sustain:if:able kiwi

latest mission matters news

Here is the latest Mission matters newslettter from the Uniting College missiology stream. Books worth reading, key participants, update on comings and goings, projects being developed and course offerings for 2013. Excellent progress for a stream birthed at College less than 3 years old!

November 2010 here; June 2011 here; June 2012 here;

Position vacant: Chaplaincy Coordinator

This is the first obvious sign of innovation at Uniting College since I became Principal.

Chaplaincy Coordinator
Uniting College is seeking a gifted person 1 day/week (annual fixed term, renewable) to network, co-ordinate and develop new Diploma of Ministry specialisations in chaplaincy (school, aged, hospital, salt and light). It is essential to possess chaplaincy experience and a higher education qualification. Enquiries and applications to Steve Taylor steve.taylor at flinders dot edu dot au. Applications close 5 November 2012.

Background: In a group brainstorming session a few months ago, we identified first that there is a gap in the Uniting church in chaplaincy training. There are short courses of say six months at vocational level and there are topics (for example Theology and Practice of Chaplaincy) in our 3 year Bachelor of Ministry. But that leaves a lot of space. Second, that in our accrediting of our Bachelor of Ministry degree, we had been encouraged to add a one year equivalent Diploma. While until now we had seen it as a general exit award, the regulations gave us space to make this specific.

So why not offer a Diploma of Ministry with specialisations – aged care chaplaincy, school chaplaincy, hospital chaplaincy? And who knows, in time “salt and light” street chaplains?

Since then, everyone we’ve talked to has encouraged us – our Boards and various stakeholders.

But as we looked at our existing staff, we realised we lacked practitioner expertise in these areas. Hence this new position – Chaplaincy Coordinator – with responsibilities to
• play a key role in developing chaplains who are passionate, Christ-centred, highly skilled and mission oriented practitioners
• promote chaplaincy and chaplaincy courses throughout the South Australian Presbytery/Synod including through the Mission Networks of the church
• assist those teaching core topics in shaping their content and assessment in a way that is relevant to chaplaincy
• oversee the development of and teaching of four elective topics that will maximise the response to chaplaincy needs, through teaching and recruitment of experienced practitioners
• keep abreast of current research in the area of chaplaincy.
• provide course advice and supervision to those seeking to develop skills in or pursuing a vocation in chaplaincy

It is just a start, a testing of the waters, but it’s nice to be setting the sails for a bit of adventure.

small missional communities and the Uniting church

Jonny Baker describes the growth of small missional communities, with around 30 groups from the London Diocese gathering recently to network.

most were a small community that had moved into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty), meeting together in a bar or home or allotment, seeking to follow christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community – in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on. they are not that focused on growing big – but more like the yeast of the kingdom that jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. a couple of people spoke of the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumner church!?). what was also interesting is that many of these described a positive relationship with their local churches – they were not competing for punters – far from it. but they brought a mission energy to the area that could really help a local church or do things a local church was not able to do.

I also see it as a way of getting out of the “alt.worship” mode, in which the energy mainly went into re-creating gathered worship. In small missional communities, the energy is focused on life-as-mission. Both are ways of beginning a mission, but I suspect different beginning point suit different personalities and also different contexts.

The question, as one who who grew up anabaptist, is how these missional communities relate to the wider church. This piece for me is addressed in Pete Ward’s Liquid Church, in which the use of “flow” becomes a way to envisage relationships. What is fascinating about Jonny’s quote is the way this flow is being located locally – within local churches. Good stuff.

Within the Uniting/Adelaide context in which I now work, I see a number of distinct possibilities. We need a way of being Presbytery (dare I say, mission network/s) that allows accountability and resourcing to be shared. The gift of the Uniting church is a church in every suburb and thus a physicality about being neighbourhood. The other weakness of being small and missional is resourcing when you start to connect with the marginalised. Again a Presbytery-as-network would address this.

A further facet about being Uniting is the potential for partnerships with Uniting Care, who can provide professional resourcing but can’t be “church” without conflicts of interest around proseltyising. Is there a 3 way synergy that needs to emerge – Uniting Care; local church buildings; small missional communities? ie professional resourcing + local presence + engaged life-as-mission groupings.

Now all we need is a motion at Synod that invited a new mission network around small missional communities; and a College committed to training missional pioneers.

Oh but wait, haven’t we got the second already?

the politics of Christian influence: Christianity and colonisation

James Boyce’s 1835 explores the Founding of Melbourne and in doing so, the conquest of Australia. Such books are essential reading for all those who care about mission and the witness of the church, because they allow us to reflect on the past.

Chapter 5: London 1835 includes a summary of the place of Evangelical Christianity in colonisation. “With the assistance of their …. [evangelicals] …. the British government became focused on the physical and moral welfare of indigenous people to an extent unknown before, or for the most part, since.” (37)

First, it helpfully notes that British Evangelicalism of the early 1800s should not be confused with present day American Evangelicalism.

Second, it notes the motivation. Once Slavery was abolished, indigenous welfare became a priority area of Evangelical concern. “Government control, along with support for enterprising ‘respectable’ settlers, was urgently needed to counteract the harm done to natives by lower-class European.” (38-9) This provides a contrast to the Domination narrative, which is often pinned on Christian colonisers. “The simple fact that evangelicals accepted that people had rights based on prior possession set them apart from the dominant settler discourse, which argued that the right to land arose from using it for farming.” (39)

This produced an ironic tension, that Christians supported colonisation because they saw it as “the primary means of ensuring that Aborigines were not degraded or killed by the lower order of Europeans.” (40)

Third, this advocacy on behalf of indigenous people relied on information. What happened in Melbourne and in the colonising of Australia, was that distance and lack of missionaries on the ground, meant that the Christian politicians lacked data to work for justice.

It’s a fascinating narrative about the relationship between church and society and the attempt to use politics for influence.

(New Zealand readers will want to read Chapter 7 – The Treaty, as it provides a fascinating analysis of a Treaty signing, both the politics and the processes, just a few short years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. But that is for another post).

mission postcards

I shut the door this afternoon and found some space to do some creative planning. The result was some mission postcards – four in total. One side of each postcard is an art image, on the other side a Biblical text. The task will be for folk to work in groups to identify the mission practices present.

The occasion is that fact that I’m working with some rural churches in the Eyre Peninsula over the upcoming weekend. Rural as in 6 hours drive one way. So I leave on Friday morning and return Sunday evening.

I am doing three of these rural events this year. In May I was in Robe, while in September I’ll be in Laura. In Robe I did 3 sessions. But there’s only time for 2 sessions in the Eyre Peninsula, which meant I needed to find a new way to get to where I wanted to go.

I’d be playing with an idea for a while, emerging from Picturing Christian Witness: New Testament Images of Disciples in Mission by Stanley Skreslet.

In sum, mission in the New Testament involves four domains

• being a mate – being salt and light in our neighbourhoods
• having a yarn – voicing our story
• crossing the ditch – stepping across boundaries both cultural and generational
• sharing the load – the determination to stretch, to extend the reach of Christian pastoral compassion.

I’ll then provide some contemporary examples of each, hoping that in the mix of Biblical engagement, art, conversation and stories from today, folk will find fresh resources for their context.

living in cultures of change

Spotlight, a leading national craft and curtain shop, sells raffia. This simple fact is important for local indigenous expression.

Yesterday Team Taylor enjoyed the annual open day at the Warriparinga Living Kaurna Cultural centre. We enjoyed the live music, watched the kids play a traditional game, kicking around a possum skin (yep, possum) and joined the local basket weavers.

As we chatted we learned that traditionally basket used reeds and grasses. However such things disappear in modern industrial cities. Either the practice of basket weaving dies. Or else the cultural adapts.

Hence the importance of raffia from Spotlight.

It reminded me of a conversation a few weeks ago. I was wine tasting and some older folk were chatting beside about the impact of technology. Will our children be able to read and write, in an age of screens and e-readers? They were concerned about cultural death.

I pointed out that my children are reading more widely and broadly as a result of the purchase of Kindle’s. To which they shrugged, sighed and said “I guess you’ve got to just so with the times.”

The resignation in their voices, the words they use, were very similar to what I hear in church circles. It suddenly occurred to me that

One, responding to change is not just an issue for the church, but for all cultures. It is a shared human challenge.

Two, that avoidance or assimilation, fighting or acceptance, are two very limited responses.

Three, that Christians who think about culture-making, about a variety of practices by which to live in change, that the adaptive resources from within indigenous cultures, are a helpful resource for living in change – not just for the church, but for all humans in modern society.

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).

is religion better or worse for society?

A range of opinions regarding the public social good of religious institutions exist.

• an “ivory tower” perception, in which religious organisations are judged to have no earthly focus, and thus little practical public good

• a “culture destroyer” view, in which religious organisations are considered to be of toxic value to tolerance and goodwill of society

• a “public good” generator, in which religious organisations are investigated as potential contributors to public social capital.

The rationale for this “public good generator” position is that religious organisations currently exist as a significant contributor in the not-for-profit arena. Some research has indicated that church adherents are more likely to serve as volunteers. For example, church attenders are more likely to be volunteers in local community groups (43%) than the wider Australian population (32%). Across all denominations, volunteering within the congregation has a strong positive relationship with volunteering in the community. Rather than being only church-focused, church volunteers are outward-looking and active in their community. (Source: NCLS Research/University of Western Sydney joint study on volunteering (2001))

However, existing religious organisations face significant challenges, in regard to adaptation to new technologies, how to participate in a pluralistic and multi-faith society and strategies in the face of declining membership and a shrinking resource base. These factors suggests that social innovation for religious organisations will be an imperative, in order to sustain their existing contributions to public social capital. In a changing world, how might historic values of compassion, respect and justice (Uniting Communities Vision, http://www.unitingcommunities.org/?q=About-Us) continue to be enacted?

This study will seek to provide research data that might guide religious institutions in addressing such questions today.

This is something I wrote for a University/Partner organisations funding bid I’ve been putting together over the last week. (One page of an 17 page).

2 great mission shaped ministry video resources

Following the success of mission shaped ministry Adelaide in 2011, a creative and hardworking team are beavering away, working on a course for the 2nd half of this (2012) year.

Venue: City Soul (13 Hutt St Adelaide). This facility offers a casual cafe set up which will ensure a communal, creative and interactive environment.

Cost: $400. This includes 11 evenings of input plus 2 weekend gatherings.

Credit: The course can be taken for credit in the Adelaide College of Divinity Bachelor of Ministry degree. Enquiries to Steve Taylor.

Dates:
– 4 Thursday evenings, July 26 to August 23, gathering from 7:00pm, input from 7:30-9:15 pm.
– Weekend Retreat 1, West Lakes Resort, Friday Night and Saturday, 31 August and 1 September.
– 3 Thursday evenings, September 6 to 20
– 3 week pause between Sept 20 to Oct 18 is given as a chance to put legs on some of the content in your local community
– 3 Thursday evenings, October 18 to November 1
– Weekend Retreat 2, Old Adelaide Inn, Friday Night and Saturday, 9 & 10 November

This includes a number of great video clips. Like this, a short 1 minute long video clip – single shot, creative use of an object, short script.

Which really nicely compliments another excellent 7 minute long video, with course participants from last year sharing what they valued about the course.

It’s a joy to see this type of creativity at work. Go mission shaped ministry Adelaide 2012.

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)

Seven Sites, Seven Words: indigenous Tennebrae Easter service

We had the privilege yesterday evening of being part of Seven Sites, Seven Words, an indigenous Tenebrae Easter Service.

The service was located at Pilgrim Uniting and involved a journey outside, around the central city. Scripture passages that tell of events leading to the death of Christ were laid alongside readings of parallel stories of white engagement with Australia’s Aboriginal people, of betrayal, denial and death. Symbolic gestures – the coins of betrayal, the whip, moments of white denial – found fresh meaning.

The service has been developed by Geoff Boyce, adapting from Norm Habel’s ‘Healing Rites at Seven Sites.’ It was a wonderful reframing of the tradition of Tenebrae (Latin for ‘shadows’ or ‘darkness’), capturing the darkness of the events leading to Easter Friday and the pain of colonisation.

The sites were skillfully chosen, ensuring that Easter is not hidden in a church, but public for bystanders to see – as it was in the original. Theologically, the process of identifying Christ with indigenous suffering is an appropriately disturbing, destabilising act. The movement and the invitation to participation added to the personal engagement.

Seven Sites, Seven Words is an event that needs to be experienced by all Anglo-Australians.

We lift up our livers to the Lord: the richness of culture crossing

“There’s a PhD in this moment.”

On Monday I found myself crossing cultures. The occasion was a visit to a gathering of local Kaurna speakers at the University of Adelaide. The reason was that I was wanting to explore, in our College worship, the use of language indigenous to the First Peoples of the Adelaide plains, as a way of honouring those on whose land the College meets. (I’ve described how this came about here). There is also the national tri-ennial Uniting Church Assembly happening in Adelaide mid-year, so what might it look like to use indigenous language as part of that event?

So I trotted along, with some key phrases from one of the most common Uniting in Worship communion service. Phrases like –

The peace of the Lord be always with you: And also with you
The Lord be with you: And also with you
Lift up your hearts:We lift them to the Lord
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God: It is right to give our thanks and praise

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.

And here was some of the the discussion.

The Lord. Well there is no word for Lord in the Kaurna language. The concept is foreign. Kaurna has a word like Ihowa. But that is a transliteration of what the early missionaries said. So it’s still, really an Anglo-Australian word. We also have a word for captain. But that was often used to related to the person who sailed the boats. (Do you want the word of the person who brought the colonisers to our shores to be linked with God?)

Kaurna does have a word of respect for an elder brother. And I know from my reading in global theology that Jesus as the elder brother is used in African theology. It is a lovely image, full of relationships and of Jesus humanity. But I’m also thinking about the Arian controversy – calling Jesus “Son” suggesting he is a lower state of being than God, and thus misrepresenting the Christian understanding of Trinity.

The Lord be with you: And also with you. Is it plural or singular? In English the word captures both. But not in Kaurna. Further complication is that it depends who says it in English. If the presider says it to all, then it is plural. But if the congregation then greet each other with the same phrase, it is singular, isn’t it!

It was at this point that one of those present got up and started taking pictures. “This moment needs to be recorded” he said after. “This is historic. There’s a PhD in this!”

Lift up your hearts. Well, in Kaurna culture, the centre of the person is their liver, not the heart. So, can we say “Lift up your livers.”

Let us give thanks. Well, thanks is not a concept in Kaurna culture. Why should you thank someone for something that just is? If you believe God is Creator, then of course the Creator will be giving life. So why do you need to say thanks for what, is, just, well, is?

And as we got up to leave, the best question of all. “You are aware that our language is 40,000 years old, while your understanding of Christianity is based on a person who lived 2,000 years ago. So how will you, in your communion respect this? Which of course links with the Uniting Church Preamble (“The First Peoples had already encountered the Creator God before the arrival of the colonisers; the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law, custom and ceremony. Paragraph 3).

I left with my head reeling and the adrenaline flowing. In the space of 60 minutes I’ve been internally sifting ways of knowing and being human, how to understand Trinity and theologies of revelation. Simply because I asked some questions across cultures, found myself in spaces not my own. “There’s a PhD in this moment.”

There certainly is.

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?”

fantastic resources for rural mission

On Friday I’m speaking to Uniting Church folk from rural South Australia. Being a townie, it’s meant a morning of preparation, including working my way through a journal called Rural Theology.

It is a goldmine.

For example, David Walker, “The Social significance of Harvest Festivals in the countryside: an empirical enquiry among those who attend,” Rural Theology 7 (1), 3-16, 2009 researched Harvest Festivals at 27 churches. He found that 16% were visitors and concluded that “Harvest still reaches out beyond the locality of the congregation.”

Another example, Leslie J Francis and Sue Pegg, “Psychological type profile of volunteer workers in a rural Christian charity shop” Rural Theology 5 (1), 53-56, 2007. While church services are more likely to cater for introverts, when a rural church began an opportunity shop, 27 of the volunteers were extroverts, while 3 were introverts. Thus “rural Christian charity shops … extend the range of people in contact with the Christian gospel.” (Francis and Pegg, 55)

Another example, Sue Pegg and Lewis Burton, “Local Festivals in two Pennine villages: the reactions of the local Methodist church congregations.” Rural Theology 4 (1), 11-22, 2006, explore secular local festivals and conclude

“Five main themes emerge from this study of two Pennine villages which may have wider implications for rural ministry. First, local secular festivals provide evangelistic opportunities for local churches. Second, traditional attitudes and practices can prevent churches making the most of such evangelistic opportunities. Third, some discernment is required as not all secular festivals are equally compatible with Christian values and expectations. Fourth, with open and welcoming attitudes built between the church and the village community at festival time, benefits for both church and village can ensue. Fifth, festivals enable the church to be perceived as an integral part of village life, rather than something apart, if the opportunities created by festivals are securely grasped.” (21)

This is not theories about what could be done, but actual data on people who attend harvest festivals and volunteer and might participate into the wider community.