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.

Lay Preachers in the Uniting Church

well I've just finished the final draft of a report and discussion paper on lay leadership in worship and preaching in the Uniting Church. It's the result of a couple of years of work and a year of research involving presbyteries, lay leaders, ministers and church councils. we've had a small working group, and my main collaborator has been Lynne Taylor who has worked with us as a researcher and been excellent.

the report is 21 pages and 14000+ words (its very fine print!) and will hopefully be online next week, so then I can comment on it (although my role is not to make comment until the responses come back in).

it's mainly an interesting exercise in how you help an interconciliar church that thinks its is resource-poor attend to the fact that it is resource-rich in every sense, including people. but given the growing role of lay leadership in small, rural and isolated communities, it does seem trite to speak of 'resource-rich' when people feel they are struggling.

the big challenge this week has been to summarise what we think we've learned from the research, and then provide some statements to which people can react, prior to making concrete recommendations in a couple of months time.

i don't know whether I got the last bit right, but I went from writing "needs" and "should" statements to talking about what might "benefit" people, particularly lay leaders. it will be interesting to see if there's a way to agree on desired outcomes, and then help the church be creative in seeking them. far too easy instead to tell various sectors of the church what they "should" do. i now have to think about what/how/who this might involve, and whether indeed its possible to pull off that kind of different approach. there's no question that our discussion paper looks NOTHING like any UCA report that I've ever seen...

so my PhD thesis is only about 6 times as long as this? easy peasy. (I just wish these words had all been for my thesis...) at least now I can get back to it!

 

Australian Association of Researchers in Education Conference

I'm at the annual AARE conference in Hobart. Lovely to be back  in Tassie. I'm here with hundreds of people who study education, teach educators, study the teaching of educators, study how educators teach, study how education is studied, study those who study education, and study what we mean by all of the above. i'm out of my comfort zone. (i know two people whom I havent seen yet.) people from universities, education depts and schools from across Australia and overseas.

there's a strong focus on schooling (yet little/nothing specific to church schools), and on preparing teachers to teach. a much lesser focus on higher education in general. very little on vocational education. virtually nothing on more 'community-based' learning eg. church.

i've been to a helpful session on research methods, and a session on educational leadership that was really about school principals for the future. there are 600 presentations over 5 days, so I'm hoping that i pick a few winners. the challenge is that there are lots of people here who know stuff that would be interesting and helpful for me, but its not really going to be in the sessions, is it?

tomorrow night I'm going to the "technology & education" special interest group dinner. i dont have an iPad... will it be all geek introverts? virtual food?

the Routledge book display has some great looking books on educational research and research in general...

i'm doing church work while I'm here too. that's the next post...

CRASSH

I've just stumbled across CRASSH - the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge University. Loads of interesting stuff. Manuel Castells is about to give some lectures about . All kinds of interesting conferences and symposia... discussion about how creativity and innovation are measured as social capital, 'digital humanities' research... definitely worth watching and a visit next time I'm in the UK.