jonnybaker

getting started

i am running a zoom workshop on 8 july 7:30pm for 2 hours on getting started in relation to pioneer practice. place are limited to 25 so we can see one another and discuss your ideas and practice. i will be joined by two pioneers who feature in the book and know all about the challenges of building something from an idea to becoming tangible in the world. they are andy freeman and kim brown. tickets are only £10 or there is an option to get it with the book that will save you something on the regular price. i haven't pushed it before the book launch as the images looked similar and i didn't want to confuse anyone!!! 

you can register here

overcoming

at the book launch for pioneer practice when he was interviewed, jon birch said his favourite quote in the book was from ann-marie wilson (see above). she is an incredible pioneer. i remember when i first met her and she said her vision was to campaign to eradicate fgm from 28 countries in africa and i thought - wow that is a big vision and challenge. she subsequently has pursued that vision and path with incredible courage and determination and set up the charity 28toomany. she is part of a conversation in the book about change where we discuss how you create the change you want to see and culture change is a big part of that challenge - i loved that conversation. ann-marie has a book just out telling her story called overcoming: my fight against fgm. and there is a launch on facebook live this friday with a video and then space for questions.

thank you

thank you everyone who came and made the book launch such a great evening - i guess pioneer practice it is now launched!

come on dream!

this is the first in a series of blog posts on pioneer practice. how it will unfold i have no idea! i hope they will be a sort of oblique link to the book without re-presenting the material in it too directly. but i will explore some of the ideas and themes.

on friday i went to the cinema in socially distanced fashion, mask wearing and all that. it was a sensual delight. i was so moved by the film that i couldn't tell if it was because i hadn't been so long or that the film was really good! it certainly was a great feel good factor movie which was great to experience. we went to see dream horse which came out last year. it's a tale set in a depressed village in the welsh valleys and is the true story of jan vokes who organised a community syndicate to buy a racehorse that they named dream alliance who was broken in on the allotment and went on to win the welsh grand national. 

but here's the thing - it's a wonderful story of pioneer practice. it may be that my head is just too full of themes of the book at the moment so i am seeing it everywhere but bear with me. the big themes i explore in the book are BE YOU, SEE, BUILD, and CHANGE and they are all at play in the film. btw warning - plot spoilers so watch the film and come back!

jan works at the local co-op and helps at the local community social club. having some experience of animals before through competing with dogs and pigeons she has the crazy idea of getting a mare who could give birth to a racehorse. it's a ridiculous idea - it's incredibly expensive if you go the usual route. but she SEEs a possibility. for me pioneer practice is a gift of sight. others don't see it but she can. she also sees that what is needed is hope and something to live for - it's not about the money. this adventure could be just what the depressed community need. in fact it's just what she needs.

once you see something you have to work out how to make it happen or BUILD it. it doesn't seem like it would stack up but crucially she does the maths - gets a spreadsheet and works out how many people she needs to pay £10 a week over a few years and puts her and brian's retirement find on the line so they can get started right way. she then persuades the most unlikely local community pub goers to join in the adventure. there are of course various important things about training a racehorse and when the time comes they find the best trainer and persuade him. pioneer practice is this work as well as the vision - it's making the idea have legs through a spreadsheet, building a team, navigating curve balls, finding a way when there is no way. it's also fascinating to hink that this is a built from somewhere that writes itself off and others assume is hopeless. but jan sees the assets in herself, in howard davies who is local and knows a thing or two about racehorses and in the community everyone else writes off. and then slowly it grows - the first race and so on. like every pioneer project i know they hit the desert on several occasions where it seems like the whole thing will collapse but they stay true in spite of some doubters and pull through.

there is a lovely scene where jan talks to dream and says that before he came along she was never able to be herself she was always her dad's daughter, her husband's wife and so on but never herself. but since dream came along she is jan. the adventure with dream has enabled her to find herself and come home to who she is. BE YOU is right at the heart of pioneer practice. it's always tempting to think we need to be like someone else who we think of as entrepreneurial but actually things always go best when we are able to be ourselves. this is in some ways all of our quest. and jan is quirky, lovable, and at her best when she is being herself.

racing is of course an elite rich person's sport. so to pioneer a racehorse from an allotment into that world meets challenges from the powers that be. but jan and the syndicate do enough to navigate that world. CHANGE is the last theme in pioneer practice - how will this practice make a better world. you assume that with a racehorse making some money would be the goal but it''s not about that and when offers come they are turned down, that distraction s resisted. the change is about hope, about being able to dream. it's kind of cheesy but i loved the way that at all the races the group would be shouting 'come on dream!', a sort of prophecy spoken to themselves where they had lost the memory of dreaming. the change is about community - there are wonderful scenes of the syndicate in the bus on the way to races, including all sorts of characters, and then the local community who get on board with dream too. there is a momemt late on in the film where jan has doubts but the community carry the vision and her - she has passed it on so well. after winning the welsh grand national the victory parade with the whole village singing bread of heaven is just a delight. you might say it's also a parable of the kingdom of god - the kingdom of god is like a horse called dream raised on an allotment! 

the last thing i thought was terrific about it as an example of pioneer practice is that jan is not a professional community worker or pioneer minister, not trained. she is someone in the local community who simply sees a possibility and then makes something happen out of that seeing using the resources that are at hand. that sets in motion an adventure that brings hope to a struggling depressed community and she comes alive in the process.

BE YOU | SEE | BUILD | CHANGE - these are the big themes of pioneer practice. 

pioneer practice is available here

come on dream!

pioneer practice is now available!

i am so pleased to be able to tell you that pioneer practice is now available to buy here. it's taken a while to get the web site up and running but it is there now and looks great and hopefully is simple enough to use... and we can ship anywhere. it's only £13 for almost 200 pages full colour which we hope you'll agree is pretty good value. you have to pay via paypal at the oment though that will take cards - we are adding in another card payment option too.

the web site is home of a new partnership between myself, jon birch and joel baker - GETsidetracked. we've even applied for a registered trademark which i have never done before. i love how this came about as a result of running the webinar series on creativity earlier this year. pioneer practice is our first project. here's an image of the site - cool eh?!

book launch of pioneer practice on june 10

we are celebrating the launch of pioneer practice with a book launch online on thursday june 10. it will be about an hour. jon and i will be there of course talking about the book with some guests who have contributed. we'd love to have a crowd to celebrate with - the book has been a lockdown journey for me at least chipping away week by week. so it has been wonderful to see it come to fruition. register here and then you'll get sent the link - it's free of course and you have to provide your own drink to raise a glass at home!

pioneer practice is printed

it was very exciting on friday to take delivery of pioneer practice - 89 boxes filled the lounge!! i have spent the weekend packing books into boxes to fulfil all the kickstarter orders. thank you everyone who has supported this project - your books will be on their way this week. it's printed beautifully - we worked with park communications who were great. 

today i am heading down to bath to celebrate with jon birch who did the design - we'll be having a socially distanced catch up in the garden with jen and clare...

several people are asking where you can get it - the short answer is my lounge :) but seriously it will be available through getsidetracked.co with a week or so. watch this space - i will let you know when that goes live. we're getting the kickstarter ordders done and then will be landing that, lining up a book launch and a webinar series. if you can't wait contact me via email or a comment.

i was very moved when this landed - partly relief that it printed so well, but really i feel this book brings together so much of what i have worked on and reflected on together with the rest of the team i work with and with many others. this is what i am passionate about. so yes a tear did come to the eye... but a joyful satisfied tear. it's been a lockdown project chipping away over the last year in my non work days. it's now that weird moment where you want to know what people think but it's time to wait...

woop woop - kickstarted!

now to finish it off and get the book printed...

happy easter!

fire in the bones

the publisher scm gave cms permission to publish the foreword i wrote to the go between god by john taylor - fire in the bones

sneak preview - nearly there

last update on the kickstarter - we have reached our stretch target - so grateful to everyone. the design is now finished bar a view tweaks. you can get a sneak preview on the latest update from jon here. the kickstarter finishes on sunday - do pre-order if you haven't and the offers inspire a friend and network catalyst are better than you'll get after the kickstarter!

GETsidetracked

two hours after sending last week's kickstarter update we had reached the target. wahoo! thank you so much to all of you who have backed the project. it still has two weeks to run and we hope to reach our stretch target so we print 2000 copies so if you are still pondering do go and pre-order copies of pioneer practice. the two offers of 'inspire a friend' and 'network catalyst' are deals that won't be available after the kickstarter.

the project has steamed ahead since the last update. jon has done an incredible amount of design work. having now laid out and designed the pages with stories and articles he is now working back through and begun to add photographs. have a read of the kickstarter update if you want to see a few more spreads.

i thought this is a good point to tell you about GETsidetracked. the idea ironically came out of a series i was doing on creativity in january. one of the themes explored was that often people come up with ideas when they get knocked off course or provoked in some way and find themselves sidetracked. so if you want to be creative being sidetracked is a good thing. the name GETsidetracked fell out of that process.  what amuses me no end is that if you look up books around it they are titles like 'How to stay focused and not get sidetracked!' and to be honest at work i am quite often in meetings about focus. 

lo and behold a new idea was born and we have set up a new partnership between jon birch, myself and joel baker. GETsidetracked will be a platform on which we can publish any projects we have that sidetrack us! it is in itself a side project. pioneer practice will be our first release. so after the kickstarter you will be able to order copies or point other people to GETsidetracked.co . at the moment there is just a holding page with a fun image from joel.  

what a week!

one week in and the pioneer practice kickstarter is nearly there. it's going to happen! thank you to everyone who has backed it, pre-ordered, and cheered us on. watching the kickstarter total ticking over turns out to be a new kind of addiction.

it's also been a really fun week for us as jon has got cracking with the design. every day he has done several spreads and sent them over to me to look through and edit and send back and day by day it's coming to life. we are loving it so far! to give you a flavour of what to expect here's a few spreads

the rewards of inspire a friend and network catalyst have proved popular and rightly so because they are a good deal that won't be available after the kickstarter. if you are one of the no doubt hundreds who thought to themselves 'o yes i like the sound of that must back it' but hasn't yet then go for it - now is the time. 

kickstarter launched today - pioneer practice

i have been working on pioneer practice for a year and am self publishing it. i have set up a kickstarter which runs until easter to raise the money through pre-sales and other rewards for the cost of printing and design. please have a look and i'd love you to back it. it's a full colour book meets magazine - one of those chunky coffee table ones. and i am working with friend jon birch who is doing the design. thank you in advance!

proost still going strong - free downloads

proost is still going strong i am pleased to say hosted as it is now by space to breathe. there are two recent books that are available as free downloads or you can buy as printed books

the first is a collection of liturgies collated by heather cracknell for fresh expression called opening the doors. mark berry, ruth wells, tim watson and dorothy woods are the contributors so i am sure it is good. i gave printed copies to a couple of people at christmas.

the second is the long promised return? by tim watson, a set of poems and prayers written in the latest lockdown. i have just downloaded it. 

i also noticed future present is currently in the free downloads section so if you have never got yourself a copy of that it's definitely worth getting hold of.

an adventure of the (digital) imagination

i got a copy in the post of missio dei in a digital age edited by jonas kurlberg and peter phillips. i attended a conference back in april 2019 on the theme and presented a paper there which i called mission: an adventure of the (digital) imagination. all those have been worked up into this volume. at the time no one knew that reflecting on mission in relation to digital communication and connection and community would be such a big thing come 2020.

in my chapter i explore how the currency of mission is imagination in relation to culture. the wisdom gleaned from intercultural work is a great resource to reflect on in relation to digital spaces. in a section called imagination, seeing and inventiveness i look at examples from winson green and nomad podcast. my chapter is also a dialogue or riff on pete ward's liquid ecclesiology. love to know what you think if you read it!

it's the kind of book you can dive in where you like and where your interests lie - i found it a really interesting read and think my takeaway was katherine schmidt's down to earth suggestion that "most Christians should be in digital spaces as themselves witnessing to God's mercy through relationships".

that's me done for a while on books i have contributed to (apart from the one i am working on right now of course!)

seeds of hope

following up on yesterday's post, another really wonderful book of reflections, prayers and liturgies is seeds of hope. this is produced by amos trust, a charity focused on human rights, justice and solidarity. it's in a similar space to liturgies from below organised into sections such as solidarity, protest, planet. i got it for christmas and am reading it through it daily. i am going to make that and liturgies from below the two books i use to pray and reflect during lent this year. it's also only £10. there is something really good about organisations/movements like amos trust articulating their spirituality. it began as a series of daily reflections in lockdown but it's great they have turned it into a book.

liturgies from below

this book is simply brilliant. you have to get it! one of our students put me on to it last week and i ordered it straight away and it does not disappoint. if you want to get a feel for it and indeed access lots of the liturgies for free head to reimagingworship.com . these are liturgies in the context of empire written from its margins in places of oppression, poverty, injustice. it's a project of the council of world mission.

i write and curate liturgies and love that in grace the community i am part of that is part of what we do rather than just take worship off some centralised shelf. as i have reflected on why that is impotant i have come over the years to think of liturgy as world making. we live in a world and indeed church that is run on particular logics and imaginaries. where do we find spaces where the world gets unmade and remade? where dominant narratives get subverted and resisted? one place is the arts. but another should be the church. this collection is most definitely world making. as sudipta singh says in the preface

the book is an invitation to resist the temptation to be co-opted by the empire and to find the nerve to come out of the empire creating counter imperial alternatives

honestly this book is so refreshing. so much worship and liturgy can frankly be vacuous. this is anything but. 

i submitted my communion prayer on jesus and the powers and it has been accepted on the web site which i am pretty chuffed about too. it feels an honour to contribute to such a project.

one thing that is intriguing is that there are two covers and subtitles - one is praying with people at the ends of the world and the other is prayers in defiance of empire. i love both but the one that arrived for me has the former - does that mean that the uk and usa can't cope with the second title? i have no idea...

thank you to claudio carvalhaes who is the artful curator of this collection and project.

reimagining mission from urban places

i always mean to blog about brilliant books i read. i add them to a list of ideas for blog posts but it seems to take an age to get onto that with everything else there is to do! but i finally have written a review of anna ruddick's wonderful book reimagining mission from urban places on what she calls missional pastoral care for the latest edition of anvil journal. you have to download the whole thing to get to book reviews so i am posting the review here.

Reimagining Mission From Urban Places by Anna Ruddick

Anna Ruddick was part of the Eden network who, motivated by their faith, moved into urban estates to share the gospel. It was a movement of young adults whose energy and motivation grew out of evangelical festivals and parachurch organisations. Over several years Anna pursued practical theology research to reflect on that movement and mission practice through a blend of ethnographic research, interviews and doing practical theology. Practical theology is paying attention through the research to the lived experience and putting that in conversation with scripture and resources of theology and other disciplines to discern what God is doing or where God is at work. Through that process she develops a framework for mission she names ‘missional pastoral care’ which is intentional missional living shared by seven elements - being among people who are different, living locally, being available, taking practical action, log term commitment, consistency and love. The interviews are with members of the teams and those they got to know.

At the core of her work is the exploration of the gap between the rhetoric of mission that she went with from the evangelical community that sent the teams with its accompanying expectations of what results might look like, and the reality of what actually happened on the ground. All sorts of good things took place which led to flourishing and genuine transformation but those that went on mission found that both mission and their evangelicalism were changed in the process.

If you are a practitioner or pioneer in a context like this this book will be invaluable. The approach makes so much sense. And it’s a relief because there is an honesty about the reality of what mission is like perhaps summed up in one of the chapter titles “If it’s messy, slow and complicated you’re probably doing something right.”. Through her interviews and reflections on them Anna pays  attention to how lives change in slow and messy ways. The changes are real and blend shifts in perspective and meaning making alongside or within an environment that loves and affirms people for who they are over the long term. It’s an approach that chimes well with Sam Wells discussion of being with rather than fixing people. And I really liked the way the whole was framed with mission as what God is doing in the world which we join in with.

However it is not just a book for practitioners. Anna’s discussion over two chapters of what good news is and of evangelicals’ tribe and identity and how it could respond to the mission challenges and context we are in is so good and so important. I fear it may not get the audience it deserves because it’s tucked in what looks like a book for practitioners. She writes as an insider to the tribe which is important to say so it’s written in a tone of careful consideration and appeal to that community. She unpacks the evangelical mission narrative and says that there is a mismatch between that and the realities of mission engagement on the ground. This arises because there is a rejection of context. She then develops an alternative mission narrative which I found compelling framed as it is with the discovery that God is present and at work in the world with people in the community who are made in God’s image. She then unpacks evangelical identity and where it has come from and suggests it could evolve in four ways - firstly revisiting epistemology in response to our time and place (rather the time and place from which it arose); secondly relaxing a concern for protecting evangelical identity and aligning with the incoming kingdom of God in the world; thirdly good-newsness in mission impulse and passionate piety; and lastly a bigger story reframing the doctrinal priorities of evangelical theology. There is not space to elaborate on these here but I really commend that section of the book and hope it gets picked up for wider conversation. There has always been a strain of evangelicalism with which that would all resonate - CMS at its best has been in that flow in my opinion. There were a couple of points where Anna’s writing reminded me of John Taylor’s writing for example.

Lastly just to state the obvious, this is a UK book on mission. This is significant because it chimes with the UK context really well in ways that say American books on mission (of which there are many more) simply don’t. It is gritty and missiologically brilliant. It’s also a very welcome counter voice to the results driven approach that seems to be dominating for example the Church of England’s investment in mission through the Church Commissioners monies. I think Anna is a wonderful practical theologian and this is exactly the sort of thinking that the church needs right now.

the go between god new edition

i am delighted to say that a new edition of the go between god by john taylor is out this weekend. it is a magnificent book on the holy spirit in mission. this is john taylor's best known book and scm have decided to re-issue it in the wake of imagining mission drawing attention to his work.

i have written the foreword to this edition which i was so happy to be asked to do. i confess i have never written a foreword before and found it quite a daunting thing to write for such a beautiful book. i hope i have done it justice but in the end who remembers a foreword anyway so i think i can relax - the task is to point to the book itself! do have a read if you have not come across it. here's one short excerpt from my foreword which highlights taylor's thinking about little congregations being a forerunner to fresh expressions perhaps?

In an extraordinary passage that foresees the fresh expressions movement, Taylor goes on to suggest that expressions of church should be as close to the life of people as possible. The ideal shape of church is that which provides the least possible withdrawal of Christians from life in the world. He envisages little congregations that are small enough for mutual awareness and large enough to embody the kingdom in their fellowship. These should not be seen collectively as a halfway house to draw people back into proper church or as an interim structure ‒ they are church. It is also the perfect place to share bread and wine round a coffee table without religiosity, the normal way the majority of Christians can make communion central to their lives. And with a sense of urgency he says he is not talking about twenty years’ time, but now. The Spirit is on the move at the growing edges, and the church should recognize it and make it easy for people by taking away red tape. Too many people view these little congregations as peripheral or subnormal, he says. He imagines the parish like a cathedral or a minster, gathering the varied smaller units so they are not too ingrown. But for him small is normative if the church is to respond to the life of the Spirit in the world. It is a truly remarkable chapter both in its imagining of what has come to pass and of the way the church has continued to struggle with the ‘sin of rigidity’, and we are fifty years on.

in the weird world of self promotion... top ten!

we just heard that imagining mission has been selected one of the top ten books of 2020 for mission studies, intercultural studies and world christianity by international bulletin of missionary research. a few smart alecs have asked me whether there are more than ten books published in a year in that area - i think there are! we're pretty chuffed about it - it means something in our small world at least. i can't actually link to the article because it's on a password protected journal. post writing a book is a weird journey of banging on about yourself - sorry if you have had enough of me mentioning john taylor and the book! one of his books is being reissued at the end of the month for which i have written the foreword so i am afraid there will be more to come!!!