sustain:if:able kiwi

the fun of research coding Ordinary knitters

Today was fun.

Today was a research coding day.

Today was out with the coloured highlighters and A3 sheets of paper, seeking threads and weave in focus group interviews in the Ordinaryknitters project.

After the toil of transcribing and cleaning transcripts, today was about the joy of making patterns, listening to people who knit for Christian projects in public spaces.

I know there are computer programmes to help with coding. There are the cheap options ranging from highlighter and comment functions on Word, through to paid software like NVivo.

But somehow getting off screen is vitalising. Perhaps it’s because I’m analysing the words and thoughts of knitters, for whom the tactile is so present in their theology and practice.

Perhaps its the physical detaching in which words on paper are seen in different ways that words on a screen. And so new ways of seeing and linking emerge.

Today was fun. A reminder that any research project has moments of creativity and colour.

Visualising online climate change activism: public eco-theologies in grassroots climate-justice organisations accepted

I’m delighted to have news overnight of a journal article about my research into grassroots digital activism accepted for publication with Theology (UK based journal). The article is scheduled for publication early in 2025.

This is the first piece of writing from my Edinburgh IASH Fellowship sojourn in June and July this year. The article outlines my novel contribution to the study of digital activism, visual images, and the construction of public eco-theologies. The research in the article draws on the social media of two UK climate justice groups as illustrative.

It’s nice to take topics like activism and social media into a journal committed to broadening knowledge of contemporary theological studies.

Ordinary Time Festivals: An Application of Wisdom Ecclesiology published in Theology Today

I’m delighted with news of a journal article published with Theology Today, a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal connected to Princeton Theological Seminary.

Steve Taylor, “Ordinary Time Festivals: An Application of Wisdom Ecclesiology,” Theology Today (here). (It’s behind a paywall and I can provide an accepted version if folk don’t have institutional access).

Its been quite the writing journey. It began with some thoughts on festival spirituality in my 2005 The Out of Bounds Church? book. During 2018, I began reading theologian Amy Platinga Pauw, particularly her Bible commentary on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and her book Church in Ordinary Time: A Wisdom Ecclesiology. I wondered if her work on the doctrine of creation and her proposal for a wisdom ecclesiology could make sense of how churches engage in community festivals.

To develop my proposal, I used empirical research of three festivals – a harvest festival in Scotland, a Blessing of the Fleece service at a craft festival in Australia and a neighbourhood festival in Aotearoa New Zealand. I outlined the different ways in which these festivals provided concrete examples of new ways by which the church might theologically participate in their communities today.

I submitted the article around the middle of 2021. It was accepted early in 2022 and was finally! published online this week. I really enjoyed creating a dialogue between theology and qualitative research and was delighted to have the peer reviewers called it “interesting,” “helpful,” and “novel.”

Here’s the conclusion:

Hence, ordinary festivals provide imaginative possibilities for faith communities today. Instead of the present festive barrenness of ordinary time, new opportunities emerge. In ways similar to how the church puts energy into the seasons of Advent and Lent and the festivals of Christmas and Easter, the church can put energy in ordinary time into wisdom festivals. The church turns outward, finding imaginative ways to join hands with God’s ongoing work in creation, making ordinary time good news for church and world. A church could join an existing community festival, like Spin and Fibre, using Pauw’s themes to offer a distinct liturgical presence. A church could, like CompassionFest, offer ‘initiatory’ capacity for a new community festival. This would begin by paying attention through placemaking. The church could enrich existing festivals, for example, exploring ways that a harvest festival might deepen faith formation. As Jesus grew in faith through Passover, so Pauw’s six themes become similarly generative, deepening discipleship during ordinary time. Wisdom ecclesiology becomes a distinct resource, offering a Biblically formed and flourishing praxis of delight, wonder, and perseverance.

stashes as research methods in researching making

I’m writing!!

As I planned the 2024 year, I set aside April and May to progress analysis and writing on the Ordinary Knitters research project. Since Ordinaryknitters began, I have been privileged to interview 43 people from 4 countries who knitted for a public project, collected over the last few years.

There are knitters who cared for their community by making Christmas angels. Other knitters cared for creation by knitting climate scarves, encouraged peace-stitches through “French knitting” peace loom installations or personalised their place through knitting remembrance poppies. Each person making as a way of connecting their Christian faith in public ways with the wider world.

To understand these experiences of making, I’m using reflexive thematic analysis. Reflexive thematic analysis values three things. First, the intuitions and interests of the researcher. Second, the unfolding nature of analysis. Third, the ways in which the particularity of one experience can illuminate the particularity of another experience.

I see reflexive thematic analysis as a way of making. I’m sifting through a rich stash of wool. My stash is unique, shaped by the active role my interests and networks have played in gathering the wool. I compare balls of wool, believing that fresh and new connections can emerge as different colours and textures (interview quotes and stories) are laid alongside each other. As I make, the unique colours of each ball will remain. In all I do, gathering, comparing, knitting, my craft as a maker will be visible. Yet the whole will be greater than the individual parts.

Practically, I undertake reflexive thematic analysis not with an existing set of themes to look for. Rather, I read “reflexively.” I start with the first interview and read it noting what I think are key words (codes).

I try to cluster these key words (codes) around big ideas (themes). I read further interviews. As I do, I work in “pencil” (reflexively) because the key words (codes) and conversation (themes) shift as I read. The experience of one knitter invites more codes, or a reworking of a theme, to better cluster a range of unique experiences. These reflexive changes require me to reread the earlier interviews. As a result, experiences from a range of interview are informing the experiences of another interviews.

I track the shifts in reflexivity by using mind maps and tables. These make visible my unfolding analysis. The mindmaps and tables allow me to keep track of my decisions and reflect (reflexively) on my assumptions.

This approach, of reflexive thematic analysis – assumes that I as a researcher have an interest and a set of values (why else would I be asking for an interview) which I bring to the interview and the analysis. This approach assumes that naming my interests and the way I make decisions will decrease the chance of imposing my research agenda on those being interviewed. It also assumes that insights emerge over time, particularly as the uniqueness of each interview is brought into conversation with the uniqueness of other interviews.

I love the making of reflexive thematic analysis.

Douglas Coupland, Charles Taylor, and Spirituality in Modernity chapter in Bloomsbury Academic

I’m delighted today to sign a contract with Bloomsbury Academic for a chapter on faith in contemporary culture, a dialogue between Douglas Coupland and Charles Taylor. Coupland is an author and artist, famous for writing Generation X. Charles Taylor is a sociologist, famous for big books on secularisation.

The chapter is a co-authored piece, with Tony Watkins. Together, we outline the work of Charles Taylor and in particular his biographies of conversion in modernity. We then bring these into conversation with converting moments in 3 of Coupland’s books – Polaroids from the Dead, Generation X and Generation A. We outline how the characters in Douglas Coupland’s fiction are experiencing transcendent moments, and what that means for contemporary faith.

The chapter began as a sermon at Graceway Baptist Church, way back in the day! I did some work on Douglas Coupland in my PhD, which became a class at Laidlaw College (Christchurch), in which I explored salvation in modernity. Then at Uniting College, I offered an honours course on Charles Taylor. I began to write about Charles Taylor’s conversion biographies in my 2019 book, First Expressions: innovation and the mission of God, when I looked at how art and creativity in alternative.worship communities connect with contemporary culture in public mission.

An online conference in 2021, focused on the work of Douglas Coupland, wonderfully hosted by Mary McCampbell, Diletta De Cristofaro and Andrew Tate, allowed me to bring together Coupland and Taylor. The chapter in this Bloomsbury book offers a spoken conference paper in a written form.

It’s wonderful to be exploring contemporary spirituality and conversion theologies in contemporary literature and to see various strands of thinking over many years come together in written form.

Compassionate Collaboration, Christian Mission and the Bank of Dave

“Compassionate Collaboration, Christian Mission and the Bank of Dave” is a piece of my writing now published in the Practical Theology Hub, (online in January 2024).

The piece works between contemporary culture and a theology of social innovation. I work to bring the ministry of Jesus into conversation with a movie and sugges surprising insights into the nature of compassion and the depth of collaboration in mission with Christ.

The back story. The piece began as a 500 word written film review for Touchstone magazine (for whom I write monthly). As I was writing the film review, I was also down to speak at my local Presbyterian church (where I also preach monthly). As I worked with the suggested Gospel reading from the lectionary, I found some fascinating connections between the reading (Matthew 9:35-41) and the film. A listener encouraged me to write it up. Which took me a lot longer than I anticipated, as I struggled to turn spoken words into a written piece.

I persisted, helped by the concept of a research stash, and the idea of a stash as a store or supply of something, and working to turn something hidden (shared with a congregation) into something more visible (written online). Practical theology hub were ideal. First, because they take pieces up to around 2,000 words, which was about the length of the sermon. Second, they are online and accessible, so my words would not be hidden behind paywall.

Writing in 2023: 120,000 words spread over 28 outputs

Writing is a significant part of my current vocation.

And writing is a challenge. The ability to compile evidence and shape an argument in ways that attend to detail and fill in a big picture is an exacting process.

Writing is also always a vulnerable process. Organisational psychologist Adam Grant suggests that the best way to gauge the quality of someone’s ideas is not to listen to them talk but to read their writing. Most of us can only hold 3 or 4 thoughts in our heads. So charisma and verbal gymnastics can mask weak logic.

In contrast, developing thoughts on paper allows someone to read page 5 and then flick back to page 1 to check if I am being consistent. Hence, writing makes us vulnerable because it exposes our ability to think.

Stepping into a new year of work, it is good to reflect on the writing challenges of the year past. In 2023, I made myself vulnerable with 28 different written outputs, nearly 120,000 words. These included

• 2 academic book chapters
• 2 academic funding bids
• 4 other academic outputs
• 5 commissioned research reports
• 10 film reviews
• 5 magazine columns

Word wise, most of my output (76%, some 90,000 words across 5 outputs) was on research commissioned by organisations in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. As part of professional benchmarking, I also offer academic contributions (16%, some 18,800 words across 8 outputs). Aware that academia involves paywalls, I also look for popular outlets (8%, some 9,250 across 15 outputs).

Breaking down the 28 outputs in more detail …

Book chapters (2)

• “Douglas Coupland, Charles Taylor, and Spirituality in Modernity,” an academic book chapter (5000 words), co-written with Tony Watkins. This piece of writing began life through a 2021 conference presentation, which is due for publication in an edited volume on artist and writer Douglas Coupland with Bloomsbury (UK) in 2024.
• “Mission in digital cultures: Opportunities and challenges in a mundane co-mission,” an academic book chapter (5000 words) for the Oxford Handbook of Digital Theology. Two conference presentations in 2022 helped develop ideas. Written in February 2023 and revised in September 2023, this should be published in an edited volume with Oxford University Press in 2024.

Academic funding bids (2)
Seeking international funding for research involves writing, and has particular challenges in linking research approaches and plans with funder aspirations.

• “Digital activism as justice-making. Evaluating decolonial public theologies on Christian social media platforms” was a research bid that gained funding and research support from the University of Edinburgh, planned for June and July 2024.
• “Race and justice in Glasgow’s mission history: a reappraisal of South Sea missionary networks and their relationships to “blackbirding” was a research bid submitted to the University of Glasgow Library Visiting Research Fellowship (awaiting decision). The application was built on a successful 2022 application and seeks to extend the archival work I did in August and September of 2023.

Other academic contributions including book reviews, journal editorial and online article (4)

• A book review of Keeping Faith: How Christian organisations can stay true to the way of Jesus, by Stephen Judd, John Swinton and Kara Martin, was published in Australian Journal of Mission Studies in December 2023
• A book review of Constructing Mission History: Missionary Initiative and Indigenous Agency in the Making of World Christianity by Stanley H. Skreslet for the Anvil Journal of Theology and Mission
• Editorial for the December 2023 issue of Ecclesial Futures, an open-access academic journal I co-edit with Nigel Rooms.
• “Compassionate Collaboration, Christian Mission and the Bank of Dave” was a conversation between contemporary culture and theologies of social innovation. This began as a written film review, then a spoken sermon, and finally a written output submitted to Practical Theology Hub on October (and published online in January 2024).

Commissioned research reports (5)

In my work for AngelWings, I provide high-quality research for organisations and agencies. The research is co-designed, with results provided as written reports for boards and key leaders.

• Theological education and ministry training review – working with a colleague to develop a 20-year framework for theological education and ministry training. A report of 55,000 words was delivered in April 2023, along with four six page summaries
• Evaluation of innovation – assessment of an initiative to bring congregations and a social service agency closer together. A report of 9,100 words along with a two page press release was delivered in October 2023.
• Missional needs and opportunities review – working with two colleagues to review how a denominational group resources mission. A 12,500-word report was delivered in July 2023.
• Property use – an 8,200 word report documenting stakeholder perceptions relating to sale of property and mission was delivered in December 2023.
• Educational consultation – A 5,500-word report peer reviewing a new higher education initiative was delivered in November 2023.

Together, these 5 outputs total 90,000 words. That’s a lot of ink. Because this research is commissioned, what is written belongs to the governance boards that provide the funding. However, I continue to explore avenues by which elements of my commissioned research that have public interest could be reworked.

Film reviews (10)
Monthly I watch a movie and write a 500 word film review for Touchstone, a Methodist denominational magazine. I enjoy the discipline of writing to honour the integrity of a film in conversation with theology and ethics and in 2023, provided ten film reviews.

Zadok columns (5)
Quarterly I contribute a column for an Australian magazine, offering Christian reflection on various contemporary issues. So, in 2023, to meet deadlines, I provided five 850-word contributions.

write-streams for AngelWings Ltd

On the AngelWings Ltd work desk sits my current writing map. I have 2 empirical research projects that are due to industry stakeholders in the next 2 weeks. They involve a lot of data – together amounting to 76 interviews and focus groups, along with 120 survey responses. All collected over the last 11 weeks.

One of the projects has the joy of working with a team, so the writing and editing are shared. But others in the team have other workstreams. So a daily writing map is needed to apportion time and keep projects moving.

Around the writing map are my ending symbols. In ending every research project, I find a symbol expressing the project’s uniqueness. They watch me as I work. “You’ve done this before – juggled, drafted, edited.” They give me confidence.

And hope.

Because soon, there will be time to choose another ending symbol. Or, in this case, two!

thrilled with Ethnography as Pastoral Practice 2nd edition

I’m delighted to have a piece of writing published in revised edition of Ethnography As A Pastoral Practice by Mary Moschella, who is Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling, at Yale Divinity School.

“When Christmas angels tweet: Making matters and practical theology in researching mission online,” Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice. An Introduction, 2nd edn. by Mary Clark Moschella, SCM/Pilgrim Press, 291-305.

Delighted first to be published. It is an appendix in which I describe how I go about conducting empirical research, in this case into digital expressions of craftivism in general, and knitted Christmas angels in particular.

Delighted second, because it gives another lens on my research on craftivism.

“When ‘#xmasangels’ tweet: a Reception Study of Craftivism as Christian Witness,” Ecclesial Practices 7 (2), 2020, 143-62, (co-authored with Shannon Taylor). Doi.org/10.1163/22144471-BJA10016

The editor of the academic journal Ecclesial Practices called the article “rich”, demonstrating new “opportunities,” “skilful and sensitive application of ethnological tools” in “powerfully informing ecclesial research.”

Delighted third at the circumstances. Professor Mary Moschella sat in on a conference paper delivered at the 2019 Ecclesiology and Ethnography conference. She emailed after, asking if I could write for a revised edition of Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice, as she was looking for contemporary examples of high-quality, contemporary empirical research and would I write, not so much on the data as on the research journey.

Delighted fourth because I have used the first edition in my classes, teaching on mission, church, leadership and change. A short blog review from 2012 that I wrote is here. It’s a fantastic book. So to be published in a revised edition of a book I consider fantastic is pretty special.

Theological Education as “Being With” the Future Church – some AngelWings Ltd applied research

I’m delighted to have an Applied Research Abstract on Theological Education published in Review of Religious Research. Steve Taylor, “Theological Education as “Being With” the Future Church: Applied Research Among Local Leaders in an Australian Baptist Denomination,” Review of Religious Research, DOI: 10.1007/s13644-021-00480-z.

Here is part of the conclusion:

“A changing world presents significant opportunities for theological colleges and seminaries to re-invent themselves. Providers of theological formation have a significant role in resourcing the future church, particularly as they attend to collaborative and relational partnerships … [including] a renewed focus on local contextual theologies, empirical research, and grassroots partnerships. Such participation requires accompanying the local church, not as a problem to be fixed or a base for recruitment, but in a shared human quest to learn in change.”

The Applied Research Abstract draws on research I did in 2021 for Whitley College (working with René Erwich and Darrell Jackson) and the Baptist Union of Victoria, listening to some 47 stakeholders. The complete report belongs to Whitley College Board.

However, the Review of Religious Research is a journal that uniquely facilitates the sharing and comparing of applied studies between denominational and academic researchers. They offer four types of articles – Original Research Articles, Research Notes, Review Articles, and Applied Research Abstracts. The Applied Research Abstract is a type of article that summarises (without any references) an applied research study. So, in dialogue with Whitley, some of the research can now be shared more widely.

The article is online and paywalled, but if folk want a pre-publication copy, just DM me.

Article acceptance – Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy journal

Stoked to get news this morning of the acceptance of a journal article in the academic journal Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy.

The article is titled “Lighthouse as a transdisciplinary boundary-crossing learning innovation in Christian communities” and is co-authored with Prof Christine Woods (University of Auckland) and Mark Johnston (now University of Glasgow). Together we reflect on the Lighthouse, a social innovation incubator weekend, funded by the Presbyterian Development Society, that we developed and ran for three years for the Presbyterian Church.

Social innovation in Christian contexts is greeted with suspicion by some theologians, as is talking about the apostle Paul in some business and entrepreneurship settings. So as well as running the Lighthouse, we set ourselves the task of writing for both audiences.

It was great to be published theologically last year in the International Journal of Public Theology (“Jesus as a socially (ir)responsible innovator: seeking the common good in a dialogue between wisdom Christologies and social entrepreneurship,” International Journal of Public Theology 15 (1), (2021), 119–143). (Some of story is here) ).

We then wrote for an entrepreneurship setting through the back half of 2021, reflecting on the Lighthouse as an educational innovation using two educative theories, boundary crossing and collaborative spirals. The invitation to revise and resubmit occupied late May/early June 2022. And now news of publication!

Thanks Presbyterian Development Society for believing in our funding bid :). Thanks Reviewer 2: “I thoroughly enjoyed reading this paper, it is a well-crafted and thoughtful paper that offers interesting insights and tools.”

Published – Theologies of Fulfillment in a Reciprocal Study – International Bulletin of Mission Research

My latest journal article is now online – “Theologies of Fulfillment in a Reciprocal Study of Relationships between John Laughton and Rua Kēnana in Aotearoa New Zealand,” International Bulletin of Mission Research here.

Short abstract: Crossing the borders of religion presents challenges and provides opportunities. This article presents a contextualized case study from Aotearoa New Zealand. Photography, as a tool in discerning lived theologies, suggests a side-by-side relationship of reciprocity and particularity. Relationships across differences are revealed not in theory but in lived practices of education, worship, life and death. The argument is that Rua Kēnana and John Laughton enacted theologies of fulfillment, grounded in different epistemologies: mātauranga Māori and Enlightenment thinking.

I’m grateful for the writings of Dr Hirini Kaa and Archbishop Don Tamihere as invaluable resources in reflecting on mātauranga Māori and the life of te hāhi mihinare. I’m also grateful for the wisdom of Dr Wayne Te Kaawa in the writing and the resource and permissions of National Library of New Zealand.

publishing contract for Making matters and practical theology in researching mission online

Signing a publishing contract is always a great way to start the day.

This piece of writing began as a conference paper delivered at the 2019 Ecclesiology and Ethnography conference. In the audience was Mary Moschella, who is Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling, at Yale Divinity School. At the time she was revising her book, Ethnography As A Pastoral Practice: An Introduction and emailed after the conference asking if I might consider writing up my research journey.

I had used Ethnography As A Pastoral Practice: An Introduction in some of my classes at Uniting College (a short blog review is here). The commitments to listening and living theologies made sense of how I approached leading change, especially during my time as Senior Pastor at Opawa Baptist. So I was delighted to rework the conference paper to make more visible my researching journey – my contribution titled “When Christmas Angels Tweet: Making matters and practical theology in researching mission online.” The revised edition of Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice is due out with Pilgrim Press in the US and SCM in the UK.

writing – from beginning to end in 1 day

Today’s work covered the full span of the writing process, from beginning to ending.

At the beginning, I was providing peer review, asked to offer constructive feedback to an international press seeking blind peer review feedback on a proposed book.

In the middle, I did final edits and submitted major revisions of a journal article. Over the last few weeks, I have been working my way with colleague Dr Dustin Benac from Baylor University) through thousands of words of constructive blind peer review feedback. This is for an article presenting research into innovation and spiritual practices in NZ and United States during the pandemic.

Toward the end, I was responding to a sharp-eyed copy editor who has been polishing a chapter I wrote back in 2019 about how to research making as Christian witness. This is for a book by Mary Moschella from Yale University, a 2nd edition of her wonderful Ethnography as Pastoral Practice, that is about to be submitted for publication with 2 publishers in UK and USA.

Also toward the end, I chased up a page reference as part of checking final proofs for a journal article about to come out with International Bulletin of Mission Research.

Finally, receiving the 3 monthly statement for book sales on my The Out of Bounds Church?: Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change which is still selling the occasional copy 17 years after publication!

So there we are. From proposals to proofs to publishing! Five different parts of the writing process – all for international publications, all in the same day.