sustain:if:able kiwi

faith making sense?

Senses play
Bodies create
Humans diversify

see
hear
smell
taste
touch

Christianity. Is yours
making
good sense?

resourcing baptism today: a baptist in a Uniting world

One of the peculiar parts of my current call is having to work out being Baptist in a Uniting denomination. I’ve got roots and life experience and intellectual convictions about being Baptist, but in the strange ways of God, get to express that within a Uniting context.  Which has made the last few weeks really fun, because as lecturer in a class called Church, Ministry, Sacraments, we’ve been looking at baptism.  And being Uniting – they baptise kids!  So, in order to honour the Uniting context, we’ve had some local Uniting folk in lead the class. It’s been quite rich to listen, learn, reflect.

As the topic drew to a close, I offered a few concluding comments to the class, as I’d listened to a rich range of discussion. The class seemed to find them very stimulating in terms of ministry practice, so I’ll blog them here.

Adult baptism should be normative. Please keep being profoundly disturbed by that.

As it says in the Uniting Church Basis of Union, “The Uniting Church will baptise those who confess the Christian faith, and children who are presented for baptism.” Infant baptism is NOT the only path. Where are your adults? If you don’t see them being baptised, please be disturbed.

Baptism is a means of God’s grace not the church’s grace.

It is easy to focus on who should be baptised, especially when people roll up wanting their kids baptised because their parents or grandparents had it “done.” It’s too easy for churches to start to see themselves as boundary keepers, when in reality baptism is God’s grace, never humans.

A person’s responsibility is ours to resource but never to expect.

Baptism invites a response, an ongoing walk of discipleship, an ongoing training and formation in being Christian. The church has a rich range of resources to nourish this. In the Uniting worship book alone, there are nearly 100 pages of resources: Pathways to discipleship like A rite of welcome; of calling; for all the Sunday’s in Lent. Or Reaffirmation of Baptism rituals for congregation and individual. There is no excuse for a people of the liturgical book to not be offering lots of rich resourcing.

Offer a variety of resources – both inside and outside the church.

This links with the above, but also applies to baptism itself. Birth of children is a rich time for people. Don’t just offer two options – baptism or nothing. Some people want naming ceremonies, others an excuse to gather friends to celebrate. In my ministry practice when it came to parents wanting something for their kids, I used to suggest two things

• can I come back at the anniversary to light a candle – and thus maintain pastoral contact
• how about start with a DIY approach to your child – I’ll provide you with resources but how about you have a first go at writing the service. This turns me from patroller of boundaries and doctrines, to ritual adviser.

As ministers and as churchs we have lots to offer – we work with words and worship, we regularly create safe spaces, we have heaps of rich symbols and ideas. Offer these as well as baptism. At Opawa we even once ran spirituality resourcing workshops in terms of birthing and parenting rituals.

Pentecost season book review: Holy Spirit. Contemporary and Classic Readings

For too long the Spirit in Christian thought has been stereotyped, ignored as the forgotten person of the Trinity, left to the Charismatics and Pentecostals. With the church celebrating Pentecost last week, it is surely a season for us all to be reading around the third person of the Trinity. A book like The Holy Spirit: Classic and Contemporary Readings is well worth investing in. (Make sure you order the paperback edition, because the hardcover price is simply ridiculous).  The book gathers readings from across the centuries – 20th century, Syriac, Early Greek, Latin, Orthodox, Mystical. While there are a range of texts of the Spirit, this book does a superb job of gathering a rich range of material from diverse cultures and contexts.

A feature of the readings is their genre – while some are theology texts, others are sermons, or songs, or art works, or descriptions of liturgy. As such it reminds us of how much theological work can be done by the church – in our Pentecost sermons, in the songs we sing about the Spirit, in the art we promote, in the words we say at communion and baptism.

Each reading has a helpful introduction by the editor, theologian Eugene Rogers. (I’ve noted before here and here his excellent After The Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology From Resources Outside The Modern West). Rogers’ introductions are worth the price of the book alone, drawing attention to nuance, layer and complexity.

One gripe is the lack of readings from the contemporary Pentecostal or charismatic world. There is now quite enough material to have provided such a section. Is the absence yet another indication that the problem the church has with the Spirit is not just historic, but still contemporary?

wood fired pizza worship

I was making pizza on Saturday afternoon. Homemade tomato pesto, mixed with finely cut basil and baby spinach leaves (from the newly planted “only-been-in-the-country-3-weeks-garden” of course!), topped with local sundried tomato and lots of cheese. Very simply, very yummy. (Picture does not represent the reality).

And I thought again about pizza church. Not just pizza as in, oh, we are funky because we eat pizza after worship. Which would be yummy enough.

But more like that sense of making a pizza out of what’s in the fridge. And how what’s in our fridge is simply a reflection of our lives. So why can’t that be the central image for being a worshipping community?

I mean, what it would be like for church to set up a woodfired pizza outside. Bases supplied. And the invitation for worship to be about bringing toppings from what’s in your fridge.

You could have a thanks pizza and a confession pizza and an intercession pizza.

And as each pizza is served, there’s time for a toast. And those who want can name, either by ingredient or by spoken words, what they might be bringing – their praise and their confession and their intercession. And so the pizzas are the worshipping work of the people, what’s in our lives, brought to community, shaped by the liturgical pattern of traditional worship – praise, confession, prayer.

This might not be a normal way for people to experience church, but it would be easy to run an experiment, try it for a few months, simply by working your way through say the gospel of Luke. Lots of food moments there, and so the preaching/teaching moment would involve serving the 2 fish and 5 loaves pizza, the eucharist pizza, and so on through the Gospel of Luke, using table fellowship as the metaphor. In other words, the Scriptures are embodied in the “Bible pizza”, offered to those who gather.

A simply over the top idea and I returned to the much simpler task, of calling the Taylor tribe for homemade pizza. And together we gave thanks – for a few of our favorite things – weekends and each other and the promise of a new life.

save the last latte for me

I was teaching my last class ever at Laidlaw College (Christchurch) today. Which made it a moment of personal significance. Happily, it was the Missional Church Leadership course, one that I have pioneered, and now taught 5 times in 4 different cities in Australasia. A personal favourite, so I nice course to end on.

We headed off to the local cafe and sat around a long wooden table. Coffees all around, on my “leaving budget”! Together we all shared a memory, something about the Missional Church Leadership course that might stay with us – Luke 10:1-12 as hopeful hook and challenging platform, a sense of safe space, a model of leadership as reflective and bottom-up, benedictions as physically facing the door, taking the course out of classroom and to community tables.

And then we read Luke 10:1-12 together. A bit of a recurring Steve Taylor/mission, church, leadership text! What struck us? What question might we have for a New Testament scholar?

It was a fitting conclusion: in cafe rather than classroom, around a shared table, drink in hand, Biblical text central, a growing community of pilgrims. A moment worth saving the last latte for.

And what struck me? The need to dwell deeply. That as I leave one (Christchurch table) and journey to another (Adelaide table), my task is to dwell deeply, to make a priority of relationships and food and drink and consistency and hospitality. I have offered peace and found peace in one place. May it be so in another.

u2 concert’s and a world transformed by the gospel

This is part of Laidlaw College information night promotion, short video’s of people responding to the question: so what part of your world do you most want to see transformed by the gospel? Here’s my contribution, reflecting on my recent U2 concert experience

click here to watch 25sec video clip

Check out the rest – other religions, Japanese people, young people, community spirit – here. It’s an interesting initiative – using social networking – specifically Facebook, as a promotional strategy.

springtime spirituality

As I left work on Wednesday, I was greeted with a waft of flowering cherry blossom. All around us (here in the Southern Hemisphere) are reminders of spring – bright daffodils, delicate blossom, cute lambs.

Spring reminds me of the words of Jesus, I have come that you might life, and life to the full (John 10:10). Words of promise, of intent, like spring, of hope in potential for beauty.

Parker Palmer, Christian author, educator, and activist (in his wonderful book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation which I try and re-read every summer holiday) called spring the season of surprise. Reflecting on his life, including seasons of depression and failure, he recognised his need to be both grateful for the dormancy of winter, and open to the surprise of spring.

May God surprise us all this spring. May it happen as each of us take time, to notice the waft and the unexpected colour, not only in the world around us, but also in our lives and in the people around us.

Some practical ways to embrace a springtime spirituality:
1. Pause every time you catch a waft of spring. Breathe deep, opening yourself to hope and potential.

2. Sit and consider a blossom tree. Visualise yourself as a dormant bud. Thank God for the energy that flows through you, so often unrecognised.

3. Wait for a wind, then seize the moment and lie under the blossom. Let the gentle caress of falling petals become your prayers for those you know who struggle.

4. Like unexpected bulbs, take a moment to send random cards, unexpectedly, to people you know, thanking them for the colour they bring into your life.

5. Use the hope of spring, the lengthening days as a chance to replace one destructive pattern with one lifegiving behaviour.

a seasonal spirituality of wine making

I was re-reading my sabbatical 08 journal last week. Partly because it was this time a year ago the Taylor family headed off (August 20-Nov 1). Partly because of the news that two of my sabbatical writing projects have been given the green publishing light. (1st, a chapter on the Bible in bro’town accepted for an edited book, published by Semeia Studies, designed to be used in theology and popular culture graduate level courses. 2nd, a paper constructing a pneumatology for engaging popular culture accepted as a book chapter, to be published by Wipf and Stock publishers.)

As part of the sabbatical, I took a 3 day retreat, walking the Riesling trail and re-reading my journal, I found the following quote:

“It begins with the old, dry grown vines gently tendered. Berries gently hand picked at optimal ripeness, producing full-flavoured fruit. Crushed, hard plunged, basket pressed to extract intense juices. Add passionate wine making skills, maybe an influence of oak. And in time …. delicious, full-bodied, flavoursome wines just for you to enjoy.”

It caused me to reflect on seasons; of how vines become laden become harvested become processed become served. What season am I/you/Opawa? What practices and resources are needed for this season? (And all this before you even think about toasts to new wineskins.)

Updated: In honour of this post, I got my Spirituality Of Wine of the shelf and will be reflecting around it’s themes over the next weeks.

a christian response to swine flu part 3

Short-term, what 10 things would you give a family suffering from the flu? With people in our community now nursing sick kids, we want to put together a “thinking of you flu pack” (a variant on pastoral care through transition packs); some things that could be dropped into a letterbox and might bring cheer to the sick and those caring for the sick. Any ideas?

Longterm, this quote from the local newspaper: “Most infectious diseases are diseases of poverty.” Ouch. I stopped and read that again.

“And beyond fears of infection, there is a bigger story about inequality and social conditions …”As a society, we’ve got to look at the conditions some members of our society live in and recognise that the conditions in which poor people live are important for all of us. If we don’t reduce inequalities, it does ultimately affect all of us. And this is a stark example of that. This is what the reformists in the 19th century argued about poverty and disease. We look back and think it was about cholera and tuberculosis and it doesn’t apply anymore. It still applies. This is exactly what’s happened in Christchurch.” Alistair Humphrey in The Press, D2.

In other words, housing inequity is an issue that churches who dare to take the endtimes dreams of Isaiah 65 seriously.

really looking forward to this pentecost/al experience

Flaxing Eloquent

An installational exploration of Pentecost
curated by Pete & Joyce Majendie to provide a hands-on, multi-sensory experience. The use of handmade flax paper and flax plants creates a New Zealand setting in which to explore Pentecost today.

A trinitarian smorgasbord
A close encounter of the spiritual kind
Intentional chaos
Facilitated worship

Sat 6th June, 8pm, Opawa Baptist Church, Cnr Wilsons Rd & Hastings St E

does forgiveness have legs?

I sat with a workplace group today. I had been asked to spend two hours addressing the topic of Managing conflict positively, and to cover negotiation, mediation. We got to the topic of forgiveness and the question was asked. “Does forgiveness have a place in the workplace?” Great question. We bounced it around the group for a while. Some said yes, others no.

Then I went fishing. I asked them if they had ever seen forgiveness in their workplaces. (If they had, I was then going to ask if it had a positive or negative effect on the workplace culture, hoping that it was positive and so might address the original question – “Does forgiveness have a place in the workplace?”).

Silence.

No one could think of an example.

It was a sad silence and I came home pondering the “alleged” Christian Easter message, that God in Christ forgives and reconciles, wondering if any of these people worked alongside Christians, wondering what it will take to give the forgiveness message legs, into our workplaces.

harvest festival

Sunday was so much fun, as in our morning congregation we brought back an ancient Opawa tradition, the harvest festival. It was nice to bring back to life something that had been lying dormant in the church for years and the display looked fantastic.

I preached from Ruth 2, an ancient harvest festival during a credit crunch, and the need to celebrate production and the challenge to consider distribution. What would gleaning look like in over-developed Western economies?

We offered 3 practical ways for people to live the Ruth text.
1 – Join twoshirts and start sharing our extra stuff (and we’ve set Opawa Baptist up as a group)
2 – We printed off “thanks for making your garden look so great” postcards and people were invited to take them and post them in the letterboxes of gardens they admired.

3 – We made soup. And more soup. And more soup. Over 150 litres of homemade vegetable soup to replenish our foodbank. About 20 people cut and chopped most of the afternoon and had a thoroughly rich experience of community for mission.

And a question to ponder. And so a harvest festival challenges us to think about distribution. How on earth do we care for the unemployed and the migrant in New Zealand? How on earth could we do business, so that any struggling migrant could find work?

This food will go toward our foodbank. This afternoon we’re having a soup-working-bee. It would be easy for us as a church to stop there. To feel good about ourselves. Wow, we had a harvest festival and we’ve replenished Opawa’s foodbank with some nourishing vegetable soup. What a practical thing for a church to do in a credit crunch. But that’s not harvest according Ruth 2. In Ruth 2 we’re asked some much more fundamental questions. How we live, so that the unemployed can find meaningful work?

discernment online

The lectionary reading for today comes from Matthew 11 and John’s disciples are seeking to discern if Jesus is the One. Jesus reply is to point them to what they see – lives healed. I wonder what this notion of seeing means for us in an on-line age.

In other words, if Jesus was a blogger, how would he respond to John’s disciples. Would he put up blog posts of lives healed? Or is Jesus demanded a deeper level of seeing?

Over the last few months I have spent a fair bit of time in the comments responding to people who, like John’s disicples, are seeking to discern- is body massage prayer a twisting of Bible to suit, is use of U2 in church OK (discussion still bubbling along!), is throwing plates at cross evidence that I/Opawa has been deceived. All of these are about discernment.

Which has me wondering how we discern online and what I might learn from Jesus invitation to see.

Here on this blog, I (always in a rush) pen a few words. They are a form of “seeing” yet invariable are a short phrase that in it’s brevity strips out context and relationship and enviroment. Are my blog words enough to allow discernment? If not, am I being irresponsible by only posting in brevity and should I only post if I have time to blog something more fully? But how much can you truly “see” something online anyway? Did Jesus demand anything from John’s disciples and if so, what should be expected of blog readers/commenters in their seeking to discern?

And what level of relationship is needed? For me, values of community and relationship are essential. Words that are not wrapped in body language are notoriously hard to discern. But how does that work online?

Questions, questions, questions. How does discernment operate in our online world?

Note: This post is a general reflection on the issue of discernment online and what it might mean for blogging. I am not trying to get at, or silence, or have a go at anyone who has commented.

doodling around church as songs and sermon

Today I was doodling with what is now traditional church worship:
fast songs
break
slow songs
sermon
altar call
go home

I was messing around with what I am calling “Grow”: wondering about creating a template that would allow the use of whole variety of ways to learn and engage, working across age ranges; maintaining singing and sermon, adding in food, all together with the aim of growing people through a range of ways to participate. I tend to think through my keyboard, so here is what I typed. (Note that I used a theme to try to keep my doodling grounded, and that theme was “gardening” ie we are like plants. We need to be planted, weeded, watered.)

Welcome and introduction

Benediction

I sort of liked it. It seemed to me to offer lots of ways to learn and engage. I could see bits of the service being picked up by other people, thus increasing the sense of ownership. It felt accessible at a range of levels.

I began to wonder what it might “grow” into 🙂