Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Herbert McCabe on Prayer

 "...For real absolute waste of time you have to go to prayer. I reckon that more than 80 percent of our reluctance to pray consists precisely in our dim recognition of this and our neurotic fear of wasting time, of spending part of our life in something that in the end gets you nowhere, something that is not merely non-productive, non-money-making, but is even non-creative, it doesn't even have the justification of art and poetry. It is an absolute waste of time, it is a sharing into the waste of time which is the interior life of the Godhead. God is not in himself productive or creative. Sure he takes time to throw off a creation, to make something, to achieve something, but the real interior life of the Godhead is not in creation, it is in the life of love which is in the Trinity, the procession of Son from Father and of the Spirit from this exchange. God is not first of all our creator or any kind of maker, he is love, and his life is not like the life of the worker or artist but of lovers wasting time with each other uselessly. It is into this worthless activity that we enter in prayer. This, in the end, is what makes sense of it..."

God Still Matters, by Herbert McCabe OP, p. 75. I have previously reflected on McCabe here. 

Newbigin and Plausibility Structures

Paul writes – Tim Keel recently reflected on Lesslie Newbigin and plausibility structures. It made me have a skim through the same Newbigin title and reminded me of a conversation I had on Friday around the violence of coercian and how Christian’s often don’t see the violence and the dehumanisation inherent in their approaches, for example, to evangelism. We impose upon rather work with the deep questions, fears, longings and hopes in people’s lives, and the work of the Spirit, which seeks to humanise…

Here’s a quote from Tim’s post, which you can read in full here. 

"Part of the reason for the rejection of dogma [or a Christian plausibility structure - Tim] is that it has for so long been entangled with coercion, with political power, and so with the denial of freedom - freedom of thought and conscience. When coercion of any kind is used in the interests of the Christian message, the message itself is corrupted. The truth is that it is the dogma [the content of belief] rightly understood, namely the free gift of God's grace in Jesus Christ, which alone can establish and sustain freedom of thought and of conscience. We must affirm the gospel as truth, universal truth, truth for all peoples and for all times, the truth which creates the possibility of freedom; but we negate the gospel if we deny the freedom in which alone it can be truly believed." (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society,p.10)…”  

Roger Steare - Corporate Philosopher in NZ

Paul writes – I listened to a fascinating radio interview yesterday with Professor Roger Steare who is a professor of organisational ethics, and corporate philosopher in residence at the Cass Business School in London. He’s the author of the (revised) 2009 publication Ethicability: How to Decide What's Right and Find the Courage to Do it.

Steare is a leading practitioner in the development and delivery of Leadership, Culture and Ethics programs globally for organizations such as BP, Citigroup, HSBC and PwC. These programs begin with a diagnosis of the organization's ethical consciousness; engagement with Board and Senior Executives to develop the right "tone from the top"; and then cascade throughout the organization with a series of social learning workshops.

“…But the greatest challenge of all will be to confront the brutal truth that our current assumptions about economics are fundamentally flawed. This planet that we all share is a closed ecosystem with finite resources. Yet the other assumptions we make are that human beings have unlimited wants; that growth is good; that we can all strive for what we want rather than what we need.

This economic philosophy of growth for its own sake is as bankrupt as the philosophy of the cancer cell…”

You can find the link to the RNZ interview here (scroll down).

Change Leaders in Churches Needed

Paul writes - I highlighted on this blog (via Mike Crowl) a fascinating book – Developing Change Leaders: The Principles and Practices of Change Leadership Development written by Paul Aitken and Malcolm Higgs. Either following this or after – I can’t remember – I listened to a fascinating RNZ interview with Paul Aitken. The interview reinforced the importance of this book to me. 

All that to say that good friend Steve Taylor has been writing chapter reviews as he works his way through the book, reading it especially through the lenses of church and missional leadership. Here’s what he summarises as the 10 dynamic capabilities for effective change leaders. I’d like this list to supplement my recent post on Re-Thinking Priesthood for the Sake of Mission, the Present and the Future.

Steve Taylor writes, and I quote him: 

“…The book [Developing Change Leaders by Paul Aitken and Malcolm Higgs] summarises 10 dynamic capabilities for change leaders as follows:

1. Develop decision making - specifically the ability to wait and see, keep an open mind and be comfortable with contradictions. Central to this is the ability to inquire, to accept that you are not the expert and that someone in your team may have a better insight.
2. Access capability from across the team.
3. Become a co-creator of a learning culture
4. Combine future-sense making with strategic thinking - digging deeper, reading widely, in a desire to appreciate the system and not just the events.
5. Develop ‘total’ leadership - including authenticity, integrity and experimentation, at all levels of a person’s life.
6. Develop competency to work in diverse cultures.
7. Develop 1-1 coaching skills - e.g. micro-skills of building rapport, active listening, attention, sensitivity.
8. Develop 1-many skills - e.g. micro-skills of dialogue, facilitation, process consulting, because leadership is about responding to real lived relationships.
9. Emotional intelligence including self-awareness, emotional resilience, sensitivity, influence, intuition and conscientiousness.
10. Dialogue on performance…” 

This is not intended to be a condemning question, but how many priests and vestries have this kind of capacity, skill set and competencies…?

For me, in part, this highlights the challenges we face, while at the same time highlighting the opportunities, not just for priests and ministers, but for whole congregations who share the responsibility for mission and for naming, enacting and experimenting with what they collectively discern as God’s missional invitations to them both when gathered and when dispersed. What if we groomed and developed future denominational leaders, not in the mould of the current leadership, but explored what kinds of new skills and competencies we needed for future bishops etc. Priority for me would be a demonstrable ability to bring about missional and thus congregational transition and change. A high level of missional-literacy networks and practice. The list could go on, but my caveat is the generally held belief that past practice informs present practice, i.e. look to the past if you want to see how a person will likely perform in the present and in new roles. If they’re not demonstrable change-leaders now, it’s more than likely they won’t be in the future. I'd also want to see all the characteristics (even not fully developed at present) listed above.

The future will require different kinds of leaders because the world is a constantly changing missional-context. 

What if the discernment processes for new and future clergy had these kinds of competencies as a focus, in addition to the other characteristics expected of clergy whether Anglican, Presbyterian or whatever…?    

You can read the post from which I extracted Steve’s words here. Have a look through his blog and you’ll also locate review summaries he’s written for other chapters in Developing Change Leaders: The principles and practices of change leadership development by Paul Aitken and Malcolm Higgs. 

We Miss God!

Paul writes – I was struck by this statement quoted in a recent post by Ben Myers, reflecting on the work of the theologian. Here’s what he said, and the quote he used:

“Jürgen Moltmann has somewhere remarked: "We are not theologians because we are particularly religious; we are theologians because in the face of this world we miss God." 

I can readily remove the word “theologian” and replace it with “wayfarers, explorers, and indeed “Jesus-followers”. It changes the focus of Ben’s reflection, but not I think, some of its central themes.  

Perhaps more provocatively, we might say we are not church leavers because we are not religious; we are church-leavers because in the face of our experiences of church-belonging and the institution and the politics of “church” we miss God. We know that God is not absent, nor distant. We know that God is imminent and transcendent, but in our experiences of church we discover that we can’t find God and we deeply miss God. We miss the experience of God. We tire of hollowness and rhetoric. We tire of slickness. We tire of noise. We tire of a lack of lament. We tire of illusion. We tire of church as the one-size fits all variety. We tire of liturgy imposed upon us. We miss God.

And so we leave and we go on a journey. And on our journey we are joined by fellow wayfarers and friends, and on our journey we catch glimpses of God, God who is in the deep longings and desires of our and others hearts, God who is in the absences of God, God who is active and present in the world.

But even then we discover that God is still bigger yet, and our hearts are deeper still. 

You can read Ben’s full post here. 

Story Telling – The Latest Issue of Refresh Journal now Online

Paul writes – The latest/final (for a time) issue of Spiritual Growth Ministries (NZ) great little journal Refresh is now available as a PDF online, and as always, it has a good range of stimulating and interesting articles. Its theme is story telling so you’ll find reflections on movies, metaphor and story-telling etc. You’ll also find in it an all-to-brief interview with Mike Riddell the NZ Producer of the fantastic movie The Insatiable Moon.

You can find the journal by clicking here (PDF). And you can find out more about Spiritual Growth Ministries by going here. 

Also, the official trailer to the movie The Insatiable Moon can be found here.

The photograph accompanying this post is that of Andrew Dunn, the editor of Refresh, who has just retired from that role. 

Below, you will find a PDF of a variation on an article I wrote on The Insatiable Moon and film watching as a means of formation in this issue of Refresh.

Download Paul Fromont - Final Version - Frugal Film-Making - Cinematic Parables, an Insatiable Moon, Story and Story-telling

Charles Taylor and a Secular Age

Paul writes – ABC radio programme has a replay of a 2009 programme focusing on philosopher Charles Taylor. His important big book A Secular Age, sets out to describe us to our western selves in a way that counters much conventional thinking. Ruth Abbey is a political scientist who runs an ever-growing web-based bibliography of Taylor related material, and James McEvoy is a theologian who appreciates the way Taylor's analysis of our age opens up possibilities for dialogue and for religious faith. If you haven’t previously heard the programme or haven’t heard Taylor, it’s a good opportunity. You can join Ruth Abbey, James McEvoy and Charles Taylor on Encounter here. 

I’m always struck by how important the act of deep listening is to Taylor. Deep listening is a critical starting point for so many things, not least the work of mission and appreciative enquiry – listening the “other” into free speech, and allowing their speaking to take us on a journey, a journey of discovering God already present and active in the deep places of people’s lives and communities. 

“Charles Taylor: You have to see yourself as one interlocutor among many, not necessarily fully understanding all your interlocutors but open and wanting to listen and to see what makes them tick and so on. There is that other exercise of the imagination… if you like, the hermeneutic imagination: understanding the strangeness of the other, which is part of the process of dialogue. I think that is also a crucial part of it…”

Transitioning into God’s mission

Paul writes – Len Hjalmarson usefully quotes from a book I highly recommend - Introducing the Missional Church by Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren. They name well, my own concerns about off-the-shelf “mission” programmes, programmes from other places and contexts, programmes that purport to have the answers. Nothing. In my view replaces the hard work of listening and attending to ones own context… listening and watching for God at work… listening for the questions and invitations… experimenting, reflecting, learning, listening for what is good and needful news in ones local context… working for shalom… working hard to redraw the church/community boundary, inside/outside, and to re-embrace a commitment to the whole body politic. The work of mission is hard-work, slow work, and a long-term commitment to partner God in God’s own redemptive and restorative mission. 

Here’s the extracts Len quotes. Highlights – for emphasis - are mine: 

“Transitional churches are coming to understand that they don’t automatically know the answers to this question. They are also discovering that they cannot figure them out by sitting in rooms discussing the issues with each other, nor can they find the answers by purchasing demographic profiles. These churches suspect that the programs borrowed from somewhere else and the conferences put on by gurus who tell them what to do aren’t going to work.

Transitional churches are figuring out that they have to do this work for themselves in their own contexts. They are learning to experiment by trying new things, failing, and trying again. And they are breaking through the fear-of-failure syndrome. This means they are slowly creating a different [culture] in their church as they shift away from experts, leaders, and programs and instead move toward empowering one another…

“Some in the church will become anxious because it feels out of control… But a transitional church knows it is on a journey in a new space where it will continually be learning rather than simply improving on what it has done.” 

You can read Len’s full post here. 

Lives Characterised by Celebration and Joy

Paul writes - The Archbishop of Canterbury – Rowan Williams – recently preached (16/07/10) at Westminster Cathedral on the occasion an ecumenical celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the death of St John Roberts. The service was attended by the Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops of Wales and many pilgrims from the churches in Wales.

Here’s a couple of excerpts that grabbed my attention, not least because of the way I see the church and its right relation to the world; a relation characterised by “new creation”, “celebration”, “human beauty and dignity” in community, contemplative, distinctive, deeply familiar with the depths of human darkness, and a people who say “yes” to the world., and who are for the world. 

“...The martyr isn't a person who says 'No' to the world in any simple sense. The martyr sees the richness of the world, the wealth of mind and imagination, the wealth of culture and the beauty of the human spirit. And because he sees the whole as the gift and sign of God, he knows that the beauty of the Giver is infinitely more than the whole world itself...

...The martyr's business is celebration, celebration of the cross and resurrection, of the new creation. It's no surprise that the records of the martyrs of the early Church are so often couched in terms of eucharistic theology – the martyr as an image of the sacramental Body of Christ, the supreme gift, the sign without parallel, the 'grain of wheat' of today's Gospel...

...So, when we look towards the future of our society, in England or in Wales, what is the martyr's message? The same as the message of the Church itself: if we want to see a renewal of compassion and service in our society, we need to know where the roots of human beauty and dignity are to be found. And to know where these roots are is something that grows on the soil of contemplation and becomes visible in celebration, even in the face of danger, terror and death. The martyr's witness tells us something about human dignity – but, more importantly, something about the fact that men and women are created for the sake of joy...”

It’s not a long sermon, and was preached in both Welsh and English. You can find it here. 

Sarah Coakley and the deepening life of a silent prayer group.

Paul writes – While on retreat earlier this year I met a Buddhist friend of a similar age – a youngish man committed to a life of mediation and contemplation within the Buddhist tradition. A young man on a journey in pursuit of some important questions – questions that were significant to him. A number of things we talked about resonated with my own sense of journey and the needs of my own life – one such thing being the need for and importance of silence. I wondered what it would be like to “sit” silently once a week, in the company of other explorers of the inner way. 

And it was in that vein that I really appreciated a 2002 story told by Anglican Priest and Theologian Sarah Coakley. It was the story of a silent prayer group she belonged to at Harvard.

Here’s an excerpt: 

“…The group started with a request from a small number of students preparing for the ministry—the prime mover was a Roman Catholic-turned-Congregationalist—who wanted help with a regular discipline of prayer. Spiritual direction as such is still not currently on offer at the Divinity School, although there are plenty of places in Boston where it can be found, and we now have a leaflet for students telling them of some of the best resources; but these original students were in search of an organized form of prayer-practice that would also create a sense of spiritual community across the many ideological and religious divides that characterize this unusual School. I was reluctant then, and remain so, to assume the role of anything like a director; but it was clear that the symbolic presence of a faculty member was important to the students, and I was more than happy to organize, and faithfully attend, a weekly hour of shared silence into which various forms of prayer could easily be slotted. The idea was that people could bring a Bible for scriptural meditation if they wished, or a breviary for office, or simply pray silently in whatever way they were accustomed. As it has turned out, virtually all those who attend practice some form of (relatively) wordless prayer; some have been influenced by the "centering prayer" movement, or are familiar with the techniques of transcendental meditation… 

…To plunge straight into a full hour of silence is daunting for those not accustomed to the practice, and I do worry sometimes that this may be too demanding and even off-putting; but in practice people are free to tip-toe in and out if they wish to observe a shorter period. The matter of guidance in reading came up early on, and about twice a year I informally provide some reading lists on both classic and contemporary texts of relevance (Dom John Chapman's appendix on "Contemplative Prayer" in his Spiritual Letters remains, in many respects, an unbeatable practical introduction to the disorientations and distractions of this form of prayer). My course on Christian spirituality, which is offered every few years, is a demanding one intellectually (covering texts from the New Testament to Gregory Palamas in the East and the Carmelites in the West), and it is not a course in which I claim to teach people to pray "experientially." But in practice students know that the silent prayer group is also available at the School, and if, through their reading of, say, Cassian, the Jesus prayer traditions, The Cloud, or John of the Cross, they feel drawn to a practice of silence, then it is often during this same term that they first make contact with it…” 

You can read the full story here. For more by Coakley on Dom John Chapman, see her essay Traditions of Spiritual Guidance: Dom John Chapman OSB (1865-1933) on the Meaning of 'Contemplation' in her Powers and Submissions.