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st kea is a church in cornwall, uk that has the most brilliant web site. i wasn't convinced it was real so rang the church number and it does exist..... the web site is designed in flash - about a mb but is worth the wait to load. vicar adrian hallett persuaded marksteen adamson of uk giant interbrand to work with the church on a campaign to help the church be relevant to the community. from the web site you can download the manifesto. it has a cheeky irreverant tone to it combined with great instincts about mission, the gospel and the community. there's even a line of products such as holy smoke candles and god bless tissues!
adrian says this in his summary in the manifesto:
The Gospel is literally "good news", but to the vast majority of people in our generation, the church is viewed as boring, hypocritical and irrelevant. As far as the un-churched are concerned, the church is answering questions they are not asking and we are providing solutions to problems they don’t face. In other words, we are scratching where they don’t itch! We are seen as irrelevant to the people we most need to reach. Yet the gospel is God’s solution to mankind’s deepest needs. God and his eternal Word are relevant to the needs of every relationship, every culture and every period of history – including the present. Somewhere between God’s ultimate solution and the world’s need, the message of hope is becoming garbled. The problem is not the message; it’s in the medium. The problem is not in the vision; it’s in the vehicle.
shhh.. sounds in spaces is an exhibition at the victoria and albert museum . it is fantastic. a mix of artists + musicians such as david byrne, roots manuva, faultline, cornelius... have chosen a space in the museum + composed a soundscape for it. shhh... takes you on a journey through those spaces. you get given a set of headphones and follow the audio route through the galleries.
the technology is brilliant. when you walk into one of the spaces the soundtrack is triggered automatically by infra red. (we have actually talked about exactly this concept at grace - imagine the stations of the labyrinth in different rooms and the track played when you walked in. if only we were commissioned on a big budget!) i'm not mad about the kind of art in the v + a - i prefer contemporary stuff but this was a great way for me to enjoy it. some of the tracks were fantastic. my favourite was elizabeth frazer's (of massive attack fame). it played in a room of huge raphael paintings and just sounded beautiful - no words but was simply her humming/improvising over an ambient piece. in the programme she says:
perhaps i've held the word in too high regard for in my struggle to connect with the spirit they are simply getting in the way
it's on until the end of auqust - definiteley worth a visit.
with all the buzz around the mission shaped church report the tenth anglican church planting conference today was sold out! cms were one of the sponsors....
the first session was storytelling of fresh expressions of church. groups telling their stories were:
B1, a network church in the centre of birmingham. i love the sound of what they are doing. network church seems to be a growing movement/network....
ignite, a youth church in harrow - the edge there i think is in their building of relationships with young people on the edges (in childrens homes, local youth centres and other places) and then seeing how church grows out of that set of relationships... one of the ways in to building relationships was through dance, mainly because a girl on the team, cindy, has a background/passion for rave dance - she has set up an acadamy. it reminded me a little bit of the ascension eagles cheerleading in the east end of london and how that has been transformational there. simon stressed that the focus for them is not on chasing cultural relevance but on building relationships with young people. if relevance follows then fine. if not who cares!
damian told a story of planting a church on a new estate near preston with no church building, no community hall, etc... so they ended up having a licensing service in the local ASDA supermarket. 300 people showed up and following it they had a eucharist every week followed by breakfast in the ASDA cafe. the church now meets in the community centre (not on sunday morning). damian explained why the eucharist was at the heart of all they did - it's at the heart of a tradition of hospitality. it was great to hear this story from an anglo catholic tradition...
sally from the tas valley in norfolk explained that in the rural area she is in the traditional church works well for some people. but for others it doesn't. she described a common experience of running an alpha course, having a group where people shared deeply and some had decided to follow christ but knowing that if these people were to join the traditional churches they just wouldn't make it. so they have developed cells that are the key unit as well as encouraging people to link in with the wider churches. but the small group/cell is church. it is enough for people to be in a cell. this pattern has continued running alpha with youth that developed into church via a youth cell, an alpha for young mums that developed into a cell/church that other mums could bring their kids to - about 40 come each month to the service they do. (this reminded me very much of pete ward's description of liquid church).
oxford diocese are investing in 5 new projects including i-church, kitchen table and others. the slight downer for me on this one is that i know mark berry in the diocese who runs a fantastic youth project and while money was put into these new things they didn't give any to that project. this seems a bit short sighted - mark is doing one of the most outsanding youth mission projects in school that i have come across....
this was followed by rowan williams addressing the conference. i hope that the transcript of his talk may appear but i jotted some notes down until my battery ran out! anyway here's a few fragments:
anglicans have often thought that the question of what church is will look after itself. but actually this isn't true. at heart it is about working out what difference jesus has made and working out how that might affect our life together. read the gospels afresh and its hard to see that jesus thought his ministry was about founding an institution called the church! jesus is not implementing a programme to which people sign up. he does help develop a set/network of relationships around him of the apostles. the point is simply that the church may not be an institution founded by jesus but neither it is an afterthought. jesus creates relationships. by his presence among them shaping their relations, jesus is the living presence of god among them. so from the start where jesus is there is church. church is the immediate effect of jesus being there. a new creation happens when people are drawn into relationship with jesus. the church is part of this new creation, the firstfruits of god's reclaiming of creation for himself so that one day it will fully reflect who he is. developing a mission theology might begin here - a new creation. church is about this new creation and it's what happens when jesus is there. the presence of jesus transfigures the environment. all our attempts to be church need to be tested against this.
moving on.... any institution's structures should if they work well facilitate this mission. when we look at the church do we see the new creation is happening? do they let the event of an encounter with jesus happen again and again? if not the church has become something very different - it has become something that says once there was an encounter with jesus and we like to remember that! we should note that people in the gospels encountered jesus in many different ways. likewise the body of christ can facilitate a diverse way of encountering jesus, sharing his life and table (in fact this is what sacramental life is about). internally the church structures have to deal with continuity and stability - this does mean they need at some level to be conservative (i.e. conserve the tradition of sacrament and word) but externally i.e. outside that internal life of the church what structures enable encounter? that is where the challenge lies.... we're learning rather slowly about structures that enable this transforming encounter with jesus. what is extraordinary at the moment is the amount of stories of where this is happening! god is showing us then examples of what the church is in startling new ways. here is god doing something, here is god drawing people together - what are we going to do? do we approach it with self protective nervousness (with questions such is it anglican? does it fit with what we know and like? is it co-opted into our culture?) or with gratitude (and this requires humility)? i think/hope that we are learning gratitude. the second mission principle i want to suggest (the first is the new creation) is patience (there is also an impatience in that we want to see the kingdom come) - and this can be hard.
(my battery ran out here! but one of the most interesting things i remember rowan saying in the last bit was about leadership and training for ministry. he suggested that we need to shift how we think about what ministry is 'away from just servicing the community to animating a network of relations both inside and outside the community')
there were a choice of seminars and time to network with other people (though not nearly enough time). good to hang out with ben (sanctus 1) edson, adrian (emergingchurch.info) riley, and steve (smallritual, smallfire, grace, alternativeworship.org) collins.
graham cray gave a commissioning address which focused on three words: permission, vision, and imagination. again a few snippets...
permission - there's a changing climate, a culture of permission, some changing legal stuff re canon law, permission for diversity. we're looking for a new partnership of ownership and accountability - gone are the days of bishops pretending that they don't want to know what is going on
vision - god is deepening our vision of what it means to be church, a mission shaped church. we are the body of the one in whom dwells the fulness of god... the vision is therefore of a church that embodies christ wherever and however... if there is a vision it has to be of a christ shaped church, not empire building, not imposing our culture, letting it emerge from below, not cloning,.....
imagination - imagination about the forms of church, in this we need a 'baptism of our imagination', if you want to stoke your imagination read the stuff about the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth, the mountain of god, the great feast etc... and ask god to show us a foretaste of that here. keep your vision of the final kingdom of god bigger than your vision of the church and it will fund your imagination. there is no future new heaven without a future new earth..... there is going to be a new world and then say let us live and show a taste of it now and show the world its future... then we might work for transformation in our communities, we will work for justice, to eradicate poverty etc..
he concluded by quoting vincent donavon - "do not try to call them back to where they were and do not try to call them to where you are beautiful as that place may seem to you. you must have the courage to go with them to a place neither you or they have seen before!" go out with that on your heels.....
graham at one point said 'for the first time in 34 years of ministry i am running to keep up with what god is doing in the church of england' - something's happening!
congratulations to gareth and philippa on their marriage today!
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