Thursday, February 14, 2008
emerging, Kiwi and anglican
Today was a day in preparation for my time with the Anglican priests-to-be at St Johns Theological College, Auckland on February 26 and 27. As part of their Anglican Studies Programme they are looking at Anglican Ministry: Contemporary Models and Challenges. They have chosen to focus on the emerging church and to invite a Baptist to help them. Very gracious.
The learning outcomes include:
Describe the mission context of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, and some of the challenges this raises for the Anglican Church.
Describe and evaluate the emerging church as one model of ministry developed to respond.
I thought these 2 videos will be particularly appropriate: Rowan Williams on what Anglicans think of emerging church and how he would evaluate the emerging church.
Over the two days I will be addressing the following:
Tuesday 9.30 – 12.30
Lecture 1 – New soil = new plants = new church shapes
Lecture 2 – What is the new “soil” that is “postmodern cultures”?
Lecture 3 – A missiology for a postmodern soil
Tuesday 1.30 – 4.00
Lecture 4 – Identifying with the life of Jesus
Lecture 5 Transforming secular space
Lecture 6 – Living as a community
Wednesday 9.30-11.00
Lecture 7 – The mixed economy that is emerging churches
Lecture 8 – Discussion and evaluation of the emerging church
And for those interested, here is my list of key Kiwi emerging church writings.
Jamieson, Alan. “A Churchless Faith: Faith Outside the Evangelical Pentecostal/Charismatic Church of New Zealand.” PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, 1998.
Jamieson, Alan. A Churchless Faith. Faith Journeys Beyond Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches. Wellington: Philip Garside Pub Ltd, 2000.
Riddell, Mike, Mark Pierson, and Cathy Kirkpatrick. The Prodigal Project. Journey into the Emerging Church. London: SPCK, 2000.
Riddell, Mike. Threshold of the Future. Reforming the Church in the Post-Christian West. London: SPCK, 1998.
Steve Taylor, “A Kiwi emerging church. Yeah Right!”, chapter in the New Vision New Zealand Congress book, (forthcoming March 2008).
Taylor, Steve, The Out of Bounds Church? Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change. Zondervan, 2005.
Taylor, Steve, A New Way of Being Church? A Case Study Approach to Cityside Baptist Church as Christian Faith “making do” in a Postmodern World, PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2004.
Hey Steve, I am looking forward to some of this stuff in Adelaide this year!!! Maybe I can finally buy you a coffee from Cibo and we can reminisce about our mate BONO!!!
Comment by mark — February 18, 2008 @ 9:09 am
I actually think the strength of the Anglican Church lies largely in its modernist qualities. I totally agree with a lot of emergent missiology and ecclesiology, but I think the Anglican model provides the structure and certainty that many people are essentially still looking for when it comes to religious community. I’m all for us having more contemporary expressions of church. I even have a dream of a group of Christians opening a cafe/bar to aid outreach and loal community development. But when people start talking about “getting rid of the pews”, and start modifying the liturgy with a whole bunch of relatively shallow and meaningless contemporary jargon, I get concerned. I’m not totally against dumbing down liturgy, but I don’t think emergent expressions should become the dominant expressions of church life. While there are strengths and virtues in postmodernism we need to embrace, we also need to recognise its shortcomings and prophetically call our generation to a deeper life of the spirit and the mind.
Comment by A.J.Chesswas — February 19, 2008 @ 8:36 am
AJ,
appreciate the comment. the ’emerging church’ that i will be talking about has no interest in cheap or shallow liturgy. nor does it have an interest in embracing all of postmodernity. (i note this, just in case you are making a caricature of the emerging church, if not, then please forgive me). the emerging church wants to do exactly what your last sentence says “prophetically call our generation to a deeper life of the spirit and the mind”.
i will start the class with acts 2 – that by the grace of the Spirit at pentecost, people heard “in their own language.” by the end of acts 2 there is both cultural connection and cultural critique. such is the power of translatability, to use the writings of lamin sanneh. we will then explore what that would mean for us today.
steve
Comment by steve — February 19, 2008 @ 8:46 am
That’s great Steve… I wish you well with your series. We are blessed to have a number of people in our congregation putting into practice the sort of things you may be talking about. I certainly don’t want to be a reactionary, I’m far too young for that!!
Comment by A.J.Chesswas — February 19, 2008 @ 9:19 am
Good on you AJ. What a great life goal for you to nourish “not to be reactionary.” In God’s grace, keep it up.
steve
Comment by steve — February 19, 2008 @ 10:27 am