sustain:if:able kiwi

out of cultural balance

Alan Creech engages with Don Carson, and argues:
if ultimately, you have first and foremost become some emerging church pomo whatever as a reaction to change in the culture – I, for one, believe you have your first and foremosts out of balance.

Well then, I for one am happy to put up my hand and say I’m out of balance. Out of balance and glad of it actually.

I was reading Philemon 22 yesterday; At the same time, get a room ready for me.

And it energised me as a missionary metaphor. We live in Western culture, which like the Prodigal Son, has left home. The church has been abandoned. And the Father waits. That’s our missionary reality.

As part of my missionary response, I’d like to keep a room ready for if the Prodigal returns. Our culture will never say what Paul says in Philemon. It will never ask for a room to be ready.

But I’m still willing to get the room ready, to create a welcoming and hospitable space for those wandering, squandering, enjoying the high life.

Maori culture has a proverb: ahi kaa – keep the home fires burning, so the loved ones will return. Such a hospitable (even if it might be out-of-balance) missiology has a number of implications.

First, it keeps me respectful of other rooms not like mine. This includes the mission rooms of modernity. I struggle with lots of Carson and lots of Willow Creek, but I keep trying to be respectful of such modern attempts at missiology.

Second, it keeps me surveying my room. It’s a place I prepare not for myself, but for the wanderer. So it’s not driven by my music wants or my favourite images. It’s a place that I hope the Prodigal will enjoy. Sure, it won’t be perfect. But part of my gift means I’ll do what I can.

So Alan, I’m sorry if it seems out of balance to you, but it’s a hospitable missiology that for me seems deeply energised by a Biblical impulse.

lateral thinking on emergent growth

From Department of Natural Resources:

EMERGENT WETLANDS (MARSHES): Emergent wetlands are considered the transition zone between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. These wetlands are usually found in association with streams or other watercourses, but can also be fed by groundwater.

Do we fully appreciate the very now of this transition zone, or are we scrambling for dry ground? What are our streams, our life-giving assocations? Is our groundwater healthy, or has it started to rot?

PS – Insights from Craig – “Not to mention the incredible biodiversity to be found in this environment which is so vital to the overall ecosystems. Often in these environments vegetatively stained water that is fresh can be perceived as not so fresh, how do we determine the nature of the water without testing or subjecting to the chlorination of our religious ritual.”

textures of worship

How much of our worship is flat walled and mono-coloured?
What would it mean to create textured worship, multiple layers, unexpected swirls, differently weaved and woven patterns.

mark this gap

I believe that on the edges, in the fragments, among the absence is where God is most. Words that are much easier to write than to live. Leaving graceway, the emerging church I planted in Auckland was really hard. What was God doing with me? What was God doing with Graceway? what would leaving mean?

This, perhaps is part of an answer. (I scored this interview off mootblog).

Mark is the new pastor of Graceway – a Baptist new form of being church and alternative worship community in Auckland. I met Mark the last time I was in OZ when I was moving around doing Godly Play as a form of worship. Mark has a background in theological studies and in particular servants, a christian liberational project in asia.
Mark has taken over after the input of Steve Taylor who has finished his PhD and Mike Crudge who is now touring around spiritual tourists and students in North & South Island.
Mark, things are changing on the Auckland scene – with Mark Pierson going off to Melbourne, Steve Taylor off to Christchurch and Mike touring – sounds a tough time to start being a minister when everyine else seems to have gone liquid – what led up to this decision and what is Graceways vision now that Steve has moved?

(more…)

made my day

the internet and blogging world has been a hard space for me the last month. this email was a positive to add to the negative.

Email today:
the Diocese has given us the go-ahead to begin a new alt.church community in Oxford – we are called mayBe – and much thanks to you for the inspiration to get us started.

great name. wierd to think that one can be “inspiration” in a birth on the other side of the world. puts a whole new spin on virtual sex!

mel and the atonement

A hallmark of evangelical christianity has been the Jesus who suffers, taking our sin, for the world. Mel’s movie dines out large on this image. Lots of “splatta” theology. A good long look at 1 perspective, but in doing so, many other ways of viewing the cross are missed.

Jesus as the integrator of the planet
Jesus as the builder of the new community
Jesus as the non-violent freedom fighter of the Kingdom.

One of the gifts of our postmodern context will be some new insights on the atonement. I am looking forward to that.

emerging church

My A-Z post on emerging church is on emerging church, (here to be precise) along with a whole lot of downunder stuff.

(warning – joke coming. It’s quite neat to see such a nod to the colonies. Next month back to the centre of the universe, ay chaps! warning, truly this is just a flippant early morning remark)

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.

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.

church, belonging, membership .. more

A couple more comments on church, belonging and membership.

1. I don’t think it’s fair to juxtapose community formation and membership. Don’t they go hand in glove ie membership is a way of expressing community formation?

2. The easy answer is to say, have no “membership”. But that frankly, is bollocks. For 2 reasons. Firstly pragmatic, when you want to make decisions, who decides. You have to have some criteria and “membership” should be as closely aligned as possible with that criteria. Secondly, even opensource (thanks Nate for the url), have “membership”, its called entering your log-in. The question is how we can make accurate and real our levels of participation.

3. I would not want to read membership as inwardly focused. At Graceway, one of the survey form options including mission, both stuff we did as a community and people’s involvement in their workplaces. In other words, your sole “membership” commitment at Graceway could be service in God’s world.

4. I have a nagging question. If we tie membership to involvement, are we reducing spirituality to doing – ie you are noted because you do something in this place. And sometimes I wonder if this is the opposite of grace?

Churches, belonging and membership

I shared a coffee with Nate Cull recently. The conversation roamed around to the way the internet builds community. We applauded open source communities; places like open office, and the way they build community.

Nate mentioned some research done on open source communities and how participation follows a sort of bell curve; very committed at the core who give lots of time, through the whole range of involvement, to those on the very fringe, who give very little.

He then dropped in what I thought was a stunning observation;

(more…)

From conversation 2 catalyst

Over the weekend I hosted a storytelling workshop, run by Olive Drane. It is not the recommended way to start in a new city, running a conversational event 12 days after you arrive.

But it was …smashing. 40 people. Huge denominational range. Olive was excellent; warm, sensitive, encouraging. A really, really good event.

The aim of the weekend was to get people creatively in touch with their own stories, telling their stories, as a way of “telling” the story of God in our life. If we believe God is in all, it’s time we told of all.

We concluded with a telling, and the magic of God’s spirit in community and creativity was present.

Best of all, about half of the group were keen to meet again, to listen again, to tell again. So within 12 days of arriving in a new city, I just might have been part of catalysing a regular storytelling group.

(Andrew Jones taught me this: hold conversational events in order to become a catalyst)

Idea for Church#1

A lot of Kiwis like to spend Sunday morning over the newspaper, with good coffee in their hands. (Is this just Kiwis, or are there similar patterns elsewhere?).

So, church=
->lots of newspapers, muffins, coffee, cafe tables
->open for about 2 hours on a Sunday am
->a number of stations set up that relate to sections of the newspaper. As people read a section, then they have the opportunity to go to the relevant station, where various responses – confession, intercession, praise – are offered.
->a regular liturgy of coffee, in which God is thanked for her gifts
->followed by a 20 minute interview with 2 people, in which the weeks events are reflected on from a Kingdom perspective. So various articulate, witty people get to help all us poor newspaper readers make sense of the news. They would have to be both well read, yet quick on their feet, because the newspaper is setting the agenda.
->a small, regular, set liturgy ends this.

What do you think? Church? Spiritual? Sustaining? Sustainable?