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
Sunday, August 31, 2003
I'm sad
This week I've carved out time away from life to try and finish my PhD. I am slowly working my way through those 1500 footnotes, seeking perfection.
And I'm really sad. I thought I would be elated. But I'm losing a good friend. The thesis and I have been mates for 4 years. We've had some great adventures and been some great places. I've meet some great people and God has changed my life and ministry. I will be sad to see the chapter close.
Oh, my wife has just walked out the door, saying, "Don't forget the book." That's right. Get this finished and all sorts of new projects await me! Yeeha. Press on Steve.
posted by spirit2go team at 7:33 PM
Tears from heaven?
Email today:
Hi steve
Keep forgotting to say that I heard you on radio the other week talking about the food for a family and the need for active learning etc- I was really moved - so much so I was driving along with tears streaming down my face!! God used it to challenge me - thank you.
Blessings
This is the second person who's told me they've been moved to tears by one of my radio rants. Sorta cool really.
posted by spirit2go team at 7:31 PM
Winners
Three video film entries were received for the Graceway Grammy awards. The church divides into groups. A theme is announced (this year it was postmodern parable of conservation). The group creates a home video. They are shown at our annual "camp". Awards (statues from local junk shops). They are a huge amount of fun. (They also are a great way to build community and creativity in the emerging church). Each year the standard rises, as groups wrestle with sound, lighting, editing.
This year the Steven Spielberg Special Effects award reached new heights. Careful use of string and fireworks and screen shots saw a bird shot, fall from a tree and explode into green feathers.
Of course, being an emerging church, the most sought after award is the most postmodern film. (Re-named by poor losers on the nite as the most obscure film). It will be of no surprise to most of my readers to know that my group picked up this most prestige award. Two tacky dolphins now adorn my office desk.
This will be good for my CV I am sure.
posted by spirit2go team at 1:34 PM
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Gone
Graceway treks out of town from a community weekend away. Lots of time to lounge, to watch videos, to walk, to have input on our spirituality. A highlight is the annual Graceway Film Festival. Each year the church divides into groups and prepares a short video around a common theme. Great for creative community building. These are shown at the camp and the Graceway Grammies presented. The theme this year is "Postmodern parables of conservation." The organiser has been one of children (10 years old).
The most eagerly sort after Graceway Grammy is the Steven Spielberg Special Effects award. Last time it was won by a video sequence in which a stuffed toy bird was dragged across screen. Unknown to all, it was stuffed with firecrackers. Trailing smoke, it proceeded to blow up midscreen, scattering purple feathers everywhere.
Graceway will also be talking about future leadership, given that Lynne and I are heading for different things next year. Pray for clarity, honesty, faith and reality. It will be an important weekend.
PS Just read this post again. I don't think there's a link between the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs!!
posted by spirit2go team at 8:54 PM
Food, for friends
Poem by Mike Riddell
God of the impossible equation
We are painfully aware of how little we have to give
And how great are the demands upon us
We are guilty of hoarding our meager stockpile
Protecting it from others
Consuming it in secrecy and silence
The crowds are too many, The people are too close
The hunger is too much
Help us in our poverty
Remember our brother Jesus
And the life he lived to teach us
We remember what happened
When the wine ran out at the wedding
And there was only water left
We recall what he said
When the crowds were hungry
And the disciples had nothing to offer
He said to them
With love and understanding
“You give them something to eat”
In the blessing and breaking
And the sharing
A miracle took place
Lord we offer you our lack
That by dividing it with Jesus
It may somehow be multiplied
Take us and use, Bless us and break us
Hold us and share us
That by your grace
We may have your love for humanity
posted by spirit2go team at 8:47 PM
3 ground rules for talking about Graceway
1 - you will remember that Graceway is one form and the future needs many, many different forms of church
2 - you will listen with grace, because we are just a group of strugglers and it is so hard emboding a new future with so few guides and so few maps. In 100 years time Graceway will look like those early photos of "flying machines" - so antique.
3 - you will not apply modernist success principles to a group working in a new postmodern paradigm
posted by spirit2go team at 5:28 PM
The irony of the future
I am speaking on "Future forms of Church" at a major New Zealand conference. The session venue is a cafe. Yesterday, about 2 minutes into the introduction, into the "this session is about the future forms of church and this is where we are going," someone shouts out ... hey, we can't hear, can you turn off the cafe coffee machine please.
Excuse me .. let me hear the future by turning off the coffee machine!!
posted by spirit2go team at 5:11 PM
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Jesus and Helen on the foreshore
My radio rant this week was a Christian reflection on the foreshore and seabed issue. For my 60% of overseas visitors, a recent court decision acknowledged the indigenous people of New Zealand had rights of tribal ownership to the beach up to the high tide mark. All the wealthy people with their beach properties got nervous. Big political issue. I had a crack, Christianly, on the radio this week. I even got to use the word "damn", and it wasn't edited out!
This week the New Zealand foreshore and seabed has been fixed firmly in our gaze. The Labour Government has announced legislation that preserves the foreshore and seabed not for private Pakeha ownership, nor for whanau, hapua and iwi, nor for the crown, but for a new legal entity – the people. For more
posted by spirit2go team at 1:50 PM
Letter to the Herald - 1 A new whale rider (By me)
My response, ;printed here by popular blog-quest, on Friday.
I struggle to understand the logic in the Letter to the Editor by Steve Taylor, Onehunga on Wednesday. First he seeks to savage the Labour Government, naming them a lame chicken. Next he praises Labour’s seabed proposal as capturing the heart of indigenous and Biblical understandings of land. Surely this is a logical inconsistency.
Helen Clark does not deserve to be named by Steve Taylor as a lame chicken. Rather she deserves to be owned as New Zealand’s new whale rider. The seabed issue lay beached on our foreshore, heavy, stranded, racially divisive. Helen Clark has innovatively ridden the whale out to sea. She’s grasped the heart of the cry of any land: "he tangata, he tangata, he tangata." It belongs to the people.
To Helen Clark say: "Hui e, haumi e, taiki e"
The other Steve Taylor, Onehunga. (That's me)
posted by spirit2go team at 4:38 AM
Letter to the Herald - 1 (NOT By me)
Last Wednesday my namesake wrote thus;Consistent with its history, the Labour Goverment has faltered like a lame chicken and clucked its way through the foreshore and seabed issue by stating that no one owns either of them.
Aside from once again confirming that no rationally minded New Zealander has any business voting for such a cowardly leadership, the decision nevertheless affirms an absolute truth about the ownership of land - that it can never be truly "owned" by anyone. The best indigenous Kirima and Maori can do is assume the role of "shared stewardship" on behalf of God or Atua, and "shared guardianship" on behalf of children or rangitahi.
To claim anything else is simply an exercise in nebulour egotism and divisiveness. Perhaps the first step in this excellent example of crosscultural "partnership" is to immediately protect land from being owned by foreign interests-thereby truly becoming the kaitiaki of Aotearoa New Zealand. The wero has been made; the putorino sounded-are we as a nation mature enough to take this challenge up? Not under this Government
Steve Taylor (NOT me), Onehunga
posted by spirit2go team at 4:34 AM
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
With shaking hand
You know the feeling .. the email drops into your in-box and you know it could be important .. and you nervously click.
I had asked Stan Grenz to read a chapter of my thesis. I have a whole chapter on how postmodern church is about a shift from authority in text to authority in community, and the implications of this. Stan is the man when it comes to community and postmodernity, so I asked if he was interested and he, very kindly, said he was.
Today the email response arrived, and with trembling hand I clicked ... I must say that in my opinion you have produced an impressive piece of work! I have no critical comments to offer. I can merely commend what you have accomplished and wish you well as you complete the project.
Thanks Stan. I am about 10 days away from completion and this was just the kind of late afternoon lift I needed.
posted by spirit2go team at 9:15 PM
Elistism vs majority art
Last year as I walked out of Mulholland Drive, a punter coming in, said “Wow, its that type of movie.” I suddenly realised how stunned the audience looked and that we were going to spend the next 2 hours over a coffee and red wine trying to work out what was going on. The film demanded our attention. Yet I was nagged by the concern that movies like Mulholland Drive are potentially elistist. They are not Terminator movies playing loud and long in the mainstream. Is emerging church just a select, elitist movement among a small group in society who like to think and prize ambiguity.
Genieveve had two great insights.
1. David Lynch still makes Mulholland Drive, he knows that there’s still a viable market, a large swathe of people who want to be invited to think.
2. If other people are doing popular, are doing Terminator, that gives us freedom to do ambiguity. If mega-church and seeker service are offering stripped down ABC Christianity, that is surely a license to explore other unreached people groups.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:10 PM
Communication
Sunday nite I went to a poetry reading, about 7 New Zealand poets. Main purpose was to connect with Genieveve McLean, one of the poets.
She spoke at the Poetics of Exile conference I attended recently. It was one of the most stunning presentations I have ever seen. I saw postmodern verbal communication. Every 30 seconds something changed – lights, position on stage, the persona of the speaker, dramatic actions. This was not lots of images and video, but pure postmodern verbal communication, the use of voice to create juxtaposition. It was stunning. It demanded attention. It compelled involvement. It culminated with 15 drummers entering the hall. Something in my gut changed, as these drums beat and Genieveve sung, calling us to action. I emailed Genieveve and asked if I could talk with her about what she had done. Some insights from the conversation are below.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:10 PM
Monday, August 25, 2003
Kiwi flying into ooze
I've just been invited to ooze over the water from New Zealand and join a conversation.
posted by spirit2go team at 11:14 PM
New Zealand poets Inspire Keith please!!!
Keith Newman writes: Radio Rhema has asked to do a seven minute spot each Thursday afternoon on a New Zealand Christian poet. The programme would feature a bit about a specific poet (what motivates them, why they write, what they write, who they are, what they've done etc) and have me reading one or two of their pieces.
I'm still thinking about it but have to admit for the moment I am a little stumped so I'm going out to my network.
Can you recommend anyone?
Have you written anything suitable?
Who are our main Christian poets in New Zealand?
Do you have examples of work that might fit?
The criteria would be mature, inspirational, thoughtful, , encouraging, insightful, provocative and well written.
Anything with musical accomniment especially welcome.
Please submit material via email that you think is suitable or email me the email or snail mail address or phone number of potential candidates
Please brainstorm and get back to me asap, I don't want to end up reading soppy, flaccid, trite about how wonderful everything is or at the other extreme how the world's going to hell and we're all going to heaven stuff.
If I can't get a dozen or so responses pointing me to a hidden wealth of talent beneath the happy clappy veneer then I'll have to seriously think about declining the offer. Any help appreciated - Keith Newman.
Leave a comment on the blog if you have any suggestions.
posted by spirit2go team at 7:30 PM
Sunday, August 24, 2003
Message to all consultants and conveyor belt Christians?
"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get them, you make them into a replica of yourselves, double-damned."
Hard words from Matthew 23. The Message
posted by spirit2go team at 4:17 PM
Saturday, August 23, 2003
The Other Steve Taylor
I have struck back. I am Steve Taylor, Onehunga. For a number of weeks another Steve Taylor, Onehunga has become a prolific letter writer to the Herald (New Zealand's largest newspaper). I am sick of getting hate mail and fan mail and propoganda from people who think Steve Taylor's views are my views.
This week I struck back. After he wrote, I wrote an opposition piece, as The Other Steve Taylor, Onehunga. It made it into the newspaper.
Perhaps know that my scizophrenia is public, people will stop getting us mixed up.
posted by spirit2go team at 7:05 PM
Being noticed
It's nice to be a blog noticed by the ooze blogging quaternity (spencer, bob carlton, 2 coopers) over at the ooze.
posted by spirit2go team at 7:02 PM
Friday, August 22, 2003
Big Sunday
Breakfast meeting with Graceway - what from Gerard Kelly and Resourcing the future did we find useful?
Preaching at Balmoral Baptist - Piglet and the Bible
Preaching at Graceway - Global Jesus
Poems at Odeon - catching up with Geniveve McLean of Kombi Nation fame to talk about contemporary communication.
posted by spirit2go team at 11:15 PM
Redemptive gifts
The Spirit gives different gifts to different parts of the body. I have often applied this individually – what are my gifts as part of the body.
I have been wondering if different churches and different life seasons can be redemptive gifts. Graceway is part of the worldwide body of Christ. So what is its uniquely redemptive gift – creativity, innovation?
Redemptive gifts enable me to appreciate my weaknesses. As I leave Graceway after 9 years of ministry, my redemptive gift/s will need to be complimented by another person/team’s redemptive gift. Graceway doesn’t need another Steve Taylor, it needs to think about its life, what it does well and what it could do better, and pray and trust for another season of redemptive gift.
An established church can look back over it’s life. It can reflect on its history of redemptive gifts, aware of the good and bad, and look to a new future, in which the redemption of its past is expressed in a new future, connecting with the past, seeking under God for a new season of life.
posted by spirit2go team at 11:08 PM
applying Resourcing the Future
This is one church's response to the August visit of Gerard Kelly.
*If many people are now looking for hope more than meaning - we need to make sure messages provide hope eg topics dealing with God’s love, how to deal with stress, God has a future for you
*Changing methods of communication – post-literate – truth doesn’t change but the ways we package/communicate it must change. The need for more stories, more visual media eg buy a data projector, develop drama teams, look for relevant movie clips to fit with service themes, use video and discussion based evangelism tools eg Journey’s (Rob Harley), Tough Questions (Willowcreek).
*A shift in authority from church to scripture to. . .? What resonates. What is proved true through experience. The claims of a trusted friend. Implications - have to be able to communicate/explain/reason truth without simply quoting scripture. (1) Dejargonise our talk about Christian things (2) Also means that people talking to seekers/non-Christians can’t say “because the bible says so” but have to show how, in the listener’s own life, the truth claims of the bible have already proven to be true eg happiness does not come from pursuing it (3) Or invite people to investigate and test for themselves the bible’s claims. (4) Means it is very important that we be helping the people in our churches (i) think through contemporary issues in a biblical fashion and equip them to express it in a relevant way; (ii) know how to communicate their own faith stories, build authentic relationships with unchurched friends, and communicate the gospel effectively. (5) The use of relevant, personal testimony in church services very effective if trying to be seeker-sensitive.
*People are looking for identity but will choose an attractive community and then take on its values rather than the other way around. (1) So giving non-Christian people ways to see inside our communities is very important – ‘by this will all people know that you are my disciples, that you have love for each other’. Eg events and ministries and church services which deliberately aim to bring outsiders in amongst the church family. (2) This makes the growth in Christ-likeness of our congregations and becoming a truly loving community very important (3)Membership/ discipling/ catechism classes should perhaps be framed within questions like ‘do you understand what you’ve been experiencing here?’, ‘do you know what these people believe?’, ‘do you know why these people are doing these things?’ (4) Valuing the local church as the Body of Christ is crucial to people being able to find their identity within a church community – eg – if you believe every member has a vital part to play and that the local church has a crucial role in God’s mission then people can find huge significance within that group.
*The need to address the felt needs and concerns of seekers. Young people are looking for causes to be part of. The church needs to have outlets for those felt needs – eg foodbank, sponsoring 3rd world children, recycling bins on church properties, organic gardening classes, and other ways they can use their skills to help others – while never losing sight of what is people’s deepest need.
*The church also needs to be counter-cultural – eg challenging selfishness through things like stories of selflessness, opportunities to serve, and by drawing people into friendships where people are not selfish. Other examples – truth and meaning do exist; happiness is not found by pursuing it; there is one hero who is not flawed. . .
*A globalised youth need a globalised Jesus – young people know a little about the vast range of spiritual beliefs – we need to show that Jesus is not just the European way to God - ie – not one possible answer for some people, but the answer for all people. A couple of examples - deliberately showing the diversity within our church families; giving room to indigenised, biblical expressions of Christianity.
posted by spirit2go team at 1:33 PM
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Converse
today and tomorrow. Annual gathering of churches and leaders within the New Zealand Baptist tribe, committed to doing new ways of church. Very loose, very unstructured. We will connect, we will talk about Liquid Church (I did the review from last week for this group), we will visit Stanley Spencer's art, we will eat.
In short - a chance to converse.
posted by spirit2go team at 1:34 PM
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
The Wild Goose Chase:Curtainraiser 2003
"Our Land Our Spirit Our Faith: New Zealand Spirituality in the 21st Century"
When: Monday through Wednesday 3rd 4th and 5th November 2003. Starting Monday morning around 10am and finishing after breakfast on Wednesday.
Where: The Oasis 10 McGarth Ave. Paraparaumu, 45 minutes north of Wellington. You can get a plane into Wellington, get a bus from the airport to the train station and take the train to Paraparaumu….someone can pick you up from there….
Who: For whoever would like to come… If you know someone who might like to come or who would benefit from coming get them to register….. registrations will be limited to 40….so be in quick.
How Much: We are being catered for this year so that puts the cost up a little. To cover bed and breakfast and lunch and dinner as well as after dinner entertainment and something for the speakers I reckon we can do it for $135 each!! Bed on Sunday night and breakfast on Monday morning is $25 extra.
Speakers: Our main speaker is Elizabeth Julian who will be taking two sessions, Landscape and Spirituality and Kiwi Culture and Spirituality. Jen Long is going to open the "raiser" with an artistic tale of her journey so far, and Alistair MacKenzie is going to finish us off with some of his excellent work about the Kiwi workplace and faith. Two alt.worship sessions.
Who is Elizabeth Julian? She is an Adult Educator at the Wellington Catholic Education Centre where she teaches courses in Scripture, Theology and Spirituality. She is particularly interested in the relationship between landscape and spirituality and is currently working on this topic as a contribution to a book on spirituality in Aotearoa New Zealand. She has been a Sister of Mercy in Wellington for 25 years.
posted by spirit2go team at 5:13 PM
Asking
Email from Rochelle (from a New Zealand context)
It is interesting to me that such a lot of thinking on postmodern / gen x stuff is coming out of the Baptist church at the moment. Esp when such a lot of the material has anglo-catholic origins. Any thoughts on that?
posted by spirit2go team at 2:18 PM
The Taming of the Truth
Like a football match
Where the fans are locked out
While the players take turns
On the terraces
To cheer
Like a concert
Where the crowd sit in silence
While the band play
Through headphones
So that only they hear
Like a hospital that keeps itself
Germ-free and sterile
By only treating patients
Who aren't sick
Like a spoonful of sugar
With no medicine
Like a mule
Without a kick
Like an ocean liner
On a pleasure cruise
Purely for the pleasure
Of the crew
We have taken
What was given
As a message for the many
And made of it
A massage
For the few.
by Gerard Kelly,
from Six habits of highly connected people
posted by spirit2go team at 2:09 PM
Selling Mike Riddell
From todays newspaper,
Walking around central Edinburgh, the flyers come at you by the dozen and everyone has a different gimmick. ... It's not long before you're trying to avoid the next person with a handful of A5 flyers ... H.J. Kilkelly, producer of the J.K. Baxter bio Jerusalem, Jerusalem, was earning herself a sunburn as she handed out flyers at the free Fringe Sunday gigs last week. She had a four-star review from the Scotsman ("innovative and provocative") to back her up. ... When she works the Royal Mile most days, she's accompanied by a cast member singing a waiata. People love it. "They love anything Maori," she says.
I remember a passionate discussion at Graceway. Should we letterbox. NO WAY people shouted. Should we do survey's on street. NO WAY they shouted.
Yet again the artists lead the way. Prepare to execute another rainforest folks.
posted by spirit2go team at 3:38 AM
Fun
From Douglas Rushkoff's blog;
I got in a weird conversation the other night with a friend of my wife's. He wanted to know what I was working on next, so I told him: a book about 'fun.' Deep fun, work as fun, meaning through fun, etc. And, get this, he said he doesn't like to have fun. Figure that. So I told him that maybe not having fun was really his way of having fun, and he said no, fun is something for the privileged classes and not of interest to him.
Question: When was the last time God/church/spirituality was fun for you?
Question: Why do you take yourself so seriously?
posted by spirit2go team at 3:26 AM
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
When the foundations crumble, where do you shine the torch?
When the normative structure breaks down, however, when the old expectations are no longer convincing as a medium of interpersonal coordination, individuals improvise. Social movements, both causes and consequences of normative disorientation, attempt to structure a new interpersonal consensus. Under these circumstances, idiosyncratice motivations of individuals, including movement leaders, require greater scrutiny from the student of social change. For some of those idiosyncracies may shape the institutions of tomorrow.
- Stephen Warner, New Wine in Old Wineskins, p. 28,9 .
posted by spirit2go team at 5:47 PM
When holy fire melts solid ice
For those who have been following my review of liquid church, and then the holy fire piece, you might like this worship idea I picked up over the weekend from Side Door, an alt.worship community in Christchurch.
1. Freeze a block of ice. (Best if you have a friend with a big freezer, so that it is BIG block.)
2. Light some hot coals.
3. Invite people to pray by placing their hot coal on the block of ice.
Images of persistent, patient prayer ... of refining fire ... of ..... you supply the rest.
posted by spirit2go team at 1:45 AM
Kiwi moves from downunder to fringe
Mike Riddells play, Jerusalem, O Jerusalem has been playing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival over the last 2 weeks.
"New Zealand prophet poet and iconoclast James K. Baxter faces the loss of his dream. T.S. Eliot meets a Maori haka - exuberant, gut-wrenching, spiritual, haunting, unforgettable." For more see
The review from the Scotsman (9/8/03) stated:
Riddell has well captured a most engaging yet completely
insufferable character. Baxter’s dazzling verbiage is
quicksilvery, brilliant, audacious and self-laudatory: "I am
the stubborn crab dangling from the pubic hair of the
Almighty". This man is almost impossible to admire - he is
deeply profane, abandons his family, won’t look after
himself, roars with insufferable arrogance at his
detractors, and sleeps with whatever isn’t nailed down. "I
learned every thin g from sex and vagrancy." He is a mass of
marvellous contradictions.
Some 30 years after his death, Baxter the social philosopher
is still rattling our comfortable cage, railing against a
society he deemed lazy, bored and materialistic, one of
ossified souls and abandoned dreams. Sound familiar? That
this comes from such a difficult man makes for rich drama,
further enhanced by the harrowingly beautiful and powerful
vocal contribution of the three-part Maori chorus
Next gig is Greenbelt on August 18.
posted by spirit2go team at 1:33 AM
Monday, August 18, 2003
Will you hear your own foundations grumbling?
Religious historian, Steve Bruce, notes the large number of studies that agree that the growth of conserative Protestantism owes little to the recruitment of people who were previously atheists or even liberal Christians …. This suggests that the explanation for the differing fate of the denominational and sectarian versions of Protestantism has more to do with the ability to retain children rather than attractiveness to outsiders.” (Religion in the Modern World , p. 88).
Yet today many of the children of the movement are not retrained. They experience a lack of integrity, a lack of grace, a lack of reality a lack of creativity and a lack of relationality. The world has changed and churches haven’t. We all know people who have left church. Fine Christian people who don’t attend.
This is why books like Churchless Faith are so stressful to the church leaders. They are the sign that the foundation of conservative Christian growth – the children- are leaving.
Does the church have the courage to listen to its own grumbling foundations?
posted by spirit2go team at 5:17 PM
Regan are you out there
All my emails to Regan keep bouncing with the words "fatal error". Regan are you still alive?
posted by spirit2go team at 3:51 PM
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Can liquid become solid?
An excellent blog comment from Ann re Liquid Church.
The problem with exchanging communication for gathering is that some people will still opt for minimal interaction with others. True communication will become ritualized (just as gathering has become) and we could conceivably end up with a Christian norm being that as long as you are reading a few blogs and posting an occasional comment, you are "being a good Christian".
In the New Testament, and even the Old, gathering was an integral and necessary part of worship. I am the first to admit that what passes for gathering now is more often than not substandard. Gathering, true gathering, requires an internal presence and participation as well as external. Communication is an essential part of engaging the internal with the external.
The corporate Body and individual expressions thereof very well may need to go through a season where we focus on communication. However, I don't think we will be served in the long run by substituting communication for gathering.
posted by spirit2go team at 4:46 PM
Soulstice
recognising the Spirit in earth :: a monthly Christian liturgy with an environmental and seasonal feel
Thursday August 21, 7:30 pm
For more see
posted by spirit2go team at 1:36 AM
Learning by doing
My latest radio rant went as follows;
A few months ago the phone rang.
On the line were some hungry people seeking some food. Mom, Dad, 2 kids, aged 5 and 3. A family of 4, who’d just been made redundant.
It was just before dinner time in my house. You know the deal. Scratchy kids, tired parents. So on the spur of the moment, to take some pressure of the Taylor household, I asked my 5 year old daughter if we she wanted to come shopping with me.
In the car, I explained to my 5 year old what was happening. The church puts aside money. A hungry family had rang, asking for food. We were going to the supermarket to get some food.
It suddenly occurred to me that my 5 year old was the same age as one of the 5 year odl kids from the hungry family. So on the spur of the moment I asked my daughter if we she wanted to choose one special thing for the hungry 5 year old. My daughter’s eyes opened wide .... For more see
posted by spirit2go team at 1:34 AM
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Images of Jesus through 2000 years
Great worship resource which I am using tonite. Uses art and brief description really well to reflect on Jesus thru-out history.
posted by spirit2go team at 3:47 PM
Seeing a global Jesus
Basic programming but worthwhile reflection. For more see
posted by spirit2go team at 3:21 PM
Friday, August 15, 2003
From Liquid Church to Holy fires
Reflection by Rosemary Neave
I see church as a gathered community who keep the holy fires of faith, spirit and story burning on the hilltops - visible and accessible.
A fire is a place of warmth and hospitality, it is more temporary than a building, more effort is required to keep it alive, but it is also more satisfying of basic elemental needs.
The Holy Fires are places where fragments of hope and meaning are gathered and celebrated, where they are connected to other stories, and where we gain strength to continue our journeys. ....
A few of us rarely visit the Holy Fires, but are seen lighting occasional fires along the way. The Holy Fires remain important to us, even though we rarely visit, we can point other questing spirits to them, the memory of them we carry within us, and the fire we carry from them we use to light fires where we are lodging for the night.
posted by spirit2go team at 4:35 AM
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Liquid Church by Pete Ward
Review by Steve Taylor
Copyright Steve Taylor. This review is being considered for publication. Having just this month found my work plagiarized and copyrighted to another author, I wish to emphasis that none of this review can be reproduced without permission.
“Connection to each other and to Christ will be enabled by an emphasis upon communication rather than gathering. The body of Christ will be reenvisioned as a series of dynamic relational encounters .. Basic to this connection will be the sharing of products, events, and activities.” (p. 48)
Warning 1. I read this as a Baptist. As a Baptist I believe in the gathered community. This book strikes at the heart of my ecclesiology.
Warning 2. Liquid church doesn’t exist. Ward writes, “at it’s heart this book is an act of theological imagination.” (p. 1). It’s a dream not a reality.
What is liquid church? A shift from church as gathered in one place at one time to “a notion of church as a series of relationships and communications.” (p. 2) Think network or web not a gathering. It is an attempt to be missionary, to contextualise, to enflesh church in postmodernity. “A network-based liquid church must emerge from a connection to the spiritual desires and preferences of those who are so far outside of church life.” (p. 5).
For those who like pictures and interactivity; you have to check out http://www.btinternet.com/~smallritual/network.html
So what is solid church? A church focused on institution, building, organization, weekly meetings. A place where
1. Attendance equals faithfulness – “Gathering in one place to do the same thing together is one of the core values of solid church.” (p. 17-8)
2. Size counts
3. One size fits all. “Solid church is based on the assumption that it is good for large numbers of very different people to meet in the same room and do the same sort of thing.” (p. 19).
4. Join the club – for identity.
Two sides of the coin: sociology and theology
The backbone of the book is the recognition of church as both a sociological and theological reality. Sociology: church is both a reality in a changing culture. As culture changes, so church changes. Theology: Church is also a God thing.
Sociology
Ward draws heavily on the work of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman
Solid modernity - I am what I do
Factory, office, institution, boundaries,
size, plant, norms, expansion, rules
Liquid modernity - I am what I buy
cell phone, briefcase, laptop,
flexibility, consumption
Ward notes that liquid modernity has already affected solid church. Church today is quite different from church 200 years ago. It has (subconsciously) mutated into heritage sites (slices of living history with minister as curator), refuge (church as place of retreat within the development of a Christian sub-culture), nostalgic community (seeks to offer community as hope of society, yet ignoring the fact that such communities are still generally mono-cultural).
Solid church will remain and should not be abandoned. However “the mutation of solid church into heritage, refuge, and nostalgic communities has seriously decreased its ability to engage in genuine mission in liquid modernity.” (p. 29). Therefore we need a liquid church reformation.
Theology
Liquid Church’s dominant theological metaphor is participation in Christ. This essential relationality is with God and a wider community. “The fellowship of believers has not been created by human action; it has come through a mutual sharing in the life of the Spirit.” (p. 36). To be “in Christ” links us to “the dynamic flowing energy of God in the world.” (p. 37) Ward explores the Trinity, particularly the mutual indwelling of Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer in a divine, fluid dance of love (perichoresis). This fluidity creates room for new ways to be church as a participation in the more fluid, missional expression.
Often we state that the body of Christ is the church. Ward wants to prioritise the fact that the church is the body of Christ. This is not individualism. We do note chose to belong to the body, but we participate in the body of Christ. This is not an absence of structures or organizations. “A liquid will take the shape of any solid container.” (p. 41). This is not every member ministry. Yes, the ministry of the body of Christ occurs, but we need to prioritise that church emerges out of the active ministry of everyone in Christ. The world is our sphere of influence.
Networks
Sociologically, we live in a network society, lines of communication the connect via a series of nodes (places where communication connects). These are already in the church – eg worship songs.
Theologically this means we need to focus
1. on the central importance of relationships. “Networked, informal contact between individuals and groups will replace monolithic meetings and formalized friendship.” (p. 47).
2. the commodification of religious product enables flow, eg. Songs, liturgies, videos, boxed sets of hildegaard, CD Roms, spirituality postcards. “The range of possible products is limited only by our imagination and our creative and economic resources.” The church needs to develop product to circulate.
3. fuzzy edges because the network is church.
Shopping
“Instead of opposing materialism and treating consumer choice as evil, we need to begin to embrace the sensibilities of consumption.” (p. 72). This is perhaps the most contentious part of the book. Ward argues that “liquid church locates itself firmly in the consumer nature of society” (p. 56). We live in a context in which people shop, not for need, but out of choice, as a way of confirming individual identity. “To shop is to seek for something beyond ourselves. To reduce this to materialism is to miss the point, or more importantly it is to miss an opportunity.” (p. 59). We must work with a spirituality of shopping.
Ward links this to desire. People’s search for spirituality is at heart a desire for encounter with God. “The church must change its emphasis from meeting people’s spiritual needs to stimulating their desires.” (p. 72) This means a liquid evangelism that assumes
1. Everyone has spiritual desire.
2. Church should be designed around people’s desire for God.
An example of choice would be the development of a varied pattern of prayer within a community. In a building or a church, different rooms might be given over to different forms of prayer; these rooms could be send as part of a School of Prayer. Through courses and workshops, individuals and groups could come to this kind of spirituality center and explore faith within and among different traditions. Space within the building could be given to different ways of praying. Space for spiritual directors or personal prayer trainers could be created. A room for praying with icons, maybe another for praying through the creative arts, worship prayer, and movement could be explored elsewhere. Aromatherapy and prayer with essential oils might also play a part. Instead of a regular worship time there could be special events, performances, and exhibitions that help people to develop these practices further. (p. 77.)
This priority of choice does not mean the consumer is always right. Rather authentic life is calibrated as part of choice. At this point Ward helpfully shows how extreme discipleship can be offered as choice, rather than a one size fits all spirituality. Bring on the monastery and the life of simplicity among the poor.
This is a contentious metaphor and Ward provides two ways for the church to commodify without losing its theological heart (the two chapters titled “Recalculating the Flow”). These draw firstly on the Word of God and secondly on the Spirit and Grace. The first he asks us not to look at the membership of the network or the shape of the network, but what flows through it. The story of God, sited in the creeds and tradition of the church, connects the liquid church to its roots.
Secondly, the Spirit and Grace. Ward explores the image of the Spirit of life. By implication, this means the Spirit at work in popular spirituality, in shopping. He then uses the work of Kuyper to argue for a common grace, sustaining creation, and special grace, re-creation. This allows for cultural engagement combined with evangelism and cultural critique.
What might liquid church look like?
1. networks in which communication and flow replace congregation, in which hubs (retreat centers or shops or record companies or music groups) produce spiritual product.
2. Community expressed through communication rather than gatherings.
3. The replacement of congregations with communities of choice.
4. The provision of events. “Liquid church will need to adopt a regular cycle of new releases, events and product launches.” (p. 93)
5. Decentered worship, worship that does not rely upon a congregational dynamic. Eg labyrinths.
For idle reflection
1. Is Ward right that everyone has spiritual desire? Or might a task of the church be to awaken people’s spiritual desire, a sort of pre-evangelism?
2. Who “funds” liquid church? Who runs the events? If most businesses fail in the first 5 years, what hope an enterpreneural church?
3. Ward writes that “Relationship and communication would follow choice. Thus community would evolve around what people find interesting, attractive, or compelling.” (p. 89) Isn’t this what happens every Sunday in our cities anyway?
4. Does Ward’s liquidity (the fluid, perichoretic Trinity) deny the persons of the Trinity? Yes God is fluid, yet God is also three distinct persons. Might these distinct persons be the body of Christ? The gathered community?
posted by spirit2go team at 4:21 AM
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Name change
Andrew Jones is thinking of a blog change. I advised him not to. There is too much change in the world as it is, without me having to change my favourite favourite.
It got me thinking, thinking of a name change. I am wondering about calling myself Steve Kennedy-Taylor.
Why? Some right winger who lives in my suburb is called Steve Taylor. I get phone calls - either hate calls or weeping I love what you say - calls. I'd rather not have to delete such things off my answer phone.
Why? My wife's maiden name was Kennedy and I'd like to include that.
posted by spirit2go team at 3:47 AM
Question: What does an emerging church pastor do?
(asked by hamo here)
Answer: Start a blog.
posted by spirit2go team at 3:43 AM
No national identity
At the risk of starting a war, I have noted that some Australians are struggling. Living Room is struggling with the following;
Last week at dinner Gerard Kelly was asked what his impressions of Australia were. He replied:
'You are trying to be like America. Your roots are in Europe and you're living in Asia. You guys have no idea who you are.'
There is of course, only one answer for an Australian identity crisis ...
... to look west
... to become a 3rd island of New Zealand
Love to all my convict friends ... a grinning kiwi
posted by spirit2go team at 3:40 AM
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Twilight zone
Between here and there
e-mersed, immersed, in liminality
Bound yet unbound
in thesis
at Graceway
in cyber-space
Airborne
over Alps (Southern)
Will you work with us
or us
or us
But preach opposite Malabars on Sunday
Note to self - correct footnote 1495 - delete a fullstop
For the sake of 170,000 thesis words
God of this moment
be present
posted by spirit2go team at 2:09 PM
Greg Sands are you out there
Greg, do you still read this blog? can you play some Jesus songs at Graceway this sunday, 17th, evening?
Bizarre request I know, but I want to set up some stations and have a central sing while people can cruise around stations of their choice, helping them reflect on Jesus.
comment or email me if you can.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:05 PM
Monday, August 11, 2003
Note to self: altculture cf altworship
Try
http://www.vitalspace.net/alt-culture/
http://www.altculture.com
Try
alt.culture by steve Daly and Nathaniel Wice.
Review at:
Future generations may well recall the 90s as the decade that defined itself before it became anything - and that what it became was not much more than a series of groping definitions of itself. alt.culture eschews definition except by implication, being simply a guide to 90s American youth's iconography and obsessions with only the minimum of commentary and no analysis. The minimalism is refreshing and the definitions are there for the readers to extract. There are entries for everything from Nirvana to Winona Ryder (she gets landed with the description 'winsome'), the Church of the SubGenius to Processed World, Beavis and Butthead to Beverly Hills 90210. Each entry comes with information about relevant Internet resources and, true to the book's Website aspirations, there are cute - but for obvious reasons, only partially useful - hypertext-style highlights so you can cross-refer your way through the pages. The emphasis is on Americana though few of the entries will be new to British Internet users, the Internet being the prime obsession of the decade and chief repository for details of its youth's iconography.
Entertaining and informative, alt.culture is probably more definitive that its authors are willing to claim and as a coffee-table book for hip young things with time on their hands, it is as good as you can hope for. For seasoned Internet users, however, the book points to nothing so much as its own redundancy.
posted by spirit2go team at 11:05 PM
More than quotes
Full review of Liquid Church coming Thursday.
posted by spirit2go team at 10:56 PM
Lost and found
Three weeks ago, on the way to the local pub after church, my 6 year old found some money on the street, outside the local shop. She handed it in, and left her contact details. On Friday the phone rang and someone asked to speak to a Shannon Taylor.
No-one had claimed the money and it now belonged to Shannon.
Suppose a woman who has ten silver coins loses one of them - what does she do? She lights a lamp, sweeps her house, and looks carefully everywhere until she finds it. When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together, and .. throws a party. Luke 15 - adapted.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:09 PM
Belated welcome
Welcome to all visitors from jordon's blog. While I slept and had a day-off, including a blog-Sabbath, I was blog of the day up there at my favourite Canadian blog. For more on Kiwi-Canadian relationships, see.
Note:
Thanks tash for the nice comment on jordon's blog. Prodigal, you're back in the big time and don't you forget it!
posted by spirit2go team at 1:54 PM
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Good news
However, I can tell you that the paper will be accepted and that it will appear in the October issue
Yeeha. It seems I have managed to turn half of one of my thesis chapters, and a presentation I did in the UK in May, into a journal article. It is a methodological piece in which I explore new trends in practical theology, trends that I use to justify using living congregations as postmodern theological sites.
Too much Christian reflection on postmodern mission is done by starting with sociologists and theory. I argue that we need to start with worship, with our video loops and community communions.
posted by spirit2go team at 4:52 PM
New links
Are you planning to visit the UK? If you do, come and preach for me at Cambridge!
best wishes, maggi dawn
Maggi wrote the best chapter in The Post-Evangelical Debate, a response to Dave Tomlinson's The Post-Evangelical. (Somewhat dated now, but a vital book when it first appeared in 1996).
Maggi and I have been emailing over the last few days, including discussing Pete Ward's Liquid Church. I am working on a review, which I hope to finish this week.
posted by spirit2go team at 4:39 PM
Right of reply: Daniel
image from steve collins.
Hey I wasn't trying to suggest you are lost or even slightly off track as a person, sorry if you took my link that way. Often times I use a hyperlink to expand one phrase, most readers don't follow those random hyperlinks, and I wasn't passing judgment on you or your blog as a whole, only obtusely responding to one post that I came across via Jonny Baker.
As far as that one post, sure I disagreed slightly with what I read to be a suggestion that you could prepackage an authentic community experience for consumption by the masses. Sounded just like a Willow Creek kinda thing to me.
As far as "some form of blogetiquette we need to develop; that means we email people to tell them we are bouncing off their thoughts, especially if we are going to publically consign them to various boxes? It’s the second time it’s happened for me this week and I’d like to be part of the conversation." -- You ARE part of the conversation...you blogged about the whole thing...that's the point...
Lastly, as far as why or how you took my link to be a broad judgment on yourself, comparing it to a theological strafing you received at the hands of church leaders...perhaps it was my use of the word "lost"? Except when I use the word "lost" I have no recollection of the christianese "lost and found" or "saved vs lost"--my meaning is REALLY NOT anything to do with that. I wasn't trying to suggest you were off track spiritually--I have NO idea where you are spiritually AT ALL and no offence but it's none of my damn business. Hell, I don't even consider myself a Christian! Maybe someday we'll meet and becomes buds or something and then maybe it will be my business, but trust me, whether your spirit/soul/whatever is "lost" or "found" is the last thing on my mind and the farthest thing from what I was trying to suggest on my blog. The link was an obtuse way of saying, "here's some text that seems to suggest how to 'start thinking about how you can make some product that more people can more easily consume'" and NO MORE. Sorry for the strong language ("lost"), sorry I didn't say "missed the point" or "are maybe looking at the wrong things" and of course followed everything with "IMHO". But it's a blog, IMHO is implied.
"Of course it is much more complicated than that...."
posted by spirit2go team at 4:30 PM
Friday, August 08, 2003
I am lost
According to daniel's journey
I am lost
I have lost God
I have lost myself
It is a big call. I don’t really know Daniel. I read his blog a little last year, directed by Steve Collins. But I’ve lost touch with his journey since then. But checking through my blog referrals, I now found that I am lost.
I have found a number of thoughts rotate through the lostness of my mind.
Firstly. It would be nice to be told I am lost. Is there some form of blogetiquette we need to develop; that means we email people to tell them we are bouncing off their thoughts, especially if we are going to publically consign them to various boxes? It’s the second time it’s happened for me this week and I’d like to be part of the conversation.
Secondly, it brings back flash backs of what I have termed my heresy trial. About 3 years into the planting of Graceway I sat in a room with a range of heavies as they picked through my theology. On the basis of unsubstantiated rumours, and without talking directly to me, I was summoned. The specific charges were never outlined. For the sake of Graceway I bent over. I let the process run in order to maintain some wider church relationships. But I will never forget that experience of being consigned to a box without consultation. Can we do better among the emerging church community?
Thirdly, the theological response. Daniel was pointing to my post on consumption and mission.
I think its time we all got real. Our blogs, our links, our cd's, our gigs, our t-shirts - are all based on the fact that we are part of a culture and a technology that shops-consumes-samples-browses. That’s why we blog. We bounce off each other’s fragments. In the process we learn, we absorb, we reflect. Why can’t that human process be named as missional?
I believe in the Incarnation. The Word became flesh. That because of the miracle of the Incarnation God will always being found enfleshed in a culture. That means that God will be incarnated in our world today through present patterns of human being.
This is the power of the gospel. That while we are lost, God can find us through consumption. The missional church needs to produce spiritual product. It’s about incarnation and mission and authenticity - all in a fluid mix. Lets be honest about the power of God to incarnate today. Lets be aware of the risks. Lets believe that despite the risks of Incarnation, we can once again experience God finding us in our cultural forms.
That’s me. Some think I am lost. I wonder if I am found.
May God find us all
from Sarajevo and New Zealand
in a greater way today
posted by spirit2go team at 7:28 PM
Thursday, August 07, 2003
I am wicked
According to a new kiwi blog I found at.
She writes: the seminar was put together by steve taylor. he is a baptist pastor of the non-traditional sort here is auckland at Graceway. steve is really marvellous... and his bibliography is wicked.. i would love to have the time to read the material that he does
posted by spirit2go team at 10:33 PM
Piglet in the oddiest places
A number of people have found the links I've drawn between Piglet and reading the Bible in a postmodern world helpful. It has even appeared on a website dedicated to God and club culture. Ain't that bizarre. VJing piglet!!
Anyhow, a few weeks ago at Graceway was Bible Sunday. So I talked about how we might use the Bible in a postmodern world, about how we nourish it as inspired and authoritative and talked some about Piglet-ology. Since some of you have found it helpful, I've uploaded it and you can link to it at
posted by spirit2go team at 10:20 PM
the cafes of God
(context: having great email conversation with a graceway-ite about community and communion. here's my poem.
the cafes
of gay paris
coffee with attitude
laced with thought
topped with discussion
the cafe of god
red wine theology
sit at couch
elbow at table
lie on floor
sip merlot
cab sav and cappuccino
talk into early morn
imbibe debate
theory test
refine, debate.
to question
angles
any and all
not triumphal syruppy moonshine
dreams, hopes, visions, plotted lives
café of God
open or closed?
friends, stragglers, misfits, welcome or alien
wine
red, rich
blessed
sent to the cafes of God
scattered around city
returning to shared visions
communal energy for
council submission
city transformation
posted by spirit2go team at 10:01 PM
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
New Blog
Bob Carlton has a new blog. Now rather than send me interesting links, he can blog them himself. Good stuff. Welcome Bob.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:56 PM
Investing in God's creative economy
Idle thoughts after Gerard Kelly, from Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class, on Incarnation as Risk-Taking, that I soapboxed about on radio this week.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:35 PM
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Fish and chips and red wine as communion
A number of families I know have fish and chips on Friday evenings.
A friend last nite suggested a friendship communion. Bring the family over. Among friends, amid the fish and chips, place bread and red wine. Share fish and chips. Pass the tomato sauce. Break bread and pour wine.
I wanted to add;
Yes, yes, and let us “examen” ourselves, let us share together, adult and children; the presence and absence of God in our week. Let us trace the threads of God.
Is this communion?
Is this church?
posted by spirit2go team at 6:29 PM
Romeo and Juliet and mission
Regular blog readers will know that I set up my postmodern mission stall among my wider Baptist tribe last month. 40 minutes to show clips from Romeo and Juliet, Forrest Gump, The Matrix, and rant about creativity downloaded, the motion of pilgrimage, the edges as the seedbeds of the future. Anyhow, my presentation was reported in the national Baptist monthly organ.
Short extracts from two film versions of Romeo & Juliet were used by M2NZ speaker Steve Taylor to show participants just how quickly the world in which we do mission is changing. For more
posted by spirit2go team at 3:20 AM
Sunday, August 03, 2003
When church is cold
Graceway meets in a community hall. It's big and wooden. Last night it was cold. Freezing. We sat there in our coats and hats.
Huddled.
In-drawn.
We have tried to move. Cafes will charge us. A likely church for lease said yes, and then over-charged us. Other churches are not ideal.
It is so fustrating. We believe in community, yet we live in a space that works against warm, human relationships. GRRRRRR ....
posted by spirit2go team at 9:33 PM
Tell the story, to find the directions
(posted again, cos I seem to have lost some archives - help-anyone know why? and cos its a topic over at Rachel's blog cos of Gerard Kelly's visit.)
This is the advice from the Piglet, Big, movie, which I watched with my kids during the recent School holidays.
Pooh, Rabbit, Eeyore and Tiger are lost and arguing about which way to go. Worse, Piglet is also lost and they want to find him. So with everyone lost, directions are imperative. All that Pooh, Rabbit, Eeyore and Tiger have is a “book of memories,” of Piglet as they call it. As they start to argue about how to find Piglet, they decide to re-tell the story, the story of their memories.
As they start a process of communal re-telling, so they find themselves in a process of communal re-living. Re-telling and and re-living can not be separated. In this process, they realise how precious Piglet is. This motivates their search for Piglet.
Suddenly, the book of memories gets lost. In a storm, the wind whips away the book of memories. How to tell and live the story, with no story?
Desolate, Tigger, Pooh, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo regroup. They decide to draw the story again. It’s a tremendously energizing process. Paper flies and the search resumes.
Eventually they find Piglet and lose the book and it all ends happily ever after. A person with them in community is much more valuable than the book.
(Actually, at this point, as the credits rolled, the fire alarm at St. Luke sounded and we joined the crowds hastening to emergency exits. But that’s another story.)
1. What is the relationship between the book of memories, and the community telling and living, the story of their memories?
2. Is there a danger that Scripture functions as a book to argue about, rather than a story which in the telling and living, changes our lives?
3. In a postmodern world, with a culture searching for truth in people and in community-should the Bible become a story that we tell, and live, in the community of God, and so people find Jesus?
posted by spirit2go team at 8:42 PM
This God
- by Gerard Kelly
This God
Who watches worlds,
Sees my heart.
This careful calculator,
Counting countless millions,
Counts me in.
This artist,
Whose canvas stretches
Eternity at both ends;
Whose palette out-colours planets,
Paints my portrait.
This lover,
Who dreams in universes,
Dreams of me.
This creator,
Whose breadth of vision spans time
And spawns a cosmos;
Whose woven tapestry of purpose,
More compound than chaos,
Eclipsing complexity,
Rolls out like a highway through history;
Whose heartbeat deafens
supervonavas:
This father
kisses me.
This playwright,
Playing
With the deaths and entrances of
stars;
Scripting
The end from the beginning;
Knowing
The purpose of the play;
Watches
My feeble audition,
And writes
Me
In.
Gerard Kelly, 2001
posted by spirit2go team at 8:29 PM
Gerard Kelly
60 people gathered. Most were under 40 leaders. Lots of conversation. Lots of discussion. Different viewpoints, on truth and culture, were expressed, listened to, and engaged with. Application was made to ministry, leadership and mission in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Fellow blogger, Rachel and Regan and Paul, connected, and shared tips on how to become NZ's most famous blogger.
The day finished with a missional dinner, food, conversation and candles.
Gerard had the occasional flat patch.
inevitable for a man upside down on the other side of the world. It was a rare occurrence in a mix of passion, clarity and insight about the future, about leadership and about mission.
One of Gerard's more interesting ideas was a Western Jesus has been rejected by European Christianity. Yet the true genius of Christianity is its ability to leap cultures. It has become a truly global religion because of its ability to be local and incarnate. Presentation of a global Jesus is thus a missiological key to Western Christianity.
Paul and Rachel provide more reflections.
Thanks Gerard
Thanks sponsors
Thanks to all you under 40's leaders, prepared to think seriously about God's misional future.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:54 AM
I think! its a compliment
"Steve is the person that makes me think most in the world. And that's a good thing." - Greg, with a PhD in Nuclear Physics.
posted by spirit2go team at 2:42 AM
Saturday, August 02, 2003
Heavy hitter sends in the artillery
A few days ago I blogged;
The missional task of the church is to turn communally authentic resources into consumptive product, allowing consumers to experientially try before they buy and thus be transformed into disciples of Jesus.
Dan Hughes responded;
{some context: i think i understand what is being said here, nevertheless this language bothers me.}".
the kingdom (and whatever part the various gatherings might play in its unfolding) is a process not a product. ... it is time to embrace the process without thought for the foolish pandering that too often fills the moments of an unrecoverable life.
My response to Dan was:
The language was deliberate. I wanted to be stark, to push people.
For me, for too long the kingdom has been held inside the church. For too long the kingdom has been reduced to pandering the sensibilities of the elite, often white, often middle class.
I want to suggest that the missional task of the church is to make spirituality accessible - to honour the fact that at its best, the gospel engages with universal themes of death, life, existence .. and so the church needs to take its authentic engagement with these struggles and the resources it has found helpful, and allow people outside the church to engage with the life-giving nature of the kingdom.
posted by spirit2go team at 9:49 PM