sustain:if:able kiwi

Welcome. But who owns “home”?

Welcome Home is a Dave Dobbyn special, the first song on his 2005 Available Light. It was reputed to be written in response to a racist incident, in which a far-right group suggested Chinese migrants were not welcome in New Zealand.

The chorus is gorgeous: “Welcome home from the bottom of our hearts/from the bottom of our hearts.” It song then offers a number of important insights in regard to hospitality and welcoming the stranger.

1 – Honouring of migrant story

Tonight I am feeling for you/under the state of a strange land
You have sacrificed much to be here

These are the first words and in doing so, the song begins in a listening posture. It starts with the migrant, and desire to empathise. This leads to an honouring of the migrant journey, the recognition of sacrifice, that no matter how good it might be to move, it still means homesickness and breaking of relationship, of missing out of change, and not seeing parents grow old and children grow..

2 – Offering fresh possibilities

Out here on the edge/the empire is fading by the day/
And the world is so weary in war/maybe we’ll find that new way

This is quite profound, for it suggests that the current state of the “home” is not the best. It needs a new way. And thus the migrant is framed as a gift. With their coming, their might actually be a new way by which the old country might live, might learn, might grow.

3 – Suggesting a new practices

So welcome home, see i made a space for you now

And here the rubber hits the road. It’s one thing to say welcome. Some words.

It’s quite another whole set of realities to make a space. Space making is physical. Space making means the welcomer must move, must let themselves be disturbed in this act of space making.

Part of the difficulty is that different cultures perceive space making differently. A comment about an accent might be a joke one day, but on another day it can be perceived as a reminder of difference, an exclusive gesture.

Nevertheless it suggests that welcome is never just words. It must include the welcomer being willing to move, to deliberately enact gestures that the migrant understands as space making.

But at the root of this is the question of who owns, who defines “home.” The danger is that “home” means that relationships are always defined in binary

• home-visitor
• local-foreigner
• mine-not yours

Theologically, it seems to me that Jesus left “home” in the Incarnation. Much ministry was done not at his home, in his place, but only as he experienced the “other” saying “welcome home.” – At Matthew’s house, in Zacchaues’s place, at Mary and Martha’s. But on the other hand, this was always done in Jesus home tongue, his language and his culture.

Should the church say “welcome home”? This has been the dominant ministry posture in Christendom. We are the host and we expect the world to come to us.

Then in a post-Christendom world I hear people rifting off the Prodigal Son, the church becomes the father, waiting for the culture, which has stomped off, getting ready to welcome the returning. “Welcome home.” The Luke 15 parables cluster around this theme. As I’ve written elsewhere, the lost sheep assumes the shepherd will bring the sheep home. But what would happen if the shepherd decided to make a new home, in the place where the lost sheep was?

But perhaps, if the church seeks Incarnation as a way of being, it is time for the church to become alien, migrant.  To give up saying welcome and go looking for welcome. To wonder who, if any, will make space for it? This is certainly the heart of Luke 10:1-12, in which the disciples are sent, speaking peace, to be reliant on the welcome and hospitality of another.

For further on this:
When home is a pain

creationary: In search of a round table

A creationary: a space to be creative with the lectionary. For more resources go here.

A few weeks ago I posted a communion reflection, on how the roundness of a communion table remakes us – a reflection of the physicality of the table, the importance of space and the power of the gospel to change relationships, powers and hierarchies.

Maggi Dawn has just posted a poem in a very similar vein.

In search of a round table
a poem by Charles Lathrop

Concerning the why and how and what and who of ministry,
One image keeps surfacing: A table that is round.

It will take some sawing
To be roundtabled.
Some redefining
And redesigning,
Some redoing and rebirthing
Of narrow long Churching
Can painful be
For people and tables.
It would mean no daising
And throning,
For but one king is there
And he is a foot washer,
At table no less.

And what of narrow long ministers
When they confront
A round table people,
After years of working up the table
To finally sit at its head,
Only to discover
That the table has been turned round?

They must be loved into roundness,
For God has called a People
Not “them and us”.
“them and us” are unable
to gather round; for at a round table
there are no sides
and ALL are invited
to wholeness and to food.

At one time
Our narrowing churches
Were built to resemble the Cross
But it does no good
For building to do so,
If lives do not.

Round tabling means
No preferred seating,
No first and last,
No better, and no corners
For the “least of these”.
Roundtableing means
Being with,
A part of,
Together and one.
It means room for the Spirit
And gifts
And disturbing profound peace for all.

We can no longer prepare for the past.
We will and must and are called
To be Church,
And if He calls for other than a round table
We are bound to follow.

Leaving the sawdust
And chips, designs and redesigns
Behind, in search of and in presence of
The Kingdom
That is His and not ours.

visualisation: creating multiple acts of beauty

This is a website to get lost in. I admire (yearn for) the gift of making complex things simple, the beauty that comes from clarity. This is a fascinating new venture which attempts to visualise data. It involves academics and design schools from around the world.

Note the key words:
complex, interdependent
understanding proceeds action
design is about integration.
it is dynamic, based on people doing things
design enables us to negotiate a revolution
integrate and collaborate

I have no idea how this can be applied to missiology and theology, but I’d love to be part of a conversation on this.

Posted by steve at 10:19 AM

the richness of our shrinking world

The internet has some downsides. But it also has some amazing upsides.

I am currently working on some distance material, around the theme of Jesus Christ today. The aim is a course to help lay folk as they prepare to exercise their gifts, including in leading worship and preaching. Being a course by distance, the challenge is not to prepare pages and pages of words, but to encourage a range of ways to engage.

On Tuesday night I was working on the section on Jesus Christ in history. I came across the Theologians Trading Cards, on the disseminary website. Could people arrange the theologians in various categories – geography, time, Christology from above/below? Could people play variants of snap or top trumps with their friends? A way to engage Jesus Christ in history in which the cards create interaction and question. A query email to the site owner and overnight there was email reply in regards to the Creative commons license.

On Wednesday I was working on another section. I love the story in pages 3-4 of Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement about the impact of Christ on a person’s actions/witness. (The whole book is an excellent resource, which I found helpful a few Easter’s ago in framing my preaching input over a Thursday, Friday, Sunday). A story opens up different ways of engaging. What is more, the story could then be used as an exercise, inviting folk to work out how the sources of theology – Scripture, tradition, experience, reason – are all there and are all at play.

The story in McKnight’s book mentioned the title of a song. I googled the title, but could find no song with exactly that title. So I decided to email the author with my query. He replied with the contact details of the actual person who tells the story.

Another email to her. And a reply, including some more detail, which will make the story even more helpful.

In less than 48 hours, three conversations with three people on the other side of the world. Our shrinking world can certainly be full of richness.

Oh, for those wondering what the song is (more…)

Christ for us today: in pluralism, colonisation, environmental degradation

The blog title is a reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor seeking to be a Jesus follower during Hitler’s reign in Germany. He found his theology must address the question: Who is Jesus Christ for us today?

The context today is not Nazi Germany.

Our context is one of pluralism, the challenge of how to name Jesus when my neighbours might be aetheist, Muslim or hedonist.

Our context is also one of colonisation, the challenge of the fact that the land I live on originally belonged to someone else, an indigenous community. It was pretty much taken by force, with the aid of gun and often by someone professing to follow Jesus. And the money that funds so much of the mission of the Anglo-church today is based on historic exploitation of indigenous land. To use the term of Chris Budden, how are we Following Jesus in Invaded Space: Doing Theology on Aboriginal Land.

Our context is also one growing environmental degradation. We live with growing talk of global warming, with acid rain and deforestation and decline of species and bio-diversity.

This is the Bonhoeffer challenge: who, what is Christ for us today.

All of this by way of saying that I am currently writing a distance course on the topic of Jesus. And I am looking for sermons. Have you preached a sermon that relates Jesus, or any part of the Gospels and New Testament, to the issue of either pluralism, colonisation or enviromental issues? Have you heard a sermon on this? Do you know of someone who might have preached on this?

Because I am looking for examples, with a view to inclusion (full acknowledgement will be given), to help students in the course think about how they will answer the the Bonhoeffer challenge: who, what is Christ for us today.

I am not looking for book chapters or readings, simply examples of how people are having such conversation in relation to the preaching life of the church.

Not am I hoping for a particular theological slant, simply examples of people having a thoughtful conversation between Jesus and the issues of pluralism, colonisation or environmental degradation.

taking some ordination theology for a spin

So on Sunday I’m preaching at the ordination of five Uniting church ministers – all bright and brand, shiny, new like. It will bring to 20 the number of ministers ordained here in South Australia this year. Which is exciting and has left us all wondering what God is up to among us.

Anyhow, my privilege is to preach and the Lectionary text is Matthew 3:1-12, which is about John the Baptist’s – the wildman “pioneer leader” – and his call for repentance and baptism. How to apply the narrative of John the Baptist to ordination?

So after much pondering, and some reading, I wonder if the text offers us a way of viewing ordination as

an invitation to share in the processes of baptism
of ourselves,
and others,
as a life long journey shaped by Christian practices
that remind us of
God’s absence (how unlike God we are) – eyes open to the world – how we allocate our resources
and presence (how much God likes us) – hands open to God – forgive our sins.

I’m drawing here from Augustine’s concept of double almsgiving – forgive and it will be forgiven and how we allocate our resources), as outlined in Inquiring After God: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Blackwell Readings in Modern Theology) and Rowan Williams understanding of church in Ponder These Things: Praying With Icons of the Virgin.

Those are my current thoughts. Feedback welcome.

the craft of work? a theology getting me out of bed

This is another entry in the dictionary of everyday contemporary spirituality: W for the craft of work

I picked up philosopher, Richard Sennett’s book The Craftsman a few weeks ago. It was the embossed pencils that made up the book cover that caught my eye …

And then I checked the back and a whole lot of things clicked in my head. The book explores craftsmanship, the desire to do a job well, for it’s own sake and suggests this as a template for living.

• craft as technique. Not mindless procedure, but the cultures in which we might flourish
• craft as a unique and individual blend of skill, commitment and judgment
• craft as the aligning of head and heart, intuition and intelligence, history and innovation

Which got me thinking about what gets me out of bed and how I approach work. When I mark an essay, it can be a burden. But could it be something to craft – through the assignments I set, the comments I make, the best practice examples I provide, the clarity of my responses.

When I teach, it can be stress of preparation. Or it can be the entering of sacred space, those moments of learning that will be unique to this moment and this group.

When I seek to innovate within academic structures, to implement new pioneer ministry/social entrepreneurial training options (details any day now) or to create a missional masters , it can be the drudgery of administration, or search for clarity around best practice.

When I meet with a post-graduate student, it can be an appointment. Or an attempt to craft a unique learning experience, to co-operate with what God has already been doing in a person’s life, the discernment of discipleship as God’s spirit shapes and moulds.

When I start researching, it is a craft honed by others into which I enter. As I write, it is a deadline. Or the time to bring vague thoughts into communicative life through the craft of concrete black and white shapes, to hone the tools of grammar and punctuation to make plain my flights of fancy.

Such is craft.

Theologically, this links with Robert Banks book, God the Worker: Journeys Into the Mind, Heart and Imagination of God. He suggests that God is a musician and a composer, a designer and a garment maker, an architect and builder, a crafter and an artisan. (I’ve been part of writing more on this here).

And humans are made in the image of God the Crafter.

To be honest, the workload this year has at times nearly consumed me. New job, new responsibilities, new culture – so many adjustments. It’s been too easy to view work as draining.

Work as craft. It provides a different way to approach the day and the desk, the week and the workload.

a public theology: mission, leadership and reconciliation

It was no ordinary “theology” class. First, we were outside. Second, we had smoke from an open fire drifting across our seats. Third, the venue was Colebrook Blackwood Reconciliation Park.

In 1952, the Uniting Aboriginal Mission opened up a home for Aborginal children. It became part of the sad saga that is the stolen generation, in which state and mission colluded in removing Aboriginal children from their homes. The home closed in 1973, but the memories linger and lives remain damaged.

In 1994, a community group began to meet. Stories were told. Relationships formed. Education began. A memorial was created. The group continues today.

I teach a course on Missional Leadership, in which participants at the beginning of the course choose a “table.” It can be inside or outside the church. At this table they have to relate and listen. They have two major projects during the class. The first is to name what they are hearing as they listen. The second is to envision a mission action project, what might happen in response to their listening and in light of an appropriate Kingdom imagination. The hope is that through this process they develop as change agent leaders, for the sake of the world.

With the year ending, it seemed appropriate to meet not in a lecture room, but at a “table.” One of the class had chosen Colebrook Blackwood Reconciliation Park, because they are part of the community group.

And so no ordinary “theology” class began. Outside. Smoke drifting across. Cradling cups of tea. And a fantastic conversation – about what is mission, about the place of truth-telling, with stories of healing, about public theology as local action, about mission today as sitting with the mission mistakes of the past, of an appreciation of mission-as-reconciliation, which is central to the Uniting Church Basis of Union. About Luke 10:1-12 and how it continues to live in everyday practice.

It is amazing how far a group can travel in a year. It is so richly accessible when theology emerges in and around local practice and not simply from text books.

a way to teach theology

Here’s an idea for teaching theology. Say you have a format which includes tutorials. You also have readings you expect (!) students to read. And a concern that students don’t read enough.

Why not offer an introductory frame, based say around the Wesleyan quadrilateral – experience, tradition, Scripture, reason.

(Hat tip: Diagram from Scott McKnight)

(Or perhaps you’re a bit more hip and you want add a fifth – creation and culture – ie Wesleyan pentalateral!).

(Or the practical theology model offered by John Drane, After McDonaldization: Mission, Ministry, and Christian Discipleship in an Age of Uncertainty, page 129, which uses reading; tradition; life experience; passion)

Having provided the frame, as you hand out the readings, also handout to each student 10 cards – 2 experience cards, 2 tradition cards, 2 Scripture cards, 2 reason cards, 2 creation/culture cards.

Suggest the following tutorial format:

• each week the lecturer will offer both a case study question and a set of readings. Say the topic is Spirit and the church. So a question could be “Can a person call themselves a Christian and not be part a the church?” and the reading could be a chapter from Clark Pinnock’s fantastic Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit
• each week the lecturer will stand at the board and prepare to scribe the student discussion
• each week discussion is invited. This occurs by inviting each student to play one of their cards. They choose whether they bring an experience, or a Scriptural reflection, or an insight from tradition, or some reason, or an artifact from creation/culture.  (Over 10 weeks, with 10 cards, they choose how they prepare for the tutorial and what they read/reflect upon.)  All must be in relation to the case study question.  Discussion and interaction occurs.
• in the last 15 minutes you switch from discussion to reflection on the process. Overall, how do the “cards” integrate? are there missing or overabundant parts? what are the implications?
• each student then writes up a 1 page reflection on the case study question, upon which they are graded. This is handed in at a later date and ensures that they are provided time to settle their own theological view in relation to the question. Students gain extra marks if they do extra research over and above the class discussion. So if a class finds a weakness one week in say tradition or Scripture, and the student goes away and does extra work in this area, credit is gained.

My hunch is that this would provide both an interesting way for students to engage in theology and a way for them to continually reflect upon the actual process by which they do theology. It would encourage reflection that is not just book based and would helps students develop in areas they are not instinctively strong in.

Thoughts?

How real is your church?

Church is “the history of particular persons realizing by the Spirit’s gift the new potential for human nature.” A challenging quote from Ponder These Things: Praying With Icons of the Virgin

It echoed this insight by Neil Ormerod:

“major divide in ecclesiology, between those who study ecclesiology as an idealist Platonic form in some noetic heaven, and those who study it more as a realist Aristotelian form, grounded in the empirical data of historical ecclesial communities.” in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church

The temptation to construct church in ideal forms. To deal with metaphors and images and DNA’s rather the particular communities that are with us now. If we just rearranged our DNA, if we could just start again, if we could just return to the early church, if we could just have a few more musicians or young people.

Yet the true grace of transformation is that God could take particular humanity, the reality of what is, and through that catch a glimpse of the Kingdom.

Almost, like, yes, an emerging church 🙂

So as part of prayer, I began to place particular persons, specific names, actual communities in the phrase. Church folk I have argued with. Communities I have been disappointed with. People I wish would change.

It was hard. I kept wanting to trade up for idealisms. But the Incarnation of Christ walked among the real, the local, the particular.

God, through these particular persons, unfold your new potential.

feasting as the way, the truth, the life

Off to talk about hospitality and mission this weekend with Coromandel Valley Uniting. Pretty much a re-run of what seemed to go so very well in Tasmania. So I shouted myself to some extra reading in the area of Christian hospitality and came across the following fabulous quote by Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness:

To be drawn into the messianic feast, anticipated now in the feastings of the church, every area of life and every person must be transfigured. However, no new totality is created. There can be no overview or single principle that orders the feast. The myriad of conversations, encounters and exchanges, which in turn generate surplus to be exchanged, cannot be contained or directed. Neither is there a single pattern to conform to: each person has a gift, and each exchange takes place between distinct and unique persons whose particularity is established and enhanced through these exchanges. Thus, feasts and festivals are ways to anticipate and respond to the inbreaking messianic age that initiates true freedom and generates transfigured patterns of human sociality.

My mind went scrambling in all directions. I thought of the meals I am part of recently, the random chaos of a Taylor table when we are all in fine form and the conversation can go anywhere, each one adding a new and rich twist.

I thought of the modern Western mind, which loved truth as individual, intellectual and objective, and yet the sense here of truth as relational and embodied.

I thought of the theological battles over the location of heaven and whether some will be left behind, in contrast to this image of new human relatedness.

I thought of Jesus, hosting the Last Supper at the end of three years of ministry of table fellowship.

loving eric: a contemporary theology of hospitality

An unexpected bonus of visiting the Tate Modern was re-finding the work of Shaun Tan. Si Smith, of 40 fame, first put me onto Shaun, by sending me The Red Tree. It was beautiful, hand illustrated with a lovely, unfolding short story.

While at Tate, I noticed another Shaun Tate, Eric. Delightful size. Once again beautifully illustrated. And the story, again lovely and unfolding. I am not going to summarise it in any way, because it would ruin it. Simply to say that it offers a fascinating theology of hospitality; what it means to give as a tourist and receive as a host.

It worked for me at so many levels – tourist in England, alien in Australia, missiologist talking often about hospitality your place and mine!

icons as theological treats

Some theologies use words, a hard, exact and careful reflection regarding the best words to use to articulate limited human perceptions of God. In contrast, icons use pictures, not words. This is not a creatively free-flowing task, but a careful task, aiming to faithfully pass on Christian thought.

I’ve found myself tremendously enriched in recent days by two of Rowan Williams books: Ponder These Things: Praying With Icons of the Virgin is a theology of the Incarnation, while The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ, offers a theology of Resurrection. Both utilise Orthodox icons as their starting points. I love this explanation of icons:

the art of making icons is often termed “writing” rather than “painting”; an icon presents the figures and events of the Bible and church history in paint rather than ink.

Icons for me do three things extraordinarily well. They help me think theologically. They help me think visually and in colour. They remind me that theology is about relationship with God.

It’s been a joy to sit with these two books on that explore icon’s theologically by Rowan and realise just how deep these three wells can go. With Rowan’s gifts, the theological depth is extraordinary. The invitation to prayer and contemplation is artful. They have been such a helpful gift for me in the last month or so, reading until a sentence or two captures me, and then using that for prayer and God-focus during the day.

tricky theology question from a 10 year old

A delightfully agile 10 year old threw me this question last week.

How do you know that God is the most powerful one? What if there was someone more powerful, but they have been keeping that hidden?

I’d be grateful for any insights, ponderings and musings from you, my intelligent readers.