sustain:if:able kiwi

rural church mission models

I had a lot of fun on Wednesday, working my way through Rural Theology journal, researching current study of the rural church in mission. During Thursday, some of that research was synthesised into my current fresh expressions, mission and church thinking. Today the results go public, as I gather with 30 folk from across South Australia.

One thing I’m taking some time to explore with them is rural churches in the Bible. While the mission of Paul is often portrayed as urban, there are examples of rural churches in the Bible. As I thought more about them, I became to find them really thoughtprovoking and began to I wonder what patterns of life they might suggest for rural churches today.

For example, Israel in the Old Testament was primarily a rural church. Their pattern of gathering revolved not around weekly worship but around three large festivals. This suggests a very different pattern of worship, community, mission and interconnection. (I wrote about this in 2005 with my The Out of Bounds Church?: Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change but never related it to rural church life until this week. Duh!)

Similarly, the church of 1 Peter was primarily rural, scattered in house churches across Asia Minor. Their call was to be “wildflowers” – distinctive in behaviour, drawing questions.

For those interested, my notes for the two hour session are here

Update: the Old Testament model really brought some energy into the room. “So, could we stop doing weekly church and move to a festival gathering?”; “So how would we resource better the home table?” (well, Faith inkubators is one place to start); “So could we connect rural youth with state-wide three or four festivals and skype networks in between?”

msm Adelaide final “report” in video format

Mission shaped ministry Adelaide. 40 folk from three denominations gathering over five months to reflect on mission and spirituality today. How did it go?

Well, we asked participants that very question on the last night and here’s the result: a final “report” not in words, but in video.

Also wondering if this might serve to promote mission shaped ministry throughout Australia – it’s a first being with Australian rather than British accents :).

Big thanks to Stephen Daughtry who gave his time to shoot and edit.

fantastic read: From chaos to mission

On the plane yesterday to Sydney I started reading Gerard Arbuckle’s From Chaos to Mission: Refounding Religious Life Formation. It is fantastic.

It is not exactly recent (1997), but Jonny has often mentioned Gerard, so last year I brought a copy and it arrived earlier this week.

Gerard is a Catholic, yet his writing has so many echoes – the priority of context, the call for pioneer type ministry, the challenge to face society rather than church. In From Chaos to Mission: Refounding Religious Life Formation he explores these themes in relation to training – (in Protestant speak) how to train missional leaders.

He does this out of personal experience, having tried to reshape a Catholic Seminary for mission. He uses cultural anthropology as a lens, what is happening in the shift to post-modernity and how this influences both the task of mission and those who candidate; plus the cultures of what is happening within organisations, how they respond to change.

For myself, working at Uniting College, which has embarked on a change process around leaders in mission, it was like I’ve found a kindred spirit, albiet from a totally different space. When I become Principal, I think I might suggest we as staff and as a leadership council read it together as a way of looking at ourselves from another perspective.

Oh, did I forget to say, Arbuckle is a Kiwi (but currently works in Sydney, for the Refounding and Pastoral Development unit!

what is mission? a story of paying attention to the missing

The question is not: what is the church? but who is the church? (Natalie Watson, Introducing Feminist Ecclesiology).

What is mission? As a missiologist, I am always looking for ways to answer this question clearly. I can give you the definitions. Like this one from the Commission on Mission of the National Council of Churches in Australia.

Mission is the creating, reconciling and transforming action of God, flowing from the community of love found in the Trinity, made known to all humanity in the person of Jesus, and entrusted to the faithful action and witness of the people of God who, in the power of the Spirit, are a sign, foretaste and instrument of the reign of God.

But they tend to make some people’s eyes glaze over. So what about this for a story from a local pastor, working with an elderly congregation, as a way of defining mission?

The pastor thought a lot about who in the community was missing from the church. And how to help the church remain attentive. This generated the idea of making some life-size cardboard cuts out of people typical of their community, but missing from their congregation. In their case, a boy aged 5, a girl aged 11, a parent aged 35.

The pastor found some photos, blew them up life-size, printed them in colour, stuck them on some plywood, cut them out and built a stand. A boy 101 cm tall, a girl 132 cm tall, an adult 163 cm tall.

And then the pastor began to take these 3 figures to every leadership meeting. And when key discussions were being made, the leaders would be asked to stop and consider the impact of the decisions on those 3 cutouts, the people absent from their church.

And the pastor also took these cutouts to church. So that as they gathered, and when they prayed for others, their prayers would include those figures, the people in their community.

Which is commendable because we follow a Jesus who paid attention the missing.

(Hat tip)

What is mission? Mission is the deliberate act of paying attention to those who are missing. It does this through inviting our prayer, our time, our talent, as individuals and as a communities.

story weaving conference

I’m off on Monday morning (early), to be part of Story Weaving, an international conference on Colonial Contexts and Postcolonial Theology. It is being hosted by Whitley College, Melbourne. They are Baptist, so I’ll be able to breathe deep that Baptist air 🙂 Apparently the conference is over-subscribed, which is great. For me, being part of these types of conversations is an esssential partnership that needs to lie alongside fresh expressions, as a concrete expression of being a stranger, of surfing the edges and entering into the marginal spaces.

My paper, which I’m delivering on Monday afternoon, is titled:

This is my body? A post-colonial investigation of the elements used in indigenous Australian communion practices

The introduction is here. What is most fascinating is how the paper has evolved. As part of my research I got into conversation with Tim Matton-Johnsto, a Congress (indigenous) leader in Tasmania. Some email, some skype, some shuffling of drafts back and forth, some negotiation with his local elders and the result is that he will be sharing the paper with me, telling a story from his indigenous community of one of their communion practices.

There’s something very personally satisfying about a process which will mean I, as a recent migrant, am part of theologising alongside indigenous communities here in Australia, and am to co-share a paper in this type of way.

being consumed (at Christmas)

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire is a great little book. At only 100 pages, there is both a depth of theological reflection, yet an incredibly practical edge. It is an attempt to “sketch out a view of everyday economic life with the use of Christian resources.” (viii)

“The Eucharist tells another story about hunger and consumption.” (94).

The argument is that the Eucharist provides an alternative imagination to globalisation. It’s not just theory, because the assertion that the “church is called to be a different kind of economic space and to foster such spaces in the world” (ix) is followed by some really concrete practices

• turn our homes into sites of creative production, not just consumption (such a practical alternative perhaps to Christmas)
• donate time to those in need
• deposit in community development banks
• buy locally
• Christian business practices and
• Fair Trade

I reckon it’s a sort of Catholic equivalent of Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling in the sense that both seem to provide an integrative center for mission. So in Being Consumed, that integrative centre is the eucharist, while in Culture Making it is the invitation to play in culture that allows a mission, whether it is a minister leading a change, a teenager engaging in social justice, a retired person crafting for charity or a Council worker enacting legislation for the sake of a cleaner city.

(For some of my commentary on this a great little video, see here).

Both seem to provide ways beyond the church-centric imagination that plagues so much of contemporary mission (including fresh expressions) thinking. What is more appealing about Being Consumed, in contrast to Culture Making, is that the eucharist is more more communal, much more social, than the tendency to individualism in culture makers.

Further links:
Consumerism at Christmas (part one)
Consumerism at Christmas (another here).

mission and leadership postgraduate offerings 2012

These are the postgraduate (Master and Doctor of Ministry) offerings for the Uniting College of Master and Doctor of Ministry, just emailed to our postgraduate students, plus are in Uniting church ministers mailings all over South Australia over the weekend (Full PDF download go here).

I am really pleased with them, especially the focus on mission, leadership and culture and the range of voices (including from interstate and overseas) and approaches we’re building into the programme. A highlight is one of the world’s leading ecumenical voices on the Spirit and mission, Kirsteen Kim, author of the fabulous Holy Spirit in the world , who will be teaching an intensive – Spirit-ed missiology for a globalised world – from July 23-27, 2012.

the place of apt liturgy in fresh expressions

In marking, I tend to engage in student work with at times quite extensive written comments. Here, with an introduction to give some context, are some thoughts I wrote in an assignment I marked today.

“Apt liturgy” is a wonderful phrase, from Ann Morisy in her book, Journeying Out: A New Approach to Christian Mission.

“Liturgy if it is to be described as “apt” needs to express people’s deepest fears and hopes. Apt liturgy should also enable people to put their fears and hopes into a wider context by sensing the resonances between their own situation and humankind as a whole. One of the costs of the low level of religious literacy in our society is that people are deprived of the conceptual tools which could help them to locate their circumstances, both positive and negative, in a more universal framework. Apt liturgy is a way of providing a framework of understanding which helps people to move beyond self centered and narrow horizons.”

This invites the role of poet, the gift of seeking to name/give voice to the work of Spirit. I find it helpful to frame this by considering the work of the Spirit. Such thinking will begin with Romans 8:23, the Spirit groans in the world. Thus, good apt liturgy will give voice to this groaning. To be faithful, it must start by listening to people, to popular culture, to the world outside the church and to naming their groanings.

This listening must be seen as part of a process. As it is in Romans 8, for after verse 23 comes verse 27, in which the groaning of Spirit is always a groaning toward God. Thus apt liturgy is a way to participate in the Spirit (the One who is at work in the foundational domain, to use another term from Ann Morisy) in the journey from Romans 8:23 toward 8:27.

Another way to understand “apt liturgy” is in reference to Luke 10:1-12, and in light of the proposal “any experience is an educative experience” (Robert K. Martin, “Education and the Liturgical Life of the Church”, Religious Education 98:1 (Winter 2003), 61). Luke 10:1-12 assumes that mission begins with the ability to listen. As this happens, one will recognise healings, interpreted in light of the speaking of peace/shalom. This draws on the Old Testament understanding of God who cares for people and place and thus healing can include physical, spiritual, relational and with the whole of creation. In Luke 10, it is only after healing is recognised that the Kingdom is named as near.

This is “apt liturgy”, recognising healing in a context and linking it with the Kingdom mission of Jesus. In this way, the experience, the participation in healing, becomes educative of the Kingdom.

This calls for a different kind of liturgy leader skill set. One still needs to know the tradition, to know of the Kingdom, and not just superficially, but at such depth, that we can connect it with experience ie what is happening, rather than bringing a liturgy package from the shelf/book/internet.

Reading Scriptures missiologically

Chris Wright has an essay Truth with a Mission: Reading the Scriptures Missiologically, currently free for download here. It is a really good, concise introduction to the idea of the Bible as a missional book. It starts with the concept that mission is something we do, because the Bible tells us so. Wright argues that this is not because of a few favourite key texts, but because the whole Bible is itself a “missional” phenomenon. He suggests that

• the very Bible is a product of God’s mission
• evangelicals have been good at reading the Old Testament in light of Jesus, but poor at reading the Old Testament in light of mission
• God with a mission; humanity with a mission; Israel with a mission; Jesus with a mission
• a critique of Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission; because of his failure to find mission in the Old Testament, because his understanding of mission, as boundary crossing, is simply too narrow
• so a look at the missiological implications of Old Testament themes of monotheism, election, ethics, eschatology.

This is a really helpful introduction to Wright. At 15 pages, it is much more accessible than his 580 page The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative; or his The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission, which my missional Masters students have worked through this year.

(Hat tip via here)

tell show be. a useful way to intro evangelism?

Evangelism. Generally a word that freaks people out. Both Christians and non. So here’s an interesting resource from the Methodist church in UK.

TELL.SHOW.BE. is an invitation to rethink evangelism, to dispel the myths that hinder many and to challenge our understanding of what it means to pass on the good news.

It’s designed to be accessible, multilingual and free, inspiring us to tell somebody, show somebody and be somebody.

Video runs for under 2 mins. What do you think?

TELL.SHOW.BE. – English from Tell.Show.Be on Vimeo.

out of the closet? or just the closest I’ll ever be to Barthian?

I’ve just had a short piece published on Share, a UK fresh expressions website. Titled “Welcome home? Hospitality as mission”, (a cut down piece from something I wrote here last year), I explore how often the church hears hospitality as welcoming people who come to us. I start with a New Zealand singer, Dave Dobbyn, move to Jesus and then to fresh expressions. I conclude with a mission question

“I wonder what it means for the church to see itself as homeless rather than home-owner? To forget practising welcome and instead go looking for welcome? To make ourselves reliant on people to make space for us?”

Which, as I reflected today, might actually make me a closet Barthian. I’ve never read all of Barth, but am informed that it was he who describes the Father’s sending of the Son into the world as “The Way of the Son Into the Far Country.” (Church Dogmatics Vol IV 1 and 2). Just as the prodigal son traveled off into “the far country” (Luke 15:13), so in Jesus, the Son takes the same journey (While the Son of God, in contrast to the Prodigal Son, carries out this journey in total obedience, this journey into the far country is radical, risky, excessive and prodigal.

So there we are. Am I a closet Barthian? Or simply a missiologist coming close?

Anyhow, head on overand see what you think of the piece. Or go here, for another – David Fitch – angle on the whole Incarnation-mission thing.

making links through Fresh expressions

Here is some notes from the talk I have gave last night, titled Making Links Through Fresh Expressions. And a concluding prayer, using this advertisement, which sort of really went off!!

Introduction (2 mins)
Moses and burning bush. It has a lot to say in terms of our topic – making links through F ex.

First, mission begins with listens – Exodus 3:7 “I have heard them crying because of their slave drivers …. “ Mission begins with this compassion for hurting people.

Second, Moses is asked to give what he’s got – “what is in your hand.” (Exodus 4:2) All he’s got is his stick. And a diseased hand. And a tongue that feels to thick. And that’s what God starts with. Pretty simple way to think about mission. It’s as is as simple as giving what’s in our hands. We’ve all got something.

For all of us, it’s our God story – our lives have been changed. As it says in Basis of Union – Para 3 – say it to the person beside you … you are “the beginning of a new creation, of a new humanity. God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge and foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal

And our community charism. That each of us are in a church that has a particular set of gifts and possibilities.

So Making links – starts with us paying attention to the cries. And being willing to simply give what we’ve got.

I want to approach tonight under 4 headings

• linking through listening
• linking in (because despite tonight being about fresh expressions, many of you are in established churches and not yet ready to think about fresh expressions)
• linking out (focused on fresh expressions)
• linking in posture

I plan to talk for about 35 mins and then give you some time to chose 1 of those 4 headings and “do something”, ie to resource yourself practically. (more…)

a practical “linking in” mission resource?

Tonight I’m speaking to about 60 folk from the Community Outreach Mission Network, which is a grouping within the Uniting Church of South Australia. The topic they have given me is

“Making links in mission.”

It has given me the chance to develop some ideas I’ve been pondering. In particular, how to help churches conduct a mission audit of their life. I worked with a church recently who became aware of needs in their community but in the end decided they were simply too busy.

So the tool is a way of inviting us first to reflect on what exactly we are busy about. Who is our life for?

And second, to think strategically about how we do our mission. If we have limited resources, then how are those resources being deployed? Anyhow, here it is “Linking in” resource and I’d love some feedback on how useful you find in reflecting missionally on your church life?

missional values

This was a (home designed) “brand” on a sweat top being worn at mission-shaped ministry course last night. And what are the missional values embedded in the words?

Eden’s bean. Serving God. Drinking Coffee. Since Day three.

It was another great night. Lindsay Cullen, from the Canberra team, was with us, sharing on the topic of missional values. I think he enjoyed having a 2nd go (having taught this topic in Canberra last weekend) and we certainly enjoyed a new face, some external input and outside encouragement.