jonnybaker

feeling sad

it's hard to know what to say about the situation in the middle east... i have just been having coffee with a  friend abby who has got back from a cms encounter trip. you can read a few reflections on their blog. but it just reminded me how angry, sad and confused i felt when i returned from a visit in 98. i ended up recording the album backbone as a way of getting what was inside out... but it doesn't sound as if the situation is any more hopeful which is depressing.

i felt so angry hearing the news this morning as an israeli mp was talking about the 'arab terrorists' - the day after their government was involved  in killing so many innocent people in qana - i wonder what definition of terrorist is being worked with here?! taking a look in the mirror might be a good start...

one of the things that wasn't there when i visited was the apartheid wall (i choose the term deliberately). abby told me how rachel's tomb in bethlehem now has this corridor so that if you are travelling to visit from israel you can do so without having to cross into the palestinian territories or see a palestinian. photos are on their flickr album. this one is the corridor, this one looking at it from the palestinian side. and this one seems the saddest - a last chink in the wall that will no doubt be finished soon closing off the palestinians. rachel still weeps for her children it seems...

Technorati Tags: israel, palestine

gospel and globalisation

you may remember i went to india (scroll down to the india talkie series) last year with a group of youthworkers. as part of the trip we attended the south asia youth conference whose theme was gospel and globalisation. well a book has been put together by adrian watkins and leslie nathaniel of all the presentations, reports and workshops at the conference. i have two chapters in there on worship and world and the emerging church in uk and global contexts. they are notes of two workshops i presented...

the book is available from ispck, to find it just type gospel and globalisation into the search box.

the redemption of the squeeze box - or reinventing tradition

went to a magical night at shepherds bush empire to see the gotan project . if you have not come across them their debut album la revancha del tango was amazing 5 years ago. since then they have produced a couple more which are equally brilliant. it's basically tango meets electronica. you imagine you are on a street in paris or buenos aires...

the line up was two DJs (the usual knob twiddling at the back), cello, 2 violins and a viola, guitar, piano, squeeze box and vocalist. i honestly never woiuld have believed i would pay money to go and hear someone play a squeeze box and i know nothing about tango. but it just goes to show - never write anything off...

i was thinking this is a great example of how tradition should work. tango began in argentina, got exported to europe (paris was the first place where it caught on) and gotan project have taken it back to its buenos aires roots while at the same time carrying on the european influence and mixing it with electronica. no doubt there are some tango purists who see the whole thing as heretical but from my (totally ignorant) point of view this is a tradition being made alive to lots of people in creative and new ways. i read a paper on culture last week with a concept called hybridity - i'll come back to this at some point but the basic idea is that culture is not static. a good example would be when two people from different cultures marry - they both bring their elements to the marriage, but rather than choosing one culture or the other they negotiate and probably come up with some very new cultural ideas - hybridity or a third space. it seems to mne this is what gotan project is - argentina meets tango meets paris meets electronica - hybridity, a third space, something wonderfully new (and yet authentic)...

anyway not sure what came over me there - what i meant to say was - what a great gig! go see them if you get the chance

technorati tags in typepad

adding technorati tags in typepad just got a whole lot easier. in your blog post window click on customise at the bottom of the page and choose to add technorati tags and you can add them to posts without having to mess with html

psalm of boredom - worship trick 75 [second series]

psalm of boredom has been put online by steve. he used this at a grace service on psalms back in 2004. i have had it on my computer ever since as mine was the one used for projection that night. steve says this about it...

the strange slogans [next stop quebec!] were all taken from ads on the tube that day. i took my camera to work [canary wharf back then] and assembled the movie from the resulting images. so the pasta was my lunch. there's my desk and lava lamp. the people standing on the marble floor were watching a fashion show in the mall.

fruitstock

if you are not going to the big chill this year then go to fruitstock which is free! thanks andrew for the tip...
artists include AIM, norman jay, nouvelle vague, LCGC

sweep a few things under the carpet...

sweep under the carpet, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

 

networks and monkeyspheres

karen and ryan have headed back to the US... am catching up, balancing books etc

on thursday and friday we had about 30 people together interacting with ryan over his research. it was too good an opportunity to miss so while that group of people were together we also discussed the loose network(s) that exist already and whether we can relate better and share resources and so on by being more intentional. there is a lot of caution because of a fear of naming, branding, control and all those things. but overall people do want to add value to the relationships that exist and open up those relationships to new people. so we ended up with a cautious yes to move forward which feels good.

to get the ball rolling, steve collins presented some theory from the world of mathematics on networks. this was fascinating. like all these things it had its own set of terms and language so may not be everybody's thing. ... but it does offer quite a few insights into networks and enriching them. steve has put his notes up as text and slides which is incredibly helpful. the headlines i remember are that networks are likely to be richer if they are loose, open, and have random elements introduced. we all have a limit to how much we can network (our monkeysphere) so none of us can really get our heads round the full set of relationships that exist and that's probably a good thing. each group should probably encourage someone to focus on external relationships and networking as that will bring a richness that flows back to the community... i want to think about all of this some more and maybe i will come back to later.

fuerzabruta

fuerzabruta
Originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

summer holidays are here at last... each year we have a jar we put pennies in. when the end of the school year arrives we spend it on going out - kind of a family tradition now. this year on a recommendation from my sister we went to see fuerzabruta at the roundhouse in camden. according to timeout this is the must see show of the summer. they are right! it is absolutely amazing. do whatever you can to go and see it. i used the word immersive to describe bill viola's art exhibition, but this really is immersive theatre. the show happens in and around and above you in acrobatic, dramatic fashion. i have never been to anything remotely like it. at one moment a huge sheet of perspex is lowered from above with water on it and the actors moving balletically above. the sheet was lowered so that we could reach out and touch it. at another a moving walkway is moved among the crowd as a man runs through walls, at another actors literally are running around the walls suspended above. all the while ambient and dance soundtrack accompanies. what a great night out! i have added pictures i took to flickr that will give you the idea

flickr inspector

flickrinspector - another third party flickr tool - this one gives you stats on yours or any other users photos

Technorati Tags: flickr

generators of culture

steve has posted his thoughts in response to a question on the tour in london - is the emerging church just a temporary phenomenon of a particular social subgroup [middle class, hip] rather than anything more universally applicable?

as ever steve has some great thoughts. i thought his second point was a particularly interesting one and one that i haven't heard many times so i'll quote it here...

2. emerging church is happening in the part of society that questions and generates culture in all fields, not just church. many emerging church people are professional culture-changers bringing their external skills to bear on church. hence the perception that emerging church is 'hip' - hip means skill in cultural manipulation. it's to be expected that the drive for cultural change in the church should come from such people, rather than the parts of society who simply accept the culture they're given.

that's why, when you apply the method - when you open up a free space for contributions - you get these people. they're the ones who want to experiment and change things. they're the ones who actually want to use such a space, and understand where it might lead.

what's the difference between the emerging church and a cult?

still touring with ryan bolger and karen ward...

at birmingham yesterday we had a question and answer session as we have done at every other location. the most bizarre question of the day was what is the difference between an emerging church and a cult? here karen and ryan thought they were posing for a nice photo - i pointed out the sign above them afterwards. maybe the questioner knew something i didn't ;-)

have spent today with CMS managers and directors presenting material and discussing how this stuff joins up with other regions of the world. it's been a good day and because at the heart of this stuff is a contextual mission approach (albeit engaging with postmodern cultures) it is easy to see how it links in with CMS. tomorrow we meet with a smaller group of leaders in the uk to talk a bit more in depth about the uk and how this stuff plays out here which i'm looking forward to. part of the discussion will be about whether and how we can network and support each other better...

emerging church credentials

dave up to mischief again at cartoonblog...

he's sparked steve taylor to proclaim that there is no such thing as the emerging church anyway. now why was i doing this tour?!....

emerging churches

two days in to the emerging churches tour... had a good time in bristol and london. it's great to meet ryan bolger and karen ward again. today off to manchester, then birmingham, northampton, high leigh. not much time to blog so expect another quiet week. (i haven't even had time to watch the tour de france which is turning out to be a very unpredictable race it seems).

ben edson is travelling with me helping organise and run the tour. i leant him some cds of some talks by david tacey (been meaning to blog about him and the spirituality revolution for a long time). seems like they have sparked some interesting thoughts as we've travelled. i think the notion of emerging churches needing rites of passage from childhood into adulthood is a really interesting idea. he speculates that many groups die in this liminal phase, maybe unnecessarily...

postmodernism revisited

at mission 21 graham cray pronounced postmodernism as over (or words to that effect) and suggested that the new cultural landscape had arrived. it was part of quite a provocative address all round which i quite liked - always good to get everyone going. anyhow i keep thinking about it and i have decided i simply don't agree... i kind of understand what graham is getting at - we can't just remain post for ever not knowing what the new cultural landsacpe looks like, but on the other hand we can't be too hasty if indeed it is still taking shape. other large cultural turns took a long time after all.

anyway all this is by way of a preamble to a book review. doug gay, whose opinion i always respect and listen to carefully e-mailed me and rang me to enthuse about jamie smith's book whose afraid of postmodernism. he said something like this is the book that captures the moment. in fact let me dig out his e-mail -

just needed a moment to rave to some interested bods about Jamie Smith's new book Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church - Baker Academic.

I have to say that in one slim volume this seems to have caught what a lot us are groping after more directly than anything else I have yet read. Personally I would sell your shirts and get it (you'll read it in an evening) And he's a Brethren boy like me! Risking the derision of his Rad-Orth buddies he also makes a fascinating attempt to connect his thinking to the legacy of Schaeffer and Doyeweerd.

high praise eh? (most of you may not have heard of dooyeweerd - but he was a genius philosopher...)

anyway i have got hold of the book and it is excellent. there's a chapter engaging with each of foucault, derrida, and lyotard, using a film to get into the issues. he takes a pretty positive engagement with the philosophers - refreshing for christian authors, but also not afraid to offer his own critique. i'm reminded of a little booklet i read many years ago called 'ideas have legs' by al wolters which basically showed the importance of philosophy because it shapes the way people live - delighted to say i found it online - he says for example -

Ideas have legs in the sense that they are not the disembodied         abstractions of some ivory-tower academic, but are real spiritual forces         that go somewhere, that are on the march in somebody's army, and that         have a widespread effect on our practical, everyday lives.

while for many, engaging these postmodern thinkers may seem an academic irrelevance, this book shows how true it is that ideas do have legs and the postmodern landscape we are living in is far from over, dare i say contrary to what bishop cray's current take is...

on another note if you are visiting the blog from the durham summer school - hi! good to be with you yesterday. i enjoyed the sessions and the worship - hope it provokes some good stuff...

a couple of things...

how many emerging church bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?

gareth is amusing himself...

and steve gets his flickr account going which is good news. be nice to have some larger sizes of some of your fab photos steve!

explosive downfall

  water zoom 
  Originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

love how this photo came out... another shot from the viola exhibition but this time with a zoomburst (zoom the camera in or out while taking the photo)

blah tour starts this week...

looking forward to the emerging churches blah tour that starts later this week with ryan bolger and karen ward. if you haven't got tickets you can get them on the door...

fire woman

fire woman, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

went to the second half of bill viola's exhibition with haunch of venison at st olaves college on tooley street. you simply have to visit this exhibition if you are in london. it is spread across two venues so you might have to pay two visits (like me). it is stunning. the scale of this piece is huge from floor to ceiling in one of the halls at the college. in fire woman, a piece  about being on the threshold of death, a woman stares at the fire before stepping forward and falling into a pool of her own reflection. mesmerising...

profound

the convent came to a close tonight. obviously i recorded it and watched it after the football ;-)

in its own way it has been just as profound as the monastery. when i turned the tv on big brother was on the other side. the contrast couldn't be greater.

i guess it shouldn't be surprising but it is amazing - each of the women have been transfromed in different ways by their experience of 40 days sharing in the life of a community of nuns. there is something about the rhythm of prayer and worship and service that creates the space for them to be vulnerable and be themselves and experience god. there is something incredibly powerful about feeling safe. the nuns provide a climate of acceptance and love where the women are safe and can trust and open up. acceptance is such a healing thing...

i admire the women on it for making themselves vulnerable for a public audience. i hope they feel fairly represented by the programmes. and i hope and pray that their lives have been enriched by the experience - it certainly seems that way.