::Theology-Christians Wrong about Heaven... Always witty N.T. Wright gives an insightful interview on Time magazine's web site. Thanks to Tim for the spot.

Labels: Church, Culture, Theology

  Posted by Stephen @ 12:44 PM   0 comments

::Rants-FINISHED! Sorry it has taken SOOOOOOOOO long but those of you who have been patiently been waiting for me to figure out how to convert Powerpoint files to Flash, here it is!

The Spirituality of Gen Y Presentation

This is a shrunken down version (file size wise) of a presentation I made to a gathering of Victorian church leaders a few months ago regarding the Spirituality of Gen Y in response to the report recently tabled and presented.

Enjoy!

Labels: Church, Culture, Gen Y, Missiology, Rants, Spirituality

  Posted by Stephen @ 11:29 AM   0 comments

::Chuch-Why we make it hard for people to come... I have had quite a few discussions (dare I say arguments?) with people recently regarding the way we go about doing missio Dei. I was having an email conversation with someone about this (don't worry, it was quite civil) and I wrote this to respond to some of their questions. I thought it would make a good blog entry...

We use some strange terminology, like initiation, I know. One of the main reasons we do this is because a few of us do a bit of public speaking and preaching outside of our community. Consequently it is easy to attract Christian people who want to check things out. If we are not careful, it would be pretty easy to get a crowd of Christians who want to come and consume what we are trying to do. Before we know it, we will be running services for Christians coming from other churches. After a while, they will probably move on, and then we find ourselves with something that we shaped for Christians moving through.

We wanted to put priority on engaging with unchurched people in our local communities. We hope that Christians who want to connect with us, realise that the gathering is not a place of excitement and entertainment, rather it is a place of intentional formation that is contrary to the culture in which we find ourselves.

Over the years, inspired by the old monasticism, we are trying to develop what is being described globally as new monasticism. A set of simple practices that help us to continue to be oriented towards the least, the lost and the last. These practices hopefully not only challenge and change our behavior, but also our beliefs and understanding.

We have had uninitiated people come into community gatherings in the past, and the conversation moves very quickly to "what I need" or "what I am looking for in a church". So we find that right from the outset, we have discussions about better sermons, more teaching, better worship etc.

We decided early on that this is not what we were called to do. So initiation is about trying to orient people to a missional life style before they begin to participate in the gatherings. Once people get oriented, and start to experience their world in terms of being called by God to create something of his Kingdom here on this earth, well, let's just say that when they participate in a gathering *after* initiation, the conversations are very different.

Labels: Church, Culture, Discipleship, Lifestyle, Mission, Spirituality

  Posted by Stephen @ 2:14 PM   0 comments

::Rants-APEST in practice II I must admit, I am wondering if APEST is the best place to start?

Probably the biggest issue is trying to redeem the meanings.

Case in point: Evangelist. "Ah, so this is the person who will (a) lead everyone to Jesus and/or (b) bring everyone into the meeting/gathering."

Al's definitions are helpful, but also quite limited. If you have three people, from three different traditions in the room, well, let's just say that it it is going to be a long afternoon.

Let's not even begin to examine the implications when hierarchical presuppositions are super imposed over the whole process.

Labels are bad. But labels are good. I have always maintained that just because something has created damage in the past, does not necessarily mean you jettison the whole. Redemption is just that. The thing needs to be redeemed.

So, the difficulty in trying to use APEST has let to some confusion regarding definitions (baggage etc) and then the whole idea of a hierarchy within (upon, around, choose your issue) also can complicate matters.

One straight up problem we struck that is worth noting is that people can behave differently in different contexts. For example, in my work with Tear and teaching in theological institutes, I would be received profoundly as Prophetic (no jokes about that being misspelled please!) no if's but's or maybes. So P first then T.

However, in the context of missio Dei, I seem to be received primarily as a T and secondarily as an A. I feel far more comfortable as a P, a little less comfortable as a T, and to be honest, we are having a hard time trying to define what an A is (again, keep your funny comments to yourself!).

I am sure that there will be at least on person who would like to give a go at helping us define what an A is, and I would keen to hear from you, but keep in mind that the reason we are stuck is not lack of information. If anything we are swimming in it. The challenge is sifting the information to find a meaningful definition that honors the biblical and historical tradition, and that makes sense to us today.

Will keep you posted in a few weeks on this one. Will probably post on leadership in the next few days as these two issues seem to be closely intertwined for us.

Labels: APEST, Church, Leadership, Mission, Theology

  Posted by Stephen @ 11:24 PM   4 comments

::Rants-Leadership in Incarnational Missional Community This post is a response to a comment left on this post. You might want to check it out in the context of the other comments. I thought it was a good enough rant to warrant posting in it's own right. Thanks to Bec for the ever thoughtful comments that act as a foil. You have helped me many times in refining my theology and praxis!

It is problematic Bec, which is why you have to, and I believe we are, in the process of redefining leadership in the same way that we have (and will need to continue to) redefine the word "church".

When I say "church", I mean a group of people called out from the crowd to articulate an alternative vision of what the world could be like, and I continue to restate this until the word has new meaning.

It is the same as leadership except that this is more recent for me. I know what leadership is not. In terms of the exercise of power, it is not dictating to others what they have to do, particularly in reference to my realising my dreams for an organisation through others. Nor is it a provision of services.

Leadership currently has strong overtones of both of these definitions.

I think leadership does exist. People are always leading in different ways. Whilst I can't define it, I find Aesop's fable regarding the North wind and the sun the most helpful metaphor for leadership.

I think that biblical leadership is not like the North wind that blusters and tried to blow the jacket of the person walking through the village. I reckon it is more like the sun, that shines, and when people feel the warmth, they of their own volition, take their jacket off.

Leadership is about creating an environment where people feel the courage to change and to dream. Leadership is also about helping people move from intent, to action as well.

I think it also needs to be named.

However, it will always be problematic, as whenever a leader rises, as well as the dysfunctions of the leader, there is the dysfunction of the community that wants to be led in ways that are not healthy, which is what the story about Israel wanting a king instead of God is all about.

However, I have always maintained that a healthy response to something is not the absence of that thing, but the redemption of that thing. So the goal is as redeemed a leadership as is humanly possible, this side of the total realisation of the kingdom.

Labels: Church, Leadership, Mission, Theology

  Posted by Stephen @ 4:43 PM   4 comments

::Rants-APEST in practice If anyone has spent any time around Forge hearing Alan Hirsch talk about leadership, or if anyone has read either "The Forgotten Ways" or "The Shaping of things to come", you will be aware of APEPT (or as Al is referring to it now, APEST).

APEPT is an acronym for the discussion regarding leadership in the church. The letters stand for the list that Paul gives in Ephesians, Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher.

Al has moved to the APEST acronym instead, replacing the second P (Pastor) with S for Shepherd.

The idea is that a leadership team should be composed of the diversity of roles that Paul outlines, with the observation that in the majority of churches, leadership teams are dominated by Shepherds and Teachers.

missio Dei are moving into a space where we are needing to think about being a little more intentional about our leadership structure. So with APEST as a framework, we tried to think about functional structures around this.

The big question was, how do you engage in this kind of exercise in a way that:

1. is humane, and does not roughly pigeon hole people,
2. does not create a situation where an individual can impose a view of themselves upon the group,
3. does not impose upon an individual a "group think" label and finally,
4. is open to a discerning process?

With this in mind, Lisa and I mused over it for a few weeks, having lots of conversation, reflection, discussions with others within missio Dei and outside of our community. We finally settled on the following process...

1. We spend a gathering talking about the process that we were about to enter into. We asked people to take a few weeks (we meet in a larger group fortnightly) to prayerfully consider others in the community. We gave a list of names to everyone and asked them to start to make notes against all of the names on the list, including their own name, being prayerful as they did so.
2. When we gathered, we spend some time on each of the roles, trying to get a working definition of each. We utilised a number of different perspectives and definitions, not just the ones that Al outlines in his book. After discussing each role, we asked people to look at their lists again, and make any changes or notes to what they had already made to their list.
3. After we went through each of the roles, we then distributed a number of pieces of A4 paper. On the front of each piece of paper was the name of one of the people in missio Dei.
4. Everyone then had a few minutes to take one last moment to reflect on the person. When they had decided which two roles that person most exemplified, they selected two sticky notes. There were five different colors, each representing one of the roles.
5. When you selected the two pieces, you could either simply place them inside the folded piece of paper, or you could write something on the sticky note, indicating the how any why, ie: "you often include people, and ask questions that make us think about those who are not here yet but need to belong to a faith community, therefore I chose evangelist" or some such.
6. Once you placed your two, different colored sticky notes inside the folded piece of paper, you closed it and then passed it to your left.
7. The process was repeated until everyone had a chance to comment about others in the group.
8. If you got your own, you didn't open it, you just passed it immediately to your left.
9. We included the children in this process as well.
10. If you were stuck for roles, we encouraged people to write something to help the group discernment process.

When we finished, each person was handed their piece of paper, we were pretty excited to find that the majority of people, had mainly two colors in their little booklet. We let people take some time digesting what they found, including the comments that people had written. There was one rainbow instance (one person who had multiple colors) and one instance with little written inside of it.

In both instances, the suspicion was that these people were not really well known by the group, and therefore the process for them would take a little more time.

Once people had time to digest, we went around the group, asking people what they felt. It was by far and away, a very affirming experience for people. It was affirming in two ways. Firstly, there were those who had some idea of what their contribution was, and to have this confirmed was very affirming and encouraging.

Secondly, there were those who had some idea, and were pleasantly surprised by an aspect of their personality and life that they had not considered. At the conclusion of that gathering, everyone was asked to take away their little booklet and spend another two weeks reflecting on the contents. When we gather this week, well, I just might have to wait to see what happens and then I will write up the upshot.

If you have any experiences of trying to work out APEST, I would love to hear from you!

Labels: Church, Forge, Mission

  Posted by Stephen @ 8:31 PM   8 comments

::Rants-Computer woes, Easter and Fish and Chips with Jesus I have been having problems with the laptop (which is my main work computer) and therefore have not been able to do much email or blog wise. Ah well. I must admit, life does seem to be a little simpler when you don't have to worry about blogging or getting back to emails.

Lisa, Harry and I got away for a little bit of the Easter weekend and did a night of camping. If Lisa had her way, we would have been gone a few more days, but we were on the tail end of rebuilding the veranda and those of you who know me, know that I don't do manual labour very well!

While we were away, I started reading "The Quest for the Radical Middle", a history of the Vineyard. It certainly is an interesting read. The first thing that struck me was that John Wimber's quest for engage the Spirit was at least partly born out of his interacting with the work of Paul Hiebert and his "excluded middle" theory on Western Rationalisms reduction of supernatural experiences. It threw me because (a) I had just presumed that it was a simplification of 80's Charismatic thinking and most disturbingly (b) I have moved significantly in the last decade or so to the intellectual and aeway from an openness to a life in the Spirit that I have come from historically.

It rattled me in both good and bad ways. I have been challenged by God to understand what it means to be an "empowered evangelical" in 2007 rather than in 1980. The challenge to take the best of evangelicalism and the best of the Pentecostal movement is one that is still stirring me. I would really value your prayers over all of this.

Today was the first day of family devotions. Lisa and I have been waiting for the right time to sit with Harry and start to be more intentional about the story of who Jesus is.

We have been praying with Harry every night since he was born. This stage is cute with Harry consistently wanting to thank God for cows (and the grass that they eat which gives us milk) and sheepy's.

A few weeks ago, we started reading some of the great stories from the bible to him before he goes to sleep. However, what we want to try and do each Sunday is to keep a family journal, where we write and draw what has been happening over the last week, then Lisa or I read a story from the bible, then we draw some of that too in the journal. Once that is done, we pray together. Todays story was Jesus feeding the five thousand. As we find ourselves doing an immediate improv reading, I turned the loaves and the fishes into fish and chips (which is what we had just eaten for lunch).

It was beautiful to hear a child say the name of Jesus, as he tries to draw him in red.

Labels: Blogging, Children, Church, Rants, Spirituality, Technology

  Posted by Stephen @ 2:05 PM   3 comments