sustain:if:able kiwi

big year out: a unique young adult discipleship experience

Big Year Out is a unique 1-year discipleship program for young adults, either alongside other study or as a gap year experience. It involves interactive study, community sharing and unique missional experiences. In 2014, it is likely to include partnerships with groups in two other states of Australia, making it a genuinely national growth opportunity. For the full brochure, check out the Uniting College website, under the heading Programs.

Plus at Uniting College, we’re looking for a Big Year Out Co-ordinator – 2 days a week. You’ll be passionate about helping young people explore the fullness of the Christian faith, vocation and identity in contemporary life. You’ll find yourself part of a team committed to developing life-long disciples and effective leaders for a healthy missional church.

stoned: memories of mission and ministry

I took this picture of a memorial stone that sits on Hutt Street, a stone in the middle of a park, surrounded by fast moving cars in a busy part of central city Adelaide.

It struck me at the time as a fascinating way to reflect on time and progress. Times have certainly changed since that first mass ever in Adelaide was celebrated. The reality of that moment was fleeting – the celebration of Mass was primarily for those present at that time, at that place, to nurture their faith and discipleship.

And that celebration of Mass has certainly spread since 1840. Now all over Adelaide today, Sunday by Sunday, Christ is proclaimed and embodied.

In the Incarnation, the physicality of God made flesh, Christians are offered two types of embodiment. One, physically, in place. Another, in human lives and actions. Both are invitations to memory.

The picture thus sets up a fascinating contrast between memory embodied in lives and practices, and memory embodied in physical objects. The physicality of memory – whether a stone or a building – becomes contrasted with the ongoing reality of God in our world and our response, of nurturing faith and discipleship.

We’re all being called to trust in that God and to believe that the impulse – to teach, to nurture – will continue no matter what physical context.

research as gospel potential

“Critical qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the gendered observer in the world. It consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible. These practices are forms of critical pedagogy. They transform the world.” (Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, 5)

Wow. Research that transforms. Now that’s a process, an activity, a culture worth being part of. That’s the goal of our Master and Doctor of Ministry at Uniting College, especially our Missional Masters cohort. Transform the world – beginning with participants and their communities.

Returning to the reading, it cites the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, who provides examples of this type of research that transforms. She lists 25 indigenous research projects. These create, name, democratize, reclaim, protect, remember, restore, and celebrate. In research, these stories are told. They are not utopian for they “map concrete performances that lead to positive social transformations. They embody ways of resisting the process of colonization.” (Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, 12)

I was thinking about this yesterday as the urban mission vision of Jeremiah was being discussed. Seek the welfare of the city. Marry. Plant gardens. These were the invitation to create, name, restore, celebrate, the power of a minority group, in a dominant culture, to survive. This is what the church is today, a minority group that is invited into a creative, en-culturated relationship with Western consumer culture. Essential to this will be a set of practices.

Let me be practical. On Sunday I was part of making a solar oven. That’s a urban mission vision of an alternative practice of life. To use the oven is a sustainable way to care for the environment. It will mean a different pace of life, as cooking takes longer, so needs to start earlier, and with eating times dictated by the sun. It’s an alternative way of living, in the midst of Western consumerism.

And then comes the research, which will uncover these practices. For example the work of a student I was reading last week, on mainstreet theology. Or the student studying how local church op shops can be missional. Or the student researching how church communities in mining communities read the Zaccheus story.

“Accordingly, the purpose of research is not the production of knowledge per se. Rather, the purposes are pedagogical, political, moral, and ethical, involving the enhancement of moral agency, the production of moral discernment, a commitment to praxis, justice, an ethic of resistance, and a performative pedagogy that resists oppression.” (Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, 14)

sustainable Sundays

Today we built a solar oven. A few hours at a local community centre, with some cardboard, aluminium foil and glue.

It’s meant to be able to cook pretty much anything, simply using the heat of the sun – casseroles, corn on the cob, potatoes, cup cakes, bread, eggs. It takes a few hours to cook. Which was part of the pleasure and promise, the hint of a different pace of life, a more sustainable Sunday.

It was too wet outside to try but here’s a video of how it’s meant to work. (Although being a vegetarian I’ll be trying something different)

a happening place, a bouncing and imaginative place

Alongside yesterday’s press release, here is another interesting perspective on life at Uniting College, placed online recently by one of my teaching colleagues, Rosemary Dewerse.

Try hanging out at my workplace sometime! It’s a happening place. Lots of people imagining all kinds of things. My students are part of that. Have just marked an assignment where a student was asked to dream of a church that is committed to being intercultural. Damien Tann 🙂 wrote his as a series of emails to an about-to-arrive pastor. I laughed and was impressed by turns. (And it is WEIRD to read oneself being quoted – will take a while to get used to that!) I’ve been warned by another student in that class that she is writing a children’s book…Another student wrote for a unit called ‘Mission Then Mission Now’ a narrative weaving with its strands being an analysis of the early Celtic Christian church, the Uniting Church in Australia today, and a middle strand of the commonalities. Peter Sorensen did an impressive job of comparing and contrasting the big challenges and bold responses of each to their contexts. And you had to read the woven text…Last semester Maxine Moore did an exegesis of her neighbourhood for the unit ‘Reading Cultures’, ready to respond missionally to it by QUILTING it! Very cool. Meanwhile Phil Smith produced a radio documentary of his local patch, pulling out metaphors for analysis that were offered by the local grocer and teenagers. 🙂 And Matthew Barker did a short film. (He’s told me he’s writing a play for his next one – as did Damien for his last!) I’ve already mentioned a postgrad student of mine, Maree Aldridge who is an artist extraordinaire. Actually, I have another artist student working on a piece for his upcoming assignment…I love it when students don’t just stick to the essay option (not that that is a bad one!)

That constant thread of creativity, of honouring the life experiences and gifts that students bring with them into the learning experience. This is not a tabla rusa model of education, in which people are treated as blank slates on which new content will be dumped. Rather there is integration, in which new learnings are being woven back into lives and contexts. In other words, the pre-existing “quilter” is evolving, new quilts are made possible, out of blend of what was, what is and dream of what might be.

For the full post, including a reflection on a “bouncing” and “imaginative” Principal, go here. Rosemary’s blog, with her involvement around Australia and New Zealand, is itself a rich window into a happening, bouncing, imaginative life.

College Introduces New Staff and Modern Topics with 2014 Timetable Release

Adelaide College of Divinity (ACD) has revised and released its brand new 2014 timetable, introducing a range of updated topics with a modern emphasis on learning beyond the class room. The College plans to introduce a full complement of lecturers from seven different denominations to its academic staff and will place emphasis on community and on-line learning with the introduction of a Blended Educational Design Co-ordinator.

ACD was founded in 1979 with the vision of forming students for a world of genuine religious diversity. The desire was to provide an experience of the reality of John 17, Jesus’ vision of a unified Christian body. The diversity of study options within the new 2014 ACD timetable continues to express a strong and continued passion for learning, encompassing diversity, unity and respect.

“We live in a world that desperately needs different religious groups to work cooperatively” says ACD Executive Officer, Janet Buchan. “The new ACD timetable reflects the involvement of lecturers from a variety of denominations – each secure in their heritage, respectful of difference and committed to providing the best theological education, encouraging students to excel in their learning.”

Next year’s ACD lecturers come from at least seven different denominations including Anglican, Baptist, Churches of Christ, Catholic, Salvation Army and Lutheran. This collaboration of denominations fits well alongside the Uniting Church denomination, itself an ecumenical movement formed from Congregationalist, Methodist and Presbyterian denominations in the 1970s.

A focus on ecumenism is present in many areas of the College, including the chapel and the Adelaide Theological Library, which continues to host treasures from a wide range of Christian traditions.

The new timetable has an additional emphasis on learning beyond the four walls of a classroom with three topics being taught as ‘study tours’ throughout the course of the year – an indigenous immersion experience, a missions immersion experience and a trip to the places where Paul walked and worked.

Blended learning will also be introduced in 2014. “Community and inter-connection are very important for learning – both for onsite and distance education students,” comments Uniting College Principal, Steve Taylor. “Technology today allows us to connect students with lecturers and with each other, no matter where people are situated. We are delighted to be employing a Blended Educational Design Officer in 2014. This will allow the College to offer an even more connected learning experience for students, no matter where they live and work around Australia.”

Press release 11 October 2013. For the 2014 timetable go here, or contact the ACD Office, 08 8416 8464.

doing theology: teaching by induction and the flipped classroom

This semester I am experimenting with teaching theology by doing theology rather than by lecturing theology. Class readings and notes are placed online and students are invited to access their content in their own time. Class time is then spent interacting, engaging, doing. (I’ve described how I introduced this to the class here).

Each week I try to offer different ways to engage. Sometimes it is simply discuss the readings in groups, other days I offer some artistic and creative engagement, other days I use the Socratic method and pick on students whom I ask to explain to the class what they’ve read. This week the topic was Jesus. I decided to structure it as a set of challenges, different tasks, with students choosing what they did; how many they did; how long for; whether they did them alone or together.

Here are the challenges –

a) Tradition challenge – Read through some readings of early theological writings (8 readings selected from Alister McGrath, The Christian Theology Reader). They are actual words from theologians wrestling with Who is Jesus? . Make your own written dot point notes of any connections you make between these readings and the class lecture notes (ie page 3 of your notes).

b) History challenge – Consider Jesus morph.

Connect the dates of the Jesus morph with the timeline from an earlier class reading, Ellen Charry, Inquiring After God: Classic and Contemporary Readings). What do you already know about any of these dates, that might help you understand the Jesus Morph? Make dot point notes on the provided timeline.

c) Method challenge – Take the class reading. (Clive Pearson and Jione Havea, Faith in a Hyphen: Cross-Cultural Theologies Down Under). Choose one of the three Christologies (one Samoan, two Korean). Read it, looking for examples of the use of Scripture, tradition, experience, reason. List your examples on the whiteboard.

d) Context challenge – Take a walk outside. Reflect on what, in Australian contexts today, might help you, and your friends, make connections with Jesus the Christ.

e) Moodle challenge – If you have internet access (through your 3G cell phone or ipad), then log onto the class moodle site and complete the exercises there in relation to this lecture.

f) Help desk challenge – Chat with Steve about any questions you have from notes, readings or life.

At around 3:15 pm, we will all gather for any reflection and general learning.

If I had more time (ie next time I teach it), I would try and add in some immediate feedback. I would offer some multi-choice options in relation to the history challenge, I would ask them to see me for a model answer to the method challenge. Nevertheless it was a good start and I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the degree of engagement and energy and the connections being made in our interaction.

I’ve also discovered that this approach, which I had intuitively decided to try, actually has a technical name -“flipped classroom” – and is at the forefront of contemporary learning innovation. I simply thought it was an idea that made sense of basic adult education principles.

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

resourcing mission as fresh expressions

Here is a list of some of the resources I used at Offspring, the inaugural New Zealand Presbyterian gathering around new missional ventures. The gathering over the weekend included four stories, of new missional ventures by New Zealand Presbyterian churches. I was asked to resource the conversation. I chose to do this by telling stories of mission in other times and places, and inviting participants into processes by which they could make links between what was happening in these local mission stories and ways mission has occurred in other times and places. I told stories from the UK (my recent research into fresh expressions 10 years on) and then from global mission history.

My hunch was that stories are a great way of making missiology accessible. And by offering missiology as story it might dignify and frame the local stories being told.  But in case folk think storytelling is not “theological” or “well-researched,” here are some of the behind the scenes resources I drew on.

• The definition of mission

the effort to effect passage across the boundary between faith in Christ and absence

was from the introduction in Stanley Skreslet, Comprehending Mission: The Questions, Methods, Themes, Problems, and prospects of Missiology

• The two Biblical images of mission – the Kees de Koort depiction of the Acts 8 narrative and the Gladzor Gospel depiction of John 4 narrative – were from Stanley H. Skreslet, Picturing Christian Witness: New Testament Images of Disciples in Mission. Another excellent way to access the Gladzor Gospels is The Armenian Gospels of Gladzor: The Life of Christ Illuminated.

• The Tarore story as an expression of missio Dei in New Zealand mission was from Rosemary Dewerse, Nga Kai-rui i te Rongopai: Seven Early Maori Christians, published by Te Hui Amorangi Ki Te Manawa O Te Wheke, Rotorua, 2013.

• The work on the Parihaka story as a fresh expression of community in NZ history is shaped by Te Miringa Hohaia, Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance.

• One way to explore Brendan the Navigator is in David Adams, A Desert in the Ocean: The Spiritual Journey According to St. Brendan the Navigator. The original account of the voyage of Brendan is here.

• One way to explore the place of the ancient and historic in fresh expressions is the Sanctus: fresh expressions of church in the sacramental tradition DVD (from here).

I’m hoping to find some time to write up my reflections on the mission themes I saw emerging in these four stories of innovation in mission and New Zealand and the parallels I saw them and between Luke 10:1-12.  But first, the day job!

offspring has sprung

My time with the Presbyterian church at Offspring is over. Very rich. But very intense.

Lots of personal encouragements – seeing former students and Christchurch pastoral colleagues – realising my Out of Bounds Church? book has born fruit – some fascinating interaction on mission, fresh expressions, pioneering, leadership and sustainability.

My input sessions seemed to go well – it was great to be telling NZ mission history stories alongside some Australian mission history stories I’ve picked up in my travels – to be able to bring indigenous gifts from Australia across the Tasman.

The highlight was hearing the stories of four Kiwi pioneer ventures, and realising afresh that God is still up to lots, albiet in fresh ways, in New Zealand. I’d love to write up some of these reflections and missiology I see emerging.

But not now.

First a precious 24 hours to pop back to Christchurch and see Mum, and together continue to process the loss of Dad. Nothing like Mum’s mock white-bait fritters.

Help us tell our story in clear, compelling, contemporary and relational ways: we’re hiring

As a Uniting College, we have five strategic signposts, one of which is to tell our story. With some qualifiers – we need to tell our story in clear, compelling, contemporary and relational ways. It is one of the reasons I was at the Teaching and Learning Conference last week, telling our new BMin story to other theological colleges.

As a College, we’ve been able, over the last months, despite being in a tight spot budget wise, to make some adjustments among our team. The result is further increasing our capacity to tell our story, by freeing up resources to recruit a Marketing and Promotions Officer (0.4). Here’s the blurb:

Uniting College seeks a passionate, creative, gifted person to “Tell our story in clear, compelling, contemporary and relational ways.” You will have qualifications and experience in marketing and promotion, a high quality of communication skills and effectiveness in emerging technologies. A result will be the attraction of new students. Applications close 15 October. For more, see here or contact steve dot taylor at flinders dot edu dot au.

It’s one of three team appointments (the other’s are Blended Educational Design Co-ordinator and a Business Manager) we hope to make before the end of this year, all through adjustments and re-alignments within our existing team, all with the aim of enhancing our walk into the future.

Blue Jasmine: theological film review

Each month I publish a film review, for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 85 plus films later, here is the review for October, of Woody Allen’s latest, Blue Jasmine.

Blue Jasmine

It sounds eerily post GFC. A rich New York socialite (Jasmine as Cate Blanchett) is bankrupted onto struggle street. She turns to her San Francisco-based sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), in an attempt to rebuild her seeming shattered life.

But like all good stories, the plot will twist and turn. The result is Woody Allen at his best, a master of a movie as character-drenched as it is plot-driven.

How to process the pain when one’s world begins to collapse? Through character, Woody Allen offers us various possibilities. For Jasmine’s step son, it is to wipe the slate clean in order to start again. For Jasmine’s husband Hal (Alec Baldwin), it is to respond to shame by taking his own life. In Augie, Ginger’s former husband, financially ruined by Hal’s fraud, it is to nurse revenge. For Jasmine, it is to hide from reality on a lonely park bench, trapped by her romantic delusions.

“Blue Jasmine” is worth watching for the performance of Cate Blanchett alone. She is the plot pivot that binds together two stories, from two worlds. Blanchett is mesmerising, her descent into mental breakdown captured by the merest twist of a hand gesture.

Director Woody Allen is an international treasure of the film industry, with a career spanning six decades, and forty-five movies. Winner of four Academy Awards, nominated twenty three times, he has given us movies including “Manhattan” (1979), “Hannah and her Sisters” (1986) and “Midnight in Paris” (2011).

Allen is known for his creative movement between reel life and real life, and his use of film and music from the past. “Blue Jasmine” continues these motifs. The film hints at Tennessee Williams’ classic movie “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The movie references in title and in plot beginning and ending, the Lorenz Hart-Richard Rodgers song, “Blue Moon.”

A romantic number penned in 1934, it offers, for those with a nose for religion, an interesting way to read “Blue Jasmine.”

The original song by Rodgers was titled “Prayer”. The lyrics included the following:

“Oh Lord, If you ain’t busy up there,
I ask for help with a prayer
So please don’t give me the air”

Over time, the original words penned by Rodgers were rewritten.

“Oh lord, What is the matter with me?

I’m just permitted to see
the bad in every man”

Performed in “Manhattan Melodrama” it was rewritten yet again, to become the romantic tune hummed by Jasmine on her lonely park bench, as she remembers the romantic beginnings of her New York high life.

It becomes an intriguing way to read “Blue Jasmine.” The words by which a society prays have been rewritten, yet the tune remains.

What is more important, words or tunes, in the human religious impulse? What are the words of faith the church might say if it were to find itself seated beside Jasmine, in her disillusioned post-GFC world, on that lonely park bench?

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is Principal at the Uniting College for Leadership and Theology, Adelaide. He writes widely in areas of theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.

change as the aggregation of small moments

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about small moments. What are the quiet places, the moments in conversation, the habits, by which I might be part of enacting change and being part of transformation? I work for an organisation in decline, one that has been in decline for decades (over a hundred years, back to the start of the twentieth century according to one researcher). In decline, certain surface habits can emerge, certain ways of being, certain self-perceptions and accepting norms and acceptance of the status quo.

The organisation I work for is itself part of a larger story, a faith that is in the West eroding away. This produces pressures and realities. Again, it suggest a set of habits, held to be determinative.

It is tempting in such times to look for the bold gesture and the silver bullet, the only sweeping solution that will herald a new era. I see this embodied in the call for certain types of leaders, or the endless supply of conferences. I see this is the rush toward action. I see this in myself. I see it in others.

So a quiet encouragement today from an unlikely source, Douglas Coupland’s Life After God.

“And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection—certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real—this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.” Life After God

Key words that I ponder – collect, small, inside, silent, story-making. It has echoes of the work of Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, his call to let the true story inside each of us be heard. A story repressed by ourselves, by our families of origin, by our society. Yet inside us, it calls, offering us, if we will listen, our true vocation.

A call to reject the grand gesture and instead look for small moments, the repeated habits, the attitudes. To see in these the enormous potential for change, by the simple act of listening, journalling even, and over time, letting the trends surface, and in them weaving a story. Not a surface story of first appearances, but a true, deep story.

That is my task today – to continue to listen, to collect, to discern – another story.

a significant national encouragement

I spend Friday in Sydney, at the inaugural Learning and Teaching Theology: The Way Ahead conference. Hosted by Sydney College of Divinity, it is a follow up to the recently completed Transforming Theology project, which tested the claims of Australian theological colleges that they provided a transformative learning experience.

It attracted about 80 people, from theological colleges all around Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia. It was great to be at a conference discussing not what we teach, but how we teach, and thus to find common ground across disciplines.  I was there to give a paper – Embodiment and transformation in the context of e-learning. I had also been invited to be on a plenary panel of four, on the place of integration in theological education. I was also to be, quite unexpectedly, encouraged.

The opening address was by Dr Les Ball. His book Transforming Theology (Mosaic Resources, 2012) documents the recent research into the Australian theology sector. His conclusion is that the claims, by theological colleges, of offering transformation in education, were much ahead of the reality, based on student experience and analysis of curriculum. Despite all the social changes of the last 35 years, theological colleges remain remarkably uniform and remarkably unchanged.

During question time, he was asked if he had come across any signs of hope. He gave two examples. A new topic introduced at ACU called Community Engagement, in which all students have to participate in a community project.

And us! From Adelaide! The new Bmin at ACD taught by Uniting College. In Ball’s book, Transforming Theology, we get three mentions

• Our philosophy of practical ministry preparation and engagement. “The teaching faculty have been strategically appointed to promote such a commitment.” (page 104)
• The use of personal preliminary interviews. “This is not a case of granting credit for prior learning and thus shortening the course, but rather it is a matter of course planning to connect with actual experience, either past or projected.” (I wonder if he’s talking about our candidate Formation panel processes and our Bmin practice stream), (page 110)
• the way we have altered radically our disciplines to reflect our developmental educational philosophy, in contrast to traditional departments of OT, NT, Theology, Church history … “a complete rethinking of the nature, the structure and the progression of content, skills, and formative elements, to facilitate a development in students.” (page 146-7)

It was a very encouraging moment, to hear our degree being affirmed, publicly, in front of 80 people from theological colleges around Australia. At the same time, it gave pause for ongoing reflection on where we, as Faculty, put our energies and focus.

Bachelor of Ministry – Promotional Video from Craig Mitchell on Vimeo.

Christianity and the University experience

Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith, by Matthew Guest, Kristin Aune, Sonya Sharma and Rob Warner, is a just released, and totally fascinating, insight into the student experience of university. It looks at the context of the university as a site for religious expression.

It is based on a three year project. It attempts a snapshot of Christian students studying, and asks about their beliefs and practices. It also looks at how they interact with their environment. The research involved over 4,500 students, spread across 13 universities. It was then followed up by more indepth interviews, totalling 100, so that individuals tell stories in their own words. These include students, church leaders, chaplains and university managers.

“The lived reality of contemporary Christianity … is under-researched and commonly misunderstood.” (9)

The result is fascinating. The university is not a context that undermines faith. Rather it presents challenges, that are also opportunities. As often as not, these empower, rather than disillusion students. “The majority of students view university as having had a benign influence on their religious identity.” (8)

More to follow in coming days … In the meantime, what was your University experience like? Did it undermine your faith? Or did it empower it?