mountain masala

things i've been doing

well actually i've been crook for the last few days. thought i finally got swine flu, but since i started getting better after a really bad couple of days i havent been to the doc.

i dragged myself out of bed for week 2 of "the welcoming church" last thursday, and then regretted it for the next 2 days!  we have 50+ people from the corner uc, salisbury, semaphore, gartrell, glenelg, grangem modbury, summertown, vermont and others.

it's been a great couple of weeks. in a sense it's easy stuff to teach because people are keen, there's a lot to learn, and you can have fun doing it.

i've decided to blog about this stuff over at www.growing-disciples.org, as it suits our brief there. you might see that i've added an RSS feed from there over to the right... currently going through Edward T Hall's four notions of communal spaces.

i led a session on youth spirituality at our national in-service for children, youth & family workers. I'm blogging about that over at www.youthspirituality.com. a feed for that site added here too...

our youngest daughter turned 14 on sunday! cannot believe it. we celebrated with a home-cooked meal including pot pies with prawns and balmain bugs with leeks and potatoes in a gruyere-jarlsberg cheese sauce, followed by home-made vanilla bean ice cream with blueberries. an adelaide hills d'arenberg sauvignon blanc and some sensational local woodside cheeses.

my sunday morning your group is making a silent movie of the mark 7 reading for sunday 30th. a lot of fun and i might post the result.

stop child labour

a week or so ago the twins were part of a flashmob in the city to raise awareness about child labour and its implications. you don't get to see them in the video as they were on the other side of the 'silver balls'.

world peace on north terrace

i had a great meeting and conversation today with mark and sue, two minister-artists, about mark pierson's forthcoming visit 14-17 september. i am trying to build a loose network of churches/ministers close to the city who have an interest in the intersection between creative arts, theology and mission. somehow there are quite a few who fit that category, and who are progressive in a good sense (not just in a weird christian-label sense).

we're asking mark to work with us on 'alternative worship' and on public sacred spaces/events, something we plan to continue with jonny baker in march 2010, hopefully involving womadelaide and the fringe.

a community-serving church

last november i visited Gil Wise, a former classmate at Duke, who has a remarkable ministry in semi-rural North Carolina, down south near the border. Gil has rebirthed a congregation that is serving his community through child care, a food bank, and many other services. He's linking wealthy retirees and low income people. He's an amazing man. We are not in the same place theologically, but that's fine. I long ago stopped believing that particular theologies have a franchise on grace. I deeply admire what Gil is doing and he's in my prayers.

there's an article in Duke Divinity School's "Faith & Leadership" e-newsletter.

read it here.

amish country

on friday I caught the train to Lancaster, Pennsylvania via Philadelphia - an 11 hour trip in all. I paid an extra $30 to travel business class - decent seat but still terrible food... And the second train 'died' 3 times - lost all power.... but we made it.

I'm staying in Lebanon, just to the north, with Mennonite friends whom we met while living in the US.  They are involved in a charismatic Mennonite church, where Dan is Pastor. In the Mennonite way, he pastors part-time and works part-time as a builder. On saturday I caught up with their family for the day while they cooked and bottled apple sauce. this morning went along to their church. It's an eight year old church plant, an offshoot from their former church in the same town. they are based downtown in a very basic cafe space owned by jubilee ministries, a mennonite service agency which runs lots of programs. living upstairs are men involved in rehabilitation and aid programs, a number of whom attend the congregation. jubilee ministries also employ an outreach worker who runs the cafe on friday nights for young people and connects with them one-to-one during the week.

this is the church for people who other churches reject, or who don't feel comfortable in middle class church.

the bishop, the doctor, the reverend, and the pastor

Monday night we watched the Duke mens basketball team beat Presbyterian College from South Carolina. It took me back to our 2 years here when Duke got to the final four on the national championships and then won the NCAA championship for the first time. What can I say? The Blue Devils are in my blood.

I arrived last night in Durham, North Carolina, where we lived when I did my Masters Degree in Religious Education at Duke Divinity School. I'm here to visit some professors, catch up with some old friends and visit the library.

this morning I visited Dr Fred Edie who leads the annual Youth Academy which gathers 50 young people in Grades 11 and 12 and 30 adults for a 2 week discipleship formation experience. This is a national Lily Endowment-funded initiative in 30 theological schools across the country. We had a great conversation about discipleship formation, and I spoke about our Big Year Out program. Fred's recent book, Book, Bath, Table and Time, is a theological and educational exploration of what is behind the development of the Youth Academy. I look forward to reading his book, which seeks to ground youth ministry in liturgy from a more traditional perspective. We also talked about the United Methodist Church's strategies for recruiting ministers, and the work of the Fund for Theological Education.

missional aptitudes

(I'm still catching up on blog posts).

On Monday I met with Dr Terri Elton who heads the Children, Youth and Family department at Luther Seminary and whose specialty is leadership. We talked about the CYF program which has been reshaped around the Exemplar Study. Students are interns in placement, hence their classroom learning has a high proportion of contextual reflection. We also discussed the learning outcomes of the program and its delivery.

I also met with Prof. Craig Van Gelder who has written extensively on mission and congregational life, and discussed the Luther project of recasting ministry as missional leadership. I've been reading Craig's book, "The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit" much of which I like (but not all....), including this list:

resourcing spiritual identities

Today I had lunch with Professor Stewart Hoover from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and we talked about my proposed research project. We ate at the fantastic Boulder Dushanbe Tea House, a gift to the people of Boulder from the people of Tajikistan.

I've also been reading "Culture and Everyday Life" by Andy Bennett, and looking over the dissertation of my host, Dr. Curtis Coats, on new age spiritual tourism. What is coming out of that melting pot for me?

It has long been said that postmoderns live in a kind of 'spiritual supermarket' where they pick and choose their beliefs. Philip Hughes from the Christian Research Association has frequently mentioned Anthony Giddens' view that our identities today are self-constructed, not given.

Andy Bennett's review of cultural and social theory presents a brief and detailed review of developments in this field. Contrary to the view that postmodernism is an 'anything goes' situation where people randomly or blithely choose their beliefs, Giddens and others speak of 'reflexive modernity'. Some who believe that modernity is still upon would claim that the influences of capitalism and consumerism, and the values underpinning them, are sufficiently strong that we cannot claim that society is in a new state. Moreover, the cultural changes taking place are not uniform by any means.

However, the combined characteristics often called 'postmodernism' (distrust of science/rationality and 'progress', pluralism, etc, etc) do not necessarily result in people being dumb citizens fattening themselves on popular culture at the whim of multinational corporations.

not giving up just yet...

on a more sensible note.....

i should probably recant or qualify what I said about giving up on congregations.

I believe that the need to assist ministers to work on the understandings, skills and attitudes to be faithful/effective 'missional leaders' for tomorrow is essential. I always thought that kind of ongoing learning was part of the job description anyway. (the problems start when you try to define those terms....)

alongside that is the reality that it's VERY hard to transform congregations, and many ministers are disheartened and disillusioned by the expectation that its up to them to do so. in addition, few congregations and their surrounding demographics have the capacity to grow to being 'regional congregations', and the big church doesn't appeal to or suit a significant number of people.

so as a church we ought to be supporting congregational ministers as they seek to be faithful in participating in God's mission (hence the visit of steve taylor at the moment!). We ought to provide congregations with resources, encouragement, examples, permission and skills to move in new directions.

and... here's the crunch... I think that we should optimistically expect only small to moderate results. that's my point. the post-everything tide is already out to sea, and we can stop blaming ministers and congregations for missing it.

what we can and should do is direct more resources - people, money, property, education - towards doing new things - not just 'church planting' but birthing missional communities of all kinds.

and put a priority not on calling ordained ministers but on calling people who are great are starting new communities, lay or ordained. they can learn on the job.

as a college we've been puzzled by the occasional person who says that they don't necessarily feel called to congregational ministry. as a church we want to slot them into the mainstream because there's a need. I suggest instead that we should say "hallelujah" and work hard with them on the missional aspect of their call.

as a synod we don't need 2 or 3 "fresh expressions" initiatives - we need 20! so one of my study leave resolutions is to work on a way to call and resource at least 5 people a year to do something new. i did float this at the first leadership development council i think...

telford

From Stratford-on-Avon we've driven to Telford for a couple of days to visit Mark Berry and the SafeSpace community. We're staying a Madely House, a 16th century house turned into a hotel. Amazing building and fairly cheap. Apparently its haunted...

On the way we stopped at Ironbridge, the site of the first iron bridge in the world, built in the mid-1700s. This area was the production heart of the Industrial Revolution apparently (doh - it's near Birmingham...)

In the evening we had dinner with Mark Berry and heard some of his story. Mark has a background in youth work, among other things, He was asked to start a new faith community here in Telford, which is a newish, growing community - lots of younger families. Rather than starting a congregation as such, he is birthing a small missional community. The aim is not numerical growth, although that is not avoided, but rather building around the DNA of community, pilgrimage and mission.

Mark has made contact with the local football club to offer to help them achieve their mission, which is very community-oriented. He assists in a range of ways and spends his Saturdays there. Mark's wife conducts nature walks with a spiritual dimensions. These are'nt advertised, rather the hope is that people are invited by word of mouth.

The community is a rather mixed group of about a dozen, who meet weekly for a meal,communion,  conversation and to share their pilgrimage. Mark sees table hospitality as central to community. The community also take seriously spiritual practices. People have come to the community by various means and cover a wide age range. The group meet in the Berry's home, which is church-owned. Mark is paid by the church as a missional iniative.

This morning we went looking around in smaller groups, and my carload visited the ruins of Buildwas Abbey and Wenlock Priory. Both of these are quite remarkable ruins, giving a sense of size and scope to monastic and church life in Norman times. It's one thing to study church history, but to be here and see the ruins alongside the floor plans of the original buildings was quite a significant learning experience for me.

Then a look around Telford to get a sense of the city, before spending the evening with the SafeSpace community. The 14 of us outnumbered them 2 to 1, and it was rather cramped. They offered us wonderful hospitality and we spent the evening talking informally with various members of the community. Back at the hotel some of us debriefed for a while.

I wonder how much effort the church should put into supporting and transforming congregations (which largely tend to sink or swim regardless of the assistance they receive) and how much into new faith communities. To put it another way - the challenge to congregations is the demise of modernity and Christendom, and we are spectacularly unsuccessful in trying to solve that. We would be better to put energy into authentic responses/expressions for tomorrow, since it's always easier to start something new than to get an ocean liner to change course...

I am quite in favour of a proliferation of base ecclesial communities, with those communities having their own local flavour and style. I agree with those who predict that the church of the future will consist of a few large congregations, who will largely exist as their own 'denominations' (as is the case now...) and many smaller communities.

I am coming to the view that the church needs to invest MUCH more heavily in sponsoring new communities. Of course, there is a limit to how many people like Mark any denomination could sponsor - a small faith community' approach can't rely on full-time workers, it must rely largely on part-time or 'volunteer' leaders. The important things is that this is not about 'models' - there is already enough evidence of models. It is about philosophy and approach - the fostering of new faith communities by one or two missional leaders is highly relational and contextual (as distinct from the Seaford-type "church clone"). We need those kinds of people, not a range of 'models'.

How do we form the Mark Berry's of this world? I have no doubt that it is important that Mark comes from a youth work background, since that breeds (i) contextualisation skills, (ii) communication and relationship abilities, (iii) ability to engage with community and culture beyond the church, and (iv) willingness to takes risks and cross boundaries. I'm also clear that if the church had told Mark to get ordained first, he would not have agreed and he would not now be here.

Whether it is called "leadership" or something else, investing in people who will make a difference seems important to me.

I'm be interested to send our new Synod leadership 'curriculum' to Mark for comment. I'm fairly convinced that we are too heavily focused on "church leadership as we know it" and that a greater emphasis on field placements will reinforce that. At the same time, I can imagine that an apprenticeship approach with someone like Mark as coach/mentor could be a significant forming experience.

We kept talking last night about the possible domestication of new initiatives. That's only a problem if you have some to start with!!