s worth the price of this chapter alone, as a reflection, preaching and communication resource.

Clifford and Johnson are practical, with a section on how to respond to these resurrection images. They note the importance of not assuming that because we see an image, all viewers will.

Even some lapsed churchgoers did not recognise that Aslan was a Christ-figure and that his death and resurrection mirrored the Easter Event.

They are cautious.

None of these characters’ resurrections are exact counterparts to Christ’s resurrection, as they remain mortal after they have arisen.

These resurrections are not once-for-all like Christ’s, and the stories have their veiled ambiguities about the source of the resurrection (does the character possess the power to rise again or is there an external source?).

Not only do they acknowledge the hopeful, the resurrection analogies. They also acknowledge the anti-Christ resurrections in pop culture, those moments when “dead, malovelent” characters return from the dead.

A weakness is that the world of pop culture is too narrow. Pop culture is so much more than film. What about resurrection in advertising, in fashion, in video gaming, in photography? I have not got it with me, but I’d want to place this chapter alongside Detweiler and Taylor’s, A Matrix of Meanings: finding God in pop culture (Engaging Culture), to leaf through their chapter headings, and then with a group of young adult theology students do a brainstorm around popular culture. Why?

Because, to quote Clifford and Johnson

Conversations with non-Christians can provide opportunities to draw these connections and help those who are seeking to begin to understand the power of Jesus’s resurrection.

three month “project” anniversary

It seems a most appropriate marker

of three months of hard labour on our “project” ready for pick up by the Council tomorrow morning. It includes urine stained carpet from two rooms, a gutted entrance way, gib and ceilings into family room, back entrance way and a bedroom.

It’s had moments of unexpected spirituality – a perfumed blessing and renovation spirituality.

Tomorrow the electricians return and if things go well, we might have lights that switch on and off in the family room, back entrance way and one of the bedrooms.

On Friday the electricians found yet another surprise. The service fuse (from the road to the house before it gets to the metre board) kept tripping. ETSA was called, lots of head scratching and the fault was eventually traced to the presence of wires attached to the power line incoming from the road, with the potential to draw (sans) power into the roof cavity.

Not sure if that’s an entry for my Dictionary of Everyday Spirituality in that – other than the risks some people are willing to take (attaching wires to live 240 volts), in order to pursue their indoor gardening hobby.

Review of 9/11 film Extremely Loud and Up Close

Each month I publish a film review, for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Here is the review for the movie “Extremely Loud and Up Close.”

Extremely Loud and Up Close
Last year was the 10th anniversary and they had to come, the Hollywood gaze settling on the shock of 9/11 and the horror of the aftermath.

In “Extremely Loud and Up Close,” the tragedy that is the twin towers is viewed through the eyes of 9 year old, Oskar Schnell as he struggles to make sense of the death of his father. Threads of further mystery are woven into the plot line, driven by the key Oskar finds in his fathers’ jacket and the unexplained appearance of The Renter, suddenly living with Oskar’s grandmother in a nearby apartment.

The movie, adapted for the screen by Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), is based on a novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is directed by Stephen Daldry. Each of his previous movies (“Billy Elliot,” “The Hours,” “The Reader”) gained nomination for the Academy Awards. “Extremely Loud and Up Close” was no exception.

Despite the accolades, the movie struggles. Perhaps it is simply because we know the ending. A similarity would be the Jesus movie genre. How to generate tension when we all know what happens, whether death and resurrection in a Jesus movie, or shock and grief in the aftermath of the Twin Towers?

Perhaps it is because the metaphors are so cliche – the vase shattering on the first anniversary, the key triggering a search both physical and psychological, the answerphone unblinking in its silent reproach.

Perhaps it is because at times, the plot seems less than believable. How can a child so young wander so easily all over New York? How can his mother find the time to work, to mother and to tread ahead of him? Why, really, can The Renter not speak?

A saving grace is the cast. Thomas Horn is sensational as Oskar Schell, mildly autistic, highly imaginative, caught in a trauma not his making. So also is Max Von Sydow as The Renter, so remotely human and Tom Hanks as the creatively engaging father.

The movie employs the zoom lens, wanting us to be up close, to focus on one child and one family. It means that every emotion is played extremely loud, evoked in the montages of bodies falling and sidewalk shrines awash with people grieving. It makes the film feel like pure opportunism, a commercial piggybacking on human tragedy.

In being extremely close, what inevitably gets lost is perspective. The focus on one story obscure the unique grief that surrounds the other 2,594 who died at the World Trade Centre. The focus on New York overlooks the many Iraqi children who now wander their bombed out streets looking for their dead parents. Oskar’s mental health, his struggles with autism, are turned into comedy simply to keep the tragedy light.

In the midst of these failings, a credible theology of grief is presented. Oskar’s self-harm is believably palpable, as is Linda Schell’s patient acceptance of Oskar’s unthinking, tearful anger. Time can heal, but only when the cycles of guilt, shame, anger are engaged, up close and extremely loud.

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.

Jesus the great contextualiser

““let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak” (James 1:19). How wise! In inculturation the most important quality of the evangelizer is the gift of listening.” (Arbuckle, 164)

More from the wonderfully accessible, deeply insightful Gerald Arbuckle’s, Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians: A Postmodern Critique. As I posted earlier in the week, Arbuckle is concerned that the failure of the church to understand culture is making us naive at best, dangerous and destructive at worst.

In Chapter 10, he explores what we can learn from Jesus the Inculturator. First a definition

“Inculturation is a dialectical interaction between Christian faith and cultures in which these cultures are challenged, affirmed, and transformed toward the reign of God, and in which Christian faith is likewise challenged, affirmed, and enhanced by this experience.” (152)

Then a note on how similar is Jesus culture to today’s postmodern notions of culture:

“There was nothing discrete, homogenous, and integrating about [Jesus’s] cultural world because it was filled with all kinds of tensions, fragmentation, and subcultural differences.” (153)

Then analysis of how Jesus used social drama, how he used moments when relationships between groups break; to encourage liminality; and open the possibility of growth.

Example – Mark 10:46-52 Bartimaeus. Arbuckle notes how

• inculturation is person-centred – Jesus speaks directly to Bartimaeus, socially a non-person
• inculturation is collaborative – “by his [Bartimaeus] actions is himself an agent of inculturation, challenging in collaboration with Jesus the crowd’s culture that rejects people who are poor.” (155)
• inculturation requires spiritual and human gifts – “The gift most needed in evangelizers is the ability to listen and converse with people in a way that respects their human dignity.” (155) This is based on Mark 10: 51, the cry of Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus does not assume what type of help is needed, but instead listens.
• liberation is an integral part of Inculturation – healing is social, cultural, economic, spiritual. Bartimaeus is not only healed of blindness, but finds he is given voice in the community of God, is respected as a collaborator in healing.

The chapter continues with analysis of the SyroPhonecian woman in Mark 7:24-30 and the Samaritan woman in John 4:1-42.

Finally he concludes with Jesus use of parables “Probably this is his [Jesus] most important method of inculturation.” (162) He notes how these emerge from an attentiveness to the everyday world of those he serves.

“Simple and ordinary circumstances of daily life such as eating, walking, and even a request for a drink of water often become social dramas of special importance for Jesus in his ministry of inculturation.” (159)