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so it turns out that with my naive suggestion i am not the only one thinking that dealing with the obscene salaries is a serious issue. i had suggested setting a salary cap above which people could then earn more and choose whether to invest it in arts, health, charity - something on the lines of transformation for good. doing so would overnight change our economics. this idea wil not go away out of my head. in fact i am getting more and more wound up about peoples' so called earnings and their supposed individual right to such earnings. i enjoyed the letter in today's guardian from les farris which said
Can we stop referring to "earnings" to describe the ludicrous sums looted from the economy by "top" people. The terms "trousered", "pocketed", "walked way with", "snaffled" or the simple "received" would be more appropriate. Nobody "earns" those levels of income.
that about says it! a report has just been published on high salaries and how they have escalated in the last 30 years so that the gap between high and low earners in a companby is wider than ever. in barcalys for example it is 75 times with top earners getting 4.5 million pounds in a year - yes a year. why do we tolerate this as a society? is this the sort of world we want to live in? it's completely absurd and indefensible.
the reason i mention it again is partly because of the report but also this indicator in companies of the differential in pay as a multiplier of the lowest to highest earner. a friend lis at grace pointed out that there is quite a discussion in places to suggest that a good move would be to curb this at 20 times. this still seems huge to me as someone who works in the charity sector but i guess it would be good to see footballers at chelsea earn a maximum of 20 times the recepionist or equivalent! it's certainly a step in the right direction.
the phrase i keep coming back to from st pauls occupy protest is the phrase another world is possible which is on tape all round the camp. in this area it surely is!
ben bell does it again! every year he seems to come up with a very creative and often provocative image for advent. there's a set here of his previous images which have now been used all round the world. fast food christmas is this year's. if you want to use the images ben asks you contact him and give a credit.
this is worship trick 16 series 4!
it sounds complicated but it's really not. a qr code is one of these -
it can be scanned with a reader on your phone. when you scan it you get a password, this gives you access to a digital station on simon's blog with a meditation. that then gives the co-ordinates to find the next qr code hidden in hanley. simple eh?! he explains it in a lot more detail here.
definitely worthy of worship trick status
i can't quite believe it's time to think about advent and christmas but i guess it's not far away. si smith and ian adams have combined together to produce a new digital advent calendar which is available on proost. it blends 25 si smith iconic illustrations with a short reflection each day from ian. it's a pdf which you can either view on a computer, monitor, projector, iphone, ipad or whatever else takes your fancy. if you subscribe you can also access the individual images - one person has contacted us to say they are printing out one a day to put on their church noticeboard outside through advent. we also have a bundle of other advent resources which you might want to look at. here's a few for example -
9 lessons, a flash animation | nine - nine artists interpret the traditional nine readings with 6 movies and 3 songs | 25 - si smith's amazing cutout and make nativity characters and advent calendar and comic. | wait - vaux movie | silent night movie
we also have another liturgy book as well that is new this month from urban expression, an urban mission agency that recruits, equips, deploys, and networks self-financing teams pioneering creative and relevant expressions of the christian church in under reached areas of the inner city. this collection of liturgy and prayer is based around the core values and commitments of urban expression. it is inspiring and relevant whether or not you are connected with urban expression. it provides a month's worth of prayers, readings and exercises. it's just available as a download. i have all the proost pdf liturgy books on my phone and I find that's a great way to be able to use them. i'll be adding this!
grace on saturday night was inspired by the occupy protest at st pauls, and explored the idea of a new earth/world. what do we grieve about the current world and how do we imagine a new earth could be? people were invited to bring tents to set up installations which turned st marys into a camp site and then there were areas to interact and for lectures and so on... i took a bundle of photographs. another world is possible this was the grace manifesto.
the first ever cms pioneer missional entrepreneurship week went really well! i have put together a photo story of the week to give you a flavour - click on the image above. we'll be running a week next year in november - dates yet to be finalised. but book early - i sense this is going to grow!
grace saturday night sounds like it should be good! and amazingly it all began 18 years ago this month - november 1993. so grace is now a grown up! jenny and i weren't in london then but joined in a couple of years later.
i love what ric stott is up to in sheffield. if you haven't come across him or his blog before scroll down his blog i ask for wonder. the latest street art adventures is inspired.
see also in this series 1 the adjacent possible | 2 the new belongs elsewhere | 3 dissent | 4 refounding | 5 darkness and unknowing | 6 connect don't protect | 7 imagination grief and amazement
this is a post on newness in relation to the church in mission. i can't think what language might be more general that would apply in other sectors. perhaps intentional community? leave a comment if you have ideas of that...
there is a stereotype of a pioneer as a lone individual who goes off to stick their flag in the land to begin something new. there is also a stereotype of a prophet who lives alone in the wilderness communing with god and appearing occasionally to deliver their message. but in terms of newness i think these are really unhelpful pictures. the kind of imagining out of which genuine newness might emerge is much more likely a communal one. in the case of prophets in the old testament there were certainly schools of prophets and i suspect pioneers were rarely alone. the nurturing of an alternative consciousness and imagination will surely come through dreaming and reflecting with others, knocking around ideas, eating together and conversation and nurturing the kind of environment in which poets and artists gifts can flourish. for this sort of environment there needs to be something intentional about community. i think this is particularly the case when we are all so co-opted by the dominant culture of consumption, and the dominant culture of business as usual in our churches. how will we find space to detox and grieve and imagine alternative worlds are possible and be energised in hope towards them? it needs a depth of community and relationship to have any kind of chance of developing a missional discipleship. but i am beginning to wonder in our world of loose networks and 'friends' if we have forgotten that to find depth in relationships requires commitment, or to use an old fashioned word fellowship which as andrew jones has pointed out originally meant buying into a cow or something together! i.e. you put your commitment on the line.
connectivity is crucial for innovation as i have blogged in the previous post connect don't protect. but loose networks and 'friends' in social networks don't afford the kind of depth required for prophetic imagination and community. they are opt in when i feel like it arrangements - typical of the postmodern avoidance of fixation or commitment. jump on board when something interesting is flowing and jump off when something else catches my attention.
perhaps one of the reasons for the resurgence of interest in monasticism is because of wisdom around community life and how to find this missing depth - in grace we were helped many years ago by roy searle's ( of the northumbia community) insights that ethos is central to community life and to see a function of leadership as guarding ethos. developing a rhythm and/or rule of life, practices of contemplative spirituality, hospiltality and lots of other things could also be seen as treasures. ian adams cave refectory road is a delightful book in which he explores some of these.
i am particularly interested in the ways that religious communities have (and might still) nurtured prophets, dissenters and refounding persons in the past. gerald arbuckle has written at length on this (yes sorry - arbuckle again!). in from chaos to mission he looks at formation and how that might be refounded in religious communities precisely to cultivate this sort of newness. one of the things that he highlights in a very helpful way is that it is not monasticism per se that forms people in this way. it's a very mixed picture. in particular, it is not a cloistered (or residential) monasticism that we should look to if weʼre interested in prophetic ministry and mission. the purpose of formation in cloistered orders was obedience and conformity and stability in an unchanging world. but for the spread out orders (friars) - the likes of the jesuits and fransiscans and celts - prophetic mission to the world was at the heart of their concern which requiried radical flexibility and imagination. the purpose of formation in the spread out communities or mission orders of friars is inculturation - i.e. innovation in relation to gospel and cultures. being part of a mission community like this formed people to engage in prophetic mission.
he suggests that denominatons struggle to contain this gift and people. they simply don't know what to do with it or them. it makes far more sense all round that these mission communities nurture and form the dissenters/prophetic ministry. the religious communties are then a 'shock therapy of the holy spirit for the church as a whole'! especially if they are actually ecclesial (part of church in and of themselves) as opposed to para church (a bit on the side of church).
i say a bit more about all this in the breakout talks and this blog post is in danger of going on rather a long time! but research is backing this up - pioneers are far better placed to bring genuine newness today when they are located in and out of a mission community/order (such as cms, church army, urban expression, the methodist venture fx diaconate etc).
this is by far the hardest piece to write so far in this series and is in many ways the most contentious, if not weird - i welcome any feedback and discussion on it. the implications are pretty huge if it is anywhere near correct... if you are a dissenter/pioneer/prophetic or whatever language you prefer get in an intentional mission community of some sort. and if you are in a denominational or equivalent structure looking for newness make friends with those in a mission community and ask them to work with you and with anyone you nurture in this prophetic mission to help form their prophetic imagination and to connect them in with a community that gets it and them. it's why am a member of cms - a mission community. it nurtures me into this kind of imagination and ministry and mission.
(if this is all too established i think it might translate for non conformists at the local level into small mission communities gathered around shared ethos values and practices and those communities networking together but with some genuine buy in and not just a loose network?)
i have a new book out imagining mission with john v taylor which i have co-authored with cathy ross
