jonnybaker

tunes of the year

i love music and i seem to like putting together a playlist so as is my habit here are two playlists for the end of year.

the first is a very ambient one - 2022 horizontal [apple music] or 2022 horizontal [spotify]

and the second more a mix of genres of some of the tunes i have enjoyed through the year - 2022 tunes [apple music] or 2022 tunes [spotify] . they are all tunes released during the year.

enjoy and do leave a comment to let me know what you think!

the light shines

wonderful to visit christmas at kew this year. there's a set of photos here - christmas at kew 2022

keep it simple

wise words from a church notice board in brooklyn

adaptive church - webinar in january

i have got more and more interested in system change. the reason why is probably obvious. i work with pioneers who see new possibilities and create paths to make the possibilities happen. but they work in a bigger structure - usually the church but maybe a charity or organisation. and it turns out that if you want to see genuine newness and innovation you really have got to pay attention to both or you can get derailed. so i was really interested to come across dustin benac's research published in his book adaptive church. he researches two organisations or what might better be described as movements in the north west of america and does a deep dive on what is happening in the change process there. there are some really interesting insights and reflections - for example he maps what a range of leadership looks like in movements which i have not seen before. and the big takeaway really is the significance for a diocese or denomination of having another organisation that can help call them to the edges, to the future, to change. 

the good news is that dustin is doing an online session for us at cms on january 18 at 3pm. it's free and you can sign up here. i am looking forward to it. i think it's particularly relevant if you are leading at that system level (director of mission or ministry in a diocese or a fresh expressions enabler) and if you are working or leading in a community or organisation that works with churches to help them change and adapt in mission and i also think it would be really relevant if you are involved in allocating funding for mission or growth in denominations or organisations.

you can read details and register here.

for goodness sake

this is the twelfth of a series celebrating twenty years at cms

see  1. gold | 2. emerging church | 3. blah | 4. new forms | 5. worship tricks | 6. mission shaped church and fresh expressions | 7. pioneer ministry | 8. church planting | 9. red tape | 10. doing the imaginative work | 11. post colonial mission

last week in the usa the main reason i was there was to attend a consultation at princeton hosted by kenda creasy dean exploring the combination of social innovation and theological seminaries with a view to designing some training options that seminaries might be able to try out. it was actually quite special to be at that gathering because it was being facilitated by shannon hopkins and mark samson. when we got to design the pioneer training at cms back in 2010 i knew i wanted a module on missional entrepreneurship and it was shannon i asked to design and lead it and both she and mark have regularly been part of the team on that module. it is not a direct line but i think it's not unreasonable to say that the experience of those weeks has led shannon, mark and matyroshka haus and now goodmakers society and rooted good to keep innovating in that space developing various tools and workshops. so it felt like the consultation was at least in part the result of some ripples out from those early days. we now call that week make good and have seen people bring fledgling ideas that have become projects, enterprises, charities. if you have read pioneer practice clean for good, home cafe, sacred bean are some of the ideas that were brought to those weeks. if you haven't it's not too late!

missional entrepreneurship is a thread that has woven through my twenty years at cms. the first venture into thinking about mission entrepreneurship was actually via chris neal and bill bolton. together with them and shannon in 2007 we hosted a gathering on a boat in the thames in london and launched NET - the network of entrepreneurial talent which ran for a few years. 

we hosted a conversations day on the theme and subsequently mark and i edited an edition of anvil journal exploring the issues.

i like the idea of good. at some basic level we need good in the world. to participate in mission is to join in the healing of all things. it's about good - good news, good communities, good neighbourhoods, good life, good business. good relationships, good for the planet. one of the reasons  i like mission as a way of framing is that the 'why' or purpose is for good in the world. sometimes i find that the 'why' in the church can seem like it's church i.e. it's very focused on itself. but the point of church is for the good of the world not just as an end in itself. the other way mission tends to get collapsed or reduced is into evangelism - sharing the story of jesus christ with people. it's a great story and i have no issue at all with that. but in a post christian culture like britain it seems a no brainer that if you want to have anyone to listen to that story you have got to actually be good news and not just talk about it.

i am also interested in enterprise when it comes to pioneering because we need new imagination about how to resource faith, church, mission. it seems to me to be healthy and more resilient if you can have a range of income sources - some donation, some trusts, some income from enterprise and so on. 

enterprise can also be really good when it is helping others who have been in a difficult space at the edges - say prison or simply long term unemployed get back on their feet and develop skills and work. there are several pioneers who have started things in that way. 

i have really warmed up to the notion of enterprise for good. it's not easy to pull off but when it's done well it's a wonderful thing. there is room for a whole lot more! if you are have an idea you'd like to develop do look up our make good week and book in on that for goodness sake :) - the next one is in november 2023 at the wonderful pickwell manor.

st lydia's dinner church

it was lovely to visit st lydia's in brooklyn on my visit to new york. it was founded in 2008 by emily scott meeting in homes and then a zen centre before getting a shop front where it is now. i have not read it but there is a book which includes the story of st lydia's or stories from at least - for all who hunger. they describe it as a dinner church which is fairly apt as the worship is organised around a meal (and the food we had was great). it's prayerful and conversational. there are two dinner tables so probably works for about 20 people.

i stayed with christian scharen who is the pastor there now. he is delightful! he gave me a copy of a book he has written which is a theological reflection on the roots and hip hop culture someone has to care . i loved it! it is part of a series of short reflections on music - there is another in the series on radiohead and one coming on new order for example. 

i do like churches where the size is constrained by the space to be small - you get more intimacy and a real sense of community. we meet in our home most tues nights with friends over a meal to share life and pray - the table always seems to me a great space for a community of disciples. i also really like church that is in different kinds of spaces - it just shifts the imagination. the worship was simple chants along with a shruti - i had not seen one before but worked well. you set it to play a chord and squeeze it to create a drone ove which the chanting is done. it was advent so the chant i remember gegan 'honour the darkness'.

if you are in brooklyn call in.

another year another celebration!

pioneers graduating this year had the disruption of COVID and training being online for much of the journey. they have done amazingly well. what a gift for the church and locale to have people with energy, passion, imagination, wanting to be good news in their neighbourhoods, and growing new communities of disciples in the borderlands (as bishop lusa put it). we also admitted some lay pioneers into lay ministry in the church of england. i love what I do for a job and am so thankful to church mission society for being such a great community to hold this in. and for a brilliant team.

it is truly extraordinary and so encouraging to hear students say that this has changed their life (I assume they meant for the better!!!). if you are interested in imaginative mission, have ideas for starting new communities, enterprises whether in youth ministry, chaplaincy, new housing areas, your home, your parish, or any place else. if you are dissatisfied and want to do something about loneliness, poverty, injustice, the state of the planet, food, the disconnect with church, refugees, reclaiming the commons, inequality and so forth then jump on board .

every year at graduation pioneers are given a gift created by the wonderful iain cotton . Eech year is a different take on the idea of making a new path in a landscape. this one has a river flowing where the path has been made and a gold leaf, a sign of flourishing maybe? it’s also a riff on the scripture that was read of a river flowing and leaves of healing for the nations. it’s become an amazing series.

natalie has written a reflection on the graduation on the pioneer blog here

advent grace saturday night

grace saturday night (yes i know it clashes with football so we'll catch up in the cafe afterwards!). here's the blurb

If it's hard to see where God is in current events, and hard to feel hope for the future, imagine what it was like to hear nothing from God for four centuries. Centuries full of empires and atrocities, with only the long-unfulfilled words from the past to feed faith.

And then something happened (so small that hardly anyone noticed at the time).

Join us for a quiet reflective service on how that long Advent sheds light for today. Café afterwards as usual - mulled wine and mince pies of course.

photos from new york and princeton

just landed back from the usa trip. it was the usual overnight flight. somewhat foolishly i am going to a gig tonight to see badbadnotgood so we'll see if i stay awake! waiting at an airport is a good moment to edit some photos. i have added an album new york and princeton 2022 to flickr or you can click through above.

the blog post i never wrote and still haven't written

this is the eleventh of a series celebrating twenty years at cms

see  1. gold | 2. emerging church | 3. blah | 4. new forms | 5. worship tricks | 6. mission shaped church and fresh expressions | 7. pioneer ministry | 8. church planting | 9. red tape | 10. doing the imaginative work

in 2005 I went to india with some youth workers. i posted a series of 15 blogs called india talkie which are fun to look back at - if you click on the india category and scroll down you'll find them. one of the things that interested me doing this reflection on the last twenty years at cms is that whilst it feels like the conversation about decolonising mission is very current, when i joined i was aware of the problem of western mission and its relationship to empire and colonisation. that colonisation is of people and land but also imagination. in that series I reflected on the disappointment of encountering what felt like overly western expressions of church and worship - either in a traditional anglican set up or in a hillsong church. i had never been to asia and expected to find something more different. part of the complexity is that english is aspirational in the culture - if you learn english you can advance. so i remember distinctly the push back when i raised this question which was along the lines of ‘who do you think you are?!’. it’s a fair enough question. of course I was also looking in the wrong places no doubt.

i came back to this question again when I first met harvey kwiyani and discussed mission in relation to african christians in the diaspora(s). this has been such a good friendship and journey for me (and I hope harvey!). my simple take on mission to that point had been to present two stories in mission - the first being contextualisation where mission is done to share faith that then grows on the inside of a culture with indigenous leadership and the other of imperialism imposing ways of being and doing theology and church and at its worst overrunning a culture and a way of life. i always appealed to the former and i would go to the likes of john taylor and max warren and draw on the inspiring sense of mission that called for and claim that tradition. but i think i probably had an overly positive view. what harvey helped me see is that colonialism is much more deeply embedded than that. the former tale can still carry a lot of privilege, power which have subtle (and of course not so subtle ways) of expressing themselves. so the quest for decolonising mission is a very real one and i am sure that will be an ongoing conversation over the next few years.

i was fascinated by the history of mission in new zealand when I visited in 2020 just before lockdown and blogged a series of reflections then - see the new zealand category and scroll down. if you look at the last post i say that will write one more post with some reflections on post colonial mission. here’s a confession which I don’t think anyone else noticed. i never finished the series. i have never written that post. on the plane on the way back i read a book on post colonial theology by robert heaney to go alongside the history i had been reading and always intended to conclude that series with a blog on post colonial mission. i haven’t yet been able to write it! i now wonder if I ever will. i think on reflection it’s probably not mine to write. i have come to the conclusion that can only be written by those who have been on the receiving end of colonialism or i could only write what they said post colonial mission is or could be. i guess i could write a post imperial rome one on britain and the need for us to recover our own indigeneity? or am I just copping out?

various things have really helped me in this quest or conversation.

• one is the significance of border crossing friendships. i try to work out of friendship. my own way of working across cultures has always been to share what we are doing and learning in england about mission in that context and hear the same about another context and see where there is synergy. i have particularly enjoyed that way of working with friends in s korea where a pioneer hub has grown that is entirely korean in its organising and leading and everything else.
• another is reading voices from the margins - i have loved the exposure to theologies and practice from the majority world and the realisation that whatever western theology is or isn’t it is just one local theology that has sadly universalised its take far too often. my favourite book i read last year was rescuing the gospel from the cowboys by richard twiss. it is the story of what first nations/native american christians have had to do to generate a genuine movement of contextual practice in indigenous spirituality following in the way of jesus. as an aside it is a great case study on a movement - it shows that movements need champions, new practice, gatherings, to do their own theological work, connection with others on a similar journey and so forth. it is a good read alongside braiding sweet grass by robin wall kimmerer which I read this summer - a delightful book that made me want to learn from indigenous spirituality, community, practices, relationship with the land and so on. when i read richard twiss' book i pondered that there are multiple versions of cowboys and a lot of rescuing needed! there is so much listening and reflecting to be done in this area.
• as well as thinking and reflecting and learning you need new practice. we have to find ways to act into new thinking rather than the other way round. practice has always been my passion. and we need plenty of grace on the way, permission to get it wrong as we seek new paths. the african diaspora route through the masters degree has been a small adventure in practice we are making together with others at cms led by harvey and I hope it can grow (and something similar be done in other diasporas). it already feels like something very special is taking place. another piece of practice i have loved observing is asia cms and the growth of their co-mission partner programme. they recently had a ten year anniversary and the accompanying report is full of stories of asian mission practice led by these co-mission partners who are asian leaders. it’s not that we don’t need exchange and intercultural work - we do, but a massive pendulum swing is needed and happening at least to some degree i think. 

in the book I read on post colonial theology on the plane robert heaney muses that perhaps it is too much even to use the word mission given the s**t that has gone down. it probably depends where you are what it has meant and i completely get that. i am less sure of that move. i would rather continue the quest to refound it in ways that are good for the earth and all peoples. i hope that is possible.

a visit to the usa and prayers in defiance of empire

i am in the usa for the first time in quite a few years at a consultation in princeton which starts later today - more about that later no doubt. i am topping and tailing it with visits to people in new york. i visited harlem for the first time - this is the famous apollo theater. the way it worked out i had a free day yesterday and also managed to get a ticket to see the new york knicks at maddison square gardens - my first ever nba game which i loved. 

i was thinking i must have been ten time or so over the years but i started checking back on my blog when i had been previously and think this is my twentieth visit to north america. one of those was holiday - the rest have all been trips in response to invitations to speak, lead worship, join conversations, design labyrinths and so on. what a joy that has been. it feels like it's been a shared conversation of mission in response to a changing world and culture with so much to share and learn. it's so energising crossing borders, meeting new people and catching up with old friends. at the end of the post i have listed those trips for my own record as it took me a while to work out!

it was an absolute delight to meet claudio carvalhaes this week. we had not met before and he kindly agreed to meet some stranger from england! he teaches at uniion theology seminary (where james cone was of course) which is on the edge of harlem. he is a liberation theologian, liturgist, artist, earth lover. i reviewed his book liturgies from below which is an extraordinary collection of prayers. there are two covers for it. the publisher clearly struggled with the original cover and sends out the 'liturgies from below' version. but there is another one which says 'prayers in defiance of empire'. claudio gave me a copy of that one so at last i have that which i love! i am going to pray the prayers in the book for advent praying with the wretched of the earth, those at the edges, the poor, the dispossessed. i feel hugely challenged by this and his other writing as i have not had to face such pain and hardship. i have a couple of other books by him so will say more about that once i have finished them. but do check out his work. in true liberation theology fashion in his work praxis of prayer and liturgy is the first move in theology, and the second is to reflect on it.

one of the things that was surreal when we met is that he had a book on trickster on the side at his apartment - when i asked about it he shared that he loves trickster and has been researching about that. he gave a public theology lecture in brazil dressed up as the trickster character curupira in the indigenous brazilian mythology whose feet are back to front presumably so he can cover his tracks or confuse people about the direction of travel! he was equally surprised when i relayed our latest photo exhibition on the theme of trickster. an artist, a trickster, a liturgist, a liberation theologian, a lover of the earth, a creative teacher of theology, a prophet... - it may not surprise you that we got on and we are going to stay in touch!

for the record these are my previous trips:

1998 Canada family holiday to Ontario
2000/2001 Group youth ministry tour
2001? Youth specialties Anaheim
2002 May - Toronto
2003 Fredericton Canada
2004 San Fransisco + Nashville
2005 Winnipeg
2005 Colorado - youthworkers retreat
2005 Atlanta
2005 Princeton + New York
2007 Lancaster + Ontario
2008 New York and Trinity retreat centre
2008 Oklahoma and Austin
2009 Lancaster + New York
2012 Austin SXSW
2013 Ontario + Saskatchewan 
2014 Chicago CTU vocations event
2017 Chicago Luzbatek lecture visit
2017 Loveland Future of church conference + Denver
2022 Princeton and NY