back from mission 21

just back from mission 21. (no wi-fi around so didn't get to blog). as ever the best thing was seeing people and catching up. whilst there were 500 people there, it was actually very thin on the ground when it came to younger, emerging church, alt worship types. but i don't think the line up was ever going to appeal in that direction...

graham cray gave a good provocative assessment of the present moment to kick things off. three things caused a stir:
a) postmodern is passe as language - it's arrived
b) alt worship and some of emerging church are too focused on church angst - the future isn't them. they are just a hinge generation (btw i went and discussed this point afterwards as i felt it was a misrepresentation)
c) spirituality is overstated - young people aren't into it and the church needs to get used to it and stop telling ourselves a story we want to hear (based on a piece of research coming out in may)

some research was presented assessing church planting - without seeing the actual data it was difficult to assess what this meant but a simple summary would be that in existing structures, on edge of existing structures and beyond existing structures new expressions of church/church planting are growing...

then there was a whole load of other stuff, stories, workshops etc... i stopped taking notes. what does it all mean? no idea... i guess keep on keeping on.

i led some worship this morning which seemed to go down well. the northumbria community did the rest which was a nice blend of down to earth, real, liturgical worship blended with quiet celtic contemplative stuff. i'm a big fan of roy searle. a few people asked about some of the things i used...
miracles liturgy
40 - or on CD rom
we hang our lives on your mercy
probes

these were the full notes i jotted down from graham if you want more detail...

Somehow we have moved up a gear - permissions, blessings in structures etc. Not because of report but God has been at work. John Taylor ' seeing what God is doing and joining in'. It's about compassion and mercy. I've spent two years trying to keep up. There's new favour with God and some of the brakes have been taken off the church.
Changes in culture - demise of christendom, postmodern shift etc have ultimately been a gift of grace to us because they have freed us to see some things we should have seen a long time ago. Driven us back to God. We have restored a missional perspective. We are seeing things that have been in the gospel all along...
Shift to dynamic mission emphasis in obedience to the missionary God. Moment of grace through cultural change where we are seeing what we should have seen. The God of mission is active sending out labourers. The pioneers suddenly belong to the heart of what we are doing whilst being on the edge in terms of ministry. 'C of E engine of a lawn mower and brakes of a juggernaut' - some of brakes are coming off.
There is mission beacuse God loves people (Bosch).
If we have recovered a sense of mission, the primary task of the leader is to reconnect theology with missiology so that first and foremost the church is missionary. In real terms our plans should be held up against a missionary call and focus. Churches that aren't missionary have forgotten who they are.
No of issues:
1. Prioritise resources and energy for non churched. Strategic planting among those with no church connection. Children of de-churched will join them? (Decline in interest in spirituality). Long term sowers of gospel into circle after circle after circle. Imagination, faith and patience...
2. Mission vision not church angst. Emerging churches good but only part of picture. Alt worship etc part of picture but not future... Baptism into compassion of Christ, not angst about church. Postmodern is passe - paradigm shift has taken place. Young people aren't in transition. Need new language. Dechurched work is vital but it's not top priority. Inculturation/contextualisation is where it is at. Interculturation even better. Need some new mission audit tools. Double listening. Tim Dakin - Ephesians moment... Need a combination of church planting and spiritual direction? Let there be a glorious diversity of expressions of church but need missional DNA that will ultimately lead us beyond a small homogeneous group. Complex layered societies - not territorial. Parallel presences in different circles seeking to penetrate in and beyond its circle i.e. cross cultural as well.
Discipleship in consumer culture big challenge.
Symbiotic relationship between inherited and fresh expressions.
New baptism of imagination about church. If Christ is embodiment of God then no one expression can fully display God. We need the diversity.

update: mark berry's pics

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Comments

[Jason Clark]

thanks for the great notes mate

Jason

[Existential Punk]

I disagree that postmodern is passe and that the paradigm shift has taken place. Paradigm shifts take longer than this. Look at the paradigm lives of Hans Kung's "Christianity". Granted, technology has caused things to morph exponentially, but it's not passe yet. Len Sweet says postmodernism has until about 2030. Thanks for posting these notes, Jonny!

[Existential Punk]

"spirituality is overstated - young people aren't into it and the church needs to get used to it and stop telling ourselves a story we want to hear (based on a piece of research coming out in may)" I definitely agree with this statement as it is my experience with m ost people i meet in my circles. Is this piece of research referred to from Barna?

[Fernando Gros]

thanks for the notes! as far as point a; people have been saying this for quite a few years now (myself included). we are where we are and the shift business belongs back in the 80s/90s. point b is a harsh call but also describes "some" of the people I have met and the vibes I've picked up. maybe it is an "outdated" comment? as far as C goes, I look forward to reading the research. i think spirituality was the right call in the late 90s, but I'm too far out of the loop to comment on that these days.

[Ric]

Helpful reflections, thanks.

I was at the event and found the opportunity to network and talk with others very stimulating. The problem for me was the main speakers - the vast majority men over 50 - who seemed to be trying to fit all of this messy, ambiguous and tentative searching for a lifegiving pattern of Christian community into some kind of modernist framework (maybe I'm just a cynical, angst ridden postmodern 20/30something). Some of the language used from the front was also a little triumphalist to my mind. Couched in more humble terms, talking about lessons learned and so on, but still implying that we are on the brink of some kind of revival.

It was Graham Crays comments regarding spirituality and the obselesence of 'post' language that intrigued me too. I await the research with interest but wonder whether those of us who feel at ease in a postmodern culture (or whatever term you want to use)are simply called to embody Christian community for this generation. This may very well be temporary and only last a decade or so but I will always be part of generation x and so am called to live out my faith within the context of this generation that lives in that place of tension and contradiction between cultures.

[Richard]

Again it will be interesting to see the results of teh research. Is spirituality overstated, for some yes, for other s they are desparate. Iam not sure if it is just the way that Jonny too the notes but there was the implication that if the Youth dont want it, the church will not do it.

Why does the church place such an emphasis on meeting the needs (or the perceptions of over 50's ) of the needs of the youth, to only dump them from the 20's onwards expecting them to revert to the same stuff that we always have had.

In the church just I have just left, the vicar saw each service as providing an evangelistic message for the <5% of new commers in the congregation, feeding them with spiritual milk, ignoring the fact that existing 95% were craving meat. That was the role of home groups he claimed. CRAP.

The church has to remember that people need different things at different times in the spiritial and biological lives.

[Derek]

I enjoyed the conference and your feedback was helpful, Jonny. Thanks too for the worship.

Re; Graham Gray and postmodernism
- I have an article somewhere from the Sunday Times mag from several years ago (!) in which Salman Rushdie profiles U2. In it he refers to a recent meeting of artists from several fields of the media at which German filmmaker Wim Wenders declared that postmodern art was over and that it was the era of simple, direct statements about the truth (I'm paraphrasing).
So maybe Graham is right?

[Kester]

Great post. Some worries in there for me too, which I've posted here:

http://thecomplexchrist.typepad.com/the_complex_christ/2006/03/in_defence_of_a.html

Precis? I think Graham is jumping way too soon to conclude some paradigm shift has already happened. And the danger is we tag on new forms before the old ones have really died... Which will help no one, and probably make a whole new generation cynical. And given that this conference was led by the same old white men, it seems incredible anyone can suggest anything has changed.

Well done Jonny for challenging him. What did he say?

[Marc]

Evaluationg M21, how are the Brits doing in missions? Challenging observations and interesting comments on my weblog:

http://marcsmessages.typepad.com/mm/2006/03/how_are_the_bri.html

[Paul Fromont]

Cheers Jonny. Very interesting Point (c). I shall look forward to the research. I wonder if the we talk ourselves up more broadly about a "revival" of interest in spirituality?

[jonny]

thanks for the comments...

i included notes on graham as they were the most interesting bit of content (read between the lines). i really liked what he was saying overall so i don't want to leave the impression i didn't. i think his stuff on parallel presences, interculturation and all that is really good. my discussion at the end wasn't me trying to correct him just suggesting a difference of opinion about alt worship. i think it is unfairly represented by implication as people full of angst. my experience is that it is full of creative inspiring reflective people who have filled me with a lot of hope. many are into mission, passionate about christ and the church. graham wasn't being negative about alt worship per se - his point was that the future isn't that and that the church should prioritise unchurched rather than dechurched in mission. i think both are really worthwhile...

i suggested that if good missionw as going to take place among the unchurched one of the skills needed would be helping develop contextual worship. in my mind alt worship holds many of the clues and instincts about how to do that which graham wholeheartedly agreed with.

part of my furstration i think is that it was a pretty evengelical charismatic crowd by background. graham's comments may close them off from looking in the dircetion of emerging churches and alt worship which is a shame.

[Dave Halls]

Ref last para. Good point. Anything which justifies people staying in their comfort zone re worship needs to be challenged. I am a 50something charismatic-evangelical by background and a third generation pentecostal as well who was at Mission 21.(By the way guys, is ageism OK in your networks?) and thought that the best evidence that alt.worship wasn't a bad thing was Jonny's worship set on Friday morning which, if you'll excuse the vocabulary, was as anointed as any setting I've been in recently. It spoke to me and has continued to impact me a who lot more than 45 minutes of guitar-led singing would have done. I thought the Northumbria Community facilitated some great stuff too. But then, I'm a sucker for authenticity. Anyway--stay with it guys! I am sure that a lot of the people at Mission 21 felt like I did