sustain:if:able kiwi

Flying again …

Auckland bound again … it is a major logistical feat to navigate 12 hours of prepared teaching up and down the country. Last time I forgot my toothbrush, this time I forgot some shirts. I will stinketh by the 3rd day … (no Lazarus jokes please)

I am dumb

Emerging church. I had always used the term to refer to the widespread cultural shift from modern to postmodern and God’s missionary desire to birth new life in new cultures. The church emerging, like a seed, from postmodern soil.

I’ve been reading the blogs and the discussion kept revolving around church. I couldn’t get it. Just read phil and dan/dan and phil and the penny clicked. I have been dumb. Apparently the term is to do with old and new ways of being the church. Duh. I do feel stupid.

OK, so to capture this missionary impulse I quickly need to find a new term and a new name for my blog. Cos I want to follow God in the culture, fan the coals of mission, see unchurched postmoderns find faith and community, not get stuck in dodging the flack and fire between different parts of the church world.

postmodern monastery

A while ago I wrote a paper on a postmodern monastery and a number of you asked for a copy. It’s sketchy and dreamy and I want to do more work on it. But you can now download the paper on a postmodern monastery here.

Usual creative commons copyright – you can’t make money from it and if you use it you need to acknowledge the source. Usual rules of courtesy apply – if you download it, email to say thanks and give me some feedback on it, so that I grow as part of the process.

How does that sound?

consume the body

jez commented “the biggest pity is that Borders is such a bad model if you’re concerned about justice, muliplicity and diversity or the local and the specific. I won’t bleat on about Borders’ purchasing policies nor about the impact of Borders on small business and local community but whatever Borders might be it is hardly the kind of organic, local, just community i’m looking for to nourish my spirit”

We all consume. We can’t live without consumption. Some then become aware of the impact of their consuming on the third world, on the local, on the diverse. But we are all still enmeshed in a web of consumption. We need a third way, a theology of consumer resistance.

We need the 10 commandments of a healthy consumption
consume no logo
consume fair trade
consume adbusters
consume organic
consume no meat
consume shade coffee
consume 5 loaves, 2 fish and have 12 bags of waste
consume the body of Christ …

Futures group

I start my new job as pastor at Opawa Baptist in 10 days time. I am looking forward to a 3 day/week job that is 10 minutes walk away, rather than an 80 minute flight. Amid the busyness of commuting to Auckland, I start to think about my new role.

I bring to a long established church my 9 years of planting an emerging church, my teaching gifts, my creativity and my PhD study on the theology of the emerging church. I have a commitment to both nurture what is, and to encourage what might yet be. How to listen and respect what is, while sharing of my hopes, dreams and experiences?

One idea I have had is to start a futures group, a gathering with no official status and no set agenda, yet the space to talk and dream. Meeting say fortnightly. An open invitation to anyone at Opawa to join a conversation; to reflect on postmodernity, to experience new ways of worship together, to talk about what this might mean for Opawa and for those outside church in Christchurch.

What do you think? Any suggestions for an appropriate name? Any other ideas of ways I might respectfully blend my insights, passions and dreams with God’s story already woven in, and through, a group of faithful servants?

Whalerider

We watched the movie Whalerider in Church and Society class this week. The class consists of about 30 people, including Maori, Pacific Island and Indian.

Question: What are the issues facing contemporary Maori society?

Issues identified included;

(more…)

a lighter note: my forgotten toothbrush

5th plane trip in 7 days and I’m getting sloopy. I forgot my toothbrush.

this company will help: Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush Ltd., dfyt, is a registered company that offers you, its customer a subscription-based service, delivering your toothbrush directly to your door.

And this is a genuine story I can read my class about a turtle who also forgot his toothbrush: The story of “How Turtle Flew South” appears in many cultures. This version is a combination of Native American tale and a Chinese Buddhist version.

be cool with your space

Back up in Auckland again, for the second week of teaching in the Church and Society, University of Auckland intensive. It’s been my 5th flight in a week and I am starting to tire.

It is listening to the music of Salmonella Dub that keeps me going. The first track of their album, One Drop East, has had the most profound impact on me. It celebrates travelling on
we all you knew you had to go
to spread your wings and let the wind take your flow
and relationships;
its good to see you again my friend (call out to Stephen and Rachel who I get to see today)
its been a long, long time

and has such a great chorus;
dont you fall from grace
be cool with your space
check your pace
it ain’t a race

This is hard to explain and deely personal and I might not make any sense, but I’ll have a go. Often I feel placed in a dualism regarding time – you can either be busy or not be busy. If you have some deadlines, somehow you are bad because you are not taking time to relax, to attend to family and spirituality. It happened yesterday. I was introduced as a busy person and the guest spent the next 5 minutes checking the state of my marriage. A very intimate introduction which I found way too intense. And the dualisms were at work; oh you’re busy, your marriage must be stressed.

Well the Dub song says to me that you can be not busy while busy. It is about one’s internal clock, how you manage the pace in the midst of letting the wind take your flow, how you treasure relationships in the midst of boarding calls. It’s not either or, but God in the midst of. Does that make any sense?

define emerging church

Andrew Jones is trying to define emerging church. Here is my second attempt (I did this last year in an email to jonny baker, but deleted it (and so did jonny I imagine)):

Define emerging church (theologically) – a journey toward a corporate expression of Jesus Christ birthed in the amniotic fluid of postmodern culture. Note that the sheer diversity of postmodern culture means that while characteristics of community, participation, imagination, cultural awareness and appreciation are shared, their expression is diverse.

PS Riley Kern likes this definition also. Thanks Riley.

NZ impacts UK anglicans

café church ‘is an approach that originates in New Zealand. It’s particularly aimed at young adults who might want to explore their spirituality in a welcoming environment. It’s much more about dialogue.’ from UK Guardian

smiling

From here :: Critical reading of the draft of a friend’s book: inspiring – and no small privelege to be asked. (I’ll blog on it when it’s published.)

stone in my shoe

One of the big arguments of my PhD, and of the book I am working on for emergentYS, is that people “make do”; that in the face of cultural change, people are creative, transformative, adapting the bits from the world around them to create their own unique mixes. It is based on the work of French Jesuit Michel de Certeau.

The only flaw in the argument is this article on the disappearance of languages from around the world, via they blinked

How many languages have disappeared in the last century? About 60 or 70 per cent of linguistic diversity in the north-western region of Brazil has gone in the last 100 years. On the Atlantic coast of Brazil it’s worse – about 99 per cent – and around the world the figure is 60 to 70 per cent. It has been very rapid.

Being brought up in Papua New Guinea, a country of over 600 languages, the loss of even one language saddens me.

ez on by

Yesterday Graceway, the emerging/ent church I planted and then pastored until late last year, welcomed it’s new minister, Mark Barnard.

Mark is 26 years old and is married to Bridget. He has a background in social work and community development, a love for the poor and was the lead singer of a band. Bridget works in promotion for a Christia n Aid agency and is really good value. They have both been part of Graceway for the last 3 years.

I flew up to Auckland for the day to share in the celebration and occasion. It was a day of a huge range of emotions for me. I gave the best of 9 years of my life to Graceway. I developed an internship scheme to train leaders and Mark was one of the 6 emerging leaders I directly worked with. I am very proud of him.

The transition from founding pastor to new pastor is a fragile time for a church and a number of church plants in New Zealand have not made the transition. So there is huge relief for me to see a very competent leadership team at Graceway welcome Mark and Bridget on board.

I sat at the back, marvelling at the goodness of God. Half way through last year God ezed me out of Graceway. It was a hugely traumatic decision. 8 months later God is ezing a new leader into Graceway and I have become a cheering bystander.

A toast:
to the Graceway leadership team, who ezed in a new pastor
to Mark and Bridget, may they ez Graceway into a new season
to God, whom I love.