sustain:if:able kiwi

Aha, there’s a storyteller: Daniel Lanois, Brandon Flowers and a ministry of imagination

Daniel Lanois is a record producer and musician. His CV includes working with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Brian Eno and U2. Quite a list! Three of the albums he produced have gone on to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Quite an achievement! Soul Mining: A Musical Life is his autobiography. Part poetry, part techhead, part philosophy it’s an intriguing and stimulating window into art and the artist – as it is glimpsed in the recording and music industry.

Here is his reflection on deciding to work with Brandon Flowers (formerly with The Killers) on his 2010 solo album, Flamingo.

I can hear Brandon’s influences, and that’s okay by me; we all got into this because we fell in love with already existing works. The part of me that looks for the original turns a blind eye to the influences and a good eye to the imagination of this young man. Aha, he’s a storyteller. There is it is, the never-ending frontier – storytelling. Life experience lives beyond the medium. (208)

It’s a lovely insight into how different generations might work together, Lanois born in 1951, Flowers born 1981. It’s a fascinating insight into the music industry and the valuing of originality. It’s a reminder for those of us who work in the religious and spiritual world, that yes we need to have our influences, our traditions and our authors. But lets not lose our good eye for imagination and the valuing of life experience.

Isn’t that the biggest challenge for teaching and for ministry formation – to cultivate imagination in the midst of the sifting of life experience?

the richness of our shrinking world

The internet has some downsides. But it also has some amazing upsides.

I am currently working on some distance material, around the theme of Jesus Christ today. The aim is a course to help lay folk as they prepare to exercise their gifts, including in leading worship and preaching. Being a course by distance, the challenge is not to prepare pages and pages of words, but to encourage a range of ways to engage.

On Tuesday night I was working on the section on Jesus Christ in history. I came across the Theologians Trading Cards, on the disseminary website. Could people arrange the theologians in various categories – geography, time, Christology from above/below? Could people play variants of snap or top trumps with their friends? A way to engage Jesus Christ in history in which the cards create interaction and question. A query email to the site owner and overnight there was email reply in regards to the Creative commons license.

On Wednesday I was working on another section. I love the story in pages 3-4 of Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement about the impact of Christ on a person’s actions/witness. (The whole book is an excellent resource, which I found helpful a few Easter’s ago in framing my preaching input over a Thursday, Friday, Sunday). A story opens up different ways of engaging. What is more, the story could then be used as an exercise, inviting folk to work out how the sources of theology – Scripture, tradition, experience, reason – are all there and are all at play.

The story in McKnight’s book mentioned the title of a song. I googled the title, but could find no song with exactly that title. So I decided to email the author with my query. He replied with the contact details of the actual person who tells the story.

Another email to her. And a reply, including some more detail, which will make the story even more helpful.

In less than 48 hours, three conversations with three people on the other side of the world. Our shrinking world can certainly be full of richness.

Oh, for those wondering what the song is (more…)

storytelling: including some quotes from Coupland’s Generation A

I’m off to the annual Network of Biblical Storytellers Conference. This is one area where Australia is way ahead of New Zealand, in having a network and a gathering around the sheer imaginative and relational possibilities created by story. It’s the 10th anniversary, and the first time in Adelaide, thanks in large part to the energy and creativity of Uniting College student Sarah Agnew.

I’ve got my storytellers hat.

Found in an opportunity shop back in the 1990s. At the time, I was doing theological training and planting a community of faith. And my peers in training, well, sorted gave me lip for wearing it! “Who do you think you are Taylor.” I’ve kept it, and kept it and kept it. Always knowing it’s moment might arrive.

And then there are the stories. I’m telling about ten in total. Some are Kiwi historical stories. Others are Kiwi ministry stories. Three are different angles on gospel stories. Two are brand new, one written in Durham, another in Tasmania. All are original to me, bar one. It’s been such fun preparing for this conference, digging around my hard drive, placing stories side by side, seeing how they move and talk to each other.

By a coincidence (?), on the way back in the plane, I read Douglas Coupland’s latest, Generation A: A Novel. Which unknown by me until after I brought it, is all about stories.

In some ways, Generation A returns us to Coupland’s first work, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, in which he wrote; “We know this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert – to tell stories and to make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process.” (8) In Generation A, once again Coupland narrates a story in which (sort of), a younger generation are leaving their lives behind and in isolation, being invited to tell stories. A fascinating theme to return to nearly 20 years later, and in a book with the same title “Generations.”

Here are some quotes from Generation A: A Novel:

“a story – something that makes some sense of events you know have meaning.” (2)

“I do not want anecdotes from your life, Zack. I want stories. Stories you invent. Stories that have no other goal in life than to be stories.” (187)

“The brain uses stories to organize its perceptions of the world.” (195)

“Stories come from a part of you that only gets visited rarely – sometimes never at all. I think most people spend so much time trying to convince themselves that their lives are stories that they actual story-creating part of their brains hardens and dies.” (201)

“Instead of inventing and telling stories, I’m going to make my life a more interesting story.” (211)

If I wasn’t telling stories, I’d be looping these behind me on powerpoint over the weekend.

stories stories everywhere. mission and discipleship in Mark’s gospel

Today (UK Monday) has been a fun workday, preparing for the Network of Biblical Storytellers Conference annual conference, in Adelaide, this weekend coming. I’m down to do 3 keynote sessions, plus a workshop on storytelling in general. I’ve been looking back through the range of stories that sit on my laptop and framing them around three questions

• What makes a good story?
• Where do stories come from?
• Where do stories take us?

My goal is to tackle these questions entirely by telling stories. It’s been so much fun. Stories allow one to be less linear and less structured. It’s been fascinating to lay different stories alongside each other and start to see how they talk to each other.

My thinking was that I would probably be in a more creative place before flying back on to Australia tomorrow.  So today was spent testing this theory. The big challenge today was writing a whole new story. The guts of my keynote sessions are stories emerging from the gospel of Mark. I had two already, which I wrote last year. At the time I had the creative germ of an idea for a third in the trilogy. So this conference was a chance to capture that creative germ.

I am fascinated by the fact that the world of Jesus was pretty small and his discipleship outside the 12 disciples seemed so haphazard.  So what might happen if a healed leper (Mark 2) had a chance meeting with the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5). Would the recognise the same Jesus in each other’s stories? Would they respect the potentially diverse discipleship path of each other?

rolling our story with God’s story: Biblical story cubes

Storycubes has got all sorts of church and worship possibilities. The instructions are simple:

Roll the Cubes. Begin with ‘Once upon a time’ and tell a story that links together all 9 face-up images and spark your imagination.

The possibilities are endless.

• throw them and invite people to weave some of the symbols into their story.
• throw them and invite people to weave some of the symbols into a Biblical story.
• Play a what happened next, using the symbols to storytell an Acts 29, or a Mark 17 ie the chapters after the chapters that are written.
• You could make your own cube, for example an angel for the gospel of Matthew, lion for Mark, the ox for Luke, the eagle for John. Then throw the gospel cube plus the nine and invite people to think of, and then share, a story from the gospel that uses that symbol.
• Or your own cube that has an angel, a mountaintop, a forest. Use these to invite personal/group sharing – a mountain top moment ie when you were at your best, a dark forest moment ie when you were at your most scared, an angel moment ie when something happened you couldn’t explain.

Why? It invites creativity and imagination and humanity around the weave of God in our lives and the Biblical story.

I think I might just buy one for the upcoming National Biblical Storytelling gathering here in Adelaide (Sept 24-25). It would be a fun addition to my workshop, helping people tell their story and God’s story.

a narrative approach to a theology of evil

Lots of stories are happy stories. Yet we live in a dark world. Babies get hurt. People grieve. Relationships break. This raises the question as to the presence of evil. Are there bad forces, outside humans, that contribute to human pain and destruction? If so, how should their presence shape human behaviour? Here’s a short story, a dark story, that I wrote for our Grow evening service, trying to get my head around evil and being human. I’m not sure if it works, or if I like it, so I’ll post it here.

The advertising catches your eye. The Bible Horror puppet show. Human puppets performing avant garde interactive theatre.

The voice fades as the final curtain fall begins.

A note of explanation (ie. Biblical shaping). (more…)

a christian response to swine flu part 2 (creative storytelling of Mark 1:39-45)

Today, in response to Mark 1:39-45, we prayed for all healthworkers. Everyone was given at the door either a white piece of cloth or a gold piece of cloth. One – white – stood for Mother Teresa, the other – golden – stood for Princess Dianna. Both became famous for touching the sick. And the challenge for us, whether rich or poor, young or old, to be willing to touch the sick.

In a creative moment, the Bible text became a story, of Jane and her rabbit and how healing touch overcame the impact of quarantine. (Following on from last Sunday’s creative storytelling of Mark 2:1-12- Bill and Ben and their goat called raisins).

(more…)

Bill, Ben and their goat called raisins: Mark 2:1-12 storytelling sermon

Here is a storytelling in relation to Mark 2:1-12. (And in relation to the question I asked on Friday, about what is sin to a nine year old). The service today included a focus on a ministry reaching boys in the community. Which got me thinking about what it means for men to be followers of Jesus and how friendship and innovation (what we Kiwis call no.8 wire) might be important to how men express their faith.

Then reading Mark 2:1-12, verse 5 stood out: “Son, your sins are forgiven.” It got me thinking about being a “boy” in this story and having faith honoured by God. I’d also been reminded during the week of the Message translation of Romans 8:15-16: Christian life as adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?”. Add to that a pastoral conversation with a new community mum, so scared that church folk might glare at her baby when it makes a noise. Other background resources included this description of Capernaum, typical first century housing and what boys in Jesus day might play.

From that emerged Bill and Ben and their goat called raisins, who get to see God, with straw in his hair, mud in eye, grin on face, talking, back and forth as best mates! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together – it was quite some fun. Big hat tip to my blogging commenters, and my two Aussie storytelling friends, who offered critical comment as the thing took shape over the last few days.

Bill and Ben were probably too similar in name. And being in a sermon slot, I might have got a bit preachy at the end explaining a few textual issues. But success was the 10 year old community kid in the front row who kept getting drawn back in, the young dad who went home wanting to have his own crack at writing a Bible story and the number of men who gathered around to reflect, in essence, on being male and being Christian.

(more…)

what is sin to a 9 year old boy?

Updated: the finished product ended up here.

I’m working on Sunday’s sermon. As part of the morning service, we welcome one of our community ministries, to 8-12 year old community kids. Since we’re working our way through the early chapters of the gospel of Mark, the story of Jesus forgiving and healing the paralyzed man stands out as quite appropriate.

I mean, this guy had good mates, who stuck with him even when he got sick. This guy also had problem solving mates, willing to whip the lid of a roof. And I’ve started writing a story. I’ve not done storytelling as a sermon for a while. And it seems a good way to access this Bible text through the eyes of a 9 year old.

Currently I’ve got Bill and Ben and their goat called raisins. How they argue, as boys do, and fight as boys do, about the boring old synagogue and what God actualy, really looks like. How Ben got sick and Bill’s a good mate who sticks beside in. Until the day of the big adventure, when Bill and Ben suddenly realise they’ve suddenly discovered what God actually does look like – straw in hair and mud in mouth.

What I need to know is this – given Mark 2:5, when Jesus says “Son, your sins are forgiven” – what is sin to a 9 year old boy?

shifting espresso

espresso is our Tuesday evening congregation at Opawa. No sermon or singing. Instead opening prayer and closing “creative ending”; in between a free for all conversation about questions that are making people itch.

We had our “annual evaluation” a few weeks ago, an attempt to look at our life and how we were doing. One of the real strengths of a multi-congregational model is how it empowers each congregation to shape and shift their life, as the signs of the time shape and shift. As a result we’re making some changes at espresso.

First in time. We are moving from 7:47-9:15 pm to 6:30-8 pm, in order to be more children friendly.

Second, in format. We are going to try a once a month storytelling time. We’ll place some colours in the “espresso bowl”, from which our questions are placed. We’ll pick a colour and invite people to bring a story about that colour. It’s an attempt to build community and offer new ways to approach the task of learning and growing. It is something I’ve dreamed about at Opawa since I arrived over 5 years ago and it will be fascinating to see how it shapes us.

So, Tuesday March 17: everyone to bring a favourite story of a “yellow” (ginger crunch yellow) moment – from their life or from life in general, when they felt “yellow”; when they saw “yellow.” And food for you in a sharable format, 6:30-8 pm,

mission storytelling roadshow

Over the next few weeks I am part of a mission roadshow, Baptist initiated, called Sharpening the Middle. It is a follow up to the Sharpening the Edge conference last year (short youtube video clip of me in action here), telling the stories of grassroots missional experiments and classic church planting going on here in Aotearoa.

The roadshow consists of three regional workshop days, in Auckland (April 5), Wellington (April 10) and Christchurch (April 12).

Topics include:

* The challenge of Mission facing the church in NZ today – Murray Robertson
* Thinking Biblically about Mission and Church in NZ today – George Wieland
* Discerning the biblical frameworks – George Wieland, Steve Taylor
* Local church stories – including Opawa story.

This day is specifically aimed at our existing churches (defined as the ‘middle’). For me this is quite meaningful, as it’s nice to have emerging church conversation tucked up within Baptist mission and life.

storytelling the kingdom

This is a story I wrote yesterday. It’s a missional reading of Matthew 13:44; The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a person found it, they hid it again, and then in their joy went and sold all they had and brought that field.
It’s called the Brown paper bag.

(more…)

God revealed in community

a tangent touched off from here

Modernity sold us a pup. It sold us a belief you needed truth as all-encompassing and systematic. Modernity took truth and wrapped it in culture and then sold it to us as a cultural syncretistic product: truth as pure, abstract, timeless.

Yet, the God of the Bible was a God of community … moulding community in the desert, moulding community in the church … urging community through the broken body of Christ…..telling story after story, narrative after narrative of the actions of the communal God … refusing to sieve narrative into doctrinal purity, God took the risk of letting stories serve as the interpretive vessel for the body of God.

For where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there is Christ … he broke bread and gave it to them … then their eyes were opened and they recognized him ….

The God of all, revealed in community…

When moderns encounter postmoderns they sniff for a watering down of truth. What they fail to smell is the decaying odor, the rotting carcase, of their modern, all-encompassing, systematic cultural approach to truth. (Note what I said, the cultural approach is rotting, not the truth.)