sustain:if:able kiwi

What is church? seed cathedral as contemporary ecclesiology

Over the week I had an email, inviting me to speak on the topic of “What is Church?’ to a rural grouping of churches.

Over the week, I’ve also been thinking about an invite to speak at CityChurch 2010, the first ever gathering of city centre Uniting church leaders, to explore what it means for them to be church in the context of the centre of the city.

Over the week I discovered the Seed Cathedral (via the creative blog of Michael Volland). It is the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010. Expecting over 70 million visitors, the theme is “Better City, Better Life.” The design had three aims, including providing a significant public open space in which visitors can relax. The Seed Cathedral is 20-metres high, made from 60,000 transparent 7.5-metre long optical strands. Each of the 60,000 rods has a seed embedded within its tip. The seeds are taken from the Millennium Seedbank, at the Royal Botanical Gardens. (For more go here)

Fantastic! Amazing to see such imagination, outside the church, in such a public space.

What is church? Well, working from the Seed Cathedral it includes
– a place to honour the past (seeds/tradition) as a source of future life (seeds grow, tradition contextualises)
– a spacious place to invite reflection on living better
– an invitation to consider transcendence

This all links for me with my use of the children’s story book, Bodge plants a seed, including at the recent Queensland Synod (my talk is here). Leaders treating people as seeds, nurturing their growth, seeking the unfolding of their unique charism.