sustain:if:able kiwi

UK September 2010 trip

Here’s my UK itinerary – it’s a nice mix of my interests – theology in contemporary culture, fresh expressions and missional leadership at a congregational level. (Graphic courtesy of a fiddle with this DIY “ancient comic” site 🙂 and with a nod to Brendan the Navigator)

WEDNESDAY: Spurgeons College, D.Min and M. Theol students, presenting some of my work around theology in contemporary culture.

Session 1: “A Pneumatology for an Everyday Theology?” An exploration of what it might mean to name the Spirit as active in the world, with specific reference to popular culture.

Session 2: “Reading “pop-wise”: An example of ‘reading’ popular culture, using animated TV cartoons.

Session 3: Preaching in a changing culture – lessons from U2?

FRIDAY: head to Durham to present on Evaluating Birth narratives:a missiological conversation with fresh expressions

Abstract: This paper will explore the “birthing narratives” of a number of United Kingdom fresh expressions, specifically five alternative worship communities. It will bring this into conversation with the notion of “fresh expressions of church” to explore whether the very term “fresh expressions of church” is in fact missiologically problematic. Resources for this exploration will include the “resurrection” ecclesiology suggested by Archbishop Rowan Williams in Mission-shaped Church, interpreted in light of the pictures of Christian witness embedded in the New Testament narratives.

SATURDAY: “Dry bones live! Mission and leadership in times of change”?’ a conversation at St Johns, Durham on mission and change

TUESDAY: catching the big plane back. At least it goes faster than the boat!

So what was the shape of your ministry today?

Was the question as I walked in the door. It’s been a rich day. So pour yourself (and me) a drink and let’s talk.

1. I presented my findings in review of a fresh expression. It’s been a fascinating experiment – an attempt to build an online community. I was invited to be the “missiologist-in-residence” as it were, which was an enormous privilege. There is not much written on this, so it has been such fun linking fresh expressions thinking with online website tools. I ended up writing about 2,500 words. So it has the makings of an article at some point.

2. I got to talk to someone about their “restless” heart and to discuss their journey toward ministry. A potential pioneer leader IMHO.

3. I got to help align a student research masters with a supervisor. It’s sort of a form of discipleship. Someone wants to do some thinking, some serious thinking, about what it means for them to love God and neighbour. And I get to help them align some people in ways that will maximise that learning. Huge privilege.

4. I got to meet with one of my PhD students. She’s just beginning a fascinating journey, wanting to explore how to help marginal voices, particularly speakers of English as a second language, do theology without imposing Western ideas on them. Stimulating.

5. I got to write up some of my own research. Again fascinating – to listen to some recorded interviews with pioneer leaders (of the alt.worship variety) and attempt to reflect on their stories missiologically. I’m developing a hunch and here it is: that “fresh expressions of church” is fundamentally an unhelpful phrase in a mission sense. I’m still working on my logic to support this hunch. But I am loving the reading, reflecting, probing.

Cheers. Thanks for listening.

my home’s a state of emergency

Update 2: candle lit today in prayer. It’s really hard to be so far from home on days like today.

Update 3: one of my former teaching colleagues, Richard Neville has had his home destroyed.

Christchurch, the Taylor family home, has been hit by a major 7.1 earthquake. Biggest earthquake in New Zealand since 1931. No reports of death, but extensive building damage. Initial estimates are of $2 billion in damage. Photos here, some of which make it look like a war zone. The city is without water and sewage. Quite sad to think that of one’s own city. We’re still trying to check the state of various things, including family, friends, neighbours and property we own. Opawa Baptist pastors have been ringing through the church phone directory checking on everyone in the church. The church has suffered some interior damage, with lights broken. (Update 1: sounds like our house is OK. Still not sure about our holiday home.)

little boat blown across the mighty Tasman sea

College worship today was framed around Jeremiah 18 and God the potter. We were offered a piece of play dough and invited to play as the service progressed. What was formed was laid on the communion table as an act of response, and then could be taken with us post-Benediction.

Here is my ponderings (thanks Sarah) …

… my little boat, blown by the wind of God’s Spirit. Echoes of Brendan the navigator, green the colour of this season in the church year that of growth in ordinary time. The backdrop a gift I gave myself a few years ago, that I have with me whenever I speak, as an evocation of grace and possibilities and God’s future.

goal!!!!!!

dying minute

Kiwi’s score,

battlers to the very end,

and take their first ever World Cup point!

long weekend relaxing

It’s a long weekend holiday here in Australia (a week later than in New Zealand). So we’re away enjoying being a family in the Clare Valley. On the “to do” as tourist list include the following:

• award winning Kapunda Musuem (used to be a Baptist church! interesting metaphor!)
• dinner at the acclaimed Rising Sun bistro (still remember the meal we had as a family there in 2008)
• mini Lake Inchiquin railway (for young passengers!)
• walking parts of the Clare Riesling trail (I did a spiritual retreat there in 2008, very special memories)
• plus lots of reading and DVD watching and general relaxing

filing systems and why nothing beats boxes

Today was a triumph for the Taylor filing system! Those who know me well might smirk in disbelief, but please, read on …

You see, I’m working on some research. My (draft) title has been: When Non-Priests Pray: A Conversation between Sarah Coakley and Bono on Incorporative Pneumatology and Priestly Prayer. (It’s for the upcoming Sarah Coakley conference in July). The research involves the usual Taylor mind, the restless/eclectic/lateral flitting between popular culture and Christian faith.

And as I reading the most fascinating compilation of texts on the Holy Spirit, somewhere in the recesses of my mind is a memory of 1994 and doing a University paper on Jesus Christ and that I read something that might be useful.

1994. That’s quite a few years ago. So I go to my old University notes. These have all been lovingly filed in boxes, along with all the courses I’ve taught since then. There are like 50 boxes around my office. But they are labelled and sure enough, under Christology, are my 1994 notes. A quick flick and yep, there is the exact 1994 article I’m looking for. A large shout of triumph echoes down the hallway.

And in another recess of my mind is another memory, a memory of a book I borrowed in 2004 about U2. And it might have relevance and the book is not the Adelaide library. But perhaps I might have photocopied some of that book?

So I go to my filing cabinet. And sure enough, in one of the 8 drawers, under the letter U (for U2)- is that photocopying from 2004! An even larger shout of triumph echoes down the hallway.

The filing system works. Good old cardboard boxes! Good old filing cabinets.

Now some you are still smirking. You have seen my desk. You think this is a one-off fluke. For such among you, may I remind you of another post, another reflection on why my filing system makes me a truly valuable employer.

Hurrah! For

• cardboard boxes
• filing cabinets
• vertical stacks of paper on my desk

clarity in communication. a hyperlinked missional church comic book

This is what I long for …

The trick in either comics or animation is to embody your ideas rather than sugarcoat them; to make plain, through images, the patterns and concepts you see clearly in your head, secure in the knowledge that even the most byzantine, advanced, jargon-laced topic probably rests on a few fat visual metaphors almost anyone can grok with a little explanation.

Via cartoonist Scott McCloud. (Who wrote the most awesome Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, a comic book about how to understand comics.)

I’d love to write a missional church theology book as a comic book in order to present “a few fat visual metaphors.” But I know I can’t draw. But … I suspect that the discipline of trying would probably make my words a whole lot crisper. So maybe I could use pictures as part of the concept design?

While I’m waffling about books, I’d love to write a book which was not only a comic, but could also be hyperlinked. So that I could be talking about say a missional practice and the reader could choose whether they flipped to the theology, or the Scriptural resources, or the history of how the practice emerged, or the story of how it played out at Opawa, or the change processes that lay behind the idea.

Books are so linear.

All this by way of saying that when this semester ends, which is in only 14 days, my semester from hell is over, 75% of my entire year’s teaching being squeezed into the first half of the year, and I get a chance to write … 🙂

working from here

working on a film review of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and

writing topic outlines for our the re-accreditation of the Bachelor of Ministry … papers like Spirit and the World; Gift of Forgiveness; Missional leadership A and B; Mission then, mission new; Living the Biblical text in a postmodern context …

finding it hard to concentrate with a view like this …

on speaking amid changing temperatures

Australia has great variations in temperature. Currently in Maroochydore there is an overnight low of 16 and a forecast high of 24, while in Bathurst there was an overnight low of 3 and a forecast high of 12.

This is important because I am packing for both places, first for Maroochydore, to speak to the Queensland synod, and then to Ballarat Bathurst, to speak at the Transformers conference, as part of the New South Wales synod.

It will be the 5th time in a month that I have spoken outside the Uniting College lecturing context.

• 3 days on mission, discipling, leadership at tertiary level in Sydney
• half a day on mission that’s out of the valley to youth leaders
• 2 days on mission-shaped community to lay folk from around South Australia
• and a hour lecture on mission to lay and ordained folk in Queensland
• followed by a 90 minute lecture, followed by 2 smaller facilitated workshops to ministry practioners in Sydney

To be honest, it is sort of doing my head in. Part of it is simply performance anxiety. When I was at high school, I used to skip school when it came time for the speech contests. I hated public speaking. So there’s a fair degree of anxiety flowing through me today.

Part of it is that each is different – in time and audience. Each has a slight variation in theme. Each has different issues they’d like to address and different expectations of how I might engage. The temperature is different in each room. I have a lot of things in what I call my speaking bag, different stories and paradigms and ways I have approached things. Different ways to stimulate people and gain interaction. I find it hard to pull out the same thing and just do it. Yet it has worked once and it would save me the time in trying to know what to pull out, how to start and to connect.

Part of it is my creative, restless personality, I like to keep working at things, playing with new ideas. So I simply can’t do the “canned” presentation.

I’m not sure why I am writing this, but it’s my blog and writing can clarify ….

The pain of being known

A wonderful surprise yesterday, with a text from Kiwi friend, Paul McMahon, with news that he was flying from Christchurch to Sydney for 2 days to attend a family funeral. Yes, we so happen to be in Sydney and yes, we can catch up. So as we finished a wonderful tea, in Newtown (must blog about that gem of a Sydney suburb), Paul walked through the door.

Another wine glass please waiter and so the conversation began! Poor kids, who wouldn’t get home until 11 pm!

We met Paul and Anne within days of them arriving in Christchurch, both of us looking for houses and hoping to settle. I was just starting at Opawa, while Paul was just starting toward his Masters in Theology, pursuing his passion – a Kingdomly just world as it might be shaped by government. (He did his Masters on a Christian theology of tax).

Paul was a student in my classes. Together Paul and Anne helped us plant espresso, one of Opawa’s congregations. Paul joined the paid pastoral team at Opawa in 2008. He is exercising what Uniting churches would call Ministry of Deacon, ordained with a focus on the community and building bridges from the community back into the church and under his leadership, Opawa’s engagement with the community has strengthened and deepened. He’s done it superbly well.

He also worked as a Researcher for me/Angelwings – tutoring in some of my subjects, helping me with research, sometimes preparing lecture notes – all stuff that enabled me to accept various speaking engagements beyond Opawa and Laidlaw College

So it was a wonderful time, but a sharp reminder of loss – friend, pastoral colleague, church, speaking. One of the reasons I’m having to work so hard at the moment at Uniting College is because I’ve lost Paul from the team that was around me. Such is the pain of moving, you build a team, and then have to start again.

In Australia everything is new. Sitting with Paul I realised once again what it was like to be known, to have history, to have done life, to have become comfortable in weakness. It was such a wonderful time, yet a reminder of the pain and grief that walks with me in these days.

can we talk?

We’ve been without phone since we arrived in Australia nearly 2 months ago and the saga looks set to continue.

We came with cellphones, brought during an earlier visit, so that initially took the pressure off. We added to that a wireless roaming plug-in, and that managed to get us through the initial search for car and house.

Once established in a house, with a 12 month rental, we began to look at phone companies.

We were recommended a wireless provider, but warned of a potential 3 week delay. They looked good initially, but after multiple to and froing (it’s not easy to organise phone without a phone), and toward the end of the 3 weeks, told us that our local exchange was overloaded, so they couldn’t help us.

So we turned to Optus, who prepared to send us out the required hardware. Which never arrived, because apparently the intermediary company we were going through (Direct Connect) required some information from us to complete a credit check, but never contacted us, so we duly failed the check.

By now it’s been weeks and we’re feeling quite cut off, especially from friends and family back in New Zealand.

So we look at yet more wireless providers. Many advertise and for a fee, will check whether there is room on the exchange for us to plug in. Yeah right, a fee to be told they can’t help!

So we’re now back looking at a landline connection. Which means back talking with the owner of the house, because the existing wires have been ripped out of their sockets and so the connection fee looks like going up.

It all feels so hard. And so tiring.

How are you finding things? strange ways in fastforward

I feel like I’m watching a movie,
that I’m really enjoying.
But it’s stuck on fastforward.
It’s also a foreign language feature.
Thankfully most scenes have subtitles
but every now and again I feel just like this …

cartoon hat tip

It’s my party

Saturday was my birthday and the day was framed around a cheese and wine trail. Blessed Cheese is a local identity, producing great food, focused around local cheeses. Which they also make available in a hamper, and partner with a list of wineries who provide a wine to match the cheese.

So over about five hours, we worked our way through cheeses, seated at various local McLarenvale wineries. Slow eating. Slow driving the countryside, such a newly different landscape, with scattered gums and gaunt hills.

Cheese tasting is not necessarily the greatest thing for the kids. It is my party … but we provided for them the Birthday Boredom Buster Bag. Each got a book to read, plus a letter writing kit. So they spent time writing letters home, reading and asking the perennial question: “You having a good time Dad?”

The final stop was Samuels George, which has previously been a moment of spiritual encounter. Once again, we were late, but they were open. The wine dogs were out, just the right level of friendliness for two kids. Who also got a tour of the wine making lab. Superb views (photo from a previous visit, Oct 08):

A great day, having a good time. Cheers to life.