jonnybaker

off grid christianity interview

i was interviewed recently by martin purnell for the podcast off grid christianity. we last spoke in about 1998 when i had recorded the album backbone, a sad angry protest album about palestine. at the time martin was working with crossrhythms. we don't particularly discuss that situation but unsurprisngly i have been pondering some of those songs and feeling that same sense of overwhelming sadness. 

the interview catches up over those years discussing music, alternative worship, pioneering, church leaving as something it might be normal to do after a while and so forth.

it feels slightly weird to say come and have a listen to me wittering on in conversation for an hour but if that appeals then here is the link!

pioneering parishes

pioneering parishes does what it sounds like - it helps parishes gently shift their energy towards focusing outwards in the parish - simple eh?! i discussed this with someone who is a vicar the other day and they simply said 'of course! isn't that what every parish does?'

the reality is that there are many pressures and demands and maintaining church life can take a lot of  energy so a reminder/call/encouragement plus some tools to shift that energy can only be a good thing. there is now a pioneering parishes web site which has just gone live - do have a nose round, sign up to the monthly newsletter by scrolling to the bottom of the page and following the link. and maybe gather a team from your church and sign up to do the first steps webinar series of 4 sessions. you can search pioneering parishes on instagram and facebook if you want to jump on the flow there.

i have spent the last 15 or so years talking about pioneering and working with pioneers. sometimes in churches i get a glazed expression - it just sounds like it's a bit out there or beyond reach or not for them. but i have found when talking with people about pioneering parishes the reaction is different - people instinctively like those two things together and want to be part of a parish like that. parish is of course a church of england way of organising and this project is being funded through the church of england for three years. but i think the ideas will translate if you are a church and interested in your place/locale.

i am delighted that this project is part of the team i lead at cms and it has been fun working with tina, greg, jayne, gail (the team) and seeing how this is naturally taking on a life and growing. it's going to be a fun ride!

a quote

i read this quote in subversive mission earlier this year and it has stayed with me since. it sums up pretty neatly the issue of whether christianity is foreign or relatable on the basis of its cultural form. it became a bit of a quote of the day at the london pioneer school on saturday.

theology brewed in an african pot

it's the beginning of term. a new year is always both crazy busy but hugely energising. at cms in oxford we have around 100 pioneers doing some training with us at undergrad, post grad and doctoral levels. it's such a joy and privilege meeting them and encouraging them in who they are, their sense of vocation, their learning and practice. i teach a couple of modules at undergrad level. one is an introduction to practical theology and reflective practice. we had the first day of that yesterday where amongst other things we discussed theology as a quest, as faith seeking understanding, as conversation about god, as something for everyone and not justan elite educated crew, as something lived, as something contextual and local and intercultural, as something global and not just western and so on. one of the ideas we came back to was theological homelessness (scroll through this edition of anvil and you'll find an article by me and cathy ross on it). 

as you would expect, for every module there is a reading list. one of the books on that is theology brewed in an african pot by agbonkhianmeghe e orobator and an essay option is 'what does theology look like brewed in the pot of your community?' which i think is a fun title (i am not so sure students think it's fun writing essays mind!). i have always loved learning from other cultures and contexts and putting my western learned sense of things in conversation with that - it's a gift cms has given me. it's such a relief to find that wesrern theology (ies?) are a local theology rather than universal and will be enriched in conversation with other theologies. i'll never forget john mbiti sharing names of god he had collected from his travels in africa and he had over 300 names. orabator has various prayers and liturgies in the book, one of which is inspired by john mbiti. it's called an african invocation of divine names and i found it online here and am taking the liberty of posting it below (largely because i have learned over the years of blogging that links eventually don't work!). what does theology look like brewed in the pot of your community i wonder?

Ancient deity,
Unbreakable stone,
Consoler and comforter providing salvation,
Grandfather who alone is the great one,
Watcher of everything who is not surprised by anything,
Piler of rocks into towering mountains,
Divider of night and day,
Response: We praise You!

Sun too bright for our gaze,
Eye of the sun,
Artist-in-chief,
Drummer of life,
Owner of our head,
Large and deep pot,
My feathered one,
Mother of people,
Response: Bless us!

Great nursing mother,
Great eye,
Great rainbow,
Great personal guardian spirit,
Unsurpassed great spirit,
Great source of being,
Great mantle which covers us,
Great leopard with its own forest,
Great healer of eternal life,
Great water-giver,
Great well,
Greatest of friends,
Great spider, the all-wise one,
Response: Enlighten us!

Controller of destiny in the universe,
All-powerful, never defeated,
Father of laughter,
King without blemish,
Possessor of whiteness,
Whiteness without patterns,
Caller-forth of the branching trees,
Unique great one to whom one can take petitions and requests for counsel,
Response: Hear us!

The first who always existed and will never die,
The only one bull in the world,
The one who sees both the inside and the outside,
The one we meet everywhere,
The one who is in all ages, everywhere and at all times,
The one who turns things upside down,
The one who has power to destroy completely,
The one who makes the sun set,
The one who gave everything on this earth and can take everything away,
Response: Guide us!

Axe that fears no thistle,
Hoe that fears no soil,
Ram of majestic sinews and majestic carriage,
Hero who never flees before the enemy,
Big boundless hut,
Victor over death,
Response: Protect us!

Compiled from John Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion (London: Heinemann, 1975); Robert E. Hood, Must God Remain Greek? Afro Cultures and God-Talk (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990); Joseph Healey and Donald Sybertz, Towards an African Narrative Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996), and other sources.

Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator - Theology Brewed in an African Pot

i am adding this as a worship trick - yes i'll be getting those going again sporadically.

a table, a kettle and a curtain

scottie reeve (who i visited when in new zealand) has written a lovely piece suggesting that all a church needs is a table, a kettle and a curtain. this is pitched at those starting new communities or planting churches. his point is keep it simple and suited to the size so don't burn yourself out!

"Many church-planters feel the pressure to become a “real church” as soon as possible. They become structure-heavy, volunteer-heavy, and bloated by brand and buzzwords before they have truly learned to be family. Their leaders are exhausted within a year because they are maintaining something built for 100, while there are only 10 of them. On these days we need to remember that, at its inception, the Church was founded in homes and houses - little rooms with not much more than a kettle and a table."

(thanks dave crampton for the tip off)

latest anvil on indigenous theologies

the latest issue of anvil journal is really wonderful - exploring the emancipation of indigenous theologies in light of the rise of world christianity (and it's free). i read it on the ferry on my phone on the way back from the netherlands last week and found i wanted to read all of it! i have so enjoyed various things related to indigenous spirituality, community, theology over the last few years - visiting maori and reading hui comes home in NZ; braiding sweet grass; first nations version of the new testament; rescuing the gospel from the cowboys by richard twiss etc... so it was a joy to be able to host some articles and conversation in the cms journal. big thanks to everyone who contributed. i also really liked the book reviews this time round - they all sound interesting. do read jay matenga's article. I thought that was particularly helpful at a time when the c of e could do well to stay in for the difficult conversations. i took some quotes from that and the editorial and put them with photos i took when i was in new zealand. see my word - indigenous

come and train at cms!

the mission training at cms is wonderful. i don't know how else to say it. working with the creative people, pioneers, dreamers, ministers who have joined us over the last dozen years has been such a joy! and i love seeing what people who have trained with us go on to do. this video of ali is one inspiring example.

it's that time of year to think about signing up for next september. if you'd like to know more about it, give me a shout or even better come to the open day we have next week. 

you can study at any level -

• audit modules or join a hub's year long programme which is not accredited
• undergraduate certificate, diploma, degree
• postgraduate certificate, diploma, MA, DTh

they all focus around mission, with imagination and creativity front and centre as we seek to reflect on how to engage meaningfully in the communities and contexts we are in.

reflective practice in mission is relevant to many things but these are the kinds of focus you could particularly explore with a mix of theology, mission and ministry -

• youth ministry
• childrens ministry
• pioneer ministry
• african christianity (now at both UG and PG levels)
• fresh expressions
• church planting
• chaplaincy 
• new housing
• social innovation
• african christianity
• helping my parish church be missional 

what a relief we are past COVID now (?!) - maybe it's a good time to engage? the plus now is that having learned from going online during COVID, you can study in person, online, hybrid so get in touch wherever you live! sorry for the short notice but there's an open day next week but there are also a couple in june. click on the links to book in or download flyers here and and here

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

true north

this is the thirteenth 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 | 12. for goodness sake

this is the final reflection. 13 makes a baker's dozen after all! 

once the pioneer training started, a few years in i was amazed at how wonderful it seemed - it felt like something precious was going on. religious communities sometimes talk about a charism or gift that is at the heart of what they are about. i went on a retreat in 2015 and wrote in my journal what i thought the facets of the charism we were seeing at cms with pioneers might be. i called it true north - true north being a metaphor for god's mission which is the big orienting factor, joining in with the healing of all things. and then i came up with 9 facets of that gift. several years on i think they still name something good. i don't think i have ever posted that on the blog. so it seems a fitting way to end this series of reflections.

there are actually two versions of it.

the latest one is in pioneer practice (use discount code in january of HAPPYNEWYEAR btw to get it for £10) which is somewhat distilled. you can download it here - true north v2

and the original is simply those 9 facets written out with a short explanation - you can download them exactly as they were first written here - true north v1

i would love any feedback on that - do leave comments or how you see it. if i were to rewrite now i would add something on the gift of community and diversity i think which we are feeling our way towards. there is a talk of me elaborating on it in germany in 2017 if you want to know more.

so there you go. that is my baker's dozen celebrating twenty years at cms. now time to look forward...

• 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
• 12. for goodness sake
• 13 true north

HAPPYNEWYEAR - pioneer practice discount

looking back on 2022 one of the highlights was getting out and about post COVID to tour pioneer practice with gav mart. we did around 20 dates i think. thank you to everyone who came - it was so good to connect with people, hear stories of what is happening and glimpse sparks of ideas that are yet to emerge. to celebrate we have set up a discount code for pioneer practice to run through january. the code is HAPPYNEWYEAR and will get you a print copy for £10 or download for £7. order at gestsidetracked.co 

if you have not come across it pioneer practice is a full colour book (more like a chunky magazine really) with a mix of stories and practical short pieces on everything related to getting something started. it's accessible, you can dive in anywhere, and is beautifully designed - we are super proud of it.

do pass on the code - oh and HAPPYNEWYEAR

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

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.

cms twenty: doing the imaginative work

this is the tenth 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

in almost everything I have been involved in at cms there has been a quest that is more interested in the future than the past. the church has always adapted so it’s nothing new but although the church has the rhetoric of knowing she needs to change and perhaps wants to change it turns out she prefers business as usual really. i noted this when I reflected on what we had learned after 5 years and still think it’s true scroll down to the section 3 the church says it wants pioneers but.... i’ll come back to that question of systemic or adaptive change in another post as it interests me more and more.

i quickly found out that if you look to the usual sources through which leaders are trained they really are not set up to do this future faced thinking. the language and forms from one era or culture don’t make sense in the new. so the last twenty years have involved a lot of conversations, reading, writing, thinking, theologising ourselves - trying to find resources and ideas that will resource a different kind of imagination and practice. the blog and series of connections with others on a similar journey has been the site of much of that reflection.

i was pondering that process of reflecting and it has been a really wonderful part of the adventure. 

one area of reading and reflecting and noticing is in the direction of artists and writers and filmmakers who catch the zeitgeist and describe what’s going on in the wider cultural space. just before joining cms i did a masters degree and a large part of that was engaging with cultural studies drawing on thinkers like zygmunt bauman. there is so much to be learned there. it’s basic mission practice to read the culture. 

another is finding the treasures from the tradition that seem to help break it open afresh in the present. there is a rich vein of this but you have to dig them out. they often seem to be tucked away and half forgotten with dust on the cover. for me in particular this has included an engagement with cms own history, stories and especially some of its prophets - i am thinking of the likes of john taylor and max warren as well as stories of cross cultural mission and contextual, local and intercultural theologies from round the world. i have definitely found some of the gold I was seeking which was a fund for my own imagination. i have returned again and again to the notion that mission is ‘an adventure of the imagination’ which is how taylor describes it in the primal vision.

then perhaps the most surprising has been to find ourselves doing our own publishing in the area of pioneering, mission, theology, practice, church, spirituality and so on. we have not been the only ones of course - it’s been wonderful to exchange learning with those in fresh expressions for example who also got on a roll with publishing books reflecting and theologising about what was happening as well as those in other parts of the world exploring similar questions. i remember a lot of energy when we toured the country with mike frost and al hirsch to talk about the shaping of things to come for example. we have hosted annual conversations days since november 2013 reflecting on what we are learning about pioneering mission - i found the flyer above for that first one. that has led to publishing, editing or contributing to quite a lot of books. i have listed my contributions here - books like the pioneer gift, pioneering spirituality, future present, curating worship, imagining mission, mission on the road to emmaus, missonal conversations, pioneer practice, go between god (the foreword) as well as running proost for several years to self publish artistic expressions and liturgies from the emerging church including a couple of pocket liturgy books - grace pocket liturgies and making communion. proost doesn't seem to be in action any more so have put these two books here as free downloads - help yourself.

we also picked up the editing of anvil journal on the way, a journal in theology and mission which is themed each issue with two or three editions in each volume. anvil is free online. the team I am part of have been incredible in this regard and i owe a debt of thanks in particular to cathy ross whose enthusiasm for publishing has pulled the rest of us forward and enabled us to grow in confidence and think we might dare to write. i have loved that some of our students have published for the first time through the books we have edited. paul bradbury published an amazing couple of books - stepping into grace and home by another route, tina hodgett and paul created the pioneer spectrum which has taken on a life of its own. it’s a delight to have harvey kwiyani and joseph ola most recently join the team who are publishing in the space of mission, diaspora, intercultural theology, african christianity and decolonisation. i have no doubt there will be more to come.

if people ask me what I do ‘writer 'would never be a label on my list but looking back i do seem to have done my fair share! but for me I think it’s more about the necessity of doing the imaginative work and offering that into the wider conversation. in movements I suspect it is essential.

latest anvil - sustainability and mission

a new edition of anvil journal is up online. i am happy to say you can download it for free. it is a collection of articles and reflections from our pioneer conversations day last year which explored themes around mission and sustainability with a whole set of questions around growth. it reminded me a bit of donut economics actually and how to live in a space within limits in a way that enables flourishing of life.

i have two simultaneous feelings when anvil comes out. i feel excited because i love the reflecting and thinking going on around mission today. and i am delighted because since landing it in cms this is now our 18th edition so there's quite a collection of thinking and conversation now. 

the other one is that it looks overwhelming. i think this is because in spite of technology i still don't like reading really long things on a computer. probably if i had a cool ipad i might feel differently about it. it's a lame confession i admit. so here's what i have decided to try out this time round. i am going to pick one article and read that every day or three and ponder that. i was at the day so have already heard some of the pieces. alison webster's piece on building collectives with soul felt very resonant at the time so it's good to have a chance to ponder that. there are also a ton of book reviews this time round. the new book review editor is clearly on a roll! 

cms twenty: red tape

this is the ninth of a series of short reflections 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

navigating change in any institution has its moments. the church of england and other denominations are challenging spaces in which to advocate for and make pathways for newness. they have been around a while and there are lots of vested interests. anyone who works in change will tell you this is entirely normal in any organisation or institution. over the years i have learned a few things about navigating change though recently have found myself drawn to reading more about it again as it resurfaces so often. i am currently reading the change agent by lyle schaller which was written in the seventies but is really good (ht ash barker). but looking back over twenty years on the blog i can see various points where i got so exasperated trying to navigate change and encountering resistance or red tape.

it was actually quite amusing to come across red tape - this installation i did at a cms conference. i was given a free hand so just set it up and amazingly there were no complaints at least that i heard of as i red taped a bible, barrier taped off communion and made a dog collar out of red tape - i think i was feeling there might be some issues of control in the church!! 

once cms had been invited to design a training pathway for pioneers i remember the challenge of then tring to persuade the powers that be at the time that what we did was trustworthy and i nearly drowned in red tape.

it wasn't just the church of england - i was wound up by evangelicals attitudes here - you'll have to scroll down to the sept 24 entry but i was surprised reading how blunt i was in response to the neac gathering i attended!

the church of england's response to lockdown and sharing communion provoked me to produce the photo above, rant and write a liturgy about jesus and the powers. i don't know what you have to do to get the church's attention but no one batted an eyelid at that either! 

i am enjoying reading holy anarchy at the moment which is from a congregationalist graham adams, who like the united reformed church are non-conformist and have a tradition of dissent. it's made we wonder how i have survived this long in the church of england as i identify strongly with dissent but it is my tribe or my tradition where i think i'll continue to do my best to navigate change, red tape and no doubt continue to get exasperated on a regular basis!

cms twenty: church planting

this is the eighth of a series of short reflections 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

in 2003 a year long course called re:source began (the irony of the name!). it was one year course where six different contexts were visited over weekends to learn from what was happening on the ground. it was a partnership between a few organisations - from memory they were cms, anglican church planting initiatives, revs, oasis, soul survivor. i really loved it - we still draw on that model now visiting contexts over a weekend to learn from them. but here's the thing - the strapline on the logo was church plant training. it changed over time and became creating church in the emerging culture and various other iterations.

i think the spirit of it is captured in this quote off an early flyer:

i found this pretty interesting looking back. if i may indulge a little more in looking back the question about church planting actually began for me in conversations about young people before that. it was deemed to be highly controversial at the time but in places it was clear that they were never going to join the existing church so growing a new one out of that seemed the best option. this was back in the 90s. i remember discussions about it when we ran a nightclub for young people in bath and wondered what we would do. fast forward a bit and by the late nineties i was in london and had got involved in grace which was a new congregation of an anglican church that began as part of what then was termed alternative worship. i wasn't involved in starting it. but the point i want to connect to is that i was contacted by a couple bob and mary hopkins who set up anglican church planting initiatives in 1996 and they started an annual anglican church planting conference and wanted a range of stories or models of what was happening to be shared. i went along to talk about grace at that church planting conference. i don't know what year that was. and in the earlier post on emerging church that was in response to new churches beginning that were very much at home in the emerging culture

fast forward to mission shaped church being published in 2004 and the subtitle of that is guess what...

church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context

in that a range of examples are listed and they would have been very similar top the range of things at the conference - youth church, new congregation, messy church, alternative worship, new monasticisim, cafe church, cell church, planting into a new building and so forth. according to the day of small things research stats that is still the best movement the church of england has had in briitain for genuinely starting communities where those who didn't realise church could be for them find out it can be. why the church of england has not continued to invest in it baffles me whilst at the same time it has a stated outcome of wanting lots of new worshipping communities.

what is also interesting to look back on is that bob and mary used to teach at re:source on a range of models and dynamics and how that affected what you did - what was the context, what size of team, the relationship with the culture and so on - did you start with church culture and worship or the local culture... it was a pretty broad and expansive range of things (their web site still has a models and types section) and contextual approaches were seen to be good from the get go. in fact overall the drive for all this was a sense that western culture needed an approach informed by the best of cross cultural mission that grew indigenous or contextual expressions of church. cms were so on board with this that we contributed to funding bob and mary and they were part of the same team as me for several years - i must catch up with them!

fast forward again to the last decade of training pioneers - they start many things in mission including new communities of disciples. some describe that as church planting, others use different language but that is a big part of what they do. in the recently published book of stories of lay church planting  from myriad they have pretty much all been done by pioneers! 

looking back over my time in cms i have been and still am very much engaged with church plating in the emerging culture. there is so much more i could say about this and why the language has become contested or lots of people have abandoned it. but i think it probably needs recovering and/or reclaiming or at least we need a generous and wide range of approaches going forward much like that mapped by acpi and fresh expressions as above - did i hear someone say mixed ecology?!

interested in church planting? then at cms we have been doing that the last twenty years or so in this context (and by the way probably helped plant two thirds of the anglican communion back in the day which is also now a complex space too). 

cms twenty: pioneer ministry

this is the seventh of a series of short reflections 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 

one of the recommendations in mission shaped church was that the church recognise that the kind of person starting these fresh expressions of church had a bit of a different skill set, way of looking and being in the world, a different gift. the report used two descriptions for this - pioneer ministry and missional entrepreneurship. quite quickly the church of england created a new designation for ministry whereby you could be recognised and ordained as a pioneer. this was pretty encouraging and surprising. at this point at cms we were already involved with others in some training called resource - i still have very fond memories of that. the model was that over a series of weekends we would visit somewhere creative mission was taking place and learn from it tied in with a series of teaching themes. we folded that into what we went on to develop.

[our first prospectus which we produced in 2011 - we didn't have one before we started!]

when pioneer ministry was recognised as a thing, theological colleges were invited to design training. i don't quite know what they designed but the imagination was not quite what it could have been. i remember being in a few meetings where it was discussed and being labelled 'priest plus' - in other words you learned all the regular stuff and then did a slightly different placement or an extra thing on a wednesday afternoon or something. 

one of the other recommendations in the report mission shaped church was that training for pioneers should include or be done through the lens of cross cultural mission (see quote to right). and after a couple of years the then head of ministry approached cms to ask if we could design some training because in his view what was being done was frustrating pioneers and wasn't really fit for purpose, and i think he thought that we would have experience on the cross cultural imagination and practice - which was true. essentially cms then asked me if i would work out how we would do that, design it and find a college to work with on it or a way we could do it. to cut a long story short i did and that request took over my life for the next decade really. of course in classic church of england fashion although they asked us, it was quite quickly obvious that was not approved of by various other people and it took a further three years to actually get permission to train ordinands. but we got dreaming, drew up a roadmap of what we wanted to do in december 2009 and i was tasked with getting the first cohort in sept 2010. somehow we pulled that out of the bag - looking back i have no idea how. we started with training independent students, lay training if you like and then two years later added in training ordinands alongside them. our first prospectus cover is above and is a road going into the fog - that felt pretty apt.

i realised i was at a change point and wrote a blog post and accompanying newsletter here reflecting on changes over the first 8 years at cms and then a post looking forward to the next 8 or whatever it was to become. that was year before we actually launched and i enjoyed reading this in it:

i can promise that the training we do will be totally geared to pioneering in mission with creativity and imagination and will be shaped with and by pioneers rather than pioneering as an add on to existing training for being a parish priest

i think we delivered on that promise! since then we have gradually added in various things so that now at cms we train at undergraduate, post graduate and doctoral research level with around 90 students at anyone time and also unaccredited training round the country (more on that later). yes we do train ordinands but the vast majority are independent students paying their own way. in many ways the whole emerging church movement has largely been a lay led movement. many of those who did get ordained did so having already pioneered so that they could share communion with the community they had helped start.

i'll say a bit more about this pioneer gift and about training in others posts.

cms twenty: mission shaped church and fresh expressions

this is the sixth of a series of short reflections celebrating twenty years at cms

see also  1. gold | 2. emerging church | 3. blah | 4. new forms | 5. worship tricks 

what age do you become mature? we certainly celebrated our two lads birthdays at 18 in crazy style as that felt a moment of transition into adulthood. i had an email this week inviting me to something to celebrate fresh expressions of church becoming eighteen - wow! where did that time go?

looking back on my time at cms it was couple of years in that mission shaped church was published. here is my blog post when it landed on my doormat. this was a church of england and methodist report published in 2004 which was in response to the wave of new things bubbling up round the edges of the church. two members of cms were on the group that produced the report - chris neal and gill poole and i am proud that cms were involved in what was a seminal report really. it is very rare that a church report becomes a best seller but it caught the moment and maybe even a wave of the spirit! it said it was catching up with what was already happening through the likes of the emerging church. it coined a new term - fresh expressions of church - drawing on the declaration of assent where the church says it will proclaim the gospel afresh in every generation. there had been an earlier report called breaking new ground so this was a build on that actually. graham cray chaired it and there was a foreword by rowan williams in which he wisely described a mixed economy of church to suggest that the new and the old were all part of the church's household and he came up with a pretty radical definition of church which has not been bettered since in my view. you can dig it out to find the content but it was generous in what was welcomed into the mix. and it was brave - there would be a lot of work to do in the church of england around culture change if this was to have legs.

the report had a series of recommendations and the then archbishop rowan williams gathered together some people who got behind resourcing it as i think he realised he probably needed to bypass the central funding structures to act quickly. he was an absolute legend, an authority dissenter who was loved to bits by the movement that followed. it's so fun to read the blog post of that evening at lambeth palace which I was at telling the story of grace as an example of a fresh expression and the blog entry is titled bring on the angliCAN church . a fresh expressions team was appointed and they got to work speaking, develioping training, sharing stories and setting to work on policy such as creating a pathway for ordination , changing the regulations around church planting across parish boundaries and so on. the tenth anglican church planting conference that june 2004 sold out. cms were one of the sponsors. but reading my blog post on it you get a sense of the energy that was around. along with notes i took on rowan williams wisdom. it's also weird how small photos were then on blog posts - but i loved this one of steve collins, ben edson and adrian riley . other denominations joined in (urc, baptist, salvation army) and it was picked up internationally. for example i visited korea where it was translated and inspired new expressions. the relationship with emerging church was interesting - if you know the diffusion of innovation curve emerging church was in the early adopters but fresh expressions was more working with the early majority - at least that is my sense of it and stephen croft and i had a discussion at greenbelt one year to that effect i remember. and it really did diffuse to a significant degree over 18 years thus far.

in july 2019 it was 15 years on from the mission shaped church report and at general synod it was reported that this had been the single most effective thing the church had done to reach genuinely new people (at least for a long time). it was also futuring the church in its forms. a motion was adopted to encourage every parish to consider a contextual expression of church (contextual means that it is creatively related to the culture of the place it is in). others would know better than me how theior denoiminations hgave responded.

the diagram above i sketched at one of the later fresh expressions gatherings and jotted down what graham cray reflected on as the facets of its charism.

the weird thing is that it is at a funny moment right now. covid has been difficult for lots of things which is one factor. another i think was a change of archbishop so the funding changed perhaps rightly to things he was passionate about. but several people used language of it being embedded as if to say we've done that - which i think was pretty naive looking back. my own take is that the church has always needed a combination of its structural way of organising and a movement way of organising (the jargon for this is modal and sodal). if you just leave something like fresh expressions to the structural it will likely slide back into more internal agendas. you need those groups with particular focus and energey to help and continue to call the church to its edges. i also think that the nature of fresh expressions was broad church and ecumenical and it worked hard at that with book series in the sacramental tradition as well as the low church end. the more recent developments are located in a much narrower stream or at least that is how they are perceived. that inevitably means some people get on board but others simply won't. the church of england also stopped its central funding contribution to fresh expressions. it is now an independent charity. it's still doing good things but much smaller. i actually feel we're at a bit of a critical juncture to see what the way forward will be for the mission of the church in this regard. i am not saying we should turn the clock back, but in retrospect i think the church has not made the most of the huge opportunity that it was on the cusp of in july 2019 because it thought this was embedded enough. 

the good news is that all sorts of newness has bubbled up and multiplied. the church is most definitely looser round the edges. and cms and church army and other groups who were there before fresh expressions are still here and passionate about and involved in encouraging the mission of the church. we (cms) always seem to be perceived at the more radical end of things (which i don't mind) but actually we have been engaged front and centre in lots of ways. it has honestly been an absolute privilege to have been able to be part of that era and movement and i think cms was great in encouraging and helping resource it. we funded a couple of people on the fresh expressions team (bob and mary hopkins) for a good season as well as carving a furrow in the pioneer end of things (more about that later). fresh expressions is still going in a smaller format and we will carry on! i am so grateful to have been part of cms that has kept investing, kept at the table, kept drawing on lessons learned about contextual mission elsewhere, and shared stories internationally to help fuel this adventure of the imagination. ht to everyone involved. it has been a huge joint endeavour.