sustain:if:able kiwi

books resourcing my mission

On Tuesday with the Christchurch Presbyterians and on Thursday with the Dunedin Baptists I mentioned two books that have greatly resourced my mission and my thinking in the last six months.

A FIRST RESOURCE:
Richard Peace, conversion in the New Testament. This book looks at conversion in the New Testament. It helped me clarify how evangelism is both process and event. The highlight is a wonderful chapter on what evangelism-as-process might look like in a local church. This chapter resourced my thinking and preaching (here and here). This chapter then helped resource and spark an “evangelism-as-process” forum we had at Opawa in October. About twenty people at Opawa gathered to ask “what would evangelism-as-process look like at Opawa?” We prayed and discussed and dreamed. As a result, the previous Sunday at Opawa we launched five “birthing units.” Five people from the October forum wanted to run with their “evangelism-as-process” dream. We introduced:
: intermediate community programme
: family film night helping families find God at the movies
: spiritual resourcing through journalling and naming ceremonies
: third-age programme, offering financial, health, relational and spiritual resources
: grief work among children.
These are ideas dreamed up among our faith community, resourced by my preaching and leadership, largely due to conversion in the New Testament.

A SECOND RESOURCE:
James Kemp, gospel according to Dr Seuss. This book explores gospel themes that emerge from the stories of Dr Suess. It provides creative sparks for the Take a Kid to Faith services at Opawa. Take a Kid services involve all-ages exploring faith together. This book, gospel according to Dr Seuss, gives me ideas that both engage kids and suggestion significant gospel themes.

Excuse me while I scream

I had to send the following email yesterday:

Hmmm. I think a major oops has happened here. I have nursed a guilty conscience all this year cos you sent me an email after [the conference] asking for something written and I didn’t think I’d sent anything, hence my nursed guilt.

Now I understand. At the end of the conference I gave participants a copy of part of a chapter from my out of bounds church book. And it appears that you have typed in by hand, then edited that chapter (you will be the 3rd person to do it, since Zondervan did it twice also!) Big scream all around – either of laughter or pain, I am not sure.

The upshot …

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it is a beautiful book

Early this year I was asked to write an article for a German artist, Sieger Koder. I said yes, intrigued, but a bit cynical about what would result.

I got the result over the weekend. It is a beautiful book. It is hardcover and A4 size. It is full colour on glossy pages. It features the gorgeous art of Sieger Koder. It is written in German, apart from one chapter, written in English. That chapter is mine. I am very proud to be part of such a beautiful book. I love the fact that in the grace of God I get to write words for an artist in a foreign country. It’s a long way from a scrawny kid growing up in a jungle in Papua New Guinea.

For more on the book go here. For a summary of the article, go here.

in heaven

A while ago I was given a financial gift – a thankyou for an act, given as a prayer for my inner renewal. Some of it went on a Thomas Merton journal. And some of it nearly went on this; View image – I mean the beautiful images, the narratives of creativity.

But the price. I put it down.

This week I saw it at a local bookshop. It was a Monday. A day off, but my 3rd day off in the month of May that would be interrupted by work in the evening. The images, the narratives of creativity, a book that I could pour over, could be renewed by. And reduced in price.

It’s mine now. I’m taking away tonight for a long weekend of holiday.

blogging the author

Being a writer who both blogs and publishes has lots of tensions.
: If I write stuff and it’s months before it’s published, has my thinking moved on?
: If I write stuff on my blog, will people rip it off before it is published?
: If I write stuff on my blog, will people read the book and think, “Oh, read that before”?
: If I write stuff on my blog, will people comment and nuance and enhance my thinking? This is great, but will they then sue the book/publisher/me for how their thoughts have shaped my thoughts.
Such are some of the tensions of being caught between two medium.

At the same time, I’m currently experiencing some real joy being between two mediums. I set up a separate out of bounds church book blog. It’s a bit tricky because I can’t totally separate the two. After all, the emergentkiwi is the author of The out of bounds church? book. But I didn’t want this blog becoming choked by my book stuff, or seeming like an info-mercial. And I wanted a book blog rather than a book website, because a quick surf showed me book websites with forums that are broken, with information that is out of date and with very little author presence.

So I responded to a review yesterday and this comment appeared; PS- I love that I get to interact with the author of a book I’ve read! The ability to discuss it makes the book even more exciting. It’s a thrill for them. And its also a thrill for me because it sharpens my writing and thinking, if there is a next time.

Now perhaps, this is just because I’m a “little” author and have only a “little” bit of feedback. (And yes, I still have not responded yet to all the emails and comments I have received.) Who knows. That’s the future. For today, I’m enjoying the way that a book blog allows a book to become more of a conversation.

of fuller, theology and story

Note to self: Further to here
“Narrative theology” is not the same thing as “telling affecting stories.” The narrative dimension of theological truth may involve many different things, but it still involves questions of truth that engage more than simply the heart-rending experiences of the aggrieved. Whatever we say about theological truth, we need to connect those claims with the truth that the church has received over the centuries, with Scripture, in a way that constitutes a satisfactorily reasonable argument.

Link

untitled

I had a young guy poke his head in the door yesterday and tell me that he and his brother want to plant a church among the poor in the city and how helpful my out of bounds? book was. Such practical missionary exploration sort of makes the angst of writing all worthwhile really.

All of this to say, that I took the plunge today and submitted a 2nd book proposal to my wonderful (grease, grease:)) publishing company.

author purgatory

I visited Manna Book shop today, to work on details for a local, Christchurch book launch of my new book. On the way out the door, I was shown the specials table. “That’s where the books that die end up.” I move to my car contemplating author purgatory, the slow wait before that dreadful day when you see your book remaindered for $3.

postmodern lenten resources: It’s pilgrimage with Jesus, Jim, but not as we know it

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of 40 days walking with Christ toward Easter. Lent often disappears behind a religious cloak. It needs to be re-habiliated into the culture.

I have started Faith Odyssesy: A Journey Through Lent, by Richard Burridge.

(The UK cover, above, looks heaps better than the US cover as shown on Amazon)

Burridge’s book offers a daily reading through the eyes of Science Fiction and popular culture. “It’s pilgrimage with Jesus, Jim, but not as we know it.”

when a missionary DJ reads a DJ

wee beautiful pict might read my book. He writes: Steve’s stuff is always accessable – well thought through, incarnation-friendly and dead readable, and then decides he might read the book!

Might! There’s a story in their about him … about a latte on an Edinburgh corner … each chapter of the book starts with a postcard, of me meeting with an emerging church/alt.worship group somewhere in the world … and as I do a global tour, I then reflect on the implications for God, church, life …

when dreams may come…

I have just had a sermon I preached at Opawa Baptist a few weeks ago accepted for publication.

The book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, sought to push forward some thinking on the atonement. It argued, very rightly, that Evangelicals have limited the atonement and thus made the significance cross smaller, more individual, less wholistic, than it really is. The book was academic and naturally raised the “so-what” and “how-to” question. This has lead to work on a follow-up volume, Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross, a practical how-to. By a series of coincidences I am now involved.

The move to Opawa Baptist/BNCZ had the potential to keep me so busy, that I would not get as much time to write. I have been warned already that it would “hamper my writing progress.”

So I am pinching myself, because something I have done at Opawa has in fact helped, not hampered, my writing progress. It is like God is grinning. As I trusted and got on with doing what I sensed was right in this season of my life, God has opened up doors and provided opportunities to not just pastor and train, but to write.

And what’s more, to write in an integrated way, a way that is close to my heart, a way that bridges gap between theory and practice, thinking and the community of God.

And as a sideline, it is encouraging to know that my preaching at Opawa is at some sort of level that it gets included in a written publication.

book of the month: the book of tobias

The Book of Tobias, by Sylvie Germain, is a delightful read. The novel follows the life of a family through the European 20th century, dealing with death, migration and love. It does justice to the original Apocrypahal Book of Tobit, in which an angel assists a doomed woman and a beaten man to find love. This includes the delight of supernatural touching our world, and the struggles of being Jewish in an exilic context.

Sylvie is a superb writer, evocative and spacious, dripping with well-timed metaphor. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good writing, to anyone who faces the task of contemporising ancient texts or to anyone who wants to reflect upon life, suffering, the divine and love.

book of the month: the heartbreaker

Confession. I love Susan Howatch. Her latest novel, The Heartbreaker, continues my affair of the heart. Sure it’s long. Sure it’s not a thriller. But I’d buy it because
1 – It’s fiction. And in the world of my imagination is where God most often sandbags me.
2 – It offers a superb contemporary contextualisation of Luke 15
3 – It offers some very interesting insights on sexuality, particularly the complexities around homosexuality. This book will satisfy neither liberal or fundamentalist, but it might make both more sensitive and less dogmatic.
4 – It offers a pastoral model of the “long haul”, in which God works deeply through sustained listening, committed Christian behaviours and the desire for sustained integrated lives.

If your world includes people or ministry, then reading Howatch will be time well spent.

Liquid church

Take liquid church by Pete Ward. Road test it by asking 30 students from a wide variety of backgrounds, spiritualities and ethnic backgrounds to write a critical review. Hone this reflection by asking them to debate the moot; Liquid Church will drown the Church. In the process the book has to preform a number of road tests.

(Note that these comments are my reflections on the class interaction and feedback and are in no way a comment on any individual student’s work.)

Naming Test: Many students felt the book named

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