sustain:if:able kiwi

fascinating art image ecological Christ, Colossians 1

I saw this on Facebook and have no idea of the original source, nor the artist’s intent. But to me it seemed a fascinating expression – in the colours of the rainbow, the dolphins, so often a sign of ecological harmony, rising – of Colossians 1:18-20 – the ecological Christ.

all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross

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?

What is missiology?

I wrote this at the start of 2010, as the inaugural Director of Missiology, being asked to develop a new missiology stream at Uniting College, which included history and theology, but expected it to be taught out of a Missio Dei perspective. I came across it again this morning and wanted to note it here as placeholder.

“a time when missiology (reflection) is as important as mission (action)” – Ross Langmead

Missiology IS NOT Colonialisation-ology, although it has been and can still can be. Nor is it Growing churches-ology, although it has been and can still can be.

Missiology IS participation in God’s purposes in the world, with particular attention to the voice of the other.

It asks questions about God and humans: including “what is God up to in the world?” and “what does it mean for humans to participate in that activity?” It is aware that these questions have been asked before and in other cultures, and so looks to church history and theology for challenge and inspiration.

Missiology skills
1. Be able to articulate mission then, mission now, both in Australia and across history
2. Ability to read contemporary contexts, both local and in general popular culture
3. Experience cross-cultural
4. Be able to work with the theological tradition in light of contemporary questions
5. Demonstrate ability to connect Uniting Church practices with contemporary spiritual searchers
6. Be able to cultivate leadership – whether a mission hub, forming a new expression, community development, salt and light in workplace

In scarcity there is both beauty and intrigue

“We’ve always used the limitations of the band as a creative tool almost.”

– Edge

“In scarcity there is both beauty and intrigue.”

– Winemaker, Chapel Hill Wines

So, might the decline of the church in the West be a good thing? Might it result in beauty, intrigue, creativity – but only if seen as a gift to be embraced, rather than a crisis to be fought.

(For two practical examples of how this might be important in leadership, see here).

bush theology

I’ve been on study leave the last few days. I booked out the time back in June to be in Tasmania with Cheryl Lawrie feeling art and space. That fell over.

So I’ve gone walking instead. About 25 minutes from home is the Onkaparinga National Park, which includes 17 km of gorge.

The plan has been simple. Walk and read. I’ve immersed myself in 2 Corinthians. The first day I read the entire book just for flow. Today I read it for images of mission. Walk for 20-30 minutes then read a few chapters. Walk again – Pondering what it means for mission, for leadership, for spirituality.

It’s been exactly what I needed. No internet access. Hard physical work. That sense of nurture being held deep by earth. Engagement with Scripture.

And along the way, some bush theology.

• Spirituality needs rapids and calm pools, shelter and sun. Both are to be enjoyed and appreciated.
• If you keep casting about there’s usually a path.
• Feeling lost generates anxiety. It can be lifegiving to ponder what generates anxiety and where is God in those moments of anxiety.
• Essential to renewal is giving space for earth to heal itself.

leadership as health intensives

Very excited about our two upcoming November leadership intensives – exploring leadership as health, and the practices needed to make possible communities that are mission-driven, innovative, discerning and culturally engaged.

Heathy Church / Healthy Organisation – For leaders, lay or ordained, on building healthy, missional churches or organisations. Lecturers: Craig Bailey, Carolyn Kitto, Steve Taylor. 12-23 November. Weekdays 9am-12pm

Leadership as Discernment: Participants will apply a communal discernment process to their own context, engage key readings in communal discernment and mission, and explore the Manual for Meetings as a discernment tool. Lecturer: Beatrice Panne. 27-29 November, 9am-1pm.

It’s a continued roll out of from our Leadership stream, wanting to take leadership beyond pragmatics and theory and into a spirituality grounded in life. For more information go here.

artist shoots holes in her Bible

When I was doing a Master of Fine Art degree, I was required to present a paper about semiotics to a contemporary theory class …. I had procured a large, black Bible of my mother’s which she had ‘retired’ because it was so heavily annotated she wasn’t able to read it any more and I’d nailed it to a wooden target, of the type hunters shoot at for practice. I set these against a tree in my aunt’s orchard and shot at them three times with my father’s rifle, blasting the pages of the Bible apart … My (non-Christian) classmates were shocked when I showed them the results, as they knew I was a Christian … I learnt a great deal from it and it generated one of the most constructive dialogues in that class. I wanted to simply say that it is not the book that is sacred per se but the living word that is in me, that changes how I live and how I treat my neighbour. (Betty Spackman, A Profound Weakness: Christians & Kitsch, 35)

This is a fine example of the power of art to engage theology. The theme is so intellectual – semiotics and I would rush to footnote and read. Yet Betty places this within her lived experience, of nurture and growth. And in so doing, raises many important questions regarding a theology of revelation in regard to Scripture. Where is sacred found? In words of text or witness of life?

End of greed – Be kind to animals

Today I preached at Journey Uniting. The topic they asked me to address was animal care. First time a church has ever asked me to preach on that type of topic!

But I have an experience of a dog scoffing the communion bread. Which in time became a journal article – “Even The Dogs Eat the Crumbs That Fall From Their Masters’ Table”: A Contemporary Reflection on The Sacramentality of Communion” Colloquim 39, 2 (November 2007), 209-225. Which seemed an interesting challenge to offer as a sermon.

So I wove together three personal stories, a selection of Biblical passages, three Christian thinkers (Isaac of Nineveh, Francis of Assissi, Paulos Mar Gregorios) along with Rublevs icon.

(more…)

Slogans for the 21st century: cultural exegesis by Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland, who came to fame for his book, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture has an uncanny knack of providing acute descriptions of our contemporary world.

Three young adults who in the midst of this changing world, seek to find their voice,by telling stories.

“We know this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert – to tell stories and to make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process.” (Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture)

Coupland has gone on to produce 12 books of fiction that seem to capture our changing culture – Microserfs: A Novel, about Microsoft Culture; Jpod, about life after the iPod; Hey Nostradamus!: A Novel, describes a fictitious high school shooting similar to the Columbine High School.

He’s currently working on an art project “Slogans for the Twenty-First Century,” in which he is seeking to “Try and isolate what is already different in the twenty-first century mind as opposed to the twentieth.” In other words, to do contemporary cultural analysis.

The exhibition is currently showing at the Daniel Faria Gallery.

Over recent years I have invited my classes to engage culture, to do “cultural exegesis” by using Third Way magazine’s Icon series, a monthly reflection on a contemporary cultural symbol. This series by Coupland would be another way of undertaking “cultural exegesis.”

For more see
– Coupland’s theologies of salvation here
– Coupland from X to A here

The Sapphires film review: an expression of ubuntu theology

Each month I publish a film review, for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Here is the review for October.

The Sapphires
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

“Without me, there’s no you.”

1968. The year I was born. The year that Martin Luther King was shot. The year four indigenous Aboriginal sisters, from rural Australia, found themselves in the midst of Vietnam.

Based on a true story, “The Sapphires” is an endearing mix of comedy, song and romance. In response to a newspaper advertisement, aided by out of luck Irish DJ Dave Lovelace (Chris O’Dowd) – Gail (Deborah Mailman), Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell), Kay (Shari Sebbens) and Julie (Jessica Mauboy) – sing their way into a war. Travelling through Vietnam, entertaining American soldiers, they discover love and sorrow, dreams and reality.

An indigenous movie demanded an indigenous cast, requiring a scouring through Aboriginal communities around Australia. It is a credit to the emerging indigenous film industry in Australia to find actors as talented as Deborah Mailman. With 11 movies in 2011 and 15 in 2010, it suggests a community both creative and healthy. (In the period 1970-1979, there were 9 indigenous movies, compared with 135 in the period 2000-2009.*) (For more graphs go here).

Indigenous film or films made by indigenous film makers – Australia decadal

The use of black and white archival future – of Martin Luther King, of indigenous Australian campsites – skillfully adds a historical layer to the song and soul. Issues of ethical significance are raised, without the storyline being consumed.

“The Sapphires” began life as a stage musical. Indigenous writer Tony Brigg’s then crafted the song and dance genre for the big screen. He drew on the lives of his mother and three aunts, their love of song which led to and their work in Vietnam in the late 1960s. All four remain alive today, working for health among their indigenous communities.

Kiwi audiences will see similarities with the art of Maori comedian, Billy T James. Both employ the genre of musical comedy. Both share a public story of beginnings in Vietnam and use humour to gently poke at issues ranging from racism to indigenous experience.

Christian audiences will see similarities with the Biblical story of Ruth. First in the sentiments of the handwritten marriage proposal and the display of a sacrificial love willing to embrace “Your people as my people.” Second, in the indigenous smoking experience in which a mother welcomes a long lost daughter, stolen by officials enacting the White Australia policy of the 1950s. It is these scenes that give this movie a real power, the human tragedy made more poignant by the backdrop, including the death of Martin Luther King.

“The Sapphires” offers a poignant reminder of the social, ethical and communal heart of God, through the sacrificial actions of kinsman redeemers who open the way for redemption in community. This is seen most clearly in the Christian tradition through “ubuntu” theology, the concept made famous by Desmond Tutu in which “I am because we are.” The reminder that in God, and thus among God’s people, that indeed “Without me, there’s no you.”

*Source http://www.creativespirits.info/resources/movies/indigenous-film-timeline

I bind unto myself today

It’s quite lovely to wake up this morning and experience this wrapped around my wrist.

It was the result of Church last night. God as creator, redeemer, sustainer – 3 threads woven into one. We are a bead, an invitation to find ourselves woven into the Trinity.

A really embodied worship experience, that lingers into the week. (As a practical expression of this – Seeking holy ground)

seeking holy ground article

I was asked a few weeks ago to contribute an article to Journey, the Uniting Church of Queensland monthly newspaper. It’s become the front page headline for the October edition – titled Seeking Holy Ground. For those interested, it is here, or below … (more…)

homeward bound

I’m back home, Aotearoa New Zealand home, for a few days.

It’s my mum’s 70th birthday and I’m looking forward to that and to family time.

It’s just on 3 months since I became Principal and I’m looking forward to a break from that, to reflect, as my supervisor suggested, on the first lap, and how sustainable (not) the pace of life is.

It’s “home, land and sea”

– and I’m really looking forward to that.

the politics of Christian influence: Christianity and colonisation

James Boyce’s 1835 explores the Founding of Melbourne and in doing so, the conquest of Australia. Such books are essential reading for all those who care about mission and the witness of the church, because they allow us to reflect on the past.

Chapter 5: London 1835 includes a summary of the place of Evangelical Christianity in colonisation. “With the assistance of their …. [evangelicals] …. the British government became focused on the physical and moral welfare of indigenous people to an extent unknown before, or for the most part, since.” (37)

First, it helpfully notes that British Evangelicalism of the early 1800s should not be confused with present day American Evangelicalism.

Second, it notes the motivation. Once Slavery was abolished, indigenous welfare became a priority area of Evangelical concern. “Government control, along with support for enterprising ‘respectable’ settlers, was urgently needed to counteract the harm done to natives by lower-class European.” (38-9) This provides a contrast to the Domination narrative, which is often pinned on Christian colonisers. “The simple fact that evangelicals accepted that people had rights based on prior possession set them apart from the dominant settler discourse, which argued that the right to land arose from using it for farming.” (39)

This produced an ironic tension, that Christians supported colonisation because they saw it as “the primary means of ensuring that Aborigines were not degraded or killed by the lower order of Europeans.” (40)

Third, this advocacy on behalf of indigenous people relied on information. What happened in Melbourne and in the colonising of Australia, was that distance and lack of missionaries on the ground, meant that the Christian politicians lacked data to work for justice.

It’s a fascinating narrative about the relationship between church and society and the attempt to use politics for influence.

(New Zealand readers will want to read Chapter 7 – The Treaty, as it provides a fascinating analysis of a Treaty signing, both the politics and the processes, just a few short years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. But that is for another post).