Pilgrim's Progress

My Dream (part 2)

I dream of being a genuine, vulnerable leader. Leadership is good, but too often we have a kind of class system of "leaders" and "everybody else". No more! The leadership "class" can fake spirituality, lead because they're paid to, insist on being treated better, take advantage of their position, keep up appearances. No more! No room for "smooth", glossy, professional (in the wrong sense), "me up here, you down there", "I'm sorted now I can help you" leaders.

Instead ... to dare to be seen for who we are, as pilgrims on the way, sometimes surprised to find ourselves out front leading because we know ourselves well, constantly in need of God's grace, and daring to let ourselves be on display as a worked example of that grace in action, and YET not afraid to give a strong lead when needed, not afraid to speak boldly when called, not afraid to let the power of God work through us when prompted, not afraid to confront in love, not afraid to endure the loneliness of costly decisions ...

Is this possible? I believe so ... It's a dream that scares me, but it won't go away!

"We are called to intentional, deliberate vulnerability."
(from the Rule of the Northumbria Community)

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."
(Leonard Cohen: "Anthem")

I dream of a church that strives for visible genuineness. Church with glass walls, or no walls - so that if it's real, people will see ... if it's fake, people will see.

Perfect example here - Bishop John Sentamu living rough for a week in York Cathedral, to pray for the Middle East, and having many significant encounters as he does so.

"Come on, bring a noise, let the woooorrrrld know we're around, how we get on, how we get down."
(MC Conrad - from a Drum'n'Bass DJ set with LTJ Bukem)

All of this "My Dream" stuff has been a kind of Martin Luther King moment - like a glimpse of the Promised Land - it's a scary, costly dream and I don't know if we'll get there, but it's where I wanna go and take others with me.

I subtitled my blog "In relentless pursuit of REAL" and I reaffirm this today! If I have to perform, or fake it to do what I do, I will leave and do something else.

My Dream

I haven't dipped into the emerging church conversation lately, but a few thoughts have been bubbling round lately, as my new post draws closer:

My dream is to simply live out authentic Christian community that nurtures the body of Christ and welcomes others in. Is this church or mission? I dream of a community that no longer makes that distinction, but simply lives authentically and open-heartedly before the world in a way which is both attractive to anyone at any stage of faith, and prophetic, in that lives out and proclaims the Good News.

Similarly, my dream is simply to be the body of Christ. Is this "inherited" or "emerging"? I dream of a community that no longer makes that distinction. We will no longer stop to decide which label fits, or which camp we belong to, but we'll simply get on with living out our callings, while blessing the diversity in the body.

My own primary passion is to get in amongst the existing church and see it renewed in every way, to see it stirred up and roused, renewed and cleansed, re-discovering its calling. I spoke to Ben at New Wine, who told me he'd spoken to a number of people who also felt this call. I sense the call to work within the walls to be a "stirrer-upperer", rather than a pioneer on fresh ground. Neither do I feel called to be a "parish plodder", simply cranking the handle and keeping church ticking over.

What's your dream? What's your passion?

One body gathered round Christ ... one Lord, one faith, one hope ... break dividing walls.

You'll Never Walk Alone: The Need to Belong

If I had a fiver for each time I've heard "new monasticism" recently, I'd be rich. Time will tell how much of it is fad or trend, and how much is the emergence of a widespread move of God's Spirit.

What draws me is the call to a consistent spiritual life that works through thick and thin, sustained by disciplines, some kind of rule of life, promises and so on.

But aside from that, I believe it's a call to a strongly relational life, not a solitary, self-contained spiritual existence. It bothers me that Western society is becoming more solitary and isolated (and lonely), and Christians are not exempt from this. We need to belong somewhere, even to a dispersed community held together by shared values and practices.

Two interesting articles here and here. Also see Odyssey blog about the formation of a new Order of Mission (not the same as the St Thomas Sheffield one). (Image from here)

Greenbelt Mullings

Had a great time at Greenbelt last weekend. Was there with the DREAM network from Liverpool running an event called "Out of the Darkness". Here's how it looked as people gathered ... the barbed-wire covered bathed in rich deep red light cross was quite moving.

I managed to find time earlier in the day to uncoil and take in the sights and sounds (my first time!). Will definitely be back.

One thing I loved was bumping into so many people I knew from so many different places, and having some great (and gritty) conversations.

It was a really good experience to be part of DREAM, in the conceiving, planning, and implementing of "Out of the Darkness" and the way we pulled together as a team. More, Lord!

P.S. I think the record for "most sightings at the Organic Beer Tent" goes to John Davies.

Greenbelt

Off to catch the second half of Greenbelt tomorrow. Oh I know you've been there since Friday but some of us have weddings, funerals and church services to conduct!

As part of the DREAM network in Liverpool, I'll be involved in running "Out of the Darkness" in New Forms 1 venue, Monday, 5:00pm.

Come and look us up, or see you there ... alternatively, if you're reading this afterwards, and came to the event, and would like to offer some comments or feedback, please leave a comment here or at the DREAM site. Thanks.

Emerging Church: The Church of the Emptied, Part 1

Christian counterculture. I'm sure John Stott used it as a book title many moons ago. More recently I read blog posts that set me thinking about this.

My counter-cultural plea to the church, whether solid, liquid, emerging, submerging or whatever, is this ... Can we aim to be "the church of the empty", or perhaps more accurately "the church of emptied"?

I heard a quote recently ... "the time of the Christian superstar is over". Can we say the time of the emptied is beginning?

"He emptied himself" (Phil 2:7) - this seems to imply a setting aside of rank privilege, desire for reputation, refusal to make a name for himself, a refusal to build an empire ... I wonder, as I search my own heart, and am being deeply searched in these days, where we as the church, both personally and corporately need to be emptied.

Alt.Worship or "Altertainment?"

Now that student placement is over, I can say that one of the best things has been creating digital artwork for use in worship.

It's great when the creation of the artwork is woven into the worship. I would love to have the facilities to create digital art live during an act of worship and weave them in. Watch this space! I also find that making beautiful things for God is one of my favourite ways to worship. (The theme of our most recent DREAM in Haydock worship)

However, there are some issues to work through with more exploratory\media rich worship:

Emerging Leadership: Broken or Intact?

Continuing this series - another two extremes in tension with each other ...

What kind of leaders will turn out to be most effective in the emerging church? Should a leader be intact or broken? Both? Once again, this is thinking in progress but here goes with trying to tease it out a bit ... please throw in your own thoughts and wisdom ...

1. Intact Leaders have got it all together
   Broken Leaders have been taken apart.
2. Intact Leaders have all the answers
   Broken Leaders have lots of questions.
3. Intact Leaders earn admiration
   Broken Leaders earn respect.
4. Intact Leaders focus their energies on leading
   Broken Leaders focus their energies on following.

My own journey of discipleship and emerging leadership is (for now at least) one of being taken apart and put back together, not one of smooth perfection ... God seems to desire complete surrender as much as radical effectiveness. See also ...

A Prayer ... may God break us gently until we learn to walk in joyful submission, that he might raise us up to be mighty and humble in his service.

Emerging Leadership: Necessary or Unnecessary?

I believe books have seasons. More than once a book bought in haste, or because it "looked interesting", or because it was the trendy book a while ago, comes "into season". It comes into "kairos" - to use the New Testament word - its message suddenly bursts into life for us.

As my student chaplaincy placement nears its end, one such book for me is "The Unnecessary Pastor" by Eugene Peterson. My previous post asked the question about Institutional or Incarnational leaders.

Let me do the same again with two other categories, after Peterson: The Necessary Leader and the Unnecessary Leader (Necessary \Unnecessary is used of the leader's attitude to him or herself). Again I paint the extremes to give us something to kick against - it's not either/or.

Emerging Leadership: Institutional vs. Incarnational

Something struck me about emerging leadership today - may have blogged about it before. Ah yes, here it is.

I have not really had an official leadership role on my student placement, so have felt what it is like to need to earn respect through relationship, involvement in shared activities, investing in others, participation, and so on, rather than just expecting it because I'm ordained.

In a small way, this echoed something Henri Nouwen wrote on leadership (on his move from Harvard to L'Arche community): "Not being able to use any of the skills that had proved so practical in the past was a real source of anxiety. I was suddenly faced with my naked self, open for affirmations and rejections ... all dependent on how I was perceived in the moment. In a way it seemed as though I was starting my life all over again. Relationships, connections, reputations could no longer be counted on." (In the name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership, p15-16)

"Evaporated Church"

I think we need a new term: Evaporated Church. This might help avoid calling any old gathering of Christians "church". Liquid church may be a legitimate term for new forms of church, but evaporated church is simply Christians happening to be together without any intention of being a group. In an evaporated state, particles have a looser association than in a liquid.

I thought of this as I read Hirsch & Frost's words:

"It’s tempting, in our efforts to strip back the church from the empire created by Christendom, to overdo it and end up with the belief that any old bunch of believers sitting together in the same room is a church. But the six of us sitting around that table that night, were not a church.

1. We had made no mutual commitments
2. We shared no long-term calling
3. We were completely unaccountable to one another
4. Our purpose for gathering was mainly social.

... we were doing some of the things a church might do, but our involvement was not permanent.

We don’t think a church is just any old bunch of Christians who have bumped into each other. Neither do we think that a group of Christians who gather for a specific mission purpose is necessarily a church."

Comments?

Em Church: Proclamation or Exploration

Am midway through my student work\em.church placement and find a bit of an identity crisis looming! I realised, on a moment's reflection, that it goes right the way back to early days of Pilgrim's Progress and also here.

Is there a place for proclamation (in the broadest sense) in em.church?
(Frost & Hirsch's model of em.ch would say so: Proximity, Practice the Presence, Powerlessness & Proclamation)

In mission to the contemporary spiritual seeker, must proclamation give way to exploration?

Is there a middle ground? A place for both?

Emerging Church & Postmodern Loneliness

An image that seems to express recent thinking both about Postmodern Loneliness & Emerging Church.

I wonder if the following two forces might propel different people into association with emerging church:

1. Flight from loneliness & existential dread (e.g. the fear of non-existence)
2. Flight towards belonging & connectedness

In other words, the forces that push emerging church together may constitute emerging communities that are both SHELTERS and GATHERING PLACES ... (continue reading for an essay extract on this subject)

Emerging Church & Masculinity

Recent blog posts have swung between these two topics but they are deeply intertwined. A recent post suggested some kinds of people might be found in emerging church. I'd like to add some more, with an eye to what kinds of men & young men we might encounter:

1. never-been-fathered
2. never-been-initiated
3. never-been-mentored
4. never-been-believed-in
5. etc ...

I wonder if some of those who will be drawn to em.church are seeking those very things ...

I am currently reading and meditating on a very helpful article by Franciscan Richard Rohr about "Father Hunger" - read it here.

Do we recognise any of these lacks in ourselves, as we also identify them in those we encounter? Following a comment in "Mission Shaped Church", the leaders of em.church are going to have to walk the walk before others will respect their talk ... if Richard Rohr is right, then what is needed is less sharing of opinions, roles and so forth, and more sharing our our very selves.

More to come on this I think ...

Emerging Church: One Title, Many Flavours?

Who is "Emerging Church" for?

I wonder how many "fresh expressions" of church are struggling to know what they should become because the needs of these different groups are so diverse and in tension with each other?

I know of one instance where there was some difficulty in defining core aims and objectives because there was a mixture of people for whom this was their only church, and others who came while belonging to another (usually more traditional) church elsewhere.

Does anyone have other experiences of this kind of tension?

1. never-been-to-church ...


2. used-to-go-to-church ...


3. bored-of-church ...


4. hurt-by-church ...


5. disillusioned-with-church ...


6. my-life-got-messy-and-they-didn't-want-to-know-me-any-more-at-church ...


7. spiritual-but-don't-want-to-join-a-church ...

Church is where Jesus is ...

Two helpful quotes about fresh expressions of church:

'Within many churches, this aspect of the body of Christ has been expressed through the idea of every-member ministry. Liquid church extends this idea and again reverses its sequence. Instead of church being a place where everyone can have a ministry, liquid church emerges out of the active ministries of everyone who is joined to Christ. As people join to Christ and communicate Christ with one another, the networked pattern that grows from this faithful communication of believers is identified as church.'
(Pete Ward, "Liquid Church" p39)

'If "church" is what happens when people encounter the Risen Jesus and commit themselves to sustaining and deepening that encounter in their encounter with each other, there is plenty of theological room for diversity of rhythm and style, so long as we always have ways of identifying the same living Christ at the heart of every expression of Christian life in common.'
(+Rowan Williams in the Foreword to "Mission Shaped Church")

Can't See Heaven for the Flashing Lights

Pictures best viewed with "I Want More" from new Faithless album "No Roots" in the background (Spotted it on Playlist of Hopeful Amphibian's blog)

Ideas and visions for new expressions of church can be very "structural" i.e. what's new church going to be made of?

These snaphots of the foyer of the City Art Gallery in Manchester reminded me that it doesn't matter what the lifts and stairs are made of, or how attractive they look. The question in worship is "where will they take us if we climb them?"

Are worshippers taken up into the presence of God, or do they stay on ground level oohing and aahing at the nice "architecture"? (It is nice architecture though!)

I want worshippers to be curious - what will happen if I go with this? Where might it end up? Do we show them where the first step is? Where the lift button is? Is it obvious where to start climbing should they wish to do so?

Recent experience would suggest that the first step in creating curiosity might be asking the right question and resisting the temptation to rush in with an immediate answer.

As mentioned in a previous post, someone said recently that at the end of the Christian basics course in which we used a Matrix clip, they were curious "to follow the rabbithole to see where it went."

Creating a Culture of Welcome

Kind of grew up with this CHURCH GOOD - WORLD BAD worldview. Then I realised one day some years back that some of my colleagues were living more integrated, connected, selfless lives than I was ... OUCH!

Today has seen me talking to a number of people who as far as I know are not regular churchgoers, who we have got to know a bit through some Christian Basics work we do as part of baptism preparation, and I came away realising that they were no longer strangers to us, and that many of them have commented on the welcome they feel at church.

(By the way our baptism prep is fairly clear about the basics of the Christian faith and the seriousness of the promises made, but we major on the fact that they matter as people to us.)

My heart leapt inside me - it reminded me of a question that is turning into a mission priority for me a church leader ...

How do we create a culture of welcome? How do we draw people into a genuine belonging so that when we get to the challenging stuff, we've earned an audience with them?

This was one major theme of the main talks at this year's New Wine leaders conference in Liverpool (where Graham Cray spoke).

This is not about being permissive or woolly ... can any of us say we were fully healed up and morally pure before being allowed to belong? Doesn't even the most faithful and holy disciple still have some way to go?

"Leading from the Leading Edge"

I'm still buzzing about Graham Cray's presentation on "Mission Shaped Church" I heard recently. How someone can answer most of my key questions and concerns in an hour's presentation short of actually reading my mind is quite amazing.

Some key quotes:

"The place of leadership is at the leading edge modelling engagement with the culture in the name of the gospel"

"The pastor apostle is one who forms congregations into mission groups shaped by encounters with the gospel in culture - structuring the congregations forms into shapes that lead people outward into a missionary encounter ... but in this kind of congregation, the pastor will only be able to lead as he or she models the encounter with the culture" (Alan Roxborough)

This resonates with me and where I believe I'm headed ... anyone else relate to this?

New Life ... from Above or from Below?

On my recent holiday I read "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho ... it's a fascinating fable which has sold 20 million copies in 65 languages.

I'm also fascinated by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and its success as a book and on film.

I also read recently that a sizeable chunk of ticket sales for Star Wars films were people going several times hoping, a report claimed, "for a religious experience".

I mull over this, and wonder what would make fans of the above stories turn to the Christian story to find meaning.

I find I am led in two possibly conflicting directions to seek an answer (see previous post, Postmodern Revivalism):

1. Wanting to creatively reimagine church for a fragmented, networked postmodern culture (my GenX creative streak)
   
2. A longing to see widespread revival in the church and in the nation by God's sovereign initiative (my revivalist streak)

These are woven together in a recent song lyric ...
Salvation spring up from the ground (grass roots renewal)
Lord, rend the heavens and come down (revival from above)

Perhaps a diverse culture requires a diversity of approach ... maybe it's "both and" ...

Postmodern Revivalism?

I have two spiritual passions that are sometimes hard to reconcile:

1) The passion for "emerging church"
2) The longing for revival in our nation - for a decisive and unmistakable outpouring of God's power on church and nation.

I was encouraged at a recent gathering of church leaders (New Wine) to hear Bishop Graham Cray manage to stir both longings in the same talk! COME ON!!!

The truth is I believe in both: - in creatively reimagining church, and also that God is drawing the existing church back to its true identity and calling. So maybe there is no tension at all!

So I will continue to pray for revival, in whatever form it pleases God to grant it, but also that the renewed church will find itself radically imaginative and courageous in proclaiming and demonstrating the Kingdom of God.

Who is My Enemy?

Who is My Enemy? ...The title of a thought-provoking book by Rich Nathan - pastor of an American Vineyard church. (It is praised by Brian McLaren which gives it a certain kudos in today's post-modern climate).

The thing that attracted me to this book was firstly hearing him speak, and secondly the book's subtitle, "welcoming people the church rejects". He spoke at the New Wine national leaders conference in May 2003 about, amongst other things "Creating a Culture of Welcome" and that has really influenced how I seek to do ministry in my church.

I liked that he managed to talk of welcome without making it sound woolly and permissive.

Torn in Two ...

As a GenX church leader with a foot in two generations of the church I am torn between:
(1) the need to be anchored in the historic Christian faith and to learn from the older and wiser who've gone before
(2) the need to "get out of the box", dismantle the box and use the wood to build something new

I'm calling myself GenX as a convenient label, but I'm really a pilgrim at heart ... my life mission is ... to follow Jesus wherever it leads and whatever it costs ... and in the last 6 years this has taken me on a journey beyond anything I would ever have imagined.

Is anyone else in this position? i.e. you find yourself serving in a very traditional denomination of the church or some organisation, but there's a restless energy inside you that wants to break out and do something fresh and new?

When is Liquid Church no longer church?

What do you think about all this "Liquid Church" stuff?

'People are meeting in homes or with their friends or in the pub and saying that it is church. But is that enough? For us it has to be more than just fellowship. We want to see at least a commitment to the Trinity, the wider church and the sacraments.'