Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Brian McLaren and Ian Mobsby in Conversation

Paul writes – I really enjoyed listening in on an all too brief conversation between Ian Mobsby and Brian McLaren – Ian in a cafe in London and Brian somewhere in the US (presumably). While only just over 30 minutes in duration there are some gems in it, things that will be affirming to some, and of value to others as the challenges and opportunities that lie before us are highlighted. Church leavers will appreciate some of Brian’s insights around what leaving churches do for people and their ability to create hospitable open-ended space for others. Brian’s comments on liturgy are also useful, and hopefully will encourage some to explore than important theme in more detail (cf. chapter 7 of Eugene Peterson’s Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer; The Spirit of Worship: The Liturgical Tradition by Susan J. White (introductory); Meeting Mystery: Liturgy, Worship, Sacraments by Nathan D. Mitchell (brilliant, academic, and Catholic); The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Ratzinger (again, Catholic, but very interesting). Also useful would be The Rite Stuff edited by Pete Ward; and Living the Eucharist edited by Stephen Conway. Robert E. Webber’s books would also be helpful in exploring the significance of liturgy).

The challenges that our churches face are the challenges that face all of humanity; we’re not exempt and nor should we be uninvolved in working to find solutions to the big challenges around ecology and the environment (pollution, diminishing fresh water etc), the downsides of globalisation, economic inequalities, global health issues (Malaria, HIV/Aids, infant mortality), war and violence etc.

Between Brian and Ian, and while not diminishing the challenges we all face by virtue of our shared humanity, they highlight the “church” challenges (which I’ve expanded on in places) as follows:

1. We have to find a way out of having a strong identity that is not an identity over and against the “other”. For example, does being a Jesus-follower make me a better neighbour to people I don’t like, to those who hold different religious belief or no religious beliefs etc etc?
2. We have a huge challenge around spiritual formation and discipleship. Brian used the term “saintliness”, i.e. do we help people grow in saintliness? I thought of Eugene Peterson and an interview with him – “The Business of Making Saints” – published in the Spring 1997 issue of Leadership. I see its online here.
3. How do we induct new generations (children and youth) into community and new ways of being formed as God’s distinctive people; as Jesus-followers; as human beings created to “image” God and to see that “image” in others? How do we grow them as Christ-shaped, Spirit empowered human beings who are different and make a life-giving difference in God’s world?  How does the Christian narrative, “gospel”, and practices of formation grow rather than diminish their humanity and their experience of life and living?
4. We have to get increasingly comfortable with a "mixed economy" [I prefer “mixed ecology” and term I got from Ben Edson] approach to being church for the sake of the world, and in response to God’s invitations to join in with and partner him in his mission.
5. Sexuality, and ironically McLaren sees the challenges as much bigger than the LGBT ones which many denominations are grappling with. In this respect I thought of Sarah Coakley’s paper which I referred to here.
6. Stopping churches from being so hard on people’s humanity.

You can find the podcast here. 

Rowan Williams on the interest in “spirituality”.

Paul writes – Rowan Williams makes some interesting points in the recent (19/07/10) New Statesman interview:

“... [Charles] Taylor also argues that, despite the decline in church attendance, there remains in societies like ours a strong "religious longing". Does this have anything to do with the growth of non-traditional, especially non-Christian, forms of "spirituality"? 

Religious "longing" is a really interesting issue. Outside the metropolitan village in which a lot of the media work, there remains a powerful residual investment in the local church - witness the role of the church and the vicar in communities in trauma, whether the Soham murders or recently in Cumbria. I could parallel this from experience in deprived communities in Wales, too.

There are bits of human experience and ­suffering that have to go somewhere, and ­secular society simply doesn't have the spaces, the words or the rituals. This does not translate into conventional church attendance and orthodox belief - and perhaps it seldom has in history, if the truth be told; but it still takes for granted a body/community/place where a person can feel related to something more than the sum of their own anxieties and their society's normal patterns of talk and behaviour. 

It isn't quite the same thing as the interest in "spirituality", which is more to do with the individual's discovery of new ways of feeling nourished or supported, that may or may not be anchored in any place or tradition. I'm personally wary of giving too much weight to this trend or cluster of trends; but Taylor is right in seeing it as an expression of discontent with an exclusively secular frame of reference. The ambiguity about it is that it can appear as just another way of making the consuming individual feel good, without much in the way of commitment or demand...” 

You can read the full interview here.  The next question (after the one above) he’s asked and his response are well worth reading and reflecting on too. 

Counterinsurgency and Mission…?

Paul writes - I recently listened to a fascinating interview with David Kilcullen who is an Australian and former Australian Infantry Officer. Now he is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. 

It’s an interesting 35-minute interview. Listen for his understand of the importance of listening, of local relationships, and shared projects. 

You’ll find the Mp3 here. 

“Did He Really Say That You Couldn’t Eat of the Fruit of the Tree?” –Inception

Paul writes – A recent post by Barry Taylor motivated me to go out on a cold Waikato night to see Christopher Nolan’s latest movie Inception with three of my best friends. It’s a stunner on so many levels – slick, complex, thought-provoking, engaging… the list could go on.

“…Dom Cobb is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb's rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved. Now Cobb is being offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible-inception. Instead of the perfect heist, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse: their task is not to steal an idea but to plant one. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could have seen coming. Written by Warner Bros. Pictures…” 

I look forward to the publication of the inevitable The Philosophy of Inception 

If you can, go and see it, I highly recommend it. Gareth Higgins and Jet Loe review it on this show. Can be listened to online or downloaded as a podcast.

Here’s how Barry Taylor starts his post, which you can read in full here. 

“…At last, a movie worth paying good money to see that is not a franchise, not animated, not a comic-book character and not disappointing. Christopher Nolan came out of the gate with Memento (there were some things before, but that was his first calling card of significance in Hollywood terms--if that matters) and now he has framed a great film-making career with another mind-game movie, exploring dreams rather than memory this time around…”

Henri Nouwen: Small Steps of Love

“…How can we choose love when we have experienced so little of it? We choose love by taking small steps of love every time there is an opportunity. A smile, a handshake, a word of encouragement, a phone call, a card, an embrace, a kind greeting, a gesture of support, a moment of attention, a helping hand, a present, a financial contribution, a visit ... all these are little steps toward love. Each step is like a candle burning in the night. It does not take the darkness away, but it guides us through the darkness. When we look back after many small steps of love, we will discover that we have made a long and beautiful journey…”

Evangelicals, Spiritual Direction, Slavoj Zizek and David Fitch

Paul writes – Some reading that friend Len Hjalmarson asked me to do a while back reminded me of a fascinating 2007 reflection by David Fitch that I’d forgotten about, not because it wasn’t any good, but because of the share volume of reading that new media makes possible, in addition to more traditional books, journal articles etc. makes it a huge struggle to remember what you’ve engaged with and where. 

Anyway, as I’ve already noted, I was fascinated by Fitch’s reflection, in which he engaged with the equally fascinating philosopher / psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek. Here’s the excerpt that I was struck by: 

“...I [Fitch] use "symptom" in a way influenced by philosopher/cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek. I offer the following take on Zizek’s symptom and how it might be applied to understand the place evangelicals find themselves in within American culture today. 

For Zizek a "symptom" goes beyond the popular psychological notion of an external sign which points to a disturbance below the surface of one’s psyche. For Zizek, a Symptom (I’ll now capitalize symptom whenever I am using it in terms of Zizek’s theory) can work within a culture to expose an unfulfilled drive, the unspoken void around which that culture (its Symbolic order or even ideology) has been formed. An image, an explosion of media activity surrounding an event, a popular movie, a flurry of publishing can expose something hidden and unspoken that drives a culture’s meaning system. What we see and hear on the surface may be compensations for what the culture itself lacks at its core. The good news here is that exposing these kinds of Zizekian symptoms in cultures like America and/or evangelicalism opens them up for change and transformation.

For Zizek, cultural symbolic orders exist to advocate certain purposes and legitimizations for being. They are in one sense ideologies. These meaning systems "mask the Real of" an absense which no one wants to face up to (Sublime Object p. 45). For instance, the U.S. "shock and awe" bombing and invasion of Iraq in order to "bring democracy and freedom to Iraq," might mask the fear of the U.S.: that if it really does allow everyone to be free, it will not have enough oil. The irruption of the bombing "in order to bring freedom" reveals how little we do believe in freedom. And so every cultural system (the Symbolic Order) is prone to "irruptions of the Real" which reflect back to its participants the Real that is hidden within the ongoing system of meaning. These irruptions are cultural events that will not fit within the current explanation of things. These irruptions are cultural symptoms of something much deeper being exposed...” 

In a sense, and appreciating I’m not a philosopher and this isn’t quite what Zizek is saying (see Fitch’s second paragraph above) I couldn’t help myself and read the reflection through the lens of the practice of spiritual direction with a primary role of the spiritual director being to listen, to listen for  the irruptions (what is said and not said) as “symptoms” behind or beneath which lies the “real”, the “original” (thinking, for example of Thomas Moore’s book Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality), the “true”, the “authentic self”, and the discerned activity of God. Clearly too there are significant implications for churches too, which is why David has written his post. What are the deeper realities that are being exposed by the cultural realities ("symptoms") of individual church congregations. What are the deeper realities that need to be addresses in order for there to be change, growth etc?   

You can read David’s full post here if the above excerpt grabs your attention as it did mine. 

Marcus Borg Putting Away Childish Things.

Paul writes – Theologian Marcus Borg had his first novel published in April 2010

Here’s how the novel is described:

“…In Putting Away Childish Things, Marcus Borg weaves his insightful teachings on Christianity into a new form—fiction. In this compelling tale, we meet Kate—a popular religion professor at a liberal arts college in a small midwestern town who thinks her life is right on track. She loves her job, is happy with her personal and spiritual life, and her guilty pleasure consists of passing her afternoons at the local pub with a pint of Guinness and a cigarette. Life is good.

Kate is up for tenure when it all starts to go wrong. A colleague warns her that her books are too Christian and too popular. She is offered a visiting professor job at a prestigious seminary, which sounds like the perfect solution except for one complication—it is the same seminary that employs the professor she had an affair with years ago. Kate now has to face her past and watch as the ramifications unfold in ways she never imagined. In the classroom, students ask for her views on Jesus, the Bible, and homosexuality, controversial topics that Kate candidly addresses until outraged parents start campaigning for the school to get rid of her. Through it all, Kate faces the toughest challenge yet—a crisis of faith that leaves her questioning what she believed so strongly before.

Putting Away Childish Things is an engaging way for readers to learn about the important issues dividing Christians today. Along the way, we join with the characters to ask the hard questions such as what does the Bible really teach? Who is Jesus? What is the nature of faith today?

This is a story that promises to leave us different in the end than when we started, as we learn how even in the twenty-first century, God works in mysterious ways…”

Also published online is an interview with Borg. Below is an excerpt:

“…DAVID: You describe your new novel with a term that probably isn’t actually the hottest selling point for people shopping for a “beach read” this summer. You call this new book a “didactic novel.” Now, I think that term may strike people as meaning something like “preachy.” In fact, “didactic” actually means “designed to teach” or “making moral observations.” Talk about your hope of actually teaching people a few things in the course of a novel.

MARCUS: The first thing I need to say is: This is probably the only kind of novel I could write. Secondly, my hope is that, through this novel, I may broaden my readership to include people who may not like to read straight nonfiction. And I don’t mean that in a crass commercial sense. I mean that I have experience with lots of reading groups and I know that there are some readers who simply would not join a small group if they have to read nonfiction. So, this gives congregations and other small reading groups another choice to explore the kinds of ideas I think are so important now.

This idea isn’t unknown. When I met with the editors at Harper, I argued that there is a genre of books like this. Think about Susan Howatch. I would say that her novels are didactic in that you learn a whole lot about the Church of England as you enjoy her novels. Her novels also inspired me a bit. What I mean by that is: When I first started enjoying her books in the early ‘80s, I was reading 100 pages about a Church of England priest about to have a meltdown, for example, and then 200 pages that basically are spiritual direction given by an older priest. I thought: Well, there is a niche in the publishing world for fiction like this! That seed remained in my mind for years, eventually helping me to see that I could write something like this myself…” 

Read the rest of the interview and more on the novel here. 

Exploring our Addiction to More with John O’Donohue and Anthony de Mello

Paul writes – It’s been a while since I had a John O’Donohue quote up on the blog. 

One of the risks we face in fast-paced, task-focused (“tick it off as done, and move on”), distracted times such as ours is the risk of only ever remaining on the surface of both our own lives, and of life more generally. Regular reading, blogging and online engagement with multiple contexts (local & international), multiple perspectives, and unlimited ideas and resources contains within it the same risk; the risk that we’ll always be on the move… always moving on, and never staying still or in one ‘place’ long enough to sit with the deeper questions and needs of our lives, others lives and those of the local contexts which we regularly find ourselves in. I well recall listening to Cistercian Monk, Michael Casey talking about the need to slow our lives down, to slow our reading down (he was reflecting on lectio divina), and to become aware of the cumulative effect of the continual bombardment of stimulus and activity. 

Here’s the late, wise and very eloquent John O’Donohue. Again, as with the link above, the quote is taken from his wonderful 1999 publication Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong (p. 89). His section heading is “The Addiction of Distraction”: 

“…When you choose someone or some way of life, you invest your heart. Choice becomes an invitation to commitment. When you commit you deepen presence. Though your choice narrows the range of possibility now open to you, it increases the intensity of the chosen possibility. New dimensions of the chosen path reveal themselves; a new path opens inwards to depth and outwards to new horizons. Your choice has freed your longing from dispersing itself over a whole range of surface. When we avoid [making those] choice[s] we become victims of distraction. We flit like the butterfly from one flower to the next, delightfully seduced by its perfume and colour. We remain secretly addicted to the temporary satisfaction and pleasure of immediacy. Kierkegaard divided the life journey into stages, and he saw that the aesthetic stage was the wanderer whose longing is magnetized on the endless array of novelties. We celebrate the surface unwilling to become acquainted with the depths where the darkness plies its slow and patient transfigurations. The colour and excitement of the surface, though delightful, are ultimately deceptive; they keep us from recognizing the habit of our repetitions and the boredom and poverty that sleep there… [When] we go below the façade of repetition and risk the danger of encounter, challenge, and responsibility. When [we] choose with discernment, integrity, and passion, [we] submit [ourselves] to the slow and unglamorous miracle of change…”  

Similarly, Anthony De Mello S.J makes a related point in his equally wonder 2010 posthumous publication: Seek God Everywhere: Reflections on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius:

Talking about the 30-day retreat and spiritual growth the writers of the introduction comment:

“…As much or even more than Ignatius, de Mello stresses the roles of silence and solitude as conditions for… spiritual growth… The overriding aim [of the Spiritual Exercises] is to make a journey through prayer and self-awareness that provides a context for becoming spiritually free and so able to seek, find, and follow the will of God in ones personal life… De Mello highlights … the indispensible role of interior freedom in enabling our love to be centered on God and our will to choose what God really wants from us… 

… De Mello [and I can speak from experience – Paul] warns against doing too much reading [while on retreat], ‘because reading can serve as a pretty good defense against God. When you are wrestling with God and grappling with the state you are in, reading can be a nice anesthetic. A person takes a book and reads in the way a husband reads his newspaper during breakfast so that he will not need to talk to his wife. Reading is a nice defense. Such people are reading all about God, but not exposing themselves to [God].’” 

The same could be said of too much activity, of always being busy, and of the need for constant change and the stimulus of those changes.  

Leadership challenges/opportunities we face and leadership competencies we need

Paul writes – I wanted to separately highlight the following synthesis by Len Hjalmarson from this post. For me it gets to the leadership challenges / opportunities we face and thus the leadership competencies we need in church contexts.

• Spirit – corporations are spiritual/material bodies. Health is maintained by unifying the two assets.
• Purpose – The purpose of the organization is to create “social capital” by serving its telos. Leadership guards the ethos and ensures that the team knows its purpose. 

• Creativity – The first and most important act is the creative act. Change, youthfulness and energy are requirements until death. 

• Challenge and response – The task of leaders is to create or recognize the current challenge, respond creatively, and avoid a condition of ease. Reliance on yesterday’s success leads to decline. 

• Disturb the system – The urgency to decide and act promptly leads to expansion and advance.   Equilibrium is death [for more on this from a business perspective see the excellent Surfing the Edge of Chaos – church leaders could read it equally profitably]
• Unity and diversity – Advancing cultures are socially unifying and become diverse in character. Leaders resist the tendency to homogeneity in personalities and skills. 

• Specialized competence – Specialized knowledge and skills and the integration of those competencies must be pursued vigorously.
• Efficient administration – is required to achieve integration as differentiation increases. Unchecked administration leads to bureaucracy and self-protection. 

• End Command and Control – Decisions should be made by those on-the-spot.

Read Len’s post in parallel with this one from Steve Taylor. 

Rethinking the Sex Crisis in Catholicism and Anglicanism – Some Introductory Thoughts by Sarah Coakley

Paul writes – Today I want to draw your attention to a lecture recently given by Anglican Priest / Theologian Sarah Coakley. Those who believe that nothing useful can come of theology that doesn’t start with the biblical text, or interact with biblical texts as a means of building an argument will be disappointed, however, those for whom an important strand of theological thinking is to begin with ones context and contemporary issues will likely find Coakley’s lecture a very useful introductory theological reflection, a lecture which engages with one of the pressing (certainly in terms of media coverage) issues confronting Anglican’s and Catholic’s. Her lecture title was: Rethinking the Sex Crisis in Catholicism and Anglicanism. The lecture was delivered in Sydney on the 13^th July 2010 and can be found in three parts: here, here, and here. 

I highly recommend it. 

The Lecture is “introductory” in that the themes, arguments etc are expanded and developed in her forthcoming book that I highlighted here.