mountain masala

new music

Here's what just hit my playlist for the month. Some great stuff here!

"Twistification" - The Last Royals - stunning pop-rock from Brooklyn. Sometimes like the Waterboys, sometimes Ryan Adams...

"The Big Black and the Blue" - First Aid Kit - Swedish folk duo of the female variety. sounds totally US but with some Brit folk sensibilities too.

"Trio Libero" - Andy Sheppard, Michel Benita & Sebastian Rochford - gorgeous jazz - sax, double bass and drums.

"Sing You Sinners" - Erin McKeown - for some reason she did an album of upbeat old gospel songs like "Get Happy".

"Von Grey EP" - Von Grey - four sisters doing folk + bluegrass, lovely harmonies.

"Cabaret" - Moon Taxi - apparently this is called "jam rock". great, interesting, varied music.

"Crazy Ever After" - The Rescues - pretty straight up and down infectious rock with a country tinge and great four part harmonies.

"Lysandre" - Christopher Owens - stunning pop. think Lemonheads-lite crossed with Simon & Garfunkel.

"Live Acoustic" - Guster - another cracker of an album. makes you want to tap your feet and sing along... sounds very Matthew Sweet in places.

"There You Go Again" - Livingston Taylor - yep, James' brother who ought to be just as famous.

"Blunderbuss" - Jack White - yeah, about time!

"Celebration Day" - Led Zeppelin...

The Teaching Ministry of Congregations

“A congregation’s culture can support critical reflection in education, or it can impede it. Its practices can involve people in forms of action which raise important issues that, subsequently, are taken up in education, or they can draw people into deadening cycles of conventionality."

I've just finished summarising Richard Osmer's excellent book, "The Teaching Ministry of Congregations" (Wesminster John Knox, 2005). It's extraordinary in its scope, thoughtfulness and detail. Osmer is a Presbyterian minister and Professor of Christian Education at Princeton Theological Seminary, USA.

Osmer’s book is the closest that I have found to my own research. It consists of an analysis of the teaching ministry of the apostle Paul, an ethnographic study of three very different congregations, and proposals for refashioning the teaching ministry of congregations.

Osmer sees three core tasks in the apostle Paul’s teaching ministry
    •    Catechesis - handing on and interpreting Israel’s Scripture and early Christian tradition
    •    Exhortation - moral formation, moral education, teaching Christian hope, and exhortation to care
    •    Discernment - learning to interpret everyday life eschatologically

With these core tasks in mind, Osmer engages in an ethnographic study of three diverse congregations in different cultures and countries - USA, South Korea and South Africa. He examines them through four frames.

Practices -  “the ways in which a congregation is a community sharing a way of life embodied in its practices, which mediate both traditions of the past and contextual challenges of the present” -  teaching ministry as congregational formation.

Curriculum - “the ways a congregation is a school that educations its members through practices of education which promote learning in a systematic, intentional, and sustained fashion over the course of the human life cycle” - teaching ministry as congregational education.

Leadership - “the ways a congregation is a learning organization that faces adaptive challenges with the potential of altering both its internal life and its relationship to the surrounding social context” - teaching ministry as congregational leadership.

Pilgrimage - “the ways a congregation is composed of individuals at very different points in their faith journeys” - teaching ministry as congregational support of individuals’ unfolding pilgrimages of faith.

The churches that he studies are very large by Australian standards, often a difficulty in engaging with American examples. However his analysis is broad, deep and rich, as are the sources whom he brings into the conversation - Howard Gardner, Moltmann, Volf, Ricouer, Fowler, a range of writers regarding leadership...

Drawing on Moltman, he suggests a coherence between Christology, the congregation's Christopraxis, and its core practices:

Christ’s              Congregational   Core
Fivefold Office   Christopraxis      Practices
Prophetic            Marturia             Preaching, testimony, evangelism
Priestly               Diakonia             Eucharist, burden bearing, social outreach
Transfigured       Doxology             Sabbath keeping, praise, recreation
Royal                  Didache              Catechesis. exhortation, discernment
Open fellowship  Koinonia             Baptism, affirmation of spiritual gifts,
                                                    hospitality

I could say much more, but I mainly wanted to alert you to the book. It is interesting to place it along side what other prominent thinkers in Christian Education have been saying. I find these ways of thinking about what and how a congregation teaches to be immensely helpful. His four 'frames' of analysis are quite relevant to my own study. Unfortunately I can't easily summarise the details or nuances of the case studies. Certialny this book ought to be prominent in the study of Christian education for ministers and other educational leaders.

Alive@5 posts

I just discovered that the Search thing on this site doesnt like Alive@5. It mght be the "@" that's the problem, or just that the search engine doesnt work that well anyway (he says from experience)... So I've made an Alive@5 category that you can access via the Categories list in the right hand column or just click here. Not every month's 'program' hase been written up. Some I will simply leave in the dust, but there are a couple like "Where The Wild Things Are" that are worthy of some description. I'll get around to it.

mission-shaped worship - Alive@5 - part 2

I wrote the start of this over a year ago, describing what we are trying in Alive@5, and just found the following incomplete post from over a year ago, but I thought I'd post it anyway...

the first post is here.

read it first or nothing will make sense. and now to say some more about Alive@5...

the key elements have been

1. music - lively, participatory (percussion instruments), Christian but not too 'praisey' (i.e. i love you Lord..... etc)

2. giving thanks. the MSM material talks about 'praise' but we havent used that word. we do a simple 'thank you' prayer each time. we've used images, a song, a simple responsive text projected, a tactile activity, a story.

3. scripture as story. we've worked out our themes month to month. Easter. Friendship. Forgiveness/Saying Sorry. Welcome/Hospitality. Good Samaritan. Sower & Seed (Seeds of Goodness and Hope). we played with 'Christian practices' for 3 months but gave up. we'll probably come back to it. we have been trying to focus on Gospel texts. ie. Jesus. wanting people to get to know about him, wanting them to experience his stories and his teachings, seeing narrative as a central medium for communication and experience of faith. We used the text about Abram and Sarai and the visitors/angels for the 'Hospitality' session, which was fine. But with both the Old Testament and Gospel narratives, so much of it is weird from a contemporary perspective. I could write a LOT more about this, but its a central challenge for us - using the Bible in a 'missional' worship setting.
anyway, some key things for us are

Facebook Group

For those who care, I'm co-hosting a new group on Facebook called "Forming Faith, Growing Disciples". It started last week and so far there are 140 members - mainly from the Uniting Church in Australia. You can find the group here.

Developmental, Practice and Discovery Learning

"Congregations of the old Protestant mainline denominations… continue to sponsor many educational activities, but they lack the intentionality, the coherence and the continuity needed to maintain and renew their identities as communities of faith."

I've just been writing a summary of Charles Foster's "From Generation to Generation" (Cascade Books, 2012) as part of my study of Christian education. Foster is a United Methodist minister and Professor of Religion and Education emeritus at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, USA. The book chronicles the decline of intentionality and influence concerning Christian Education in mainline US churches, with many parallels to the Australian situation.

One of his many insights is that faith formation requires three inter-related kinds of learning.

Developmental learning - building blocks of learning that are available when we are ready for them, that accumulate over time. This has been the common foundation of Sunday School curriculum. This isn't only cognitive, but it has often been seen in the light of what we are ready to learn and 'know'. What are people ready and able to learn at different ages and stages of life?

Practice learning - “directed to the competency of our participation in the community or communities” and “the quest for effective and competent participation”. He suggests that the cognitive aspects of faith often don’t take hold because their relevance is not experienced as lived reality. He says that “Habit memories, in contrast to cognitive memories, are social and historical, embodied and contextual.” “Practice learning binds and sustains developmental and discovery learning in forming faith.” For example, we engage with practices differently according to our ages and stages ofd development. Habits of faith form predispositions that “become catalysts to resources for new knowledge and skills, hence the crucial link with discovery learning… "These mediated expectations have an ecclesial shape.”

Discovery learning - exploratory, transformative learning that imagines or uncovers new possibilities for appropriating our faith traditions in changing contexts. Discovery learning is where learning is relevant to our situation and setting.

I found those three categories very helpful in thinkng about the what, where and how of congregational Christian education.

Foster talks about three congregational habits that make intergenetaional learning possible - hospitality, celebration and conversation. He also says a lot about the importance of intergenerational mentoring.

Its a short book at 150 pages and well worth a read. There's much more in it than I've outlined here. I felt that like many older people, he didn'treally know waht to do with electronic communication and technology except to be very cautious about its influence. Secondly he presumes that churches still have children and youth in them. Thirdy, I felt that he fell short of exploring in more detail how mission and learning/education might be related.

Alive@5 starts 3 February

Download 2013 Poster PDF

Coriander, Sesame and Coconut-crusted Chicken

Coriander, Sesame and Coconut-crusted Chicken with Kaffir Lime Sauce

Great recipe from The Spirit House Cookbook. I heartily recommend this book for excellent Thai food with a medium level of complexity in terms of coooking. We have Women's Weekly and Family Circle books which are pretty basic. This takes it all up a notch.

Serves 4

Chicken Crust

1 tsp light palm sugar
2 tsp oyster sauce
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup shredded coconut
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cupp finely chopped coriander leaves and stems
2 tbs vegtalbe oil

Mix all of the above ingredients and spread on 4 medium-sized chicken breasts (approx 150g each). A couple of mine were a bit too big and thick so I should have trimmed them first. Put chicken in the fridge for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. This is important so that the crust doesnt fall apart when you fry it.

Sauce

200 ml coconut cream
1/2 cup mirin
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 double kaffir lime leaves, chopped finely
2 tsp fish sauce
2 tsp chilli jam (or minced chilli)

Combine all of the ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to the boil, then simmer for a few minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Cook chicken breasts in oil in a frypan over medium heat, crust side down, for 5 minutes - until crust is golden. Turn over and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. (I gave mine 15 mins, and then the bigger ones needed another 5 mins. Next time I'll weigh and trim them. I put foil over the crust for part of that time.)

Blanch 250g snow peas or sugar snap peas.

I added chow mein noodles and steamed zucchini. Serve with sauce around the plate.

It really is a fantastic cookbook. Go and treat yourself to a copy.

Nachos and Mexican Salad

I was given Jamie Oliver's "!5 Minute Meals" for Christmas. Here's my rejig of one of his dishes.

A platter of sliced chorizo, smoked bacon and pork loin baked in BBQ sauce.

Corn chips baked with sauted cherry tomato halves, cheddar cheese, spring onions, red chillies and coriander leaves.

Salad of rocket and spinach leaves, roasted red capsicum, baked corn, cannelini beans, grilled avocado and pineapple, and lime.

The green dressing is spring onions, coriander, lime juice, sour cream and oil.

It took me forever to make but was an excellent combination and looked great, if I do say so myself. We'll be doing this again.

Guilt-edged Mirror

Grace has been awarded the sculpture prize for her final year of her Visual Arts degree. I don't often blog about our family obvious reasons, but since we have two graduating artists seeking work, I'm going to support them by getting their names 'out there'.

Grace's piece won praise from the judges for both its edginess and coherence. While Grace is a great illustrator (often ink and watercolour), her leaning toward sculpture is about creating interactive, social experiences.

She currently has a piece in "Nest" at the Format Gallery, 15 Peel St, Adelaide. I can't tell you what it may invite you to do.

Inspired by the phrase “Birds of a feather flock together”, 'Feathers' features 23 young artists’ works which will be enmeshed in a giant chicken wire nest built within the gallery, physically and metaphorically supported by the audience as they weave fabric, yarn, sticks, tape, and other recycled materials into the walls.

At Uni Grace made an installation involving 400 balloons (mostly blown up by me... using compressed air), each with sentence of someone's dream in them (mostly inserted by me), and some with tiny torches in them (also me...). The darkened room had cloth suspended waist-high with the balloons above the cloth and light shining down. When you walked into the room you had to stoop down. It was all about the weight of dreams. A wonderful idea.

As a sideline she had an outdoor piece in "Drawn In" where she had 200 kites hung in trees (me holding a ladder in the rain, Yvonne helping make kites while sitting in the mud and rain) representing the loss of childhood innocence as we journey through life.

Prior to that she filmed herseld dragging a kite around town and then throwing it off a balcony. It was all about the difficulty of the creative process. I missed seeing that one.

And then there's "Fluxus", the movie of which will never be seen publicly. Rundle Mall. A large box. A smaller, singing box. Carrots. The "Tim the Enchanter" headgear. Chanting. Balloons and glitter. Bananas. It was all about audience reaction.

We're very proud of her and have absolutely no idea what she might want to create next. But she has power tools and is calling MY shed HER workshop, so who knows...