sustain:if:able kiwi

UK Adventures 7 – mission research with Cliff College

Yesterday I had a great afternoon/evening with the Master of Mission students. I rolled out what for me was some new stuff, providing a global ie non-Western frame on new forms of church. It was a good chance to develop something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but lacked the time. A mix of storytelling and history, it seemed to provide a lot of energy and stimulus and move the emerging/fresh expressions conversation into some really animated mission type discussion.

Today I am with the PhD students. I have been asked to reflect with them at two levels. First to provide some of my recent research and second to reflect with them on the research journey ie the processes by which it all emerges. For me, this quote captures my approach

“I am an inquisitive and chaotic traveller … I have not attempted to devise or discover a systematic method … My only excuse is that I was guided not by an theory of art but merely by curiousity.” (Alberto Manguel, Reading Pictures: What We Think About When We Look at Art, ix.)

I only have 2 sessions, so I am having to select from some of my recent work (some published, some in process, some conference papers that need some time to write up), which I have sorted under four headings. It ended up being quite a list. For those who are interested

1. Mission history –

• “When land is layered: Jacob in conversation with coloniser (James Cook) and colonised (Te Horeta Te Taniwha),” The Gospel and the Land of Promise: Christian Approaches to the Land of the Bible, edited by Philip Church, Tim Bulkeley, Tim Meadowcroft and Peter Walker, Pickwick Publications, 2011.
• “Bible, Ploughs and damper: responding to a de/colonizing God”

2. Emerging/fresh expressions of church –

• “Finding fresh expression ten years on?”
• “Evaluating Birth narratives: A Missiological Conversation with Fresh Expressions”

3. Worship

• “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table”
• “Baptist Worship and Contemporary Culture: A New Zealand Case Study”,  Interfaces: Baptists and Others. Studies in Baptist History and Thought, (forthcoming)
• “Feeling for a theology: “sense-xegesis” in theological interpretation”

4. Culture

• U2’s “Bullet the Blue Sky” as an Evolving Performance, Exploring U2: Is This Rock ‘n’ Roll?: Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2
• “Reading “pop-wise”: the very fine art of “making do” when reading the Bible in bro’Town,” The Bible in/and Popular Culture: A Creative Encounter (Semeia Studies), edited by Phil Culbertson and Elaine Wainwright, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, 2010
• “Public Lament,” Spirituality and Practice of Lament, edited by Tim Bulkeley and Miriam Bier, Pickwick, forthcoming, (co-authored with Liz Boase)
• “A Pneumatology for an Everyday Theology: Whither the Anonymous Spirit in Luke 10:1-12?” The Spirit of Truth: Reading Scripture and Constructing Theology with the Holy Spirit, edited by Myk Habets, Wipf & Stock, Eugene, Oregon, 2010.