emergent
kiwi
In Liquid Church, Pete Ward takes a deep swim in postmodern waters. While many are just trying to dog paddle, Ward explores ways for the church to incarnationally flourish in our contemporary culture. At times the theologian in me wonders if Ward’s theology is so liquid he ignores Divine person, and thus the importance of gathering. At times the practitioner in me wonders who will fund Pete’s dreams. But the insights around spiritual desire and the creative and missional possibilities around shopping for meaning are worth the price alone. It is a provocative book in which the missionary heartbeat is undeniable. The book is well written. It is concise. It handles well. If you’re serious about being church in the postmodern world, it is worth taking the plunge.
liquid church
Coming:
Olive Drane, creativity and the image of God
Christchurch, January 04
Going:
Taylor's to Chch, Jan04
Church and Society, Auckland, Feb04
Stuff I've written:
Celebrating a Postmodern Pentecost
Sketching a postmodern missiology
Romeo/Juliet/altworship
DJing salvation
Piglet reads the Bible in a postmodern world
Coupland/community
cultural
wildflowers
1 Peter:mysogynist
or feminist
New generation/new
millenium
Church
in a global world
My further reading
art and spirituality
church ministry
postmodernity
Generation X
popular culture
gospel and culture
faith in aotearoa new zealand
Conversations that enhance me:
andrew jones up close
small ritual
douglas rushkoff
jonny baker
God-n-
club culture
paul fromont
darren rowse
Christian greenie
God-n-club culture-2
human in london
intellectually gritty
rachel cunliffe
jordon cooper (mentioned my blog 3x)
mark barkaway
Interview with:
Archives:
June 2002
July 2002
August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November 2002
December 2002
January 2003
February 2003
March 2003
April 2003
May 2003
June 2003
July 2003
August 2003
September 2003
October 2003
November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
Friday, June 28, 2002
Went to hear Derek Lind launch his new album at the Odeon last night. I think Derek is one of Nzers finest artists; great live and solo, superb with band behind, thoughtful lyrics and good harmonies. God is unmistakably present, wrapped in Kiwi lyrics – golf at Dargaville, doing the Northland Run, white crosses on road sides – and connective imagery. www.someone.co.nz
Spoke to his son, Nick, who got 96/96 in final school year art and is now at art school. He’s keen to exhibit at Graceway, so that will be good for him and Graceway.
posted by spirit2go team at 3:11 PM
David Bowie was on TV a few nights ago about his new album. He’s called it “Heathen” because he is concerned about the prevalence of materialism and the lack of spirituality in our culture.
Interesting cos people like John Drane among many others right of the upsurge of spirituality. Perhaps Bowie is surrounded by more materialism than Drane et al!
posted by spirit2go team at 3:10 PM
Thursday, June 27, 2002
I good friend of mine has just been doing the OE church sight seeing tour. He often does this as part of his learning and life reflection. He emailed yesterday
“Take care out there, Graceway is still as good as it gets in the West I reckon.”
Which in the middle of a winter, seated on the edge of the known world, is a nice way to end the week.
posted by spirit2go team at 4:05 PM
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Head bangers
Here are some thesis questions that I can’t get my head around. Can anyone out there help me?
One
Is postmodern spirituality generally a search for immanence (God-is-close) (eg Gaia mother earth etc) or transcendent (God-is-otherworldly) (Eg X-files, Chemical Brothers latest album is heavily Sci Fi/ethereal) or …
Two
In Douglas Coupland's Gen X, the main characters "tell stories and make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process". I read this as an individualized search for meaning that is found in shared lives (i.e. in community). So is this the sign of a cultural shift that extends the individualism of modernity, or a search for communal meaning, or is their a 3rd, more helpful metaphor …
Three
According to Alpha News, 20-30’s in the UK are the age-group most commonly found at Alpha in 2001.
Yet while Alpha is hospitable and relational, it is not postmodern in the way it presumes answers through a long monologue. Is the reason so many Xers are going to an unpostmodern thing like Alpha evidence of the importance of marketing i.e. recent UK TV promotion of Alpha
OR Alpha’s connectivity with a certain sociological portion of the population
OR the breakdown of notions of postmodern missiology as needing community, mystery, symbolism and openended searching.
Four
Early (1970’s) Charismatic movement has been described as experiential, creative, whole body, lay involving. Was this an early indicator of the breakdown of modernity's rationalism and postmodern search for community, mystery, symbolism? If so, what how did it get stuck in endlessly looped Hillsong?
posted by spirit2go team at 10:08 PM
Monday, June 24, 2002
imagine scanned image of acorn
I walked in the park and passed a plaque that read of trees being planted for enjoyment both for today’s and tomorrow’s generation. And so I prayed
God of emergent
Life’s Breath
Spirit of play and pregnancy
Provider in mess of birth and after-birth
May our play today
become plants for tomorrow.
Amen
posted by spirit2go team at 3:28 PM
Saturday, June 22, 2002
It’s a gorgeous day. After weeks of rain, earth dries. A reminder of cycles, that storms are followed by peace. That wet is followed by dry.
We went for a leisurely café breakfast. Then we sat on our porch, in the sun, sipping Earl Grey tea. As nature was dried, we were warmed. A reminder of cycles. Of peace n warmth amid busyness n pressure.
posted by spirit2go team at 9:16 PM
She phoned yesterday. She left a message with my wife that she was thinking of me. I love the inversion. I’m meant to care for her. She’s ringing to care for me.
posted by spirit2go team at 9:15 PM
Friday, June 21, 2002
Our local community threw a Community event today: stalls and entertainment. Graceway had a stall and it was nice to be present as a church - visible, relational – alongside other community groups.
But I smelt a whiff of irony. In this poorly attended event, a group of American Christian tourists were quite visible. The first 2 entertainment singers were Christians. In between the MC introduced a stall raising money for World Vision.
I’ve been blogging this week about marginalia, about Christianity in exile. Well today in Ellerslie, without Christianity, this local Community event would have lacked a crowd, lacked some quality entertainment and had no charitable focus. Quite ironic for a marginalised movement.
posted by spirit2go team at 8:23 PM
Not that marginal creative communities are a unique phenomena. We'd follow in the footsteps of the Jewish exile, when out of exile emerges OT. And then the early church, which when forced out of the temple, shaped Christianity. So there's been lots of notes from the margins already.
Yet the church has for so long lived at the centre. You still get the whiff of this, or at least hear visions of a return to power. Well if my French friend and exile and early church is right, then perhaps the margins is a great place to drink coffee.
posted by spirit2go team at 4:50 AM
Thursday, June 20, 2002
Marginalia.
Def = notes from the margins.
Some of my friends tell me the church is dead. Other friends tell me the church down the road is pumping with life.
A French Jesuit mystical scholar (de Certeau) met the 1968 French Revolution. (Which some think was the cultural dawn of postmodernism. It was certainly my dawn, I was born 1968).
After ruminating on revolution and mysticism, my French friend (after reading 6 of his books for my PhD he certainly feels like a friend) wrote that every culture creates most along its margins. And that this creativity is best seen in the gesture that allows a group to invent itself. Which sounds a lot like Graceway and my emergent church friends. Marginal creative communities.
The institution will always treat the margins as exceptions. Neither dead nor alive. Thus the marginal creative community represent both life’s creative surplus and an exposure of the rift of death in the institution.
Emergent church? Neither dead nor alive, but marginalia. A note from the margin, a rift exposing the death of God, the slow slump of the institutional church. A creative surplus for our culture and our institutions to enjoy.
Emergent church = marginalia.
posted by spirit2go team at 1:55 AM
Monday, June 17, 2002
Currently Graceway meets weekly in a church hall. Last weekend someone suggested that we meet in homes weekly and in the hall monthly to give us more time to build community.
My thinking goes like this;
I like to the community idea and a house does that. BUT homes aren't public space. It takes more courage to walk into a home than into a public hall. So homes aren't publicly missional for people "checking us out".
So what about meeting in cafes? They are more public and yet still really communal. BUT how do you set up the teles and the banners and the candles and the visual environments, ie all the creative worship stuff that is so important to who Graceway is?
So why don't we buy a cafe and kit it out ourselves? BUT firstly, money (any wealthy donors out there) and secondly, it seems such a waste to use a building weekly.
So why not multiple services, with different creative ethos? BUT the cafe would be in one place, and I want cafe churches throughout the city, cos that's urban mission.
So what about meeting in cafes ...and as you can see I'm caught in a circle. Can anyone out there help me?
posted by spirit2go team at 4:21 PM
Sunday, June 16, 2002
I've had a good week on my PhD thesis.
I'm analysing the emergent church. My basic hunch is that emergent church is finding God in some new places;
in new ways of being human, including creativity and community
in cultural connectedness, we're like DJ's sampling from here and there and everywhere. This gives the ability to simultaneously amplify, subvert, juxtapose in dialogue with God and culture. Faithless were right -
God is a DJ.
posted by spirit2go team at 3:24 AM
Thursday, June 13, 2002
She phoned today. We’d shared lunch a few weeks ago, starting as strangers, finishing as friends. We talked about medication struggles, the forced fostering of her child, the presence of visions and the absence of Jesus.
She shared her love of art. Her eyes gleamed as I told her about Graceway and that Sunday’s worship experience - spirit as earth’s healer. How we would immerse ourselves in God’s Garden by painting earthen tiles and listening to the drama of creation in CS Lewis, (The Magicians Nephew).
It was a neat lunch, rich in relationship and reality. She phoned today. Her child’s birthday, should she buy him boxers or underpants?
I love these encounters, when life’s everydayness seeps under the door of my pretentious posturing. The future of the church, the emergent … whatever … pales aside the reality of humanity. I’m left richer, realer, immersed in life.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:31 PM
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
flame
flickers by open door
swirls in Desert Draught
gulps, greedy, for Breath
flame
atop wrought black candlestand
amid flatpack saucer
afloat in scented water
lights of Breath, resting amid differently shaped
wax
beaded, twisted, sprawled
cross crusted table
smelling of coffee, dregs and dust
up long, up late, listening to table,
talk of reality
O God, Flame of love
Keep us open to your Spirit in our world
Fan into flame differently shaped churches for our multibox world
Nourish deep communal relationships, set the Creatives alight
May we never forget that missioNZ is bigger than church percentages. Amen
posted by spirit2go team at 2:12 PM
Monday, June 10, 2002
we all come together
we all fall apart
sings Moby on "We are all made of stars", from the 18 album.
A definition of community? the need to gather. The need for real and honest space that allows each other to fall apart when life's a dark forest.
Why? cos we are all made of stars ... made in God's image, held in God's hand, and so that makes me hungry for community and for nuture.
So in worship on Sunday we held eggs and the names of others in the community. Mine dropped on the floor. It cracked. (Thank God they were hard boiled). Most embarrassing. It made me more tender, as I reheld this fractured shell.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:58 PM
Sunday, June 09, 2002
Rock worship
Yesterday as part of worship the kids got given a rock. They dabbed paint for every prayer they prayed. Last night my 5 year old brought out her rock, pointing out each colour. Thanks God for ...
A neat mix of grounded creative spirituality.
posted by spirit2go team at 9:29 PM
fluid community
Thanks to Jan for this phrase. We need new models of commmunity for an emerging culture ... creating flexible relationships so that community allows growth, change, different locatities, with web and culture interfaces.
posted by spirit2go team at 9:26 PM