mountain masala

social media and mainstream religion

Mainline churches come directly or indirectly from the medieval church, and medieval or pre-modern communication was highly relational. In its own low-tech way, the medieval church was networked. People created and shared knowledge and shaped their practical theology or their spirituality by sharing stories...

The modern period changed that. The printing press distributed knowledge and allowed the Reformations to happen, but it also privatized reading... Reading was not done in community anymore, and that changed the relational nature of communication...

Social media changed that. It democratized communication, giving everybody access to all kinds of information. It also gave people access to the means of creating, sharing and collaborating on information.

an excellent interview interview with Dr Elizabeth Drescher, author of "Tweet if You Heart Jesus" here. I've just borrowed the book from our College library. more to come...

the church zombie walk

that's what Halloween,  aka "All Hallow's Eve" is. The night of the dead. remembering the saints who surround us. who they were, why and how they died. if I had my own church I'd make it a creepy gothic thing this night. skeletons, death metal, maybe even real tattoos on offer (serious). not messy church but bloody church. 'i see dead people'...

tonight we tried to read from the book "365 saints" by, wait for it... Woodeene Koenig-Bricker. It was supposed to be dead serious but it turned out funny thanks to the saints names and some of the very lame 'life applications'. a great pity as these were remarkable people.

some excellent saint's names:

Andrew Dung-Lac
Christina the Astonishing
Hedwig (no, she wasnt an owl....)
Imelda Lambertini (no, not Lamborghini...)
John Before The Latin Gate
Lucy
Sylvester I (i know what you're thinking...)
Wadetrudis

but no Brian...

next year lets all dress up as dead saints and walk the street and tell our stories...

new media for sinners and saints

Here's a great article from Union Seminary's New Media Project. Its an interview with Nadia Bolz-Weber, the Lutheran pastor at House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. I met her briefly at Greenbelt in 2008.A remarkable woman and a facsinating church community.

Read  Ancient Liturgy for Scruffy Hipsters with Smartphones

what gift will you give?

the church of england bookshop in the uk knows just what a newly ordained person needs....

if you're attending an ordination....

what will you give?

sunday's coming

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

do we still need christian education? - part one

apologies for the quiet blog... i seem to be going backwards at the moment...

i've just had three days in melbourne at the annual meeting of the uniting church's national christian education reference committee, something that i joined a couple of years ago. great to catch up with people from across the country and meet some new folk (including paul, who is a 'research fellow in multi-modal learning'.  damn! how I want that on my business card!) 

one visitor asked whether 'christian education' was a modernist term that we didnt need in a postmodern word. i'm glad he asked it (although we didnt get enough time to explore why he did). so, is CE a thing of the past, or what?

growing disciples

speaking of our "growing disciples" project - the website is here. it's a group project...

coming events

details of some coming events:

in a few weeks time we have a visitor from Oxford, Revd Henry Kirk here to lead a couple of sessions on using are in preaching, teaching and pastoral care. monday 27 and tuesday 28 july.

Download Henry Kirk brochure

we have several topics in for aged care chaplains and volunteers starting at the end of july.

Download Aged Care brochure

Steve Taylor will be back in town for a week in early August as the keynote speaker at "breathe", our national in-service for children, youth and family workers. we'll be taking the opportunity for these:

"Culture with a K(iwi)" - a day seminar on mission as local culture-making - Sat 1 August. Brochure out later this week.

Download "Culture with a K" poster

[re]generate with steve will be monday night 3 august. postcard out soon!

there'll also be a coaching session for those who participated in steve's coaching series last year. we know who you are - you'll be contacted shortly.

also a reminder that mark pierson will be in town 14-18 september, son we'll have a [re]generate mon 14 september. more details soon!

leading learning

we just had our fourth annual "grow & go" training weekend. dreadful name, but we were uncreative at the time. numbers were down. I'm blaming the global pig crisis. or the economic flu meltdown...

anyway, we've had 80+ people in the past at the training and this weekend it was about 45. but I'm not obsessed with numbers... I've had dreams of running a bigger event - one-day event, short electives, more people (like our Mission Expo). but seeing the responses of the more intensive, in-depth learning, I'm revising my thinking here. these people needed and valued the in-depth learning.

we ended up running four streams - pastoral care skills, evangelism, faith & film, and professional ethics for ministry workers. we had four excellent teachers, and the participants really appreciated the weekend. we run Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday afternoon. it's not a live-in event, and some people travel for 6 hours to be here. i ran the worship and helped with other arrangements.

if I'm disappointed its that more ministers dont bring a group to events like this. i know from my time in rural Victoria that people will go to an event if the minister goes with them.

our new college

Last night we launched our 'new' college at our presbytery/synod meeting.

We had a jazzy-gospel band featuring the fergusons... Andrew Dutney preached on 1 Corintihians 12, and managed to connect that with the new college being like the bit of the travel guide that you rip out of the book to put in your back pocket while you're visiting that town. ie. this initiative is current, contextual, provisional and temporary. a great metaphor I thought.