Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Dave Tomlinson - The Bad Christian’s Manifesto

I hadn’t realised, until having differ with wonderful friends yesterday evening, that Dave Tomlinson has a new book out – a follow up (of sorts) to his 2012 publication: How to be a Bad Christian…And a Better Human. I loved this book – one of Dave’s best.

I loved the subtitle too, and thought of it again yesterday as I was reading some information about Kenda Creasy Dean’s latest publication Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church… “…Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less…” In other words, what kind of human beings does church belonging produce, and how is a Jesus-following life (an altogether human life) actually lived in the ordinary and the everyday?

Anyway, back to Dave. His latest publication is The Bad Christian’s Manifesto…Reinventing God (And Other Modest Proposals).

“Dave Tomlinson, author of How to be a bad Christian, thinks that a lot of our overly religious, formal ideas of God need to be reinvented - and a lot of our spirituality, too. What does it look like to live well and die happy - from an unapologetically generous Christian point of view? Join Dave as he considers virtues, vices, friendship, morality, [and] mortality.”

“Dave Tomlinson was a house church leader for many years and is now an Anglican priest. Unable to accept the narrow restrictions of his tradition, he founded the legendary Holy Joe's, a church in a pub in Clapham for disaffected church drop-outs. He is now Vicar of St Luke's, Holloway, a thriving parish church in north London. He is the author of the seminal The Post-Evangelical, I Shall Not Want and Re-enchanting Christianity, and is a regular guest on Radio 2.”

You’ll find a review of the book here. 

Unexpected Gifts: Discovering the Way of Community

This seems like a good follow on from yesterday’s Gone Girl post. Marriage is after all a miniature form of community.

“…Ironically, as much as we yearn for deep friendships and meaningful communities, many of us seem to be unable to find our way into them. Even if we know we’re made for community, finding one and staying there seems almost impossible. Though we hate to admit it, if we stay long enough in any relationship or set of friendships, we will experience failure, doubt, burnout, loneliness, transitions, a loss of self, betrayal, frustration, a sense of entitlement, grief, and weariness. Yet it’s these painful community experiences, these tensions we struggle to navigate, that hold surprising gifts…” From the Preface of Unexpected Gifts: Discovering the Way of Community by Christopher L. Heuertz, with a Foreword by Richard Rohr, OFM. 

Alan Jamieson offers a brief review of this 2013 published book. He begins:

“I have just finished reading 'Unexpected Gifts: Discovering the Way of Community' by Christopher L. Heuertz.  

Jean Vanier, himself a world guru on community life, says of the book –"Unexpected Gifts is a prophetic book about the wisdom of community. For nearly two decades, Christopher Heuertz has led the community Word Made Flesh, whose goal is to serve and be with the most miserable and oppressed people of our world, hidden in war-torn lands, slums, and red-light districts of big cities. The community founded in the evangelical church has become ecumenical; members from different churches united in their desire to serve the poorest of the poor, are inspired by Jesus." This high praise by Vanier is backed up by a foreword from Richard Rohr. 

Chapter One looks at community, under the subtitle 'Why bother?', he answers by suggesting that, while God created humanity out of love, God also created out of loneliness, saying: "After all, love, by it's nature is self-giving and needs a subject. And if there is such a thing as divine loneliness, I imagine our need for relationships is one of those subtle indicators that we actually are made in the image of God (pxiv)." 

He is very clear about the difficulties and failures in trying to build community. "I've always been in a variety of communities. The most authentic ones are on a continual journey of failing miserably. In those circles of relationships we've let one another down and disappointed one another: Many of us haven't been the kind of friends we hoped we could be to one another. We haven't always fought fair. We've made plenty of mistakes. Sometimes we have given up on one another. But I believe tragic flaws bear unexpected gifts. I trust in the reasons to stay, even though I've experienced more than adequate excuses to leave most of the communities I've participated in…" 

You can read his complete post here. 

“Without authentic relationships, community is merely a backdrop for someone’s experience of self-discovery, and community members are used up along the way” (p 120).  

David Tacey: The Invitation to Engage with the Present Challenges

“…What if it [the church] ignores the present challenge or does not care enough to take up a dialogue with the world? The yearning for sacredness, spiritual meaning, security, and personal engagement with the spirit are the primary needs and longings of the contemporary world. What is happening if the institutions of faith are so bound up with themselves and resistant to change that they cannot make some contribution to these needs?

Our contemporary situation is full of ironies and paradoxes. Chief among these is that our secular society has given birth to a sense of the sacred, and yet our sacred traditions are failing to recognize the spiritual potential. The gap between critical approaches to Christianity and the simplistic spirituality promoted in lots of churches lies at the heart of so much disillusionment with Christianity today. Many long for an expression of the Christian faith that reconciles heart and head, that offers a positive, engaging spirituality which is also committed to grappling honestly with difficult and painful questions, and which longs to make the world a better place…”

~ David Tacey (original source of quote is unknown me, but quoted in this talk (PDF) by Ian Mobsby). See this recent post. Tacey will be in Hamilton (NZ) early next year to explore some of these themes.

The Churchless

The Barna Group recently published an article summarizing some of their most US research on the “Churchless”. It coincides with the publication of a new book (excerpt here) with the same title. Here are excerpts from the article.

“…4. There Are Different Expectations of Church Involvement

Another intriguing shift among the churchless has to do with their expectations of church involvement. In the early 1990s, our research showed that nearly seven out of 10 adults, if they were to visit a church, would be most interested in attending the Sunday service. Today, weekend worship services remain the most common entry experience, but only slightly; now, only 57% of churchless adults say they would be interested in Sunday worship as their starting point. Today's unchurched are more likely to say they are simply not sure, reflecting their disinterest in churches generally, or are more likely to say they would prefer attending some activity other than the Sunday service.

A similar shift is afoot in terms of the number of churches they would attend. The churchless were asked in both 1993 and in 2011 if they would prefer to be involved in one church or multiple churches in their area. Two decades ago, even the unchurched expressed some sense of church loyalty (albeit hypothetical): 85% said they would expect to attend just one congregation. The recent study reflects a slight loosening of this potential loyalty, but the more notable shifts are among those who don't have a preference and who aren't sure. Together, these percentages doubled from 8% to 16%, reflecting growing cultural indifference to church involvement.

5. There Is Skepticism about Churches' Contributions to Society

Although many of the churchless hold positive views of churches, a substantial number also have no idea what Christians have accomplished in the nation, either for the better or for the worse. When the unchurched were asked to describe what they believe are the positive and negative contributions of Christianity in America, almost half (49%) could not identify a single favorable impact of the Christian community, while nearly two-fifths (37%) were unable to identify a negative impact. Of those who could identify one way Christians contribute to the common good, the unchurched appreciate their influence when it comes to serving the poor and disadvantaged (22%), bolstering morals and values (10%) and helping people believe in God (8%). Among those who had a complaint about Christians in society, the unchurched were least favorably disposed toward violence in the name of Christ (18%), the church's stand against gay marriage (15%), sexual abuse scandals (13%) and involvement in politics (10%)…”

You can read the complete article here. Thanks again to Gabe for bringing, from afar,  the article / Barna book to my attention. For a more Kiwi flavour I highly recommend Alan Jamieson’s research, his first publication being A Churchless Faith: Faith Journey’s Beyond the Churches. 

State of the colony: Resident Aliens at 25

“Twenty-five years ago, Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon sparked a lively debate about church, ministry, and Christian identity with their book Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony. The book called on Christians to think of themselves as "aliens" in American culture who were part of the countercultural ethos of the church and shaped by the biblical witness rather than liberal, capitalist, democratic culture. 

Several major themes in Resident Aliens—the importance of Christian formation in the church; the church as a community set apart from the wider culture; and the end of the "Constantinian" alliance between church on the one hand and state and culture on the other—have since become part of the mainstream theological conversation…”

You can read the rest of the article here. See also this 1991 article by Hauerwas and Willimon – Why Resident Aliens Struck a Chord (PDF).

What lasting impact has the book, and/or the themes it espouses, had on you…?

2015 John Main Seminar – Hamilton, New Zealand

Sadly I won’t be able to make it, however, I wanted to highlight that the 2015 John Main Seminar with again be held in Hamilton at Waikato University. The seminar is being given by the always-fascinating David Tacey (author of the Spirituality Revolution and most recently The Darkening Spirit: Jung, Spirituality and Religion) and will be based around the theme Spirituality and Religion in a Secular Age. The Seminar will be given over 3-days, the 15^th – 18^th January 2015.

It will be preceded by a 3-day pre-seminar retreat led by Laurence Freeman OSB. The theme of the retreat will be Meditation as a Modern Spiritual Path. 

Following the seminar with be 3-day pilgrimage:

“The pilgrimage is a journey to the Bay of Islands and the Hokianga, the cradle of Christianity in New Zealand, and will be led by members of the New Zealand Meditation Community. Christmas Day 2014 marks the bicentennial of the first sermon delivered by Rev. Samuel Marsden, of the Church Missionary Society and Anglican priest. This took place at the Bay of Islands. The first Catholic Mass was celebrated at Totara Point in the Hokianga on 13 January 1838 by the French missionary, Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier. The return trip will include a visit to the famous Waipoua Forest which hosts New Zealand’s largest kauri tree, Tane Mahuta.”

You’ll find all the information you need, here. 

Richard Rohr: Benefiting From What’s Gone from Before, or the Importance of Not Throwing the Baby out with the Bath Water…

The latest Nomad podcast is up…. and it’s Fr. Richard Rohr. After the 10 mins of opening waffle from the show’s hosts 71-year old Rohr is his usual incisive, insightful and provocative self. While there's always some repetition of themes and stories, if you've heard a lot of Rohr, there's still an awful lot of real value in the conversation, and a reminder for me to remain grateful that my formation has been, and continues to be nourished from within a broad Christian tradition – benefiting from West and East.

“…Richard Rohr is a Catholic priest and a Franciscan Friar. He is well connected and respected across Christian traditions (including the emerging church), so he seemed like the perfect person to speak to about what Protestants can gain from Catholic spirituality…” 

You’ll find the podcast here. 

Phyllis Tickle - The Spirit and the Shaping of the Church

The boys at Nomad recently had a fascinating conversation with Phyllis Tickle. One of the questions they asked her was why she ended her trilogy on “Emergence Christianity” (Book 1 & book 2) with a book on the Spirit - The Age of the Spirit: How the Ghost of an Ancient Controversy Is Shaping the Church (pub. Jan 2014). Phyllis believes that a greater, deeper, engagement with the Spirit is essential as we enter this new phase of Church history.

You’ll find the podcast here. 

The Church in 30-Years…?

I was struck by a quote blogged by Jason Goroncy (via Kevin Ward). It was taken from an interview between Ed Stetzer and Distinguished Professor of History Dr. Phillip Jenkins (Baylor). Its an interesting quote and much in it rings true, especially as I reflect on the local churches in my town, and what I see in the wider denomination in which I find myself on the “inside of the outside.” 

The recent Dave Andrew’s interview (and an earlier Graham Ward one) further underlined the issues for me. They also made for an interesting juxtiposition. 

The quote in question is highlighted in bold text almost immediately below. The first part of the Phillip Jenkins interview can be found here. The second here, and the third part (which contains the quote) is here.

Dr. Phillip Jenkins: So much of this change has happened very recently – within 30, 40, 50 years, which in the span of Christian history is not great. It's hardly surprising that some institutions have not adapted fully to take account of that. Other churches, however, recognize it. On a typical Sunday, there are more Assemblies of God worshippers in the greater San Paulo, Brazil area than in the United States. It's a radical change.

Let me suggest to you that in 30 years, there will be two sorts of church in the world. There'll be the ones that are multi-ethnic, transnational, and multi-continental. They are constantly battling over issues of culture, lifestyle, worship, and constantly in conflict, debate and controversy. And those are the good ones. The other churches will have decided to let all these trends pass them by. They'll live just like they've always done with an average age in their congregations of 80. Personally, I'd much rather be in one of the ones that is recognizing, taking account of the expansion with all the debates and controversies.

We are dealing with a movement that comes out of a uniquely American birth. I don't think anyone would argue that Pentecostalism was born anywhere else. But one of the great challenges is how do America and other Western nations make the transition from parent to partner with these other countries that are now taking the lead in some respects. 

Ed: What are some of the principles or characteristics you've seen from churches or movements that have successfully moved into partnerships, moving away from the parent/child relationship that defined missions for centuries?

Dr. Jenkins: Sometimes the greatest mistake that an organization can make is deliberately trying to be flexible or accommodating or have any particular policy at all. I sometimes tell the story of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the French finance minister, calling a meeting with a group of businessmen and entrepreneurs in the late 1600s. Colbert asked the men, "What can I do to help you?" They replied, "Let us be" or in French "Laissez-nous faire," which is the origin of the phrase laissez-faire.

I sometimes think that instead of trying to come up with policies about how to do this, the answer is let things evolve. Let things emerge.”

Progressive Spirituality?

The Spirit of Things (Rachael Kohn) recently featured a show titled: Progressive Spirituality: How Far Can You Go? It reflects on the inaugural Progressive Spirituality Conference  (28-31^st August 2014 / Programme here). 

“The Rev'd Glynn Cardy switched from Anglican (St. Matthews in the City) to Presbyterian and the Rev'd Brenda Rockell is about to switch from (Cityside) Baptist to Anglican. Both are on a search for a more embodied faith that is less about doctrine and dogma and more about living a holistic spirituality with Christ at its centre. From radical politics to ritual expression both ministers were key participants at the inaugural Progressive Spirituality conference held in New Zealand. Includes Pop up Poet Dietrich Soakai and Hamilton parishioner Catherine Polglase.” 

You’ll find the podcast here. Theologian Marcus Borg has been influential in the thinking of so-called “progressive Christianity”. See this recently published (2014) book, for example.