sustain:if:able kiwi

Where do we get enough bread? Graduation sermon 2015

It was the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership 2015 Graduation Service last night. I was asked as the new Principal to preach. The lectionary text for the day was Matthew 15:29-39; the feeding of the 4,000. In the sermon I unpacked what the text might mean for being church and for ministry. I was able to weave in some creativity, including an art work by Faith Ringgold and setting up on stage a picnic, with different cultural groups bringing their mat and food, in order to explore the diversity of the Presbyterian Church in Aoteroa New Zealand. It gained positive feedback, so for those interested the sermon in full is as follows (more…)

Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching

The news was made public today that I’ve gained a Flinders University 2015 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching. With over 1100 lecturers at Flinders University and only 5 Awards made each year, it is a very significant achievement. The Award was made in recognition of:

leading sustained innovation in theological pedagogy over six years, implementing quality improvements that ensure the embedded diversity of the student body is a resource in contextualising, personalising and deepening the overall teaching and learning experience.

Application is based on submitting a 10,000 word application that addresses 4 criteria:

• Approaches to teaching and the support of learning that influence, motivate and inspire students to learn.
• Development of curricula, resources or services that reflect a command of the field.
• Evaluation practices that bring about improvements in teaching and learning.
• Innovation, leadership or scholarship that has influenced and enhanced learning and teaching and/or the student experience.

In making my application, I focused on my teaching and academic leadership over the last 5 years. I wanted to think through what it means to teach in the particular context of the challenges and opportunities of teaching theology in a modern, pluralist, University context.

Teaching theology in a University setting provides a critical, academic and pluralist context. The environment is one in which those with faith and no-faith mingle. As a consequence, teaching theology involves the teacher creating a space in which students participate in ways that are neither pietistic nor dogmatic. This context has been impacted by the rise in recent years of religious intolerance. As a result, the University, in providing spaces in which critical conversations can occur, provides an important societal good. As a teacher, I see my role as cultivating, nurturing and protecting these spaces, growing in students the capacity to work confidently in diverse environments, able to deal with subject matter that they, their peers and diverse communities, remain potentially highly invested in.

It is a great thrill to have the theological context named and recognised by the University. I think I’m the first Award winner from the Department of Theology at Flinders University in 36 years, since it was set up in 1979. Recipients are recognised by the University to be leaders in their field and gain $5000 to spend on things teaching related. So that’s quite encouraging. My hope is to use the financial resources to continue to develop indigenous theological curricula – specifically to expand on the indigenous women’s Christology project.

the First Real day at work: Auckland blockcourse

Tomorrow is the First Real Day at work. Tomorrow the Summer KCML block course starts. which means I get to meet students. It’s very exciting, after six weeks of connecting with staff and with the church, to actually connect with students.

KCML operates on an internship module. Students speak 60% of their time in placement. The other 40% is a mix of mentoring, tutorial group work, plus three block courses spread over the year. The block courses last for 10 days. The Summer block course is in Auckland, to ensure interns are situated in a multi-cultural context. Which means that I’ve got quite a bit of gear to pack.

I am involved in 5 lectures, plus preaching at the Graduation sermon. I’m very much looking forward to the First Real day at work. But not to the 5 am start, to fly to Auckland.

How do local churches respond to global events? research project

(Please share. The more responses the richer the results)

This is a short survey that asks a set of questions regarding how the local church you attended responded to the Paris attacks of Saturday 14 November, 2015 (NZT). It should take around 5-10 minutes to complete.

The survey is also being undertaken in two NZ denominations, to provide a geographic contrast alongside the networks of social media. The more people that participate that better, so do please share the link. (If you’ve also received a link via email, please use that one rather than this social media one: it’ll make analysis easier)

The research will be used in ongoing resourcing of church and worship leaders. Participation is completely voluntary. Unless you give specific permission to be contacted, all responses are anonymous.

Please click on the following link. If that does not work then copy and paste the FULL URL into your web browser: www.surveymonkey.com/r/LCRSoc (It will NOT work to put the URL into a search engine). If you have any trouble email angelwingsresearch@gmail.com.

Thank you (in hope) for participating in this research in understanding how local churches respond to global events.

Steve Taylor (Principal, Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand) and Lynne Taylor (Researcher, Baptist Churches of New Zealand)

Place-based theology (updated) with the children of Parihaka

This is a helpful introduction to place-based theology by Richard Twiss.

In five minutes he provides a number of explicit theological resources that might encourage a place-based theology. He draws on culture, that of the Navaho people, to suggest the importance of a relationship with earth as part of identity and belonging. He then turns to Scripture. First, 2 Chronicles 7:14, and the phrase “heal their land.” Which, he notes, means land can be broken. Second, he references 2 Samuel 21:1-14,

While both are Old Testament Scriptures, they do offer an understanding of connection between place and identity. Next, Twiss turns to place-based education, which immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences, using these as a foundation for the study. Drawing these threads together, Twiss encourages place-based theology.

Twiss is not alone. In Australia, indigenous woman, Denise Champion has written Yarta Wandatha,
(see my review here). The title is Adnyamathanha for “land is speaking, people are speaking.” It offers an wonderful example of place-based theology, telling stories of land, in order that “ngakarra nguniangkulu,” God is revealing so that we can see (Yarta Wandatha, 28). I also see links with Celtic theology, for example in the understanding of thin places, a Celtic understanding of physical locations in which God is especially present. It has academic rigour, for example in Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, and Identity and Living Between Worlds: Place and Journey in Celtic Spirituality.

I have experimented with place-based theology by taking students to places. I have reflected on the potential in walking the art, which then became a floor talk at the launch of an art festival. I have wondered about teaching New Zealand mission by going to places – to Bay of Islands, Waitangi, Rotorua, Parihaka, Anzac day memorials. Now I’m wondering what an assignment might look like, in which students not only engage with place, but seek to construct their own place-based theology.

Updated: This is another example of place-based education, and thus potentially place-based theology (a review here).

It is about place; places from history in which people lived. The places remain today and can be visited, as part of remembering. In remembering (an act at the heart of identity formation for the people of Israel) respect is paid, identity is formed and connections are made.

This has links with one of the rich insights from Yarta Wandatha, in which Aunty Denise uses story, of her father, to introduce Anhangha idla ngukanandhakai (28) – “living in the memories.” This becomes a way to understand tradition, and to connect that to place. Is this what is happening in Tatarakihi – The Children of Parihaka and in place-based theology?

Flags as lament: Brooke Fraser for Paris, Beirut, Kenya and violence

Brooke Fraser’s song “Flags” (from the 2010 Flags) album) became a place of thoughtful healing over the weekend. Certainly the weekend brought news that was “plenty of trouble, from which we’re all reeling.” The suggestion, to “listen,” to news of lives flapping empty (“our lives blow about, Like flags on the land)”.

There is something disturbing, challenging even, in the line “My enemy and I are one and the same.” The reminder that Jihadists are humans, who have mothers and brothers, and they will awake today to grieve a dead son. What will they be feeling? And to wonder what drives a human, a person born vulnerable like me, to such extreme acts.

And then her turning to Scripture; with the verses that reference the Beautitudes. In these verses (pun intended) is a place to feel – “to mourn, to weep.” In these verses is faith, not in triumph but in reversal; for the innocents who have fallen and the monsters who have stood; “I know the last shall me first.”

Which gives me a place to act: To listen, to feel, to retain the will to faith. Thanks Brooke.

Come, tell me your trouble
I’m not your answer
But I’m a listening ear

Reality has left you reeling
All facts and no feeling
No faith and all fear

I don’t know why a good man will fall
While a wicked one stands
And our lives blow about
Like flags on the land

Who’s at fault is not important
Good intentions lie dormant
And we’re all to blame

While apathy acts like an ally
My enemy and I are one and the same

I don’t know why the innocents fall
While the monsters still stand
And our lives blow about
Like flags on the land

I don’t know why our words are so proud
Yet their promise so thin
And our lives blow about
Like flags in the wind

Oh oh oh oh

You who mourn will be comforted
You who hunger will hunger no more
All the last shall be first
Of this I am sure

You who weep now will laugh again
All you lonely, be lonely no more
Yes, the last will be first
Of this I’m sure

I don’t know why the innocents fall
While the monsters stand
I don’t know why the little ones thirst
But I know the last shall be first
I know the last shall be first
I know the last shall be first

For more of my writing on lament and popular culture, see U2 and lament for Pike River; which became a book chapter in Spiritual Complaint: The Theology and Practice of Lament, when I worked with a colleague, Liz Boase, to explore Paul Kelly’s concert response to the Black Saturday bushfires and U2’s response to the Pike River mining tragedy.

Steve Taylor, “Inhabiting Our Neighbourhoods: Plot by Plot, Plant by Plant”

My practical theology of community gardens is now online, published by Urban Seed. It is one of 16 contributions, which are summarised here. They were all presented at Urban Life Together: Inhabiting Our Neighbourhoods, which was a grass roots missiology conference organised by Urban Seed on October 17-18, 2014. Conference contributors were invited to submit their presentations, which were then peer reviewed and copy edited, before being made available online – in order to enhance access.

Here’s the summary of my contribution:

(Abstract):

Gardens offer rich insight regarding how we might inhabit our neighbourhood. This paper considers gardens in Scripture, start, middle and end. It researches the development patterns of two inner-city Australian community gardens. The story of each is brought into dialogue with Scripture, including Luke 10:1–12 and 1 Cor 3:6–9. The insights from this dialogue between Scripture and two urban garden case studies is then enriched by consideration of two movies. Gardening with Soul is a documentary about an urban missionary who turned the lawn of her religious community into a community garden. Grow your Own is the story of a stranger’s gift that grows healing among a well-established British allotment garden. Both point to the power and potential of a seasonal spirituality. Throughout this paper, beginning and end, is also woven experience—mine—into the place and potential of gardens in mission and ministry. The argument from Scripture, case study, film and experience is that gardens invite us and our neighbours to become good, plot by plot and plant by plant.

In this small thing is all of creation! God made it, God cares for it, God loves it. (A Paraphrase of Julian of Norwich)

In some ways, “Inhabiting Our Neighbourhoods: Plot by Plot, Plant by Plant” is is something I’ve been writing all my life. It became words because I wanted to reflect missiologically on community ministry, specifically community gardens. There is my personal interest in gardening, woven with research into inner-city community gardens, Scriptural reflection and my film reviewing. It is online here.

writing less because I’m writing more

Readers of my blog will have noticed a down turn in words on the blog. My blogging halved when I became Principal of Uniting College of Leadership and Theology.

It has pretty much halved again since I became Principal at KCML. The irony is that in both situations, I am actually writing more.

In regard to Knox, currently, I am making sure and steady progress on the Built for Change book project. I began writing in June. I tested some material in public – Creative Renewal in action – with a Mission Network at the end of July. I wrote that up as a book proposal and signed a contract in September.

The book project is getting the best of my writing time and I suspect that is a major reason for the decline in blogging. I was meant to delivery a finished manuscript at the middle of October, but given I was moving countries, that was probably a bit optimistic. The publisher has asked for 40-50,000 words. I’ve currently got 35,000 words that I’m pretty comfortable with and a chapter structure that is becoming tighter and tighter. It is a practical theology of innovation, in which I am taking multiple stories of change and exploring them theologically, with a particular focus on Paul’s understanding of ministry, informed by a Trinitarian lens.  I’d hope to complete by the end of November!

In regard to the Uniting College, I will leave you a picture.

I have a spiritual practice of journalling and as part of packing to move countries, I was collecting all my journals together. On a whim, I grouped them according to each of my placements.

• In 9 years church planting, I filled 6 journals
• In 6 years Senior Pastor, I filled 3 journals
• In 2.5 years, Director of Missiology, I filled 2 journals
• In 3.5 your, Principal, I filled 7 journals

Less blogging, but actually writing more. Is there any wisdom to be gleaned from this, I wonder?

Moving into the neighborhood: a missiological conversation with Good Neighbors

At the heart of Christian faith is the challenge to be a good neighbor. In John 1:14, Jesus moves into the neighborhood, while in Mark 12:31, Jesus invites us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. In recent times, a major theme in Western understandings of mission has revolved around moving into the neighborhood. Excellent books like Simon Carey Holt’s, God Next Door and Al Roxburgh’s, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood (Allelon Missional Series) provide a rich theology of place. The Parish Collective exists to encourage Christians to love their neighborhoods.

All of which makes Sylvie Tissot’s, Good Neighbors: Gentrifying Diversity in Boston’s South End an important read. It is a study of a gentrifying suburb in Boston’s South End. Tissot uses ethnography, which allows her to undertake a structural analysis, focused on the local agencies. It analyses how mixing across social groups is defined and controlled. Her argument is that “enthusiasm for diversity ultimately translates into a form of power that operates on a particular combination of inclusion and exclusion.” (6)

“One last specificity is the gentrifiers’ inordinate taste for espresso, cappuccino and other drinks considered sophisticated in the United States.” (8)

Introduction (1-10)

“Gentrification, the rehabilitation of old and degraded neighborhoods as wealthier households move in, is one of the most flagrant manifestations of inequalities that mark the twenty-first century.” (1) Everyone seems resigned to the fact that it is an inevitable social process. Tissot chooses Boston because it has sought as a city to value the neighborhood and because it represents the victory of an arriving upper-middle class in what was a working-class suburb. A key instrument was the use of participatory planning processes, along with the concept of diversity. It is a challenging and provocative thesis, one that Tissot claims she will make by analysing four planes – politics (Chapter 2), morality (Chapter 3), culture (Chapter 4) and public space (Chapter 5).

Chapter 1 (11-36)
This locates the research, researcher and the neighborhood. Between 2004 and 2010, she uses standard ethnography tools of attending (visits over 6 years) and interviewing (77 people). Tissot argues that this is the value of ethnography, a particularity shaped by physical proximity and scientific distance (25). Her method includes finding interlocutors, people who provide different perspectives on the community.

She explores the role “played by neighbourhood associations, the vast majority of whose members were white homeowners” (12). She realizes that what on the surface appears to be an upper class suburb in fact has significant proportions of working class.

“Taking the time to walk around the neighbourhood … I … discovered the still-visible and daily presence of the “undesirables,” and with each stay, my impression that white owners exercised a uniform control over public spaces diminished.” (31)

She will argue that while the upper class claim they value diversity, in fact they have used their influence, primarily through voluntary associations, to create the perception of homogeneity.

Chapter 2 (37-78)
This chapter explores history of neighbourhood. It paints a picture of an ecology, the systems of local government and local community, enmeshed with wider economic and urban developments. It is a mistake to view a neighbourhood as autonomous. Rather it is shaped by an interlocking mesh of groups and structures.

The focus of this chapter is tracing the urban struggles of the 1960s and how they generated an activism that included neighbourhood committees – “resident participation” organised “democratically.” (48) It begins because ethnic-minority activists during the 1960 protest urban renewal strategies. Yet by the turn of the century, upper middle class appropriated these structures.

How did these diverse associations develop into more monochrome? “Efficient professionalism replaced the amateurism of the activists of yesteryear.” (69) Competent people in fact contribute to socioeconomic exclusion. “Websites and e-mail lists provided an opportunity for those who had mastered these techniques to introduce new rules.” (70) In other words, if you want to plan with people, key justice question include who you plan with, and how you plan?

They generate authority by seeming to be committed to diversity. What is the social imagination that adds power to these concepts, mobilizing around values? Addressing this question is the task of the next chapter, as it explores how collective action happens.

Fiction as missiology: an appreciation of religious change in Drusilla Modjeska’s “The Mountain”

Abstract (2) for 14th Assembly of International Association of Mission Studies, August 11–17, 2016, Seoul, South Korea

Conference theme: Conversions and Transformations: Missiological Approaches to Religious Change

Title: Fiction as missiology: an appreciation of religious change in Drusilla Modjeska’s “The Mountain”

Stanley Skreslet (Comprehending Mission, 2012) argues that missiology has been slow to examine historical fiction from outside the West. A way to respond to his challenge is presented in The Mountain (2012), a novel by acclaimed Australian writer, Drusilla Modjeska. Book One describes the five years leading up to independence in Papua New Guinea in 1973 and ends with a ‘gift child’: a hapkas boy. Book Two describes his return – the child of a black mother and white father – to the land of his birth.

In the book an account of conversion and transformation in Papua New Guinea is offered. “Of all the applause, of all the cheers, the greatest is for the Christian missions, the priests who cross the stadium with their crucifixes and their bibles …. ‘Jesus,’ … ‘good’ man true” … ‘He die on a tree. Very good. He die for PNG.’” (The Mountain, 291). It is a surprisingly positive portrayal of conversion and transformation, referencing indigenous approval (“the greatest [applause] is for the Christian missions”) and indigenization (“He die for PNG.”)

The paper will take this notion of Jesus as good man true and analyse how this Christology interweaves with themes in The Mountain of ancestor, gift and hapkas. It will argue that The Mountain offers a distinct and creative Christology, one that offers post-colonial insight into the interplay between missiological notions of pilgrim and indigenizing and the complex journeys between there and here. Such a Christology is one result of religious change in PNG.

(My brief book review of The Mountain here).

“regard as valuable”: Missiological approaches to the “Silence” of religious change

Abstract (1) for 14th Assembly of International Association of Mission Studies, August 11–17, 2016, Seoul, South Korea

Conference theme: Conversions and Transformations: Missiological Approaches to Religious Change

Title: “regard as valuable”: Missiological approaches to the “Silence” of religious change

Accounts of conversion and transformation within the Christian tradition are often linked to narratives of success and expansion. Yet a truthful missiology needs to engage the entirety of the Christian story. Silence is a historical novel that offers an absorbing, albeit bleak, meditation on the inability of the seventeenth century Jesuit mission to establish religious change on Japanese soil.

The book is currently being made into a movie. Directed by Martin Scorsese and due for release in 2016, it will undoubtedly rekindle debate regarding conversion and transformation, including how to understand the mission in the gaps and silences of history.

This paper will examine three missiological approaches.

First, the work of Donald McGavran who has argued that lack of success in conversion and transformation is due to the strategies being deployed, particularly a lack of resources focused on evangelism.

Second, the work of David Bosch who has argued that suffering is at the core of Christian mission and that silence can be an evangelistic action.

Third, the work of Philip Jenkins who has argued that the Christian understanding of Easter, in both death and resurrection, is a more Christian paradigm for understanding religious change than that of progress.

Each of these missiological approaches to religious change will be applied to Silence, both the novel and movie (if released in time). The argument is that missiological approaches that speak of silence are consistent with the Apostle Paul, who asks the church in Philippi to “regard as valuable” the story of Epaphroditus.

time to flourish: a theology of time management

The day lies open before me. It is gift, waiting to unwrapped.

How to fill it?

Appointments – these include the requests from outside to meet, greet, complain, engage. Each of these reach out to fill my day.  When I think of appointments, I also include my to do list. As it lies open before me, it is also making appointments, marking my diary not with “Meeting” but with “Complete marking schedule.”

Crisis – something unexpected might happen. I recall days that have been consumed by funding crisis or relationship breakdown. The adrenaline surges and the crisis engulfs.

Routine – the comfort of habit. I settle today in what I did yesterday. Yet if I am honest, what I did yesterday was what I did last week, last month, last month, last decade. There is security in this, the rhythm of routine. But do I want my gravestone to be titled “lived by habit.”

Flourish – Psalm 1, the lectionary reading for today, suggests another approach. In verse 3

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.

Which got me thinking about the shape of flourishing. I suspect what it means for me to flourish might be different from what it means for you to flourish. My role, my skills, my context, invite a particular set of fruit.

The Psalm mentions not only fruit, but leaves.  Like fruit, leaves also are particular, shaped by seasons. Again comes the reminder that my season is different than your season. So to flourish, in fruit and foliage, is unique, an individual fingerprint.

This requires some work, some intentionality. What might my fruit be? I began to journal, a rough draft. A flourishing Principal will

• ensure continuous quality improvement in learning and forming
• be careful, competent, yet creative with resources (buildings, people, systems)
• connect with stakeholders in ways that serve the church of tomorrow
• think (research and write) in ways that take the organisation they serve back to the future

In doing this work, I find that the gift that is my day now has some shape. It might well be expressed in appointments, in responding to crisis, in routine. But my day, my time mangement, is now  more that the sum of its parts.  To grow fruit takes time. The deliberate application of fertiliser, the careful pruning, the commitment to thin appropriately. And so the gift of today is now shaped – by what it means for me and my organisation to flourish.

first week: three words to describe KCML

I often ask people, in job interviews or reference checks, to provide 3 words to describe. There is always room to expand on the three words, but it’s a useful way to encourage clarity and focus.

So, at the end of a first week as Principal at Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership (KCML), let me apply the question to myself. Three words to describe KCML?
– warm
– connected
– thoughtful

Let me expand
– warm – with a wonderful welcome morning tea on Monday, with hot scones and cream lamingtons on the Wednesday, with a range of interesting people in the staff lounge in the afternoon, with lovely greetings on arrival from a range of people
– connected – closely to Knox College in a range of practical ways (including the morning teas), with the church up and down the country, with culture in interesting conversations about digital archiving and crossing cultures
– thoughtful – lots and lots and lots of conversations with people who care deeply and passionately about the church, ministry and the future of faith

It’s been a good first week.

“It takes a church to raise a minister.” Discuss

Today at our first staff meeting as a KCML (Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership) team, I began with a statement for ongoing discussion.

I pointed out how, given our recent move across the ditch, our endings and beginnings, how acutely aware we were of relationships. This is well-captured in the saying – it takes a village to raise a child. Healthy communities offer a wide range of relationships, which at all sorts of different levels, can contribute to growth. That’s the positive take. Equally, unhealthy communities offer a range of relationships, which, because of their lack, or because of their bite, can contribute to decline.

Pondering relationships, their fragility and vitality, I began to wonder if the proverb – it takes a village to raise a child could be applied to forming ministers. Is it that it takes a church to raise a minister? If so, what are the implications for us at KCML?

So today, at our team meeting, I introduced the statement. I invited discussion by offering one Biblical character (not telling who :)). Together as a team we had a very fruitful and rich conversation, one shaped by Scripture and placed alongside a set of living case studies, one that enabled all the team to contribute, one that led naturally into prayer and our business together.

As a result, we decided that in the coming weeks, we would keep exploring the question. We will take turns, each week, to bring a Biblical character or person in history. And we’ll see where the conversation goes, and what it might mean for us, for ministers and for the church.

Feel free to join us

1. What Biblical character or person in history would you introduce?
2. What insight might they bring to the statement – it takes a church to raise a minister?
3. What might be the implications today – for churches, for theological colleges, for ministers and those training and those considering training?

(in the comments)