jonnybaker

easter and empire

nomad podcast's easter special easter and empire is amazing - thank you guys! i am a big fan of ched myers. but this take on easter is so powerful and reminds why i am a follower of the way of christ. i also really loved the gauntlet he throws down at the end to listeners who deconstruct - essentially that is fine and good but reconstruct because we need new communities of hope following in this way! as an aside what a brilliant take on the original ending of mark's gospel which ends without the resurrection. 

grace saturday - praying with a lump in our throat

continuing our grace lent we have a prayer focused evening on saturday with a series of stations praying with and for those at the edges. do join us. the title is inspired by claudio carvalhaes book that we are reading through lent.

nick cave and sean o hagan on the sacred

the sacred podcast interview with nick cave and sean o hagan is really remarkable. i have seen nick cave many times and love his music. i have been intrigued by or drawn to the spiritual quest that seems to infuse his song writing in places. seeing him and warren ellis at the royal albert hall last year was a spiritual experience which ended in prayer or a kind of blessing. he wrote an intro to marks gospel in the canongate series some years back. his letters to the community that rallies around or towards him are honest and searching pastoral letters of a sort. some have called it the church of nick cave! i have also been blown away by the films of the last few years especially one more time with feeling which is the most raw thing i think i have ever seen on grief, grief for the loss of his son arthur. 

the podcast explores the themes in the book faith hope and carnage (which i have not read but now will definitely do so) and the theme of the sacred. it is so interesting to hear nick suggest that it is easier to find the sacred in the world than in religion - the natural world, wild swimming, music and art, and so forth. i find the same to be true. but he also loves church spaces and the sense of mystery that is there. i found myself strongly resonating with the notion that christianity has diminished god with its certitude and stridentness which makes it so difficult for those reaching towards god. it's a beautiful conversation. there is a transcript on the podcast page but i do recommend listening.

imagining the possibilities in post christian britain

i wrote a baker's dozen blog posts looking back and reflecting on the last 20 years. at the end of that i said 

now time to look forward...

so i intend to write some blog posts a bit more future facing especially in relation to the work i do at cms. to kick things off i have some news which i realise i have not got round to sharing on the blog. i have a bit of a changed role at cms. we have been through a refounding process over the last few years. i think it's been really good even if a bit painful to do.

as part of that i was invited to lead a team to write something that captured the essence of what cms is about which was quite a daunting but exciting task. it became a refounding document (gerald arbuckle you would be happy!).

having done that and got feedback and rewritten through talking to stakeholders we then asked the question of how to use the resources we have and create a structure to serve that vision. that all landed about a year ago. the big shift there is to have several focused areas of work round the world rather than a general supporting people in mission round the world. 

that then involves changing the resourcing model so that it is fit for this new world.

then the next phase has been to think how to talk about all that in a way that makes sense to people.

i'll elaborate on those things in some posts. that was 3 years work to make that change by the way and it will take a few years to land so it is quite a big deal.

but all that is a lead in to say that one focused area of work is mission in post christian britain (of course connecting to other similar contexts). my changed role is overseeing the work in britain - and i am still one of the directors. it includes the pioneer movement, training and all that but also now includes church facing work which is really about calling the church forwards in mission, helping and encouraging her. and then cms has some mission partners doing great stuff who previously were in a different team. all the cms work in britain is now in one team which makes sense.

i wrote a piece for the cms magazine and web site on what i mean by post christian and indeed why that is a context full of imaginative possibilities. the link to it is here - imagining the possibilities in post christian britain but i have also pasted the text below as i have realised that the only sure way to guarantee a future for blog posts is to do that as links disappear over time elsewhere!

Fewer than half of people in Britain said they are Christian in the latest census, the results of which were published in November.¹ This has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years. Britain is most definitely now in a post-Christian era.

The next largest response is now the “no religion” box or what some call the nones. We should be slow to leap to the conclusion that those people are atheists. In Linda Woodhead’s research into that group she found that only a few are militantly secular, and less than half considered themselves atheists.² The largest group were made up of maybes and doubters and don’t knows and a group who believe there is “something there”. Interestingly, the younger the cohort, the smaller the proportion of atheists. So paradoxically Britain might also be post-secular!

At the risk of too many “posts”, the other one that is worth a mention is post-Christendom. Christendom describes the time in Europe when church hierarchy dominated the landscape in its alignment with political power and empire. The cultural memory and cultural presence in Britain is still there and we still have a state religion, but it is a faded reality.

An exciting context

Some reactions to all this are quite gloomy, but I find this quite an exciting context for mission. CMS intuited this was coming back in the 1970s, when members discerned through a vote that God was calling CMS to mission in Britain and Europe.

We are a minority-Christian country in which lots of people have not experienced Christianity at all. That could be positive, as they might well come across it as fresh and new rather than having been put off by negative experiences of formal religion. Christianity might be discovered as gift rather than obligation.

Sharing from the edge

It can really help us to move away from sharing faith in a dominant way if we can see ourselves as a minority, so we are sharing our faith from the margins, not from the centre. We may well find ourselves alongside and in solidarity with others in marginal and minority positions. Stories of being strangers or exiles might be rich and fertile ground for mission.

Rather than focusing all our energies into attracting people to our churches, we might do better to focus on nurturing communities of missionary disciples, who follow the way of Christ to be present with and among people as salt and light, sharing faith where opportunity arises in these borderlands.

The vast majority of people in Britain do not go to church. I was interested to discover that of those, 85 per cent say they are unlikely to do so. And yet so much focus in mission seems to go on trying to do church better to attract people to it. Let us go to and be with these people where they are instead!

This is why we are here

That is exactly what we train pioneers to do and they are doing it in such brilliant and creative ways. The Partnership for Missional Church training helps churches to develop mission practices that will help them to innovate in this changed context. And mission partners in Britain are all situated in spaces sharing the love of God with those at the edges. Jesus was always found dwelling at the fringes. We hope to follow in the way of Christ and see where God is at work and join in.

This is our edge in Britain – the post-Christian borderlands in which we seek to join in with what God is doing and share God’s love.

---

1 Office for National Statistics, Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021

2 Linda Woodhead, The Rise of ‘No Religion’ in Britain, Journal of the British Academy

mountain retreat

i go on a retreat every year. in terms of my life, headspace, wellbeing, imagination, relationship with god it's one of the best things i do. i tend now to go somewhere quiet, alone, silent. the last couple of years that has been in the wood. but group retreats are also great. i have done a few of those. last year johnny sertin and paul rose ran a mountain one for pioneers that sounded wonderful. they are running one this year. places are limited so book early if you are interested. book here

after the apocalypse

it is always a delight to discover friends creative projects. i spotted on instagram a new collaboration between poet chris goan and illustrator si smith. chris penned a few books of poems and liturgies on proost, and si is probably best known for the wonderful 40 series of illustrations of christ's journey in the wilderness.

after the apocalypse is arranged in three sections - before, during and after written and drawn in and around the pandemic. you'll find yourself in the words and images - it's a landscape we all traversed. artists have a knack of being the kind of nerve endings of a culture or something - a sort of feeling their way on our behalf or something. the times we are living in have made it hard to feel genuinely hopeful but it does blend grief and sorrow with hope against the odds.

chis blogs at fragile tent and is someone who has really stuck with the blog format over the years and done an amazing job. you can see some illustrations from the book and poems if you scroll down - like i want to live on this post.

while i was looking to see what was there i really enjoyed chris' latest 4 posts which are explorations of theopoetics - spirituality through artful making. this is a link to the fourth - click on that and scroll down. well worth a read...

the book is available from seatree argyll - that's also the site for chris and michaela goan's creative projects working in pottery, words, wood. they both left jobs a few years back now to pursue a simpler life where they could explore their passions and creative interests and make a life from that. it seems to be going pretty well! 

the go to guy...

i was delighted to hear harvey kwiyani sharing his story on the comb bbc world service podcast and being described as 

the go to guy for african church leaders looking to reach out to communities around them

i have been friends with harvey for several years now and learned loads from him. it's a delight to have him leading the african diaspora route through the ma at cms. we are half way through the first year and it couldn't have gone better really. one of the issues he discusses is that in terms of revitalising the church in post christian britain, africans bring a wonderful gift of faith. but the challenge is that very often the churches they grow replicate the culture of the leaders so become largely nigerian or ghanaian say. it is then harder for others to join and feel at home and can be hard to engage well in the community. there is such a great connection with pioneer training because pioneers are asking a similar question. they are on their own adventure of the imagination to see how faith can connect with all sorts of people and communities where they are without those people having to cross the threshold of church which can seem very strange or foreign. 

the pioneer training at cms is wonderful and we are so privileged to get such creative people who join us. if you are interested in the diaspora ma or the pioneer training we do we have an open day coming up on february 28 - actually that's a misnomer it is an hour and a half online! love to see you there.

 

be you - pioneer practice webinar week 1 this thursday

i am really looking forward to the pioneer practice webinar series. week 1 is exploring the idea of be you (and as it's the first an intro to pioneering and how you might get started). i have three guests joining me. it will be informal, chat show style. it's free to join - register here and if you do register you'll get links to any weeks you miss. 

the series will follow the four themes i explore in the book pioneer practice - be you, see, build, change. it's a partnership between cms and heartedge.

the gift of african diaspora churches - new edition of anvil

the latest edition of anvil journal is online and free as ever. i read the articles over the weekend. it's powerful and inspiring exploring the contribution of african diaspora churches to mission in britain. find some time, grab a coffee and have a read. it is edited by harvey kwiyani and colin smith and i was delighted to see contributions from a current and former student too! 

harvey leads the new route through our ma which is now up and running with 10 students signed up. they study three modules related african christianity, theology, mission and three related to pioneer mission. it's fully online so you can study it now from anywhere in the world.

church for people who want to punch stuff + first review

it was great to read a first review of pioneer practice from russ bravo at inspire. he says 

Pioneer Practice manages to both provide inspiration and motivation for the pioneer, while being hugely pragmatic and realistic about the cost, the struggle and the challenge of doing things differently. Full of wisdom, deep questions and electrifying examples of what God can do when people who don’t fit the established order get stuck into changing things.

you can read the full review here. 

i also wrote up one of the 'electrifying examples' from the book for an article for inspire too - church for people who want to punch stuff 

ten years of spiritual direction

i found out today that i have been meeting with my spiritual director for 10 years. not sure where the time went but it has been an absolute gift to be able to chat several times a year with someone wise in the ways of the soul where we have an intentional conversation about faith (and life and whatever else is relevant). it's a safe space and one where there is no judgement - in fact the opposite is the case as I always come away feeling encouraged. for me it is up there as one of the most important spiritual practices that sustains me. i wouldn't normally say who I meet with but michael mitton agreed to have a conversation with me about spiritual direction to include in pioneer practice - i love how that conversation turned out. spiritual direction is a misnomer really but it's what it seems to get called - soul friendship or accompaniment is a lot better description. whatever you call it, he says that "the primary focus of the conversation is to help the person track their own particular journey with god" - sounds about right!

church of england online worship today

together with cathy ross i planned and helped lead today's church of england online worship service. you can watch here and download the order of service here

it was good fun to do and was amazing that the reading for the day is a passage about going to the other side of the lake which has been one i have thought about for a couple of years in relation to pioneering mission. thank you to all the people who contributed - photography, videos, poetry, music, prayers. it was a combined effort from lots of pioneers.

just imagine - free webinars on being creative

i get asked a lot about how you come up with ideas. so i have set up a series of four webinars for one hour each exploring that question. each one will take one idea for exercising creativity and play with it. there will be three guests each time - an artist/creative, a church leader and a pioneer. whilst the ideas explored will be helpful to anyone wanting to think about how you exercise creativity, the challenges and exercises we do will explore church and the practice of the christian faith today. this is inspired by a comment that struck me from a friend that the church’s greatest challenge today is a lack of imagination. rather than bemoaning that fact this is an attempt to help get imaginative, get the creative juices flowing as it were. please do not think it’s only for people who think they are creative. the whole point is that it is for anyone interested and not just those who already think they are good at exercising creativity. 

it’s free - simply register and you will be sent zoom links nearer the time. if you sign up you're not obliged to come to all four! 

each week there will be a mix of stories and interviewing guests around exercising creativity and how they come up with ideas. there will be creative exercises for the guests to engage in live each time that explore the theme of the week. you will be invited to contribute via chat if you would like but will not be put in small groups to do any work or anything so you can relax about that - you can sit back and enjoy it. i hope it will be fun, generate ideas and give you some tools and approaches to exercise creativity yourself.

if you like the ideas and want to explore further i have written six short pieces on exercising creativity at the end of each chapter of imagining mission with john taylor.

go here to register 

• Thurs 7 Jan 8pm: Intro: “But I’m not creative!”
• Thurs 14 Jan 8pm: Provocations
• Thurs 21 Jan 8pm: Play
• Thurs 28 Jan 8pm: There are no rules

 

faultlines in mission: reflections on race and colonialism

the latest issue of anvil journal (which is free online) is on faultlines in mission reflections on race and colonialism - sctroll to the bottom of the page to download the complete issue. in the wake of george floyd's murder as with other areas of society it seemed a good chance to shine a light on the area of mission and ponder it's history and practices and the degree to which they are framed and shaped by empire and colonialism. it's guest edited by harvey kwiyani, lusa nsenga-ngoy, and shemil matthew - huge thanks to them! it's powerful and hard hitting. there's a lot to digest.

i read harvey and lusa's articles at breakfast today. harvey says that mission as we think of it today is a european construct out of an era of empire and colonialism so it's logic and imagination are tied in to narratives of superiority. for example he says

In a nutshell then, the very concept of mission as we understand it today has racism and white supremacy in its DNA.

i love mission as a way of framing so this is a jolt but as paul thaxter reflects in his afterword i am definitely guilty of telling inspiring stories of those who have done mission on the inside of cultures well and resisted empire but i am sure that in doing so i have been blinder to and not told other equally true and real stories. i was wrestling with this issue in my visit to new zealand. harvey recounts the story of mission in malawi as one example. his article begs the question of what mission might look like after george floyd. this piece reminded me that i have not yet written the last blog post in the series of reflections on mission after my visit to new zealand which is due to be on post colonial mission and whether such a thing is possible... i'll get back to it before long - life took over!

lusa's article is wonderful. he explores how imagining a different kind of world and future is essential for there to be change. it's actually a piece that would have been perfect for the book future present. he suggest that imagination is a tool for resistance and has powered radical changes in history. our imagination is easily colonised by the iconography of the world around us but needs freeing and maybe it is artists and prophets and dreamers of a better world who will interrupt our imagining to reframe it. afrofuturism is just such a kind of imagining - think black panther for example.

i have plenty more articles to read... 

do download it (or read it online). and we hope it sparks conversation, reflection, awareness, new imaginings of what world and future is possible for the church, christianity and mission and what changes might be required as steps towards that new world..

a communion prayer - jesus and the powers

i wrote a communion prayer for grace on saturday...

Eucharist: Jesus and the powers

Thank you for your incredible life. 

You announced a new kingdom at the margins of the world, 
an offensive against the strongholds of oppression, 
and the dawn of liberation. 

You made a way in the wilderness. 

You proclaimed good news of the kingdom, 
brought healing and deliverance, 
lived a life of nonviolent confrontation with the powers. 

You restored social wholeness to the sick and “impure”. 
You tore down the boundaries of tribe, gender, skin tone, religion, disability and ill health. 
You overturned the dynamics of status and honour 
to make way for the outcast Jew and alien gentile. 

With you there is no longer male or female, slave or free, Jew or gentile.
Patriarchy, slavery and racism have no place in your kingdom.
All are made in God’s image, 
all are welcome, 
all are included in your “last as first” revolution.

Almost every ruling faction in society opposed you. 
Your resistance was through loving enemies, 
non violence, 
story telling,
truth telling, 
meals with the wrong people, 
refusing to live under the domination of the powers and their way of ordering life.

You chose love and not fear 
pursuing kingdom practice even at the cost of death. 
Ultimately they did put you to death. 
You were lynched and hung on a tree. 

In a great mystery and a great reversal 
you overcame the powers on the cross. 
Three days later you were raised from death, 
a sign that the powers have been defeated, 
a sign of hope, 
a sign of a future kingdom when all will be well. 
You shattered the powers’ reign of death in history.

When we forget, help us to remember. 
When we are blind help us to see. 
When we are deaf help us to hear. 
When we despair and are overwhelmed send your Spirit to comfort us.

You call us to a conversion of heart,
to turn away from empire, its seductions and iniquity.
This is not a call out of the world, but into an alternative social practice,
a community of resistance and healing, 
gathering in homes and around the table with you. 

You have given us a meal to remember you by
a meal to remember the ending of slavery 
and deliverance from the power of Pharaoh’s dream;
a meal in which you broke bread and drank wine - 
your body broken for us, 
your blood of a new relationship with God.

May our homes and our tables be open, 
May they not have rigid boundaries. 
May this table and this home today be such a place. 
May we live from love and not fear. 

We break bread and drink wine now to celebrate your life, death and resurrection.
And we look for the day when all slavery, all oppression and all domination is ended.
When we will be free at last
Your kingdom come
Amen

we'll post the whole service on the grace site at some point and i'll come back and post a link here. if you are interested in what is behind this take, things in the background are probably multiple but some that spring to mind:

• mark's gospel and his telling of jesus' life - i have been very inspired by ched myers binding the strong man which i have blogged about elsewhere. there are some lines of the above prayer that are phrases directly lifted from his wonderful commentary. i really hope he would like this prayer.
• the current wider context and the challenge of making sense of the powers and their domination as exemplified in the murder of george floyd and in the continual ordering of political and economic life to favour the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the earth and those at the edges. for me the wider context is also about religious power which too easily slides towards control and/or domesticating jesus. i am not against institutions or power as such - it is where there is domination that is the issue.
• subversive meals by alan streett who reads the lord's supper as an anti-imperial practice (which is picked up on by kreider and kreider in worship after christendom). 
• walter wink's trilogy on the powers and alastair mcintosh's take on that in soil and soul.
• james cone's the cross and the lynching tree which i have just read (thank you emma for the suggestion) - the prayer uses the word lynched challenged by this book. we reflected on this image of the black christ at grace which is from a book of poems the black christ by countee cullen published in 1929 which james cone refers to in the amazing chapter on the arts. if you want a short summary of the idea of jesus being lynched then chance the rapper's twitter thread does a nice job.

i am adding this to the worship trick series 4 - that will be no 79 - i must try and get to 100 before it's been a decade that that series has been running!

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! 

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...

grace labyrinth on saturday 11 jan

join us at grace on saturday january 11th and walk a labyrinth. if you have not walked a labyrinth before it is a lovely prayerful space surrounded by candlelight and ambient tunes. you meditate by walking. it’s a perfect way to start the new year reflecting on what has gone before giving thanks and letting go. it’s a space to be still, to be with god, to place yourself into god's care. and then it’s a journey into the decade that lies ahead with all of its possibility, challenge and adventure. there will be a cafe afterwards as ever with space to chill and catch up. 

thinking about church as woodland...

the latest issue of anvil is out and explores mission and church. the direct link to this issue is here and you can read online or download articles as pdf or the whole thing.  there are so many questions to explore in relation to this. it's a brilliant issue i think. we try and make it accessible but to have weight to the reflections. hopefully we get that about right. i have a piece in there where i am in conversation with tim nash around what is happening in relation to nomad podcast. a community is orbiting around it that seems quite significant. it's not a church (as in a congregation who meet together weekly) but it is very much church in other ways. so we dive into a discussion around that. in that i speculate that a helpful metaphor for church might be a woodland. i actually push this further in a book i am working on that will be out next summer.

anyway have a read and see what you think. the reason i think the conversation may be of interest is that i think it shines a light on the way many people, at least in western contexts, are assembling their faith and navigating what it means to follow christ in a mix of spaces - online contributes to this environment. thanks to james butler for editing a really good issue. aas ever anvil is online and free.

pioneering in europe

this week i have been at a conference in utrecht on pioneering and fresh expression sof church hearing stories of how people across europe are starting new things and working with their denominations to create space for that. i have written something about it on the cms pioneer blog including links to some of the strategy of the protestant church in the netherlands which is very helpful i think.