Fuzz Kitto, Sydney-based consultant and international speaker, has teamed up with The Work of the People and To Be Told to produce a series of film clips on Christian faith.
Worship and Mission
It’s not about making worship more exciting. It’s more about connecting worship with an all-week lifestyle of mission. In the past I’ve been involved in introducing new technologies for worship, including the visuals Fuzz talks about. But I strongly relate to the questions Fuzz raises here.
The Work of the People
Does your theology come from a system or from Jesus?
I spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons of the Forge Grassroots Festival based at the UCA Hub in Little Collins Street, Melbourne. Cheryl Lawrie (of [hold :: this space]) (right below), Sam Charlesworth (middle) and Blythe Toll (left below) worked with a team to transform a corporate car park into Holy Ground : : Holy City. I was there to talk with interested people about alternatives to standard models of worship - a conversation deeply enhanced by the environment in which we met.
The burning bush/sacred ground experience of Moses was juxtaposed with the glimpses of God’s redeeming, transforming, hope-giving presence in the cities. iPods hanging from the ceiling showed video clips of the Tianenmen Square protester, the monks protests in Burma, and the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Around the walls and ceilings were projected films and photographs of pedestrian traffic in Melbourne. This was an invitation to explore the small clues to life, including the nature of concrete, cigarette butts and shoes.
In the middle was a space surrounded by security tape, with the words “Do Not Enter”, alongside phrases connecting the sacred ground experience of Moses with our experience.
Out on the wall outside was a chalk outline of the cityscape, with the words “New Earth”, and the invitation to dream of a future life for the city.
It’s now Day Two for the Forge Grassroots Mission Festival in Melbourne. Somewhere around 350 to 400 people have gathered from around Australia to catch up with each other and keep the cutting edge of the missional church movement sharp.
Al Hirsch was in full swing on Thursday, providing a bonus day of input for Forge interns and other interested visitors, talking through his book, The Forgotten Ways. Inspired by the early New Testament church experience, and that of the persecuted churches in China, Al talked about hallmarks of strong vital missional movements. Al spent a fair amount of time in the morning setting the scene for why the church needs to get its act together as incarnational and missional (being sent beyond itself). The afternoon was focused on developing common values, beliefs and practices expressed in practical ways.
Al reflected on the dangers of hierarchical approaches to church expressed in high views of ordination, and attempts to reproduce the Old Testament temple approach to worship. At the same time he expressed concern that ‘house church’ models were limited because they lacked the broadness of community found in the extended household models of the New Testament.
Al has spent the last year in the United States, on a speaking tour and working with leaders there. It was interesting to note his concern about the tendency of some emerging church leaders to lose a sense of confidence in the gospel. Moving past faith into doubt, Al suggested, would put the brakes on any sense of healthy movement. I’m not sure I agree with Al here. Yes, when we stop standing for anything positive we often stop looking beyond ourselves. But there is a season for reassessing and deconstructing before redeveloping expressions of faith that can be held with integrity and passion.
More to Come
It’s not too late to turn up at the Forge conference - at 488 Swanston Street, Carlton, Melbourne. I’ll be taking workshops in the afternoon on ‘post liturgical, post charismatic, post alt worship’, working with Cheryl Lawrie in the basement car park of the Uniting Church Centre, 380 Little Collins Street, 1.30 - 4.30 pm, Saturday and Sunday. Cheryl and team have set up a ’sacred space’ art installation with a focus on life in the city. In the same space Adrian Greenwood and the Praxis team have set up a cafe and exhibit focusing on ending sex traffic.
Stewart and Susan Harris, members of the Forge missional training network in Brisbane, are starting a missional church in the context of Brisbane’s Central Railway Station. Here’s the text from an article recently printed in the Queensland Baptist Magazine…
What is Central?
Central will be a group of Christian ‘City Dwellers’ (people who work in or live in or near the City) forming a church community that will be intentionally shaped by the mission of Jesus. Central will meet on Tuesdays @ 5:30pm in the Dining Car of the Grand Central Hotel (Ann St, opposite the Shrine of Remembrance).
Why meet at Central Railway Station?
Simple answer: because there are lots of people there! It’s going to be great doing church right there in the flow of city life! Our long term goal is to make Jesus and His church more accessible to the average person. Initially a core group will meet to renew their commitment to Christ’s mission. In time, our interested non Christian friends will be able to continue their search by coming along to Central with us.
What will happen at Central?
We will restructure our lives for mission by using Lifestyle – pray, standout, socialize, include, companion*, 5 clues to living mission. So a night might include investigating from the Bible how to live an attractive, distinctive Christian life, discussing a topic dominating culture, planning how to create meaningful social opportunities, praying for friends, learning how to engage people in conversations, discussing ways we can share the gospel in word and action. Most of the evangelism will happen through relationships in the flow of life, not in a building. (* Lifestyle developed by City North Baptist.)
Why meet on Tuesday’s?
First, it’s a good time for ‘City Dwellers’ to meet. People who work in the city can easily come to Central on their way home. Second, it will make some Sunday’s more available for meaningful socializing with non Christian friends. Third, it will be easier for curious ‘City Dwellers’ to access a church community.
If someone joins Central will they have to leave their church?
Yes and No. Central would become the core group’s church. But because we won’t meet on Sundays, people could continue their association with their local church. Central’s aim is to work in partnership with other churches that would release people who share Central’s focus.
Interested? Need more info? Contact Stewart & Susan Harris ssharris at tpg.com.au / 0401 762 121 and come along to an info night on Tuesday October 16, 23, 30.
I’ve written a summary of the presentation by Alan Roxburgh at the seminar held recently in Brisbane. His comments are certainly challenging to consultants, church leaders, speakers and authors.
I wrote the summary first for the benefit of my colleagues in the Uniting Church Queensland Synod Mission Resources Network Team. The Mission Resources Network team is the name given to the growing collaboration occuring between Gary Adsett and Scott Guyatt (Property and Resources Strategies), Graham Beattie (Mission Consultant - Leadership and Congregational Growth), Michael Jeffrey (Youth and Childrens Ministry Unit), Andrew Johnson (Justice and International Mission), Ann Warren (Human Relations), myself (Vision for Mission) and Jenny Tymms (General Secretary).
Forge Missional Training Network Queensland held the second half of its intensive on sustainable spirituality, discipleship, sustainability in a consumerist culture in Brisbane this last weekend.
Steve Said, on loan from Tear Fund in Melbourne, provided some helpful models for development of faith practices related to just lifestyle. He provocatively suggested that many approaches to prayer are more pagan than Christian, treating God as a source of goodies that can be manipulated through magic formulas (my words). He finished Friday with a session on the art of critical contextualization.
My sessions on Saturday focused on generational values and the ways in which we embed the gospel, connecting the Biblical narrative, the context we find ourselves in, and motifs. One of the interesting reflections was the way in which models of church reflect the generational values of those who start and promote them. We contrasted the early Baby Boomer large regional churches with the small alternative communities being started by Gen Xers.
One of the resources that got us talking was John Driver’s Gates to the Cross model, explored earlier here at Gospel Notes.
A highlight for each Forge gathering is the telling of stories from alternative approaches to church. We heard from Joshua Tree on the Sunshine Coast (Steve & Felicity Turner, Kelly Edington) and Pathway (Steve Drinkall). That’s Steve Drinkall on the left below, and Steve Turner on the right.
Mark Driscoll, pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, has hit the emerging church blogosphere this week, with a video clip he provided for the National New Church Conference Church Planting conference in Miami last week. Mark wasn’t able to get to the conference and so sent a videotape of him speaking.
Mark focuses on 2 Timothy 2, the passage in which church planter Timothy is encouraged to be focused, hardworking and able to endure hardship.
“You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs�he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.”
Mark delivers his rant from a military cemetery, with a video closeup to the firm-wristed gun-toting soldier statue. He paints the church planting scene in terms of battleground and body count. He believes that selecting the ‘right man’ is critical to the success of a church plant. He suggests that the core mission is to find men to serve, put them through boot camp, instruct them, and through God’s grace force them to be people who will live as God’s people. “If you want to win a war you have to get the men.” The message, Driscoll says, is Jesus the warrior, king and hero who has fulfilled his mission: leaving his throne in heaven to live a life without sin, dying for our sin, rising from the dead triumphant over Satan, sin and death, and ascending into heaven. The message, Driscoll says, is not about some marginalised Gallilean peasant hippie in a dress rocking out to the Spice Girls in a cabriolet hoping to meet nice people to do aromatherapy with while drinking herbal tea. The snapshot from John in Revelation is of Jesus in his glory returned home as a triumphant warrior and victor.
Interestingly Mark’s video was just before Bill Hybels presented the closing address for the conference. Hybels simply suggested that church planting needed women in leadership before proceeding on to his talk.
Clearly the soldier image does it for some men. And some women. However the writer of 2 Timothy goes on to use the image of athlete and farmer as well. The early church would have had a healthy percentage of pacifists for whom the military connotations would have been repugnant.
I don’t agree with Mark’s commitment to use only men in church leadership roles. But I can sympathise with his efforts to develop a concept of church that will equip and inspire people with the Y chromosome. So are there models and metaphors that provide the sense of challenge and focus needed by men today?
Denny Weaver, in his book, Nonviolent Atonement, works with the Christus Victor concept in a way that clearly portrays Jesus as an alternative to the stereotypes of ‘macho marine’ and ‘gay hippie’. I’ve written a brief review of his Nonviolent Atonement at GodPost this week.
If we want to talk about being focused, hard working and enduring hardship we can learn from sportswear companies like Adidas. I’m aware of the questionable work practices of these companies, but we can learn from their advertising agencies!
Adidas, in its latest ‘Impossible is Nothing’ campaign, invites sports and adventure role models to talk about the toughest times of their lives, using art, animation and gritty honesty. They’ve interviewed women and men, young and old, and enabled each to cross the artificial boundary between creativity and gutsiness. Adidas doesn’t need to ignore women to attract male customers.
Anarchist and Christian traditions have often shared a commitment to non-domination, creative cooperation and the equality of all people. Not often has either movement been associated with the other - but anarchist principles can easily identified throughout the Bible story and Church history. Last year a group of people from the ANZAC countries met in New Zealand to explore Christian Anarchism in our context and this year they’re meeting again - and it’s an open meeting! The annual conference of the South Pacific Christian Anarchists (SPCA) will be held in Brisbane, 22-24 June, 2007.
Sessions (subject to some facilitators not being in jail) are likely to include:
Indigenous expressions of anarchy and faith in Aotearoa: Graham Cameron, Urban Vision, NZ
Why anarchists can’t be missionaries: Manu Caddie, Pacific Centre for Participatory Democracy, NZ
Peacemaking at Pine Gap: Jim Dowling and Donna Mulhearn, Christians Against ALL Terrorism, Pine Gap
Christianarchy - Being the Change you want to see in the world: Dave Andrews, Waiters Union, Brisbane
Power With, Power From Within, and Power Over: Jason Macleod, Non-violence activist and trainer, Brisbane
I mentioned in my review of the Forge Conference that Wolfgang Simson was a hyperbolic metaphoric passionate speaker. Well what do you know, he’s also a very approachable correspondent. I’ve had some very useful email conversation with Wolfgang in response, exploring the context and meaning of my remarks and his.
The ‘hyperbolic’ is tied up with the large number of house churches planted by the people Wolfgang met in India, Indonesia and Bangladesh. I got the impression he was being given numbers by church planters that couldn’t be corroborated. No doubt there had been a large number of groups started throughout these countries. But to give the numbers (was it 20,000?) was, I inferred, an example of hyperbole. Not lies. Maybe exaggeration. We got the point - that developing a reproducing theme at the heart of a church planting movement is so important.
Wolfgang responded by explaining that he had came from a background of healthy cynicism in which he set out to test claims of church growth, first in Europe and later in Asia. He provides some background to the people working and researching in India, Egypt, Indonesia and Bangladesh. It was good to hear Wolfgang’s life context and story.
When someone mentioned to me during the conference that they were having difficulty coping with the incredible stories of rapid church multiplication, I shared a story from my life in NZ. It was September 15, 2001. I was at a ministers gathering in Tokoroa, New Zealand, hearing from the AOG pastor who had just returned from India. He told us about incredible responses to the gospel from crowds of people there. He did acknowledge that a response at a revival meeting was not the same as a life-long response of world-changing action. He shared about the miracles, including people being brought back to life. We talked about the different environments, wondering if the Indian people were more open to anything happening.
When I returned home I discovered an ambulance at the front and a crowd gathered around. My wife was standing by the pavement distraught. On the road was my 18 month old daughter who had been hit by a car. She’d died on impact. A neighbour was administering CPR but it wasn’t working. I prayed to God with every bit of earnestness possible. I rushed into the house and rang the church where there was a worship service about to start, to ask for the prayers of the congregation. But Kristen didn’t come back to life. She would have turned 16 yesterday.
So how did I feel about those stories of resuscitation from India? How did the AOG pastor feel about this tragedy? We didn’t have much to say to one another. Neither event made the other impossible. As you can imagine, my wife and I felt dampened in our faith. We already knew that prayer is not magic. We knew that God suffers with us in difficulty. But mustering up the courage and grace to pray for God to intervene was hard for a while. We winced when we heard the story of a young man being revived through prayer at a crash scene not far away. Why didn’t God intervene at our crash scene? But it wasn’t long before we found ourselves plunged into God’s merciful intervention in the world again. It was the faith of our three year old daughter that led to praying for the healing of a friend’s broken arm, with amazing results.
The stories of amazing effectiveness go together with the stories of incredible struggle. And visa versa.
Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
