sustain:if:able kiwi

the messy early church: women, houses and churches

Recently I’ve been getting a bit grumpy about the phrase “messy church.” I’ve been thinking that all church all the time should be messy. Shouldn’t the normal be the involving of all the ages and all the senses and deal with the real stuff of people’s lives, while the abnormal is quiet, respectful, adult only church?

So I was most interested to recently pick up A Woman’s Place: House Churches In Earliest Christianity which looks at everyday existence in ancient households, with a special focus on women’s everyday experience. The book has chapters on hospitality, funerals and education. And the data points to messy early church indeed being the norm.

Messy hosts
Houses led by women in the New Testament include Mary mother of John Mark (Acts 12:12), Lydia (Acts 16:14, 40); Nympha (Col. 4:15). Married couples were “vital to the life and infrastructure of the communities.” (48).

But is this simply hospitality? The answer is no. There is evidence of women who acted as patrons, teachers and dinner hosts. They were presiders (and in an environment in which presiding meant a meal that interwove eucharist, food and conversation).

Messy meals
While there is a tendency to concentrate on the expectional woman of early church history, like Priscilla, Phoebe and Perpetua, recent research into Roman families allows us to appreciate the ordinary and domestic. In other words, “within the setting of early church groups, it is safe to assume that conversations about nursing and rearing children were part of daily life and were intermingled with conversations about what we would normally consider as more typical church concerns.” (247-8)

Messy church
What about messy church? well, “house-church meetings must have been noise and bustling places. The sounds of a woman in labor somewhere in the background, the crying of infants, the presence of mothers or wet nurses feeding their children, little toddlers under foot, children’s toys on the floor.” (67) “Children were present everywhere; nothing – not even sexual activity – escaped their gaze.” (93).

Messy worship
Which all leads to messy worship. “The attention given to such “liturgical questions” in later patristic documents as the placement of children during church meetings … reflects a commitment to the inclusion and valuing of children in continuity with the period of the house churches.” (93)

In sum, what emerges is a very messy early church, “a picture of church life that challenges preconceived notions of solemnity in favour of the boisterous and somewhat chaotic exchanges of household life. House-church meetings took place in a setting where midwives were hired, babies were born, nursed, and nurtured, and children grew up.” (246-7)

UK adventures 6 – cliff college, emerging and fresh?

I’m at the lovely Cliff College. The views are fabulous and there are some lovely trees to hug. I’m here for two things.

First, to input into their Master of Mission programme, in particular their Emerging Church stream. Which has produced a fairly healthy twitter stream of folk debating how to define emerging church cf fresh expressions. Obviously quite a contested field in this part of the world!

I have gone with a world/God/church formulation; which provides a way to frame the Gibbs and Bolger definition –

communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures (Emerging Churches, 33).

I am then taking a mission perspective on that, using the six paradigms of mission in David Bosch’s Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology Series). I will animate that with six mission stories, ways that the world/God/church formulation has been made concrete in history. Which I hope will generate some real mission thinking around “emerging.”

The second reason I am here is to help kick of their new PhD in Missiology. This sounds an exciting development, a professional research degree in mission and to their first cohort, I’ll be offering them some of my recent research. More on that tomorrow. For now, I must pop outside once again and enjoy sun, views, trees. With a cup of tea!

msm adelaide update 1

The start of the first ever mission-shaped ministry course in Adelaide is only a week away (starting Wednesday 27 July) and the working team met for a final planning meeting yesterday.

There are some real encouragements.

• Enrolments currently stand at 45 29.
• We will have a group from Kangaroo Island part of through the use of (touch wood) Skype technology
• We have a teaching team that includes at least 15 people, ensuring a genuine team feel
• We  have four hardworking hosts, from four denominations, that will also ensure a genuinely ecumenical feel.

It is amazing that only 8 months ago, November 2010, was the first meeting of a group from around Australia to simply canvas the possibility of working together. And now, it’s about to start. (If you want more of this history, go here)

I left reflecting on what it means to be a pioneer. I was thanked for being willing to be the first speaker on the first night. But for me, it’s a privilege. I’m energised by that sense of uncertainty and unknown.

I (as a pioneer) am needed.

Yet I know that once a thing starts, I find it much more difficult to pay attention and keep focused. While others are energised by having a pattern and a template, which they can refine and improve.

They too are needed.

As it says in the Basis of Union, “The Uniting Church … acknowledges with thanksgiving that the one Spirit has endowed the members of Christ’s Church with a diversity of gifts, and that there is no gift without its corresponding service.”

landslide victory for fresh expressions in Australian churches

Recent results indicate a stunning mandate for change in the Australian church climate.

Some 66% of church attenders agreed that the traditional established models of church life must change to better connect with the wider Australian community (only 11% disagree).

For an even larger majority, this was personal. 82% claimed that they would support the development of new initiatives in ministry and mission in their church (3% disagreed).

This is a stunning mandate for change. It should encourage every church minister, and every church leader, to consider how they provide responsive leadership, seeing to establish a fresh expression or new initiative in their church in the next years.

Update: Some interesting pushback over at Hamo’s blog.

(Data from the Innovation data from the 2006 National Church Life Survey.)

leading and fresh expressions

I’m back from a rich and thought-provoking time with the Anglican clergy of South Australia. Throat a bit sore and grateful for all those who prayed. One of their requests – to reflect on leadership and fresh expressions – involved me reworking some previous work, plus developing some entirely new material. Time consuming, but quite rich personally. It involved reflecting on the leaders who had helped shape my understandings of leadership in fresh expression

• Mary who births – hands open to God and eyes open to the world
• Elizabeth who blesses in Luke 1:39-45
• The unnamed in Luke 10 who speak peace and dwell at tables
• Paul in Athens who looks for unknown Gods

I explored the postures toward culture and the habits at work. This included some contemporary leadership and change insights, including appreciative inquiry and Roxburgh’s three zone model. Plus some stories, via God Next door and my Opawa experiences.

We ended by praying for each other (the person next to us), aware that we are all uniquely gifted, we are all uniquely called to keep growing as disciples and thus (for this group) as leaders and ministers.

It seemed to be helpful – as someone commented “You took what was beyond us and made us feel like we could be part of it.”

A Uniting Church, an emerging church? updated with more resources

Here is the introduction:

In May, I was privileged to participate, as the Norman and Mary Miller Lecturer, in the 28th gathering of the Queensland Synod. The opening worship was a highlight, a moving expression of the richness and diversity of The Uniting Church in Australia today.

The worship began with an indigenous cleansing ceremony, a welcome to country and the entry of diverse Uniting Church congregations. All were in traditional dress, singing and dancing as an expression of their unique culture. Each of the four Bible readings was given in a different language, while the Prayers of the people were enriched by the use of a conch shell. The communion table, in the shape of a boomerang, was draped in rich fabrics, in the colours of the rainbow and decorated with baskets of local produce. Celebration of communion included the Great Thanksgiving as a prayer of call and response that originated in Kenya. The prayer for the Bread originated in the Church of South India, the Gloria was a sung response using a chant from the Taize community in France while other words from Augustine of Hippo were also utilised.

It was a rich and splendid liturgical feast. At the risk of being facetious, but in order to make a point that is both obvious, yet important, let me make the following observation: that the worship bore little relationship to the early church.

Let me explain.

Here is the conclusion:

The emerging church invites a global, missional theology. It is not a Western manifestation, a product of books in the USA or fresh expressions in the United Kingdom.

Rather, it is a response to the impulse of the Spirit, at Pentecost, throughout church history and across the expanse of global culture.

This is the conclusion to an article I wrote last year. I try to argue that the best way to appreciate the emerging church is by placing it within global mission. I explore a Uniting church communion, and 20th century developments in both church and global mission history.

Titled “A Uniting Church, an emerging church?” it was published in Cross Purposes, a journal to encourage and support theological dialogue. If you want to read the full article, it has just become available online here, by scrolling down to page 3.

Updated: Jonny Baker found my article “delightful” and in email conversation we began discussing the books that are shaping our thinking in terms of seeing church in the context of God’s global mission. Here is what we noted

Kirsteen Kim, Joining in with the Spirit (who we’ve got booked to teach an intensive here in Adelaide on Spirit and mission in July 2012).

Bevans and Schroder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today

Chris Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative

Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture

Dana Roberts, Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion

David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission

Gerard Arbuckle, Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership

Stanley Skreslet, Picturing Christian Witness: New Testament Images of Disciples in Mission

Since this Uniting Church, an emerging church? article, I have developed my thinking further. This is due to appear in an article titled Evaluating Birth narratives: A Missiological Conversation with Fresh Expressions, due out any time soon with Anvil. Here’s part of the conclusion:

Third, in reflecting on my own attempts to communicate Fresh Expressions to church leaders in Australasia, something happens when the conversation is started with an ecclesiology of “birth narratives”, rather than with the marks of the church. Telling the stories of Brendan the Navigator or of Alexandre de Rhodes pioneer leadership in Vietnam in the 1600s, offers an ecclesiology that values pioneering, risk, and that cannot avoid the constant interplay between faith and culture. Missiology becomes entwined with ecclesiology.

Does this mean that Fresh Expressions might be better served by employing the phrase “Fresh Expressions of mission”, rather than “Fresh Expressions of church”? A number of benefits might occur. Firstly, in honouring the global work of the Missio Dei. Secondly, in avoiding of the Western imaginary that is evoked in the word “church.” Thirdly, in the production of a set of ecclesiological criteria – potential, pioneering, risky, engaged with culture – that are more missiologically generative for the growth and development, which includes evaluation, of Fresh Expressions?

Fourth, a birthing ecclesiolgy might more directly link ecclesiology with the narratives of the birth of the church that arose after the Resurrection. One schema is provided by Stanley Skreslet, who offers five New Testament images of mission, linked with mission history. The images are those of announcing good news, sharing Christ with friends, interpreting the gospel; shepherding; building and planting.

One example provided by Skreslet is the Gladzor Gospels, in which the woman at the Well is portrayed as sharing with her neighbours, one of whom wears a Mongolian hat. And so a global mission history offers evaluative criteria that include whether Fresh Expressions expect to exist in mission only for their own cultural sub-group, or whether they are have eyes open to a world with multi-cultural neighbours.

Another example is the exploration by Skreslet of the theme of announcing good news. Skreslet notes that a third of the book of Acts is public speeches and explores how all are uniquely contextual. And so this early church birthing narrative offers evaluative criteria including whether a Fresh Expressions is engaged in the interplay between faith and culture.

Such might be the possibilities generated by the use of the term “Fresh Expressions of mission”, rather than “Fresh Expressions of church.”

When Fresh expressions suddenly made me claustrophobic

It’s Lent. A time to focus on Christ and what it means to live as Christ followers. So I’ve started to tuck into Rooted in Jesus Christ: Towards a Radical Ecclesiology. Daniel is a younger leader, born in Spain, studied in United States, now back in Europe working with migrants. It’s a rich and fertile bed for theological reflection.

A few pages in he discusses the place of martyrs for theology.

“In recent decades, liberation theology has become a theology of martyrdom. A number of bishops (the best known being Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, Bishop Enrique Angelelli in Argentina, and Bishop Juan Gerardi in Guatemala), various priests and nuns (including the six Jesuits of the Universidad Centro-americano Jose Simeon Canas in San Salvador), and thousands of catechists and members of base communities have been killed for their commitment to the gospel of liberation. These martyrs offer a witness to the meaning and implications of following Christ in a violent world, Their testimony is much needed to overcome the effects of a cultural context that emphasises comfort and tends to forget the anonymous victims of injustice.” (4)

Why martyrs only four pages into a book on Jesus today? Well he is arguing that these martyrs, not just one, but many, are one of the four key permanent contributions of liberation theology to the ongoing task of theological reflection. That you can’t think and act on Jesus without a struggle that is radical, so radical it might even be life-giving.

Suddenly some of the fresh expressions talk I’ve been part of began to feel claustrophobic. I couldn’t think of many martyrs, although I can think of hours spent arguing about American authors, or the use or otherwise of pop culture, or candles, in worship.

Recently I reflected that mission is a 3D triangle. It needs to include

• words, the talking of the Jesus story
• deeds, the practical helps of listening well, of offering mercy, of seeking justice
• prayer, whether in monastic patterns of faithful prayer, or of worship performed in representation of a hurting world, or in “power evangelism” in which the sick are prayed for
• societal rebuilding in which Christians join with Nehemiah in rebuilding broken walls, follow Daniel who gave himself to just administration, echo Dueteronomy and seek to build cities of refuge

Fresh expressions claims to be about mission. But it runs the danger of becoming a church-centric, worship-focused program.

The feelings of claustrophobia lifted as I read on. Daniel offers a few critiques of liberation theology. One is that the use of praxis was too narrow. Praxis is not only political – it is also about ordinary, daily life, the real practices and lives of the people, “the whole reality as it really is, not as we would like it to be.” (7) In Australia this might not be matyrdom, but it is the way we eat, it is the way we shop, it is how we culture-make.

This offers a generative moment for fresh expressions. Daniel continues;

“there is a significant ecclesial role in the cause of people’s liberation … we need to strengthen Christian identity – including spirituality, liturgical life, and a factual sense of belonging.” (10)

In other words, Fresh expressions is vital as it encourages a ecclesial role that is contextual for First-world cultures. Fresh expressions remains essential as it seeks to nourish Christian identity in ways that make sense for 21st century disciples.

Fresh expressions is claustrophobic if the goal is fresh expressions. It is full of potential if the hope is cultural transformation in an alignment with God’s inbreaking Kingdom.

But what of where I started? What is the place of martyrs in Fresh expressions? Perhaps in the reminder of a life of love lived freely and radically, the invitation to love our enemies, not as an option for mature Christians who have their act together, but as a core of discipleship.

A radical Lenten following of Jesus?

emerging responses to For the Parish, chapter 5 – flight from tradition

“For the Parish”, by Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, is an extended critique of fresh expressions. Always good to listen to the critics, so I am engaging the book, chapter by chapter. The Introduction is here, Chapter one is here, Chapter two is here. Chapter 3 is here. Chapter four is here, including a lengthy and very helpful set of comments

These posts seem to be getting longer and longer. My excuse is that I do want to take seriously the questions being raised!

This chapter offers an extended reflection on the relationship between faith and tradition. It begins with the assertion that the Anglican church originates with an priority of common prayer. Thomas Cramner “producing a prayer book for all to use, not through a common confession.” (98) So For the Parish take issue with Fresh expressions practically, ethically, theologically and grammatically.

Practically, if you have diversity as encouraged by Fresh Expressions, does this not make it hard when people shift.

“The person who has come to faith through a ‘skateboarding church’ or a ‘greetings-card-making church’ is very unlikely to find anything on offer in a new locality that even approaches what will have been his or her only experience of church life up to now.” (99-100)

Ethically, Fresh Expressions seems to value novelty, and to value novelty is simply a middle-class luxury.

“Only those who are rich in this world’s goods are likely to side with ….[the] … postmodern thinker, who looks forward to a future that is like the present ‘only with more options’.” (102)

Theologically, faith is a given gift. “It is notable that every Fresh Expression starts with what is chosen, wheras the inherited church is more likely to start with what is given.” (102-3) Thus For the Parish frames tradition as something that comes to us “from beyond ourselves.” (103) In so doing, the the tradition gives us an “exteriority” (103) with which to judge ourselves, a breadth and depth that is both “wide-ranging and specific.” (105)

Grammatically, For the Parish is concerned about the loss of “the” in the language of Fresh Expressions. They offer examples including phrases like “faith” rather than “the Faith” and “Fresh expressions of church” rather than “Fresh expressions of the Church.” Apparently this makes the church into an abstracted idea, rather than the inheritance of the past. This is a “flight from locality, temporality and particularity.” (117).

The chapter offers one extended example – the use of compline. It is worth pondering in relation to tradition. (more…)

church and mission: a highly constructive ongoing blog comment discussion

“The story of Acts is the story of a community inspired to make a continual series of creative experiments by the Pentecost Spirit.” (Joe Fison, Fire Upon the Earth, 79.)

I’m involved in one of the most satisfying and stimulating blog conversations I’ve had in quite a while – in relation to my ongoing book review of For the Parish. The conversation has become a probing exploration of church and mission as it relates to Fresh Expressions.

I know that in general blog commenting is way down compared with a few years ago. I realise that there is a blog rule of thumb that the life of a blog post lasts three days. So I wanted to simply note this ongoing conversation, thank God for the value of blogs and provide a note of appreciation for Tony Hunt and his wisdom, grace, thoughtfulness.

emerging responses to For the Parish, chapter 4 – segregation

“For the Parish”, by Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, is an extended critique of fresh expressions. Always good to listen to the critics, so I am engaging the book, chapter by chapter. The Introduction is here, Chapter one is here, Chapter two is here. Chapter 3 is here.

There is much that I applaud in this chapter (The Flight to Segregation). This includes the call for conversion to be radical, the call for reconciliation to be made present in local faith communities, the call for a faith that challenges politics and ethics. There is an even-handed and thorough discussion of the Homogenous Unit Principle (that people are more likely to find faith if they don’t have to cross cultural boundaries).

I think that Fresh expressions would do well to keep some of the quotes from this chapter for ongoing evaluation. For example

• Bad examples of church practice need “not doom everyone to reproduce these patterns.” (80).
• “Expressions of the Fall in late modernity are particularly nasty.” (page 84, footnote 29)
• “There is almost no sense (in Fresh Expressions) that the Church might take a political stand against the errors and tragedies of contemporary society, not least in offering practical resistance through its forms of life.” (91)

It is easy to take the best of what you fancy and the worst of what you dislike. I’ve seen it done often in emerging/fresh expressions circles. However I suspect it’s also being done in this book. This chapter suggests that one particular facet of the parish church is that it is a “mixed economy ” (64) For Davison and Milbank, this is linked theology, linked to “a message of reconciliation, forgiveness and peace.” (64) Apparently, “The parishes of the inherited church are heterogenous communities.” (64)

Well, try telling that to my kids, for whom their experience of a mixed economy means continuing to do church the way another generation likes it done. Or tell that to a migrant struggling with English, for whom their experience of a mixed economy means doing church in English.

I remember once a 90 year old churchgoer telling me that the kids were being too noisy in church. Their turn (to sit quietly like the adults), would come later. For now, they should be somewhere else.

This simply assumes the church does not yet belong to “the little ones.” It’s about privilege fused with power. For Davison and Milbank, “the cultural interests of church members [in a parish] can be valued without having to structure an entire church around them.” (77)

So let’s reverse this. Imagine the “parish” offers messy worship. Or sings to drum and bass. Now imagine telling a visiting baby boomer that their cultural interests can be valued without having the drum and base music and chatter of kids needing to change! Because this is a “heterogenous” church.

So what to do with church next Sunday? Establish something new for the visiting aging babyboomer. Which Davison and Milbank consider “a recipe for segregated congregations.” (65) Or continue the status quo (in which the boomers like it or lump it, because in essence this church is in fact already segregated)?

Or does not Acts 15 give us some way forward? A dominant power group lays down it’s need for assimilation, and instead sends some pioneers to encourage what is new, requesting only a willingness to grow in a shared commitment to mission and justice.

Davison and Milbank might charge that this runs the danger of being seen as choice, a bowing to consumer culture. But isn’t it surely part of the Spirit’s work in the early church? Consider these two verses from the same Bible book In 1 Corinthians 1:10 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. Place it against 1 Corinthians 9:20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.

Do you start with mission-as-contextualisation ie 1 Corinthians 9? Or mission-as-reconciliation ie 1 Corinthians 1? If you start with either, it seems to me that you need to see them not as the endpoint, but as the start of a life-long spiral toward justice and transformation.

Further:
(I have written elsewhere about the place of social justice and the poor in Fresh Expressions)

emerging churches 10 years on: progress update

Today was another step in my research into emerging churches 10 years on. This is involving interviews, surveys and focus groups.

Today I visited Cityside Baptist in Auckland. They had very kindly offered me their “sermon slot.” So I took some time to introduce myself and my research with them 10 years ago, and then gave them some space to fill out a 22 question survey form.

The questions are grouped in three categories

• some are taken from the national census and thus allow comparison of the congregation against their suburb, city and country
• some are taken from the National Church Life Survey and thus allow comparison against their denomination and the church in general
• some are uniquely related to questions about faith and culture today

At the end of the day, 47 people completed survey forms. 

What is amazing is that ten years ago when I conducted a similar survey at Cityside, guess how many people completed survey forms?

You guessed it. 47!

Amazing.

The next step is to start to analyse the data. The plan is to return perhaps in the middle of the year to run some focus groups – to present the survey data and invite them to help me interpret it.  Plus I am aiming to present the research more formally at an Ecclesiology and ethnography academic conference in Durham, UK, in mid-September. And then, if all goes really well, I’ll roll it together with my PhD and look for a publisher.

But for today, I thankful for Cityside and pondering with amazement the number 47.

emerging responses to For the Parish, chapter 3 – mission and church

“For the Parish”, by Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, is an extended critique of fresh expressions. Always good to listen to the critics, so I am engaging the book, chapter by chapter. The Introduction is here, Chapter one is here, Chapter two is here.

Before we plunge into round (chapter) 3 of For the Parish vs Fresh Expressions it is worth gaining an overview. Chapter 3 is a crucial chapter, which in a nutshell, battles over the relationship between church, worship and mission. Did Christus propter ecclesiam venit (Christ come for the sake of the Church)? Or the world?

Before I explore this chapter, I wanted to gain an overview of current debates on the relationship between church and mission. I turned to the The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church. Nearly 700 pages, of which chapter 36 is on the theme of church and mission (Ecclesiology and World Mission/Missio Dei, by Paul Collins, 623-636.)

Collins offers some history. First a history in which mission has been understood, based on Matthew 28:19-20, as going. By implication, mission becomes a task performed elsewhere. Second, a history in which the context of Christendom, which meant that “conversion and salvation, church and mission became inextricably bound together.” (624).

Collins urges the “understanding of the world church today [be] rooted in the experiences of the colonial and post-colonial periods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (623). He then links six themes – salvation, partnership, missio Dei, relationality, inculturation and pluralism – in dialogue with major church councils like Vatican 2 and World Council of Churches. His conclusion is that to be church is to be sent, to participate in God’s mission in the world. “Ideas of ‘mission’ in terms of conversion and recruitment to church membership need to be re-evaluated in the light of God’s cosmic mission: ‘that God may be all in all.” (633, drawing on 1 Cor 15:28)

This overview of global trends in thinking about church and mission, gives us some way to understand For the Parish. The book makes no reference to trends in world Christianity, nor to the conciliar councils. Instead the authors draw on European theologians like John Robinson, Sergei Bulgakov, Henri Lubac. They acknowledge the place of the Kingdom in the Gospels, but choose to place priority on the Pauline epistles to argue that “the goal of salvation … might even be said to be all church.” (48) They conclude that to suggest mission is a proper ultimate goal is “the ultimate heresy within the contemporary Church of England.” (54)

Heresy. A strong word indeed.

They critique Fresh Expressions for having

the fervour of devotees casting around for increasingly precious things to offer up to mission. The favoured sacrifices are the practices and traditions of the inherited church. To mission, every and any treasure must be sacrificed. (For the Parish, 54)

This chapter opens up a crucial, crucial debate. What is the relationship between church and mission? Does church exist for mission? Or for worship? It seems to me, given the overview provided in The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church that For the Parish is urging is simply continuing a Christendom, European understanding of church and mission.

Whether Fresh Expressions is doing any better is an equally valid question, which will occupy us in Chapter Four. But first, back to the piles of paper on my desk.

listening at your local in Lent: step one in a fresh expression?

Updated: Feedback

“The good thing about this is that it’s a process. We’ve been offered in the past so many programmes, which people tend to resist.”

“The best thing about what you did is the homework. So many seminars just give information. You gave us something to do.”

On Sunday I am offering a Lenten mission challenge to a local Uniting Church. I am preaching and then offering an hour long mission seminar. The Lenten focus I am suggesting is not a study or some readings. Nor is it a chance to give some money. Nor even to engage some internal spiritual practices. Rather the focus is on some practical tasks in order to listen outside the church walls and into their community …

Task: Take a project. Decide on a time frame. Do it either individually or as a group. If as a group, why not meet fortnightly for coffee to encourage, pray for each other.

• Listening project one – some growth questions to ask selected individuals
• Listening project two – observation walks around the community
• Listening project three – visual observation of the community, involving creating photo exhibits
• Listening project four – some Appreciative inquiry questions

I am hoping it is practical and fun and people want to have a go. Why not enjoy a few summer walks around your community.

I am hoping that this becomes a first step in a process, that what they hear clarifies their next steps in mission; that out of listening comes some acts of intentional service, that such acts are designed not as programs but to grow relationships, that those relationships become conduit for gospel stories to be told, that those gospel stories invite an exploration of Jesus, first individually and then in community. (ie a fresh expression).

But those words – fresh expression – are often a step to far.  So first, hey, why not listen in your local ….

emerging responses to For the Parish. A Critique of Fresh Expressions, chapter 2

For the Parish, by Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, is an extended critique of fresh expressions. Always good to listen to the critics, so I am engaging the book, chapter by chapter. The Introduction is here, Chapter one is here

Chapter two – Theology and mediation

This chapter introduces a second theological concept, that of “mediation.” This is (dictionary) defined by Davison and Milbank as actions that bring about a gift. They chart a number of implications for Christian faith

• “the messenger becomes the message; we receive the gift of being gifts to ourselves” (30)
• the priority of the sacraments as “the chief material means by which we are united to Christ (31)
• “God works through our actions, words and communities because he is the active, speaking, communal God, whose image we bear.” (33)
• God is “revealing himself in [human] language” (36)
• the goal is the divine redemption of human culture

Having dedicated 11 pages to defining mediation, the chapter then finishes with three paragraphs in relation to Fresh expressions, which are accused of lacking this theology. However, no concrete evidence (eg quotes or examples) is provided to back up such accusations.

One way to examine a work is to look at the sources being used. So this chapter affirms culture, as it needs to by advocating a theology of mediation. So does it practice what it preaches ie use cultural sources? If so, what? This chapter does draw on culture, citing poet David Jones (35), Elizabeth Bishop (36), and an opera by Rossini (38). I will be keeping an eye on this as the book develops, but my initial observation is that this book is privileging certain forms of culture – it is quoting poetry but not pop music, opera but not film. In doing so, it might well reveal an exclusive, limiting understanding of what it is to be human and of what cultures can be part of mediation.

As with chapter one, I am again left confused with the fact that the themes being argued here are also being used in the Fresh Expressions discussion. When I teach on “alternative/emerging worship, I use themes of Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, Ascension to argue for the priority of embodiment and thus the use of culture in worship. Pete Ward has written an book titled Participation And Mediation: A Practical Theology for the Liquid Church in attempting to articulate a theology of pop culture emerging from his experiences in youth ministry. What is going on when a theology of mediation is being used in Fresh Expressions, yet this book is accusing it of lacking such a theology?