e~mergent kiwi

resurrection door kicker

Jesus, door kicker, strides out the tomb
hinges swinging
door banging
in Spirit's breeze

Jesus, walks our world,
loving on sandy beach, gathering on grassy knoll,
calling "Followers, to me"

If you walk away, will we follow?

Church,
inside 4 walls,
contains, confines,
holds, hoards
doctrine?

Or

Church,
jogging through city street,
laughing, listening,
stretching through house and home,

Til Kingdom come

defining your missional life

So in Luke 10, Jesus sends out the 70/2 in mission. And he suddenly looks around his empty church. Stink. This won't look good next Sunday. Who will do sound? What will visitors say? What will the denomination think?

And then he wakes up in a cold sweat. Can those 70/2 be trusted? What if they don't get the mission right? What if they aren't faithful in gospel transmission? What if they don't come back?

So much of our life and identity as church has historically been defined by Sunday. Yet missional church is about following Christ outside the building, about inviting ordinary disciples into God's purposes in settings beyond are physical control.

It suddenly occurred to me this morning that so much of Opawa's life actually now happens outside Sunday morning church.

Every year the denominational statistical sheet arrives. They want to know our attendance and our baptisms. Yet you can no longer simply can't define us by Sunday. You need to count the community kids enjoying mainly music or watch us at the Waltham Community Fair on Friday. You need to note the visitors at the family movie night. You need to check out our other 4 congregations. You need to interact with the God at work group, quietly practising spiritual practices in their work place. You need to be part of the Thursday nite youth forum, and watch parents, pre-teens, grandparents, youth group leaders and community youth, multiple small groups all over our church foyer, talking, dreaming, praying.

How are those things named? How do we keep Sunday morning up to date with all of this energy? How do we share the sheer enormity and diversity of these stories when we gather? What practices sustain this type of scattered energy?

evaluation multi-media in easter worship

Email from Jeremy Williams (UK Programme Development, SGM Lifewords): I've just been writing up a debrief on our Easter project, and I came across the mention of the films on your blog. Thanks for the link, and for the resulting traffic!

I'm going to be writing a short news item for our magazine too, and it would be great to include a quote from someone who has used the films on the ground. Can you tell me a bit about how you used the animations, and how they were received?

My response: Hi Jeremy,

Good work and kudos to whoever was the creative catalyst and project manager.

mission storytelling roadshow

Over the next few weeks I am part of a mission roadshow, Baptist initiated, called Sharpening the Middle. It is a follow up to the Sharpening the Edge conference last year (short youtube video clip of me in action here), telling the stories of grassroots missional experiments and classic church planting going on here in Aotearoa.

The roadshow consists of three regional workshop days, in Auckland (April 5), Wellington (April 10) and Christchurch (April 12).

Topics include:

* The challenge of Mission facing the church in NZ today - Murray Robertson
* Thinking Biblically about Mission and Church in NZ today – George Wieland
* Discerning the biblical frameworks – George Wieland, Steve Taylor
* Local church stories - including Opawa story.

This day is specifically aimed at our existing churches (defined as the 'middle'). For me this is quite meaningful, as it's nice to have emerging church conversation tucked up within Baptist mission and life.

easter workloads

Fascinating Easter workload reflection from here.

Until this year I had thought that the intensity of Holy Week came from the business involved, but this year has made we wonder in a positive way.

So far I feel very little different than previous years - which perhaps indicates that the intensity comes from the experience rather than the work-load

Easter simply wipes me out and the week after is really hard work. This year we paused our Easter Journey, yet I am still wasted. Is it just church leaders? Does Easter take an emotional toll on worship participants?

imaging resurrection life 2008

The door is open, and Jesus walks out, into our city, calling "Come, follow me"

and in response, the invitation to reflect on resurrection by placing flowers - symbols of colour, life and potential - on maps of our city, in the places where we live and work, as our commitment to live resurrection life to the full.

resurrecting the resurrection

Went to see the movie Vantage Point and it helped me make sense of the resurrection. The movie is tagged 8 points of view: 1 truth. It's a soft form of postmodernity, affirming eyewitnesses as subjective, without losing history as truthful.

In a similar way, the Bible has 4 gospels. Each offers a uniquely different point of view - Mark is fear and trembling; Matthew is earthquakes and angels; Luke is burning hearts; John is a new start. Each is subjective. Each adds insight, without losing truth.

Vantage point (the movie) ends with an 8th scene, an extended narrative which provides the big picture. In the same way, Christian hope is a big picture, or in the words of N. T Wright:
the events of Easter Sunday are no less than "a full, recreated life in the presence and love of God, a totally renewed creation, an integrated new heavens and new earth, and a complete humanness … in worship and love for God, in love for one another as humans, in stewardship over God’s world."

In between the 4th and 8th perspective is the church. Each of us, in our homes, workplaces, city, living out the resurrection in our lives. Each of us subjective eyewitnesses, adding insight.

I wonder if the evangelical captivity to historical truth means that we jump to quickly from the 4th to the 8th perspective. I wonder if evangelicals are so concerned about the historical truth of the resurrection that they reduce the resurrection to an intellectual set of categories. Thus the entry to the 8th perspective is reduced to a set of beliefs that get you into heaven.

Yet the resurrection is so much more than an intellectual historical search. It is the affirmation of life, and life to the full. That is a truth to be lived, through your own unique point of view.

Full sermon manuscript is here.

easter atonement theologies

thursday
is for friends,
honestly. OK, honestly betraying, honestly bad praying, honestly
take, eat,
this is my body
(atonement in community)

friday,
is for Passover,
liberation rescues us
crossing seascape, crossing sandscape
Kingdom coming
(atonement as liberator)

saturday
is for pain,
honestly. In, Darfur and in child abuse, God why have you
abandoned me, him, them
gone God
while innocents die
(atonement as crucified God)

vantage point student

from my leadership class today, a student cell phone pic.

the picture says a lot: in the foreground inductive learning with the class invited to use a type of lego to "build" their church. a way of allowing them to name their leadership values. leading into an excellent discussion around leadership and leader as builder in 1 Corinthians 3:10-17. in the background lecturer, white board marker in hand, waiting to capture student feedback. in so doing I am questioning, making links to pre-set class reading and earthing through practices and storytelling.

pushing pause on a strength: easter journey 2008

Our easter services: creative, contemporary, multi-sensory, happening Easter Thursday, Friday and Sunday. But note, for the first time in 10 years, there's no Easter Journey (interactive art pilgrimage) at Opawa.

I wrote to the main organisers, Peter and Joyce on December 28, 2007, noting that Easter was the earliest it has been in 95 years and that given the enormous energy required to do our 2007 Christmas Journey, open for 60 hours continously in a public park, it might be time for a pause.

In hindsight, it was a good call. It's a good discipline to pause something that you as a church are really well-known for. We've been able to give Peter and Joyce a weekend trip away. We've been less busy as a staff. We've been able to do more with Lent.

How about you? What have you discovered when you have paused something you're really well known for?

easter week resources

Great Easter visually Biblical resource here for each day of Easter week.

I used a couple of clips on Sunday (and will again on Friday and Sunday). Afterward one of our church artists commented on how they are experimenting with similar art techniques in their work, with particular reference to Luke 10:1-12. Really looking forward to seeing that!

collaborative learning around the real Jesus

Grow (our non-linear, interactive, Sunday evening church service) is using a cell phone text challenge to help us search for the real Jesus. Themes - like aren't there are other gospels that offer us a different Jesus or the church tampered with the gospels - lend themselves to some collaborative learning through a text challenge. So we have asked people to volunteer to be either
a) a Gnostic Jesus or
b) a Buddy Jesus
c) or a real Jesus.

We have given them either a Gospel of Thomas, or a selection of feel-good Bible verses, or a Gospel of Mark and sent them into the week. Then we text them a challenge during the week.

I was sitting a test this week. I cheated by copying from my friend. Now I feel bad. What do I do [Gnostic or Buddy or real] Jesus?

Simply giving people the Gnostic gospels has already highlighted how patriarchal, esoteric and just plain weird they are. And we are hoping that then running these "Jesus's" through real life type scenarios will further help us realise the significant differences between the real Jesus of the gospels, and other constructions.

let him who has no sin cast the first stone

a tear ran down my cheek last week. it was a tear that developed from a splinter that I found in my own eye.

(If you want to make this poem your own, feel free to add your initials or your response in the comments).

so who is the Bible for?

As I continue to probe the place of the Bible in church today, I have found myself asking who is the Bible for? Is it for individuals or for the church?

Is the Bible for individuals? And therefore the way we use it reinforces this. We encourage personal devotion and applaud a sermon that applies the minds of the individual with thoughts and truths.

Is the Bible for the church? And therefore the way we use it reinforces this. We preach a sermon that applies to the church. We encourage devotions that remind us we are reading within a wider communion. And we read the Bible together in ways that invite the community to engage the text as a community, through practices like communal lectio divino, Dwelling in the Word, community discernment, storytelling, takeaway spirituality.

Or is it for someone/thing else? Am I making a false dichotomy? How much does the culture we grow up in shape our answers?

updated post: the theology of one Hillsong song

Update: Commenter Bill has posted on this post at his blog, and started another stream of conversation over there. His blog is bigger than mine (just like Hillsong is bigger than most of us), and so the commenting energy has now swung over there.

For those who think I might be a Hillsong devotee, check out my other posts on Hillsong here and a here and here. And other posts I have done on exploring Jesus images in texts, including Narnia, Edmund Hillary and the Mel Gibson movie.

...................................................

I did the below at our Grow service tonight. We've started a series looking for the real Jesus. As part of it, I am leading into worship by taking a song and asking "what are we thinking when we sing this." Here is the Hillsong number "for all you've done."

The song has 3 parts. The opening is fascinating;
My savior
Redeemer
Lifted me from the miry clay

I hear echoes of the Old Testament. For example Psalm 40:1 -3; I patiently waited, LORD, for you to hear my prayer. You listened and pulled me from a lonely pit, full of mud and mire. You let me stand on a rock with my feet firm, and you gave me a new song, a song of praise to you.

Such echoes of Jesus are present in a number of places in the Old Testament. The most well known is Proverbs 8, with what I call a "Cosmic or Wisdom Jesus," Jesus present at the birth of creation, giving wisdom to life. So "for all you've" done starts with a creation Jesus present redemptively within creation.

The middle of the song keeps the Old Testament theme going:
Almighty
Forever, I will never be the same

At this point, I become a bit uneasy, as there is the potential of Jesus being mushed into Almighty God. But then the song gets very specific.
Cos You came here
From the everlasting
To the world we live
The Father's only Son

This is a good Incarnational theology. This Cosmic Jesus is God before time, that came to live. The life of Christ is essential. "For all you've done" includes every day of every one of those 33 years.

The good theology continues as the song moves to end:
And You lived
You died
You rose again on high
You opened the way for the world to live again

I find fascinating the echoes of ascension. Jesus fully human and fully divine "opened the way." The human body of Jesus ascends into God. In the Ascension, the way for humans is opened to God. What is more, God is changed as God embraces humanity.

In summary, "for all you've done" is a surprisingly broad song theologically. Christians often limit what Jesus does to the cross. Yet this song names Jesus, for all you've done as including creation, incarnation, life, resurrection and ascension. So salvation in Christ is not limited to the work of the cross. It starts with God making the world, involves the sending of Jesus, God with skin on, moves through thirty three years of healing to the embrace of the cross, the surprise of Easter Sunday and the ascension, as Jesus opens the way. That's the Jesus being worshipped in "for all you've done."

PS:

Being a U2 fan, I must note the echoes of both an old hit, "40" and a new hit, "Windows in the Sky."

how should we use the Bible?

I was listening to someone rant this week. Discipleship was poor in the church. The evidence? Well, only 21% of people said they read their Bibles daily.

I thought back to the early Jews. They had handcopied scrolls in the Synagogue. They never had a Bible to read daily.

I thought back to the first disciples. They never had a book. Although they did have the stories of Jesus to tell to each other.

I thought back to the church before the printing press. They had handcopied scrolls in the church. They never had a Bible to read daily.

So isn't daily Bible reading as a mark of discipleship simply a contemporary phenomenon, based on the fact that due to the printing press and internet, we now have Bibles we can read daily?

I thought back to Jesus. When asked about eternal life in Luke 10. He quotes the Bible, mixing two Bible texts from different contexts. Then he creates a story from contemporary culture (the one about robbers and Samaritans and religious leaders). Then he says go and do likewise. That is discipleship for Jesus. Nothing to do with reading the Bible daily. Simply the ability to relate the Bible to everyday contemporary life in a way that changes behaviour.

Using that story, yes discipleship will include using the Bible. Although not necessarily daily and privately. And it must also include the number of contemporary stories told in church. And it also must include the way lives are lived.

How about you? As you think about the church through time, how should we use the Bible?

hunting hindu idols

Update I have closed comments due to sp*m problems.

How many emerging church gatherings have you attended?
Of those gatherings, how many times have you seen a hindu idol present?
Of those gatherings, how many times have you seen the Bible used?
Of those gatherings, how many times has Jesus been mentioned?

I need to know, because I nearly lost it in front of strangers yesterday. I have been attending the Vision New Zealand Congress, probably New Zealand's broadest gathering of church leaders. In preparation, I had been asked to write a 5,000 word chapter (A Kiwi emerging church. Yeah right?) for the congress book, tracing the development of emerging church in Aotearoa New Zealand. And I am down to do a 75 minute workshop on the emerging church.

All is trucking along in the workshop reasonably smoothly until the word "absolute truth" is mentioned. And at this point, dialogue between myself and the audience goes up a notch. And one punter tells me that if you deny absolute truth, you end up worshipping Hindi idols. I am sure he said other things and I am in danger of misrepresenting the dialogue, but at this point I had lost it. I was absolutely gob smacked.

Stunned. Trying to work out the logic. Mentally flicking through my powerpoint images and presentation, hunting for hindu idols.

Hence this internet survey. I need to know from all of my readers:
1. How many emerging church gatherings have you attended?
2. Of those gatherings, how many times have you seen a hindu idol present?
3. Of those gatherings, how many times have you seen the Bible used?
4. Of those gatherings, how many times has Jesus been mentioned?

(I would also love to know where in the Bible "absolute truth" is mentioned, but that's another whole arena.)

I am serious folks. I need to know .... has the questioning of the modernist understanding of truth as "absolute" led to hindu idols in emerging church worship?