sustain:if:able kiwi

Thinking aloud

Every time I meet with the church board I have a thinking aloud section. This allows me to incubate vision and process ideas together, rather than being a top-down leader who presents ideas fait accompli/like it or leave it. Here is what I wrote today.

End of the year. How to end the year? We have our AGM which starts the year. But how do we evaluate the year and honour God for all that has been done? What is a sustainable (ie yearly) way for us to celebrate our life as a church?

I’ve begun to wonder about a day long “celebration”;
that starts and ends with worship (10:30 pm and 7 pm), that offers a barbeque lunch, that has coffee throughout the day, that has a bouncy castle and play area for the kids, that has a performance space where at regular intervals throughout the afternoon, people sing or do comedy, that has multiple “stations” set up through the church.
: each ministry department saying what they have done and what they need “resources” for next year
: with pictures and names of those baptized, come into membership, those who have left membership, newly planted congregations
: with video footage that we have collected
: with a thankyou space and cards to write to volunteers in our midst
: with a dream space for people to imagine about next year
: with time to walk through all the newly painted areas including the prayer room
: with an evaluation space where people can ask the Board questions
: ending with a praise and prayer wall, where people write up all that they are glad of, and all that they were dreaming of

This would enable people could take time, at their pace, to “wander” through the year. We could set the church up in “zones” based around our mission;
Enabling people to walk (blue)
: Evangelism
: Community ministry
: Worship

And grow with Jesus (green)
: Youth
: Children
: Spiritual growth
: Administration
: Property
: Small groups

Reflecting his love in our communities and beyond
: Missions
: Pastoral care

getting a [preaching] life #2

Jordon posted a great comment about the freedom people have to walk out of movies in contrast to church. The irony is, someone did walk out on Sunday.

It happened like this:
I start speaking by giving out pipe cleaners – Make what you like with them during the sermon, but at the end, I will ask you to twist it into a prayer for your future.

I start reading from Book of God – I will give a candy bar to the person who 1st guesses who “my Bibical hero is”.

The answer is Nehemiah, so I talk for about 5 minutes about how Nehemiah has faith in a hard place – exile, pluralistic, influential. I give a contemporary example and then ask – so how do you sustain faith in a hard place?

Silence as people shuffle and think.

Tobacco, a visitor in the front couch announces. Tobacco. And gets up and walks out.

So, all you who judged me harshly/told me I was rude for playing with my email; do you extend the same judgement to this person?

For me, I think it takes real guts to do that, real character to be different from group norms. Surely the person should be honoured for showing real courage.

yes but is it church?

Context: we have been planting a new congregation, called espresso, at Opawa Baptist. And it has caused me to reflect more deeply on what is church. It has been a very intuitive journey. I don’t have a plan. Nor, I think does the rest of the leadership team of Paul and Anne and Lynne. We are sort of shaping it up as we go.

Below is the outline of last night. The use of an “*” (a theological star) equals some theological thinking that shaped why I did what I did last nite and if you hit the link at the bottom of this post, you’ll get that theological thinking.

8pm: 6 people turn up and there are apologies from 4 people with hospitalised family. Only 6. There are 150 people on a Sunday morning. Is 6 people church? “*1”

8.10pm: We say our regular gathering prayer. “*2”

8.15pm: We play a game. Cranium. The boys lose to the girls. But is playing a game church? “*3”

9.05pm: We celebrate communion. Bread is such a let down if you’ve dined on cake and pineapple and chocolate slice. So we have sparkling grape juice and fruit bun. “*4”

9.10pm: We take some time to reflect as a community on how espresso is going. What is working? What is not? “*5”

9.15pm: We decide on the question for next week – Why are there 4 gospels? (Each week of discussion starts with a question, which emerges from our group life). We allocate among the community who will provide food and the closing ritual and the discussion starter. Until next week. “*6”

As I drive home I reflect on how it seems so low-tech and organic. Is there a danger that something can be so low-key that it doesn’t grab people’s vision and time and energy? And does it matter? It was for me, a sustaining among friends of my following of Christ into the world.

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art at Opawa

Some thoughts by Shannon, one of the Opawa church’s plus 5 interns, who blogs here.

this past week i worked on creating an irrigation system for the front part of the church. this was to visually show how the living water (Christ) trickles down to other parts of the world. we placed 7 “mission stations” around this irrigation piping to represent specific places around the world to pray for (with specific missionaries to go along with each of them). we drew water from the fountain (the installation i helped make the week before) and visually showed how each of us (represented by the individual pipes, screws, etc) can work together as a church to pour out the living water to those in need. i was kind of skeptical before i worked on the project because i kind of thought it would either be really cheesy or really bizarre, but now i love it!

and as far as where artists enter into this picture, i think we as artists have the amazing task (and privelage) of stepping up to the plate. we live in a world full of images.

a simple metal plumbing pipe and why the future of God is indeed, among the people of God

One of my passionate beliefs is that mission is a partnership with the Spirit of God already at work. We don’t dream up mission, but we find a creative, redeeming, reconciling God already at work in the world.

This affirmation is important when we think about church and emerging church. It might just be, if God is a God of the unexpected, that the creative, redeeming, reconciling God might be at work not only in the world, but also in the church. That the future of the people of God might already be among the people of God.

A simple concrete pipe is a potential, practical example of this. Opawa Baptist is a 40 year old, brick, block monolith. So the thought of installing a coffee machine sends the cash registers spinning on practical, plumbing types. Putting water pipes through concrete block walls can get expensive!

This week I went exploring. I dream of a coffee machine in an “L” cove of the foyer. So I open some cupboard doors under a stair-well and I find a hot water cylinder. I look underneath the cylinder and there is a “T” join already on the pipe, pointing straight toward where I want the coffee machine. I knock on the dividing wall and it echoes. It’s wood, not concrete.

40 years ago, in the wisdom of heaven, a church plumber chose to install a “T” join in a straightforward plumbing operation and a church builder chose to build a wooden wall rather than concrete wall. And so today, a coffee machine installation is much more affordable. So perhaps the future of God really is among the people of God. Perhaps we really do build on foundations laid by others.

So much of the emerging talk is about starting anew. Let me rant. It’s dangerous. It’s disrespectful. It’s dodgy in it’s theology. If we really believe in the Spirit of God at work in the world, why is it so hard to conceive that the Spirit could be pregant among the concrete block walls of a church?

how is espresso going?

We’re pioneering a new congregation here at Opawa – every Tuesday, 8 pm, church foyer. (The journey is blogged here, here and here). It is based around sofas, and we
– gather ritually
– discuss
– ritually end

It’s scarey and its exciting. Often I get asked how it is going. Here is some participant feedback:
I have started going to Expresso/Espresso at Opawa. It is a place where we can eat, have a coffee and discuss, mull over some of the questions of life we have as we travel on our journey towards or with God. There is a lovely mix of people with lots of different stories to tell that have made them who they are. It has been nice to see familiar faces and get to know new ones. It has been nice to feel safe, to have my own opinions and to be able to express these whilst listening to others and seeing the world through their little window.

I am enjoying it!! and last night I was able to take a very special friend of mine too. She is related to me but she is so much more than that – she is truely my friend. I am writing about her in the hope she will read this and feel special as a result of me blogging about her. Thank you to Steve, Lynne, Paul & Ann for taking the risk of starting Espresso and allowing us the chance to attend and grow together. Thank you for starting to restore my faith in people – Karen.

Link

transitional church

I am in transition, working among a 95 year old church. The story of this church in transition seems to strike a chord with people, at seminars and by email. It suggests a new term, not emerging church but transitional church.

Transitional church suggests that the culture is in transition. The post-modern is a signifier of flux, rather than fixidity. The culture has still not found what it’s looking for. Transition honours this.

Transitional church recognizes that the past is important. Future is important. That we still have not found what we’re looking for, but that we have paths and traditions and wayfarers that have walked with us until now.

Transitional church stands against the anarchical, arrogant disrespect potential in the nu and the neo.

Transitional church honours the now of the in-between. It welcomes metaphors of wilderness, dessert and exile. It will not rush for quick how-to’s, simple solutions, revival prayers,

Anyhow, yesterday I got this email (part of being a virtual pastor?) asking me some questions about the transitions at Opawa. Some of you might be interested in the questions and the answers.

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expresso

cafe church
every Tuesday, 8-9:15 pm
@Opawa Baptist

Recipe: being led by the Spirit

used digestion: sunday evening church service

1. Find ingredients (toothpicks, polystrene pieces; coloured paper).
2. Build boat of your choice; using polystrene for the base; paper for the sail; and toothpicks for a mast.
3. Place boat in water and gently blow, committing your future dreams to God.

This took about an hour of creative preparation (i.e playing) on Sunday afternoon; altering mast lengths, trying paper, then wood, then polystrene. The thing that I most enjoyed was seeing people build on the idea. I suggested a simple boat.Yet people made rafts and catamarans and multiple rigs. It is so neat to see a group take worship further and beyond what I was worship curator dreamed or imagined.

art internship

Our first ever Opawa art intern started this week. Shannon McMillan is from the US and is here at Opawa with us for the winter (her summer).

She is involved in setting up creative prayer in our new 24/7 prayer room, using creative art in services, reading in the area of arts and Christianity and in developing her own creativity. Today we talked about reclaiming hymns books for intercessory prayer and she went off to make a sail cloth praise wall for use in worship.

Art internships are a new area for me, and for Opawa church. I am not sure how it will all work out, but I am glad to be a part of.

nor’west festival

a week of Spirit~ed reflection ended with Saturday’s creativity workshops;
kitemaking and flying; metalwork expressing what it means for us to be Spirit-filled; washed down with coffee.

many more photos (all taken by Lynne) here

less flames, more fire

Pentecost 2004, things got pretty heated around Opawa, as we lit a 2 ft pumice rock soaked in meths.

Pentecost 2005 had less flames, but perhaps more fire. We:
: baptised Andrew Wilson
: launched a 24/7 prayer room
: commissioned expresso, a new cafe congregation, to go live Tuesday 31 May.
: gave the kids chalk and let them chalk flames and kites all over the concrete outside the church. It made a great site as people left the building, sort of like our worship leading us into the community.
: listened to a digeridoo and heard Acts 2 read in 6 different languages. The best part of worship was giving the kids bubbles to blow (the wind of the Spirit), and seeing our intermediate boys cascading bubbles down on the congregation from the balcony.

This week Pentecost continues. The Nor-West festival offers teaching, live music and an outdoor art project (if you’re trying to get your head around what this looks like, go here.)

I looked up an old hymnbook this week. There were 143 hymns about Jesus; 29 about the Creator; 18 about the Spirit. The nor-west festival week of teaching and music and creative expression is simply our attempt to honour this “forgotten” member of the Trinity.

expresso dress rehearsal

Blog followers know that I’ve been working away, with a team, on a cafe-congregation, called expresso. Last nite we had a sort of dress rehearsal, and invited some people to join us, worship with us, and then evaluate with us.

It was a neat night – warm and thoughtful – were the 2 descriptors I would use.

The feedback was positive, and so with a few minor alterations and a deep breath we are taking the plunge … espresso – cafe church; Tuesday, 8 pm, 31 May, the couches in the foyer of Opawa Baptist Church.

nor west festival: metal work

Email from the artist who will be guiding the Saturday, 21 May, morning metal work:
A few thoughts: In addition to the corrugated iron it could be fun to have some other materials that we could attach-to or juxtapose beside the iron.

shellac (is good to work with. You can buy the flakes and dissolve them
overnight in meths). I can source this if you want.

It’s sounding like a LOT of fun.