sustain:if:able kiwi

out of bounds book launch Auckland

You are invited … to an Auckland book launch of Steve Taylor’s book, The Out of Bounds Church? Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change, Zondervan, 2005.

Wednesday 12 October, 2005, 7-7:30 pm, The Community of Saint Luke, 130 Remuera Road, Remuera.

There will be
: Books available ($25) for author signing
: Drinks and nibbles
: Big ups to two Auckland church communities (Graceway and Cityside)
: Prayerful commissioning
: No charge

The Out of Bounds Church? book launch is occuring as part of the futurechurch conference. Following the book launch (from 7:30 pm) Steve Taylor and Margaret Mayman will “animate” a conversation around the theme: Disconnected? Our relationship with the Christian tradition. You are more than welcome to stay for this session. (It costs $5).

To book your nibble, RSVP by leaving a comment Tuesday 11 October.

food and mission

Espresso, our Tuesday evening discussion-in-community congregation, was EXCELLENT last nite. The opening question was: Why do Christians eat meat? If they can justify that, surely they can justify anything? It’s a question that I have faced from a number of spiritual seekers.

To kick off the discussion, I used the following rant from circle of pneuma. Lot of laughter around this quote:
Your neighbourhood new ager and neo-pagan is likely a vegan or vegetarian (just participate in a new age festival and you won’t find a hamburger in sight)? And consider that in their eyes the [barbeque] just might look a bit like food offered unto idols (i.e. the repugnant idols of intensive factory farming and consumerist capitalism), and so they will be repulsed at the outset from even feeling “welcome”?

It was such a rich discussion: food, hospitality, Biblical ethics, Pharisaical and fundamentalist vegetarians. I just wish I had “podcasted” it. It has prompted me to add another verse to my bread liturgy.

Give us today our daily bread.
Matthew 6:11

ALL: You are the bread of life
Yet in a world where many lack daily bread
Help us eat justly, consume wisely for our world
Bread for all our journey.

whale rider, women and leadership

The 2002 movie Whale Rider is set in a small New Zealand coastal village. Yet the themes are universal. Dare I suggest the movie should be compulsory viewing for anyone interested in both the emerging church and the future of the church? … As the movie explores the struggle of a young woman to express her leadership, could we in turn dare to explore the place of women in the emerging church?

An article I wrote, titled Women and apostolic leadership and reflecting on women and leadership in relation to the movie Whale Rider and some New Testament data is now online here.

The short history is that I preached some of it as a sermon at Opawa, at Digestion, our evening congregation. Then I decided to blog it, because the issue of women and leadership is really important to me. Then Next wave editor Charlie Wear somehow caught a sniff of it and asked to use it. I added in a bit from the movie Whale Rider, to hopefully make a more accessible introduction and to add some more layers to the New Testament.

Somewhat ironically, there is also a review of my book, out of bounds church?, in the same next wave issue. Roger Overton is mostly complimentary (heck, “for anyone looking to find out what emerging church is all about, this is the book to read … a far more interesting read and a far more accurate description of what’s going on in emerging churches” [than McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy] is high praise). However, in the out of bounds church review, Roger has a “problem [with] the way Mr. Taylor exegetes scripture.” That’s me. Mr Taylor 🙂 So I like the irony of being considered problematic around Scripture by Roger, yet offering something Scriptural the Whale Rider article at the same time, in the same issue.

evangelism as process and event

My Friday blog post – found bears – became a sermon that compared the apostle Paul and the disciple Peter, conversion as event and conversion as process (Download file). Next week I want to explore the question: what does a church look like that takes seriously both event and process? For this week I just wanted to affirm that bears and people are found in unique ways. So much of contemporary evangelism seems to miss this point.

can’t comment

I’ve had a number of emails saying people can’t comment. So I’ve had a bit of a tinker and I think it’s now fixed.

blogging for education

This afternoon I’ve been working on a new block course Living the text in a postmodern context, which I am expecting to teach at Fuller in 2006.

DRAFT: This course will explore the communication of the Biblical text in a contemporary world, with particular missiological reference to the use of the Bible in the emerging church in a postmodern context. It will explore ways to maintain the integrity of the Biblical text, applying the best of academic insights around text, community and culture, to the task of communicating the Biblical text with reference to postmodernity. The course will combine both theory and practice, believing that learning often happens through seeing new models, while new practices necessitate a shift in the under girding values. As a result of the course, students will be better equipped to read and communicate the Biblical text in a postmodern context.

Previously, I have often used journals as a form of assessment. It allows me to listen and interact with students, and allows a greater flexibility of expression than traditional essays. It has worked well.

Today I wondered about inviting students to journal, not with pen and paper, but on-line. Students could very easily be given their own course blog-site, organized by lecturer beforehand. Students would be asked to journal regularly at their own course blog-site, with a suggested number of entries (and word length suggested). Students would be assessed with particular reference to the course learning outcomes. Students could be made aware of each others “course blogs” and be encouraged to read and interact with each other’s journals, using comment functions.

I wonder if this would greatly increase the level of community learning and interaction. Any thoughts?

bread for the journey

Here’s a liturgy, titled “bread for the journey” I wrote for communion today, reflecting on bread in light of a variety of scriptures …

(more…)