sustain:if:able kiwi

Walking on country: Uniting College Candidates Indigenous Immersion

News via email overnight of funding approved for Walking on Country, an indigenous immersion experience, which we want to have as a compulsory part of our training for candidates for ministry at Uniting College. It’s a project that I’ve been quietly working away on for well over a year – first in going ourselves as a family, then in seeking partnership with Uniting Church Congress, then in approaching a potential funding partner, then in finding a person to provide leadership, including to write up the bid ….

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
• That a three day/three night educational and spiritual experience of Indigenous culture, history, politics and contemporary lifestyle be incorporated into the training and education of Uniting Church (of South Australia) candidates for Ministry.
• That this occur in different locations each year, based with an Indigenous community.
• That over a three year cycle, with up to 10 candidates attending each year, this program will be attended by the entire Ministry candidate cohort.
• That the program consist of Preparatory reading, an Immersion experience, and a post-trip forum.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:
1. For participants to become informed and educated about life in particular Indigenous communities
2. For participants to explore ‘decolonisation’ of their colonised thinking and relationships,
3. For participants to develop conceptual, emotional and spiritual foundations for covenanting and friendships with Indigenous communities and the UAICC
4. For participants to commit to a journey of reconciliation with Indigenous Australians, and to the vision for Covenanting in the Uniting Church.

Three days is nothing.

Although it might be better than nothing.

And it fits with a number of other intentional processes we’re working on – looking not for a one-off tokenist experience, but consciousness raising on multiple fronts.

Because missional leaders need to experience boundary crossing – in their guts and bodies and in their contexts – as well as their heads.

choose you this day whom you will serve

I led a combined gathering of Board and College team on Tuesday. It’s been an excellent year and it seemed appropriate to gather and celebrate and be in relationship.

We also had some need to talk further about our focus as a College. So before we ate together, we had some work.

In preparation, I invited the following exercise. I noted that College has many potential people to serve/stakeholders. I listed some of them

• Candidates (POD – Phase 3)
• Ministers – continuing education (Phase 4)
• lay leaders (Lay preachers, MoP)
• chaplains
• lay ministry teams
• lay people
• agencies
• university (postgraduate students, research)
• others

I then asked the question – All organisations have limited resource. So, as we think about each stakeholder, what % of energy should college give to each?  Being a percentage, it needed to sum to 100.

What would you answer? How do you think a College should allocate resource?

the potential and place of corporate discernment

Something anew was born yesterday. The timing seemed almost inspired, given this is Advent.

At Uniting College, one of the mechanisms by which candidates participate in their growth as ministry people is Formation Panels.

A person applies for selection as a Minister of the Word or Deacon. If accepted, they are placed in a formation panel. A Formation Panel consists of 3-5 experienced ministry practioners and an Academic Adviser from College. They meet three times a year. This group listen to a new candidate. Together they design a process that mixes formal study, formation and ministry skills and length of process. A candidate and the panel journey together, usually for six years, through the more intense training phase (2) and for the first (phase 3) three years in ministry. Listening, sifting, naming, checking.

Yesterday, was Formation Panel day and all over College among the 40 plus people in phase 2 and 3, all sorts of conversations were happening. Direction for next year was being clarified. Progress in the deep work that is individual growth was being monitored and discerned. Frank conversations about suitability for ministry were being had. Wisdom about how a new minister in placement might handle a difficult situation were being gleaned.

And in one life, a change of direction was being born. Something a candidate had written in preparation, was being linked with some knowledge of their life skills. A question was asked.

And a light bulb went off. The person visibly lifted. A whole new door in ministry was becoming clear.

And so the panel went back to work. A new course plan will need designing – a different mix of formal study, formation and ministry skills. Because of corporate discernment. The willingness to listen long enough and hard enough, to wait (this Advent), for the work of Spirit anew.

survey help please

If you are in Australia and have not attended Uniting College then read on ….

Uniting College for Leadership and Theology is currently conducting research with a range of people through a third party consultancy group, Capacity Builders. Uniting College is eager to hear honest feedback from people both inside and outside the College as we develop a strategic plan and explore how we can communicate more effectively with potential students, current students, graduates and church leaders.

If you live in Australia and if you have not studied at Uniting College, we would greatly appreciate you taking 15 minutes now to complete this anonymous online survey. No attempt will be made to identify you if you want to remain anonymous. If you do provide your contact details at the end of the survey, then we can contact you because there are 2 chances to win two movie tickets.

The Survey will be open until Wednesday 28th of November

a turning point in indigenous relationship

Earlier this year I was privileged to ask a question.

It began a conversation.

It led to a process.

Which I ended up in a room, watching indigenous people work on a translation of some communion words into their local language.

I described the encounter from my perspective prior, and after, here – We lift up our livers, the richness of culture crossing.

On Monday, I got the chance to read another perspective. Another person in the room has written up the encounter as a journal article and sent me the draft for comment. It is still in process, but it was fascinating to read the encounter from another perspective. Two quotes are worth documenting.

First the significance. This apparently, “it signifies a turning point in the relationship between at least a small group of Australian mainstream Christians and the local Aboriginal community. Almost 175 years after the first encounters of the local Aborigines with the missionaries, whitefella Christians had come to Aboriginal Kaurna people to ask for spiritual guidance, by translating a Christian liturgy into the Kaurna language that carries a completely different perception of life, world and faith.” That’s humbling. But also deeply disappointing, that it took 175 years.

Second, the challenge. “It will be interesting to see if, and to what extent, the students and lecturers at the Uniting Church College will engage in such an inter-religious dialogue.”

Since then, we’ve had 2 sessions of input from local indigenous folk into one of our classes. Since then, we’ve done work to make indigenous exposure a compulsory part of our Candidate formation and the first experience will be offered February 2013. Since then, we’ve continued an English as a second language pilot, exploring how to train across cultures. Since then, we’ve continued to build networks and relationships. Since then, we’ve put in a funding bid, seeking a partnership that might allow us to capture indigenous stories from key elders.

But we’ve only just begun …

learning through listening

The last few months have included settling into a new role as Principal. The College has a team of 12 and we’ve all gone through the adjustment of a person within the team becoming a leader in the team.

One of my first goals was to find time to connect with the team. I did this by booking some time with each person to listen. I had four questions, which I’ve asked each person. I’d thought long and hard about what I wanted to ask. Here’s what I crafted.

• Tell me about your sense of call (given I wasn’t part your interview as you began work at Uniting College)
• Imagine a bathtub. It can be emptied, through a plug hole. It can be filled, through a tap. As you think about your sense of call, what about Uniting College enhances your sense of call?
• What about Uniting College drains that sense of call?
• Since I’m new, tell me what responsibilities and priorities you have with us?

I let the whole team know this process was happening before I began. I also let them know as a whole team the questions. I took them individually to a local cafe and listened.

It’s been gold. Absolutely gold. As a team member commented recently, I learnt more in 60 minutes than 3 years of corridor conversations. It was true.

People have felt affirmed. Often there’s been new insights for them, fresh connections about their unique fingerprint and how it’s being inked. I’ve gained perspectives on the organisation that I never would have had otherwise.

If mission is finding out where God is up to and joining in, then the first task of mission is listening. In this case, to people in our teams.

colour wheeling into formation for ministry

Yesterday I spent an hour sharing the big picture of formation for ministry as we currently understand it at Uniting College. The thing that generated the most energy in the candidates seemed to be a colour wheel.

I began with two quotes, taken from our Formation Panel handbook:

“Ministerial formation is first of all an aspect of Christian formation; growing as a disciple of Christ and serving God in the world. It includes transformation, taking in the likeness of Christ as we respond to God’s work of renewing creation. Ministerial formation is grounded in formation for discipleship.” (Formation Panel Handbook, 2)

“Ministerial formation is a life-long process. It involves the whole person – integrating his or her spiritual life, knowledge, skills, attitudes, personal priorities and health.” (2)

After some interaction about our individual uniqueness, I suggested that one way to clarify formation for ministry was to see it as having three parts

• study – lectures and topics
• ministry practice – engagement in ministry
• formation – the processes by which we are shaped organically

I had lots of colour wheels scattered around the space. Folk were invited to choose three colours, to fit them together and to think about their formation. When they first began to sense a call to ministry, how much study had they done, how much ministry practice had they been engaged in, how much life formation had happened?

As they shared in pairs, the insights began to emerge.

But hey, the two of us – we’re different. Exactly. Formation is a unique process.

The colour wheel moves. It changes. But so do I! Exactly, the seasons of our lives might well invite different patterns of formation.

Which allowed a rich conversation. About what we provide at College, an ideal framework that might be a way to ground and make ministerial formation practical – topics to study and different ways to engage ministry practice and various intentional experiences.

But how this could never be a strait-jacket, a one-size fits all approach. Because each of us come with different range of experiences. So each of us need a different type of course experience. Which requires a lot of discerning together. Which takes time. And gets messy.

But how else can we take the unique and individual processes of formation seriously? And all around the room, people gently wheeled their colours into formation for ministry.

indigenous story for a commissioning in mission

This was the symbol presented to Rosemary Dewerse, who was commissioned as the Director of Missiology and Postgraduate Coordinator for Uniting College on Friday night at Presbytery Synod.

The book, by Patricia Grace a fine New Zealand’s Maori writer, is an illustrated picture book, which tells the story of Maraea, an elderly Maori woman living in a coastal community. Sadly, people are drifting to the cities, and the community is falling apart, leaving an aging Maraea on the clifftop, looking out to sea to welcome the birds …

Why such a gift for a commissioning in mission?

Albatross is a bird of ocean flight and acknowledges the pilgrim journey made by the Dewerse family to be among us. It also acknowledges the journeys that have shaped them to this point.

The author, Patricia Grace, is an indigenous Maori and thus has links with what has shaped, and continues to shape Rosemary.

The albatross feather, for the Maori community of Parihaka, was a sign of peace, harmony and reconciliation. Which has obvious echoes the gospel of Christ found in the mission of God’s people.

And the elderly women, in a community falling apart in the face of social change, well that surely is metaphor for the mainline church in the West, including the Uniting Church in which Rosemary is called for this season.

The inside cover was signed by staff and some students.

And for those interested, this is how I introduced Rosemary and the position. (more…)

the colours of formation

“Ministerial formation is a life-long process. It involves the whole person.” (This quote comes from our Uniting College Formation Panel handbook.)

That is so provocative. How does what a theological college offers give expression to what is life-long and embodied? It is so tempting to assume those who join us are blank slates, in whom we need to download everything they need. It is equally tempting to assume that we have more influence than reality, because a person has countless influences in their lives outside of the theological college experience – family, friends, sport, church – that makes them who they are.

So how does ministerial formation respect the past and integrate the whole? One way to conceptualise this is through categories of theological study, ministry practice and formation. To seek to place equal weight on class, experience and the non-formal practices and disciplines.

Which got me thinking colours. You see, part of the whole person is our visual and our sensory. Part of the whole person means thinking not only in words, but also in colours.

If you had to choose one colour, what colour is theological study?
If you had to choose one colour, what colour is ministry practice?
If you had to choose one colour, what colour is formation?

latest mission matters news

Here is the latest Mission matters newslettter from the Uniting College missiology stream. Books worth reading, key participants, update on comings and goings, projects being developed and course offerings for 2013. Excellent progress for a stream birthed at College less than 3 years old!

November 2010 here; June 2011 here; June 2012 here;

Position vacant: Chaplaincy Coordinator

This is the first obvious sign of innovation at Uniting College since I became Principal.

Chaplaincy Coordinator
Uniting College is seeking a gifted person 1 day/week (annual fixed term, renewable) to network, co-ordinate and develop new Diploma of Ministry specialisations in chaplaincy (school, aged, hospital, salt and light). It is essential to possess chaplaincy experience and a higher education qualification. Enquiries and applications to Steve Taylor steve.taylor at flinders dot edu dot au. Applications close 5 November 2012.

Background: In a group brainstorming session a few months ago, we identified first that there is a gap in the Uniting church in chaplaincy training. There are short courses of say six months at vocational level and there are topics (for example Theology and Practice of Chaplaincy) in our 3 year Bachelor of Ministry. But that leaves a lot of space. Second, that in our accrediting of our Bachelor of Ministry degree, we had been encouraged to add a one year equivalent Diploma. While until now we had seen it as a general exit award, the regulations gave us space to make this specific.

So why not offer a Diploma of Ministry with specialisations – aged care chaplaincy, school chaplaincy, hospital chaplaincy? And who knows, in time “salt and light” street chaplains?

Since then, everyone we’ve talked to has encouraged us – our Boards and various stakeholders.

But as we looked at our existing staff, we realised we lacked practitioner expertise in these areas. Hence this new position – Chaplaincy Coordinator – with responsibilities to
• play a key role in developing chaplains who are passionate, Christ-centred, highly skilled and mission oriented practitioners
• promote chaplaincy and chaplaincy courses throughout the South Australian Presbytery/Synod including through the Mission Networks of the church
• assist those teaching core topics in shaping their content and assessment in a way that is relevant to chaplaincy
• oversee the development of and teaching of four elective topics that will maximise the response to chaplaincy needs, through teaching and recruitment of experienced practitioners
• keep abreast of current research in the area of chaplaincy.
• provide course advice and supervision to those seeking to develop skills in or pursuing a vocation in chaplaincy

It is just a start, a testing of the waters, but it’s nice to be setting the sails for a bit of adventure.

faith formation for leaders in mission: hitting the time capsule

In a few weeks, I have to “vision cast,” present a “big picture” to our Uniting church candidates on the topic – academic formation. I’ve been wondering what to say.

Some 6 years ago, I was asked to engage a similar topic while a lecturer at Laidlaw College. It’s interesting to read now what I wrote then, to enter the time capsule, the denominational time capsule, the contextual (Aotearoa New Zealand to Australia) time capsule. Here is my big picture of faith formation some six years ago …

I turned to Paul’s autobiography in Galatians 1:13-18. I pointed out the factors at work in the Paul’s storytelling;
– text knowledge; “advancing in Judaism”
– church knowledge; “traditions of my ancestor”
– human experience; the Damascus Road
– processing space; “after three years”
– community engagement; “acquainted with Cephas.”

I suggested that [Paul’s faith was] re-integrated. He was taking processing time to reconsider text and church in light of human experience. He was processing in community, checking his re-integration with Peter.

And this mix of experience; text; processing; community was life changing for Paul and moved him into ministry.

Considering church and human experience allow him to integrate his past and his emotions; Considering text knowledge allows him to integrate his intellect and build depth and continuity; Processing allows him nuance and insight; Engagement with Peter in community processing keeps him down to earth and people focused.

This was integrating faith; text; church; experience; processing; community

All of us are like Paul; we bring human experiences, we bring church experiences, we have engaged with texts of Bible, history, culture.

And now we become aware of the gift of processing space and the gift of community engagement. So in fact, going to a bible college could, like Paul, be a life-changing experience.

(Full post six years ago here)

insider, outsider perceptions

At Uniting College, we’re in the midst of a vision, planning and promotion process. We’re taking some months to explore questions like  – What is our unique God-given charism (call)? What is the unique context in which we’re placed? Given that context, what do we want to be in 4 years time (vision)? What do we need to focus on to get there (signposts)? How would we know if we’ve got there (measurable outcomes)? What markers will set to guide our progress (strategy)?

We began with a 3 day workshop in September and it’s been fascinating to be part of a theological College of a mainline church engaging in such a process. The amount of energy, goodwill and clarity generated has been wonderful.

A second phase of the process began today, 2 days of work around promotion. Focus groups (potential students, current students, graduates, staff) will be woven together with phone interviews and a survey.

One of the exercises from today was around the question of what draws a person to a College/seminary. Focus groups were asked to list the following in order of priority. What will be fascinating will be comparing focus groups. What do potential students value, compared with what staff think potential students they might value?

Here’s the list of 12

• focus (missional)
• flexibility in study
• teaching staff
• theology
• emphasis on practical experience
• subject selection
• college culture
• denominational alliance
• levels of study – from diploma to PhD
• working with local churches
• location of campus
• emphasis on research

What would you put? What would be your top 2? What would be your bottom 2?

small missional communities and the Uniting church

Jonny Baker describes the growth of small missional communities, with around 30 groups from the London Diocese gathering recently to network.

most were a small community that had moved into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty), meeting together in a bar or home or allotment, seeking to follow christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community – in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on. they are not that focused on growing big – but more like the yeast of the kingdom that jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. a couple of people spoke of the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumner church!?). what was also interesting is that many of these described a positive relationship with their local churches – they were not competing for punters – far from it. but they brought a mission energy to the area that could really help a local church or do things a local church was not able to do.

I also see it as a way of getting out of the “alt.worship” mode, in which the energy mainly went into re-creating gathered worship. In small missional communities, the energy is focused on life-as-mission. Both are ways of beginning a mission, but I suspect different beginning point suit different personalities and also different contexts.

The question, as one who who grew up anabaptist, is how these missional communities relate to the wider church. This piece for me is addressed in Pete Ward’s Liquid Church, in which the use of “flow” becomes a way to envisage relationships. What is fascinating about Jonny’s quote is the way this flow is being located locally – within local churches. Good stuff.

Within the Uniting/Adelaide context in which I now work, I see a number of distinct possibilities. We need a way of being Presbytery (dare I say, mission network/s) that allows accountability and resourcing to be shared. The gift of the Uniting church is a church in every suburb and thus a physicality about being neighbourhood. The other weakness of being small and missional is resourcing when you start to connect with the marginalised. Again a Presbytery-as-network would address this.

A further facet about being Uniting is the potential for partnerships with Uniting Care, who can provide professional resourcing but can’t be “church” without conflicts of interest around proseltyising. Is there a 3 way synergy that needs to emerge – Uniting Care; local church buildings; small missional communities? ie professional resourcing + local presence + engaged life-as-mission groupings.

Now all we need is a motion at Synod that invited a new mission network around small missional communities; and a College committed to training missional pioneers.

Oh but wait, haven’t we got the second already?