jonnybaker

grief and hope

the fiesta festival in earlsfield was great - it was so good to meet amd learn from the wisdom of alastair macintosh. grace curated a space to reflect on hope and grief - flip sides of a prophet's imagination - or flip sides of the road to newness perhaps. i have added some photos in an album here. it was good to suspend a block of ice for an installation on grief - last time we did that was 2001 apparently!

fresh expressions of church - changing the landscape

it was very encouraging this week to read of the positive reflections on fresh expressions of church at the general synod of the church of england - the general synod paper is here. in 2004 a report was published calls mission shaped church which reflected on the new things that had bubbled up around the edges of the church and basically said they are good - let’s have more new alongside the old or traditional. and they came up with the phrase fresh expressions of church. synod this week were told how in fifteen years 50000 new people have been added to the church and 15% of congregations are fresh expressions of church, which is around two dioceses. you can read a c of e news summary here which includes a motion passed which celebrates fresh expressions, asks for a report back on the new project led by heather cracknell, and my personal favourite point -

encourage every parish and diocese to be part of this movement forming new disciples and new congregations through a contextual approach to mission with the unreached in their community

that would be great! and why wouldn’t a parish and diocese want to be? but i especially like that the church writ large is naming a contextual approach to mission - thank god! it’s jargon of course but some jargon is helpful and the critical bit is the word context - mission should take the culture, the context, the way people do stuff in their locale seriously and share christ and develop church in ways that relate to and indeed grow in the soil of that local context and culture. ideally whatever grows should become led by people who are from that place and culture as soon as possible. (it was also what one of the key figures in cms history henry venn said was at the heart of mission practice developing the indigenous church). that is what a contextual approach is. and it means letting go of our taste, our preference, our way of doing things and the expectation that people should have to become like us in order to follow christ.

bishop martyn snow looks like he had a speech up his sleeve but didn’t get to share it at synod so has posted a facebook post of his reflections. it’s such a wonderful and positive post. he sees this as the most significant development in the church for decades. he kindly said i could post his reflection here so it is below but i also recommend you read through the comments on his post. he pulls out three lessons for the church - that it is a movement led by ordinary people and not professional priests; contextual mission - so we need to learn lessons of how to translate; and vulnerability - these things are small and fragile. on that last point he notes that there is not a lot of funding that has enabled this. that in itself is quite a complicated thing to get at what the investment has actually been from local churches, individuals, grants, salaries and so on. but it is small by comparison with what gets spent on other priorities in the church. 

of course you would expect me to remind me that if you are interested in contextual mission the pioneer training at cms has that at its heart - we love contextual mission. it's what we are all about - so get in touch if you are interested in exploring that further. 

bishop martyn snow's reflection on fresh expressions of church posted on facebook 9 july 2019

The strange irony of General Synod debating fresh expressions of church, straight after a 'business as usual' budget presentation.

I believe fervently that the Fresh Expressions movement is the single most significant development in the church in this country for decades. Having talked for many years about the importance of evangelism and the ‘re-conversion of our nation’, this predominantly lay movement, has quietly got on with the task. Eschewing the big events, mass publicity and big spending of some initiatives, the movement is teaching us about what Pope Francis calls ‘The Church’s Missionary Transformation’. This wonderfully ambiguous phrase – is the church the agent of the transformation of others or is it the subject of transformation – leads me to suggest that there are three specific lessons for the wider church.

Firstly, this is predominantly a lay movement. Fresh expressions of church offer us a living model of what can happen when God’s people are set free to be leaders in mission, when clergy and lay work in partnership, with a genuine sharing of gifts and true mutuality. Clergy are set free to be enablers of others – lay people are set free to use their God-given gifts, and their experience in networks outside the church. Both are needed.

At a time when the church is being forced to recognise the very damaging effects of clericalism – where a culture of deference has contributed to abuse, and difficulties in the reporting of abuse, and the poor response to the reporting of abuse – our recognition of lay ministry needs to be more than a patronising, ‘isn’t that interesting’. We simply must find ways of learning from fresh expressions and enabling their approach to ministry to shape that of the wider church.

And secondly, I would invite us to notice how the principle of contextualisation also opens our eyes to new insights. Contextual mission lies at the heart of the Fresh Expressions movement and ‘The Church’s Missionary Transformation’ is a helpful title for a church reflecting on what it means to be a Christian presence in every community.

As the missionary bishop Lesslie Newbigin reminded us, there is no such thing as a pure gospel – there is only a gospel enfleshed in culture and context – the gospel has to be embodied in a cultural context. And Andrew Walls, historian of Christian missions, writes “Divinity is translated into humanity, but into specific humanity, at home in specific segments of social reality. If the incarnation of the Son represents a divine act of translation, it is a prelude to repeated acts of re-translation.”

I put it to you that one of the most critical tasks facing us today, if we are to be a Christian presence in every community, is to learn again what it means to re- translate the gospel into every context and every culture that is now part of our wonderfully diverse nation. And as we translate, so we are transformed, or we might want to say, converted.

Finally, I would also note that the Fresh Expressions movement is teaching us about fragility and vulnerability. Most fresh expressions of church receive almost no funding. Most Pioneers receive little formal training beyond mentoring and coaching from other Pioneers. As a result, a fair proportion of fresh expressions of church only last a few years. But their very fragility and vulnerability is an important corrective in the Church of England.

There is a slight irony to the way the General Synod debate on Fresh Expressions followed straight after the Archbishops’ Council budget presentation. We welcomed the news of additional money from the Church Commissioners which will allow us to spend ever increasing amounts on exciting mission initiatives and training new clergy – all good. But there are some us, including bishops like me, who want to ask whether all this money is blinding us to what God is doing at this moment in our history. Could it be that the move of the church to the margins of society is a move of God? Could it be that the ending of our powerful status as a key institution governing the hearts and minds of millions of people who have little personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, is a good thing, which we should embrace?

Fifteen years after the Mission Shaped Church report, it is right that we should pause to thank God for this truly wonderful move of Gods Spirit. We should celebrate it - and I am actually quite pleased that Synod was being asked to do little else but notice it, celebrate it and bless it – countless Christian disciples getting on with mission in their local communities, in their own networks, growing faith with children, ‘turning up the volume’ about BAME inclusion, avoiding clericalism, operating within the simplest of legislative structures, often working ecumenically, with almost no money spent on training, support or deployment. Yes, we should celebrate the beginnings of ‘The Church’s Missionary Transformation’.

HUI - my next 4 days

excited for the next four days as at cms pioneer we are hosting a gathering to share learning about training and education for mission. it's called hui - see below for why - here's the spiel we sent out about it. 

New imaginative approaches to mission and church have emerged in range of contexts round the world. Alongside that, new approaches to mission education, leadership training and theological education are being explored. In Western contexts it feels like the old models don’t work so well any more but equally new ones are quite fragile and exploratory. In the global South there is less baggage and new approaches areemerging out of energy for mission or finding ways to do things that are authentic to the locale. At CMS in England we have felt our way towards a new approach to training which is now in its ninth year and has been something of an exhilarating ride. Over the nine years we have had lots of international visitors who want to talk about training/education that is focused towards pioneering mission* and have enjoyed those conversations very much. Hui is a Maori word for a gathering where there is mutual sharing and exchange of ideas and learning and we thought it would be good to have one of those for mission educators or whatever you want to call yourselves. It’s as simple as that really!

*It’s actually hard to know what language to use to talk about it! For example mission education sounds like it’s training for people going to another country (and of course it can be but often isn’t). Theological education or ministerial formation also sounds heavy (though theology and ministry are key aspects of the conversation). We have used ‘pioneer mission leadership training’ but appreciate that is particular to our context and a bit long. But whatever we call it, at heart it is about wanting to help people see and imagine through a lens of mission and to be enabled to participate in that mission in good and transforming ways.

hopefully we'll tweet with #HUI2019 so do follow along and i am sure we'll collect contributions and musings to share at a later stage

grief and hope - grace at fiesta

looking forward to the next grace which is part of fiesta festival in earlsfield - note it's a differemt venue and time if you are a regular! here's the info... 

Join us as we grieve like prophets and dreamers for our broken world, and hope like prophets and dreamers for a different kind of future.

Note different venue and time - Grace will be 6:30pm at 'Riverside', Haldane Place, Wandsworth SW18 4UQ, as part of 'Fiesta' - see below for details of the festival as a whole.

People at the festival are coming as part of their festival ticket, but if you are just coming for Grace it is free. Just say you are a member of Grace when you arrive.

The legendary block of ice will be making its third appearance - last seen at Greenbelt 2001! Well obviously not the same block of ice.

hope to see you there

note venue change:the venue has changed to paradise cooperative, 19 heathfield road sw18 3je - opposite the entrance to wandsworth prison.

not black not white

pioneering in europe

this week i have been at a conference in utrecht on pioneering and fresh expression sof church hearing stories of how people across europe are starting new things and working with their denominations to create space for that. i have written something about it on the cms pioneer blog including links to some of the strategy of the protestant church in the netherlands which is very helpful i think.

colour

wilding the church

really loved this piece from paul bradbury on wilding the church where he takes the example of wilding knepp estate in sussex and allows it to spark his imagination and make connections to the ecology of the church environment which might benefit from some wilding and wild theology.

feeling blue

a little bit of a tenuous photo link but thinking about blue being the colour having enjoyed chelsea's brilliant second half performance to win the europa cup last night in what almost certainly was hazard's last game. it now looks like a weirdly successful season even though chelsea have not fired on all cylinders. they are good at winning things!

the photo is from a sculpture in the rwa open sculpture exhibition at bristol which is now in its last week.

crate

this is a photo of seyed's edalatpour's incredible sculpture crate which is in the RWA open sculpture exhibition in May 2109. see this photo for the whole piece. the notes don't say much about it but on his web site he speaks of a long and dangerous journey as a refugee from iran which didn't come as a surprise. this sculpture is so evocative! i found it utterly compelling. i love work in wood like this too.

pillar of fire

on the way back from the yurt we stayed with dave (my brother) and lou. lou baker is a textile artist creating extraordinary sculptures in textiles - usually incorporating knitting. we saw one of her pieces pillar of fire in the open sculpture exhibition at the rwa in bristol. this photo is an abstract enjoying the colour but click here to see what it actually looked like. i'll be adding some photos of pieces in the show by other artists in the next week or so...

harry baker - i am 10000

tomorrow night i am going to see harry's new poetry show i am 10000 (which he will be performing at edinburgh along with harry and chris new show). come along if you are in london and you get to see chris' solo show as well - weird i know. harry and chris but not harry n chris or something...

super proud of harry - just saw today that he has 2 million hits on his exteter tedX talk - wow. i am generally delirious if i get over 50 likes on an instagram photo! i need to up my game clearly though inspired by harry i worked out i will be 20000 days this year on the same day as joel's birthday.

i should also add that the rejected eurovision song contest entry of harry and chris - sorry! - is out today...

a week in a yurt [and the most amazing shower!]

just back from a week's holiday with jen in somerset where we stayed in a yurt for 4 nights. it was quite a cold week but with a firepit outside and a woodburner in the yurt and plenty of layers it was an amazing experience. i didn't take loads of photos but there is a set here (half of which are in woodland nearby). the set up was beautifully designed by the owners who had created a kitchen unit, compost loo and the most amazing shower which was run from gas but open to the sky with the shower head hanging from a tree above - see photo set if interested. i don't normally duck out for a week's holiday in term time but summer is a challenge for holiday for us so this was an opportunity we took. the only reason we ended up in a yurt in somerset was because the weekend before i was in wells for the launch of holy rumpus, a new pioneer hub in bath and wells diocese, so we thought we'd look in the direction of somerset and devon. we pretty much cooked off the fire outside all week which was good fun too. anyway now back to emails and work tomorrow with a new boss to meet and a shed load of marking to do!

fiesta - pioneer festival in london in july

i'm looking forward to fiesta in london in july - a festival for pioneers, activists and others wanting to make their community a better place. it's being hosted by earlsfield friary and will be great food, music, spirituality, conversations and the like. book in here . grace are taking part on the sat night and i see harry and chris will also be performing. i am a big fan of alastair mcintosh who is going to be the resident wise elder for the weekend. 

bluebell impression

so many people on instagram are loving bluebells and what is there not to love about the gorgeous blue carpet that appears in woodlands at this time of year. what is particularly special for me about it this year is that in september we bought a woodland and wondered whether bluebells were in the wood or not so it has been exciting to see the blue carpet emerge. having said that how do you take a great photo of bluebells especially that has some originality to it. my previous favourite attempt of mine is this one - bluebell vortex but i found myself messing around again to try and create something more abstract and painterly that shows off the colours. there's a couple of others on flickr too. woodland photos is going to be a thing as i am sure you have worked out!

candid beer launches today - another make good idea finds legs!

excited today for mark and jess bamping who launch their community hub - candid in stafford. yes mark loves beer and i am sure will brew as well as serve up decent local and creative independent craft beers. but the driver is community and rather than calling it a cafe or pub it's a community hub. mark brought the idea to our make good week a while back now and when he made his pitch he was coincerned about loneliness and thinking that men in particular will gather around doing stuff together (such as brewing beer) so it seems thayt this has developed into the design of the space and there being a room for groups and activities as well as a larger table to gather round. i was hoping to get to the launch but couldn't make it but will raise a glass of craft beer today to toast candid beer on their launch and hope to visit before long.

there is a make good week coming up at cliff college 13-17 may and there are a few spaces left so if you have an idea for a project or enterprise to make good in the world then sign up!

let the light in [2]

in the last blog post i said how wowed i was by the salgada familia cathedral in barcelona. the light through the windows is incredible. but i have to say given a choice between a cathedral and a woodland i'd probably say the latter is a better cathedral with equally glorious light that comes through the trees.

let the light in

i finally got to visit barcelona for the first time last weekend which i loved. i am not a big fan of visiting historic buildings normally but the gaudi totally wowed me. i loved sagrada familia and casa bastilo. there are some photos in an album here - barcelona

woodland silence and mountain retreat

every year i go on a retreat - this year i am not going on anything organised or landing with a monastic community - i am simply heading into the woodland with a tent, hammock and some supplies. the phone and email will be off. i'll be cooking off a fire and off grid for a while... i have blogged before about silence and retreat. i have come to value this practice for my own wellbeing, my own sense of reconnecting with life, leaning into the love that holds the universe together aka god, remembering who i am and what's important, and i simply find that turning the noise off is regenerative. forgive the parallel but it is like making a clearing in a woodland - it lets the light in and new life comes. curiously enough last year in silence i had the idea of getting a woodland - i don't know if that would have come to me without space for nothing. but it feels great a year on to be going on retreat into the woodland that emerged out of last year's silence! for those of you into the enneagram for people like me stopping doing stuff is also an important practice.

i actually started the practice of retreat in an annual way because we were recommending it to all our pioneer students at cms. and i thought i can't do that if i don't actually do it every year myself! when i first did retreats i did a few with other people which i also really enjoyed and think in some ways it's an easier way into the practice. if that's where you are at there is a fantastic retreat been organised at the end of april if you are an outdoors type of person. it's a mountain retreat led by paul who is part of mountain pilgrims which is an innovative fresh expression of church in cumbria. there are a maximum number of twelve places so if you are interested in that i recommend booking quickly. see below for the flyer and the link to book is here. sadly i can't go on that one myself though it looks great.

 

art [pioneering] matters

i love artists - the way they see, think and make. so much so that i am happy to say 'yes' if anyone asks me if i am an artist. i have blogged before about books about artists - notably think like an artist, and the creative stance. as you probably know if you read this blog regularly i train pioneers people who have ideas for making the world a better place, people who see possibilities and then build things out of their seeing, people who imagine and can gather communities of people who follow christ which don’t require them to leave their culture behind. whenever i read a book about artists or art i find myself replacing the word art with mission or pioneering. it’s quite a fun game to play. for christmas this year my son harry gave me a book art matters which has four essays or reflections by neil gaiman illustrated by chris riddell. one off the pieces is called make good art and is the text of a speech neil made in 2012 at the university off the arts - the text and video are here. it’s absolutely brilliant - do digest it in full its own right. but i have taken the liberty of taking a few of his quotes and switching the words the arts or art for pioneering or pioneer. i have placed them in brackets so it’s obvious. anyway see what you think…

When you start out in [pioneering] you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not.. If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that.

When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive.

I decided that I would do my best in future not to [pioneer] just for the money. If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work. Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I've never regretted the time I spent on any of them.

I hope you'll make mistakes. If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something.

Do the stuff that only you can do. The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So [pioneer] as only you can.

Where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?

People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today's world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don't even need all three. Two out of three is fine. 

That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.

The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're supposed to's of how you [pioneer], and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are. So make up your own rules.

And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. [Pioneer]