sustain:if:able kiwi

being spiritual, being reflective, being emerging

Three excellent learning opportunities coming up at Uniting College next week.

Spirituality 2 go with Olive Fleming Drane. 
Thursday, 17 November, 9:30-3:30. This informative day will explore the spiritual in everyday life and daily routines as opportunity for divine encounter. It will offer input, examples and space to explore. Topics include – The craft of ritual, Transitions, Ordinary time, Extraordinary time.


Trends in theology: experience, Scripture in practical theology with John Drane
, Thursday 17 November, 1:30-3:00. This will explore what is often a weakness in theology and practice, the way Scripture is brought to bear, to illumine, challenge, even reframe, human experience.

Reformed, Reforming, Emerging, Experimenting: Insights from the church emerging in Scotland with John Drane. This will explore fresh expressions of church on the edges of the Church of Scotland, and outline the opportunities and challenges for being church today. Given historical links between the Church of Scotland and Uniting Church, this should be of particular interest.

John Drane and Olive Fleming Drane are both Fellow’s of St John’s College, Durham, adjunct faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary and are becoming Chaplain at International Christian College in Glasgow, Scotland. They are well known and appreciated as writers, educators and creative thinkers on mission.

Being spiritual, being reflective, being emerging – all themes and conversations central to who we are and are becoming. Or from our logo design

“The logo design speaks of the different journeys people take in their growth in discipleship and service. At key points these converge. That convergence sometimes involves the educational programs of Uniting College. So the pathways converge and then disperse, as people continue their journeys in mission. The cross at the centre of the logo is not just there as a matter of form, but as a real commitment, as Uniting College is consciously Christ-centred.”

For more information on any of these, contact me: steve dot taylor at flinders dot edu dot au

UK adventures 6 – cliff college, emerging and fresh?

I’m at the lovely Cliff College. The views are fabulous and there are some lovely trees to hug. I’m here for two things.

First, to input into their Master of Mission programme, in particular their Emerging Church stream. Which has produced a fairly healthy twitter stream of folk debating how to define emerging church cf fresh expressions. Obviously quite a contested field in this part of the world!

I have gone with a world/God/church formulation; which provides a way to frame the Gibbs and Bolger definition –

communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures (Emerging Churches, 33).

I am then taking a mission perspective on that, using the six paradigms of mission in David Bosch’s Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology Series). I will animate that with six mission stories, ways that the world/God/church formulation has been made concrete in history. Which I hope will generate some real mission thinking around “emerging.”

The second reason I am here is to help kick of their new PhD in Missiology. This sounds an exciting development, a professional research degree in mission and to their first cohort, I’ll be offering them some of my recent research. More on that tomorrow. For now, I must pop outside once again and enjoy sun, views, trees. With a cup of tea!

house churches are about a new vision not a new form of church

I’ve spent a wet, winter’s day reading. It is one of the ways I am renewed – reading – and especially reading theology. (Wierd I know, but there’s something about reading slowly and deeply and thoughtfully that I found renewing.)

Here’s some gems from the conclusion to Luke: The Elite Evangelist by Karl Allen Kuhn (A book I wanted to read, given how much time I spent talking to groups about both Luke 1:39-45 and Luke 10:1-12). In a section titled “Turning the world upside down” Karl Kuhn notes 15 ways in which the theme of social and economic reversal is manifested in Luke-Acts. This includes house churches and ministry.

To us, the household churches and their economy may seem rather quaint, even naive, but they constitute a striking rejection of the Roman and Judean economies, in which redistribution of resources was based on social location and power, not need. The practices of the early believers also set aside the engrained cultural notion of limited good. (89)

Given that there is a lot of talk in emerging church/fresh expressions about the potential place of house churches, its fascinating to see them framed not as a new form of church but as a different way of being in relationship in the world. In other words, this is not about moving the deck chairs, but about living in ways that challenge the economic and social values of our culture.

Here’s a second quote, in which the new vision is limited not to where and how ministry happens, but also to who does the ministry.

Luke repeatedly makes it clear that the authority to proclaim the mysteries of God resides not in a select few, but in an ever-expanding group of ministers and eyewitnesses … Luke alone among the evangelists pairs and follows the sending out of the Twelve (Luke 9) with the sending out of seventy (Luke 10), the latter receiving the same commission and authority as the Twelve … Similarly, in Acts the ministry of the Twelve is soon overshadowed by those outside the original apostolic circle. (90, 1)

Which is a point I repeatedly make when talking about new forms of church/fresh expressions. And was certainly our experience at Opawa, the potential of gathering lay teams of 3-5 folk to pursue mission and ministry through the creation of fresh expressions.

landslide victory for fresh expressions in Australian churches

Recent results indicate a stunning mandate for change in the Australian church climate.

Some 66% of church attenders agreed that the traditional established models of church life must change to better connect with the wider Australian community (only 11% disagree).

For an even larger majority, this was personal. 82% claimed that they would support the development of new initiatives in ministry and mission in their church (3% disagreed).

This is a stunning mandate for change. It should encourage every church minister, and every church leader, to consider how they provide responsive leadership, seeing to establish a fresh expression or new initiative in their church in the next years.

Update: Some interesting pushback over at Hamo’s blog.

(Data from the Innovation data from the 2006 National Church Life Survey.)

local church in mission. starts practically here

These represent the next step in a local church practical mission project I’m involved in – postcards – given out to the church this Sunday. The front, including google map of the community,

And on the back, four questions to consider, with plenty of blank space to write responses

Back in January I conducted a seminar, in which I suggested that in our contemporary world, a theology of mission must begin with two ears. To make that practical, I suggested a range of exercises

• Listening project one – some growth questions to ask selected individuals
• Listening project two – observation walks around the community
• Listening project three – visual observation of the community, involving creating photo exhibits
• Listening project four – some Appreciative inquiry questions

(for more see here).

The church decided to make this part of their Lenten process. People were encouraged to choose one exercise and, with joy, seek to put it into practice leading up to Easter. During Lent, when the church gathered, stories were told, including a number of folk putting their listening project 3, the visual observation, up on the screen during worship courtesy of PPT. Very cool.

So with Easter approaching, it’s time for the next step. The postcards are intended to help with the bottom nature of this project. This is not about a select group or the leaders, but the whole church who’ve been invited into mission with their ears. Now it’s the whole church, any and all, given a postcard and invited to record what happened.

These will be collated up and hopefully, at Pentecost, the results will be shared. And the question asked: given what we, all, have heard, how then might we need to act?

In working on this over the week, I realised that this is yet another example of church resourcing both scattered and gathered.

I’ve blogged about this a number of times over the last month, the need for church practically in how it shapes it life to be affirming God at work when the church gathers and God at work when the church scatters

• a general introduction here
• a specific pattern here
• a worship treat here

This is a 4th example, in which the postcards affirm the church as both scattered, any and all engaged in practical listening, and gathered, being collected, collated, gathered as next steps in mission.

A Uniting Church, an emerging church? updated with more resources

Here is the introduction:

In May, I was privileged to participate, as the Norman and Mary Miller Lecturer, in the 28th gathering of the Queensland Synod. The opening worship was a highlight, a moving expression of the richness and diversity of The Uniting Church in Australia today.

The worship began with an indigenous cleansing ceremony, a welcome to country and the entry of diverse Uniting Church congregations. All were in traditional dress, singing and dancing as an expression of their unique culture. Each of the four Bible readings was given in a different language, while the Prayers of the people were enriched by the use of a conch shell. The communion table, in the shape of a boomerang, was draped in rich fabrics, in the colours of the rainbow and decorated with baskets of local produce. Celebration of communion included the Great Thanksgiving as a prayer of call and response that originated in Kenya. The prayer for the Bread originated in the Church of South India, the Gloria was a sung response using a chant from the Taize community in France while other words from Augustine of Hippo were also utilised.

It was a rich and splendid liturgical feast. At the risk of being facetious, but in order to make a point that is both obvious, yet important, let me make the following observation: that the worship bore little relationship to the early church.

Let me explain.

Here is the conclusion:

The emerging church invites a global, missional theology. It is not a Western manifestation, a product of books in the USA or fresh expressions in the United Kingdom.

Rather, it is a response to the impulse of the Spirit, at Pentecost, throughout church history and across the expanse of global culture.

This is the conclusion to an article I wrote last year. I try to argue that the best way to appreciate the emerging church is by placing it within global mission. I explore a Uniting church communion, and 20th century developments in both church and global mission history.

Titled “A Uniting Church, an emerging church?” it was published in Cross Purposes, a journal to encourage and support theological dialogue. If you want to read the full article, it has just become available online here, by scrolling down to page 3.

Updated: Jonny Baker found my article “delightful” and in email conversation we began discussing the books that are shaping our thinking in terms of seeing church in the context of God’s global mission. Here is what we noted

Kirsteen Kim, Joining in with the Spirit (who we’ve got booked to teach an intensive here in Adelaide on Spirit and mission in July 2012).

Bevans and Schroder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today

Chris Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative

Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture

Dana Roberts, Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion

David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission

Gerard Arbuckle, Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership

Stanley Skreslet, Picturing Christian Witness: New Testament Images of Disciples in Mission

Since this Uniting Church, an emerging church? article, I have developed my thinking further. This is due to appear in an article titled Evaluating Birth narratives: A Missiological Conversation with Fresh Expressions, due out any time soon with Anvil. Here’s part of the conclusion:

Third, in reflecting on my own attempts to communicate Fresh Expressions to church leaders in Australasia, something happens when the conversation is started with an ecclesiology of “birth narratives”, rather than with the marks of the church. Telling the stories of Brendan the Navigator or of Alexandre de Rhodes pioneer leadership in Vietnam in the 1600s, offers an ecclesiology that values pioneering, risk, and that cannot avoid the constant interplay between faith and culture. Missiology becomes entwined with ecclesiology.

Does this mean that Fresh Expressions might be better served by employing the phrase “Fresh Expressions of mission”, rather than “Fresh Expressions of church”? A number of benefits might occur. Firstly, in honouring the global work of the Missio Dei. Secondly, in avoiding of the Western imaginary that is evoked in the word “church.” Thirdly, in the production of a set of ecclesiological criteria – potential, pioneering, risky, engaged with culture – that are more missiologically generative for the growth and development, which includes evaluation, of Fresh Expressions?

Fourth, a birthing ecclesiolgy might more directly link ecclesiology with the narratives of the birth of the church that arose after the Resurrection. One schema is provided by Stanley Skreslet, who offers five New Testament images of mission, linked with mission history. The images are those of announcing good news, sharing Christ with friends, interpreting the gospel; shepherding; building and planting.

One example provided by Skreslet is the Gladzor Gospels, in which the woman at the Well is portrayed as sharing with her neighbours, one of whom wears a Mongolian hat. And so a global mission history offers evaluative criteria that include whether Fresh Expressions expect to exist in mission only for their own cultural sub-group, or whether they are have eyes open to a world with multi-cultural neighbours.

Another example is the exploration by Skreslet of the theme of announcing good news. Skreslet notes that a third of the book of Acts is public speeches and explores how all are uniquely contextual. And so this early church birthing narrative offers evaluative criteria including whether a Fresh Expressions is engaged in the interplay between faith and culture.

Such might be the possibilities generated by the use of the term “Fresh Expressions of mission”, rather than “Fresh Expressions of church.”

When Fresh expressions suddenly made me claustrophobic

It’s Lent. A time to focus on Christ and what it means to live as Christ followers. So I’ve started to tuck into Rooted in Jesus Christ: Towards a Radical Ecclesiology. Daniel is a younger leader, born in Spain, studied in United States, now back in Europe working with migrants. It’s a rich and fertile bed for theological reflection.

A few pages in he discusses the place of martyrs for theology.

“In recent decades, liberation theology has become a theology of martyrdom. A number of bishops (the best known being Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, Bishop Enrique Angelelli in Argentina, and Bishop Juan Gerardi in Guatemala), various priests and nuns (including the six Jesuits of the Universidad Centro-americano Jose Simeon Canas in San Salvador), and thousands of catechists and members of base communities have been killed for their commitment to the gospel of liberation. These martyrs offer a witness to the meaning and implications of following Christ in a violent world, Their testimony is much needed to overcome the effects of a cultural context that emphasises comfort and tends to forget the anonymous victims of injustice.” (4)

Why martyrs only four pages into a book on Jesus today? Well he is arguing that these martyrs, not just one, but many, are one of the four key permanent contributions of liberation theology to the ongoing task of theological reflection. That you can’t think and act on Jesus without a struggle that is radical, so radical it might even be life-giving.

Suddenly some of the fresh expressions talk I’ve been part of began to feel claustrophobic. I couldn’t think of many martyrs, although I can think of hours spent arguing about American authors, or the use or otherwise of pop culture, or candles, in worship.

Recently I reflected that mission is a 3D triangle. It needs to include

• words, the talking of the Jesus story
• deeds, the practical helps of listening well, of offering mercy, of seeking justice
• prayer, whether in monastic patterns of faithful prayer, or of worship performed in representation of a hurting world, or in “power evangelism” in which the sick are prayed for
• societal rebuilding in which Christians join with Nehemiah in rebuilding broken walls, follow Daniel who gave himself to just administration, echo Dueteronomy and seek to build cities of refuge

Fresh expressions claims to be about mission. But it runs the danger of becoming a church-centric, worship-focused program.

The feelings of claustrophobia lifted as I read on. Daniel offers a few critiques of liberation theology. One is that the use of praxis was too narrow. Praxis is not only political – it is also about ordinary, daily life, the real practices and lives of the people, “the whole reality as it really is, not as we would like it to be.” (7) In Australia this might not be matyrdom, but it is the way we eat, it is the way we shop, it is how we culture-make.

This offers a generative moment for fresh expressions. Daniel continues;

“there is a significant ecclesial role in the cause of people’s liberation … we need to strengthen Christian identity – including spirituality, liturgical life, and a factual sense of belonging.” (10)

In other words, Fresh expressions is vital as it encourages a ecclesial role that is contextual for First-world cultures. Fresh expressions remains essential as it seeks to nourish Christian identity in ways that make sense for 21st century disciples.

Fresh expressions is claustrophobic if the goal is fresh expressions. It is full of potential if the hope is cultural transformation in an alignment with God’s inbreaking Kingdom.

But what of where I started? What is the place of martyrs in Fresh expressions? Perhaps in the reminder of a life of love lived freely and radically, the invitation to love our enemies, not as an option for mature Christians who have their act together, but as a core of discipleship.

A radical Lenten following of Jesus?

can mission be embedded into the worship DNA? a worship treat

Scattered and gathered, outward and inward, sending and receiving, mission and worship – I have been pondering the relationships for the last few weeks.

• I had a general introduction – can mission be embedded into the worship DNA – here.
• I had a followup – a possible worship pattern – here.

Today in chapel we trialled a very practical beginning. We began outdoors (scattered). We invited people to use their outside environment as the starting point for reflection. For 10 minutes, to wander. And in particular to consider

• bitumen – what has been hard?
• sky – where have we found joy?
• windows – who, what, have we walked past?
• grass – what of God’s breath in creation have we missed?

We gave out a card as an aid (very simple, used an apple Pages business template and just rolled text and picture in).

And then we gathered to continue in worship – to hear Scripture, to have communion, to pray for God’s world, before being benedicted back into the places of bitumen, sky, windows and grass.

I loved seeing people wander, reflecting on God in our scatteredness and then having that woven into our gathering. So there you are, some thinking about mission and worship, a possible worship pattern and now here, a practical worship treat that might encourage and inspire you to do better.

Do let me know how you improve it 🙂

mission made practical

This is a practical mission story. As a Taylor family, we were all pretty upset about the Feb 22 Christchurch earthquake.

In our feelings of sadness, one of the family had an idea. What about having a casuals day at school? What about asking if the whole school could swap uniforms for casual clothes, complete with a gold coin donation to help with earthquake relief in Christchurch?

A feeling. That needed a bit of courage. First an email to the school leadership – explaining the idea and making the request.

Then more courage. Because of the request – would you explain your idea to the class and seek to win their support?

And then the response, permission for the school to have a casuals day. With money raised going to Christchurch. And all the kids forming a sign on the playing fields – CHRISTCHURCH.

Which happened last week.

A feeling of sadness. Made practical with courage. A child providing caring and practical leadership in mission.

For more in mission made practical in a quakezone, go here.

colour my feelings: how the feelings of Jesus shape the mission of God

Updated: This post continues to grow. The relationship between feelings, colour and the mission of God are being developed further at a talk I am giving, May 13, Friday evening, at Grow and Go 2011.

What colour is

• sorrow?
• crying?
• radical love?
• anger?
• compassion?

According to Matthew Elliott

“The theologies of the New Testament, as we have seen, do not do a good job in incorporating emotion into their framework. As it is in secular ethics, in New Testament ethics and theology emotion is often belittled, trivialized or ignored.” (Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament 256).

According to adolescent psychologists, Haviland-Jones, Gebelt and Stapley

“We usually think of learning how not to be emotional rather than whether or not emotions are being refined and transformed to mature forms.”

In the last month my home town of Christchurch has been trashed by an earthquake, while Japan has gone radioactive and Libya has become a warzone. In response, I’ve been reading the Gospels, looking for the feelings of Jesus, wondering what I might learn from God who experienced sorrow, crying, radical love, anger, compassion.

And I’ve become more and more intrigued by how the feelings of Jesus shaped his mission, and the implications for how the 21st century church needs to feel, think and act.

Faithful feelings: how the feelings of Jesus shape the mission of God.

Which I will be preaching on tomorrow, Sunday March 27, 6 pm at Adelaide West Uniting. And exploring in more depth a keynote address at Grow and Go weekend, May 13-15, at Uniting College.

Hence my question, what colour is

• sorrow?
• crying?
• radical love?
• anger?
• compassion?

can mission be embedded into the worship DNA? a 2nd proposal

This is a further post on the topic: can mission be embedded into the worship DNA? a proposal.

In an ideal world, worship moves as a spiral between gathered and scattered, scattered and gathered.

I imagine two circles. Some worship I experience is simply gathered – you go round and round in a circle with no evidence that life outside Sunday, outside the church building exists. Some worship I experience as simply scattered – the call to live in the world, as individual salt and light, with no connection to the people of God gathered. What I suggest is that the two circles – gathered and scattered – overlap, with a continuous flow.

Whether you start with gathered, and then are sent into the world to be the hands and feet of Jesus, or whether you find yourself the hands and feet of Jesus and return to share those stories with the community of God, the hope is a rhythm in which the people of God gather to scatter, scatter to gather.

In my first proposal I sketched a way that over time, over a month, a community might structure itself to embody this flow between gathered and scattered.

In this second proposal, I suggest a way this could happen weekly. This is based on deciding that the places we are salt and light are the primary places in which we are Christian. In other words, to be Christian is to be scattered.

Then, when we gather, we want the stories of us being in scattered in mission, of us being the hands and feet of Jesus, to shape our gathered worship.

The suggestion is that we use the standard pattern of worship

• Call to worship
• Thanksgiving
• Confession
• Word – hearing
• Word – engaging
• Communion
• Prayers for the world
• Benediction

and invite the focus to be on the community sharing stories that are arising from our scatteredness. In other words – what have we seen that makes us thankful? what have we experienced that sends us to confession? what in our scattered context makes the Word alive among us? what from the newspapers is causing us to pray?

When people gather, worship moves through this regular pattern. People simply share the stories. This could be impromptu, or it could be decided prior, or it could be a mix of both. Some sort of shared words could be used to nest individual stories in the work of the worshipping community. For example, after each thanks story is shared, then everyone together says – Thanks be to God. Or words from the Lectionary Psalm are read together after stories for confession have been shared.

It will probably mean less of a need for a worship leader as song leader (although songs could still be sung) and more of a need for worship leader as curator – a person to welcome, enact the call to worship, offer the benedict, who make sure enviroment works, and to link, where necessary between the segments. (Mark Pierson’s The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader has more on worship leader as curator.)

This second proposal is using the established gathered worship liturgy of the church, but is making the focus of gathered worship the stories from the scattered lives-in-mission. It is refusing to let worship be about gathering, nor letting scattering have no communal resourcing. Rather it is “lightening” existing gathered worship by orientating it around the stories of the people of God in life.

can mission be embedded into the worship DNA? a proposal

Updated: For a second proposal, see can mission be embedded into the worship DNA? a 2nd proposal.

Updated: to be clear, I’d not for a moment suggesting this for a whole existing congregation. Best way to kill an idea is to expect everyone to agree! With this, I’m wanting to suggest an experiment, to invite a number of folk to try for a set period of time and then to sit back and reflect on the implications.

Here is the logic of some current thinking.

1. Faith is caught, not taught. Thus the Christianity we are offering is focused on worship, not on mission. The energy for being Christian today (what folk see, what people are paid for) is concentrated on the invitation to gather and to worship, not to scatter in God’s sending name.

2. This makes mission the extra, the stuff we do after the benediction and outside the worship service.

3. Mission is a multi-faceted way of being God’s hand and feet in the world. It includes the individual relationships we have with those beyond the community of faith. It also must include corporate acts in which the people of God together are the body of Christ.

4. We live in a time poor society. This means that some prioritisation must happen. Current Western church attendance patterns include more and more folk attending fortnightly. In other words, weekly is hard enough, let alone saying to folk – to be part of us weekly involves both gathered worship and mission.

5. Churches when they gather do some mission. This involves pray for others. It also involves giving financially. However if we are honest, most of this giving is funneled into more worship, not into mission.

6. Further, it takes levels of skills I rarely see to integrate mission into all of gathered worship – thanks, hearing the Word, confession, communion. The Uniting church worship recommends the worship includes a Word of Mission, but one is more likely to see a Kiwi than find this wonderful treasure.

So how can we embed mission into the DNA of the worshipping life of the church? Since this blog has many purposes, one of which includes trying out ideas, flying kites, here’s a suggestion, that we offer the following pattern for church.

Week one – gather together to give thanks, name sin, engage the Jesus story, hold the world before God ie gathered worship.

Week two – scatter – each is encouraged in this week to simply connect with friends and family who are not yet Christian, to pursue individual redemptive relationships.

Week three – gather – a simple gathered worship service focused around communion, storytelling of the Jesus story and prayer for relationships.

Week four – gather but only in order to do a combined mission project. People come together to plant trees, feed the homeless, advocate for justice, plan community events.

In this pattern, all the important facets of gathered worship are present, albiet monthly, rather than weekly. What is changed is that mission – both individual and corporate – is now embedded into the rhythm of the gathered communion.

I would have resisted such a pattern 10 years ago, when I use to argue vehemently for regular weekly patterns. My thinking 10 years ago was that those on the fringe, or visitors, might not be able to connect with this changing pattern. And so they might turn up to find the church “in mission”, which would be cool, but also pretty inhospitable. But 10 years ago was before we had cell phones, websites, social media. These now allow a whole range of ways for people to keep connected with the life of a community.

So what do you think? Would such a project allow the life of a church to be more aligned around the important impulses of worship and mission, gathering and sending? What might be lost?

defining fresh expressions: a local pastor speaks

I sat with a pastoral friend the other day. We were shooting the breeze – talking funerals and spiritual retreats – as pastoral folk do!

And he suddenly talked about a new initiative with families that was happening in the church. And he made what I think is on the best definitions of fresh expressions I’ve heard in a long time.

I think its about people being together, doing stuff around faith and
relationships and something emerging from that, rather than simply a
program.

mission begins with two ears

Written for a local church newsletter, and for a new distance course I’m writing for Semester 2 – Equipping in Christian mission.

“Sorry, I wasn’t listening.” Sadly, it’s a comment that I hear a bit too much from my family at the moment! Yet we all know what happens when we take time to listen.

In December I met with the leaders of a local church to talk about mission. They felt stuck, trapped, ineffective, out of touch.

Mention the word mission and images come to mind: perhaps sending people overseas or trying to recruit people to attend church. I suggested to this leadership team that in the 21st century, mission starts in neither of these ways. Instead, it starts by listening.

Why listen? First, it is common courtesy which people appreciate. It shows they are valued, important, recognised as unique. Second, our world is changing. So listening helps us keep up with that change. Third, we have preconceptions. So listening ensures we start with the needs of others rather than our prejudices.

How to listen? I wanted to be practical, so I suggested a number of different ways this church could listen – take photos, conduct neighbourhood walks, practise appreciative inquiry, interview people. Different strokes for different folks. These were introduced at a seminar in January.

What happens when we listen? Two stories might help. The first is from New Zealand. The church I used to pastor walked the streets of our community at Pentecost. Our task was to listen to the history of the community. One year, as we listened, someone mentioned that a community group needed funding for a new heater (this was Christchurch in winter after all!). We prayed. The next week we heard our prayer had been answered. Listening helped us know what to pray. And it strengthened our relationship with our neighbours.

The second is a story from Australia (told in “God Next Door”). Jane moved to Melbourne with two kids. She was struck by how empty her suburb felt during the week and the lack of interaction outside the school gate. Rather than complain, she placed a note in her local school newsletter, inviting other parents to meet at the playground on a Wednesday on the way home from school. Within a month, 20 or 30 parents were attending. For Jane, “There’s this whole new level of interaction in the neighbourhood that just wasn’t there before.” A new initiative in the community, that began with listening.

There is a lot more to mission that listening. But it’s an important, and respectful, place to start.