jonnybaker

pioneer training - prospectus and web site have landed!

it's an exciting week (for me at least!) - the prospectus and web site for the cms pioneer mission leadership training are ready!

the prospectus arrived from the printers on friday. 

the web site is here - http://pioneer.cms-uk.org and you can download a prospectus from there.

we have open days tomorrow and wednesday (not too late to come along btw but let me know).

there is lots i more could say about it but there is enough to digest in the prospectus and web site. do let me know what you think. and please do spread the word about this - it's early days and i think it will grow by word of mouth. i can't quite believe we have come this far so quickly...

greenbelt announce line up

greenbelt festival announce some of their line up today - of course there will be a bundle more to follow! always a must visit festival to end off the summer...

Best-selling author Rob Bell returns, alongside the likes of political satirist Mark Thomas, theologian Brian McLaren, Christian Aid director Loretta Minghella, and emerging church guru Phyllis Tickle.

Beyond the talks programme, already confirmed to in the music lineup are singer and activist Billy Bragg, familiar Greenbelt names Iain Archer and Martyn Joseph, folk favourite Kate Rusby and Scottish rock outfit Idlewild.

Other musical highlights include Christian rock outfit [dweeb], new worship group the Rend Collective and jazz-rap renegade Soweto Kinch.

As previously announced, Greenbelt is focusing particularly on family and children’s provision this year. New performance, film, craft and play venues for children will operate alongside spectacular shows for the whole family, including breath-taking aerial theatre from Ockham’s Razor, charming puppetry from PuppetCraft, and dance workshops led by Britain’s Got Talent finalists Flava.

"We're so pleased with the lineup that’s coming together," said Greenbelt Chair, Andy Turner. "Only Greenbelt could host such a diverse group of incredible artists, thinkers and activists."

Further contributors will be announced over the next few months.

To celebrate the launch of this years lineup, Greenbelt will be hosting two evenings with Rob Bell which will take place at Westminster Central Hall (in partnership with the Methodist Church) and at Cheltenham Racecourse on Tuesday 19th April. The Festival itself will take place from Friday 26th - Monday 29th August 2011. Tickets for both events are available at greenbelt.org.uk/tickets.

what are parishes and denominations in emergence?

steve collins is on holiday for a couple of weeks. whenever that happens ideas that have been in his mind or scibbled in a note book seem to creep into the public realm. sure enough he has added a new piece - scalability trying to reflect on what parishes and denominations might be in emergence!

curated membership communities are today's most important networks

steve collins sent me a link to this article - beyond groups: why curated membership communities are today's most important networks. it sounds as though it's something that might have come out of a conversation on new monasticism with the importance of ethos at the centre of a relational community life but not so - this is coming out of a conversation around social capital and networking and how they are transforming business and culture. that doesn't mean for a moment that its any more significant than if it's a conversation around community life in faith communities. but it did impact me all the more none the less. it's a reminder that the search for new ways of being the body of christ is a quest that chimes in with the quest in the wider culture for ways of being human and being community and making a difference. 

The explosion of curated membership communities is an attempt to create the shared experiences which bring us into contact with those people, giving us access to the amazing world which we can see, if not fully yet grasp.

it's also interesting that curation as a way of thinking about leadership has not just spilled into thinking about worship leading but is an exciting new metaphor elsewhere.

the insatiable moon

you may remember me raving about the insatiable moon last year - mike riddell's film. well it's due in london from march 4 and you can book tickets here.

daydream believer

mike burke is relatively new to cms and his role is liasing with churches. life is full of surprises and it turns out that he has just written a novel - daydream believer which he handed me a copy of the other week. the subtitle is one clergyman's ministry goes parabolic. it follows the tale of a rev kev birley who is in his forties, a widower, and who finds himself increasingly frustrated by the church of england he is a leader in and its mediocrity. it's painful in places with observations that are no doubt born out of mike's own twenty years as a vicar. if you've seen the tv series rev you'll get the drift. the observations are both amusing details - bad coffee, storage heaters and custard creams, but also cut deeper than that. through the tale mike explores through the story of kev how faith has somehow got disconnected from real life and what to do about it. in his case he takes a sabbatical and through his love of music and touring with a band begins to reconnect and find healing. without giving away the ending this journey forces him to confront the question in relation to church - should i stay or should i go?! perhaps the deepest issue this got me thinking about was around the challenge there is for vicars being themselves in their communities. i have often wondered in some models of church who the vicar's mates are, or who he/she is able to be themselves with. there is often an odd sort of role and set of expectations created.

i enjoyed the read. it's quite niche - i suspect that church leaders will identify with it and enjoy it but it's also a creative way in to a coversation around the challenges the church faces in relating to the wider culture. i confess it's a book that if i saw in a shop i would be very unlikely to pick up because of the cover. hopefully you are less shallow than me and will get past that...

growzones

earth abbey is an inspired project/vision/network. here's what they say about themselves...

EarthAbbey is a movement of people helping one another to live more in tune with the earth. We work to promote

• A rich relational life between human beings
• A compassion toward the earth and its creatures
• A sense of interconnectedness of all life
• Wisdom and justice in relationships
• Human fulfilment and the nurture of the inner life
• A way of living that leaves the earth better than we found it

Our inspiration derives from Jesus of Nazareth whose life and mission was to bring about a peace which embraces all creation.  We pursue a life-affirming, creative spirtuality that is open to all. EarthAbbey is more than a website. It is a movement of people and you are invited to join.

one of the projects they are encouraging is growzones. it's a very simple idea - getting a small community group together to either develop a community garden/allotment or to develop one another's gardens to grow food. we actually do this with an allotment anyway and certainly find it easier and more fun to do in a group but it is good to see it being encouraged. there is a web site and kit to get you started if you need help. a group is starting in oxford soon...

singles

both tallskinnykiwi and steve taylor are excited about the kindle single format for books - the argument is that digital formats suit shorter lengths. i think there is a lot of truth to this so it will be interesting to see what transpires...

come alive - worship trick 99 series 3

yesterday rich played this movie at a cms pioneer training day. it's a foo fighters track - can't say i'm that familiar with their music. anyway people liked it so much he has put it up on youtube. he made the whole thing in keynote - i had a look and on one slide there were around 79 transitions! and to get it to sync with the song he simply did the transitions manually. he then used snapz pro to record the presentation as a movie. i hadn't come across this before but it looks like a very powerful little tool to record anything on screen or on an area of your screen. genius!

so it's the first worship trick for a while - no 99 in series 3.

the eucharist re-examined

nigel scotland wrote a piece the eucharist re-examined that someone forwarded on to me. in it he explores the eucharist/communion in the context of fresh expressions of church. it is encouraging this piece was published in the church of england newspaper. i really welcome discussion around this whatever direction or perspective people bring and indeed whatever direction their community then takes it. it's one area of church practice that should be celebratory and freeing but is too tightly controlled and straight jacketed and stuck. i recently read an article on the eucharist in a dictionary of liturgy and worship that pointed out that scholarship is pretty much agreed that improvisation was the norm for the first 400 years and that there is very little evidence to suggest that the words of institution were in eucahristic prayers. so driving to the heart of the tradition might uncover the possibility for a new faithful improvisational practice and a relaxing of what we consider to be sacrosanct! i hope to give more thought to this at some point but as you can probably tell from the lack of decent blog posts - never enough time! as nigel says...

A re-examination and fresh expression of our Eucharistic practice may enable these wonderful blessings to become an increasing reality in our lives.

james blake

james blake's new album is gorgeous - the first music of the year to blow me away [though i am expecting jamie woon's album to do the same].

praise - grace this saturday night

grace on saturday is on the theme of praise. we are good at being reflective, artistic and several other things but praise is a conundrum. if you are not a chorus or hymn singing type of community what does praise look like and how can it be done together in a way that is heartfelt and authentic? that's what we'll be exploring...

labyrinth kit now available as a download

a while back we ran out of labyrinth kits in the uk and decided not to do another batch but make it available as a download. it's taken us a while but finally the leader's guide, movie loops and audio of the meditations is now available and of course it's made it a fraction of the price. i must admit having re-looked at the leader's guide i had forgotten that it contains some wonderful theory as well as the practical info on how to set it up. for example there is a really good chapter on alternative worship.

if you are in the US you can still get the labyrinth in a kit form as the prayerpath

if you want to experience it online you can do so here

gods behaving badly

pete ward has a new book out on celebrity culture - gods behaving badly. he's had this fermenting for a few years now so it's great it's finished. i made a comment that has been put on the back of the uk edition of the book. it's a fairly long comment so i'll repost that here...

Whilst many people might dismiss the culture's obsession with celebrity as trivial or trashy, Pete Ward typically dives in and gets under the skin of the ubiquitous presence of celebrities in our culture. Uniquely and creatively wearing the lenses of both cultural studies and theology he suggests that the conversation about celebrity is at its heart a conversation about the possible self - who am I and who do I aspire to be?  Madonna, Paris Hilton, Tiger Woods, Princess Di and Michael Jackson turn out not to (just) be trashy but to be an arena in which contested notions of what it means to be human are being negotiated. Ward suggests that theological language and themes are at play in the  conversation but transcendence has collapsed into the self - a sure sign that notions of the sacred are shifting. This kind of reflecting on and listening in depth to the flow of meanings in popular culture is wonderfully refreshing.

one of the ideas i like a lot in the book is what pete calls the para-religious. by that he means that while religious language and imagery and myth is at play in popular culture it's not really religion as we know it but is a kind of religion, often ambiguous and where the transcendent seems to have pretty much collapsed.

sacred spaces in public places 2 day conference in oxford

oxford centre for youth ministry and cms are hosting a two day conference in oxford on sacred spaces in public places - see details and book here

the blurb...

This two day non-residential conference will explore 3 strands

• Recognising the sacred in the seemingly secular places - where are God's fingerprints in the world around us?
• Creating a sacred space in public place - artistic visual expression of God's presence
• Being aware that we may be the sacred space in the public place - looking at our inner space, an incarnational engagement with the world.

Day 1: Theological and theoretcial input with workshops from our contributors on our threes trands of sacred space

Day 2: Putting our learning into action! Creating sacred spaces in public places in Oxford

wow

wow - nice surprise!