e~mergent kiwi

pentecost confession

I wrote this confession to start our Pentecost service::

Breath of God, you are our life
forgive us for our apathy and blandness,
our lack of passion and creativity.
Breath of God, enliven us

Breath of God, fire of God, wind of God,
blow away our cobwebs
light our fire
fall afresh on us this Pentecost,
Amen.

change

sea
thick n lumpy
green, swollen
carries
tide n time

erodes

rock
spray spume
white froth top fluid force

Reading Whale Rider: Reweaving in Godzone

This is the abstract of a paper I am going to give in July in Auckland. It's up on the web here.

Reweaving in Godzone: theological scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand

The movie Whale Rider has placed New Zealand on the screens of the world. The movie explores many themes, including the place of the ancient and historic in a culturally fluid context.

In one scene, Paikea asks her Koro about their past. Koro takes a rope he is using and shows Paikea the strands of the rope, woven together, as an illustration for how the past is woven into the present. Koro then uses the rope to try to start an outboard motor, only to have it break in his hands. He goes to find another rope, only to be greeted by the roar of the outboard motor. Paikea has re-woven the rope. This scene becomes a metaphor for the movie.

In this paper I will apply this metaphor of re-weaving the broken rope to the task of theological scholarship in aotearoa New Zealand.

Our theological scholarship occurs in a broken landscape. This includes the decline of church attendance, the cultural divides that mark our society and stain of responses to global terrorism. The broken ends of these ropes need to be acknowledged.

The task of theological scholarship can be described as a re-weaving the ancient ropes.

This paper will reweave the Emmaus Road narrative into the rope of theological scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand. This means facing the brokenness of ethnocentricity, violence and marginality and weaving in themes of hospitality, welcoming the stranger and table fellowship. This paper will thus challenge the notion of theological scholarship as an individual elite rational enterprise.

This paper will argue for first: excavating the unheard stories, and the task of theological scholarship is to mine the edges, to allow the voice of the voiceless to speak. This can be applied to a number of areas, including the voice of popular culture.

Second: excavating the non-rational insights, and the task of theological scholarship is to allow ways of knowing, to “let our hearts burn,” not only through words, but in community and ritual. New ways to research, as evidenced in recent trends in practical theology are thus insightful.

Third: excavating in missional community, and the task of theological scholarship is to include the edges, rather than exclude. Scholarship thus must be an inclusive, missional enterprise.

Kid A

Today is a Kid A day. This week has been a Kid A week.

Everything
in its right place

sort of bleakly beautiful,
on repeat.
that mix of soulful hope,
I'm it.

abstraction

there is a lot of pain in life. sometimes it feels like the more we speak, the less we understand. it is easy to point the finger. it is harder to be constructive. distance makes talking harder. silence makes me nervous. it is hard to create cultures of mutuality and empowerment.

when dreams may come…

I have just had a sermon I preached at Opawa Baptist a few weeks ago accepted for publication.

The book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, sought to push forward some thinking on the atonement. It argued, very rightly, that Evangelicals have limited the atonement and thus made the significance cross smaller, more individual, less wholistic, than it really is. The book was academic and naturally raised the “so-what” and “how-to” question. This has lead to work on a follow-up volume, Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross, a practical how-to. By a series of coincidences I am now involved.

The move to Opawa Baptist/BNCZ had the potential to keep me so busy, that I would not get as much time to write. I have been warned already that it would “hamper my writing progress.”

So I am pinching myself, because something I have done at Opawa has in fact helped, not hampered, my writing progress. It is like God is grinning. As I trusted and got on with doing what I sensed was right in this season of my life, God has opened up doors and provided opportunities to not just pastor and train, but to write.

And what's more, to write in an integrated way, a way that is close to my heart, a way that bridges gap between theory and practice, thinking and the community of God.

And as a sideline, it is encouraging to know that my preaching at Opawa is at some sort of level that it gets included in a written publication.

Singing of grace

I went for a 45 minute walk through a forest with my 4 year old yesterday. We walked along, hand in hand, with an occasional picky back ride.

Dad: Kayli, can you hear the birds?

Kayli: They are singing a song.

Dad: What song are they singing?

Kayli: Amazing grace.

book of the month: the book of tobias

The Book of Tobias, by Sylvie Germain, is a delightful read. The novel follows the life of a family through the European 20th century, dealing with death, migration and love. It does justice to the original Apocrypahal Book of Tobit, in which an angel assists a doomed woman and a beaten man to find love. This includes the delight of supernatural touching our world, and the struggles of being Jewish in an exilic context.

Sylvie is a superb writer, evocative and spacious, dripping with well-timed metaphor. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good writing, to anyone who faces the task of contemporising ancient texts or to anyone who wants to reflect upon life, suffering, the divine and love.

signs of hope

New blog; Emerging Women Leaders that might clear some space to move some conversations forward. Good stuff, especially if they can embrace some women bloggers from outside the US ...

Season of prayer

A number have people have asked for more info on what is happening with the season of prayer.

I have just moved to a new church, and it seemed to me that there were many links between us as a church facing a new future, and the Acts narrative, with the disciples facing a new future as Jesus ascends. They gathered, waited and prayed. Why could we not gather, wait and pray? Why could we not pause before God, create some space in our lives, to wait and listen?

I wanted us as a community to live in the Biblical story, to let it shape our lives and our dreams. So I divided the Acts chapters 1, 2 into "bits"; and isolated a theme;

Day ::: Biblical Text ::: Theme ::: Focus of prayer
Thu ::: Acts 1:1-5 ::: Fresh excitement ::: Mission
Fri ::: Acts 1:6-11 ::: Repentance ::: Confession
Sat ::: Luke 4:16-21 ::: Mission ::: Ministries, missionaries of church NB This is kid interactive.

Sun ::: Prayer in worship services.

Mon ::: Acts 1:15-26 ::: Leader ::: Leaders and new leaders
Tues ::: Acts 2:1-4 ::: Ministry for all ::: Everyone in church
Wed ::: Genesis 2:2-4 ::: Day of rest
Thu ::: Acts 2:5-12 ::: Many voices ::: Our community
Fri ::: Acts 2:14-37 ::: Preaching ::: Preaching, teaching, people saved
Sat ::: Acts 2:43-47 ::: Healthy community ::: Small groups, community building occasions, radical lifestyle discipleship

To download the file, go here

I made up a booklet; a prayer guide which I gave to everyone in the church. I will put these up tomorrow.

Each day we gather. A different person leads the prayer each night. I have supplied them with a bit of material from Richard Foster's Prayer, in order to broaden our concepts of prayer.

At the end of the prayer time, we try and summarise in 1 sentence the main thing God is saying -- this is a sort of communal discernment process. This is then placed on a phone number (New Zealand) 0508 -ASK GOD (0508 275 463). It enables those not at the corporate gatherings to ring in and remain part of what God is saying.

It's not flash multi-media and it's not rocket science and its not cool emergent sexy mission with VJ loops. It's just a way of us living in the Bible story and in a hectic world, creating space to sit before God.

re:tro

yesterday the current school principal of my high school phoned. it is a Christian school. would I speak to their senior management staff retreat for 30 minutes … my experience of school and what I would say to them now

long pause on the phone from me.

you see, my high school days were a bit fraught. i was not the school pin-up boy by any stretch of the imagination.

i had to be honest. “you need to know that I did not have a happy time at school. you need to know that I have fairly strong opinions and that these are not always considered mainstream Christian. I love the Bible, but not everyone who loves the Bible thinks the same as me ...”

no pause on the phone, they know, they still want me to speak ….

my high school past is something that I have not thought about in a long time …

what do you say to a Christian high school leadership team, educating in a postmodern world …

ascended

40 days after easter,
Jesus ascends

for 10 days before pentecost,
the disciples pray,

at opawa we are following this pattern with a 10 day season of prayer
it is a project i have put a fair bit of preparation energy into
over the last weeks

i wrote a prayer guide, given to each person, so that the church is reading the same scriptures :: each day there are corporate prayer gatherings, different prayer leaders have been trained with different themes for each day :: each corporate prayer gathering tries to summarise in a sentence what was prayed, and this is loaded onto a 0508 - ASK GOD phone number - so that people can ring in and keep up to date.

10 days, to clear space in our life as a church community,
to wait, listen, be before God.

Update 1: DUH - thanx Tom

Update 2: we also did this 3 times at Graceway, as well as Opawa.

stencilling the Spirit in the world

intro to the service blurb
stenciling is a way of art.
it involves making your own design on a piece of card.
this design is cut out with a craft knife.

chalk is applied to the cut our area.
thus you leave behind your design mark.
(note – chalk washes off in water)

which got me thinking
about the Spirit is in our world,
in us, through us, around us.

tonite we reflect upon this Spirit.
what does it mean for the Spirit to leave, to stencil, a mark on our city?

you are invited tonite during the service
to make a stencil,
your image of the spirit.

you will need a pencil, a card, a sharp knife. some guidelines are available.

and this was (some of) the outcome... poetry, Scripture, story, communion ... and then a piece of chalk as a benediction ...

stencilling the spirit in the world

I am leading a worship experience this Wednesday titled Stencilling the Spirit in the world. Inspirational spark via Jonny Baker.

I need prayers and words and images that speak of the Spirit in the world. Any help will be gratefully acknowledged.

Side Door :: Wednesday, 18th, 7:30 pm :: Opawa Baptist

NB: Chalk washes off in water.

question re pxt

Is the term - pxt - pictures on cellphone - just a New Zealand term, or is it appearing in other places in the world?

broken worship

Text: [So spacious is Jesus, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place without crowding … all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe get properly fixed together in vibrant harmonies. The Message, Colossians 1]

Backlight a cross: Give everyone a broken tile : Invite them to name brokenness - theirs, a friends, the earths : Ask them to place (skilful use of double-sided tape) their broken tile on the backlit cross.

world:views

:: the hoiho (yellow-eyed) penguin

Christians must work to create conditions in which human beings and the whole created world live as God intended.
:: NT Wright, Colossians and Philemon, IVP, Leicester, Eedmans, 1986, 80.

Marriage, Civil Union, Omnibus Bill

Did a rant on radio recently about marriage, the Civil Union and Omnibus Bill.

Now I want to stress that these are my personal thoughts. They do not represent any group I work for. And I also want to stress that these are my thoughts in progress. I am still listening, still thinking, still processing. But at this point I like the legislation ...
continues under heading of What is marriage; and What is justice

I ask myself, What is marriage?
Firstly, it is a ceremony in which social relationships change. In front of the community, marriage acknowledges, brings into the open, a change of relationship between two people, their family and friends. It is matter of honesty and community.

Secondly, marraige is a social arrangement in which love and trust are shared. Commitments are made that affect things like property rights and the raising of children.

Thirdly, it is an entry into a way of being with God, a Trinitarian relationship, where 2 become 1 in the site of a third, God.

Fourthly, it has a societal history, an understanding and a tradition built up over time.

It seems to me that the Civil Unions Bill acknowledges these differences. It asks for 1 and 2, but not 3 and 4.

It seeks to honour, to preserve, the Godly understandings and historical rights.

It acknowledges that there are historical and theological traditions that need to be honoured.

We live in a plural world. Not everyone thinks like me. This cuts both ways. I have respect others opinions and traditions. Others have to respect mine traditions.
This means
1) that the rights of those we disagree with must be respected. Thus Christians must respect gay-rights, while gay-rights must respect Christian rights. Equally the gay community must respect the sacred and historical understandings that underpin Christian ideals of marriage.

I think the Civil Unions Bill does this. The Christian Heritage NZ leader Mr Ewen McQueen has argued these the Civil Union and Omnibus Bill will stripping marriage of any last vestige.

Frankly, the only people that will strip marriage of its vestiges are us. The Civil Unions Bill does not take away marriage. It leaves the uniquely Christian understandings of marriage to the church. It remains up to us as a church to honour marriage, to teach on Trinity and history and what that means for marriage.

With regard to the Omnibus Bill, I think we do have to recognise the justice issues involved. It seems to me to be unjust when a gay partner is not allowed to visit his partner in intensive care or see his partner in the mortuary, or to seek the cremation of his dead partner.

Then there is the justice issues involved as relationship break up.

In Micah 6:8, we are asked;
What does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly.

The Greek word dikaiosune is can be translated as both justice and righteousness.
Seek you first the Kingdom of God and God’s dikaiosune; God’s justice and God’s righteousness.

The Omnibus Bill does seek for justice and surely we as followers of a God of justice need to recognise this. Surely our Christian God applauds the seeking of justice and the end to discrimination.

I repeat my opening – this is my personal opinion and I am a mind still in process.

But that is my soapbox today:
what is the God of justice?
what does the Christian understanding of marriage
really require of us?

contemporary preaching

below are some questions I have as I draft the outline of a course I am putting together on preaching in the postmodern - how to use the Biblical text with integrity in our world. I'd value any feedback ...

NB: the course assumes an awareness and competency in expository preaching and is aimed at those who want to explore other approaches that both maintain the integrity of the Biblical text, yet communicate in our postmodern world.

What are the challenges for preaching today?

What place authority in the matrix of text, texts, preacher and community?

What approaches to contemporary preaching have you experienced and appreciated? (My list includes inductive, dialogical, case study, multiple approaches, video sermons, storytelling old and new?)

What wholistic approaches to text have you found useful? (My list includes emotional exegesis, group lectio divino, multi-sensory, creativity workshops)

How can sacred space, including the arts, the visual and the environment shape our environment today?

I taught Ben the NZ idol

Congratulations to Ben Lummis the NZ idol. (For more on this news, go here.)

I taught Ben at Excel School of Performing Arts. Not in anything NZ idol-useful, not in singing or dancing. Only in New and Old Testament. So if you want any gossip on Ben and Ruth, or Ben and Luke ... drop me a line!

hot text seat

So if you have a "hot text" slot, you need a hot text chair. Saw a bright red version of this, marketted down, at freedom furniture. Could this appear on Sunday, as a visual way of introducing :hot text?

hot text

I have been at Opawa Baptist Church 3 months this week. I took the first structured step toward a more communal approach to worship this morning.

I suggested the idea of a regular "hot text" slot, 5 minutes where a community person tells us their favourite Bible verse or song, and how God found them through that text.

This was a deliberate strategy to move toward a more communal voice in our worship, and the telling of God stories in our midst. It was also a missional move, allowing our spirituality to be told.

I passed around sheets of paper, and over 40 people signed up. I now need to find a "safe chair" in which people can sit in, to tell their hot-text God story. Today Opawa took a step toward a new future.

spiritual friends

in Colossians 1, Epaphras is noted as a good friend of the church.

on the way into church this morning, everyone got given a piece of green paper (colour of growth), with a question printed on it "who has been a good spiritual friend for you?".

at the front of the church we had made people chains - about 180 "people" lined the steps of the stage.

people were invited to write on the paper the name of someone who had been a good spiritual friend. Moby's Everloving, off the Play album, was on. the kids collected up the pieces of paper and stuck them on the white people chains ... it was a neat visual picture, a sea of white people and green friends, over 140 "good spiritual friends" were honoured at Opawa today.

this week I will send thankyou letters to names i recognise, honouring their gifts in our midst.

visitors and safe space

I am pondering writing some "worship leader guidelines" for how we treat visitors. How do we ensure by the words we say that church is a "safe space" for first timers?

1. Introduce ourselves - "my name is Steve ..."
2. Give visitors verbal freedom to just watch - "If you don't want to participate then just say, "no thanks"" OR "The offering is for those glad of the vision of this church"

additions, deletions, suggestions welcome ...

irrelevant worship

I speaking today at a local Pentecostal Bible School. My topic is culturally relevant worship in New Zealand. My headings will include
what is worship
what is relevant worship
EPIC worship (thanx Len)
an exercise in multi-sensory worship

One day I would like to be asked to speak on culturally irrelevant worship in New Zealand.

idle musings on creativity and community

“We need to hear stories. Why should we wait until a funeral and a euology to hear the stories of God in people’s lives?” Comment made last week.

“I am so looking forward to church on Sunday. We never know what is going to happen.” Comment made this week.

Readers of this blog over the last 5 months will know that I have been in transition. I have moved from planting an emerging church, Graceway, to a 93 year old congregation, Opawa Baptist.

My move has been made for many reasons. One is a growing conviction that creativity and spaces to hear the stories of life, and of God in life, stretch across generations. That modernity has robbed all of us, not just younger people, of some important ways of accessing God.

I was getting sick and tired of hearing that participation and creativity only worked in church plants with people under 40. That what I did at Graceway was somehow good for youth, or good outside the mainstream.

I am in very early days at Opawa. We are still in honeymoon. Neverthless, I am constantly surprised at the warmth, excitement and acceptance of creativity and community across a wide spectrum of people.

filling a hole with the gifts of God

I am trying a new approach to preaching over the next few months.

The situation is that the church's youth pastor has resigned, leaving a preaching hole in the evening service. The evening service fills a unique place in our church life - the music has a loud, hard edge and it is mostly a younger set.

I have limited time but I didn't want a string of guest preachers. So I am going to pick up the preaching (meaning I speak 2x a Sunday). And I am trying 2 innovations.

a) a researcher :: the church is paying someone to research my sermons. The researcher (my wife) is paid to read and summarize some background reading for me each week, to surf for images and material and will input some creative ideas into the pot. The dream is to shift this creative input to a "creative team", but in these early days, modelling is one way to suggest change.

b) digestion :: will become the name of the preaching slot, and digestion will be the aim of the service. (There is a video loop of humans digesting food to introduce the first night). I will preach the same text in the morning and evening. In the evening I will summarise the text (for people who just come in the evenings) and then introduce some participatory interaction. The aim is to not just talk about the text, but to allow us as whole people to engage with the text. Possibilities this week include praying with pastels, and next week building the mosaic of God.

Spirituality of humour

Most of us don't laugh enough. Most churches don't laugh enough. A spirituality of humour is in important part of being human.

For those near Auckland, Peter Majendie is one of the funniest people I know and a great storyteller. He is doing 2 shows at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival.

A Deaf in the Family
Wed 19th, Fri 21st May, 7:15 pm

Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, THE EDGE.

One man stand-up storyteller with a reflective view of life as an 8 year old through the eyes of a 50 year old. Powered by his hearing-aid batteries, Pete’s stories of New Zealand life and culture are tinged by deafness and no small amount of cynicism. (With deaf sign interpreter Friday)."Brilliant ... Certainly engaging" - The Christchurch Press.

bodies of god

I like the Body of God. I like the sense of diversity, of different parts each making a unique contribution.

Today I saw the Body of God mistreated. A friend, flamed. An email that played the man not the ball. An email that assumed that the Body should be uniform; and that the only worthwhile parts of the body were dressed in the same uniform. It failed to appreciate giftedness; that God made some to be sociologists and some to be researchers and some to stirrers. We don’t all have to be middle-class, male, practioners.

Later that day I saw the Body of God in action. I saw truth and love mixed. I saw a person, by being true to herself, bring life. I saw a personality, enthused by the Spirit, and so used.

i love the internet

i just got sent 78 spam emails in the space of 3 minutes. isn't cyberspace a great place to be!

off-the-map

book manuscript sent to emergent. it has consumed a lot of my energy for the last 3 months. thanx to all the readers and editors and interested people who made the journey more human.

i woke up this morning and felt off the map. like i crossed a border. the book has had weekly deadlines and huge time pressures. 1 may has consumed me. it has now gone past 1 may. i'm off the map. places with no maps excite me. i like it. i am feeling very free.

slow blog postings; crammed head

sorry - slow blogging period
book mss due to emergentYS this weekend
preaching sunday
preaching monday at a seminary graduation
student marking to do