Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Stations of the Cross and an Emergent Kiwi under an Insatiable Moon

While in Hamilton, under an insatiable full moon, there are the most excellent Stations of the Cross in Hamilton’s renowned Hamilton Garden(s) this week. While in Adelaide, Steve Taylor, living out of his usual willingness to engage his creativity is this week – Holy Week in the Christian calendar – weaving together the biblical text with the watching of a film each day of this week. His first text was Mark 11:15-16 “…on reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts…”

His first film, the one he weaves together with his text from Mark, is my movie of 2010 – The Insatiable Moon. The little film that could! A Kiwi gem!

Steve reminds us, by quoting Tom Beaudoin, that “…popular media culture is an imaginative palette for faith … the church has to take that imaginative palette seriously… if part of the pastoral task of the church is to communicate God’s mercy and God’s freedom in a way that people understand then you have to use the language that they’re using, you have to use the metaphors and forms of experience that are already familiar to them…”

The Stations of the Cross is a good example of enacting and engaging “popular media culture” by using language, symbol’s, metaphor and forms of experience [people] are already familiar with…” Steve is doing the same thing.

You’ll find Steve’s list of films and biblical texts here. 

While in respect of The Insatiable Moon, Steve reflects that:

“…Kiwi movies tend to be bred with a dark underbelly, from the haunted hills of “Vigil” to the secrets buried “In My Fathers Den.” “The Insatiable Moon,” a film dealing with the clash between mental health and urban gentrification, has a similar potential. Happily, the movie demonstrates a simple commitment to bless contemporary life, infusing human pain and suffering with an earthy humour and gentle mystery.

Two scenes – one pastoral, the other prophetic – remain etched in one’s memory long after the final credits roll. These scenes showcase Mike Riddell’s remarkable talent, the artist’s ability to sketch life, the mystic’s eye for the spiritual in the ordinary.

The first is the funeral of John (Mike Innes) and the pastoral drama created by the open mic and the pain of colliding narratives. It allows a superbly theological reflection on God and the suffering of being human. The scene is a must see for all those who stake allegiance to a God of love in a world of suffering.

The second is the public meeting, another collision of narratives, this time of developer with Ponsonby locals. Arthur’s entrance is superb, a powerful enactment full of strength, oratory and tenderness. Another must see scene for all those who yearn for prophetic transformation in our urban communities today. A powerful way to ponder the events of Holy week…”

You can read Steve’s complete reflection here. He also has a clip of the film.

And for those in NZ don’t forget to get your DVD copy of the movie. It was out in retail outlets last week. 

 

Not Speaking in order to Enlarge our Humanity…!

In the spirit of film director Jim Jarmusch I pinched the following quote wholesale from Barry Taylor after he put it up as a recent post. 

"I feel a bit of an impostor, standing behind a lectern giving a religious address. It’s not that I haven’t done it before. I used to be an Anglican priest. However, now I’m agnostic about Christianity – though I rather like the phrase Diarmaid McCulloch has coined, being a 'candid friend’ of Christianity. You see, we agnostics worry about Christianity too – and for not dissimilar reasons to those I imagine are shared by many here. We know we need it, as much as those of faith need it, for Christianity is the great story of our lives. But we worry that this great story, at least in the west, is not speaking to our humanity as it might do, so as to enlarge it."

Mark Vernon (here also, for Vernon’s blog).

 

Mission, the Limitations of Descriptors, and Sexuality

Jonny Baker recently drew attention to a paper written by good friend Steve Taylor. “…A delightful piece on the emerging church” Jonny declares! (here). And he’s right; it’s a really good piece of thinking & writing. 

It gets at some important issues and questions around church and the way churches change, adapt, engage culture, and “make do” in culture. It gets at the importance and significance of “translatability… [as] the characteristic One-size does not fit all. So, Steve highlights Andrew Jones belief that “the emerging church actually comes in [at least – I think there’s more permutations - Paul] “ten different types” (here). Damn, I’m disappointed I missed Andrew and only discovered later that he was only 20-minutes drive from where I live!). It could have been a meeting of a tallskinnykiwi & a shorter, stockier prodigalkiwi. 

It underlined for me some important issues, and the need for some comments I made last week in a meeting I was a part of. Comments, in part, around my not liking the term “fresh expressions” of church because of the tendency it has to back conversations into a corner; and our tendency to simply "import" it into a very different context without a missiological and interdisciplinary contextual framework native to this land and its cultures. More to unpack, but not in the limited space available in this blog post. 

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from Steve’s paper (and his post plus an update since the original) and I hope you’ll read it, reflect on, and talk about the implications that flow from it for the Church (in the West) more generally, and for your own denomination and local expression of church. 

Steve writes, under the following sub-heading:

Emerging Church? 

…Garry Deverell, in the August 2009 edition of Cross Purposes, in an article titled “‘Emerging’ Church and ‘Alternative’ Worship” [PDF], began a discussion on the relationship between the emerging church and the Uniting Church. He offered a thoughtful and thorough response to the work of one emerging church thinker, a visitor to Australia named Wolfgang Simpson… 

The question raised by the emerging church is thus not, Is the emerging church a new slice of the denominational pie? Nor can it be a misplaced desire to return to peel of layers in order to return to some pristine version of the “original, early church pie”. Rather, the emerging church is shaped by the question of what form— in our unique environment, the season that is this new millennium—the church will take. [Brian] McLaren also notes that just as new rings  [like the rings of a tree] can only be built on existing rings, so the future of the church, and of each denomination, can only be built on its uniquely ecclesial history… 

What Brian McLaren’s image does is invite us to move beyond ecclesial pigeonholing and instead to consider the question: What does it mean for (______________insert denomination) to emerge (grow a unique ring) in this current season? Which, it seems to me, is the question that is the heart of what it means to be Uniting (as against a “United” church). We are charged with an open commitment to “emerge”, always, in light of the unique history that is the Uniting Church in Australia. 

Global Church in History?

However, one concern with McLaren’s metaphor needs to be named. It is a warning heard in the writings of English theologian Colin Gunton, who wrote:

In the West ... ecclesiological discussion in our time nearly always centres on, or degenerates into, disputes about clergy and bishops, the result being that the question of the nature or being of the Church is rarely allowed to come into view. 

In other words, while for the first thousand years of the life of church, the church actually found emerging expression in three continents—Asia, Europe and Africa—it has been too easy for most Western discussion of the church to simply draw a straight line from Jerusalem to Rome to Europe…” 

So ends the quote from Steve’s essay, however, also worth a read, and in the same issue of Cross Purposes as Steve’s article is an excellent one by William ('Bill') Loader focusing on Sexuality in the World of Jesus and the Future. The methodological link is closer to Steve’s essay than you might think.

Here’s the last section of Loader’s piece: 

“…I have chosen to focus on the issues of sexuality more familiar to most, leaving much unsaid about the rest, including economic exploitation of sex whether through pornography or prostitution, including the sex trade and effective slavery; issues of nudity in practice and art; abortion, surrogacy, fertility treatments, opposition to contraception, undoing the mistake of a celibate priest- hood, and much more I acknowledge that for some the reaffirmation of ancient prohibitions provides stability and security in a constantly changing world where human reassessments rarely escape human foibles and fallibilities. I am not persuaded that the old cloth is adequate to mend the new patches, though, if I may play with the symbols, 

I think the old wine is more than worth preserving I have argued, indeed, that there are insights embedded in our ancient heritage which actually do us good service in deconstructing its own strictures which survive on its ancient landscape and enable us to rebuild on our own, sometimes reaffirming the old, sometimes of necessity reconstructing to incorporate new materials which new knowledge and life experience bring. The future is then best served, neither in re-erecting ancient tents and tenets, nor in bulldozing the past into oblivion, but in engaging and embracing our tradition, as much as we do in our liturgies and sacred rites and sermons, to remain connected to what drives and inspires them, and that, not as nostalgia, but in the faith that the God who meets us when we are most in touch with love calls us into the future with hope. Then the future of Christianity is likely to be also good news for sexuality, a goal its story has but rarely achieved…”

 

Faith, Love and Terror on Tibhirine

 
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction." The speaker is Luc, an elderly Catholic monk played by 79-year-old Michael Lonsdale, quoting a pensée of Pascal. (From The Guardian Review linked to below) 

Back in 2003, while in Brisbane, I purchased the 2002 published book The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria by John W. Kiser. It is the story of a community of Cistercian monks deeply rooted in the soil of Algeria. The San Francisco Chronicle then described the book as “a chronicle of faith that transcends any particular religious group or political affiliation.” The Washington Post notes that the “book paints a surprising picture of the bonds between Christians and Muslims, and provides a ray of hope for the future”. The story centres on the period 1995 to 21 May 1996. 

Roll forward to 2010 and director Xavier Beauvois breathes life into the story and the French-language film Of God’s and Men is released. “…A small miracle of a film, it puts so much petty pedantry into humbling proportion, while offering a genuinely progressive vision of faith.” (The closing section of a review by Catherine Wheatley writing for Sight & Sound, Jan. 2011).

“…It is the most intensely passionate film at Cannes (2010) so far this year, and the fact that the passion is religious makes it no less moving. The early-morning audience wept yesterday in Of Gods and Men, Xavier Beauvois’s picture of the monks of the Atlas Mountains in Algeria, a beautifully told story of bravery and extraordinary understanding…” (Kate Muir, The Times: Sunday Times - here).

The Ecumenical Jury at the 2010 edition of the Cannes Film Festival awarded its top prize to Xavier Beauvois' Des hommes et des Dieux / Of Gods and Men. 

Sadly it hasn’t had a general release in NZ, so has only been able to be seen in film festivals. So for me it’s likely to not be until the DVD release that I get to see it.

So, in place of a review from me, here’s an excerpt from Carl McColman whose review of a book featured in yesterday’s post: 

“…The film moves slowly, and is for the most part quiet and contemplative; at times it felt like I was watching the Cistercian answer to Into Great Silence, the 2005 German documentary about Carthusian monks. The film repeatedly takes us back to the liturgy (sung beautifully in French), just as the normal day in the life of a monk repeatedly returns to the prayer of the community; as the movie progresses, this continual returning to the liturgy functions almost like a refrain to the poetic unfolding of the film’s story. One thing that really makes this movie shine is how authentic it is in its portrayal of the humanity of the monks, warts and all. Several of them are irascible and downright ornery, at one point one utters an extremely not-nice word. His companion mutters “he’s tired,” almost as if to make an excuse to the audience. People who have romanticized notions about monks never wearing anything other than their habits and never ever leaving the cloister will find a much more realistic portrayal of the down-to-earth men who have chosen to live alongside, and truly with, the simple but loving villagers who depend on them for medical care and friendship. Their life as a community of monks, in all its simplicity, humility, and sheer ordinariness, is presented in a beautiful, understated, matter-of-fact way — which is why I think the film succeeds not only as great cinema but as a great testament to faith…”

You can read Carl’s full review here (but note there is a spoiler if you don’t know the story and its outcome ahead of watching it yourself). Also, here’s a Dec. 2010 review from The Guardian. 

 

Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life

By an enjoyable and circuitous route (via Jason Goroncy – here) I came across what sounds like a fascinating book – Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life by Robert Davis Hughes, III. Hughes is Norma and Olan Mills Professor of Divinity and Professor of Systematic Theology in the School of Theology of The University of the South, where he has taught since 1977. Author of numerous articles appearing in journals such as the Anglican Theological Review, the Sewanee Theological Review, and the St. Luke's Journal of Theology, he also wrote "The Holy Spirit in Christian Spirituality" for The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality (2005).

Beloved Dust was published in October 2008.

Carl McColman gives an initial “teaser” for the book

“This is actually just a “teaser” review. I just got my copy of Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life yesterday [Nov. 17^th 2008], which means I’ve only given it a cursory glance:  so I’m only going to do a brief mini-review of this book for now. But this book deserves a careful reading, so after I’ve read it, I’ll come back and write about it in greater depth. Let me offer a disclaimer: Bob Hughes was my spiritual director in the late 1980s, so I am a wee bit biased here. He teaches theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, and embodies the fullness of the splendor of Anglican spirituality, from its catholic sacramentality to its joyous optimism in the Holy Spirit. Here, in his first book, he is proposing a “reconstruction of spiritual theology” in today’s post-modern, post-triumphalist, post-Vatican II world, engaging honestly with the challenges posed by interreligious dialogue and with the exciting emergence of serious lay spirituality in our time, as evidenced by the popularity of the writings of Thomas Merton and Richard Foster, or the success of organizations like Shalem or Spiritual Directors International. In conversation with significant voices such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Simone Weil, Beloved Dust explores where the Holy Spirit may be taking us: using as its overarching metaphor the notion that we earthy humans are made of dust, washed over by the tides of the Spirit’s love, care and grace.”

Table of Contents

Part I: Love and Dust: New Foundations for Spiritual Theology

1. The Nature of Spirituality and Its Crisis

2. The Rise and Fall of Spiritual Theology as a Discipline

3. Koinonia or Communion: Trinitarian Resources for Renewal

4. The Missions and Tides of the Spirit: Pneumatological Resources for Renewal

5. Dust: Anthropological Resources for Renewal

6. Spirit and Psyche: The Conversation between Psychology and Spirituality 

Part II: Tides of the Spirit: A Renewed Spiritual Theology 

1. Converted Dust First Interlude: The Dark Night of the Senses and the "Second Conversion"

2. Transfigured Dust Second Interlude: The Dark Night of the Soul and the "Third Conversion"

3. Glorified Dust 

Meantime, and more recently Amos Yong offers the following thoughts on the book:

“…In a discussion of what the Christian theological tradition has called sanctification, and which Hughes calls transfiguration, a pneumatological theology of love is explicated. Again, drawing together in an intriguing manner disparate voices – this time, Teilhard de Chardin and Simone Weil – Hughes weaves a tapestry that captures the transfiguring waves of the Spirit which bring forth the new creation in anticipation of the eschatological glorification of dust in the coming age. Yet the transfiguration of dust happens precisely through the Spirit's work in the mundane activities of being neighbors and friends, vocational pursuits, study, work, life in community, and, of course, religious and spiritual life and practices. Each form of transfiguration, however, remains from first to last a work of the Spirit, and is in part the participation of dust in the Spirit's mission and economy.

Naming Desire: Hugh MacKay

One of the many things I appreciate about Ignatian Spirituality is the significance it places on working with desire and longing – to finding more readily what one desires. That said, David Runcorn rightly suggests that “The Church is still struggling to express a vision for Christian desire and vocation that naturally integrates love for God within and through the raw, erotic earthiness of human longing” 

“…Desire, Philip Sheldrake observes, “is at the heart of all spirituality. It is an energy that powers spirituality”, a spirituality that is concerned with how people discern God’s invitations within desire and longing. Christian spirituality, he argues, embodies the sense that fundamental to what it means to be human is a deep restlessness that can only be satisfied in God.15 Desire is a central reality in what Sheldrake calls “the human search for God, and God’s search for humanity.” Christian spirituality doesn’t just have a passing interest in desire, it centers on desire. 

Sheldrake tells us “desire is best understood as our most honest experience of ourselves, in all our complexity and depth as we relate to people and things around us.” Authentic desire arises from what Thomas Merton called our ‘true selves’ rather than as hyper- stimulated responses to the “wants” encouraged by marketing and advertising. This kind of ‘shallow-consumption’ most often only encourages our continuing dislocation from the authentic, the deep and the real…”

I was therefore interested in a recent lecture by Australian Hugh MacKay. Mackay had his latest book What Makes Us Tick? published in 2010. In it “he identifies ten key "social desires" linked to personality, identity, relationships, and that influence our approaches to love and friendship, family, work, and community…” (For more on the book, go here.) 

It’s an interesting book and approach to starting to get at the deeper places in our lives. Important too are the interesting places it takes you in terms of your own longings, workplace issues, Ignatian Spirituality, your relationships with those close to you etc etc. 

Recently The Sydney Institute had MacKay deliver a 35-minute lecture (plus questions and answers) on the place of desire in our lives, and in particular the ten desires that he believes lie at the heart of what it means to be a human being. You can find the podcast here. 

 

Eugene Peterson: Something Old, Something New

Paul writes – I was recently re-reading a March 2005 interview with Eugene Peterson. It marks the publication of the first of his five volume series in which he pulls together themes he has been talking about for three decades—spiritual formation, Scripture, leadership, the church, pastoring,  and spiritual direction. The first volume is Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Eerdmans, 2005). 

Here’s an excerpt from the interview which you’ll find in full here.

“…What is the most misunderstood aspect of spirituality?

That it's a kind of specialized form of being a Christian that you have to have some kind of in. It's elitist. Many people are attracted to it for the wrong reasons. Others are put off by it: I'm not spiritual. I like to go to football games or parties or pursue my career. In fact, I try to avoid the word. 

Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God.

That's a naïve view of spirituality. What we're talking about is the Christian life. It's following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we've been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It's just ordinary stuff. 

This promise of intimacy is both right and wrong. There is an intimacy with God, but it's like any other intimacy; it's part of the fabric of your life. In marriage you don't feel intimate most of the time. Nor with a friend. Intimacy isn't primarily a mystical emotion. It's a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency. 

Doesn't the mystical tradition suggest otherwise? 

One of my favorite stories is of Teresa of Avila. She's sitting in the kitchen with a roasted chicken. And she's got it with both hands, and she's gnawing on it, just devouring this chicken. One of the nuns comes in shocked that she's doing this, behaving this way. She said, "When I eat chicken, I eat chicken; when I pray, I pray." 

If you read the saints, they're pretty ordinary people. There are moments of rapture and ecstasy, but once every 10 years. And even then it's a surprise to them. They didn't do anything. We've got to disabuse people of these illusions of what the Christian life is. It's a wonderful life, but it's not wonderful in the way a lot of people want it to be…” 

I’ve also been dipping into his latest book, his A Memoir: The Pastor. You’ll find more on that book, including an excerpt here. 

 

(Organisational) Culture and Unreflective Cultural Formation

Today I want to hold together two separate ‘reflections’ by two different people. One ‘reflection’ is from an interview; the other is from a recent blog post. 

First up, Len Hjalmarson (from this post): 

“…Reading a dissertation last week and reflecting again on the nature of culture. One of the biggest impacts on my thinking about the Gospel in the past few years was prompted by reflecting on the nature of culture – thanks in part to writers like James K.A. Smith, Charles Taylor, and even Derrida and Simone Weil. When we answer the question, “what is culture” and then “what is God’s relationship to culture” we begin to shape lenses and assumptions that impact the way we approach and read Scripture…

…I’m thinking this morning about Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership. Schein defines organizational culture as “a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaption and internal integration, that worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems” (Schein 2004:17).

When Schein consults with an organization to analyze its culture, a critical step prior to attempting to lead change, he moves through three different layers. He starts with the top layer – the artifacts – those elements of culture that are easy to observe but hard to interpret. Next, he examines the stated values of the organization. These values are “stated,” because it is a rare organizational culture that always lives out its ideals…

…Schein recognized that values are our aspirations, but may not yet cohere with the group’s basic underlying assumptions. These tacit assumptions, then, are the group’s culture and ethos. They represent the third layer – the roots. The roots are underground, hidden until — what? Until we examine our practices. We measure our practices against our stated values. When these two do not cohere – when they disagree – we can make a reasonable guess that our operating assumptions need to be examined. Pull up the roots. What is really growing down there? It’s at this level that ideas like Charles Taylor’s on “social imaginary” become very helpful. (Or Colin Greene’s thoughts in Metavista – what are our core narratives? James K A. Smith has been working at this level in his books)…” 

And the second is from the aforementioned Jamie Smith (you can read the full interview here): 

“…I guess I’m working on multiple fronts.  A lot of my work has been on “postmodernism” (including my editing of the “Church and Postmodern Culture” book series).  This is where I’m trying to take my expertise in European philosophy and use it to help Christians understand cultural shifts and the impact of ideas on contemporary culture—again, with the goal of thinking carefully about the shape of Christian practice.

It was this that gave rise to my “Cultural Liturgies” trilogy, of which Desiring the Kingdom is the first volume.  In a way, I can plot the trajectory to this project from chapter 7 of my earlier book, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy and the chapter on Foucault in Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? In general, I think Christians have operated with a reductionistic notion of “culture”—reducing it to the level of ideas—and failed to appreciate the affective dynamics of cultural formation.  That can be both detrimental and a missed opportunity.  It’s also part of why Protestants—and evangelicals in particular—have been largely unreflective about the formative role of worship.  So the second volume, tentatively titled How Worship Works, is going to explore what I’m calling the “mechanics” of liturgical formation by exploring an analogy between literature and liturgy, drawing on research at the intersection of literature and cognitive science.  The third volume will focus on politics: the wager there is that thinking about the politics in terms of liturgy changes the debate.  In doing so, I ultimately hope to respond to Jeffrey Stout’s critique of what he calls the “new traditionalism” (Hauerwas, MacIntyre, Milbank) in his very important book, Democracy and Tradition…”

 

The Polemics of Parish and Fresh Expressions

The Rev'd Dr Bruce Kaye is a Professorial Associate in the School of Theology at Charles Sturt and a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of History at UNSW. He is formerly the General Secretary of the Anglican Church of Australia (1994-2004) and is the author of Introduction to World Anglicanism (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Conflict and the Practice of Christian Faith: The Anglican Experiment (Cascade Books, 2009). He recently offered a reflection on “Fresh Expressions” within the CofE in conversation with a relatively new book, by Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, For the Parish: A Critique of Fresh Expressions. Some of you will recall that Steve Taylor has begun a review of the sale book. 

For me, Kaye highlights for me a few points, which are important in the ongoing conversation around what I believe is a false polemic between “parish” versus “fresh expression”. 

• Davison and Millbank focus in on the belief that these “affinity groups” “cannot express the full range of human experience in the host society or in the church, and that would be a loss.” I’d agree (to a point), both about the limitation of “affinity groups” to represent the full range of human experiences in the wider culture (how do we become more fully human without this wider engagement with human experience and perspective?). That said, is the full range of human experiences expressed in, for example, a traditional “monastic context” and does this ultimately stunt human growth and development? And, perhaps more pointedly are typical parish churches (as represented by their Sunday gatherings versus the wider geographical community they are a part of)) anything other than “affinity” or homogeneous groupings? Do they reflect the diversity and richness of their wider communities? Do they, and indeed, are they willing to make space, to be hospitable, or do they in fact give expression to the same reality that is critiqued in “fresh expression” affinity groups? That said, I think Kaye is right when below he writes: “…Even granting this, the territorial parish does provide the possibility of encompassing the differences that exist within its territory in a way which is simply not possible for congregations created on the basis of extraneous social interests or connections…[Kaye]” 

• Theologically too, are typical parishes – in reality – actually taking seriously, for example, the incarnation and its implications for both mission and worship (some of my concerns are given expression in this recent post by Jonny Baker). 

• I agree with Kaye, but am again not convinced that typical parishes do this any better; “…Davison and Milbank point in the right direction when they draw a link between liturgy and ethics, since it is the presence and growth of the virtues that will be one of the fruits of church…[Kaye]” (A whole lot of theological reflection swirls around me at this point, not least as that is given expression by the likes of Daniel Hardy, Stanley Hauerwas (for a good overview see Living Holiness: Stanley Hauerwas and the Church by John B. Thomson), James Davison Hunter, William Cavanaugh, Nicholas Lash, Luke Bretherton, Sarah Coakley et al)

• Kaye reflects “Davison and Milbank also see in the Fresh Expressions movement a flight from tradition, by which they do not mean the habits of social activity that have been recently created and nurtured in popular memory. Rather, they are referring to the sense that this generation lives on the given reality of the practices and faith of previous generations, and which this generation will in turn pass on to the next…” Again, an important point which for me orbits around questions of ecclesiology, mission, spiritual formation & discipleship, and the relationship (expressed in practical ways, shared practices, theological reflection, values and virtues etc) between a congregation and the tradition(s) or the soil it is rooted in. Traditional parish congregations aren’t immune from a “flight from tradition” and indeed, scratch below the surface of a good many and there is often a remarkable lack of living connection with the tradition and the rich resources of both a specific tradition (e.g. Anglicanism – albeit this too is a diverse field over which to traverse) and the wider Christian traditions – both East and West. For example, think of the absence in many Anglican congregations of the contemplative and the mystical streams; or in many, the Charismatic or Spirit tradition, and the spirituality of the Monastic tradition. To underline the point, the question John Drane poses as the title of his book – Do Christians Know How to Be Spiritual? – gets at a much-neglected stream in many local church contexts. While interestingly many so-called “fresh expressions” are deeply rooting themselves in the Church’s so-called “spirituality” and monastic / mendicant traditions; as well as the intertwined political / social-action / ecological dimensions of a Jesus-following life.  

Lots more can and has been said on the complex questions of everyday practical theology (cf. Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Cultural Trends; Let’s Do Theology: Resources for Contextual Theology by Laurie Green); ecclesiology (cf. The Hybrid Church in the City: Third Space Thinking by Christopher Baker, Rooted in Jesus Christ: Towards a Radical Ecclesiology by Daniel Izuzquiza); liturgy (cf. James K A. Smith Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation or the work of Johann Baptist Metz, and Alexander Schmemann) and the ways in which these questions need to be considered as part of a missiology (cf. Participation and Mediation: A Practical Theology for the Liquid Church by Pete Ward, Missional Church edited by Darrell Guder, The Church Between Gospel and Culture edited by George Hunsberger & Craig Van Gelder, Missional Map-Making by Alan J. Roxburgh, The Witness of God by John G. Flett, and The Out of Bounds Church? (Now on Kindle) By Steve Taylor) that sees God at work in the world by and through the Spirit.

You can read Kaye’s full reflection / ‘review’ here. 

 

Ian Mobsby on Fresh Expressions, Dechurched and Unchurched

Paul writes – Friend, Ian Mobsby reflects from Cambridge MA on a question I’ve thought about a lot over the years, especially given that I experience myself as “de-churched”. 

A good number of years ago I used to be a part of a church community, however today I no longer regularly, or even often, attend a church gathering – a reality as much about form and my own journey, as content and context. Am I anti-church? Not in the slightest! Can I imagine myself belonging to a church community again? Yes! But not church as I’ve experienced it across my lifetime. 

“De-Churched”, or for me a better term in relation to “faith” is the one Alan predominantly uses: “Churchless Faith”. Both are terms that for me emerges primarily and implicitly within the work of Spirited Exchanges and Alan Jamieson’s research work published in his pioneering book A Churchless Faith. “De-Churched” is in the title of another book on the theme of the “de-Churched” – The Church and the Dechurched: Mending a Damaged Faith by Mary Tuomi Hammond (pub. 2001).

Ian Mobsby writes:

“…From [my recent] discussions, I have been struck by something I had missed before.  Many of my pioneering and mission orientated colleagues in the UK have been frustrated that the projects [that have emerged from their hopes and dreams] seem to have started with not being able to make an impact on the totally unchurched - the primary focus, and instead have started with a ministry that began with the dechurched. 

Now, it has struck me that this is my experience too in the Moot Community, something that we have faced some criticism for in the early days.  But - it has struck me, may be this is the intentions of the God outside of our own needs and desires.   Jesus himself in the Gospel, very rarely goes directly to the unchurched from a Jewish perspective - I can think of the Samaritan Woman at the well and a few others.  No, instead Jesus associated with those who were Jewish who were outside of the powerful temple system to build up a new community of disciples with Jews who were very similar to the dechurched. It seems that Jesus was intentional about gathering around him a community of the dechurched, who through God’s death and resurrection are empowered to become the Apostles, and the beginning of the Church through mission to the Gentile unchurched.  May it just be that ecclesia, and the building of ecclesial communities begins with pioneer missioners building small communities of the dechurched to create deep and radical Christian community that then has the maturity to start and sustain mission and evangelism to the unchurched.

In the Moot Community we have spent 7 years building up a community of the dechurched, which now is intentionally starting out to seek to service God by reaching out missionally to the unchurched.  Maybe - focusing on the dechurched first is right strategically, as long as this then is matched by a commitment for the previously unchurched to mature into the call of seeking to serve the unchurched. 

So pioneering missioners, don’t be disappointed that what you are doing seems to attract the dechurched and not the unchurched, just maybe this is the starting place to build community to be able to reach out to the unchurched effectively.  I think this is true…” 

Also of value in terms of thinking about or exploring some of the experiences of those for whom faith is expressed outside of traditional expressions or understandings of “church” are the two books co-written by Philip Richter & Leslie J. Francis: Gone But Not Forgotten: Church Leaving and Returning (pub. 1998) and Gone for Good? Church Leaving and Returning in the 21^st Century (pub. 2007).  Another useful text is Changing Life Patterns: Adult Development in Spiritual Direction by Elizabeth Liebert. As is The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith by Janet O Hagberg & Robert A. Guelich. 

Another really important book is Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (or his audio series An Undivided Life: Seeking Wholeness in Ourselves, Our Work & Our World) by Parker J. Palmer. I think it speaks into the kind of space many find themselves in both within “faith transitions”, but also within the kinds of transitions that can mean that growth, liberation and life are best gained outside of a traditional church context; apart from belonging. Add Alan Jamieson’s often overlooked book, Called Again: In and Beyond the Deserts of Faith (The title of the NZ publication – a title I like better than the title of its UK edition) and as a corollary Rowan Williams’ Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert, which explores the themes of Life, Death and Neighbours, Fleeing, & Staying.

Also useful are the back issues of the Spirited Exchanges (NZ) newsletter, especially Alan’s essays (for example issue 36) – one of which is re-printed in the most recent (March 11) issue of the UK Spirited Exchanges newsletter.