Thursday, July 30, 2009
faith:full families take a lot of work
I’ve just printed off my speaking notes for Adelaide. 74 pages, and 20,000 words in note form. That’s a lot of work! It’s something I’ve been working on for nearly a year now, using a range of places to workshop stuff.
Here is my introduction in the written material I have provided for participants:
Aim of week: To provide stimulation for our ministries as children, youth, family workers by weaving together selected Biblical narratives regarding families, together with contemporary missiology.
Key image – tables: You sit at a table. The people in your ministry context sit around tables. Jesus sat at tables. Many Bible narratives occurred around tables. What narratives and insights – Biblical, ministerial, missional – can shape our “table” ministry?
My context: I come not as an academic with a lot of well polished talks. Instead the material is tentative and on the run, shaped by 6 years helping an established church refind a heart for local community ministry. This conference has provided a chance to go back through my hard drive, trying to pull together key moments and learnings and shaping narratives, with specific regard to family ministry, and to realise this recurring theme of table. And so to offer the fragments to you, wondering what you will find as we sift life and ministry together. I am looking forward to that with you.
A more thorough outline is here. The angelwings research team has also cooked up some case studies – 4 different contexts in which ministry can be happening – and I’m looking forward to seeing what participants make of them.
While I am in Adelaide, I’m talking with a publisher about the possibility of this becoming a book. Just an exploration. But it seems to me that there is very little written on ministry across the generations from a Downunder perspective. Even less that is closely attentive both to Biblical narratives and to contemporary mission insights. So there might be a hole needing filling. It certainly would be nice to see 74 pages and 20,000 words find life not just for 1 week, but in an ongoing way.
(I’m also doing stuff here and here plus this lovely comment (final paragraph) here).
)
You may already know this poem but if not I hope you find it helpful
‘In search of a round table’
Chuck Lathrop
It will take some sawing
To be roundtabled.
Some redefining
And redesigning,
Some redoing and rebirthing
Of narrow long Churching
Can painful be
For people and tables.
It would mean no diaising
And throning,
For but one king is there
And he is a foot washer,
At table no less.
And what of narrow long ministers
When they confront
A round table people,
After years of working up the table
To finally sit at its head,
Only to discover
That the table has been turned round?
They must be loved into roundness,
For God has called a People
Not “them and us”.
“them and us” are unable
to gather round; for at a round table
there are no sides
and ALL are invited
to wholeness and to food.
At one time
Our narrowing churches
Were built to resemble the Cross
But it does no good
For building to do so,
If lives do not.
Round tabling means
No preferred seating,
No first and last,
No better, and no corners
For the “least of these”.
Roundtableing means
Being with,
A part of,
Together and one.
It means room for the Spirit
And gifts
And disturbing profound peace for all.
We can no longer prepare for the past.
We will and must and are called
To be Church,
And if He calls for other than a round table
We are bound to follow.
Leaving the sawdust
And chips, designs and redesigns
Behind, in search of and in presence of
The Kingdom
That is His and not ours.
Amen
Comment by Bob Sneddon — July 30, 2009 @ 7:31 pm
thanks bob. interesting twist on the table image,
steve
Comment by steve — July 30, 2009 @ 8:14 pm