Another rant..... Identity and navel gazzing

Around the Anglican church at the moment i hear the word identity thrown around quite a bit - and the need to define who we are before we can engage in the task of mission. What crap, when Jesus sent out the the 12 did he say find out who you are and then go??? I don't think so.
It seems to me that in working with young people and looking at the scriptures the identity issues comes through a process of action and reflection, sitting around in conference rooms contemplating our navels does not tell us anything. Messing our way through the mission of Christ, engaging with those around us, screwing up and saying sorry tells us far more about Christ's mission. Why on earth can we not just get on and Christ's hand and feet instead of being his navel
Don Tamihere often uses a phrase which I think is great and I thinks sums up some of the problem "aren't we supposed to be Angli Cans and not Angli Can'ts."

Tagged for Jesus

I got Tagged the other day from a local youth group person. Not having a clue what that meant I had a look on the site was kind of confused by the whole thing. I guess like My Space, beebo and some of the MSN groups before them it is a way of socialising, semi anonymously with people from around the world. It struck me as being kind of weird, not that i don't think socialising is a good idea but there does seem to be an element of collecting people and their links, just like I collect Psychedelic Firs Cd's or my wife use to collect stamps - i think there is a real danger in this type of phenomenon that people become numbers and not a lot else. We call it making friend but is it really, or is it making transactions?
It reminds me a lot of how I have seen many Christians approach evangelism. In my BC days I had quite a few Christian contacts who only i think wanted to know me because they saw me as a potential convert, and a good one at that having been a new age Church of Scientology type with a leaning towards being a goth. It all came to a head one day when I accused one of the people of only being interested in me because they saw me as another notch on their crucifix. Needless to say after this spread many of these people wanted nothing to do with me, to them I was just a link a transaction.
I guess this experience has really shaped my approach to evangelism in the fact that I don't believe in it - and yet people often tell me I am an evangelist. I do however believe in relationships, sharing bread in whatever form that may be and I am also not ashamed about what I believe. I believe the gospel is good news, but I don't want to deliver it like postman carrying a bill, but I do want to demonstrate it and i believe that relates to the whole of what I do, whether it be smiling at a stranger who has had a bad day, and being patient with the check out assistant, it also means that i am not as quick as i used to be to judge others but would rather encourage them and dare i say it try to relate to them. I do not want to tag people for Jesus, people are not a commodity or a link to be collected.

The Easter Instalation...

Please note the absence of Hedeghogs

books,

I have been attempting to plow my way through some books over the last few months, some i would want to reccomend others - well I had to wonder why I read them:

Bored with God - nice title but very misleading - should have been I suspect bored with Church as that is what the book is about mainly - comming to terms with young people who (like many adults) find church boring. Wasn't the greatest book i have looked at - sorry could not read the whole thing - it was a little boring. Struck me though how in spite of the fact we talk about faith alone and christ alone as all important we still fall into a standard Church alone...

Presence-Centered Youth Ministry, working my way through this but am really enjoying it, its nice to find a book aimed at people who have been in youth ministry long term. And also nice to see that others are realising the focus of youth ministry sould be ministry and formation - the title says it all realy. Mike has a blog that is worth looking at too -

Exiles - A very worth while read for anyone interested in all things missional, It's not just about being a missional church for chnage but looks at some aspects of living out your faith in a post christendom climate. It's deffinatly a book for the times, dealing with discipleship through more holistic eyes. While many of the thoughts are nto new Frost has done a great job of gleaning and unpacking much of the thought surrounding missional living. Not neccesarily a great introduction to being missional as I think Frost is a little too academic at times, but I would recomend it as a follow up to something like Out of Bounds Church .

Bono has a new book...

Bono - On The Move

"The one thing, on which we can all agree, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor. God is in the slums and in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. 6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality." --Bono

My daughter the artist, Jesus and the hedgehog

My six year old daughter is building an art instalation in our back garden at the moment. It involves 3 crosses, a dozen pine cone disciples, a sad looking Jesus, one good criminal and on bad criminal - It's of course a crucifixtion scene.
It amazes me that the depth of sprirtuality that occurs in such a small child and devotion to not only doing this but doing well. Over three nights she has worked on this, putting time and effort into it - even sawing some of the wood herself.
But it also amazes me the depth of devotion and care she has for this "art" too, on Monday night when it was all finished and she was off to bed she suddenly ran outside torch in hand to check on her instalation. She was mortified to see on of the crosses lying face down on the dirt. It seems our friendly neighbourhood hedegehog had stepped into the instalation to inspect, and knocked Jesus down... Needless to say my daughter stood up the cross again and chassed away the hedgehog...

The Soil of Community

The last few years have been rather difficult for me – in terms of my faith. It’s not that I have lost it in fact I think it may be stronger, but I have struggled with the place of community.
When I lived and pastored in Christchurch I would constantly talk about community, and spent lot of time telling the people I worked with if they could be a Christ centred community and do community everything else would take care of itself. However the house of cards I believed in fell down and I know realise that thought we talk community, we have little experience of true community.

A year or so ago I was introduced to the thinking of Anthropologist Victor Turner through listening to Michael Frost. Turner suggests that we should think about this somewhat differently. He offers the concept of communitas instead of community. According to Turner, communitas grows out of liminality (that is a state of ambiguity, openness, and uncertainty). This transition state opens the possibility for new ways of thinking, feeling and acting. Subsequently differences between participants also become less important and hence a truer sense of what we believe community should be grows.

Out of this liminal environment grows what Turner calls communitas, a new social structure that is based on equality and common experience. The focus then is not on building community, but due to a common experience a ‘type’ of community grows.

Turner was talking specifically about tribal initiation cultures and there importance in bringing life to the WHOLE tribe. But I think many of us see the same type of phenomenon in natural disasters, mission experiences, camps, dare I say even fundraising events etc. things that take us out of the ordinary and literally through us together. In Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture. Frost notices this is what happened with the first followers of Jesus, they were: “Men who otherwise would have nothing to do with each other are thrown together by their shared devotion to Jesus, and as they journey together, they develop a depth of relationship that literally turned the world upside down.”I think the key is that when the church focuses on mission, communitas naturally develops. But when the church tries to create “community,” it often goes bad.
“The hunger for community is a legitimate one, but to pursue it for its own sake is the mistake. When we seek to build community without the experience of liminality, all we end up with is pseudo-community that pervades many churches." Exiles, page 121

A commitment to mission then is the soil out of which community grows.

Duffy Robbins in New Zealand

Baptist Youth Ministries and Canterbury Youth Services are hosting Duffy Robbins while he is here in NZ during June. Should be a great opportunity to hear one of the great grandfathers of youth ministry. He is also speaking at the National Youth Ministry Convention on the Gold Coast in Australia which i am planning on attending - so may be a double dose of Duffy is the order for this year

rural or urban

I work in a diocese that has a mix of very rural and very urban parishes. Though among that there are plenty that are border line too. Last week i went to great lengths explaining to someone that i believed in spite of geography that one particular parish was more urban in it's shaping.
I went to visit that parish yesterday and on arrival had to reappraise my view of whether it was rural or urban. . Imagine my surprise then when i arrived in the car park yesterday to to be greeted by a couple of cows being rounded up by the local vicar..... not quite as urban as I had thought.

Rites of passage

One of my 'hobbies' over the last few years - particularly because I am working as part of a church that has them is looking at the idea and ideology of rites of passage, in particular baptism and confirmation. Today i had coffee with a guy who is involved in a group that is developing and running initiation rites and rites of passage for youth and adults. It was interesting for many reasons but the similarities in the issues were glaringly obvious, he was coming from more of a New Age/universal truth direction, while I am hoping that i come from a more Christian/ church tradition approach. I believe we can glean and learn from what this group have discovered. I came away quite excited about some possibilities thoughts and issues that this group have encountered. But i guess also what excites me is a recognition that the the Spirit of God is alive and well and blowing where he/she/it chooses too.

It's official teen behaviour is caused by brain damage

Now this won't be new information to some but apparently teenage behaviour is caused by changes in a teens brain make up. Fortunately they normally come right and develop into sensible, nice, well mannered adults, like this guy who was in Auckland last week....

Life Sucks....

Several years back I posted as I occasionaly do a sermon on the web site Sermon Central at the time I became almost famous with somewhere in the region of 300 people viewing it in a matter of 2 - 3 weeks. I was however forced to take it of and resubmit it with a different title and some editing. Why because it was called "Life Sucks", and apparently as one of the many complaining emails I got pointed out Sucks has Sexual connotations. Imagine that an every day word here in NZ has sexual connotations, in all honesty I did not know that (call me naive), so I thought with the web masters and the dozen or so people who objected via email for creative and artistic and cultural recognition of the word sucks as meaning really bad. My argument was simple, and I gave examples of words that went the other way, namely - fanny, where i grew up it ain't what people from America think it is, I pointed out how offensive I found the theme tune to the TV series the Nanny with Fran Drescher glorified a word that much of the world was disgusted by. I also pointed out that Tramp in our culture has nothing to do with prostitutes and that i objected to the censorship of Corrie Ten Boon's book Tramp for the Lord. But alas I was defeated and forced to resubmit (but if you look at the sermon on line you'll notice the checker at their site missed one offending sucked).
SO why am I writing this - well it's not to plead for tolerance, but just to point out that even some Americans don't think the word has sexual connotations. Had to laugh at this article. Would love to start a protest group to recognise and save the word SUCKS from dirty minded people.r

"its not the Christianity has being tried and failed. Its that it has never really being tried"

Been pondering on this quote for a few weeks but could not remeber who said it - apparently it was G.K. Chesterton.... Not the most handsome person to grace the planet but certainly one of the greatest minds, and someone whose thoughts seem to speak volumes in today's climate.
particuarly like this other quote from him too...
"Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance." - The Speaker, 12/15/00
I think he might be a prize fighter when it comes to philosophy sucks you in and then deals a killer punch...

Sympahty for the U.S of A

Just been reading an article in the February Relevant magazine where the American writer was very critical of the attitudes of the so called ugly Americans who were on plane with him. While there is a sterotypical ugly American that i think we are all aware of i thinks it's a gross injustice to single them out. Here in NZ we have ugly Kiwi's too, while they have there own characterisitics they can be equally and gruff, abusive and loud as ugly American's. To the ugly American's out there i want to say you are not alone, you have brothers and sisters in many nations.....

What is Anglican Worship?

John over at colourful dreamer, has been thinking hard and getting in to some minor scraps over the subject of worship - particularly as to what constitutes Anglican Worship? While the question of what constitutes Anglican worship and what doesn't may be interesting - it personally think it misses the point, and places the understanding of worship into far too small a box. A box that i don't think reflects the gospel, the early churches understanding of and most certainly the emerging churches understanding of worship.
While it's good to focus on what makes something distinctive, it too easily overlooks what we mean by worship any way.
I think we need to get away from the worship is what we do on Sundays' mindset. Now i hear o lot of people saying that worship is a 24/7 thing and that is it exactly but we say that and still get obsessed with what happens on Sunday - and i think the Anglican worship debate falls into that too easily...
It's interesting to note that the five fold mission of the Anglican Church has only just recently been expanded to six by adding - To worship and celebrate the grace of God...
given this late addition surely what constitutes Anglicans at worship is more then than what we do on a Sunday Morning - Anglican worship then is about:

• Proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom
• Teaching, baptising and nurturing new believers
• Responding to human needs by loving service
• Transforming the unjust structures of society
• Striving to safeguard the integrity of creation, and to sustain and renew the life of the earth.

If what we do on Sunday morning reflects that then surely then we have Anglicans in worship, I guess i am more interested in the worship we offer when we are scattered rather than what we do when we gather.

And I guess a church that reflected some of those values and not just gave lip service to them would be truly exciting, a great place to belong - and dare i say it damned attractive to the world around