e~mergent kiwi

being a pastor at easter

Opawa as a church gives a lot of life away at Easter
a) we run the Easter Journey, an interactive art installation. It involves about 60 volunteers setting up, welcoming, offering hot cross buns and cups of tea. This year over 1,000 people walked the journey. It's a very significant outward, mission event. (Some photos of previous years are here. Other photos are on the front cover of Dan Kimball's, Emerging Worship).
b) we encourage our young people to attend Easter Camp and they do.
c) Opawa folk help behind the scenes at Easter Camp. Providing meals for 2,700 people is a huge task and the camp kitchens are full of Opawa people. It's a gift of love and service for the people of God in their (youth) mission of God.
d) and then there is the simple fact that Easter in New Zealand is the last big holiday break before winter. So a lot of Opawa people who work really hard Monday-Friday, need the grace that is the encouragement of Sabbath rest, of taking a break to refresh and recharge.

So all in all, a lot of energy goes out of the church.

And it means that on Easter Sunday morning I, and the only 2 musicians still around, struggle to inject Risen, Christ life into our worship. And the 3 young adults, visiting for Easter Sunday, look around. And with our youth group away for Easter, it's like "hmmm, not many people like me in this place."

Part of the pastor in me wants to say, "folks, Easter is like the high point of the year. Stick around. Make it a priority." The other part of the pastor in me wants to cheer and go, "wow, so much life given in mission." Such are my Easter dilemnas.

Why I am Southern Baptist, bible believing and into the emerging church

(Or a Biblical word of encouragement to tallskinnykiwi and a Biblical word of admonition to the notion that the Emerging Church is a threat to the gospel).

OK, I pastor a Baptist church and I live in in Southern Hemisphere. This clearly makes me a Southern Baptist and able to enter the debates here and here. I note the following Biblical texts, that have converted me to being a Southern Baptist emerging church disciple.

Firstly, (we are post-Easter after all), take Luke 24 and the Emmaus Road story. Jesus preaches, and the disciples don't get revelation. Jesus preaches the Prophets and the Law. I mean, that is one BIG expository sermon. And still the disciples don't get it. It is not until they are in community with Jesus, eating supper, that Revelation occurs.This Biblical text calls for repentance from expository preaching and a commitment to finding God in community. (Don't get me started on Biblical scholarship that suggests the two disciples were husband and wife and thus woman were equal participants at the table of Jesus.)

Secondly, take Colossians 1:15. Christ is the Image of God. Move over word-bound, propositional theologies. Christ can also be revealed in images. This Biblical text calls for repentance from solely word-bound, propositional theologies and a commitment to image-based, multi-media worship.

These Biblical texts have converted me to being a Southern Baptist emerging church disciple. I have repented of my expository preaching. I am seeking a Bible based ministry of multi-media worship, sharing food among a community of friends.

flowering cross on sunday

laid on New Zealand stone,
made from local bedding plants,
surrounded by shell and paua,
laid in love on Friday
also surrounded by bulbs,
to be taken on Sunday as a commitment to Resurrection Life

with Easter love

in love, we wrap
the body of Jesus

in love
we lay petals

the Friday of Easter week

On the Friday of Easter Week, in the easter egg the colour is black. We break a black (painted) piece of polystrene, to find inside a red heart. Easter Friday is the saddest day, a day of darkness.

We will gather around and wrap the cross. We will sprinkle our rose petals. We will express love for a heart of love, broken for us.

Note re atonement: I have really struggled to include the more cosmic and wholistic dimensions of the atonement at this point. God died for the whole world, for the integration of people and planet. A red heart speaks of God's love for individuals. There are hints of relational connectedness, as Christ restored relationships on the saddest day, so we are offered hearts of love which include restored relationships. But the central metaphor remains individual, and I have struck a creative brick wall.

re-releasing the passionate response to the passion

With Easter, movie theatres in various countries are re-screening Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ. In May last year I wrote an article for Reality magazine on the movie, exploring various film and theology angles in the movie, including the place, or otherwise, of redemptive violence in Christian theology. It's proving a popular read again, being no. 1 at the moment on Reality website. I got a fair bit of flack for it at the time in Letters to the Editor. Anyhow, it's located here if you want to read it.

the thursday of easter week

On the Thursday of Easter week, in the Easter evangeegg, the colour is blue. Often we talk about having a blue day, a sad day.

Wrapped inside blue cellophane in the Easter evangeegg is a lolly, sweet on the outside, sour on the inside. On Thursday Jesus disciples said sweet things, but by nights end, their actions left a sour taste. Sucking the lolly becomes a reflection on what walking with Jesus means for us this Easter week.

Note re interactivity: By this stage in this Easter evangeegg, people have used taste, touch, smell, sight and sound. We are made whole people, in the image of God, and so an ideal is that worship is multi-sensory. When I first came across the alt.worship movement, I marvelled at their video loops. Over time, I have tried to use technology less, and everday tactile objects more. It takes less time, it beds God in a different part of everyday life and it often opens up more senses.

A few weeks ago their was a surprise at church. The service was "hi-jacked" and the congregation took time to celebrate my being at the church a year, and to express thanks for all the change. There was space for people to share and a common theme was people talking about how interactive tactile symbols - sheep, flowering the cross - had been vehicles of help and inspiration.

the coolest thing

Dear Steve,
Your text will be published in the book about Sieger Köders life and works.
The book will be published on the German speaking market. We will send you
one copy in July/August.

I have no idea how I'm going to find the time to write this piece but this is like the coolest thing, being asked to input into a different culture about an artist who has shaped me theologically.

loss of punctuation

there were 230 people at church on Sunday weve gained about 60-80 people in a year the church really needs another staff person now in the last 24 hours I've had emails accepting an article I've written for a US magazine, final drafts for me to check of a denominational newspaper interview, a publishing company seeking a book endorsement, a letter from Germany asking me to contribute to a "festchrift" for a German artist these are all so cool but there's only one of me oh, did I forget to mention this is Easter week, with daily services and the Easter Journey underway at Opawa?

Note: the loss of punctuation was a deliberate move to indicate the inner-state of my head.

What does it mean for me to smell perfume and love Jesus today?

the wednesday of easter

On the Wednesday of Easter week, in the Easter evangeegg, the colour is purple. Purple is the colour of royalty and inside the Easter evangeegg, a purple coloured card is perfumed.

Today at our 7 pm service, we will reflect on perfume, the act of expensive love, as what was likely a family hierloom was poured onto Jesus head. This costly act of love invites us to reflect on how we are loving Jesus this week of Easter.

Note re colour: It was Olive Drane who helped me find colour in ministry. We sent her some of our Pentecost Spirit cards (for examples see here and for explanation of the missional context go here and read the side-bar, titled Practicalities at the bottom). Olive and John had a worshipping group who met at their place. They showed them the cards and one woman was stopped dead by the colour red used in one of the cards. Colour alone evoked powerful connections.

This week my 5 year old is navigating the Easter evangeegg by colour - today is .....

tuesday of easter week

On the Tuesday of Easter Week, in the postmodern evangeegg, the colour is brown. Why brown? Because during Easter week, Jesus announced that unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it can not produce many seeds.

Today, at our 7 pm service, we break open a brown (painted) piece of polystrene. Inside is a seed, which we plant in the earth. And we reflect, as we walk with Jesus toward Easter ... What needs to die in our lives this week? What needs to planted in our lives this week?

Note re environment: This is a very organic image. It reminds us that what Jesus did at Easter, the atonement, is more than Jesus dying for individual sin. Jesus journey connects us with our environment, with the cycles of birth and death. As we feel soil and seed tonight, we are earthing ourselves with God the Creator, and Jesus the Re-Creator, dying for planet as well as people.

the monday of easter week

Today, the Monday of Easter, in the postmodern evangeegg, the colour is red. Inside a folded red card is a coin. Why red? Because on Monday (in Mark's gospel), Jesus got angry, red-faced, and trashed the money changers in the temple.

Today, at our 7 pm service, we lay down a coin, as a prayer, that as we too walk with Jesus toward Easter, we will walk with a similar passion for speaking and acting with justice.

Note re Maggi: Maggi Dawn reminds us that historically, traditionally, this week is Holy Week, not Easter Week. My problem is that in New Zealand, a cultural memory of "holy week" is absent. I can either use the term "holy week" and know that it does not connect, or I can use a term followed by an explaination of the term, which makes publicity more clunky.

Or I can make what I think is a logical connection in the minds of the public - that this is the week of Easter ie "Easter Week." It's an interesting issue -- when does a church surrender what is potentially out-dated in the task of trying to communicate?

postmodern evangeegg?

Part of our commitment to being an inter-generational community at Opawa is "Take a Kid to" services, in which we all, adult and children, explore the Jesus story. We had over 190 people in attendance, including 50 kids, a good number from the community. At the risk of being called a postmodern Ned Flanders, by the tallskinnykiwi, as part of our walk to Easter, I unveiled this today.

Inside each "egg" is something to open, break, suck, for each day of Holy week. I'll post about each one as we go through Holy Week. Our kids got the "egg" after the service and are invited to open it each day of Holy Week, sharing the story with their families.

So why, tallskinny, might I not be more cheesy than Ned Flanders?

1. This is designed to let people enter the story, for families to sit together and tell the Jesus story. I know a church that did something similar, but all the activities were focused on inviting people to church. This is the opposite. It invites families to enter the story amid the fabric of their own lives.

2. It is tactile and experiential - there are things to break and suck and smell.

3. It is integral to the life of our community. We are having a short service each day of Holy Week that takes the same symbols and the same readings. Together, we walk the Scriptures with Jesus.

4. Help me ....

Updated note re evangelism: I like the distributed nature of the postmodern evangeegg. An egg has gone for use in a school class in Auckland, for a school class in Christchurch, and to give to a family of migrants in the community.

expresso

(Further on here). The expresso leadership team met last nite. 5 of us gathered to talk about how we are finding God spiritually, what is church and what a new congregation at Opawa could look like.

Excellent discussion. My summary:
- We'll meet weekly; with a cycle of 3 weeks of discussion, 1 week of mission, 5th week of fun.
- Looking at Tuesday nites, 8-9 pm, in a local cafe.
- Discussion nites will have an opening ritual and a closing multi-sensory prayer. In between is discussion, with the group choosing the topic/question and different people taking turns to "kick-start" each evening discussion.
- We're not yet sure about how often we should do communion.
- This will be a congregation of Opawa, seeking to offer a complete church experience, yet seeking to develop it's own life that could look very different from existing ways that Opawa is church.
- We talked about the tension between small group and being church. How good can a conversation be amongst more than 12 people? If we talk around tables, will that still give us good conversation with a growing mix of one yet many, big yet small? (Any thoughts out there? Can you experience good community in a cafe with 50-70 people clustered around tables talking about one "kick-start"?)

We have gone away, with different individuals working on opening and closing rituals, others on logo's, others on "group guidelines for a healthy learning experience."

postmodern monastery in amsterdam

Karel, from Amsterdam is asking for prayer for what could be a cool new adventure.

Hey Steve,

I've been very intrigued and fascinated by a lot of the writings on your website. Especially the paper/dream about 'the postmodern monastery' really spoke to me as it so much look like the dreams I had over the past few years.

(Karel is probably talking about a rant I did about postmodern monasteries here, which still gets lots of visits. It's also updated and put in a larger missional context; alongside festival spirituality, art collectives and house churches in postcard 7 of my book. Anyhow, back to the email)

This leads me to the following: At the minute we're talking to the head of a Franciscan fraternity in Amsterdam who have their monastery + church up for sale. It's going really quick now as we'll have a meeting to discuss our proposal next friday. It would be the best place ever to start a postmodern monastery - in the heart of the old city and with the history of a Franciscan fraternity. We want it to be a place for new media, visual arts, community, and for people working together on social justice ... pray with us for God's guidance in this process - both for us and the brothers from the fraternity who have to make the decision ... pray to our God for guidance in this project...

Praying for you Karel as I type ...

film quiz - Jesus as movie star

Every few weeks in the gospel and film class I am teaching this semester, I have a film quiz. The class are in teams: Fox, Bollywood and Sundance. I fire 5 questions at them, and the overall winner at the end of the semester will receive a BCNZ Academy. Lots of fun, good crowd breaker, and often the information makes good teaching points.

Here's the questions from last week.

Question 1: The longest film ever made, at 6 hours, is Jesus of Nazareth? True or False

Question 2: Which religious film - The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Story ever told, Ben-Hur - was a Top 10 film for the entire decade of the 1920s?

Question 3: Ben Hur was a box office smash in 1959. Made for a then unprecedented $15M, it earned more than $70M at the US box office. Did it win 7 or 9 or 11 Oscars?

Question 4: Put the top 3 movies of 2004 in the correct order:
Shrek 2, Spider-man 2, The Passion of the Christ.

Question 5: Less than 0.1% of people who watched The Passion of the Christ came to faith? True or false.

Update: For the curious, the answers are ...

Answer 1: False – The longest film ever made is The cure of Insomnia, 1987, is 87 hours.

Answer 2: This is a tricky question, as both Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur feature in the top-10. Former at no. 3, latter at no. 4. This shows the power of religious film in the early days of Hollywood.

Answer 3: Ben Hur (the remake of 1920s’ movie mentioned above) won 11 Academy Awards.

Answer 4: According to here, the order is Shrek 2, Spider-man 2, The Passion of the Christ.

Answer 5: Less than 0.1% of people who watched The Passion of the Christ came to faith? True, according to research from Barna group here. Note that many more were affected in terms of discipleship. Barna concludes by noting the power of movies for spiritual transformation, but not as one-shot magic bullets.

church notices

I'm still processing whether church notices are curse or gift.

A sacred vs secular divide would see notices as secular, mundane, needing to be rushed through. An integrated view of God in everything would discern notices as just as spiritual as prayer or worship.

All groups have them - if you're small in number it might be which pub after the church service or notice of a house warming. If you're larger in size, they can be long and tedious. They can also be manipulative, guilt-inducing sales pitches. Yet if done well they can be creative and insightful.

Are they an impediment to worship? Should they come at the end of a service, after the benediction, as part of the movement of God's people into the world?

Or they actually an essential part of community? A chance to "peek" into the mission life of a church? An opportunity to participate?

Still processing.

In memorandum

I ate fish tacos with Stan Grenz in San Diego last month. I, the young theologian, had emailed, seeking lunch, keen to stir the older theologian about the contrast between his post-foundationalist theology of community and his individual writing projects.

Stan was gracious enough to humour my impudence. The conversation quickly shifted. I, the young stirring academic, began to appreciate a depth of spirituality. We shared career call stories; for me a white rabbit to Christchurch, for Stan a cold snap and ice roads back to Vancouver. This was no academic theologian. This was a humble and passionate follower of Jesus.

Stan Grenz
Called home 12 March 2005.

Leaving behind the inspiration
To love God with all our minds
And live our careers with all our humility
And our spirituality with all our passion.

Grey
comes in soft cotton waves
and sharp email

Show me your fruit? the choir man asks
Measure for measure

Cats pat
adequacy, and his leading twin
in
from personal paw to personal palm

Who am I?
Single spark in turgid grey

The shoes of the liberator
are ill-fit

Text is black. Margins are white and wide
Context is sharp, Edged
And never the twain shall meet

Problem
Yours, mine, ours, hers
And with a gently smile
we play,
naked

5 people signed up for growth coaching 2 date.

How often do we meet in the forming of community?

How often does "church" need to meet to be church? Here at Opawa I'm tossing around the birthing of another emerging congregation - expresso101. One of the questions is timing - how often do we meet? Here's part of an email I sent a friend. Any web wisdom out there for us?

for a number of months I have been wanted to start something a bit different at Opawa. Sunday morning is a singing monologue. It's got some really good things, but Q/A and discussion will never sit easily with the majority of Sunday morning punters.

People could also still be part of both Sunday and Espresso (or Side Door or Digestion), but I am reluctant for espresso101 to meet less than weekly.

is church as boring a healthy motivation for creativity

"I went to the Easter Vigil service at the Anglican Cathedral in Pittsburgh. It was snowing, and I was aware of the proper setting for a tremendous religious experience. But the people in the church seemed bored, and the clergymen [sic] seemed to be hurrying to get it over with. I left with the feeling that, rather than rolling the rock away from the tomb, they were piling it on. I went home, took out my manuscript and worked it to completion in a non-stop frenzy."
- Tebelak, creator of the 1973 musical/movie Godspell.

(In Tatum, Jesus at the Movies. A Guide to the First Hundred Years. Polebridge Press, 1997)

worship leader blog list

A US magazine (I've never heard of) called Worship Leader has a feature of emerging church, and the little wee emergentkiwi blog gets a mention. So there we are. Maybe its time for me to release my worship DVD!! Tee he. Or is it that they think I can sing!

(thanks Will for the heads up - I wondered why there was traffic from your site to mine!)

pastoral leadership skills

Partnering in God's new future requires spaces to listen. It resists programmes and models and hurries from impatience. It requires attentiveness to the unique contours of the cultural now in people's lives. It plays with metaphor and possibilities. It lives within a narrative, not its own yet strangely familiar. It is birthed amid a personal attentiveness to my uniqueness, gift mix and personality.

Sorta nice

One of my recent poems is featured on theooze. I've never considered myself any sort of poet.

strangely familiar: how to respond to religious bigotry

I preached on Luke 9:61-56 on Sunday. What initally seemed a rather opaque text in the end became strangely familiar. This weekend a religious group marched in protest of family values. We have seen how the US responds to 9-11. We live in a world dominated by religious terrorism.

In Luke, Jesus meets religous opposition. He choses to journey to Jerusalem via Samaria. It's a shorter trip, 150 km, but goes through an area in which a different ethnic and religious group dwell. He could have taken the longer route, 190 km, and avoided Samaria. Most religious pilgrims did.

For some reason, Jesus takes his pilgrimage into religious pluralism. He is faced, probably naturally, with opposition. Rather, than turn or burn, Jesus lives out the Sermon on the Mount. In the face of religious hostility, he will love enemies, and quietly move onto the next village.

a day off through the eyes of a 5 year old

"Daddy, have a good day at home cuddling Mummy."

processing a tough one

A lot of my thought has gone into a tough pastoral issue this week.

Late last year we baptised a new Christian. His testimony was honest and raw. Coming back after the Christmas break, I became aware this new Christian had copped some flak for what he shared.

Sigh. I don't know the who or what. Not everyone knows about this, yet there is a fair bit of talk in the community. Should I leave it or not? Is this a one off or more sinister? There are 25 new people at Opawa since December. Will hearing some of our history put them off?

Sigh. This morning, after consultation during the week with heads I respect, I took the plunge. In the context of communion I talked about being one body. I described the joy as the body grows (we had welcomed 4 new members), and the pain if one member of the body suffers.

I described some of what happened at and after the baptism in December. I then reminded us of the grace of God, in welcome, reconciliation and forgiveness, that is offered to all at communion. The invitation to take communion this morning was an opportunity to walk with Jesus in a body of honesty and forgiveness and grace.

The coming days will tell if I made a wise call and if the processes I engaged with were appropriate. Leadership is scarey and I'm feeling exposed over this particular call.

The Diary of the Opawa Baptist mouse

If there was a mouse, in the house (of God), their dairy for the week would note the following.

Sunday: Some tired ladies laugh and joke about something called “camp.” After dark, a big, fat, sound system arrives.

Monday: Dodge some paint from the community art class. The carpet ain't so lucky.

Tuesday: Staff team leaves a trail of crumbs through foyer at morning tea. 35 American university students leave an even bigger trail of crumbs after lunch. When it gets dark, the Board arrived. Senior Pastor tries to look sharp, but I think he’s bluffing.

Wednesday: Small groups of youth (cells) are in so many rooms that I go to bed early. But the sound system cranks up for a video. Can’t sleep. Get up to watch some new people at Opawa mingle over pizza, with that new bigger Pastor looking pleased with himself.

Thursday: That office person rushes around looking “Crafty.” And some Asian voices practice their (Conversational) English. When it gets dark, ten people arrive for a new members information evening. Again, Senior Pastor tries to look sharp, but I’m sure he’s bluffing.

Friday: More crumbs from the staff table. More dinner for me. Hope it’s quiet for the weekend. I need a sleep-in Sunday morning.

Signed: The mouse.

festival spirituality and road trips

At the risk of upsetting a few respected friends; let me put up some ruminations about spirituality of road trips (or pilgrimage), festivals and large Christian gatherings.

But first some context. Their have been two recurring themes among Baptist youth ministry across New Zealand in the last few years. These are
a) the rise and succcess of easter camps as they grow each year
b) the rate of 20 plus's leaving the Baptist church, either drifting to large, Pentecostal churches or totally out of church.

Could it be that these two are related; that what is happening at Easter Camps is contributing to the loss of young adults to church?

Let me explain the possible connection. Easter Camps become a high point in people's lives. So God is found through large, worship settings, and with dynamic speakers. The larger the Easter camp grows, the more the "professionalism" of the large gatherings grows. Then kids return to ordinaryville-Baptist Church, on a high but absolutely stuffed. They have connected with God in the big tent. But the big tent is not likely to be found again at ordinaryville-Baptist Church.

But it could be found at large-city-centre-Pentecostal church. That replicates in some way the Easter Camp experience, large, professional, younger. So in the dryness of ordinaryville-Baptist Church, why not try to reconnect with God by checking out large-city-centre-Pentecostal church?

A side-effect of Easter camps for ordinaryville-Baptist Church is that their Easter becomes harder. Easter still has some connectivity with the wider, unchurched community. Not as much as Christmas, but still some. So an alert, missionary church will be wanting to make connections with the community at Easter. Yet how to do this with their young people away, thus affecting numbers, music and creative life, vitality and age range. Thus Easter becomes more impoverished at ordinaryville-Baptist Church. This is great for the sake of easter camp, but harder for our mission to wider society.

Now, I'm not necessarily calling for the loss of Easter Camp. Back at Opawa/ordinaryville-Baptist Church, I will be encouraging our kids to go.

But I wonder if we could frame an Easter Camp slightly differently. In the Old Testament, we do see a mix of large gatherings and small gathering. Groups come to Jerusalem for festivals. They enjoy the large, the big, the spectacle. It gives them a sense of being part of something bigger. What is interesting is that these gatherings are in the context of pilgrimage - hence Psalms like 120, 121, 122, 123, etc. The festival spirituality of the Old Testament includes a road trip spirituality. (There is more on this in chapter 7 of my book, The Out of Bounds Church: Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change).

I wonder if Easter Camp could be framed in the context of a road trip spirituality. Easter Camp starts not on Easter Thursday, but at the start of Lent. Easter Camp partners with ordinaryville-Baptist Church to provide each year a road trip spirituality that integrates the themes of Easter camp with the ongoing life. This starts well before Easter Camp and finishes well after Easter Camp. The life of ordinaryville-Baptist Church becomes an essential building block in the road trip spirituality of Easter Camp. Easter Camp is poorer without the road trip resources, pre and post, and thus God being found is woven both into ordinary-villeBaptist and into "the Jerusalem" that is Easter Camp.

Just some thoughts. I'm not wanting to knock the value of Easter Camp, but to ruminate aloud about some potential connections and offering another perspective or metaphor for thought. I could be way off beam and if so, am happy to be drawn back into the light.

crossing cultures

I spoke to a group from Eastern Mennonite University. As part of their study, they have to go overseas - and so a group of 35 of them are here. I like that. A deliberate attempt to subvert being US/us[centric].

They asked me to talk with them about the emerging church in New Zealand. The whole conversation seriously disorientated me. I'm just back from stuff in the US, just back from having a funny accent and having to make cross cultural links.

Suddenly here I am, back in my home church, surrounded by American accents, suddenly having the same accent problems and having to make the cross cultural links. Talking "accented" mission, but now in my home patch! Categories of edge and centre; home and away; in flux.