sustain:if:able kiwi

missional impotence

postmodern culture=postmodern cultures. John Drane notes
: desperate poor
: hedonists
: traditionalists
: spiritual searchers
: corporate achievers
: secularists
: apathetic
So perhaps Hillsong exists as a form of contextualisation among corporate achievers?

To do so would be to affirm it, while at the same time encouraging mission innovation among the plurality of cultures. It is just so frustrating when its apparent numerical success is used to discourage other mission innovation.

In the movie Super Size Me, excessive consumption leads to a loss of sex drive and muscular vigor for the filmaker, Martin Spurlock. It seems that same thing is happenning with ecclesiological and denominational ponderings; that the drive to up-size in fact leads to a slackening in reproductive vigor.

emerging church = hillsong?

The leader of our Baptist family of churches here in New Zealand has just returned from the UK. He writes in our Denominational magazine of a weekend in London, and of going to Hillsong where he believed he “caught a glimpse of the future church.” He was very impressed by six services with people “queuing up for a hundred metres down the road waiting to get in.”

He then writes:
“There are lots of pundits and theoreticians on the emerging church, but when you count the fruit of their strategies you could be forgiven for wondering if they’re as onto it as they claim to be. Is it true that most supposed experts on the emerging generation come from small niche-market churches with remarkably few transformed lives? Is it not also true that the largest Gen X church in the United States is Saddleback … I got the unmistakable impression that Hillsong in London was actually attracting lots of young adults -maybe they have something to teach us about how we might do it here.”

So this is the Denominational climate of vigorous missional critique and affirmation within which I work. As I ponder a response, I’d be interested in any more grounded UK comments on Hillsong London and what it might teach us about the future of the church?

first draft emerging church 101

First draft :: weekend block course :: Bible College of New Zealand :: 3rd term of 2005.
This course is designed to introduce people to ministry in a postmodern context. It will use selected examples of contemporary Christian exploration; specifically the emerging church as a loose, umbrella term for a range of new forms of church and ways of being Christian; including worship innovation, cyber church and new forms of community. Such real life experimentation will be critically examined in light of the Christian tradition. This weaving together of life with a thinking faith will enhance a student’s ability to follow Jesus today.

Course text :: Taylor’s The out-of-bounds church? learning to create communities of faith in a culture of change.

I am in Wellington for the day, meeting with a few people about a possible New Zealand wide emerging church conference mid-May 2005. It looks a great day for flying.

enscribing ecclesiological identity in the unique crevasses of our sociological context

church is never ahistorical. to etch “be the church” as one’s ecclesiological slogan is to potentially deny the incarnation, a Jewish Christ walking among a Jewish people, cracking Jewish jokes and building a Jewish community.

For to “be the church” is to be embodied among particular people in the unique crevasses where God has placed us. Those unique crevasses might be called by sociological names: Jewish, early, African, Roman, Celtic, Gen X, postmodern, even emergent. Such names, such attention to the unique crevasses of one’s existence, need not be read as a defining label, but as an expression of Incarnation, a respecting of the unique contours of enscribed identity.

last days then left behind

Last day to pick up a limited edition A5 size copy of my PhD, A New Way of Being Church .. if not, then be left behind … A New Way of Being Church is a world first, an indepth academic exploration of how the emerging church responds to cultural change, asking the question; how effective is the emerging church as a postmodern expression of faith?

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xtreme ways

xtreme sports are a new cultural phenomenon; adventure racing, bungy jumping, white water rafting – a chance to take risks, to stretch and grow in the process.

I have seen, experienced and designed xtreme worship experiences – blocks of ice and hot coals as prayer, chardonnay bottles as acts of grace descending from the ceiling, naked flames. Alternative worship has mixed image and culture and brought us xtreme worship.

I have seen, experienced and sought for xtreme community – church as shared meal, community as the essence of Christian expression. Friends like Living Room and Al Creech have used relationships as the prolegomena to mission.

I want to see xtreme discipleship. In a world where the passion of Islam includes a willingness to take up one’s cross to death do us part, it is time for xtreme worship and extreme community to be entwined with xtreme discipleship. It is time for radical peacemaking and keen environmental concern and social justice to enter the regular praxis of the emerging church.

xtreme worship + xtreme community + xtreme discipleship = xtreme ways of the Kingdom of God

hacking the emerging church

We live in strange days, when an Anglican vicar suggests we leave church. There is much about church I struggle with. Yet I stay because church is a space and a resource to hack.

A hack as in an enthusiast who … through clever programming, pushes the system to its highest possible level of performance … a person who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about it.

Hacking has an ethic. It is not mischievious, but is based on … the ethic that all technical information should, in principle, be freely available to all and that destroying, altering, or moving data in a way that could cause injury or expense to others is always unethical

Thus an emerging church hack is about the attempt to create missional spaces; to seek to make the gospel freely available for all, rather than encrusted under layers of modernity, and ossified under centuries of tradition.

A hack does not intend to destroy or alter data. Thus a hack respects the riches of the past. But a hack recognises that church is not monolithic. Rather church is a contextual response of a group of people, uniquely working with the strands of Scripture and culture and tradition in their context. Thus a hack takes the rich strands of past data, and seeks to re-work them to maximize to a highest possible level.

In 2001 New Zealand dub band Salmonella Dub released Inside the Dubplates. In 2002 they gave their mix to 10 different DJ’s, who produced a new mix, titled Outside the Dubplates. Same elements, same number of songs, same song order, but the strands of bass and vocals remixed.

Church hackers won’t leave, despite the invitation. They will stay because they want to take what is inside the church’s dubplates and play it outside the dubplate. They want to take the gospel freedom beyond the centre of church and institution. It’s a missiology that might be hard to grasp at its deconstructive best, but at its constructive best its an adventure that gets me up in the mornings.

Please, despite the invitation, don’t leave. Keep hacking.

the future of the emerging church

The emerging church scene began in New Zealand in about 1994. This was the making waves period. Mike Riddell and Mark Pierson ran Parallel Universe – worship that was on and off the wall. Chardonnay descending from the ceiling, large gas flames at Pentecost. You get the idea; intense creativity and high multi-media. Mark and Mike ran seminars and conferences up and down New Zealand. Lots of agro. Lots of angst.

This was followed by a period of birthing innovation communities. Various worship expressions and communities took shape around participation and cultural engagement and creativity. These included Cityside and Graceway in Auckland, Ilam and Side Door in Christchurch, various communities in Wellington, Soul Outpost in Greymouth, Soul Reason in Dunedin. Not all survived. Birth was painful and babies struggle without good parents. The movement matured.

The period of missional conversation. With a new decade, their was a first, practioners from about 10 emerging churches gathered in Auckland. This was not a conference or a seminar. The emerging church movement was now a conversation, a group of practioners learning, growing, wrestling. The original superstars were now fellow journeyers. Mission was increasingly important; and so the conversation turned from multi-media, to funding spirituality, to visitor experience, to life ritual.

This week we had our third such Converse. We farewelled Mark Pierson to Australia. Perhaps it represents the end of a third phrase. We have moved from making waves, to innovative communities, to a missional conversation.

What might the future hold? Let me suggest three issues.

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DJing with spiritual others

In response to this:

It was Maori language week in New Zealand last week. It was a language under extinction a few decades ago. During these painful decades, there was one school of thought that only those who could speak properly and had the right accent could speak. If you tried to use a few words, you were verbally assaulted. A recent article in the local newspaper celebrated the fact that such an elitist, Byzantine attitude had passed. Any use of language by anyone should be celebrated. In other words, if people are using your cultural artifacts, get over it. You can no more stop them than hold back the tide.

Having said that (and to pick up on an earlier post of mine on gospel and culture and the DJ), a kingdom DJ needs a kingdom ethic. There is a community who affirms a DJ mix. When I mix gospel and culture, my community give me feedback on my mix.

A DJ respects their community, the “2 or 3 gathered” because Christ is in their midst. A kingdom DJ will also respect the community of others they sample from. A kingdom DJ will take time to respect the story around the sample (the orthodox prayers, the eucharist etc). In doing so, they will DJ with more sensitivity and nuance.

culture and the emerging church

G wrote: I would love to hear your thoughts about the emerging church and hauerwas, and also the “counter-culture” or “culmination-culture” motif, or whatever alternative you are working with.

Hauerwas offers a strongly counter-cultural approach, using the community as an alternative place from which to challenge culture.

I find it idealistic and unrealistic. It seems to me that people live in multiple communities; not only church communities but work, interest groups. Thus to offer the church as an alternative community seems too pure, to unconnected, to the multiple layering of most people lives. It also tends toward isolation and withdrawal from culture, an approach which tends to minimize Incarnation. The emerging church values creation and Incarnation and thus is seeking to work with a more culturally engaged approach.

For me, I have found the model of DJ-ing culture helpful and I use this in my (forthcoming) book. The DJ samples from multiple places, and lives in a symbiotic relationship with a community, who give authenticity to the DJ mix.

This approach recognises the multiple worlds we live in, and allows us to take different approaches to different dimensions of our culture. For example, we might buy a car, but use it less and to transport a disadvantaged person. Thus we are using the culture, but mixing in an “environmental” and “social justice” ethic.

So I think we need a DJ approach to culture; sampling, always in relationship to a community, because where 2 or 3 are gathered, Christ is among us. Our use of culture is “processed” in the Spirit-discerning community.

I guess there are some parallels to Hauerwas in the importance of community, but in a multiple (DJ) way that respects the complexity and fluidity of our lives and our cultures.

G, I hope that offers some answer to your questions. Too much more and my book publishers might come calling.

emerging criticisms

Sam, commenting over at living room, makes some thoughtful criticisms of the emerging church. Let me respond to 2 of them. (My context is not mainline or liberal, so I can’t really speak to his 3rd criticism.)

(a) the risk that we will “out-relevant” ourselves, ironically succumbing to the post-modern culture to which we claim to be bringing the gospel;

There needs to be a distinction between relevance and mission. God in Jesus came in human form to a culture and spoke to that culture in its own accent. The point of this Incarnation was not relevance, but redemptive mission.

If we are committed to following Jesus, the point of the emerging church should not be relevance, but mission, seeing Jesus in human form in the video loops and samples of postmodern culture.

The problem is that relevance and mission can look the same. However, some pointed questions should help tease out the differences. Perhaps more importantly, will be the fruit of the Incarnation. When the mission to postmodern culture is able to intentionally welcome and embrace that which is absent, then we will see not relevance but a mission heart which, like Christ, makes room for the Other.

(b) that “no church form” has in actually become a “church form” and, therefore, is subject to being championed and attacked in the “my way’s best” argument;

Any experimentation runs the risk of fossilizing. This might not in fact be the fault of the form, but be the fault of the on-looking public, eager to find a model to photocopy. The wind of the Spirit is dynamic. If the “no church form” becomes a “form,” if the emerging church becomes stuck in its moment, then it will probably find the Spirit blowing in fresh ways, fresh forms. At this point, the depth of humility (or otherwise) of the emerging church will be interesting to observe.

tribalism and difference

mine difference rather than manage difference

This was a throwaway line from the conference I was at. maggi blogs about the different tribes in the emerging world. Tribes can be tribal, wagons drawn in, hunched against diversity. Yet this leaves me unable to manage difference, let alone mine it for all its depth and colour.

I was told that dialogue requires me to put aside my own beliefs, in order to fully engage the Other. Yet such a notion seems frightfully modernist. I can’t change who I am, my social location. I am Kiwi, male, etc. I always bring this to the table. Pure objectivity does not exist. I can only bring my embedded subjectivity.

So equally, if I am evangelical or liberal in my roots, that is all I can bring to the table. I need to mine my embedded subjectivity, be increasingly aware of my unique differences.

When I engage with other tribes, I can only do this from my social location. If I want to mine, rather than manage the difference, then I need to learn, listen and speak about my tribe, and about others tribe.

In other words
– we can’t change our roots
– the better we know our roots the better we can learn from others
– the task is to listen, not to weave webs of psuedo tolerance.

Converse

A live-in rolling conversation among friends about issues to do with emerging church. This years themes will revolve loosely around worship and art.

We’re moving from Auckland to Christchurch to support our Southern Men and Women. Costs will be maybe $20 for 2 nights accommodation at Governors Bay and a share of whatever we decide to eat. The accommodation is an alcohol-free zone (not a free-alcohol zone!) so you’ll have to be creative. Travel costs are your own.

We’ll aim to start at midday on Monday 9 August and finish with lunch on the Wednesday.

UPDATE: Will include guided tour of new Christchurch Art Gallery, and discussion of curating the visitor experience: stimulating us to draw the links to worship and mission “curating visitor experience”