sustain:if:able kiwi

welcome to

any wee scotties, i.e church leaders throughout Scotland.

I am lead to believe that my blog was named as a e-news resource by the Mission and Discipleship Council, an ecumenical grouping resourcing church leaders throughout Scotland.

So welcome. The Taylor family have very fond memories of our 3 month sojourn in Scotland in 2001, while I was on study leave, working on my PhD, eating butties and admiring the rugged Coastlines of Aberdeenshire.

giving me a shake

I’ve just been made redundant. From my BCNZ role. As of the end of this year.

Along with all BCNZ academic staff, who are then invited to reapply for jobs over the next month.

I work 2 days week at BCNZ and 3 days week at Opawa and we as a family are pretty settled. So this news is giving my roots a good old shake. As part of the BCNZ process I am invited to articulate my long term career plans. Here is what I wrote:

Long term, I want to be part of a missional think tank, that provides formation of leaders and offers research, teaching and consultancy in Western missiology. To that dream I bring being a published author, with a PhD and some academic publications, a leadership track record of planting emerging churches and as a change agent pastor in established churches, along with experience in denominational consultancy.

I thought I’d put it here, because I’m facing partial unemployment.

formation in community through process

I looked around the room this evening. It was the 4th week of a 10 week evening block course on How to read the New Testament, giving tools for reading gospels, letters, parables etc. It’s part of changes made last year, including (paid) staffing re-alignment, part of clarifying our focus around discipling and mission resourcing.

As a church, staff are our largest budget expense and we don’t think it’s Kingdom to focus that resource predominantly on internal activities such as Sunday worship or church activities.

Anyhow, back to tonight. 15 people in the room. A nice mix of long, medium and new timers. And those new to the church, why are they there? Well, because they’ve not read the Bible and have a hunger to understand it.

Hearing that is like being in heaven. It’s great to be part of a church that is attracting people new, hungry and with little Christian history. It’s great to be able to offer places where people can choose to take their Christian growth a step further. It’s great to teach in groups, allowing formation through relationships.

Term 3 we are planning God at work input, including some weeks on work life balance and some weeks on mid-life planning. Again, taking seriously formation, not for church life, but for work life.

More of an overview on discipling at Opawahere.

smash communion

Theme: colliding worlds

Call to worship: People were invited to write their names on coloured flowers, as a way of naming themselves as present in this act of worship.

Psalm of lament: on each table were placed dinner plates, colliding worlds (poor:rich or east:west or young:old) were written. People stood, read out their words, and smashed the plate. Yep. Smashed it. Some found this very therapeutic!

Response: The fragments were laid on a cross. People were invited to also place their flowers on the cross. It became a nice mix of colour and collision.

Benediction: The Message translation of Colossians 1:18-20 was read, followed by these words.

When I was in Gisborne over the summer
I collected lots of sea glass off the beach.

Perhaps God will fit them together
in something new and mosaical
rather than simply using superglue
to stick all back together as it was.

And the invitation was given, to go into God’s world and participate in mosaics.

One person was so moved, they took home all the broken pieces, dreaming of how they could create their own mosiac.