sustain:if:able kiwi

get down to up: film spirituality

Took the kids to Up yesterday. Fantastic film.

It’s the plot that makes Up great; that good old-fashioned ability to engage an audience by telling a story, in this case of childhoon dreams lost, the pain of life and the possibility of imagination rekindled.

It’s the little things that make Pixar great; the saliva that drips of the ball the dogs chase, the stubble that grows on the face of the older man. Extraordinary attention to detail.

Take your family and get down to “Up”.

I’d also suggest you take your church leadership team and get down to “Up”. You see, Up is a movie that has lots of connection with leadership and mission in emerging cultures. (I would put it up there with Grow Your Own). Read it alongside Luke 10:1-12 and ask each other:
– what dreams are shaping your imagination? who are your partners in that imagination?
– what adventures is God calling you and your community?
– what must you let go off in order to pursue those dreams?
– how importance is the ordinary and the everyday, the sitting on the curbside of life, in your theology and ministry?

is God holding a white-y Bible? (chapter three)

This continues a review of Mark Brett’s Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire and the question of whether God’s book, the Bible, really is an instrument that increases the power of white-y/Western cultures. For me, such conversations are essential to whether an emerging church can get beyond a stylistic makeover, and actually be part of a post- world in which the Bible can have a liberating, rather than enslaving, place in the task of being Christian and being church.

Chapter three Ancestors and their gifts. How should Christians relate to indigenous spirituality? How does the Bible shape our understandings of redemption?

Brett suggests Genesis 14:18-22 is a guide: an example in which an indigenous priest names the Creator as God most high (El Elyon), which Abraham assimilates with his reply, honouring Yahweh El Elyon. Brett finds more examples in Deuteronomic theology, an overall strategy “not so much to revoke the previous traditions as to assert a new interpretation of older Israelite identity and law, claiming continuity within change.” (Brett, 50)

Exodus 20.24 encourages worship in every place, 1 Samuel 20:6 indicates worship in various places, yet Deuteronomy 12:5-6 encourages worship at a single site. Since “Deut. 13.2-10 subversively ‘mimics’ Assyrian treaty material” (Brett, 48) then was the book of Deuteronomy written at a much later date, after the Assyrian invasion, as a theology of centralisation within Israel?

“Several studies have pointed out that Exodus 23 envisages the destruction of Indigenous cults only, not the ‘holy war’ on Indigenous peoples that we find in Deut, 20.16-18 …. In other words, there was more that one denomination of Yahwism.” (Brett, 54). What we see is, in the words of Chris Wright a “taking over [of] established culture patterns and then transforming them into vehicles of its own distinctive theology and ethics.” (Brett, 57, citing Wright, God’s land, 156).

Ah. So is colonisation now justified Biblically? Dueteronomy did it, so we can do it: sanctioned by God no less?

Not quite, for the Old Testament mounts sustained resistance against the abuse of centralised power: Naboth in 1 Kings 21:3, the year of liberty in Leviticus 25), which enshrined land in families and Dueteronomy 26:14 separates veneration of ancestors from worship of familial gods, affirming the first, rejecting the second.

In summary, “Genesis, Leviticus and Deuteronomy all pay respect to the ancestors, even though the monotheizing tendency of these books has absorbed the diversity of ancestral religion in very different ways… In short, the biblical ideas of redemption cluster around the restoration of ‘kin and country’, and to suggest as colonizers sometimes did that Indigenous people need to forsake their kin and country in order to be ‘redeemed’, turns this biblical language into nonsense.” (Brett, 59)

For discussion: How important was family and land in your redemption? Have you ever considered worshipping Jesus as your great ancestor?

Links:
For all the posts relating to this book/blog review go here.

a theology of hospitality or stuck in an attractional moment: back to church Sunday

We as a church are participating in Back to Church Sunday. We’ve simply marked a normal, everyday, run of the mill Sunday and encouraged our folk to consider inviting someone they know. Not someone who hates church or goes to another church, but someone who has dropped out of church. We’ve made it clear that the service will be ordinary, just like very other week, because we don’t want this to be switch and bait, false advertising.

For us it started about 3 months ago, with a brainstorming with our ministry leaders. We made a list of all the things we would could improve in relation to our welcome. We eventually came up with 10 “tips” and we’ve simply began presenting them a tip a week, over 10 weeks. For us at Opawa it was things like
– better street signage
– leaving the back rows free
– ensuring those up-front introduce themselves
– finding ways to communicate sustainably our mission to those new among us
– making sure our information was current and easily found
– improving our “oh, well, i’ve been here for years actually!” responses.
We’ve poked a bit of fun at ourselves and quietly chipped away at all those things that often get overlooked.

In surfing this week, I noticed this comment about Back to Church Sunday.

I still think it’s working on a silly model of mission. All that happens with these seeker friendly services (IME) is that all the congregation get annoyed at having to change what they would otherwise be doing, the sermon is either diluted or made overtly evangelistic, and the people who come smile sweetly as they leave and resolve never to come back again (usually because of some birthday song travesty!). We all know this by now surely. Mission is about what we do in the work place (or the post office in your case Dave) or down the pub or even in formal mission events. A weekly service in your local church should be primarily for those who go to it.

I’ve been turning the comment over in my mind, working with their model of mission.

Say you do mission in the workplace. Say over time, your salt and light is attractive and a workmate wants to join your God conversation. Being true to your ethos, you do that at your workplace. Which is fun and exciting. And then 6 months later, another person expresses interest.

Now at this point, the two of you have some decisions to make. Will you provide an extra seat in case this other person comes? Will you say hi and be courteous and introduce yourself when they arrive? Will the two of you continue telling each other in-house jokes that make no sense to the person new among you? Will you share stories from bygone days, conducting a conversation the new person can’t join?

Hopefully the answer is of course not. Because you want to be hospitable.

Which it seems to me is what Back to Church Sunday is all about. It’s about us looking in the mirror.

It’s also about the fact that for some people, it’s far less threatening to check out “gathered church” by slipping in the back of a crowd than by joining two others at a workplace. It’s about both/and, not either/or, in terms of mission.

I wouldn’t have done Back to Church Sunday when we arrived at Opawa, because the imagination was attractional. But six years down the track, with a multi-congregational approach and something like 15 different community ministries and the establishment of three Mission Collectives that intentionally resource people as salt and light in ministry, there’s now a place to ask each other “hey, how hospitable are we?”

Not because we want to attract you, but because we want to be hospitable when you arrive.

Updated: Prodigal Kiwi ponders this post and the motives for Back to Church Sunday here. I like the way he picks up on the essential need for a missional work out and I agree with his worry that BCS runs the risk of being “bolted onto a particular Sunday – a one-off – rather than being a deeply imbedded and explicit feature of the way a congregation is every Sunday of the year.” But that’s exactly why we got involved. As I commented in response to Andrew Hamilton: “I would hope/expect our community (and all churches) to be hospitable every (Sun)day. otherwise why do we do church? And how can we call ourselves Christians if we’re not ready to welcome the outsider/stranger?” The key for me is the pursuit of a theology of hospitality rather than of attraction.

And here is another Kiwi perspective on Back to Church Sunday. What are the theological narratives at work here?

springtime spirituality

As I left work on Wednesday, I was greeted with a waft of flowering cherry blossom. All around us (here in the Southern Hemisphere) are reminders of spring – bright daffodils, delicate blossom, cute lambs.

Spring reminds me of the words of Jesus, I have come that you might life, and life to the full (John 10:10). Words of promise, of intent, like spring, of hope in potential for beauty.

Parker Palmer, Christian author, educator, and activist (in his wonderful book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation which I try and re-read every summer holiday) called spring the season of surprise. Reflecting on his life, including seasons of depression and failure, he recognised his need to be both grateful for the dormancy of winter, and open to the surprise of spring.

May God surprise us all this spring. May it happen as each of us take time, to notice the waft and the unexpected colour, not only in the world around us, but also in our lives and in the people around us.

Some practical ways to embrace a springtime spirituality:
1. Pause every time you catch a waft of spring. Breathe deep, opening yourself to hope and potential.

2. Sit and consider a blossom tree. Visualise yourself as a dormant bud. Thank God for the energy that flows through you, so often unrecognised.

3. Wait for a wind, then seize the moment and lie under the blossom. Let the gentle caress of falling petals become your prayers for those you know who struggle.

4. Like unexpected bulbs, take a moment to send random cards, unexpectedly, to people you know, thanking them for the colour they bring into your life.

5. Use the hope of spring, the lengthening days as a chance to replace one destructive pattern with one lifegiving behaviour.

is God holding a white-y Bible? (chapter two)

This continues a review of Mark Brett’s Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire and the question of whether God’s book, the Bible, really is an instrument that increases the power of white-y/Western cultures. For me, such conversations are essential to whether an emerging church can get beyond a stylistic makeover, and actually be part of a post- world in which the Bible can have a liberating, rather than enslaving, place in the task of being Christian and being church.

Chapter two Alienating Earth and the Curse of Empires. For Brett “one of the most significant biblical texts in the development of colonialism was Gen. 1.28, a single verse within the Bible’s complex theologies of creation. The divine command in this verse to ‘subdue the earth’ was frequently cited from the seventeenth century onwards both as the reason for imperial expansions and as a warrant for linking the cultivation of land to property rights.” (32)

Yet for Brett, the verse provides no endorsement of colonialism. Reading Genesis 1-11 as narratives, Brett notes that Gen 1:29-30 presumes a context of vegetarianism. In Gen 2, humans are tasked with service and care, rather than with rule and subdue. Then in Gen 9:1, when the vegetarian ideal is replaced, so is the command to “subdue.” Further, in 9:13, humans are offered a covenant of restraint with the earth. Consider also the Babel narrative (Gen 11) which encourages not the superiority of one culture, but of cultural diversity.

A second verse significant in the history of colonisation is the “children of Ham” in Gen 9:20-25. Brett argues that what unites the children of Ham is not in fact an ethnic unity, but a social and economic pattern of life. Ham-ites are city builders (10:8-12), while Shem-ites are rural dwellers. Brett suggests this would help a rural Israel make sense of their oppression as slaves of the city-building Egyptians.”

“Colonizers would be the ones to stand under Noah’s curse, not the Indigenous peoples whose connection with the land was swept aside. Thus it is not just that colonizers of modern history misconstrued these chapters in Genesis to serve their own interests. Rather, they inverted what the editors set out to do, and failed to see that the biblical texts potentially deprived them of legitimacy.” (41)

Brett notes the approaches of St Francis and the Celts toward creation. As Christians, they never read the Bible as giving license for exploitation of indigenous people and planet. Rather, for Brett, modern philosophies have re-configured Biblical texts.

For discussion: How important has “subdue” in Gen 1:28 been in your understanding of Christian faith? Does the notion of a complex of theologies of creation excite you, or freak you?

Links:
For all the posts relating to this book/blog review go here. For a review of a fine book on St Francis, go here.

it’s work. honest! U2

So today is a writing and research day and you would have seen me at the library, checking out the U2 digitally remastered The Joshua Tree. It’s work.

Honest.

You see the boxed set includes DVD includes concert footage, Paris, 1987. The performance includes Bullet the Blue Sky. Now, fast forward years 17 years, to 2004, and the Vertigo DVD. The concert includes a performance of Bullet the Blue Sky. Same song. But 2004 is a radically different context than 1987. As Bono notes, a song can change the world. But what happens when a world changes around a song? How might the “ancient text” sound in a culture of change?

Now address the question by using a method called narrative mapping. Look not just at the narrative of the lyrics. Look also at the narratives of sound, of lighting, of visuals, of theatrical performance. Any changes? How has the performance evolved? What might we learn – about culture, about context, about communication?

Such are the questions I’m researching. It’s work.

Honest!

All preparation for my paper for the U2 Academic Conference, initially planned for New York in May,

then postponed, now happening in Durham in October. I’m speaking alongside Beth Maynard, looking forward to her paper and seeing face to face a cyberfriend, looking forward to talking U2, feedback and hype, over a weekend. Of work. Honest!

is God holding a white-y Bible? (introduction, chapter one)

Decolonizing God: The Bible in the Tides of Empire is a fascinating read by Australian, Mark Brett. He’s a lecturer in Old Testament at Whitley College and has been a researcher in Aboriginal land claims. It gives him a unique perspective from which to consider the question of whether God is a white-y, and whether God’s book really is an instrument that increases the power of white-y/Western cultures. In this chapter by chapter review, I plan to summarise the book and offer some down-under reflections, specifically from where I sit in New Zealand. It’s an urgent discussion for those of us who live in a post- world, and have to face the abuse of the Bible, it’s complicity in slavery and colonisation and whether we can have any confidence in our ability to use it better than those who have gone before us.

In the Introduction Mark lays out his aims. He acknowledges the crucial role of the Australian context in shaping his work and the fact that he Bible has been used, historically, to legitimate colonization. He outlines his method, in which he refuses to adopt one particular hermeneutic. Instead he uses a range of questions and methods to ask the question: Can God be decolonised, freed from this past? What might it look like for Christianity to not only say sorry, but to find ways to live that are freed from historical injustices and power imbalances?

Chapter one The Bible and Colonisation explores how the Bible was implicated in colonisation and the key texts that might help a ‘post-colonial’ re-reading of the Bible. Brett notes the uniqueness of Australia (unlike New Zealand, South Africa or North America) it was settled with a mindset that which considered Australia “waste and unoccupied.” Social evolution was a huge driving factor in European colonisation, applying Darwin’s theory of evolution to suggest that white people were superior.

“[William] Ward’s prediction was based on the assumed superiority of European literature in general, of which he took the Bible to be a part – even though not a single line of it was first composed in the colonizing nations of Europe.” (Brett, 22).

Brett notes a variety of responses: from evangelical Anglicans like William Wilberforce advocating for indigenous peoples (influencing the thinking of the British Government in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi), through to the published opinions of Australian missionary clergy that Aborigines were “brutes” and “beasts.”

Genesis 1:28 was interpreted (for example by John Locke) to suggest an original empty creation. Land could be owned by no-one until the advent of agrarian labour (ie colonisation).

However, missionaries could not control the reception of the Scriptures once they were translated. “[B]iblical faith presented a form of sovereignity higher than government and it thus provided a foothold for Indigenous resistance.” (Brett, 26). Hence Gandhi drew on the Sermon on the Mount to shape his resistance to British rule, as did the Gikuyu tribe in Kenya in the 1920’s. In New Zealand, Te Kooti drew on the Bible in founding the Ringatu faith. Aboriginal leader David Burrumarra urged holding together both traditional and Christian life.

Despite this subversion, “the overall effect of most of the missions was cultural genocide.” (Brett, 29, quoting George Tinker, an Osage/Cherokee theologian). Ironically, “most biblical texts were produced by authors who were themselves subject to the shifting tides of ancient empires,” (Brett, 31) and this is the focus of Chapter Two.

For discussion: Does it worry you that the Bible might have been used to endorse colonisation? What does such knowledge do to your respect for, and reading of, the Bible?

For all the posts relating to this book/blog review go here

team building processes

A focus of the last few months has been some team building processes among us here at Opawa. So I thought I should post our processes, for those interested in building teams.

A team starts with bringing people on board. Initially we used tools including a presentation, an interview/s and reference checking. This allowed us to see a person, nervous and all, speak to a group, to explore values and beliefs with them, and get a bead on their track record.

Then a few years ago, we realised that we were still pretty naive as a church and that there were people with real competencies that could help us. So we asked a human resource person to input into our processes.

As part of that review, we made some changes to our recruiting. Firstly we began to ask much more questions focused on behaviour. Like “Can you tell us about a time when you got in a situation over your head?” Such questions are not seeking right or wrong answers, but to gain an angle on how people react under pressure, on how they resource themselves and thus how they might respond. Secondly, we begun exploring personality profiling. It is one tool among many. But it gave us yet another take on a person. In addition it gave us an idea of how they might be in a team and how they might best like to be coached. So we had a heads up on whether a person likes lots of encouragement, or likes to be left alone.

Which was all well and good. But in the last few months, we’ve taken another step.

We’ve flipped the personality profile on its head. If every person is a uniquely gifted person, then that means that each team has uniquely gifted people and thus will have a unique culture. No two teams are identical. A team that works well in one context might not another. This lead to us taking two half days out as a team. (Using the excellent expertise of the human resource people).

In the first day, the team, with their consent, shared their personality profiles with each other. What was known only to the individual and to the selection group was now named among us as a working team. Light bulbs went off as people shared their strengths. Heads nodded in understanding as weaknesses were named. Having shared as unique individuals, we then looked at ourselves as a whole. All the personality profiles were laid on top of each other. We were so encouraged by the way we need each other and we complement each other. We realised that in the grace of God, our roles in the team actually suited our personality profiles.

We went away, to meet again in a month’s time. This time the aim was to form a unique code of practice for this unique team. Together we went through a process, sharing our dreams of what a healthy team would look like, categorising and prioritising, working on how, with our unique configuration and work/life balance (we’re all part-time), we can make these priorities work.

It’s been an energising process. We know each other better. We respect our individuality more. We have a language to move forward. We are taking a shared responsibility to make this work.

So that’s a bit of our journey. It’s not an area I feel confident in, nor had any training in while at theological college. So for me it’s all been guess work and intuition. In putting this up here, I am sure that many of you readers will be doing the team building thing heaps better. So please do enrich by commenting on what you’ve done, the practises that you’ve engaged in to build a healthier team.

soak and lectio divina for those wanting to hear God in sickness

Soak is a monthly (first Sunday) service we run at Opawa. It’s like nothing I’ve ever been involved with before: sung worship, a great space, lectio divina, and then various stations, with people leaving when they feel they’ve finished soaking.

So tonight the theme was Hearing God in sickness. One of the stations was a wheelchair, on which people could sit and pray for the sick they knew. Another offered healing prayer. Other’s offered prayers, poetic and tactile, for those hearing difficult news.

It just felt such a useful pastoral thing to be part of; offering Christian resources – a wide range of Christian resources – for those everyday realities.

For those interested, here’s the lectio divina I wrote. It’s based on a phrase from Ben Harper album, “Two hands of prayer”, which seemed to me the best way to understand Mark 9:24 “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!..” Which linked in my head with John 20:27 “Put your finger here; see my hands.” It’s not exegeticaly logical or coherent. But that’s the beauty of lectio divina: it expects God’s inspiration simply because the Spirit is alive and well both in relation to Biblical text and in relation to human imagination. We offer the Bible in many, many ways at Opawa, and the lectio approach is just one of the man.

(more…)

tradition or why I’m not the first kid around this block

I grew up keen to make a straight line between myself and the early church. If I could just get back to Acts, then all would be well with Christianity. Somehow in my naivety I used to ignore the lying Christians in Acts 5 or the fighting Christians in Acts 6. I guess those chapters never fitted my idealistic dreams.

Over the years, I’ve become more aware of the 2,000 years that stand between me and the early church. I’ve become aware that lots of Christians (probably more intelligent and more spiritually aware than I will ever be) have sought to follow God in their time.

Sadly, when I first started reading church history, I read looking for the splinters in their theology, keen to find the mistakes they had made and the errors of their ways.

But I’m increasingly aware that people will no doubt do the same to me. Some of the comments on this blog leave me in no doubt, commenters eager to point out the dirty, great big logs that make up my human fumblings to articulate the mystery that is God. All of which leads me to savour the following:

“We may view the Christian past like a gigantic seminar where trusted friends, who have labored long to understand the Scriptures, hold forth in various corners of the room. There is Augustine discoursing on the Trinity, here St. Patrick and Count von Zinzendort comparing notes on the power of Light over Darkness, over there Catherine of Siena and Phoebe Palmer discussing the power of holiness, across the room Pope Gregory the Great on the duties of a pastor, there the Orthodox monk St. Herman of Alaska and the first African Anglican bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther on what it means to carry Christianity across cultural boundaries, here St. Francis on the God-ordained goodness of the earth, in a huddle Thomas Aquinas, Simeon the New Theologian, and Blaise Pascal talking about the relation of reason to revelation, there Hildegard of Bingen and Johann Sebastian Bach on how to sing the praises of the Lord, here Martin Luther on justification by faith, there John Calvin on Christ as Prophet, King, and Priest, there Charles Wesley on the love of God, there his mother, Susanna, on the communication of faith to children, and on and on.” (Mark Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity)

So there’s treasure in church history. Reading how humans before me have wrestled with faith, God and life can in fact enrich my faith. As the next paragraph astutely notes.

“Teachers of foreign languages say that you don’t really know your own language unless you have tried to learn a second or third language. In the same way, students of the Scriptures usually cannot claim to have understood its riches unless they have consulted others about its meaning.” (Mark Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity)

So there’s a challenge for the week ahead. Read some history folks. Read it not looking for their splinters, but our own dirty big logs!

do you have a sinner’s table please?

Zaccheus was a sinner, well-known for his exploitation and participation in injustice.
Jesus asked to go to his house for dinner.
At Zaccheus’s house, Jesus saw redemption.

Who are our Zaccheus’s today, the people and places, we need to invite ourselves to eat among?

This week a newer Christian at Opawa read the book of Ruth to a local drug dealer, while another newcomer invited a practicing wiccan to an upcoming church service.

How much redemption do we miss because we fail to eat at the houses of an/other?

Conversation starter: a building name change

The Board and pastoral team want to start a conversation at Opawa about a building name change. At an upcoming church meeting, we want to suggest that we adopt not a church name change, but a building name change. … Why?

One: Biblically and theologically: a Christian understanding is that “church” is never a building, but always the people. As we see in 2 Samuel 7, Acts 15 and Revelation 5, God’s building project is not a building, but people. Can we find a name that does not suggest a building is the church?

Two: Ministerially: our buildings are used pretty much 7 days a week, not only for “church” worship services, but for community, for ministry and as a relational space. It would be good to have a name that reflected this use.

Three: Practically: with the completion of Stages 1 and 2 of the building project, a birds eye view of the physical footprint shows a building focused as much on community, team, ministry and relational space as on church worship services.

Four: Timing: that it would be an appropriate way to celebrate a significant moment in our life as a church.

The Board have been experimenting with names. We started by working with combinations: mixing and matching – what we do and what the physical building is:

Opawa Baptist ministry centre? restoration hub? hospitality spot? resting place? spirituality space

To date, none of these possibilities really grab us. So as well as wanting to start a church conversation, in preparation for a church forum, we are calling for constructive, considered suggestions.

changing world: changing fathers

In honour of fathers, Statistics New Zealand offers the following facts ahead of (New Zealand) Father’s Day this Sunday (6 September).
* The average age of fathers of new babies is 33 years.
* One in 100 babies has a father aged 50 years or over.
* Today’s newborn babies have fathers who are, on average, four years older than their own fathers were when they were born.
* Fathers with children aged under a year old manage with 42 minutes less sleep than the average of 8.5 hours.
* Over a lifetime, fathers have seven fewer Father’s Days, on average, than mothers have Mother’s Days. This is because men generally start parenting later in life and women have a longer life span.
* More than a quarter (28 percent) of babies born in New Zealand last year were to fathers who were not themselves born in New Zealand. This compares with 24 percent a decade ago.

Other facts about Father’s Day
* The first Father’s Day is thought to have originated in Babylon over 4,000 years ago.

missional cyber book club anyone?

So I sat with a pastor today. Wanting to keep thinking, in a relational way. Surrounded by post-grad options, but none really itching – too detached, not contextual enough – and with no real need for qualifications upgrade. Mostly just wanting some missional travelling companions.

Suddenly I got a spark …. how about a missional cyber book club ….

A yearly commitment, renewable annually.
At the start/end of the year, the group generates 12 books for the year ahead.
They commit to read a book a month.
They commit to take turns at being a conversation starter (generating a set of questions that helps the group talk) and a conversation keeper, someone to watch the conversation on behalf of the whole group.
They commit to provide a description of their context (replacing real-time cues).
They commit to Skype regularly, monthly, for an hour, on the book.

Simple really. Anything like this out there? Or am I a self-starter on this one? If so, I’m looking for 12 punters, willing to have a crack with me.