jonnybaker

billionaires

we have a tradition in our family that jen started a few years back of giving books as easter gifts. mine this year was billionaires by darryl cunningham. it is a graphic book i.e. the stories are told in pictures like a graphic novel but it's not a novel. he tells the stories of three super rich - rupert murdoch, the koch brothers and jeff bezos. it is brilliant! it is a surprise in that you wouldn't expect a graphic book to be able to get under the lid of the issues in the way he does.

i find the whole financial systems confusing and when i have read books on economics i don't usually make it to the end especially if they are as fat as piketty's capital which i bought and never read. but super crash his previous graphic book was the most undestandable book i have read on the finance systems.

my own naive few is that the society we have allowed to exist where an individual can accumulate the level of wealth these guys do is absurd. it would be simple to deal with through taxation and creating limits and the money could be invested in society in different ways. but the obssession with not interfering and the ideology of the free market seems to stop that sort of intervention. it find it disgusting. it will be interesting to see if the current situation changes our societal view.

murdoch i knew about and the book confirmed what i thought. the koch brothers are unbelievable - i ended that section wondering how they are not in prison for the abuse of the environment. but the really disturbing thing in both of their stories is the collusion with government and media and what is essentially manipulation of power through their wealth that buys political influence. the level of cosying up should be illegal. and make no mistake these guys are hugely powerful. jeff bezos story is interesting - i genuinely like his drive and innovation but in the end his drive doesn't play out so well for workers and the stories of tax avoidance are well reported and the jury is out on what he will do with his wealth. but that is the point - why should we as a society wait for these individuals to be good philanthropists? they should never be in that position. 

musings from the other side of the world 5: this is my whakapapa for good or ill

[see part 1 kiwi and proud | part 2 am i in england? | part 3 smug statues and street art saints | part 4 when church collapses]

every story is contested. and the older the story perhaps the more challenging it is to unpick. i found myself really interested in the story of new zealand while i was there in a way i hadn’t anticipated. the particular aspect of that story that i was keen to find out more about was the story of missionaries and how they had shared the story of christ with maori and the degree to which they colluded with or indeed resisted oppression and empire. i work for the church mission society which was founded at the end of the eighteenth century by what now we would call a missional community - a group of people meeting in a pub dreaming up ideas of ways to change the world. the purpose of the cms was to share the story of christ with those who did not know it or indeed know him, which at the time was a lot of parts of the world. very early on new zealand was one of the places that cms missionaries travelled to.

i find in conversation with people that when i say i work for an organisation that sent missionaries some people wince! their assumption is that missionaries were part of the domination of the colonial enterprise. they assume the missionaries softened up the indigenous people and then the empire could grab the land in a sort of one-two move. in new zealand there is a particular twist to the story. because of atrocities elsewhere the british wanted to try and take a different approach in new zealand and this led to a treaty - the treaty of waitangi - which is the founding document of new zealand granting equal rights to maori and settlers signed in 1840. it’s a really important document and has been very significant in recent decades in a multi billion dollar programme of compensation because of the ways the treaty was ignored by the settlers. and good on new zealand - they have engaged seriously in this process of restorative justice and compensation whilst many other countries have not. the leader of cms in new zealand at the time was henry williams who was loved and trusted by the maori and he translated the document and met with the maori chiefs who eventually signed it. the point of contestation is that one spin on the story is this was a con and in translation the maori were manipulated. this felt like it was important for me to dig into and face my own story both as british and in terms of the legacy of mission - this is my whakapapa for good or ill.

when i asked around several people said you have to read huia come home by jay ruka and someone kindly gave me a copy (thank you stephanie). this intrigued me straight away because this is the indigenous bird i could now only find stuffed in a museum because it was extinct and this was the bird that appeared in several street art murals in christchurch. in the book, initially through a dream, jay reconnects with his maori roots and it leads him to explore the story of the early missionaries. he then gets into the maori worldview and spirituality and introduces that in a very accessible way. this book seems to be being read by young adults and stirring up in them a hope, a longing and a possibility for a different kind of engagement in faith into the future which is integrates maori spirituality rather than separates. i was pretty excited by those conversations. my own experience of connecting with maori was that i visited a maori church which is one of three strands of the anglican church there and i loved being there - big thanks to paul for pointing me in that direction. it did feel pretty separated in that space but i hope there are lots of quests for that connection to reimagine the future. 

hula come home is a really fabulous book - it’s easy to read, provocative, and gives some of the history and maori sensibilities and worldview in an accessible way. that made me want to dig a bit deeper so i read nzcms account our story:aotearoa and bible and treaty: missionaries among the maori a new perspective by keith newman. i loved digging into these stories. i’m not going to attempt to retell the history of mission in new zealand in a blog post. as i said at the start every story is contested so i am sure there are counter tellings but a few things caught my attention...

the missionaries were shaped by their time without doubt. samuel marsden who preached the first sermon on christmas day in 1814 in new zealand believed that civilisation paved the way for openness to the gospel. my heart sank when i read that. beneath that is a worldview tainted by superiority - the dreaded colonial disease. and i am sure that was in the mindset of many missionaries however radical they were. it’s so challenging to do mission well in a way that lets go your own way of doing things and offers it as a gift inside local culture.

the missionaries loved the maori people and were trusted by them over time. cms and marsden wanted to see a flourishing maori nation and envisaged only a small number of settlers. they expected to introduce farming and other technologies to help but never envisaged the wave of settlement that took place and so had to respond accordingly. in fact in england cms were publishing pamphlets opposing widespread colonisation which got into national newspapers. cms at the time had members in parliament back in england and were weighing in at the political end to try and get a different approach to other places the empire had expanded and opposing some of the theories of colonisation being purported by those such as wakefield (see below). here’s how newman summarises the missionaries

Most were men and women of good character, determined to bring the gospel of peace, forgiveness and love to the Māori while attempting to build a life for themselves and their families. They were often accused of favouring Māori above the settlers, being opponents of colonisation, and having more land than their humble profession required.

the change point that came in terms of maori responding to the story of jesus christ was when the bible was translated and it got into maori hands. they became the ones who shared the story with their own people. the european missionaries had faithfully shared the story and some had responded to it but the reality was a hard slog over twenty years or so with little results. but it was the local maori evangelist/disciple who set it alight in extraordinary ways. there was a maori prophet toiroa who had visions of settlers in 1766 before captain james cook set foot on the shores who had said that ‘the name of their god will be son who was killed, a good god’. so this came as the fulfilment of that prophesy. the same prophesy also said that ‘however the people will still be oppressed’ which proved to be only too true.

there were some horrible characters in the early history who sound very like today’s free market capitalists - people like edward wakefield and governor earl grey (yes that is his name) out for profit regardless of the means to achieve it. some of them arrived ironically on a ship called the tory (!!). wakefield and the new zealand company were seeking to do deals to get land by hook or crook to sell to settlers. if no one was on land they claimed it was free to be taken and so on. they hated cms because missionaries advocated for the maori in the face of this injustice. and it was largely the lawlessness that was unfolding that led the crown and cms to think that a treaty was essential. coming back to henry williams, everything i have read suggests he was a good man - he loved maori, was deeply trusted by them, and was mortified that the treaty he had helped broker was largely ignored or overridden such that the maori came to feel they had been duped and it did turn into a fiasco. it is sad that there is this widespread myth about the treaty - jay ruka and keith newman say the accusations simply don’t match the historical accounts. his is a sad tale in that there was a campaign against him which sounds so like politics today - governor grey, bishop selwyn, the wakefields wanted him out of the way. cms sadly removed him from office over what proved to be false accusations and whilst he was later reinstated he was broken by the experience. i intend to ask the cms archivist to dig a bit to see what i can find out about that part of the story. this quote from newman sums up his take on the missionaries and the difference between them and those greedy for power and land

The high-minded social reformers of the Clapham Sect who set out the template for Māori to have a full say in what happened to their country well before colonisation gained any real momentum, would have been horrified at what eventually played out. Greedy men, hungry for cheap land and temporal power, betrayed and delayed the proposed partnership plan outlined in both the Bible and the Treaty of Waitangi – mocking the humanitarian promises, undermining the missionary influence and misinterpreting science with a borrowed bias from the era of slavery. Until history found them out, those responsible were determined to dispossess an indigenous people of their land in the belief that they were superior and ‘the natives’ would soon become extinct. For over forty years, dozens of European missionaries generally stood firm like guardians, concerned for the welfare of Māori and against injustice, rivalled in their passion only by the scores of Māori who brought the message of transformation to their own people. 

i was interested by the tension between cms and the church of england. in the very early days cms wanted missionaries ordained but the bishops in england refused so john venn sent them as lay catechists - it sounds much like discussions around pioneers today and a good hack by john venn! bishop selwyn sounds like the kind of bishop i would hate - i bet there is a smug statue of him somewhere on his high horse. he had an abrupt manner, was very into the english churchy ways (robes, surpluses, vestments, english prayer book), looked down on those not ordained, and insisted missionaries and others come under his authority. he colluded with the corrupt new zealand company who offered him funding. he held back the possibility of ordaining maori for years creating ridiculous hoops that they could not jump through such as learning greek and latin classics and so it goes on. it reminded me why the church needs mission movements and not just denominational structures. 

on that point while i was there i was reading binding the strong man which i blogged about previously - that book sees the life of christ as a confrontation with two powers of domination - dominating religious power and dominating imperial power. it was so pertinent to the stories i was reading. and in terms of my own whakapapa i feel more shame at the church of england and english empire parts than i do the cms missionaries. i feel good about being in their legacy overall.

this is all getting a bit long for a blog post… but i loved engaging with these stories though feel the pain of them too. and it raised so many important questions. is there a place for mission today? if so how can it be done in a way that has no superiority or colonial whiff about it (the technical term is post colonial i guess)? and how come these two powers of dominating religion and imperialism are so prevalent still? and what does it mean to follow in the way of christ today in the face of these powers? small questions! i downloaded post-colonial theology to read on my kindle on the flight back to london (hoping it would be helpful or send me to sleep or both!). and i hope to conclude this blog series with a comment or two about that. thanks if you have made it this far! 

fermenting

i am not quite sure why i got into this but in lockdown i have been exploring fermenting. i have been making sourdough for around five years so in that sense it's not new but vegetables is a whole new thing. why? i don't know! because you can. actually i think my taste palette was inspired by my visit to korea and japan a few years back where you have some fermented pickles with most meals as a side. as well as sourdough and vegetables i have also made ginger beer and got a ginger bug fizzing away. next stop is probably yoghurt and cheese i guess! i am sure you are all thinking why not beer and wine - that requires a whole lot more knowledge and equipment i think - maybe one day...

one of the things that i love is the colours so i took some photos yesterday and have started a fermenting album here. btw fermented food is great for the gut - big health benefits.

for this term only...

unsurprisingly we have moved all our teaching online but it does mean that for this term there is an opportunity for anyone who is interested to join in and audit a module who would otherwise not be able to travel to oxford to do so. for example you may be in another country... our focus is on pioneering mission so you'd need to be interested in that kind of practice. there are six modules this term. i am teaching one on worship for example which is designed to help give you some approaches to thinking creatively about leading worship in a way that relates to the culture or community you are in whilst drawing on the resources of the tradition (aka inculturation in mission jargon), or john drane is teaching one on bible - have a look here for the list. i have been on study leave for a couple of months and just back in the fray this week so don't know details of things such as cost but do follow the link to email if you want more info. 

and when i say for this term only i guess it depends how long the lockdown goes on!

something borrowed

the current situation is producing all sorts of creative things in lockdown. harry has started doing a live instagram poetry show with a guest which is on every wednesday evening and works amazingly well on a phone. he has now turned it into a weekly podcast something borrowed... which is the show edited and you can follow in the usual podcast places.

smallfire back revamped

smallfire has been completely overhauled by steve collins making photos larger and adding plenty of unseen photos too. it's beautifully done and is such a labour of love. thank you steve!

it has photos with short narrative underneath for various alternative worship communities. because of the nature of alternative worship it's so much easier to look at pictures to get a feel for it than simply read words. 

i loved looking through the grace archive - and enjoyed seeing various family members in there! and this is a photo of me i don't remember looking different in the goldfish service...

i also liked that it is dedicated to nic hughes with a lovely section about him.

hand washing ritual

grace's easter vigil went well - like so many others we were feeling our way with the technology running it online and quickly worked out that our usual music background didn't work! i hope it went well for people who followed along on the hashtag #graceeastervigil2020 in either twitter or instagram. a big plus was having people join in who were in other countries! the communion prayer is here

it was really good fun having steve leach dj at the end live on facebook and it's still there if you want to have a listen. he played an amazing tune of his with the queen's speech mixed in which i loved. 

as ever we invited people to create bits of content. i thought one was really worth sharing here as a worship trick. gill created a hand washing ritual in response to one of the readings. it is on the grace web site and has a prayer that goes along with the various kinds of washing. it's really lovely. i have put it on my phone so i can dig it out each time i wash my hands. anyway you might like it. 

there was also a really good playlist at least for my taste and i thought it suited the mood of the vigil perfectly (ht mike rose) which is on spotify and apple music 

info for grace easter vigil tonight

info for tonight's grace easter vigil is now on the grace web site

share communion in your own home and resist the power of religious control

when christ dies on the cross the curtain in the temple is ripped from top to bottom. that curtain guarded the way into the place that only the priests could go. it is a sign that the religious power controlling access to god is ended. the way is open. in some mysterious way christ’s non violent resistance disarms the powers including the power of religious domination.

while in new zealand i read binding the strong man by ched myers. it is a brilliant commentary on mark’s gospel story of the life of jesus christ. i found it compelling. he sees jesus’ life as one of non violent resistance to the powers that oppress and dominate people. in the foreword to the twentieth anniversary edition hendricks describes it as nothing less than a project to rewild the church. i should have read it years ago.

there are two powers that jesus contends with - the imperial power of rome and the religious power of jerusalem.

myers tees up the narrative by saying that these two powers are highlighted in stories where people are oppressed by an evil spirit. the first is in the synagogue where an unclean spirit says to jesus ‘why are you interfering with us’? this is a pretty perceptive question because within the first few chapters of mark jesus has interfered with the way the religious world is controlled and organised by breaking laws of the sabbath, healing people, suggesting that god has come to those who the religious world deems unclean - touching lepers, eating with ‘scum’ tax collectors, touching a woman who is unclean through bleeding, blind beggars, gentiles and the list goes on. he messes with what is clean and dirty. within three chapters the heavies from jerusalem have been sent up to investigate and accuse jesus of being possessed by the devil. and so it goes on from there. jesus does not mince his words when he confronts the religious authorities about how they burden and oppress people. his stark warning to his followers is ‘beware the yeast of the pharisees’. this all eventually comes to a head in jerusalem where jesus turns the tables in the temple which is the heart of the religious ordering and system which is ripping off the poor, and while the disciples are admiring the building he says that within a generation it will be destroyed. and sure enough that is exactly what happens. as myers puts it “jesus now offers a vision of the end of the temple-based world, and the dawn of a new one in which the powers of domination have been toppled.”

the second story is where jesus crosses a lake and encounters a man who is oppressed by ‘legion’. myers says that can only be heard as a reference to roman military power by readers that somehow dominates this man’s life so that he is in chains. jesus frees him from this domination. jesus is ultimately executed by this state power. it’s hard to say how much they perceive him to be a threat. today is good friday when we remember christ’s death which was at the hands of the imperial state and the religious authorities who colluded together. but my own take is that the real anger and drive for it came from the religious authorities. it was their world that jesus threatened so much.

the opening lines in mark’s gospel are about a way - preparing a way. jesus life shows a radical alternative way. i have always found this way amazing and inspirational - i have often noticed how many people like jesus but are put off by the church. in my own clunky way i want to follow him in that way. and i have been stirred up by this notion that to follow in that way is to live in a way of non-violence, of activism, and of resistance to the powers of domination. it is a way that has at its heart a vision for a different kind of world (kingdom as jesus calls it) of peace, of cancelling debts, of love, healing and non judgement, and fairness for all that welcomes those who the powers exclude precisely because all are god’s children. god is not the preserve of the wealthy, powerful and religious.

i was thinking about these powers in relation to colonialism while i was in new zealand and i will come back to that in another post. but today i am thinking about religious powers of domination and control in the church and in particular the church of england of which i am a life long member and a lay pioneer minister.

in a previous post i suggested we need more imagination and less control especially as people seek to be creative online in how they worship and pray and do community. these are challenging times and as i said in a previous post there is a lot of good work and practice going on. but the lockdown has brought home to me just how far we stray at times from the way of christ in the church. it is the sharing of communion in particular that has vexed me this week. 

jesus instituted a meal with friends where bread and wine are shared and people have done that ever since in homes and churches to remember christ. jesus life was one where he was always in trouble over meals - he ate with the wrong people who were always welcome at his table, though he usually was round theirs.

fast forward to coronavirus and the church is holding online eucharist services with guidelines that the only people who can share the bread and wine in their homes are bishops and priests. everyone else can watch apparently! so for easter day for example which is a day when all are encouraged to take communion suggested activities are:

Some bishops and priests may wish to celebrate Holy Communion in their homes.

Practising spiritual communion as this is a day on which all ought otherwise to receive Holy Communion in church.

spiritual communion is explained here - and is for situations where you can't share bread and wine. in many cases i suspect and indeed i hope that those leading the service will not have it but use the absence of sharing bread and wine to reflect on this moment of separation. and some will choose not to have services of communion which is probably a good option if you want to obey the guidelines. the idea that just the priests would have communion i find unbelievable both in itself and that it could be in print in public - i did a double take to check i was reading it right. this makes it both exlusive and a rite of exclusion! surely the obvious thing to do and what everyone will want to do and i hope will do is to share bread and wine in their own homes to remember christ. it saddens me that the church has not got the imagination to say this is healthy practice. there is a regulation in the canons of the church (scroll down to b5) that gives discretion to ministers for unusual circumstances to lead worship that is different. for example they may...

on occasions for which no provision is made... use forms of service considered suitable for those occasions and may permit another minister to use the said forms of service.

we are in such an occasion surely! so i hope ministers act anyway.

the church has a lot of regulations about communion - what prayers, who can preside, where it can take place and so on. in grace we have found these frustrating and sought permission to use other prayers and write our own which we have done over the years. we have respected having someone preside who is ordained when we meet in st mary's church as we are part of the church of england. one curious regulation is that a place needs to be authorised if it's not a consecrated building like a church. so whenever we meet in homes we regularly share bread and wine in a simple informal way usually as part of a meal and concluded those ordained should not preside because the buildings have not got the permission - i know it's nuts. bishops are likely to have had to give permission for priests to lead communion from their homes online i suspect! i have written about grace's approach in the introduction to making communion if you are interested. the church of england says on the one hand that it values creativity, that the shape and integrity of worship is what is important and not the words in themselves and we need new ways of doing things but in practice it is still extremely controlled and locked down.

the church has various justifications through sacramental theology and other clever sounding ruses. but really it is an issue of control. these are things the church has constructed, made up, nothing more and i can't help thinking they are in direct opposition or at least massively out of kilter to the way of christ. how do you get from what he did to what the church is saying at this time? it's completely baffling. beware the yeast of the pharisees. the curtain in the temple seems to have been stitched back together. the central structures of the church of england have somehow created a scenario in which there is a priestly caste who control access to god because it is only through their magic actions that people can have communion, bread and wine to remember christ. if one of them is not in your home tough. it's absurd! the religious power of domination is alive. 

i refuse to collude with it. it’s power was disarmed by christ’s death on the cross. i will be happily remembering the story of christ and sharing bread and wine online with others in grace and in my own home with jenny. this is we note from the guidelines not going to be an official church of england communion. but we will be making communion. i hope there are homes and indeed vicars up and down the country who ignore the church’s guidelines on this. i get to go to various meetings in the church of england where the rhetoric is that the church is committed to mission, to lay ministry (that means people who are not ordained) and the vision of the church is to empower all of its people with a vision called ‘setting god’s people free’. how are we supposed to take that seriously?!

some years back at another time when i was bumping into the religious power of domination in the church of england in another way, i made an art installation called red tape in which i ring fenced the table with barrier tape and bound the bible in red tape and wrapped a dog collar in red tape. i couldn't help thinking about it again today...

from my experience of communion in homes over the years, a simple way to do it is to do so in a meal and share bread and wine either between courses or at the end. give space to tell the story of christ in some way and to remember his life. death and resurrection. invite participation and conversation, use one of the stories from the gospels, maybe one of the meals jesus is at. have a prayer of thanksgiving - the official church ones are online, you can find one you like from elsewhere - such as the iona community or grace, or someone can improvise one. if you improrvise it it helps to have an idea of the shape of those kinds of prayers. in our grace easter vigil we will be using a thanksgiving prayer for easter written by the st hilda community and janet morley which has really lovely words. then give some space to share and pray for one another. it's not hard!

light in the woods

holy week online

this week the church remember's the story of the passion - jesus' last week including the last supper, his death, and then through to the resurrection on easter morning. it will be so interesting to see what people do in their homes on their own and online connecting with one another in real time through technologies or by participation in shared practices and resources shared online. i don't intend to spend the week posting links but if i see anything that grabs my attention i'll let you know or by all means leave a comment. i am sure some of the links are now broken but anything i have linked to before can be scrolled through here. my advice for what it is worth is to pick something and linger with that rather than get overwhelmed with loads of things.

lots of churches are posting regular services online with links to songs on youtube videos and downloadable childrens packs and words and liturgy on youtube, or via livestream. so if that's your thing there's lots out there to suit all sorts of tastes. people have had to go on a steep learning curve with technology in some cases but huge effort is going into that. i have seen lots that is really well done. it's not the kind of thing i normally go to so it's not the kind oif thing i will be doing this week either. but for lots of people it's what they know and love.

in grace we tend to go for one thing in holy week and put some effort into that. this year we are doing the saturday night easter vigil which seems really fitting this year though we had decided to do that before the virus. there are two ways you can participate - it will be live on zoom - we'll post a link and expect that to be our more regular people or those in the grace diaspora but i think you can fit 100 people in zoom so we'll see who shows up. then secondly there will be a hashtag #GraceEasterVigil2020 . you can jump onto a flow by following that hashtag in twitter or instagram or the grace facebook page. the vigil is in four parts and we'll be doing all four of those between 10pm and midnight. but of course those links will stay online so you can visit them when you like and you could just choose the parts that connect. if you choose to follow that way we'd love you to participate by posting using that hashtag too rather than just consuming. we will post some more info on this on the grace web site later in the week so do have a look back there. it will include a few items to gather so you are prepared for example.

two other things have caught my attention. one is that tess ward has reworked a whole easter retreat and will be posting all sorts through the week. tess is an amazing writer who has a gift for crafting lovely liturgy and prayers so i have high expectations for that. see her blog for all the info you need

and then there is an easter vigil called rumours of hope that looks like it will be good - it sounds as though it will have a range of pieces of content to fuel your own prayer and reflection through the evening and night. i like it that is a church of england thing that is not just a broadcast of a service but something more imaginative and artful. i don't actually know anything about the context i should add. i got invited to be involved but as grace was already committed could not do both though i am sure there can be some mutual hashtag sharing.

anyway whatever you do i hope the story comes alive for you this week. i hope to get round to revisiting communion online but we'll see how the week goes as i am trying to do some writing and not get overly distracted!

i am adding this as a worship trick as it feels these are all in the spirit of those even though i haven't added many for a while.

 

more imagination, less control please - church online

following up on the last post what i was really saying is we need more imagination!i thought it worth following up with a few further thoughts and links reflecting on what happens when church is online.

this is actually not a very new conversation though it is a new experience for many. i was absolutely delighted to see that tallskinnykiwi has re-emerged online. he is someone who has pioneered, experimented and blogged about this for maybe 25 years? anyway he has started a series on transcoding church. after an intro the first post is zoombombing in historical perspective. he points out that radio broadcasting was innovative and with enforced separation in WW2 broadcasting services became a big thing. fast forward to new digital media and it's less about broadcasting and much more participative (or at least that's the theory!). i love this thought he has 

the greater amount of interaction from participants, the greater the loss of control from those hosting the event.

on the subject of control i have seen what i consider to be absurd conversations online about communion and people sharing bread and wine in their own homes and what the rules might be. of course you can! get on with it - i wonder sometimes what on earth the church thinks it is doing. how has it morphed into this system of control? i think jesus was quizzed by religious authorities about his own practice which threatened their system of control and they asked 'by what authority do you do these things?' to which he gave a genius answer. so if someone says to you 'by what authority do you do these things?' you're in a good tradition! i think i'll come back to some ideas on this in a later post but the table in your own home is a wonderful location for it. 

someone else who has reflected and published on faith, religion and spirituality online is heidi campbell so it was great to see an article pop up summarising her findings about building religious community and doing church online. it's well worth a read.

pete phillips who runs codec has also posted an article the church (has gone) online which is really helpful and a good reminder again that this is not that new actually. 

musings from the other side of the world 4: when church collapses

[see part 1 kiwi and proud | part 2 am i in england? | part 3 smug statues and street art saints]

i loved this piece of street art of a quaking church in panic mode. further down the mural the trickster wiley coyote is spotted with some tnt!i am sure it was terrifying to experience the earthquake in christchurch when many buildings wobbled and indeed fell down. and surveying the landscape makes you realise it takes a long time for a city to rebuild. there are still buildings being repaired and many pieces of land where buildings once stood. one area is a whole zone that has been cleared of where house stood. the shapes of gardens and streetlights are there but no people. the land there has lowered so is prone to flooding so is now simply a red zone.

christchurch cathedral is a centrepiece of the city - the settlement was very much church of england centred so it's no surprise to see this central place. but the cathedral (and indeed the catholic cathedral too) were seriously damaged by the earthquake. you can see in the photo above. by any stretch of the imagination this is an interruption or provocation. whilst you wouldn't wish it on anyone, whenever you get provoked in this sort of way there is an opportunity for creative thinking. many writers on creativity suggest you should programme interruptions into your routine because it's how you come up with ideas. i read the book messy by tim harford recently and the first chapter in that is really good on exactly that point. you can listen to a podcast here cautionary tales which effectively rehearses that first chapter - it's the episode bowie, jazz and the unplayable piano.

well the church did get creative. realising it would take a long time to sort out, a japanese architect shigeru ban was commissioned and designed the cardboard cathedral. this is a light structure that might last 50 years i guess. it has been a big hit - i loved it. the interior structure looks like it's made of and held up by cardboard tubes though i am not sure exactly what the material is. but i noticed while i was there that work seemed to be starting to repair the old cathedral. perhaps this is inevitable but i also was disappointed. why?! i like the new one a lot better and it's a sign of travelling much lighter.

one of the church's biggest challenges certainly in england is its buildings. they are old, inflexible, often cold, and not really fit for purpose. sure some of them look beautiful and have been reworked well. usually that is the case where there is a large congregation. but most are a chain round the neck of a small community and would be better given away as heritage sites. in many villages in england there is a small community of older christians - maybe a dozen who put so much energy and effort into keeping the roof on, the lights on, the heating working. in my view it would be amazing to wake up one day and find that the buildings had wobbled and collapsed. what a relief - the people could get on with being the church as a community of people! i am honestly not just being flippant. i genuinely think that. somewhere along the way church easily forgots the why of its existence.

what i had not forseen when i was in new zealand was that when i got back church buildings would soon be shut albeit for a different reason - coronavirus. the church has literally left the building! so people are having to reimagine how to be church, how to connect to one another and encourage community, worship, discipleship, mission. they too have been provoked, interrupted from business as usual. what are the creative and imaginative opportunities for churches in this season? there have been a lot of social media comments about making more of the opportunity than simply broadcasting church services online. and i admit whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with that and it is probably comforting in its familiarity in a time of crisis, it does lack imagination. but my impression is that people are connecting in all sorts of more liquid ways connecting to christ and one another. but i wonder when the crisis is over will they be like christchurch cathedral and go back to the old, to business as usual or will they inhabit the new in an ongoing way?

i have been reading mark's story (gospel) of jesus life this lent - in fact i have been thinking about mark for a year or so. today i laughed out loud when i read the part where jesus' disciples are admiring the temple in jerusalem and saying something along the lines of 'look at these magnificent buildings' to which jesus replies saying they will be demolished and not one stone will be left on top of another! at that stage the disciples really don't seem to get what jesus is about. he is starting a new community of people following in the way of jesus. they largely met and gathered in small groups and communities in homes in the early days. there's no reason why that might not still be a brilliant idea...

when i was in new zealand one of the things i found really inspiring was the imaginative approaches to being church amongst young adults. i got to visit wellington for one day and hang out with some pioneers over breakfast and catch up with bishops eli and justin who are great. it was also good to meet scottie reeve, catch up with jethro who studied with us at cms for a term and others including one follower of my blog (small world and all that) and hear about a network of homes that are community houses for church in a different way. they share life, prayer, mission, food together. in the background seem to be a few decades of a deep rhythm of prayer and radical discipleship through urban vision. i apologise if my description is a bit clunky or not quite right but i was only there for a day - do leave a comment if you are part of it,

the anglican church in wellington have embarked on an experiment in one neighbourhood led by scottie and anna where they have bought a building which is on the high street which can house a residential community, have a small chapel, and run a community space and perhaps an enterprise or two. sadly i didn't take a photo of it as i got there late at night and left first thing (that's my excuse) so can't show you but i thought it is exactly the kind of imagination that is needed - so refreshing to see. the regular church building i assume is being sold or decommissioned. it is just in the throes of beginning so there is not much more to tell on that particular community yet.

i picked up a daily prayer book: he taro ma - tatou daily prayer, that those communities use which i have been using since. though i am on the other side of the world it feels good to unite in spirit and in prayer. i couldn't find where that is available online - let me know in a comment if it is. today's morning prayer was on peacemaking and non violence and references some of the maori prophets and cms missionaries. i'll get back that in the next post...