mountain masala

Up the Top End

Since the start of last week I've been in Queensland, interviewing congregational leaders, lay and ordained, about Christian education and discipleship. This has included a 'church plant' in association with a church school, a revitalised suburban congregation, two churches in Townsville - one a long-time charismatic congregation, the other more 'mainstream' but seeking to be renewed, and an aboriginal community in Mapoon, far north Queensland. Diverse, rich, stimulating conversations, with a host of insights for other churches. I was fortunate to get an afternoon at Rowes Bay north of Townsille, where there were a couple of dozen kite surfers putting on a spectacular show for passers-by.

Research Interviews

I've just started travelling all over Australia over a 6 week period interviewing about 20 congregational leaders, ordained and lay, about Christian education - for the research project that I'm undertaking for our national Assembly and as a PhD thesis through Flinders University. Last year I conducted pilot interviews with several people. Now I've started the formal reseaerch and interviewed six people - all excellent conversations.

My research question is: What dynamic characteristics of educational leadership and of learning communities are significant for effective education for Christian discipleship in the Uniting Church’s postmodern missional context?

A question for you to ponder: Do faith communities and their leaders see lifelong learning in the beliefs and practices of Christian discipleship for the mission of God as central to their ‘reason for being’?

For the purposes of the study, Christian education is defined as the theory and practice of teaching, learning and formation in life-long Christian faith and discipleship, both for individuals and communities of faith. (Thanks to John Littleton for the suggestion of the last phrase).

The term "Christian education" seems problematic for the Uniting Church at this time, hence I am using it as an umbrella concept, and inviting people to speak in their own terms about growth in faith and discipleship.

I wrote a catch-phrase for an interim report that went: Fostering life-long discipleship through informed practice in intentional community for missional living in postmodern society.

That might sound like a bunch of cliches, but it summarised a number of aspects of the study.

This is the first of two rounds of the qualitative study, of which I'll say more. I'm travelling to every state and territory in order to interview church leaders whose congregations are diverse in terms of location, size, theology, culture, style and mission emphasis.

It's a wonderful privilege, and i hope to share some of the journey with you. Stay tuned...

Alive@5 Plays!

Last Sunday's Alive@5 was on the theme of Play, chosen as an expression of the season of Easter. Since our "Interactive Easter" event obviously had sombre elements, this evening was more about celebration.Our minister, Phil, has just started long service leave, so this has been a good prompt to involve others more in the planning and leadership, and to work on some changes that we've talked through prior to him going away.

One key change is to have one or more arrival activities, on the basis that people with children almost never arrive on time. While Messy Church does this, our overall program/approach differs, in that we want people to experience the biblical narrative in some way/s before they explore/respond, for several reasons...

So we started with parachute games (above) as folk arrived, and we have several play activities on tables.

The introduction consisted of a number of short and mainly funny video clips about play - most were TV ads - among them highlighting the need to spend time together and that might mean turning off the "screen" among other things.

Communities of Practice and Church Councils

"The most distinctive, valuable knowledge in organisations is difficult or impossible to codify and is tightly associated with a professional person's identity. Developing and disseminating such knowledge depends on informal learning much more than formal - on conversation, storytelling, mentorships, and lessons learned through experience. This informal learning, in turn, depends on collegial relationships with those you trust and who are willing to help when you ask. Informal learning activities amd personal relationships among colleagues are the hallmark of communities of practice. Hence, we see an increasing focus on informal community structures whose aggregate purpose is to steward the learning of an organisation and its invaluable knowledge assets."

William Snyder and Etienne Wenger 2004, 'Our world as a learning system: A communities-of-practice approach' in Conner, ML and Clawson, JG (eds), Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Technology and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp35-58.

While the above quote focuses on informailty and relationships, I see another aspect to this. There seems to be a fundamental tension between the trend toward executive leadership by a few and the goals of forming 'reflective practicioners' and reflective communities of practice. The more that discussion about the critical challenges of life and faith are removed from the life of a community, not only is the capacity to learn together from experience undeveloped, but the personal and interpersonal practices and disciplines that might make such learning and discernment possible lose their power and purpose. The less that a synod or presbytery meeting or a church council is allowed to have deep and ongoing conversation about those things that matter most (and instead 'rubber stamp' the thinking done by a few people), the less the whole group is able to function as a self-transforming entity. Not only is an unhealthy trust and dependence built, those who see the dichotomy are likely to withdraw their participation, thereby depriving the whole of their own critically reflective capacities.

In this regard there is a fundamental problem in the notion of church councils dealing with a lot of busniess efficiently. Might we instead choose wisely about which few issues we will wrestle with deeply and prayerfully over time. Let us choose to frame our gatherings around ongoing conversations about those things that are most critical to our life and mission, and thereby build our capacity as a community of faith to make learning and discernment part of our lives.

Alive@5 in May

Interactive Easter

We ran our second Interactive Easter event at Rosefield last night. Not sure how many turned up, but the place was comfortably busy. We run 5-7pm and most people arrived in the first 45 mins.

Here's a rundown on the program with some photos and downloads. I didnt get to take photos of everything, and our resident photographer was absent.

Download Program Handout and Activity Posters (cover photo courtesy of jonny baker).

1. Easter Palms

We made Palm leaves and Palm crosses in the foyer of the church. This also serves as a 'holding area' prior to people coming in for the plenary activity. Palm leaf details. Video on making palm crosses.

2. Songs and Story

Jo, Emma, Elena and Peter both performed and taught some songs. Gillian Powis told the Palm Sunday story, first as biblical narrative, and secondly from the perspective of the two donkeys, with on-screen visuals.

3. Crafty Easter

Helen and David led some craft activities - making Easter cards and other stuff. You know, cutty pasty things.

3. Arty Easter

People were invited to paint an image (icon) of Jesus on a tile.

interactive easter

coming soon to a church near me...

 

 Download Interactive Easter Poster (A4 low-resolution) 900kb

Download Interactive Easter Poster (A4 high-resolution) 8 mb

Christian education field interviews

I'm in the process of setting up interviews with local church leaders (ordained and the other type of Christian... just kidding. we're all lay people.) who are exercising the kind of leadership in Christian education/faith formation/spiritual growth that has a discipleship and mission edge that we can learn from. i'm going through a peer recommendation process. it's been exciting to receive more suggestions than I can include from some parts of the country and bewildering to have complete silence from others. but then, i look at the flood news and figure that some presbytery people are busy with other things... since i'm trying to do this as a PhD I can't tell you much else just yet, except to say that the Assembly Project is broader than my PhD, so I'm hoping to undertake a bunch of interviews that can be shared sooner and wider. I've done some trial interviews and I've loved it (not so sure about the subjects), so I can't wait to finally be doing this. The PhD process has involved learning more about qualitative research methods (I have done some in the past and my first degree had a quantitative research major) which I've really enjoyed and hope to continue and carry back into my work at the College in 2013.

Interactive Christmas 'Stations'

Here's the detail of what we did last Sunday with Interactive Christmas. The event was open 5-7pm, with people coming and going when they chose. Unlike Interactive Easter, this time we channelled everyone through the church. As they arrived they received a simple ' program' with map.(380kb PDF) This matched posters (33kb PDF) throughout the venue (icons from the excellent font Speed Bump from 3 Islands Press).

The First Angel - based on the angel coming to Zechariah. We had the text from Luke 1:5-23 (CEV) and a simple poem to introduce the journey. People made the angels that are described here. It was a good activity, but we only had two glue guns (which kids arent allowed to use themselves) and not enough helpers for the busy times. Next time I'd add a couple of face painters and have more helpers and equipment. The issue for us was that this area was a 'holding area' prior to the next activity, so people had to wait here until they were ushered into the next place.

Read on for more...

Interactive Christmas

I currently have three days off (annual leave) doing final prep for our Interactive Christmas" event this coming Sunday. As with the event that we ran last Easter, this will consist of a series of 'stations', most of which people can visit at their own pace. It has a bit of everything in it.

- music by some talented locals plus the remarkable Leigh Newton
- biblical storytelling by Sarah Agnew
- a 'Christmas around the world' activity where people share and learn about ways that Christmas is celebrated around the world
- a space to respond to the Christmas story using clay
- a display of images of the Christmas story from history and today and nativity scenes (this will be in a darkened room with light and video and hopefully cooler than it sounds...)
- making and decorating Christmas cookies to take and share as a gift
- an experiential re-telling of the shepherds' encounter with the angels
- a storytelling corner with story books and Rory's Story Cubes (I'm adding some additional images to some of the faces)
- some other Christmas crafts
- a reflective activity using 'stars' and inviting reflection on hope
- a Jesse tree on which to hang peace prayers
- a live nativity (featuring Luci, Mark and baby Anna - aka Jesus) and Athena speaking a reflection that I havent written yet
- iPhone video loop of short Christmas-related clips (iPhone in box with headphone hub)
- outdoor sausage sizzle

I'm using angels as an icon throughout the event, and starting with people making angels to travel with them and whisper to them along the way. I'm not a craft person, but I decided to hunt online myself for angel ideas, as I didnt want anything too tacky. The following is not what was in my mind's eye (but that involved glass and metal and other kid-unfriendly things). So here's my own angel design:

- polystyrene head and body. head glued to body
- a pin through the head into the body
- hair glued to head
- pipe cleaner wrapped around ribbon and then glued to body

We used a glue gun and that seemed to hold.

The idea is that people can then decorate the angel with coloured felt pens.

Grace designed some wise men for her uni are portraits, and we've scanned these, tidied them up and  getting them enlarged and printed on fabric to display.

so it's all happening. will let you know how it goes.