jonnybaker

fractured or networked - depends on the lens you look through!

one of the most thoughtful mission thinkers out there in the blogosphere in relation to mission and the emerging culture is mark sayers who i really enjoyed meeting last year. he has just posted a piece that i have been thinking about for the last 24 hours the emerging missional church fractures into mini movements. initially i thought he was writing as though this was a problem but on  re-read i'm not exactly sure. maybe he is just trying to map something...

here's my thought on this. if you look at this through an old lens - denominational or tribal - it looks like a problem. but if you look at it through a network lens it's exactly what we should both expect and hope for (though i wouldn't use the word fractured as that sounds very negative). i blogged previously about small world theory which i don't want to go over at length again. but to recap a couple of points. people can only hold a certain number of meaningful relationships, most people are locally focused (in their small world), it only needs one or two people in any small world to be connectors to other small worlds and suddenly the insights across the various small worlds (or movements as mark calls them) can flow around the network.

the key point therefore for any movement is having a particular edge and practice, connecting with others but then encouraging some to focus externally so that that movement isn't insular.

my fear around mark's post/headline is that people will think fracture, spilt, difference, disagreement. whereas i'm looking and thinking diversity, network, connectivity, flows, insights etc... it all depends on the lens you look through!

i wrote a piece on the spirit in which this might be conducted called the network of christ which you might like to read if you didn't catch it.

of course australia is a different context which i know less about in terms of how networked/fractured it is. but my impression in the uk is that there are plenty of small worlds but lots of connectors and lots of generosity...

christ has no body now but yours

came across christ has no body now but yours on phil's new blog and am adding it as a worship trick

Christ has no Body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which he looks
Compassion on the world
Yours are the feet with which he walks
To do good
Yours are the hands with which he blesses
All the world.

Yours are the hands
Yours are the feet
Yours are the eyes
You are his body
Planning in the Kingdom
It helps, now and then, to step back
And take the long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts
It is even beyond our vision.
Lord, we know in whom we believe
We accomplish in our lifetime
Only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise
that is God’s work
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying that the
Kingdom always lies beyond us.

Lord, we know in whom we believe
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith
No confession brings perfection
No pastoral visit being wholeness
No programme accomplishes the Church’s mission
No set of goals and objectives includes everything
Lord, we know in whom we believe
This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted
Knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
Lord we know in whom we believe

We cannot do everything
And there is a sense of liberation in realizing that
This enables us to do something,
And to do it very well
It may be incomplete
But it is a beginning,
A step along the way, an opportunity for the
Lords grace to enter and do the rest.
Lord we know in whom we believe

We may never see the end results,
But that is the difference between
The master builder and the worker.
We are workers,
Not master builders,
Ministers,
Not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future
Not our own.
(Oscar Romero)

Lord, we trust in you
To eternally renew our belief in you
In ourselves and in each other
In this is our joy. Amen

Yours are the hands
Yours are the feet
Yours are the eyes
You are his body.
Christ has no Body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which he looks
Compassion on this world
Christ has no Body but yours.

discipleship and a revolution of the self

having recently linked to mark sayer's post on 5 things the emerging church got wrong in australia, he seems to be on a bit of a roll. i like the challenge of his need for a revolution of the self where he suggests some ways that we have been more co-opted than we realise by consumer culture...

• the lure of the hyperreal world
• commitment phobia
• therapeutic faith
• life as acting
• double lives
• choice anxiety

essentially these are questions around discipleship. (i confess i am a bit bored with the discussion around whether the term emerging church is over. for me it's always been around gospel and culture and mission. the terms are bound to change. the kinds of people into emerging church always want to be on the front end of the curve so whatever it was called we'd get bored when it became too mainstream and want the latest thing. it's kind of ironic that in a critique of consumption mark can't resist newness - isn't this part of being co-opted by taste cultures - hip vs mainstream?! anyway that's a small aside on a great post...)

5 things we got wrong in the emerging missional church - reflecting on the australian context

i met mark sayers for coffee in melbourne earlier this year...

he is a brilliant thinker and reader of the zeitgeist as well as someone bringing a good missions head to all the emerging church stuff.

he has just posted a piece 5 thing we got wrong in the emerging missional church. this is about the australian context, not the usa or uk. but there are excellent insights to learn from. it's the most thoughtful piece i have read about emerging stuff for a while. here are the headings but go and read the article.

1. Failed to define what is meant by “attractional”

2. Failed to define what is meant by “incarnational”

3. Being overly defined by a reaction to mass/popular culture

4. Failing to understand “low fuel tank faith”

5. Being wed to Gen-X culture.

thanks to scott where i picked up the link to the article who i met in tasmania and who has since started blogging on tasmission

in memory of water - worship trick 40

cheryl lawrie and a group visiting greenbelt with her from australia led one of the worship sessions in new forms. i didn't get to it but cheryl has written up the whole service the memory of water. i am making it worship trick 40 in series three.

good to catch up with cheryl and meet the group after greenbelt.

pocket liturgies available in australia

Unichurch bookshop are stocking our proost pocket liturgy book series and will post books to anywhere in australia. cheryl has details...

challenge

i have finally just about finished going through photos from australia and there are two sets -
australia 08 and melbourne street art if you are interested.

one of my favourites is a child shall lead them, which will always stick ion my mind because mike emmett took some time with me to teach me a few photoshop skills on the photo to bring out some of the detail. he takes some lovely photos.

it's not a great photo but at one cafe the barista drew a face into the latte - quite amazing. so this is the challenge. who can find a barista who does that and work with them to create a worship trick? - davinci's last supper in coffees? a cafe worship experience where you integrate different coffees into it? madonna and child for advent? if anyone does it will get added as a worship trick but i can't add it just as a vague idea. so the challenge is yours...

australian post 5 - taking street art to a new level

melbourne is known as the street art capital of the world (at least in melbourne!). it's not hard to see why. every inch of spare wall or garage door is sprayed, stencilled, tagged or stickered. there are some amazing large scale pieces, whole streets of colour, quirky messages and a lot of it is there one day and gone the next as something else takes its place. religion gets a bad rap as ever but i did spot jesus in disguise as a street artist! there are a few streets that are just entirely graffiti and the city council clearly have a policy of creating spaces for this art form. i have added a photo album melbourne street art to flickr. i did see one sole woman lovingly painting her wall white over graffiti but it was looking like an invitation...

at the nosh gathering in queenscliff there were a group from incedo in new zealand. incedo is nzyfc re-invented as a mission order. i really liked what they were up to... dave white, based in hamilton, is  running  a stations of the cross art project on a huge scale outside in the public gardens. he showed us some photos and talked about it. about 3500 visitors passed through the 2008 one. they gather each evening and journey round the stations in groups. the team have to assemble and take down the stations each day for the whole of holy week. mark pierson who i always think of as the person who inspired lots of groups to re-invent stations said that this is simply the best stations in the world. i think he's right. it clearly began on a smaller scale inside a church building, progressed to more public space in a theatre and now is outdoors - see the history. the photos and video give an idea of the scale and the size of the task involved. one station involved people holding an ice cube with a leaf shaped cross in it - this meant making 4000 of them in advance. another involved a guillotine, another creating a 9m light shade suspended over a pond and so on. it's run by a loose collective of artists who 'share meals, paint brushes and the zeitgeist of the resurrection'.

it is inspirational, it's in public space, it's creative and imaginative, it partners with local council and community groups, it's caught the public imagination and it invites people into the story. this is taking street art to a new level...

melbourne

melbourne, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

had a great time in australia. now back and a little bleary... this is melbourne at night looking across the river. i love cities at night. my stay finished up with a weekend in queenscliff with people interested or involved in alternative worship. it was all pretty relaxed and conversational. great to meet face to face with several people who i have liased with virtually.

australian post 4 - new wine and old wine

australia has some great new wines. vineyards are developing everywhere or so it seems. last sunday we visited giantsteps winery which was very contemporary and stylish. there's a story jesus told about wine...

No one pours new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, 'The old is better'.

the uniting church, like so many other denominations and churches is wondering how to create newness and change whilst remaining faithful to its traditions and edges. a few thoughts in relation to wine...

the thing that struck me about the story last time i read it was the last line about old or vintage wine. once you have drunk the good stuff why would you bother experimenting with the new... so if you are in or have people who are drinking at the well of good vintage wine in churches, then great - let them keep drinking. but if there is going to be good vintage in the future we need pioneers who will go and find new soil and plant vines to begin the process of developing new wine. i have been told (not that i know a lot about it) that it might take fifteen years to go through the process of getting towards something decent. on the way there will be experiments that fail, wine that's thrown away. but with hard work, passion, good knowledge of wine making tradions and processes, a bit of good fortune (weather conditions, soil, climate etc), and creativity the new wine will get produced. some wines will fail. that's just part of the process. and sometimes the most unlikely ones will be amazing. if there are things learned, innovations that work, they might also flow back and renew the traditions of winemaking. but it's new alongside the old... in the church of england we call this (thanks to rowan williams who coined the term) a mixed economy. where there is good old keep it going. and alongside that let's develop new. this takes the threat out of it for the old. indeed the old is probably better!

i have written before about the church of england and some of the factors that i think have created the environment in which change is happening so i don't particularly want to repeat that at any length here. but new things starting round the edges (a new congregation, a new community) has been a great way to go rather than trying to change what already exists. then alongside that have been plenty of people still working more at the centre. and that combination has been key along with a shift in environment towards openness to the new and change.

i have done a couple of training days this week - one at the uniting church synod and one at the centre for theology and ministry. one of the comments that got me really thinking was from a woman who was around 85 who said to me that the problem with church is that she knows lots of old people who don't like it either. they are fed up with singing the same old hymns and want some more action out there in the world! that fascinated me - i think we have told ourselves a story in many places that traditional church is working for the older people. but i have increasingly noticed that church hasn't just dried up in places for the younger people and adults - lots of people are struggling with it. so maybe a nuance we could add to the new wine/old wine is there is the danger that the old gets kept too long and where we think it's going to be great, it turns out it has peaked and may even have become undrinkable which is why we'll always need the new as well as the old to keep the tradition being renewed and alive...

my last thought on wine is that sometimes the old vineyards just when we think they have resisted change and are about to die get a good year or their wisdom honed over decades pays dividends. i am getting increasingly irritated at the church's capacity to write other parts or denominations or approaches off. every part has its edge and gift to bring and we all only see in part - i've got loads of blind spots. the body is only a body with all the parts. i showed a dvd clip in a worship session that i led that we have used at grace before now from david attenborough's planet earth deserts programme where the desert blooms with life - the water only comes sometimes once every 30 years. but it still blooms where it seems there is no life at all and it could never come again. just when we write somebody or a denomination or a community off that can happen - i actually think there is something about the christian story that suggests we should expect god to surprise us in those kind of scenarios!

other things i have been up to... i joined with the upper room, a young adults gathering round meal tables to join a discussion on community, caught a coffee with paul arnott who heads up cms in victoria, and met with barb from solace and a few others in a pub conversation to compare notes. i also met with mark sayers who used to work with forge, but now heads up uber and one of the red communities. i'll say more about him perhaps in another post. it's also been good to catch up with mark pierson again who is in town for a few days.

there is loads going on in melbourne - at least that's my observation as an outsider - lots of creativity, wonderful people, good thinking. lots of it is small and fragile (no surprise - it's not vintage yet). there is plenty of reason to feel hopeful about the future against the statistical odds...

aussie figure

figure, melbourne national gallery, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

this sculpture is in the entrance to the national gallery in melbourne...

australian post 3 - religion report

i was interviewed on stephen crittenden's religion report on ABC this morning talking about emerging church. the transcript and audio are online so you can download or listen again... (i now realise from looking at the transcript that i say 'kind of' a lot!)

if anyone is dropping by from listening to the show, if you want to find out a bit more about emerging church have a look at emergingchurch.info which has lots of stories and a beginner's guide and the grace web site is here

australian post 2 - the primal vision

on the plane on the way to australia i finally read john taylor's book the primal vision. it was written 45 years ago in 1963 and is his attempt to map and respond to the tribal/primal cultures he encountered spending time travelling in africa. tim dakin, general secretary of cms in britain has been recommending it to me for several years! john taylor was a former general secretary of cms - i have referenced his book the go between god before now. well it turns out it is another wonderful mission text to fund the imagination albeit in very different contexts.

on monday i was invited to give three different presentations to people from the uniting church, many of whom were church leaders. so i decided to do one on the primal vision and see how it went down. i lifted a number of themes from the book and then asked what they might imply in our own contexts...

here are the ten points and accompanying quotes:

[the quotes are lifted directly from the book, so they sound of their era particularly in talking about 'mankind' and so on... i chose to just leave them as they are as they are quotes. the whole point of what i am then trying to do is to replay them for a new situation which would include making them inclusive. i have added this comment since making the post in relation to the first comment on the post below. i did explain this in te presentation]

1. western civilisation and gospel confused as the same gift

It has to be admitted quite frankly that during these centuries the missionaries of the Christian Church have commonly assumed that Western civilisation and Christianity were two aspects of the same gift which they were commissioned to offer to the rest of mankind.

2. risk letting go of control and trust god

Are we of the West prepared to trust the Holy Spirit to lead the Christians of Asia and Africa or must the controlling Western hand be permanently resting on the ark of God?

3. holy ground of another culture

When we approach a man of another faith than our own it will be in a spirit of expectancy to find how God has been speaking to him and what new understandings of the grace and love of God we may ourselves discover in this encounter. Our first task in approaching another people, another culture, another religion is to take off our shoes, for the place we are approaching is holy. Else we may find ourselves treading on men's dreams. More serious still we may forget that God was here before our arrival.

[he also suggests we need a deep humility and to focus on listening deeply, friendship and presence]

4. adventure of the imagination

Any attempt to look upon the world through African eyes must involve this adventure of the imagination.

[this one sounds easy but it is clear that the kind of imagination that taylor is able to undertake enables him to really be prepared to let go of his own constructs in order to really try and get inside the culture]

5. waiting for the redemptive gift

The world church is impoverished and incomplete without the insights that the logos has been preparing for it in Africa.

6. failure of only meeting people in their best clothes

This might well be a terrible failure of the whole church in Africa that it meets people only in their best clothes... Such Christianity becomes something to put on at certain times  and in particular cicumstance and has nothing to do with other areas of life.

7. necessity of local poets articulating grief and amazement

More and more necessary to Africa are the spokesmen be they poets, prophets or statesmen who can articulate this hidden rejection of the West and more positively give voice to the passionate affirmations which Africa needs to make.

8. radical identification - do it from the inside

Either we must think of christian mission in terms of bringing the muslim, hindu, the animist into christendom or we must go with christ as he stands in the midst of Islam, of Hinduism, of the primal worldview, and watch with him fearfully and wonderingly as he becomes dare we sy it? Muslim, or Hindu, or Animist, as once he became man and a Jew.

[he is aware that the depth of imagining and change required is way beyond what we western christians would recognise and goes on to ask whether we would even recognise it as christian?!...]

If Christ came into the world of African cosmology to redeem man as Africans understand him would he be recognizable to the rest of the church universal?

9. eschew the foreigner's language

Recognising that we have to do with a spiritual religion we shall eschew much of the foreigner's terminology -'evil spirits', 'witch doctor', 'devil possession'

[taylor shows his willingness to really engage with this challenge - for example in talking about leadership he suggest the two primal categories are mediator and medium and it would make sense to talk of a christian medium]

10. never call another's light darkness - sin is the last truth to be told

Be constantly careful never to call another's light darkness.

The evangelism that proceeds by listening and learning, entering into another man's vision in order to see Christ in it, does not astart with assertions about sin but waits to be told about it. And usually the truth about sin is almost the last truth to be told.

good stuff eh?... it is a good exercise to replace the references to africa with 'postmodern' or make equivalent moves to see how this feels spoken about the cultural context we find ourselves in.

you can download the presentation primalvision as a pdf file which mainly uses photos i took in melbourne to try and make the local connection...

australian post 1 and tasmanian worship tricks

well i got here! fantastic to visit australia for the first time...

the first day i spent recovering from the flight in melbourne. in the morning i caught up with darren rowse who started living room a few years back and has now left it to stand on its own two feet. darren is the most entrpreneurial blogger i know - problogger and digiital photoography are two of the sites he runs. he had a book out earlier this year which looks good. then i wandered round melbourne soaking up the autumn sun, visiting its wonderful cafes down side streets and perusing the street art. i have taken some photos which i'll sort out and add at some point soon.

then it was off to tasmania, a beautiful island. after a delayed flight we didn't have much free time so just went up wellington mountain overlooking hobart. the delay meant that we arrived just as the sun was starting to set and it was astonishing light. the triangle you can see in the photo is the shadow of the mountain with sun going down behind us. it created these two shafts of light that looked like some thing almost sci fi! looking the other way the sunset was beautiful. there are a few photos that hardly begin to capture it but give a sense at least of what we experienced.

in the evening it was a meal with conversation with several leaders from the uniting church. i guess it shouldn't surprise me but it was weird that having travelled half way round the world, as the conversation ranged from cultural change, church being stuck, newness, mission, change, leadership and so on, the issues were almost exactly the same as if i'd been with a group of leaders in the uk. this was followed up with a training day for a larger group of people which was more focused on alt worship but touched on mission and church issues. it was a really good day. i hope i was able to offer some encouragement. it was great to meet graham who talked about an alt worship experience he had set up in hobart in his home with a number of stations - there are photos and explanations of it here. i loved the idea of using the treadmill. the idea was that you had to write a prayer in chalk on the treadmill as it moved which i assume is difficult even at a slow pace and the thought with it was is it any wonder we find it difficult to hear god when our lives go at such a fast pace. there were also people involved in lacuna, a creative/meditative approach to worship - i really like this water in the desert meditation on their web site. often when i talk about alt worship, whilst i emphasise imagination, creativity and ideas and relating worship to your context, people still feel that they can't do it or that it requires more technical toys. i had a conversation with one woman ros who sort of said she couldn't do alternative worship but went on to describe a wonderful idea. every easter she invites members of the congregation to take a piece of broken candle wax as a symbol of their own brokenness. they then come forward offering the piece of wax as a symbol of themselves and place it in a huge mould for an easter candle. ros then adds in hot wax to create the easter candle, symbolising god's love holding the community together in their brokenness. that is exactly the creativity we are talking about!

similar to the uk at the moment the climate seems to be one now in which everyone knows there needs to be new stuff happening on the edges and change must happen. it used to be that you had to persuade people but not in tasmania. they were very open, and prayerfully taking one step forward at a time. i look forward to seeing what emerges in tasmanian soil over the next ten years...

i am making the things mentioned above a combined tasmanian worship trick [no 36 series three]
treadmill station | lacuna water in the desert meditation | candle of brokenness 

if anyone from tasmania is visiting hi!
some web sites i meant to mention but forgot...
emergingchurch
alternativeworship
smallfire

melbourne and tasmania

heading out of the door to go and join the uniting church in australia for several days of training. it will be my first visit to australia and am looking forward to it. the schedule is something like

30 may - 1 june - tasmania conversation and workshop
2 june - workshop melbourne and upper room in evening
3 june - visit cms
4 june - continuing education day for ministers on alt worship + pub conversation
6-9 june - nosh alt worship gathering

cheryl is hosting so contact her if you want more info...

linkage and worship trick 31 - sunday

a few news/link type things...

mike morris has started blogging.

beyond church has had it's first worship gathering that looks like it was a lot of fun. and their next event should be hilarious with the brilliant comedian milton jones...

ian adams is branching out into other creative areas and projects offering spiritual direction amongst other things

moby gratis is free music from moby for non commercial ventures. it's film score type stuff - ideal for worship background?

20 questions to use in a small group to get to know people

and darren wright has a whole worship experience called sunday that is free and downloadable. it was originally used at the australian black stump festival. i am making that worship trick 31

holy ground::holy city

holy ground::holy city looks wonderful. i love the scale of it.

i am looking forward to going to melbourne later this year to do some stuff around alt worship with cheryl.

this prayer of cheryl's is brilliant (and gets added to the worship tricks as no 30)

glimpses of redemption
already unfolding.

acts of justice;
of pre-meditated
unprovoked,
love.

surges of liberation
pre-emptive strikes of hope.

do not wait to see the flames
in a burning bush.
the flames are everywhere:
held in every piece of gravel
as pervasive as the grime that gathers on the walls of buildings

do not be stopped simply by the absence of a voice telling you to go:
it’s there, waiting to be heard
within the relentless beeping of a pedestrian crossing
in the squeal of tram tracks
the background hum of airconditioning units

liberation is waiting to unfold
on every streetcorner
in every city square.

we choose, in our everyday
- just like moses did:

will we place ourselves on the side of life

or not?

apology

wow - this is quite something

living room transition

i have been inspired by the journey of darren rowse and friends in living room so was interested to see they are handing on the leadership and moving on... hope the transition works out well for everyone.

worship trick 96 - you'd never end the story

as ever cheryl has been inspiring me with her easter postcards for prison, and various written pieces. i am making this reflection on the prodigal son, you'd never end the story , worship trick 96.

You’d never end the story by turning us away
so why do we live as if we could do something that will stop you loving us?

You’d never end the story giving up waiting for us
so why do we live in fear of wearing out your patience?

You’d never end the story with a litany of our sins
so why do we live as though you see us only with eyes of judgement?

You’d never end the story giving us one last warning
so why do we live in fear that your goodwill will run out?

You’d never end the story not recognising us
so why do we live thinking you don’t know the shape of our souls?

You’d never end the story with outpourings of anger
so why do we live in fear of incurring your wrath?

You’d never end the story by taking us back as servants
so why do we live as though there are limits on your grace?

You’d never end the story slamming a door in our face
so why do we live in fear of your rejection?

You’d never end the story with anything but love
so why do we live as though our story might end with anything but love?

i also loved this rumour