e~mergent kiwi

fat freddys drop live review

Saw Fat Freddy's Drop live at the Town Hall last nite. I first saw them live in 2003 and loved their unique mix of lanquid songs nourished by phat beats, and the spacious sounds within which are woven a unique blend of vocals to a unique mix of reggae, jazz, even soul. They are one of the best live music bands I have seen.

An opportunity for all my overseas readers to check out some of the best in current Kiwi music. European dates:

European dates:
Astigmatic festival – Gdynia, Poland – 5 Aug
The Big Chill, Eastnor Castle - 6 Aug
Concorde 2, Brighton - 11 Aug
Music Evolution – Praa Sands, Cornwall - 13 Aug
Big Weekender - Cardiff - 14 Aug
Paradiso - Amsterdam - 18 Aug
Lowlands Festival - Netherlands - 19 Aug
Yaam - Berlin - 21 Aug
Cafe Moskau - Berlin - 25 Aug
Museumsuferfest - Frankfurt - 27 Aug
Liquid Rooms - Edinburgh – 6 Sept
Festival - Isle Of Wight – 10 Sept
KoKo - London – 13 Sept
Popkomm - Berlin Staatsoper – 14 Sept

the real nature of apostolic leadership in a post-Christendom context

times of transition and rapid change require grieving. And there is the key. Women are much better at grieving than are men, who tend to simply amp up the energy.. full speed ahead, damn the torpedos.. we tend to reach higher rather than embrace the call to fall.. to look inside.. to slow down.. to weep. We aren’t good at liminality.

Remember FOTR..Galadriel says that these are the times “when love is now mingled with grief”…

Link

slow learner

How to talk about church membership in our contemporary world? How to raise the bar around participation and values, while being open-handed and hospitable? I'm learning. Slowly.

I'm learning
1 ... every few months to offer a newcomers cafe .... nothing structured, just a time to eat and a few get to know you questions.
2 ... every few months to offer a membership evening.
3 .... to start by asking people what they are praying for about the church. You see, membership evenings can be "sales" evenings. But Opawa is actually a very human church. We've got lots of warts. Asking people what they're praying for about the church gives me feedback on some warts, and reduces the "sales" pitch factor.
4 ... to talk about the journey we're on, including our Denominational past. I mean, we as humans, we're all shaped deeply by our parents habits. Apply that to church and we have lots of strange corporate habits. So talking about our past might make it easier to understand our strangeness.
5 ... offer concrete ways to participate. I give people a participation survey form. I try to keep it to one page, but offer lots of ways to get involved. This goes into a database. And it can be given back to them annually, to allow them change and flex and growth.
6 .... finish with Ello, kids lego. Invite people to use Ello to make their prayer for the church. People talk, people laugh, people explain, and it's a spiritually real way to end.

(Context. I ran a membership evening last nite.)

postgraduate emerging church research

Bryan has emailed, asking for research citations (ie postgraduate research, not some lightweight fluff) regarding the emerging church, as he begins to prepare for his Ph.D. This is what I am aware of. Have I missed anything?

Baker, Jonny, "The Labyrinth. Ritualisation as Strategic Practice in Postmodern Times." MA thesis, Kings College, 2000.

Flores, Aaron, "An exploration of the Emerging Church in the United States." MA thesis, Vanguard University, 2005.

Guest, Matthew. “Negotiating Community: An Ethnographic Study of an Evangelical Church.” PhD thesis, Lancaster University, 2002.

Taylor, Steve. "A New Way of Being Church." PhD thesis, Otago University, 2004.

Note of clarification: Thanks for the comments already. I too am aware of lots of books and journal articles, but in this post I am looking only for post-graduate primary research. Not to be elitist, but because this was the context of the email request.

i kid you not

The exclusive brethren have their own website. It looks like a serious attempt to correct public misconceptions. They tell us that ...

Virtually all marriages among the Brethren endure for a lifetime.
Over 95% of all Brethren Families own their own homes.
There is practically no unemployment among the Brethren.

I was using them in my being Kiwi, being Christian class as an example of extreme cultural withdrawal. But then to discover they have a website!

Wonder who built it? Wonder if they use technorati to keep track of referrals? Wonder if they'll drop by to say hi?

Update: For a political comment on the Election Pamphlet funding by Exclusive Brethren business leaders, go here.

note to self: perhaps i'm not mad

I’m noticing this kind of discussion happening over at Steve’s blog since he questioned the APEPT model of leadership as the only model portrayed by Paul in his ministry and letters. After his post Alan commented with:

Perhaps he’s asking questions in much the same way that a Prophet would in the APEPT model? The Prophet is rarely liked, because they ask questions that the others don’t like.

[ironic musing: arguing against the APEPT model by using the APEPT categories?]

Link

Biblical leadership

Further to my post on APEPT, let me quote Clarke...

"church life in each of these communities [eg, Corinth, Romans, Phillipi, Thessalonians, Galatians, Philemon] varied considerably. As social groups, these churches did not fit neatly into a uniform, theological schema of Paul. It is also clear that each of these social groups was also part of the broader society in which the early Christians lived. They were, accordingly, influenced by the patterns of leadership which prevailed around them." Clarke, Serving the community of God, p. 207.

"Although the early Christians had a range of models of leadership or community organization available for them either to adopt or adapt, it becomes plain that Paul associates himself with none of these. Instead, his perception of the nature of leadership within the Christian church derives from his understanding of the unique nature of the Christian church, and the basis on which that community is founded." Clarke, Serving the community of God, p. 209.

My point is simply this ; APEPT is one of many New Testament ways of leading. And so I ponder; Why are we taking Ephesians on leadership and not say Thessalonians on leadership … lead a quiet life … work with your hands or Phillipians on leadership … live as citizens? Perhaps we are reading the Biblical text rather than letting the Biblical text fully read our leadering?

a foreign language day

Today I
: finished an article on the emerging church for the september/october edition of a magazine called australian christian women!
: received confirmation that an article I wrote on artist Sieger Koder for a German publisher has just been printed.

Yep, translated into two foreign cultures in one day!

I also did a re-write of a co-authored piece (The Post-Evangelical Emerging Church: Global Innovations in New Zealand and the UK) I am doing with Matthew Guest for the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church (who are doing a themed issue on the topic of the Emerging Church).

I'm now meant to be on holiday for the next few days, apart from being part of the first ever Holy-wood Free Film Festival, with spiritual films, film church and film debate. So I might not be around my blog much.

I'm probably in trouble but ...

I probably just got myself in big trouble, but I made the following comment here, in relation to the APEPT model and so note the comment here (as a sort of obituary perhaps!)

I think the APEPT model is one of the more problematic things I have come across in the emerging church conversation. Read Clarke's Serve the Church. It looks at the early church within its social setting. It argues that every one of Pauls' letters has a slightly different take on leadership and that is because Paul is contextual. Leadership structure emerges from the mission context. To impose APEPT is therefore not true to the full range of the Biblical material; it is privileging one letter over the other letters. More problematic, it's imposing a theoretical model that distorts the true contextual missionality that is the New Testament texts.

Thinking aloud

Every time I meet with the church board I have a thinking aloud section. This allows me to incubate vision and process ideas together, rather than being a top-down leader who presents ideas fait accompli/like it or leave it. Here is what I wrote today.

End of the year. How to end the year? We have our AGM which starts the year. But how do we evaluate the year and honour God for all that has been done? What is a sustainable (ie yearly) way for us to celebrate our life as a church?

I’ve begun to wonder about a day long “celebration”;
that starts and ends with worship (10:30 pm and 7 pm), that offers a barbeque lunch, that has coffee throughout the day, that has a bouncy castle and play area for the kids, that has a performance space where at regular intervals throughout the afternoon, people sing or do comedy, that has multiple “stations” set up through the church.
: each ministry department saying what they have done and what they need “resources” for next year
: with pictures and names of those baptized, come into membership, those who have left membership, newly planted congregations
: with video footage that we have collected
: with a thankyou space and cards to write to volunteers in our midst
: with a dream space for people to imagine about next year
: with time to walk through all the newly painted areas including the prayer room
: with an evaluation space where people can ask the Board questions
: ending with a praise and prayer wall, where people write up all that they are glad of, and all that they were dreaming of

This would enable people could take time, at their pace, to "wander" through the year. We could set the church up in "zones" based around our mission;
Enabling people to walk (blue)
: Evangelism
: Community ministry
: Worship

And grow with Jesus (green)
: Youth
: Children
: Spiritual growth
: Administration
: Property
: Small groups

Reflecting his love in our communities and beyond
: Missions
: Pastoral care

visual worship worth bookmarking

Christ is the image of the invisible God; Colossians 1:15. And so some useful resources for those who take the Incarnated Image (whether visual/video) seriously at this site.

And this site also.

trained to preach

On Wednesday and Thursday I hosted local Baptist leaders on the theme:
Mission and the DNA of the church.

Best quote for me, from a long-term minister, was this one:
I'm starting to realise that communication today involves preaching, being part of communal dialogue and allowing individual multi-sensory responses. But I was just trained to preach.

if i had time

If I had time I would write articles on:
: from movements to meme or why movements are an outdated overflow from modernity
: re:mission and Luke 10
: shaping indigenous worship, with particular reference to indigenous spirituality
: the simplicity of attraction vs. incarnation in contrast to the 6 epochs of mission history in the work of david bosch, transforming faith
: the missiology and resources behind a take a kid to faith service.

But I don't. I have 2 day jobs and it's hard enough doing that, let alone responding to the email -- in the last week requests for advice from
: a denomination
: PhD students
: speaking resources for a ministry in the US
: a request to participate in a virtual seminary.

At times the amount of email generated around this site makes me it all feel unsustainable. Oh, you guessed, didn't you. Yes it is raining today. But the irony, I'm listening to Lemon Jelly and it's track 4 - don't stop now!

reading the [biblical] text in a postmodern world

Prodigal is rehashing some theologising I did around Winnie the Pooh and reading the Bible. For those who are about to dismiss me as sacriligious (assuming you haven't already:)), I was struck by the relationship between the inspiration of Biblical text and community memory in the Piglet Big movie.

“... As they [Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore and Tiger] start a process of communal re-telling, so they find themselves in a process of communal re-living... As we tell the story, our lives are changed ... Re-telling and re-living cannot be separated."

For those interested in more, I did a sermon once on Bible Sunday, exploring Pooh, Piglet and reading the Bible.

Maybe we should show Piglets Big movie for a film:church at Opawa? And now I am eagerly awaiting Pooh's Heffalump movie for more theological reflection ( Quick time promo here).

the images say it all

I'm kicking off the conversation at our espresso congregation tonite. I've been handed the question "what does postmodern mean when applied to theology."

I'm tired of words, so for fun I thought I'd google "postmodern" under google images. The first 20 images visually say it all really; the art, the language and the language games, the commerce, the architecture.

Now take those 20 images and think about how theology (God talk) is applied to seeing God and speaking of God and connecting God...

but what do you do when Jesus is attractional?

One of the big dualisms offered by some in the emerging church is that of attractional as against incarnational (here for instance). We are told that the church is attractional in Christendom and so a move beyond Christendom necessitates a commitment to incarnational.

So what do we do with Jesus and the gospels? I've been pondering Luke 15 today. Three things are lost - coin, sheep, and two sons. Twice the Jesus response is to go look - for a coin or a sheep. Sounds incarnational. So far, so good.

But once - for two sons - the Jesus response is to prepare a hospitable welcome and wait. Not to "Incarnationally" leave the house or the building, but simply wait. And in time, to find that outrageous love and hospitality will become mission.

The mission to one lost son is to offer love. The mission to the other lost son (the churchgoers who have never left) is to challenge them to join the joyous party happening in their building. Sounds like attractional mission to me. Sounds like mission to those using the building to me.

For a sermon I preached on the prodigal son last year go here.

written for church newsletter

I write on Friday and the events of the last hours in London have left us shocked and numbed. Once again our world is rocked by a terrible act of violence. It can be hard to know what to say and how to pray.

At such times, when I am looking for words to express my feelings, I turn to the Psalms. There we find prayers for all of life. There are prayers for happy days, when life is good and makes sense and we feel on top of our game (like Psalm 1 or 8 or 133). There are prayers for surprising days, when God turns up in totally unexpected days (like Psalm 40 or 93).

And there are prayers for sad days. At such times, Psalms like 13 or 137 allow us to be honest with God and ourselves, to voice our feelings of hurt, suffering, death and loss. To express our longing for justice and peace.

a poorly paid writer

Today I got paid to write. I am doing my first ever commissioned piece of writing. It feels very strange.

Today I have learnt that I won't make my fortune as a paid commissioned writer. I would need to do 10 of these commissions a week and to work a whole lot faster than I have today.

women and the emerging church

Excellent post by Dan over at signposts, reflecting on women and the emerging church. After a thoughtful and sensitive reflection on a range of issues, she concludes:

I think that we probably have a lot more work to do with the role of women (and men) in the church, and in the new missional church particularly. I am encouraged by the fact that there seems to be a recognition that more work is needed. I am sometimes discouraged by the types of initiatives that are put into place. I am discouraged by the fact that women when they seek to encourage and mentor leadership seem reluctant to adopt and celebrate our most accomplished female leaders. I am discouraged by the way that discussion is often hamstrung by political correctness and the unwillingness to evaluate women in the same way as men.

the spirituality of dissent with poise

"It takes a while to dissent with poise." A very elegant sentence. Spoken by Duncan, who describes the Forge flavour as one of antagonism; "antagonism towards 'attractional' church ... There's not a lot of interest in the engagement with postmodernity found in other quarters. Alternative worship is seen as just a tinkering with the gathered worship model."

And then the profound sentence (which adds balance and nuance to what is perhaps the negative side of the positive strength in the prophetic gift that is Forge?) Anyhow, the sentence has become for me a breathe prayer for the week;

God, help me become better at dissent with poise. Amen.

getting a [preaching] life #2

Jordon posted a great comment about the freedom people have to walk out of movies in contrast to church. The irony is, someone did walk out on Sunday.

It happened like this:
I start speaking by giving out pipe cleaners - Make what you like with them during the sermon, but at the end, I will ask you to twist it into a prayer for your future.

I start reading from Book of God - I will give a candy bar to the person who 1st guesses who "my Bibical hero is".

The answer is Nehemiah, so I talk for about 5 minutes about how Nehemiah has faith in a hard place - exile, pluralistic, influential. I give a contemporary example and then ask - so how do you sustain faith in a hard place?

Silence as people shuffle and think.

Tobacco, a visitor in the front couch announces. Tobacco. And gets up and walks out.

So, all you who judged me harshly/told me I was rude for playing with my email; do you extend the same judgement to this person?

For me, I think it takes real guts to do that, real character to be different from group norms. Surely the person should be honoured for showing real courage.

get a [preaching] life

Preachers take themselves far too seriously. I was at a conference, sitting at the back, listening and clearing my email. The visiting speaker tells me "I hope no-one ever treats you with that much dis-respect."

It's like get a life. It's like have you never seen the back row of a youth service and watched everyone texting. It's like have you never watched the way people watch TV, the way they tune in and out. Welcome to a culture in which people multi-track.

It might not be ideal, but it's life. Get high and mighty, or work out ways to enculturate and participate in our multi-track culture. Earn the right to subvert.

preaching as the engaging of multiple stories

I was interviewed about how I prepare to preach today and I suddenly realised how different my preaching preparation is now than say 4 years ago. I have also been following chris erdmans blog, and been increasingly uneasy about the text centred approach being advocated.

Today clarified some things. But first, some of my unique context
1. I'm by nature a theologian. (Update. It's a discipline that works in a matrix of text, experience, tradition, culture, reason, revelation). It's in my training and perhaps its in my personal makeup and approach to life. So I do a lot of reflecting.
2. I'm fairly busy. I used to put a lot of time into exegetical preparation. I just don't have that time now. But that need not mean I am not preparing, for ..
3. I have done quite a bit of study and reading in the last few years, doing a masters and a PhD. So could their be some opportunity to draw on the theological reflection and resources of the last few years? And ...
4. I work in multiple job/s, as pastor and lecturer and speaker. So I am constantly in multiple conversation with people and spirituality and life. So could these engagements in fact be gifting me reflections and insights?

So it is my sense that one of the spiritual disciplines of this season of my preaching journey is to trust God by doing less preparation and spending more time intuitively drawing on the learnings from the past few years and from multiple conversations. I don't find this easy. It requires a greater need for inner centredness and willingness to trust my creative intuition.

What does this mean practically?
Tuesday I sit with the text. Without commentary or exegetical rationalisation I contemplate the Spirit of God among the text.

Wednesday-Friday I sift stories; in the lives of people, in my life, in the culture, I search for the stories that challenge, amplify, de-stablise Tuesday's text. This is based on the belief that the Spirit of God is among the people of God. If this text is a-live by the Spirit, then I dare to believe that the a-liveness is not just with my individual preparation, but is among the community and in the world. I contemplate the angles and the jarring juxtapositions.

Saturday I write. Often I am surprised by what I have written, as if from deep within something has opened. This is not a mindless process, but somehow the written words capture a more intuitive knowing.

Sunday I speak. I don't take myself too seriously, but offer some stories, some reflection on a week of sitting with text and people.

I dare to believe that the gospel might be for all people, inside and outside the church, that all people are broken and talented, busy and searching and that the gospel will engage with all of life. It is a text for all, offered not only for me, or for my community, or for society, but freed among many stories and entrusted to the ongoing resonnance to the goodness of the Spirit.