sustain:if:able kiwi

kingdom signs discerned

The point of looking for Kingdom signs is not just the writing, but the reflecting. Over time, prayerfully, as one reflects on what is written, themes begin to emerge. It is often in these themes that Kingdom clarity becomes clear.

ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

So as part of the Kingdom signs project, I am suggesting that people only blog journal for 5 days in 7. That leaves a 6th day for reflection, looking back over what one has written and starting to prayerfully ponder. And a 7th day, for rest, for doing nothing. This is essential to any spiritual practise and common sense given that we are human – prone to sickness, busyness, etc.

It is only a week, too early yet, but reading the Opawa Kingdom blogs (Regina; Phil; Judy; Viv; Allan) blogs, I am struck by the beauty and power within our everyday lives. God seems richly present: in creation, in sustenance, in Scripture, in healing, in sunshine, in life cycles, in hugs, in restoration.

PS Just a word about the kingdom signs selection – I simply asked 5 people from the church. They had to be lay, there had to be male and female, they had to come from a range of life situations, to be both long and recent in the church, they had to be people who were probably not doing this sort of thing already. All mixed with a bit of intuition, people who I just wondered if they would enjoy and benefit from the practise. All 5 said yes (one will start in a week or so). I also had material available on the Sunday after the sermon in case others wanted to join. (And I ran out of copies, which was grand).

Material:
Introduction here, instructions here and here

Sense making faith

Sense making faith: a mind, body, spirit journey

For anyone interested in using the physical senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste in their search for God in the world surrounding us. Requires no prior knowledge of Christianity, simply a curiosity about the spiritual search.

Thursday for 8 weeks, starting June 26, church foyer, 7:30 – 9 pm. First session is an introduction, with freedom to change your mind and pull out after that.

kingdom signs

Regina is journaling here;
Phil is journaling here;
Judy is journaling here; Viv is journaling here; and outside Opawa, outside New Zealand — Eleanor is journaling here; Dan is journaling here; Jane is journaling here …

… anyone is welcome to join them, introduction here, instructions here and here

ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

discerning Kingdom signs as the practice of a community

Update: In response: Regina will be journaling here; Phil will be journaling here; Judy will be journaling here; Allan is here

Email I just sent out:
I am starting a 4 week series on Kingdom of God and I am asking for your help. My aim for the 4 weeks is to help us become better at finding the Kingdom in our ordinary and everyday lives as Christians. I am writing to ask if you would be willing to be part of a public experiment. And for the next 4 weeks, make a commitment to keep an on-line journal in which you write a paragraph each day on Kingdom signs that you are noticing in your everday life and work. Your journal, and those of 4 others in the church, would be advertised and placed on our church website. (I will also invite anyone who wants to in the church to join us, but I want a few examples to get us all going).

Why do this? I suspect that many people lack confidence in looking for God. I suspect that the more we do it, and the more we see examples of others doing it, the better we will get. I suspect that watching other people, is a great way to learn. I suspect that examples from ordinary people is more helpful than pastors. I think it is a good way of using technology to help us relate as a church and to take Sunday into our life.

Resources being used:
1. A model for discernment: download file
2. Setting up a online journal: download file

soak and space

We had an evaluation and planning meeting of our Soak service last nite. Soak is quite unlike any alternative worship thing I have been part of. It’s got stations AND sung worship. It’s in the main church that is beautifully lit with candles and draped with fabric. Which works stunningly well in creating a very rich space. We try to avoid theme-based stations, instead offering regular communion, confession and journalling stations, which lessens the intense creativity usually demanded by alternative worship.

Soak happens monthly on the first Sunday of the month. It starts with sung worship for about 30 minutes. It then offers a lectio divino Bible reading for about 15 minutes. The various stations are then introduced and people are invited to leave when they want to. A benediction is taped to the exit doors.

What this means is that Soak is what I, for lack of a better word, am calling an adult space. So much church spoon feeds you. Every minute is programmed and full. You are not required to do much. In contrast, at Soak, if you lack an inner world and don’t want to work that inner world, you get bored pretty quick.

Here are some of the unexpected learnings:
– some (not all) of our teenage boys love it
– people stay so long, regularly over 2 hours
– it’s genuinely redemptive with 2 people asking about baptism
– the Bible has been liberated, allowed to become a springboard for prayer rather than something to analytically dissect.

formation in community through process

I looked around the room this evening. It was the 4th week of a 10 week evening block course on How to read the New Testament, giving tools for reading gospels, letters, parables etc. It’s part of changes made last year, including (paid) staffing re-alignment, part of clarifying our focus around discipling and mission resourcing.

As a church, staff are our largest budget expense and we don’t think it’s Kingdom to focus that resource predominantly on internal activities such as Sunday worship or church activities.

Anyhow, back to tonight. 15 people in the room. A nice mix of long, medium and new timers. And those new to the church, why are they there? Well, because they’ve not read the Bible and have a hunger to understand it.

Hearing that is like being in heaven. It’s great to be part of a church that is attracting people new, hungry and with little Christian history. It’s great to be able to offer places where people can choose to take their Christian growth a step further. It’s great to teach in groups, allowing formation through relationships.

Term 3 we are planning God at work input, including some weeks on work life balance and some weeks on mid-life planning. Again, taking seriously formation, not for church life, but for work life.

More of an overview on discipling at Opawahere.

broken glass Pentecost prayer

Pentecost invites us outside the walls of the church. So as one small part of this year’s Pentecost celebrations at Opawa, we offered an afternoon walk around our community, to visit sites of significance and hear their stories. We visited where the new motorway had cut a swathe in the 1970’s, the first bridge in the 1880’s, the historic local homestead, our school and a local community centre.

At the school, we heard the census data, that makes our community one of the poorest in the city. We were then asked to walk on, praying in silence.

We walked across the play ground. A broken bottle had been smashed and one by one, the group bent down to pick up the pieces.

Silently. And then carry the pieces in our hands back to rubbish bins at the church. Silently.

I think I saw the Kingdom. The people of God praying by picking up the broken glass in our community. In anger at such stupidity. In practical expression of God’s Kingdom come in our school playground as it is in heaven.

It’s a Pentecost moment I will never forget and there is no other place and no other community and alongside no other people I would have rather been than today at 5:15 pm on a bitter, rainswept Christchurch afternoon.

disturb us O Pentecost Spirit

This week is Pentecost Sunday. In Acts 2 we find the story of the first Pentecost. It is the story of a group of dispirited and scared Jesus followers. Touched by the Spirit they find themselves disturbed. Such a disturbance becomes a profound reorientation, as they find themselves outdoors, in God’s mission outside the church walls.

As a church, we celebrate both these dimensions over the next weeks. Our worship space has been disturbed – both in the Pentecost art installation and in the new screens making a new front. It is part of a month long experiment. In the disturbance of these physical changes, we are invited, like the first followers of Jesus, to let God to profoundly reorientate us.

Spirit as fire, as gaunt, twisted willow; touching coloured houses; connecting with God’s world, and

Spirit as fire, as gaunt, twisted willow; touching coloured houses; inviting your move; a jump toward black, or toward white?

In addition, we are providing 3 ways to make this reorientation practical:

1 – Join us at 4 pm this Sunday either for a seminar on Mission trends in the 21st century OR to Prayerfully walk and listen among our community.

2 – Join us at 7 pm this Sunday for a prayer concert, an evening of song and prayer for God’s mission, led by Jamie Wood, from Pioneers Mission agency.

3 – Takehome a self-denial globe as a practical way of considering your place in God’s mission outside the church walls. This will then become the focus of our 7pm evening services, Grow through Colliding Worlds, on May 18 and 25.

discipling today

Email from a pastor: I have been thinking quite a bit about discipleship in the church. The question that is in my mind is this. How do we do discipleship in the 21st century and in a missional context. I grew up as a Christian where discipleship was done in a formal group setring and it is all about how I should live a life that is opposite to the world. But I realise that if we are to resource people to be salt and light in the community, I would need to rethink discipleship and to look at how we can disciple people in the context of missions. I was interested in hearing about the preaching series you did at Opawa where you focused on behaviour and you gave out little information cards for people to reflect on and apply.

2. Could you tell me more about the preaching series you did? What were the
topics and could you send me the outlines of what you did and a set of those
information cards you gave out?

I thought there might be other’s interested, so have decided to post my email response, as follows …….

Excellent question. It’s a process/environment issue not a program issue, but that is not always helpful, so here are some concrete ways that we express our discipling:

1 – individuate with growth coaching – we have developed 1-1 whole of life coaching that allows us to start where people are at and walk alongside them relationally. It was joy to sit with our Growth coaches last nite and hear stories of lives changed. Lots of work has gone into this and a good place to start is here and follow the links.

2 – offer frameworks in regular weekly, evening block courses during term time eg Work/life balance, How to read Bible. These allow us to add concrete input into our seekers. So at the moment, we have quite a number of people new to the church, seeking God and bringing very little Bible knowledge. So short term courses allow foundations to be laid.

3 – shift from talk to walk, in our 7 practices of faith For more on this go here, for what is a mix of input, takeaway practices and return storytelling. It started life as a Lent series and we are now seeking to use them as a sort of introduction to discipling and membership, to give us a common vocab around a life lived Christianly.

4 – create accountable community in our God at work group – this might be a bit out there, but it is a process designed to focus people as salt and light in workplaces. It took a lot of foundation laying but the result is here . The group has been meeting now for over 18 months, quietly running themselves. They took our service on Sunday and it was magic to here them talk about God in their workplaces and the salt/light benefits gained by them meeting monthly around simple practices.

All this is the results of lots of trial and error. No formulaes or programmes, simply having a go.

why did you go to Opawa Baptist?

He was puzzled. He was senior in our denominational leadership. He was aware of the history of Opawa Baptist, 96 years old, a fine past. He was aware of my history, emerging church planter. And so he was honest enough to ask, “why did you go to Opawa?”

And this quote from Maggi Dawn’s blog says it better than I could yesterday.

“The really interesting questions that surround the Emerging conversation have less to do with the how and why of a deliberate strategy to re-create the shape of Church, and more to do with how the concerns of Emerging are, in fact, emerging in different settings all over the place – messily, imperfectly and in unexpected places – which, in fact, is more faithful to the concept of emergence. For many Emergers, the least expected place of all to find an emerging congregation would be slap in the middle of a suburban Parish church. But that’s what is going on in quite a lot of places.

And that’s the conversations I’m glad to be part of at Opawa.

practicing communion with storytelling

Last Sunday the sermon text had been the Emmaus Road. A number of challenges were given: to seek the Risen Jesus on the road, to practice Christian practices, to depend on the Spirit.

So on Sunday we decided to provide time for storytelling.

3, not 1, communion tables were placed up the front and chairs added to ring the tables. I read from the Emmaus text. Bread was broken and thanks offered.

I then reminded people of the sermon and placed the communion elements on all 3 tables. I invited people to participate in two ways.

They could either remain seated and be served. Or, if they wanted, they could come to front, sit at a table, share communion and tell a story, of either meeting Jesus during the week, a Christian practice they were finding life giving, or a way they were needing the Spirit. A sung item was played.

And it worked well. Appropriate numbers of people responded and some encouraging stories were told. People talked afterwards about how helpful it had been. It was a worthwhile way to practice communion with real live stories around table.

the missional God is an ordinary God

This place was build so that people who gathered can read their hymn books. A comment made to me recently as a person gazed around the Opawa building. It was a reminder of the history that faces us everyday.

I enjoyed my time with the Board also – it helped to make me more aware of your context and the ‘ordinary’ things that you face in the journey. Another comment, another person, a reminder that amid all the mission changes is the ordinariness of everyday.

As one who has made a journey through alternative worship to community development work to parish ministry I find it disheartening to read your seemingly gleeful evaluation that ‘now the parish system has been legally blown open’. A comment made here. It’s a heart cry that God might be considered missional among plain parish and not only sexy fresh expression.

The organisers are looking for alternative worship… but, of course, since it’s a conference, I have no control over the space at all – over the lighting, seating, where the focus of attention will be… i can’t do stations, there will be limited multimedia capacity… up until now i’ve been fighting the limits and getting nowhere. today i’ve just given into them, and stopped thinking it needs to be alternative. it just needs to work with the people and the context. A blog post naming the stress of being asked to be emergingly alternative in showcase settings.

Can God be a lifegiver among the ordinary, in the plain parish, in the places where the hymn books go, in the limitations of conference settings? Is resurrection really that powerful, that inclusive, that revolutionary?

This is the real challenge for missional church. It’s not to start a hot new thing for 20 years olds, or to import the latest flash song/video clip/alt. idea from another context. It is to truly live the claim that God is life-giver in our here and now. This is surely the heart of Incarnation – God with us – not in some idealised, abstracted other.

imaging resurrection life 2008

The door is open, and Jesus walks out, into our city, calling “Come, follow me”

and in response, the invitation to reflect on resurrection by placing flowers – symbols of colour, life and potential – on maps of our city, in the places where we live and work, as our commitment to live resurrection life to the full.

pushing pause on a strength: easter journey 2008

Our easter services: creative, contemporary, multi-sensory, happening Easter Thursday, Friday and Sunday. But note, for the first time in 10 years, there’s no Easter Journey (interactive art pilgrimage) at Opawa.

I wrote to the main organisers, Peter and Joyce on December 28, 2007, noting that Easter was the earliest it has been in 95 years and that given the enormous energy required to do our 2007 Christmas Journey, open for 60 hours continously in a public park, it might be time for a pause.

In hindsight, it was a good call. It’s a good discipline to pause something that you as a church are really well-known for. We’ve been able to give Peter and Joyce a weekend trip away. We’ve been less busy as a staff. We’ve been able to do more with Lent.

How about you? What have you discovered when you have paused something you’re really well known for?