Sunday, May 23, 2010
where does the hope come from? words of mission in mission
Today is a transition day – flying from Maroochydore to Bathurst via Sydney; from Queensland Synod lecture to working for with New South Wales ELM centre (lay ministry training); from one-off talk to two days of rolling conversation around the theme of transformers.
Last night I talked with the Queensland Synod about a word of mission. (Update: summary and even audio are here).
It’s a (neglected?) part of Uniting church worship and I used it as a framework to explore my ministry experience with Opawa Baptist. What were the words of mission in our change process? What did we do in actual ministry practice as a result of those words of mission? What were the leadership understandings that helped our journey?
So I looked at
- the Pentecost story and the word of mission in Acts 2:6 people hearing “in their own language and how that helped shape our multi-congregational model.
- and the Parable of the sower (I used a children’s book, Bodge plants a seed, by friend Simon Smith as a encouragement to lead by nuturing green shoots
- and the story of Mary and Elizabeth, as a word of mission to Elizabeth’s to speak words of courage and life to the new things of God in our midst and for the church to be open to the unexpected innovation from Mary’s
And I reflected on the leadership understandings
- Roxburgh and Romanuck – organisational development diagram
- leadership as process and verb, not position and noun, and the 2009 NCLS resources that let us build leadership teams and invite us into shared processes.
At times as I spoke I felt that my attempt to weave the word of mission and the ministry practice and the leadership lessons were too ambitious for an hour lecture on a Saturday evening after a long day. I wished I could have been clearer, but alas, it is too late once one is speaking! And my powerpoints were not good enough. However, there was good group interaction and some thoughtful questions and some fascinating after-ward conversations.
May God’s peace rest upon the Queensland synod.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
a pentecost journal
Here’s an idea … why not every church start a Pentecost journal. This would be read every year at Pentecost. Then, after a time of silence for reflection, updates to the journal would be invited. People would name how the Spirit has been active among them in the year gone. These would be typed up, and added to the journal.
Which would be read again next year.
This would honour the Spirit as alive today, honour the Spirit as alive in history, appreciate the Spirit as diverse and creative in the life of the community, develop skills of discernment and just be plain interesting.
It is an idea that has some echoes to the Advent journals I initiated at Opawa. It emerged in my Grow and go Mission-shaped community class today. We were talking about innovation (one of the 9 National Church Life Survey indicators of a healthy church) and to make this practical, the class were introduced to a number of ways to practise creative brainstorming. In the process, as groups laughed and talked, a number of random linkages were made …
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