Mission Resource Site

Seminarians with a little to learn...

2012-01-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Yvonne Wilkie....this video should be on all Presbyterian sites/blogs/whatevers...

Book catch-up

2012-01-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year...belatedly.

For those who still catch up on the occasional posts that appear here, I thought I'd give a pointer to an interesting post reviewing (mostly in brief) a bunch of books that the reviewer thought worthy of commendation from his past year's reading.

Byron Borger (I think that's the person who's written the post) runs a Christian bookshop in Dallastown, Central Pennsylvania; it's nominally Presbyterian, but like OC Books (which also began life as a Presbyterian bookshop) he's wide open to Christians of all denominations. However, this isn't a plug for the shop, but for the books he's commending in his post, which has been done in something of a rush by the look of it, as there are a number of typos scattered throughout (!)

Be that as it may, this list is well worth checking up on, because even if you don't go as wholeheartedly for the whole collection as he does. There are several books in the list that I've either had my eye on for a while or now plan to get - pensioner's finances willing - and I'm sure you'll find something of interest there too.

N T Wright makes the cut (dare I say, of course) as does Rob Bell (though it seems that the study guide to Love Wins may be even more interesting than the original book, given its list of contributors). Abraham Kuyper gets a look in twice, Richard Mouw is there, Tim Keller, Philip Jenkins, Craig Bartholomew, Walter Brueggemann, Scot McKnight, and Richard Hays.

Then there are a bunch of authors whose names I don't know (I might if I was still running the bookshop!) but whose books look very intriguing, and there's a variety of publishing houses, well-known and unknown. The range of topics is broad, and there should be at least one book to satisfy every taste - for me there'd be far more than one book.

Here's the link: Hearts & Minds Bookstore

Fourth post from Bradley Wright

2011-12-28T18:54:00.000-08:00

Bradley Wright's been posting on the subject of why people leave church, and for some reason I managed to miss noting the fourth post in this series. (Fourth and last, by the looks of it.)

In this one he discusses the relative unimportance of non-Christians' influence in regard to a Christian leaving church. Very occasionally the influence of a non-Christian will cause a Christian to leave the church and/or faith. But it's by no means as frequent an occurrence as you might think.

It's a somewhat different story after the Christian has left the church. Then there is a stronger tendency for non-Christians to support those who left.

Which seems reasonable enough.

Don’t Be an Ekklesaphobe

2011-12-28T11:22:00.000-08:00

David Fitch in full flight on getting a proper balance between what's wrong with the church...and what's right with it....

It happens on facebook when I give the slightest indication the church is God’s instrument in the world. It happens frequently when I am speaking and assert that God has empowered the church to extend Christ’s presence in the world. It happens when I coach church planters that are missionally oriented and ask them when they gather for worship. It happens when I engage my missional friends on one of the variants of the formula “missiology precedes ecclesiology.” It happens each time I meet someone who has been abused by the traditional church. Each time there is a out-sized reaction against organizing people into practices traditionally associated with being the church (this is especially true of the public worship gathering, or the ordination of clergy).

See the rest of his blog post here.

Vocations and leavers

2011-12-01T11:51:00.001-08:00

Two more items in the occasional posts to this blog...

Jason Goroncy alerted me to a post by Michael Jinkins that asks the question; “What sustains you in your vocation?”

Jinkins begins by noting:
John Calvin believed that it is the vocation itself, the fact of having been called by God which sustains us. That’s a great response, and I’m sure it is true. But, in the day-to-day slog and grind of living our vocations, beyond the assurance that we are where God called us (which is no small thing!), are there other things that sustain us? Prayer, regular Bible study, worship, the practice of Sabbath? [I'm currently reading, at long last, Eugene Peterson's Working the Angles - it relates strongly to this question.]

The second item is the third post by Bradley Wright and his research team on the question of why people leave church. In this post he asks, Does Christians’ bad behavior cause people to leave the faith?
This is a very useful series of posts, asking the right questions, attempting to find some answers - and of course, as always, the comments are as interesting as the posts themselves.

Second post on leaving church

2011-11-22T12:40:00.001-08:00

Bradley Wright recently uploaded his first post about why people leave church.   The second is available today.

If the first seemed obvious, in some ways, the second is the same.   The first related to people who had intellectual problems with their faith, and were asking questions that in fact have been asked for ever - and often answered reasonably adequately.

The second group are those who say because God hasn't answered their prayers therefore He either doesn't exist or isn't what He says he is, or doesn't keep His promises.   Wright has an interesting comment on this:

I am struck by how much these accounts resonate with sociological theories of human relationships, especially those coming from social exchange theory. This theory describes humans as judging the value of relationships in terms of costs and benefits. One variation of social exchange theory, termed equity theory, holds that people are satisfied with their relationships when they get the rewards that they feel are proportional to the costs that they bear. An inequitable is unstable, and it usually occurs because a person thinks they receive too little for how much they give.

These blog posts are worth keeping in mind; they may explain many of the issues that people in your congregation have with God, and/or church.

Leaving Church? Why?

2011-11-19T09:48:00.001-08:00

Two blog posts about why people are leaving church have turned up this week, and it's worth noting them here as part of an ongoing conversation about the question: Why are people leaving the church (in 'droves' as one of these writer's notes).

The first blogger is Joshua Graves - he's the preaching and teaching minister for the Otter Creek Church in Nashville, Tennessee. One of his points is: Church and community are very difficult. Church is a great idea until people get involved. Bonhoeffer consistently warns us in his various writings that we destroy community when we try and create it. Meaning–community, in and of itself, cannot be the goal. Rather, community is the space in which we communally seek to experience the resurrected Jesus. That being said, anyone who’s been a part of a church community knows that relationships will suffer, endure disappointment because this is true in any community...

He has more to say on the topic. but the following paragraph perhaps sums it up: I think the real cause of disillusionment with church is self-disappointment. Pain birthed anger, now solidified in cynicism and apathy (funny how those two always go together). Frustration with “the church” is first about frustration with self. We tend to, in the wisdom of Donald Miller, judge others based on actions while judging ourselves based upon our intent. We are harder on “the church” so we can be “easier” on ourselves. This is why some Christians literally demand more from their church than they do from their own family, their own personal lives (money, time, etc.).

The whole post is called Leaving Church?

The other post is from Bradley Wright, whom I've mentioned on several occasions on this blog. In a post called, Why do Christians leave the faith? the fundamental importance of apologetics. Wright begins his post by writing: Several colleagues and I recently finished a study of why Christians leave the faith, and we were surprised at what made a difference as well what didn’t seem to matter.

The post begins in outlining the sociological aspects of their study (and this post is the first of several that will be appearing) but it soon gets onto looking at some of the reasons people bring forward for why they left the church. For Wright, many of them hinge on a lack of understanding of apologetics, which of course basically goes back to a lack of understanding of the Bible and God Himself.

Missional/Discipleship

2011-09-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

I keep saying I won't be posting anything more here but there was an article by Mike Breen (with the provocative title: Why the missional movement will fail) that someone alerted me to this morning which I think is essential reading, and certainly very much related to the kind of material that has appeared frequently on this blog. Here's how the article starts....

It’s time we start being brutally honest about the missional movement that has emerged in the last 10-15 years: Chances are better than not it’s going to fail.

That may seem cynical, but I’m being realistic. There is a reason so many movements in the Western church have failed in the past century: They are a car without an engine. A missional church or a missional community or a missional small group is the new car that everyone is talking about right now, but no matter how beautiful or shiny the vehicle, without an engine, it won’t go anywhere.

So what is the engine of the church? Discipleship. I’ve said it many times: If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.

More here.

Video on the taboo topic of suicide

2011-07-23T19:36:00.001-07:00

Though I haven't put anything on here for some time, and won't be doing so regularly, I thought it was worth uploading this video on people who have an ongoing struggle with suicidal thinking.

It comes from The Guardian's website - the mental health section, and concerns a home run by volunteers for people who need space to get away from the 'hurricane' outside...

Not back to church?

2011-06-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

Though I said I wouldn't be posting regularly on here from now on, I can't resist adding this:

It was brought to my attention by Bosco Peters in Christchurch. His comments are worth reading.

No more posts for the time being

2011-06-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

Too all those who are regular readers of this blog.

My apologies, but I'm going to have to stop posting to the this blog, at least for the time being. I'm working on writing a musical, as some of you will know, and while you'd think that would mean once the script was written, and the music mostly written, I'd be starting to relax. Of course, what it actually means is that the job is only beginning. While I have some supportive people also working on aspects of the task, it's beginning to feel like we're only starting to climb the mountain. So regrettably I'm going to have to put some things aside, such as this blog, at least for the present.

Yes, I know....you'd think that with being retired, I'd have more time. Nope, the same time, just differently arranged...

God is in charge...

2011-06-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

Peter Carrell, an Anglican priest resident in Christchurch writes today:

For Christchurch, in the midst of death, destruction, and (increasingly these days) despair, it is good news that God is in charge, Jesus is Lord. A tad difficult to believe, but an important gospel fact nevertheless. The earthquakes are not in charge of us and our future: God in Jesus Christ is boss.

Last night was a challenge to faith in this God, incidentally: a hefty 5.3 at 10.34 pm, just prior to going to bed, and then a whole series through the night, including a 4.4 at 3.28 am which woke us up. A cheeky friend texted me at 11.03 pm asking if I still had an office. I shall check soon. Not to worry if I don't. Neither did the Son of Man who has graciously called me to follow him without pack, blanket or jacket.

Not decline

2011-06-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I headed up a post 'Decline'. Today Skye Jethani, on the Out of Ur blog, writes about the Southern Baptists in the States suffering ongoing decline.

He notes how he asked Willard Dallas about the situation some time ago, and was surprised by his answer:

“I am not discouraged,” he replied, “because I believe that Christ is in charge of his church, with all of its warts, and moles, and hairs. He knows what he is doing and he is marching on.”

Jethani goes on to note: ...the truth is some churches are dying [and perhaps even some denominations] and others reached room temperature years ago. But that doesn’t mean the Church is dying.

He goes on to say that his experience at the Lausanne Conference confirms this. The evidence, both scientific and anecdotal, show the global church is more than surviving...it’s thriving! Some of the growth may be attributed to strategic planning on the part of Western churches and missions agencies in the early 20th century. But what we heard again and again were the unexpected and even miraculous ways in which the church has been planted, germinated, fed, and nurtured.

Empty shells?

2011-06-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

I came across this extract from (Anglican Bishop) Kelvin Wright's blog today:

"These empty worship shells scattered around the countryside are the signs of the death of a particular religious infrastructure. ... A particular way of meeting the spiritual needs of our society is disappearing because it no longer meets the needs of our society, ...

The role of the church is to introduce people to the Living God and open them to the transforming power of the presence of God. Gradually we have forgotten to do this. We have forgotten how to do this. We have forgotten, even, that we are supposed to do this. And quite naturally, and quite rightly, the infrastructure we have created precisely to help us to do this crumbles and dies.

The old churches tell me one thing and they tell it to me clearly and loudly: The church must facilitate personal transformation or it must cease to exist. It is time to forget the infrastructure except to the extent that it facilitates the one essential task of the Church. As my Lord tells me, "seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the rest will be added to you as well."

Decline

2011-06-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

The church in the UK is not in decline because people no longer believe in God, rather people in the UK no longer believe in God because the church is in decline.

Kim Fabricius writing another bunch of doodlings on the Faith and Theology blog.

(Incidentally, when I worked for the Presbyterians there were several words that got used a good deal and which I began to baulk at being used so readily: paradigm, contextual...and most especially, decline. It's an excuse word, as I think Fabricius may be indicating.)

Walk Humbly with the Lord

2011-06-17T23:09:00.001-07:00

Viggo Mortensen is probably best-known as an actor and all-round artist. But as a theologian? Too intriguing for words. Yet his name appears as one of the editors (and also one of the contributors) of a newish book called Walk Humbly with the Lord: Church and Mission Engaging Plurality.

However, it turns out that the Viggo the actor isn't Viggo the theologian. The latter is a thelogian at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He's published several books on theology.

The book has other familiar names amongst the contributors, including Stanley Hauerwas, John Drane, Andrew Walls, and Darrell Guder.

The essays cover the 1910 World Missionary Conference (an attempt to sift the history from the myth); Hauerwas on the Church is Mission; community, the fluidity of mission, the church in a multireligious Europe, the Canadian Church in the third millennium, being a Christian minority in a Muslim land, Andrew Walls on missiology as vocation, and much more. You can see a full list of the contents and contributors here.

The book is also available on Google books (in part, at least). Bruce Hamill has written a post about Hauerwas' essay, and there is more about that essay on the Prodigal Kiwis site.

Update from Christchurch

2011-06-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

An update from Martin Stewart on some of the ongoing mission work in ChCh, post-earthquake...

It is a real pain all this shaking – I really feel for those poor people out east with any hope they might have had of something being closer to normal being erased this week. While the quakes themselves weren’t as bad insofar as the devastating trampoline effect in February (esp the lives lost) in other ways they are more demoralising, especially with winter upon us. There is widespread anger now – wanting some resolution over what will happen with their land and property, but anger at the sense that there may not be any end to this in the medium term. It is scary, hard on the nerves, massively inconvenient, and hugely disheartening.

I do a bit of chaplaincy at a university hostel (well I try – it is hard to get there these days) – I was talking to some students last night who are quite fed up. They have missed crucial parts of their semester but also they are in exam mode with exams postponed and squeezed into a very tight timeframe but also their ability to concentrate in any extended way is very difficult. Some are seriously contemplating transferring elsewhere for next year. I cannot blame them, but it will have devastating consequences for ChCh and the University of Canterbury who are quite worried about their ability to attract new students for 2012 as it is.

The Presbyterians have had fewer problems in this week’s round of shocks – a disused church to be demolished is now demolished (quite convenient as it had historic places issues), another two congregations that were uncertain about whether their buildings could be repaired are clearer now about having to move on from them, and one minister is probably going to have to move from his damaged house.

My little project of having people from St Stephen’s, St Giles, and St Mark’s delivering $200 supermarket vouchers to the homes of people in the Avonside/Dallington area is chugging along nicely. My target of raising $50,000 is now up to $33,000 thanks to two large donations from a Wellington trust and an Auckland parish, along with quite a few $1000 donations from supportive folk. Once I get the $50,000 I will be approaching several supermarkets on this side of the city to buy the vouchers and invite them to match us dollar for dollar.

St Stephen’s is handling this project for the three parishes – we even have a dedicated account:
contact Martin for details of this account: martin@ststephens.co.nz

Mission Workshops

2011-06-16T21:23:00.000-07:00

Mission Workshops
Saturday June 25th, 2011
1-4pm
Leith Valley Presbyterian Church,
267 Mavlern St,
Glenleith, Dunedin

Workshops include: Beyond the big OE, Why mission?
Reaching cross culturally in NZ, The changing face of
mission today, Realities in Southern Sudan
For more infor: contact nz.info@sim.org

A pneumatological approach...

2011-06-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

J R Woodward presents a useful review of the book, Beyond the Impasse: toward a pneumotological theology of religions, by Amos Young, on his blog (Dream Awakener)

He writes: “In Beyond the Impasse, in light of our globalized context, Amos Yong presents a pneumatological (Holy Spirit) approach to the theology of religions as the preferable way for Christians to meaningful engage in genuine dialogue with other religions with the ability to discern the Spirit’s presence, activity or absence. He develops his approach by tracing some of the biblical, philosophical and theological approaches to date, recognizing contributions that have been made, as well as identifying present deficiencies.

He then addresses the “potential Achilles heal” of this pneumatological approach – the need to develop a theology of discernment which is adept at discerning both the phenomenological and inner workings of all religions, “in ways that enable the religions to be take seriously on their own terms in order to facilitate the emergence of adequate comparative (and therefore discerning) categories” (pg 185).

The review is a good overview not only of the book, but of the theology of other religions.

Caring for the carer

2011-06-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not entirely sure why I found the short piece, The perfect husband I am not, by Tom Becker, resonating with me. Perhaps it's his sheer honesty about how difficult it is to be continually sympathetic to someone who has a chronic illness. His piece is a good reminder that carers need care too...

Here's how it starts.

My wife’s depression pours light on my own sins. I’m stoic, unsympathetic and critical of her in every way. I’m quick to declare fix-its for her occasional panic episodes. Ever since she was diagnosed with anxiety-induced depression 14 years into our marriage, I’ve waged my own war against the demon of selfishness and, in moments of failure, self-worthlessness.

Distraction-free

2011-06-13T19:19:00.001-07:00

Skye Jethani has written a blog post this week on the way in which we as 'church' regard those in our midst who are disturbances of some sort or other. He's discussing a situation in a church named 'Elevation' in which a boy with cerebral palsy was 'escorted out' (according to the mother) or moved to another part of the auditorium (according to church officials). He was a 'distraction' and the church's goal is "to offer a distraction free environment for all our guests."

As you might imagine, Jethani is disturbed by this attitude. Whatever the best intentions of the church are/were, his view is that church is a place where distraction is one of those things you put up with....because all the people in attendance are part of the family. Certainly it can be difficult for a minister doing his best to preach well to have someone in the congregation making a lot of noise (not that this boy was, apparently). Unwarranted noise can be an interruption to a well-prepared skit/drama/whatever sort of presentation.

But as Jethani notes: when I come freely to worship the Living God and gather with his people whom he describes as the foolish, weak, and despised in the world (1 Cor 1:26-28)--I do not expect a distraction free environment.

Church is not a cinema, a rock shop, a theatre, a performing arts centre. You might perhaps expect a distraction-free environment in any one of those places (although what you might expect and what you get aren't necessarily the same thing). Church is family, and in a family you put up with the noisy, sloppy baby, the irritating toddler, the old person heading towards dementia.

If we lose that, we're heading away from what church is about. Aren't we?

New commandments

2011-06-03T19:28:00.001-07:00

Just in case you thought those Old Testament Ten Commandments were a bit too chunky to memorise....try these for size.

Courtesy of Anglican priest, Don Tamihere.

People with mental health problems...in OUR church

2011-05-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

It's likely there'll be people with mental disabilities, or mental health problems in your congregation. You may be dealing with them and their situation with compassion and concern. But what if you don't know how to help them, even in the most basic ways? (My own church has a particular ministry towards people with mental health issues, but there's a very small percentage of the congregation who are actually involved with the group who come to church.)

In an article that appeared in the Leadership Journal online, Through a Glass, Darkly:
Ministry to the mentally ill, Amy Simpson talks about her own experience as a teenager with a mother who was mentally unwell, and how she has learned what things pastors and congregations need to know to help not only those with the mental health problem, but also their families and friends. For instance here's what she has to say about pastors trying to assist:

"Sometimes clergy distance themselves from people with mental illness because they realize the problem can be long term. To become involved with this person may mean a lengthy commitment. Perhaps this person will never be cured. Such a problem is contrary to contemporary Western ideas of being in control of one's life and destiny. People in modern day America expect to find a rational solution to any problem. And yet, in this case, there may be no solution. It is tempting, if an answer is not apparent, to avoid the person for whom one has no answers."

Simpson also looks briefly at the theological issues, and at the problems of overspiritualisation of mental health issues. This is quite a long article, but it's full of good insights, and practical suggestions.

Croucher retreats

2011-05-31T17:38:00.000-07:00

Rowland Croucher writes in an email today:

For the first time in twenty years, I'm taking an extended sabbatical. I won't be answering the phone, but will occasionally check emails and Facebook for anything needing urgent attention.

What will I do? First, spend some time in solitude and prayer. I'm booking into a Retreat centre to do that - and will probably return there - or to other solitary places - from time to time.

If I get a green light (from God!), I'm probably going to write a Blog later in this sabbatical, then maybe a book (which will include some of your helpful feedback), on the Top Ten (?) Questions pastors ask: The key six these days relate to Stress/Burnout, Homosexuality, Marriage/Relationship issues, Hermeneutics (The Bible: Fundamentalism vs Jesus Seminar etc.), Islam, Effective Leadership and Conflict Resolution - a sort of updated series of 'Grid' leadership articles, like we produced with the help of World Vision back in the 80s and early 90s.

Note the item that's first on his Top Ten Questions.

Folk theology

2011-05-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

In discussing the difference between academic and folk theology Richard Beck writes, "....even if we had better theology in churches we'd still be awash in folk theology. Mainly because Christian theology tends leaves too many details unspecified or uninvestigated."

He gives two examples, one relating to sin and one relating to the Devil, and what is believed by many Christians about both these matters. What he's pointing out is that many people in the pew have to have a kind of theology (his 'folk' theology) in order to live in the day to day. This theology isn't provided from the pew (when did you last hear anyone preach about the Devil at all, let alone about what sort of state he exists in, where he might actually be and so on?), and it certainly isn't provided by academics, whose books are often not read because they're just too darned hard for the average brain in the pew - even if the aforesaid brain was inclined to read them. (Anyone without academic training tried to read Elizabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza lately? Even apart from her tendency to give words different meanings to the norm, she's hard going...)

Consequently, the folk have to work out some things for themselves. What can preachers do about this?

The goal is love in the midst of all the brokenness.

2011-05-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

Joseph Black (Onesimus Online) writes:

Jesus has restored our relationship with the Holy Trinity, but he hasn’t made us whole, the rhetoric of popular Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism notwithstanding. Assuming and believing that rhetoric for decades, I personally longed to be made whole. I carried scars from my parents’ divorce, was sexually abused, have struggled in my most important relationships, been stricken with chronic depression, was unfairly removed from my last pastorate, and been overwhelmed by the scope and depth of my own character flaws. I know what it means to be in a world turned black and to cry out to God for help. I have cried out again and again for mercy, help, transformation, healing – to be made whole. I have asked, but the answer has been ‘No’.

I found the emphasis in Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism on being made whole increasingly disorienting in the past decade. The rhetoric I was believing, the rhetoric I was singing, the rhetoric I was preaching was not matching the reality I was experiencing and that I was seeing in others. It wasn’t just that I was not experiencing wholeness, nobody else I knew was experiencing wholeness as well. I continue to hear this rhetoric all around me, particularly from the popular preachers and authors. I do not think anybody is being malicious or is intentionally setting out to deceive. But the effect of this one little tiny misstatement is to set Christianity off in a ruinous direction that puts the emphasis on our experience and performance vis a vis the glorious testimony that ‘Jesus made me whole’. Our goal, as I understand the Christian life, is not the experience of wholeness. Instead, our goal is giving and receiving love in the midst of our brokenness and need.

Read the rest of Black's post - it may help you clarify some of your (erroneous) preaching....

The earthquake story you probably won't have heard

2011-05-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

The earthquake story you (probably) won't have heard....

The following extract comes from a post that was written on the 16th May on a blog site I was previously unfamiliar with: the kiwifruit blog. It tells of some heroic work done in the first minutes and hours of the second Christchurch earthquake, and what followed after that. The 'sting in the tale', one might say, comes right at the end of the blog post, so make sure you read it all.

Doug Watt is the Sales Manager of OMC Power Equipment on Gasson St in Christchurch – directly down the road from Madras St where the collapsed CTV building was. As soon as the quake struck, Doug grabbed some hardhats and tools and headed for the city, encouraging his workers to do the same. They were among the first people on the scene at the collapsed CTV building. There arrived so early that the police and the fire department hadn’t worked out who was in charge of the site yet. Doug was able to convince them that, since he and his men were builders, they ought to get onto the site and try to rescue as many people as possible (those in Christchurch will know builders were the most useful people in dealing with the ruins). Doug and his workers stayed at the CTV building until 4am the following morning and rescued as many as 8 people from the building.

Lack of imagination....

2011-05-25T18:16:00.000-07:00

These are radically different kinds of questions than the ones currently being asked by denominations and congregational leaders. In Missional: Joining God in the Neighbourhood I argue that we’re controlled and shaped by what I call church questions. No matter what the style or brand - be it traditional, contemporary, emergent, missional etc. - the basic underlying questions are focused on how to improve, change, reorder, redesign, remake the church in one form or another. Discussions are about what types and models of church are needed, they focus on how to, one more time, restructure what already exists, put a commission together to imagine new forms, or change existing books of order and discipline to make the church more open. All these activities, which have some value, are shaped by a single, common imagination. Church is the centre of the conversation, the subject, object and end of all these discussions. It’s this imagination that’s blinding and binding Christian imagination from the ways the Spirit is actually unravelling our existing church world and pushing us across boundaries into unknown spaces where we no longer have the maps or control.

Alan Roxburgh in his article: Rediscovering the Neighbourhood

Update on the 30 days

2011-05-25T18:04:00.001-07:00

Back on the 2nd May we mentioned that Alan Roxburgh's Missional Network was running a 30 days of joinging God in your neighbourhood series.

I've just checked back and there are now 20 days listed (obviously a little behind, even given that they're a day and half behind us in time zones), with some fascinating and useful material.

There are several items by Simon Carey Holt, along with a variety of ideas of ways to engage with your neighbourhood, such as going out with the local police at night and hearing what they know about the area, or offering tutoring to immigrants close by, or becoming a regular in a particular coffee bar or other meeting place, and getting to know who else is there frequently.

Some of the ideas may not appeal, some may take up more time than you have available. Nevertheless this is a worthwhile series which is bound to have at least one thing in it that's of value to those looking for ways to become more neighbourhood-focused.

De-conversion

2011-05-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Sociologist, Bradley Wright, has recently published an article on 'de-conversion' - in other words, reasons for why people leave the Christian faith.

This is the abstract. The full article, which appeared in the Journal of Religion and Society, can be found online here.

"This article examines the written narratives from fifty former Christians. In these narratives, drawn from an online community of deconverts, the writers described their experiences with and explanations for leaving the Christian faith. Several themes emerged as to why they left, including: intellectual and theological concerns, a feeling that God had failed them, and various frustrations with Christians. The writers gave little mention to non-Christians as pulling them out of the faith. These narratives emphasized external, rather than internal, attributions for the deconversion. They also identified primarily “push” rather than “pull” factors as the cause of deconversion. While some narratives outlined the costs and benefits of deconversion, others told of seeking moral rightness regardless of the cost."

The reasons boiled down to intellectual and theological concerns, God's failures, interactions with other Christians, and interactions with non-Christians. (Interestingly enough, this last group seems to be the least influential.) Some of this may be already well-known, but it's good to have it available in a relatively succinct form.

Job's wife

2011-05-24T16:13:00.001-07:00

We base our entire picture of Job's wife on her one line in the story, and Job's rebuke that follows.

But she says no more than many of the prophets in their bitter moments, and to condemn her because she speaks out of her heart is to forget that she's undergone much of the pain which Job himself experiences. He's by no means alone in his sorrow.

Daniel Darling calls her The Most Misunderstood Woman in the Bible - that may be overdoing it a little, but there's no doubt that she's received more than her fair share of condemnation over the centuries, Augustine labelling her "the devil's accomplice" and Calvin calling her "a diabolical fury." Both men who were at times prone to overstating things...

Darling's article on Job's wife is an example of how to think outside the obvious, and is worth reading for that aspect alone.

Preaching as performance

2011-05-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

"The second misconception is that performance [in preaching] is mere playacting. It's easy to assume that theatrics is about manipulating people for mere entertainment, that is, entertainment for entertainment's sake. When this is done with preaching, the delivery is embellished and actually impedes the communication of the message. Bad performances in the pulpit are as obvious as bad acting on the stage or screen. The only time we usually notice actors acting is when their craft is poor. It's the same with preaching. When it's done masterfully, the preacher almost disappears.

Good preaching comes alive and speaks to the heart precisely because it is well presented, with proper gesture, vocal technique, and bodily presence. People in the performing arts call this "stage presence." We might call it liturgical presence, or pulpit presence. All effective communicators realize that they must master numerous techniques in order to impact their audience."

From Preaching is Performance Art, by Clayton Schmit

Faith-based unit may close

2011-05-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

Prison Fellowship is seeking support from Christians in an approach to the Minister of Corrections to try and save the faith-based unit at Rimutaka Prison, which is under threat of closure.

Prison Fellowship NZ has operated the national faith-based unit in partnership with the Department of Corrections, since October 2003. It is the only official faith-based unit in Australasian prisons and is widely respected internationally.

The unit's operations were extended first by Operation Jericho, a single mentor-based aftercare programme, then the whole throughcare scheme, the only scheme of its kind in a New Zealand prison. This scheme was extended by PFNZ, at considerable ongoing cost, with a more intensive community-led care scheme, Target Communities, based on an internationally proven model.

See the full story here.

Wright's five act play...

2011-05-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

Andrew Perriman discusses Tom Wright's 'five act play analogy for biblical authority' in a recent blog post, and, while he finds it has value, doesn't think it goes quite far enough.

He notes:

...it is a useful analogy. It gets away from the Bible-is-authoritative-because-it-says-so approach, and it brings into the foreground—stage front, if you like—the concrete, intentional, creative response of the biblical community. So far, so good.

My main disagreement with Wright here is that, in his view of things, history more or less grinds to a halt when we get to Paul.

To find out why he thinks so - and his thinking develops Wright rather than dismissing it - read it online here.

Mental Health Webinars

2011-05-24T13:41:00.001-07:00

I note that I haven't posted anything here since my birthday on the 13th May - things have been a little hectic, what with performing in the play, Shadowlands, and a variety of other things that needed to be done. This week I'm aiming to do a bit of catching up...(note the use of the word 'aiming'.)

The Mental Health Foundation is launching a new series of live and interactive online broadcasts in May aimed at answering the challenging question: “How Do We Talk About Suicide?”

The first of these took place on the 18th May, but there are further ones to come. They're taking the form of Webinars, online seminars which allow presenters to interact with an audience live over the internet.

Once registered, audience members are sent a link to a website where they can log on and view the presentation at the time of broadcast. Any questions that audience members have can be sent in confidence to the presenter during the broadcast by typing into a chat window provided on screen, and will form part of the interactive discussion.

Future broadcast subjects will include cultural perspectives on suicide prevention, coping with suicide bereavement, and advice for families on supporting a loved one with an ongoing mental health problems. You can read more about the programme here. (At this point future dates aren't yet listed.)

Education

2011-05-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

Education in the true sense, of course, is an enablement to serve -- both the living human community in its natural household or neighborhood and its precious cultural possessions that the living community inherits or should inherit. To educate is, literally, to ‘bring up,’ to bring young people into a responsible maturity, to help them be good caretakers of what they have been given, to help them to be charitable toward fellow creatures.

Wendell Berry
“Higher Education and Home Defense” from Home Economics

Church: fall in love

2011-05-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

Greg Boyd wrote on his blog this week....

...you have to wonder why millions of people have been tortured and murdered by Christians throughout history for espousing “heretical” views about baptism, communion, the church and a very long list of other doctrines, while not one person (so far as I know) has been officially disciplined — let alone accused of “heresy” — for failing to adequately love (as when they tortured and murdered others in Jesus name, for example). We can have all the right doctrine in the world, but if we fail to love as Christ loved us, we are all “heretics.”

This comes from a post entitled, The 'Heresy' of Failing to Love. (Which incidentally, I originally read as: The 'Heresy' of Falling in Love. Will really have to stop skimming.)

It's an interesting post asking a question as to why we put doctrines and creeds and theology above love, (as in the recent fallout over Rob Bell) when Jesus specifically prayed that we (all of us Jesus-believers) would all love one another.

I did a paper in NZ Church History last year. I knew there'd always been disagreements in the church, including the NZ Church. I'd never realised just how extensive this was, and how sometimes horrendous it was. None of the denominations was free of guilt in this regard.

“By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:35) has to be one of the most unanswered prayers in history...

Kiwi-made Preaching

2011-05-04T00:16:00.000-07:00

A quick update on the Kiwi-made Preachingforums in October...

The venues in Auckland, Waikanae and Christchurch are confirmed..

A page has been added to the Kiwi-made Forum with more details regarding dates.

Paul Windsor writes: we are now working on signing-up 60 'Questions-Askers' who will provoke us. There is no shortage of people to ask, that is for sure (but we would be glad to consider your suggestions).

Chris Wright is confirmed as the companion for the day, coming out from the UK for the week.

He will open and close each forum with separate 'Exclamations' and then mix and mingle with people through the day.

Two things at this stage:

1. If you are a facebook-user, please 'like' the 'kiwi-made preaching' page and 'share' it with others as we intend to use it to update people regularly.

2. The best outcomes to the forum will be achieved when a preaching team from a local church comes together, divides 'n conquers the total menu on the day and then, on some later occasion, gets together for a debrief. We think this approach could provide a huge boost to the preaching ministry in a local church. Please begin to pray and plan along these lines.

Mission in the Neighbourhood

2011-05-02T14:32:00.000-07:00

On the Missional Network website Alan Roxburgh and his team invite you to join them as they introduce some ways in which you can begin some small experiments in joining God in the neighborhood.

Over the next 30 days they will tell stories, suggest actions and share interviews, and they invite you to join the conversation. What are your stories? What are the questions you would like to have answered? Where are you seeing the Spirit change your imagination of what it means to be the church today?

If you feel a little unimaginative in this regard go to another site recommended by Roxburgh called Missional in Suburbia. They're doing a series called The Church Returns to the Neighbourhood (the first post is here) and they're already (as at the 3rd May) up to their fourth post on the topic. The posts connect back to Roxburgh's book, expanding on his ideas.

The experience of pioneers

2011-04-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

Jonny Baker reports:

There have been a couple of pieces of research recently into the experience of pioneers and pioneers in training [in mission]

One isn’t yet in the public domain so I’ll come back to it when it does appear. But this piece of research by Beth Keith on behalf of Fresh Expressions is excellent. It was conducted through a series of small group gatherings of pioneers round the country. The information has then been collated into a series of themes raising a number of points and offering some recommendations. You can download the report from here on the Fresh Expressions web site.

Jonny then goes on to give a brief overview of the research - some interesting insights on sustainability, finance, over-optimism, lay workers and more.

Making the most of Facebook

2011-04-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

Wales online reports that Welsh chapels struggling for members are swapping prayer books for Facebook, hoping that younger people will be attracted by the social network site. Twitter is also being used. (I think this reported line might be a tad metaphorical; have the prayer books actually been ditched as yet?)

Some Welsh congregations have launched their own online TV station in a bid to salvage dwindling attendances. Annibynwyr TV is possibly the first internet channel of its kind launched by any denomination in the UK.

In the last three decades the average Welsh chapel congregation has gone from just under a 100 to around 50, and only around 60% of the chapels that existed 30 years ago are still functioning.

The Rev Andrew Lenny, president of the Union of Welsh Independent churches, says:

“We as a denomination are working towards utilising new media in order to engage with communities who we might not otherwise reach. While our key messages remain the same, we recognise that we have to embrace these new and vast means of reaching out to people.”

The ultimate Yes

2011-04-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

Two of the quotes Simon Carey Holt uses in his Easter Sunday sermon, Yes! reproduced in his blog.

‘We are a Bible-believing, fundamental, dispensational, non-ecumenical, non-charismatic, non-Calvinistic, anti-liberal, anti-feminist, anti-gay, separatist church.’

Jurgen Moltmann says that ‘True spirituality is the rebirth of the full and undivided love of life; the total Yes to life and the unhindered love of everything living.’

I sat through a sermon on Sunday that seemed to me to be more about the Cross, Good Friday and dying to life/self. Could have done with a bit more celebration....!

The $300 house

2011-04-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

The mission?
Design a simple dwelling that can be constructed for under $300 which keeps a family safe, allows them to sleep at night, and gives them both a home and a sense of dignity.

The $300 house has been in the pipeline for some time now, and it's getting to a point where some real progress will be made.

Like Habitat for Humanity this is an attempt to make housing affordable for people who would otherwise never live in their own home. Unlike H for H it's aimed at people in poorer countries for whom the H for H house would be a complete dream.

In an article by Christian Sarkar, you can catch up on the progress of this innovative idea. The $300 house is mission in action, yet comes out of the business world....

More thoughts from Epic Fail

2011-04-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

The following paragraphs were written by one of the participants at the Epic Fail Conference. J R Briggs was given permission to include them in his blog, so I'm hoping that the writer of these words is happy to have them disseminated further on the Net.

Anyone who has ever read through the book of Acts has felt a tension between the words on the biblical pages and the state of the current church. There is a glaring hole between them and us. Miracles, revival, and community were the normative. There is a culture of “God-movement” that defines the early followers of Jesus. As a Jesus follower, the thing that strikes me most is the deep connection that existed among this community. A community that is often described as the Acts 2 church.

I want Acts 2 community, in a bad kind of way. I have read many books, listened to many lectures, taught often, and even written about the pursuit of community – yet it remains slippery and seemingly just out of reach. This past weekend I heard a brother make a profound statement that has reminded me of of a great truth. Ready?. Acts 2 is preceded by Acts 1. Selah.

Simple, yet profound. Acts 1 is about the people of God, longing for the presence of God, waiting on the promise of God. They prayed, and God came in power. Power that manifested itself in witness to the Resurrection of Jesus and the birth of a community. Acts 1 is about impregnation – being filled with life. This naturally leads to Acts 2 lifestyles. Why? Life begets life. The Spirit produces a community that is united, not the other way around. The point – If you want to be an Acts 2 church, you must become an Acts 1 church first.

The opening video to the Conference is here:

How we started the conference from Epic Fail Pastors Conference on Vimeo.

Epic Fail a Success

2011-04-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

Back in February I mentioned the Epic Fail Conference that was due to take place this monthy. It's now been and gone, and there's a lengthy blog post reporting back on how it went from one of those, J R Briggs, who was involved in the organisation of it.

In a sense, the Epic Fail Conference was a success, which is slightly ironic. Briggs notes: I was absolutely scared to death to try this (Can you imagine the headline: “Epic Fail Pastors Conference cancelled due to low registration”? I wondered if I could ever recover from such irony). A first-time, low-budget conference on failure in a suburb of Philadelphia that is anything but a tourist destination seemed like a large enough risk – but the response took me by surprise. We thought it would be a small, regional event. But people flew in from 15 different states – some not knowing many of the details, but knowing deep down they had to attend. There was a least one participant from Australia.

Later on in the post he says: This buzz was encouraging – and yet, it grieved me deeply. It was evident that there is a void and a desperate need for pastors to talk about failure. (What would inspire someone to fly half way across the globe for this? Why would a pastor drive 1200 miles by himself to talk about failure for three days in a bar?) There should be dozens of these types of conferences for pastors across the country. No, I take that back. There should be dozens of these types of conferences for people across the country.

Rather than continuing to quote Briggs, I recommend that you read the post in full. It's insightful, and looks at issues that this blog has often commented on.

So who's going to be first to provide an Epic Fail Conference in NZ?

two items

2011-04-14T18:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, you're right, there hasn't been a great deal appearing on this blog over the last week or so. However, I have all sorts of reasons/excuses for that, none of which I'm going to present...

Anyway, here are a couple of things worth noting that you may not have caught up with elsewhere.

Scottish Seeds in Antipodean Soil: the development of Presbyterian Worship in Aoteaora New Zealand, by Graham Redding (the most recent past-Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Aotearoa NZ). I read an earlier version of this recently...

Graham's paper sets our early colonial worship patterns in the context of the Reformation and Church of Scotland history and then explores worship trends in NZ Presbyterianism to the modern era. This work in progress is the first attempt by any within the Presbyterian Church to explore and map the contours of this fascinating topic at such depth.
Why, he asks, have Presbyterians in this country never had a service book like the Anglicans? Is there anything distinctive about worship in a Presbyterian church? Does it have any underlying convictions? In what ways has it evolved over the years? What are its major antecedents? What have been its main liturgical and theological influences? Which personalities have played a key role in its development?

The current Presbyterian Moderator, Peter Cheyne, notes that there is a wortwhile series on discipleship from George Barna available here in New Zealand. It's called Growing True Disciples of Jesus, and the details of price and where to get it are available on Peter's blog.

Counter-cultural

2011-04-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

In case you thought that retirement had settled upon me in such a way as to make me a bit like Rip Van Winkle, asleep while the world passes by, let me assure that I've actually been busy enough this week to keep me going most of the time. Okay, occasional rests have been the order of the day, and walks with the dog, but in general I'm still keeping an eye on what's going on.

Hence, links to a couple of blog posts. The ubiquitous David Fitch wrote one, and is featured in the other. Don't let that put you off; to me he speaks some pretty good sense, if we're prepared to listen.

The first is Fitch's own, a post on the kind of leadership needed for the postmodern world. It looks pretty much like the servant leadership Jesus espoused - so that's a good thing (!)

The second comes from another old favourite on this blog, Len Hjalmarson. In this one he quotes Fitch a good deal as he draws up a list of ways to 'instill missional habits.'

This post is as countercultural (at least counter church-cultural) as the first. Both worth chewing over while you're having your morning cuppa.

Small group stages

2011-03-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

Scott Boren, author of Missional Small Groups writes about four different types/stages of small groups.

1. personal improvement
2. lifestyle adjustment
both of these stages can apply to any small group, not just church-oriented ones.
3. relational re-vision
4. missional re-creation.

As you can see, it can take some time for a small group to get to a missional mindset: many small groups never make it, in fact, and remain in either stage 1 or 2.

You can see a detailed summary of Scott's four stages either here or here.

Should Stats be Extinct?

2011-03-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

I'm always interested in stats, even rough ones, so when I read the following from Peter Carrell, an Anglican who because of his job moves around from church to church congregation regularly, I was intrigued. He noted this about one church he does manage to get to fairly often:

Yesterday, participating in a service at church #1, I was very pleasantly surprised to find yet more new people than when I was there a month ago. I also performed some mental arithmetic: 80% of the large congregation were under the age of 60, with around 50% under the age of 20. By contrast, when I first visited that service several years ago, I would say 80% of the congregation were over the age of 60.

He also makes a comment elsewhere about a'religious' survey that's had some promotion recently:

It seems incredible that researchers could come up with such a conclusion [that religion is set for extinction] when other evidence points in a different direction. For instance the secularization thesis (that Western countries were becoming more and more secular) has found itself undermined by both a rise in enthusiasm among Christians as well as by immigration drawing in active adherents of many faiths.

Ah.....church....!

2011-03-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

A list of does and don'ts from a site called The Owls and the Angels has probably already started doing the rounds of the Internet. However, I've only just caught up with it, and for the benefit of those others who haven't seen it either, I'm alerting you to it.

The first three items on the 20 point list are below, to whet your appetite.

1. Be genuine. Do not under any circumstances try to be trendy or hip, if you are not already intrinsically trendy or hip. If you are a 90-year-old woman who enjoys crocheting and listens to Beethoven, by God be proud of it.

2. Stop pretending you have a rock band.

3. Stop arguing about whether gay people are okay, fully human, or whatever else. Seriously. Stop it.

Researching small groups

2011-03-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Matthew Taylor of RSA (not Returned Services Assn) and social entrepreneur Tessy Britton [pictured at right] are planning on researching small groups.

Now while this has nothing to do specifically with the small groups that are part of many Christian congregations, already their five points and the subsequent comments to the blog post give an idea as to why some small groups flourish and others don't.

Taylor and Britton have set out five areas that are the structure of their research; they're looking for people to write to them to give examples of small groups that have gone right and ones that have gone wrong. It looks already as though there are more examples of their second point - most small groups fail to fulfil their potential and here are the main reasons people give for groups under-performing - than of their first: small groups of volunteers can change the world, and here are some examples

If you've found that small groups in your church have flourished, you might be interested to let Taylor and Britton know why; equally if you've found that small groups have burnt out for various reasons, the research that these two are going to do may be of help in encouraging small groups in the future.

Busyness

2011-03-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

“Busyness, of course, is not peculiar to the pastoral life; it is endemic to our culture.. We need a strategy that takes into account two sets of demands that seem to cancel each other out.. The first set of demands is that we respond with compassionate attentiveness to the demands of the people around us...demands that refuse to stay within the confines of regular hours and always exceed our capacity to meet them..

“The second set of demands is that we respond with reverent prayer to the demand of God for our attention, to listen to him, to take him seriously in the actual circumstances of this calendar day, at this street address, and not bluff our way through by adopting a professionalized role. This is a kind of attentiveness that we know from instruction and experience can be entered into only slowly and deliberately. There is a large, leisurely center to existence where God must be deeply pondered, lovingly believed. It means entering realms of spirit where wonder and adoration have space to develop, where play and delight have time to flourish. Is this possible for pastors who have this other set before them daily?

“It is possible for pastors. Because there is a biblical provision for it.. The name for it is sabbath…”

Eugene Peterson in Working the Angles

14 theses on prayer

2011-03-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

Ben Myers, after staying for a weekend at a Catholic monastery, has written 14 theses on prayer....here's one example that particularly appealed to me:

6. Why do we close our eyes when praying? Prayer is not a turning inwards, not a withdrawal into the silent recesses of the self. Prayer is open-eyed attention. It is waiting all day on the shore for the glimpse of a rare bird. ‘You must wear your eyes out, as others their knees’ (R. S. Thomas).

Church in the Present Tense

2011-03-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Church in the Present Tense: a candid look at what’s emerging - authors: Scot McKnight, Kevin Corcoran, Peter Rollins, Jason Clark.

The book includes a DVD with interviews with the authors, as well as Rowan Williams, Brian McLaren and Jonny Baker.

Jonny Baker has written a lengthy post/review of this scholarly book in which he discusses many of its features and points out some things that are missing (such as women authors and interviewees). The book offers different stances on theology, mission and church, some of which disagree with each other. There are critiques of the church cultures as well as the cultures churches ‘live’ in, of institutionalism and emergence.

By the look of the reviews this is an important book on the current state of ‘church’ in its various forms (though not all of its forms).

At the end of his review, Baker quotes Rowan Williams: Church is what happens when people encounter the risen Jesus Christ; institution is something that comes much later...
Brazos Press 2011.

Hope and resilience

2011-03-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

One of the five aspects of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand's mandate is justice. We possibly don't focus on it as much as we might on this blog, so here is an extract from a blog (Never Mind the Bricolage) that itself doesn't usually focus on justice issues either.

In this post, the writer (whose name doesn't appear on the blog that I can find) has recently seen a documentary called Wasteland about the world's largest landfill on the edge of Rio, in Brazil. Whole communities live in and around this landfill, and the film shows how there is both hope and resilience amongst these people. The writer's comments are worth reading in full, but the following paragraph is significant.

Without reaching too far, it might be that there is a shift in consciousness occurring, a growing sense that materialism is not sufficient and that finding some to contribute to the well-being of others is integral to our humanity. If it is not a shift in consciousness, it is a trend for sure. It could be that the economic downturn has had some effect, but think it is beyond that. Another signal that we have experienced a move away from, or are past, post, after or entering some new phase of the modern project--can't be bothered with terming it postmodern, post-secular, hyper-modern, liquid modernity or whatever other characterization has been put forth---things have shifted, we don't live in the same world anymore, new values and ethics are emerging and Muniz [the film's director] embodies some of them in this film. Or perhaps they are old values being incarnated differently--just watch the film and make up your own mind.

Liturgy back online

2011-03-20T20:01:00.000-07:00

One of the websites that's been missing as a result of the Christchurch earthquake has been the internationally popular Liturgy site, run by Anglican Bosco Peters. As a result of being offline, a lot of his fans have assumed he'd gone for good and have departed themselves.

After a few spasmodic tweets, sent from an internet cafe, or the like, Bosco and Liturgy are now back online again.

And as perky, informative and occasionally hilarious as ever...

Some updates on ChCh

2011-03-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

Via a tweet leading to a website where there was a post about another blog, one written by the current Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, I found out a bit more about what's happening on the Prezzie front in Christchurch. Peter Cheyne has written quite a lengthy post about his visit to Christchurch to see at first hand what the churches are experiencing.

On the Anglican front, I was sent a lengthy email a few days (which will probably already be slightly out of date). This lists what's happening in a number of parishes around the city. I'm not in the position to post this here - and I don't know that it's been posted in this particular format elsewhere either - but if anyone wants a copy by email, I can forward it to you. Just ask in the comments section of this blog. The official Anglican site is here and there's a good deal of information about where the Christchurch Anglican community is at on that site.

The Catholics of Christchurch also have a good deal of information on their site, including the dire state of the Cathedral - a building I know better than the famous Anglican one (which I think I've only ever been in the porch of). A few years ago when my wife and I were in Christchurch, we spent a bit of time in the Catholic building, and it was distressing to see photos of the present state of it after the recent earthquake.

There isn't a central Baptist website for Christchurch - Baptists being rather more independent church-wise, they've each got their own sites.

Japan and Religion

2011-03-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

We tend to have our views about countries in terms of how religious they are...or not.

Japan is no different. Kudos, then, to GetReligion.org for picking up on various reports as to the actual state of belief in Japan. Here's CNN.com on when the Japanese bring religion into their lives:

Proud of their secular society, most Japanese aren’t religious in the way Americans are: They tend not to identify with a single tradition nor study religious texts. "The average Japanese person doesn’t consciously turn to Buddhism until there’s a funeral,” says Brian Bocking, an expert in Japanese religions at Ireland’s University College Cork. When there is a funeral, though, Japanese religious engagement tends to be pretty intense. “A very large number of Japanese people believe that what they do for their ancestors after death matters, which might not be what we expect from a secular society,” says Bocking. “There’s widespread belief in the presence of ancestors’ spirits.”

And USA today on religious percentages:

Japan is 90% Buddhist or Shinto or a combination of the two, with young urban Japanese more inclined to have drifted from religious attachments.

The same writer, Cathy Lynn Grossman, begins a blog post on Japanese and religion by writing simply: Everyone prays.

Finally, Religion News Service tells us this:

Churches and Christians in northeastern Japan, the most heavily affected area, are still out of contact days after the disaster. Studies estimate that 2 percent of Japanese are Christian, with the vast majority practicing Buddhism and the indigenous Shinto religion.

The various reports go to confirm yet again, that there is no country in the world that can be simply called, 'secular.'

PS. There is a short news report video on this blog page showing some slightly more positive aspects post-disaster.

Workplace trauma after the earthquake

2011-03-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

In response to the urgent need, Skylight has developed a practical and unique hand book for employers, managers and team leaders in organisations and businesses impacted by the Christchurch Earthquakes and aftershocks - When trauma and grief come to work.

Employers are not only dealing with their own trauma and grief but are faced with the trauma and loss in the lives of their staff and customers too.

Hard copies are also available 0800 299 100 or email rs@skylight-trust.org.nz

The booklet/pdf looks at a variety of issues: post traumatic stress, grief, coping with staff reactions, looking after yourself as an employer, support organisations and more.

Short sleeps = poor concentration

2011-03-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

Say you decide to go on a fast, and so you effectively starve yourself for a week. At the end of seven days, how would you be feeling? You'd probably be hungry, perhaps a little weak, and almost certainly somewhat thinner. But basically you'd be fine.

Now let's say you deprive yourself of sleep for a week. Not so good. After several days, you'd be almost completely unable to function. That's why Amnesty International lists sleep deprivation as a form of torture.

So begins a short article by Tony Schwartz on the fact that we need more sleep each night than most of us allow ourselves. High achievers, in particular, always want to make the most of that extra late-night hour. Others just don't want 'to go to bed so early.' But Schwartz says that the result of having too little sleep is that we work at a considerably reduced capacity. Better sleep means better focus and concentration in a shorter time.

I'm pointing to this article out of concern for the health and wellness (are they the same thing?) of ministers, many of whom have broken sleep and interrupted sleep; it's part of the nature of the job. But few of them make up that sleep. And that only leads to worse sleep patterns.

Japan

2011-03-13T13:35:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this in full....it appeared on the Tall Skinny Kiwi blog (he's in NZ just now) on March 11th and is a 'conversation' between him and a colleague in Japan. It gives some idea of where things are at for those on the ground.

He writes: My friend Mika Goto was stuck in Tokyo tonight after the earthquake and I asked her some questions for the blog. I am posting it unedited.

TSK: Did you feel the earthquake in Tokyo? What is happening there now?

MIKA: I and co-workers, felt the earthquake in the central Tokyo.
It was the biggest earthquake in my life, intensity 5 in Tokyo area.
After emergency escape, we are told to go home or to go safe place,
but trains were stopped, there were traffic jam,
so that, there were lots of people walking to go home, or to find warm and safe place.

some of co-workers, who live near central Tokyo, they walked home.
some of us, who live away from the central, we stay at office for tonight.
hotels and restaurants were full, lots of people are staying in some building to keep themselves warm.
from around 11pm, trains started moving in Tokyo area.

phone line has been too busy, we lost contact with each other.
I kept calling to my parents, so that I could reach them to find that they are safe.
(my father is also staying in his office in the central Tokyo.)

tokyo, is ok, i gues, but the area close to the origin of the earthquake,
people there are facing difficult situation, with collaption of building, landslide, seawave.

one of my co-worker, her family is in Miyagi, near earthquake center,
inside of their house is messed up, but the family is safe and their hous is ok.

I heard, the parents of a guy in our church, live in Sendai, which is also near earthquake center, he hasnt reach them yet.

TSK: Have the churches begun to respond in Japan? What do you think they will do?

I dont know if they have begun, without any info,... but I hope, the churches aound the epicentral area will help, such as offering them place to stay, food, blanket, caring of those who lost their family...

TSK: People around the world are praying for Japan right now. And we expect that churches and organizations everywhere will want to help in any way we can. Which organization is the best one to donate money to help Japan?

I don't have any church org in mind now. I will ask some of church friends for this...

TSK: How can we pray for your country?

it will be great if you pray for Japan, asking Jesus what to pray.
I pray that no more death will be caused by this earthquake,
and that God will use good of this for the future benefit of this country and the people in this country... (coz this gave us opportunity for us to think what is really important in our lives.)

no photo for now......and,,, i m going to sleep... hope i can go home tomorrow morning.

thanks for your prayers, mika goto

Samaritans and Facebook; Self-harm and You Tube

2011-03-09T12:02:00.000-08:00

From a report released on Sky News:

The Samaritans and Facebook are teaming up to allow users to get help for friends they think might be having serious problems. Facebook has 30 million users in the UK and anyone concerned about people struggling to cope or with possible suicidal thoughts will be able to get help through the Help Centre.

The feature enables users to report specific content, like status updates or wall posts. For instance, typing the word "worried" into the help centre search engine will bring up a list of places to find advice as well as the option to report suicidal content. Once a report about suicidal content has been processed, the distressed person will be sent a message with information on how they can contact the Samaritans if they need help.

Samaritans chief executive Catherine Johnstone said: "We want to remind people that if a friend says that life isn't worth living, they should always be taken seriously. "Facebook is a part of daily life for so many of us and we must make sure that people online have support when they need it."

And connected to this, a brief report has been published called: The Scope of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury on YouTube. Early in the report they state:

The top 100 videos analyzed were viewed over 2 million times, and most (80%) were accessible to a general audience. Viewers rated the videos positively (M _ 4.61; SD: 0.61 out of 5.0) and selected videos as a favourite over 12 000 times. The videos’ tones were largely factual or educational (53%) or melancholic (51%). Explicit imagery of self-injury was common. Specifically, 90% of non-character videos had non-suicidal self-injury photographs, whereas 28% of character videos had in-action non-suicidal self-injury. For both, cutting was the most common method. Many videos (58%) do not warn about this content. [My italics]

International Women's Day....was yesterday

2011-03-08T12:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (8th March) was International Women's Day - and was a special occasion in that women around the world were celebrating 100 years of Women's Day.

While we're a bit late in posting about it, (though for many people it's still the 8th March, anyway) that doesn't mean that many of the options available to both men and women in terms of celebrating the day have been left behind. Jenny Baker offered the following bunch of suggestions - many of which you could do at any time of the year...

Contact a woman who has inspired or encouraged you and tell her how much you appreciate her
Join the Big Inequality Debate at http://www.weareequals.org/
Follow Ruth Wells' example and take action against the objectification of women, or get involved with Object
Get in touch with a younger woman who has leadership potential, or who inspires you and offer your support and encouragement.
Use videos and information from The Girl Effect to raise awareness in your youth group - or among your friends - about the injustice faced by many girls around the world.
Find out more about women around the world on Christian Aid's website.
Get involved with Restored, Tearfund's new initiative to challenge the church on violence against women.
Give the money you could have spent on a treat for yourself to help women in poverty around the world - why not give it here, here or here?
Join Womankind's twitter campaign and tweet your #wish4women

Toxic Pastors

2011-03-06T14:01:00.000-08:00

Author, Joe Hellerman is presently at work on a book about the use of power and authority in Christian leadership. The provisional title is When Pastors Were Servants: Recapturing Paul’s Cruciform Vision for Authentic Christian Leadership.

He writes:
The motivation to take on the project came from numbers of students at Talbot, and colleagues in pastoral ministry, who have found themselves on the receiving end of abusive, hurtful leaders. The book will contain, among other things, a series of narratives (well disguised, of course) detailing the various experiences that these men and women have had at the hands of narcissistic, dysfunctional leaders in their churches.

Here is perhaps the most counterintuitive reality I have encountered in the whole process of researching the topic: all but one of the dozen or so abusive local church leaders described in the book are still in their churches, fully in control of the church’s vision, ministry, and staffing.

At a deeper level, people respond to powerful, charismatic leadership out of a profound longing for a god-like figure in their lives. In religious contexts this person can be a gifted, celebrity pastor who simultaneously serves as both God’s representative and spiritual father to a willing, compliant congregation. Jesus was apparently well aware of this dynamic: ‘Do not call anyone on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is in heaven’ (Matt 23:9).

I think this promises to be a book worth reading, paradoxically in the light of the need ministers in New Zealand and elsewhere have for avoiding burnout and stress-related sicknesses.

Homelessness

2011-03-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

Kim Fabricius writes, in a sermon 'published' on Ben Myers blog, on the subject of homelessness....not quite the discussion homelessness you might expect, as the following couple of paragraphs indicate [my italics in the first paragraph]

There has been a lot of talk over the past decade or so about the church at the end of Christendom being a church in exile, often rather glib talk, in my view, because it has neglected to acknowledge the Old Testament significance of exile, and the traumatic experience of exile, namely, God’s judgement on Israel, God’s punishment of Israel by their dispersal to Babylon. Without this recognition, it is easy for Christians to slip into a victim mentality, in which we blame church decline on secularism or atheism. Without this recognition, we rather too quickly start “re-imagining the future” (as the process of renewal was called in the URC in Wales) without confessing and repenting the sins of our past – sins mainly of taking too much for granted, sins of apathy and lethargy, the sins of civic religion.

And then there are the three dangers of living in exile. The first is nostalgia, pining for the good old days and trying to re-inscribe them in the reality of today. But – remember King Canute – you can’t command the tides of time to withdraw. The second danger is withdrawal, disengaging from the big bad world of today altogether and circling the wagons. This is the sectarian option and it is not only cowardly and faithless, it is also a recipe for further decline and ultimate disappearance. And then there is the third danger, assimilation, whereby we think we can save the church by aping the ways of the world, as if all we’ve got to do is to market and manage the church more strategically and effectively to be “successful”. But then the customer, not the gospel, becomes sovereign, and though the church gain the whole world, it loses its soul.

Lent is round the corner

2011-03-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

Of course, no one has problems thinking of things to give up for Lent, or things to do that are out of their comfort zone and that make a difference to someone else. Or do they?

Anyway, if you're feeling short on ideas, here's Dave Gibbons offering what he (rather oddly) calls A Hardcore Top Ten for Lent 2011.

Some obvious things on the list, like giving up chocolate or watching TV or taking a retreat from social media, but also some slightly off the wall suggestions - giving up sex, stopping wearing make-up, turning your car into a car-pool, not locking your doors against the outside world.

Check out his list and his reasons. One of these might just be the thing for you!

Who are your Neighbours?

2011-03-03T11:47:00.000-08:00

Amidst the tragedy of the earthquake in Christchurch last week, it has been heartening to see the generosity, kindness and creativity expressed by neighbours to their neighbours, from getting water for an elderly neighbour to cooking for the whole street. At such times we realise the worth of the people living near us.

Can you name your neighbours?

This year on Saturday 26 and 27 March all over the country, an opportunity exists for all New Zealanders to participate in Neighbours Day Aotearoa. Why not encourage your congregation to consider how they might connect with their neighbours in a meaningful way.

Ideas can be small or large, ranging from baking for a neighbour to simply introducing
yourself to a neighbour you've never really spoken to, from organising a street barbeque to afternoon tea to mowing your neighbour's grass front.

For more information, check out the Neighbours Day website. There are heaps of ideas there.

The rumblings continue

2011-03-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

The other day I posted a brief note about Rob Bell's video in which he seems to espouse 'universalism' as a reasonable theology. What he actually does in the video is ask questions - always a good way to start a discussion. And boy, has it started a discussion. On the basis of the video alone (well, not quite alone, on the basis of the video and the blurb on the back of the as yet unpublished book) all manner of people have started discussing the rights and wrongs of what he's said, and whether he's a heretic and is leading people astray and why does Rob Bell get to influence so many people and is he really going to say this in his book (which none of us have read yet) ...and so on.

Richard Beck has been writing about it - he's now on the second of a bunch of posts that will appear on the topic. The first is here.

Tim Keller hasn't written recently about it, but has tweeted back to an earlier article he wrote on the subject - and the way in which traditionalists and postmoderns see Hell differently.

And then there are the Reformed people, who've really gone to town on the whole issue. They're exceedingly up in arms.

What's great about all this is that people are talking theology, that is, they're talking about God, who He (okay 'She' for some of you) is. And they may be arguing like billyo, but at least the subject is out there in the blogosphere for all to see....and that can only be good.

Advance notice...

2011-02-27T14:59:00.000-08:00

Gaynor McCartney is collating a list of Songs, Prayers, and Readings under the generic title "For Christchurch."

Gaynor says the list will also be suitable to help people through all kinds of trauma. This list is to be published on the NZ Hymnbook Trust Noticeboard.

The list isn't available yet, but will be coming. We'll let you know when it arrives.

Love Wins

2011-02-27T12:28:00.001-08:00

This video is likely to cause some ructions.....it's a promo, in a sense, for Rob Bell's latest book, Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived and it's interesting to read some of the comments on You Tube that accompany it. Ructions are already in the making there.

I think one of the most interesting statements he makes in the short 2 and a half minutes is that many Christians believe 'Jesus rescued us from God'....Mr Bell has some issues with this....

PS - just found this wonderful line from Kim Fabricius:

There are Christians who reject universalism not because it is unbiblical but because, were it true, it would disappoint them.

I can't get over it

2011-02-24T19:10:00.000-08:00

In the light of the disaster and chaos and trauma in Christchurch, I was particularly interested in a book that came to my attention this morning.

It's not new - the second edition was published in 1996 - but it obviously hasn't dated, if the enthusiastic review I received today is anything to go by.

The book is I Can't Get Over It - a handbook for trauma survivors, by Aphrodite Matsakis. Dr Matsakis has worked for many years with victims of all manner of post traumatic stress disorder. Her clients have included Vietnam veterans, rape victims, disaster survivors. Though this book is listed as a 'self-help' book, and could probably be used that way, I suspect it's more valuable used in tandem with a counsellor, therapist, minister, supervisor - anyone who is willing to work through the PTSD a person is suffering.

"...one of the most informative and sensitive books on surviving violent trauma. [It] covers most useful techniques and self-help suggestions for safe recovery, empowerment adn groth following trauma." Yigal Ben-Haim, trauma specialist.

This may be a useful book to have on your shelf in the days to come, when many hundreds of people around Canterbury in particular will be looking for help to get past the horrors of this week.

Reflecting on disaster

2011-02-24T16:37:00.000-08:00

The three most recent posts on Jason Goroncy's blog relate to the devastating second Christchurch earthquake.

One offers two poems/reflections by Walter Brueggemann, the second is called, Christchurch: a pastoral reflection, and the third is reprint of a theological reflection by Frank Rees on his own experience of disaster called God of the Tsunami.

Rees is Principal and Professor of Systematic Theology at Whitley College in Melbourne, and this paper was first presented at a conference in South Korea.

Conversion! - maybe

2011-02-24T12:45:00.001-08:00

Late last year I blogged briefly about a book called Launching Missional Communities by Mike Breen and Alex Absalom.

Dave Fitch has just read it and claims 'conversion' to the attractional model of church, after having spent a number of years arguing for the missional approach as the best option.

His lengthy post, however, appears to arguing for something rather different to what most of us would have considered 'attractional' meant. My understanding of 'attractional' is a church where people basically expect non-believers to come to the central place/building - how the church members go about getting them to the church in the first place varies enormously, of course.

Fitch says Breen and Absolom are talking about something different: an occasional (say six weekly or even three-monthly) service for the believers which may or may not 'attract' any outsiders, and which is like a kind of major celebration for all those involved in the church (which in Breen and Absolom's case consists of lots of small sub-groups - missional groups, in other words).

So, as one or more of the commenters on Fitch's post say, he's been 'converted' to something rather different to the normally accepted version of 'attractional'. In fact, it may be that he hasn't been converted at all. LOL

Read the post and see what you think. And what does his post add to the argument about missional vs attractional - what does Breen and Absolom's approach add to it?

Cold Calling

2011-02-24T12:09:00.000-08:00

Just for something different....an anecdote as to why cold calling evangelism doesn't always work....

A nun who was living in a convent next to a construction site noticed the coarse language of the workers and decided to spend some time with them to correct their ways.

She decided she would take her lunch, sit with the workers and talk with them. She put her sandwich in a brown bag and walked over to the spot where the men were eating.

She walked up to the group and with a big smile said, "And do you men know Jesus Christ?"

They shook their heads and looked at each other very confused. One of the workers looked up into the steelworks and yelled out, "Anybody up there know Jesus Christ"

One of the steelworkers yelled down: "Why?"

The worker yelled back, "Cos his wife's here with his lunch."

Curated communities

2011-02-23T12:54:00.000-08:00

Jonny Baker has written before about curated worship, a concept that is only beginning to filter through in NZ, I think (though there may have been some exponents of it under a different name a decade or so ago: Mike Riddell and Mark Pierson, for example).

However, the idea of curating is a concept that's visible in the world apart from the church - as happens so often, something that the church is picking up in the culture is what the culture is either already doing, or thinking about.

Jonny points towards an explanatory blog post on the subject, written by Nathaniel Whittemore. He's looking at it in regard to the world of TED. Here's a paragraph Jonny quotes from the piece; it's worth reading the whole article for the way in which such thinking could impact communities in the church.

The explosion of curated membership communities is an attempt to create the shared experiences which bring us into contact with those people, giving us access to the amazing world which we can see, if not fully yet grasp.

It may seem obvious, but...

2011-02-22T13:57:00.000-08:00

Mission is so easy if only....

Len Hjalmarson has written in his latest post about being neighbours....there's more to the post here.

In January of 2009 a group of pastors gathered to think and dream about what it would look like for the churches in their area to come together to serve the community. They asked the mayor to join them and talk about his dream for the city. They also asked him to talk about hindrances to that dream coming true.
He came with a list of pervasive issues and problems: at-risk kids; elderly shut-ins; decaying housing; hunger and homelessness. Before he started speaking he shared this: “it occurred to me that what our city really needs are good neighbours. The majority of the issues we face would be eliminated or drastically reduced if we could just become a community of people who are great neighbours.”
The pastors left convicted. Here they were asking the major what areas of the city were most in need, and he was telling them that the city could be transformed if Christians would simply live out the second half of the Great Commandment.
The plan they forged is simple — a teaching series on the art of neighbouring. They found that people don’t build relationships with their neighbours because,

1) they don’t see the value in it,
2) lack of time, and
3) lack of trust.

So they came up with this teaching series for this group of churches:
Week 1. taking Jesus seriously – what if Jesus really meant we should love our neighbors?
Week 2. Time: creating space to build relationships with neighbors
Week 3. Trust – embracing the messiness of relationships
They are then equipping their people to actually enter their neighbourhoods and live in them and build relationships.

Len also mentions an essay written by Todd Hiestand, which has apparently been unavailable for a while (it was written in 2007). It's called The Missional Church in Suburbia, and appears on Todd's site. It looks at mission in the urban society, and takes some similar approaches to those of the Australian, Simon Carey Holt.

K.I.S.S

2011-02-21T14:06:00.001-08:00

Andrew, the Tall Skinny Kiwi blogger, who's currently in New Zealand at the moment, (at the Ngatiawa Contemplative Monastery as he calls it, though Ngatiawa Contemporary Monastery seems to be what they call it) wrote in a recent short post:

Praxis focuses on what they call the "emerging postmodern paradigm of mission". Which reminds me of David Bosch who suggested we were in the 'postmodern' paradigm, a term he wanted to replace with the word "ecumenical". As we all know, this never happened, probably due to his untimely death in 1992 and the reluctance of the evangelicals to embrace the "ecumenical" word, despite the fact that it occurs in the New Testament. But "the emerging postmodern paradigm of mission" would probably have his stamp of approval.

I'd hope that some other word or shorter phrase would eventually take off rather than 'emerging postmodern paradigm of mission' which quite honestly apart from being an awful mouthful doesn't tell us anything much. 'Ecumenical' now has a dated sound, and it lacks any sense of mission in it, as far as I can see.

I'm just reading Bosch's magnum opus, Transforming Mission, for the first time, after having sold it to innumerable customers over the years. It's quite some book and is full of good insights, particularly in relation to Matthew and Luke (by which you can guess that I'm probably not a very long way through it). Possibly Bosch would have used 'the emerging postmodern paradigm of mission' but he strikes me as a writer who's clearer than that, and I suspect he might have come up with something more useful. [Though I've just noticed that he uses 'paradigm' in the subtitle...!]

My sniping here isn't helped by the fact that 'postmodern' is a word without meaning, 'emerging' isn't much better, and 'paradigm' has been on my list of don't use words after I kept hearing it being overused in my office here in my first year (2008). Paradigm shift is a scientific term, primarily, which has become popular in other circles.

Note this paragraph from the Wikipedia article: In the later part of the 1990s, 'paradigm shift' emerged as a buzzword, popularized as marketing speak and appearing more frequently in print and publication. In his book, Mind The Gaffe, author Larry Trask advises readers to refrain from using it, and to use caution when reading anything that contains the phrase. It is referred to in several articles and books as abused and overused to the point of becoming meaningless.

I'll leave Bosch with the last word: Our mission has not life of its own: only in the hands of the sending God can it truly be called mission. Not least since the missionary initiative comes from God alone.

Life's big questions

2011-02-17T17:51:00.000-08:00

In a few days time Scott Stephens will host the first of an exciting new Compass series called Life's Big Questions. Each episode features Scott talking about the meaning of life with high profile Australians including Matt Preston (from Master Chef Australia), Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, Julian Morrow, Clare Bowditch, Philip Nitschke and Rolf De Heer.

Scott is the Religion and Ethics editor for ABC Online. Before joining the ABC he taught theology for many years, and even did a stint as a parish minister with the Uniting Church in Australia. He has written extensively on the intersections among philosophy, theology, ethics and politics, as well as on modern atheism's dependence on the Christian legacy. Scott is also a regular contributor to The Drum, Eureka Street and the Times Literary Supplement. He has edited and translated (with Rex Butler) two volumes of the Selected Works of the highly influential philosopher and cultural critic, Slavoj Zizek - including The Universal Exception, which was named by The Guardian newspaper one of its "Books of the Year" in 2007.

Sadly the repeat videos of these programmes won't be available to New Zealand viewers, though there may be transcripts of them at a later point.

Going Missional

2011-02-17T12:58:00.000-08:00

As a leader in the Gospel and our Culture Network, George Hunsberger set forth four trajectories of self-awareness for the missional church:

1. “We own our cultural-ness, our own culture.” We join with our secular neighbors in living
within the particularities of the American culture.
2. “We have the habit of continuous conversion.”
3. “We are a living demonstration of the gospel.” More than rational proof, secularized
people want to see whether it is possible to live by the mandates of Christian discipleship.
4. “We structure our lives around being a sent community instead of a vendor of services.”
For many churches, this involves a fundamental shift in identity, pastoral leadership habits,
community formation, and orientation to the church’s mission.

This comes from an essay entitled Preaching in the Missional Church by Ervin R. Stutzman of the Eastern Mennonite Seminary. The essay is around 17 pages of pdf file, and full of interesting insights into the concept of 'going missional'.

art, theology, marxism, atheism, the mix!

2011-02-17T12:27:00.000-08:00

One of the blogs I read regularly is entitled 'Never mind the bricolage' and is written by someone who calls himself 'Superflat'. There was a point when I had an actual name, but I can't just track it down on the blog at present. He works with students doing courses in which he discusses art and theology, (at least these topics come up regularly in his blog), and in his latest post, Criticism of Heaven he begins by writing the following...

In the Art, Cinema and Theology class we have been exploring the role of women in the arts and particularly women painters and their general absence from Western Art History. We found our way to a discussion about Frida Kahlo, inspired by the movie about her starring Selma Hayek and directed by Julie Taymor.

I think that there are rich conversations to be had around her life and work, but a question came up during class about how to 'do theology with someone who is a communist and an atheist'--points that I actually think are favourable for a conversation, but somehow seemed to be a stumbling block to at least one person. I guess it all depends on how one understands what theological discourse might be--for me it encompasses at least some aspect of bringing things (anything) into dialogue and conversation. While I part company with the conclusions of the Radical Orthodoxy mob, I do like Graham Ward's idea that doing theology somehow means 'reclaiming the world'--bringing all the things once ceded to the wider culture back into contact and conversation with sacred communities and with theology. So for me Frida Kahlo offers up some major theological potentials: sexuality and gender; socialism/Marxism, theism/a-theism, pain and brokenness just to name a few.

I like that idea of 'reclaiming the world' in relation to art/theology -it resonates with a number of different writers on art and theology I've read.

Superflat has a little more to say....here.

[Bricolage is a term used in several disciplines, among them the visual arts, to refer to the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term is borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoler, the core meaning in French being, "fiddle, tinker" and, by extension, "to make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are at hand (regardless of their original purpose)". In contemporary French the word is the equivalent of the English do it yourself, and is seen on large shed retail outlets throughout France. A person who engages in bricolage is a bricoleur. Thanks, Wikipedia!]

Sorry, who killed the church?

2011-02-16T12:42:00.001-08:00

In the middle of last year Richard Beck wrote a post called How Facebook Killed the Church, which has just taken off on the blogosphere again. It's a provocative title, and it's true in relation to what he actually says in the article, where he talks why people who went to church primarily for the social element find it's no longer necessary when there are umpteen technological ways to make contact. I quote:

No doubt, the vast majority of the people in a friend list on Facebook are strangers, acquaintances, or old school friends you haven't seen in years. But no user of Facebook is confused enough to think that she is "in relationship" with any of these people. These are just the penumbra around the core of our Facebook interactions, connecting with people we actually know and are friends with.

In short, Facebook isn't replacing real world relationality. Rather, Facebook tends to reflect our social world.

Beck isn't saying that these people who no longer go to church were thoroughly involved in being disciples - at least I don't think that's what he's saying. There are a great number of very comments to this post, and these clarify and deepen the discussion in a variety of ways. These are as much worth reading as the original post.

V.I.M.

2011-02-15T12:13:00.001-08:00

Len Hjalmarson's latest post summarizes an article written by Dallas Willard in which he puts forward an approach to spiritual growth that's worth thinking about. It's not a 'method'; however the three stages are all necessary for any kind of change or learning, as Hjalmarson shows.

Vision – Intention – Means – this is the pattern that Dallas Willard uses to talk about a framework for spiritual growth. He defends this frame very well and it's a convincing bit of work. I discovered on the weekend that he has a lengthy article online that pulls much of the core material from his book “Renovation of the Heart.”

Perhaps these things don’t interest you greatly – one more system to try to work through. But consider for a moment that this same framework can be applied to the formational agenda of a faith community. Do you know where you are going? Do you understand the working of the system you are attempting to change? Are you ready to commit to going there? Will all your key leaders commit? Do you have a means worked out, step by step, to practically move forward?

Hjalmarson goes on to give some good examples of how Willard's framework works out in ordinary matters, like learning a language, or overcoming addiction.

Missionary work

2011-02-15T11:59:00.001-08:00

Mission work has never been easy, but for many years one of the ways in which it's been conducted is by arranging to work in a country - legally - and then doing the missionary work on top of that. However, the following bit of news in relation to South Korean missionaries shows that this approach may not work for much longer...

South Korea is to enact laws to discourage its people from engaging in illegal activities overseas, a move seen by Christian groups here as an attempt to curb missionary work.

The South Korean government has been trying to deal with the growing dangers of Christians working as missionaries in Islamic nations, especially after a young missionary was kidnapped and killed by insurgents in Iraq in 2004.

See the remainder of the article here. Note that a number of Koreans were kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2007 (two of them later executed) and two Korean men were imprisoned in Libya last year.

This might be news to you

2011-02-14T14:44:00.000-08:00

In a recent post, Andrew aka Tall Skinny Kiwi, who has been back in NZ for a spell, writes:

We are staying for a few days at Ngatiawa which is a monastery in the new-emerging fashion. This used to be a Presbyterian camp in a previous life but has been bought out and changed over and broadened in its use to become a monastic center for protestant youth, with a connection to the Anglicans. Good people here. There are actually 6 urban monasteries in this area under the Urban Vision banner and one rural monastery which adds some balance to the ministry. Ngatiawa is that rural piece of the puzzle - land, cows, gardens, daily prayer in a nice chapel, dung between your toes, etc.

In case it's news to you (as it was to me) that there was a 'new-emerging' monastery called Ngatiawa (which appears to be the joining together of the Maori tribal name Nga Tiawa but may not have particular connections) the following paragraphs from the NZ Urban Vision people may help:

We are a contemporary monastery set in the beautiful Reikorangi valley – inland from Waikanae, on the Kapiti Coast, north of Wellington. Ngatiawa seeks to give priority to nurturing a contemplative life within UV Vision and be an open community for others to experience. We offer prayerful rhythms, retreat and solitude. We enjoy and care for our land, seeking to live more sustainably. We also offer training and team building, as well as plenty of hospitality and recreation in a new way.

Our guest house hosts groups each week from Urban Vision, as well as other friends and neighbours, and church and community groups. Individuals also come to join us for retreat, support, recreation or to explore issues of faith, justice and community and personal wholeness. At least annually we host larger gatherings and festivals, and hope to be a place of connection for others committed to God's love and justice.

All this is great, although the more I read on the site the more it all sounds like what monasteries have been doing pretty much since they began. Certainly they were often more contemplative than active, but reaching out to the marginalised and working justly isn't exactly 'emerging' in regard to the history of monasteries. Just quibbling...!

Just in case you thought you were alone....

2011-02-14T12:42:00.001-08:00

There's an endless amount of handwringing going on in the mainline denominations (not just the Presbyterians) about decreasing this and declining that and vanishing those and where the heck are the people who used to be here...

You're not alone. Terry Mattingly has just written about the way in which denominations in the States are facing these issues, but adds an interesting slant to the problem: liberal and conservative Jews are facing exactly the same issues. As he notes:

Conservative Judaism’s membership rolls are in free fall.

According to a strategic plan for renewal issued in February by the denomination’s congregational arm, the number of families served by synagogues belonging to what was once American Judaism’s leading stream has shrunk by 14% since 2001. In the denomination’s Northeast region, the number of families has dropped by 30%.

And liberal Jews are in the same boat...

Mattingly nicely sums up the issues amongst both Christians and Jews as: the post-denominational mess.

More on giving

2011-02-14T12:28:00.000-08:00

Back on the 7th of this month I mentioned some blog posts Richard Beck was writing relating to a different view of giving in our churches. He thinks giving in a way that connects with what we're actually giving to might be more helpful than just tossing something in a plate or offering bag.

He's now onto his third post on the subject. Here's an extract:

The most spiritually formative giving that my church does occurs around Thanksgiving when, on Sack Sunday, the church members take up to the front sacks of food for our food pantry. By the ending of the service the stage is packed with food. Then, after the service, we all grab the sacks and take them to a waiting truck. I expect lots of churches have giving times just like this.

The most spiritually formative aspect of this is the shopping during the week in preparation for the service. It's particularly meaningful for my boys who love to go up and down the aisles of the grocery store picking out food items. As we do so we get to talk about giving, poverty, gratitude, and what all this means for someone who follows Jesus of Nazareth.

It's well worth reading the rest because of the way he develops this argument....

Why bother with church?

2011-02-13T14:58:00.000-08:00

Next time one of your congregation says they're thinking that it's hardly worth bothering to go to church, point in the direction of Lisa Colón DeLay, who calls herself a writer, artist, impromptu humorist, and spiritual formation provocateur (certainly sounds more trendy than a Spiritual Director).

She's recently written a post entitled, So, You wanna ditch your church? Top 5 Mistakes. It's not heavily theological, so it won't cause anyone to say 'that's too hard for me to understand.' It begins:

Sometimes going to church doesn’t seem worth it. For heaven’s sake, wouldn’t it be better to just have breakfast with some family or friends, and forgo irritating people, scheduling problems, overblown or petty dramas de jour, personality conflicts, politics, dodgy doctrinal positioning, and the rest of machine the local church can be? Is the Cracker Barrel growing a bit more more alluring each Sunday morning?

Seems like a no-brainer, right?
If this is kind of thing is happening for you, in your local church, maybe church shopping is around the bend? Well, wait just a minute. Here are 5 Mistakes you can make (or have made) regarding your local church.

1. Making theological judgments for what are personal preferences.
2. Mistaking the “local church” for The Bride of Christ.
3. Misunderstanding the idea of “community.”
4. Implementing a consumer approach with the spiritual and transcendent.
5. Overlooking what is happening in the sacraments.

Collins St, Melbourne

2011-02-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

In a post written back on the 6th of February (2011), Simon Carey Holt writes:

“…I came to Collins Street Baptist Church one year ago this month. In a community of such history, I am still new. I came from seventeen years of teaching practical theology in seminaries and universities. When I accepted the call to Collins Street, eyebrows were raised, my own included. Why would I leave the security and stimulation, not to mention the opportunity to influence, that teaching provides? And why, in the breathless age of ‘new missional communities’ and ‘emergent churches’, would one join an ecclesial relic in apparent decline?...

I have read the statistics, the predictions of demise for churches like this one: stories of sinking ships and chronic relevance deficit. I’ve listened to whispered warnings of a conservative community, liberal in theology, jealous of its history, hording its resources and resistant to change. Despite all of this, I packed my bags and moved in.

…What I have found could not be further from its reputation. Collins Street is anything but an ecclesial relic! Indeed, it’s a relatively small congregation—I often say it’s a small church with a big building, a big history, a big budget and a big impact—but far from being on its deathbed, this church is very much alive. What I have found is an extraordinary community of people, diverse in every possible way, alive to the Spirit and deeply committed to the future. A year in and I am very glad to be here…”

I was interested to read this, because I visited Collins St when I was in Melbourne about seven years ago, and was distinctly unimpressed: people sat separately, the sermon was thin, the decor was of that ilk that says 'church is a serious place' (Wellington Central Baptist struck us in the same way when we visited in January this year) and all in all we came away not having been overwhelmed by our visit. Holt's post needs to be read in full (it's not much longer than what I've quoted) and it's worth reading the follow-up post in which he talks further about his reading of Diana Butler Bass' book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, where he notes:

Bass’s vision of a church ‘with its eyes wide to the world’ is one I have long shared: a church deeply committed to this earth, its wellbeing and renewal; a church with a finely tuned radar for the sacred in the world around it; a church open and responsive to the needs for grace and redemption in its own neighbourhood. Reading Bass’s words made me wonder again what such a church really looks like. How does an ‘eyes-wide-open’ church differ from one with its eyes tightly shut? What characterises its life together? What shape does its mission take?

This will be an interesting journey, and one that's worth following up on regularly.

Art and Faith Conference

2011-02-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

Murray Rae has just announced that the organisation, STAANZ will hold a conference and associated exhibition on Art and Faith in Dunedin from July 29-30 this year. The theme of the conference is 'Tikkun Olam: To Mend the World' and the keynote speaker will be Professor Bill Dyrness from Fuller Theological Seminary.

The aim of the conference is to encourage conversation between artists and theologians around the theme of art and faith.

More details on the conference website.

Pass this on to anyone who may be interested, especially artists.

Discipleship + Salvation

2011-02-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

The sad reality of discipleship in our time is that it is divorced from mission. Discipleship is often divorced from mission because it is divorced from the awareness of who God is and what it means to claim that Jesus is the Christ — the living Messiah of God. Discipleship grows out of the awareness that salvation begins a process of submitting our lives to the Lordship of Christ. When this process does not follow the event of salvation, then we fail to follow Jesus in life.

This comes from a blog post written by the prolific Len Hjalmarson, in which he says that the Gospel isn't just 'Jesus saves' but also 'Jesus is Lord.'

He also notes:
Our practice of discipleship is often lacking because we have separated a personal event from a public process. But discipleship is never a private process; if it was a private process the early Christians would not have been martyrs.

Giving - because it's good

2011-02-09T11:56:00.000-08:00

Remember the verse about 'giving a cup of water in My Name'? What about those who give cups of water, or time, or do an act of kindness not in Jesus' Name? Does he strike those events out of the Book of Life?

I think not.

Giving to others, being kind to others, doing something heroic for another is built into our DNA, I suspect, which rather undercuts Richard Dawkins' idea of the 'selfish gene.' Giving, being kind, being heroic may not be what we focus on, or do very well (either as Christians or not) but it is still there in our system, and comes out frequently. For instance, the anonymous truck driver who rescued a little girl from a blazing car near Milton in the last day or so probably just got on and did what he thought he should. I doubt that there was any particular 'spiritual' motive behind it.

What prompts this meandering is news that a website has been set up in New Zealand called 'Giving for Good: the generosity hub.' You can read stories about giving and helping, and volunteering, and recent news reports of generosity, and you can contribute your own.

You're also nudged to think about giving money to good causes, and shown some examples of how this might be achieved. There's nothing churchy or spiritual about any of it - not that I've noticed so far - but it's great that the groups putting it together think it's worth emphasising generosity within our society.

Family and household projections to 2031

2011-02-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

From Statistics NZ

The latest subnational family and household projections provide an indication of possible future changes in the number and composition of families and households.

Highlights of the latest release project that:

• All 16 of New Zealand's regions will have more couple-without-children families and one-person households in 2031 than in 2006.*

• There will be a continued decline in average household size for all regions and territorial authorities, between 2006 and 2031.

• The Auckland region will account for almost half (48 percent) of the national growth in the number of households by 2031.

*‘Couple-without-children’ include:

(a) couples who will never have children,
(b) couples who will have children in the future,
(c) couples whose children have left the parental home.

Note that first projection, that all 16 regions will have more one-person households.....but we keep focusing our ministry on families, married couples, youth, children.

Photo, David Salafia

PS: This year is Census Year - in just a month's time. It's a date I was looking forward to, in many ways, when all the 2006 Census figures that were becoming increasingly unuseful would be replaced. And now my role here as Research and Resource Assistant is coming to an end....pooh! :)

Another announcement

2011-02-08T17:03:00.000-08:00

A Rocha (Portuguese for the rock) is an international Christian conservation organisation which has been established in Aotearoa New Zealand since 2007. A group of people have been working towards setting up a Dunedin branch, and believe this will help them give substance and continuity to their gospel witness through Creation care.

Their first public event will be a visit to the Craigieburn Reserve, one of the earliest conservation reserves in Dunedin, and indeed in New Zealand. Other planned events include visits to wetlands, coastal restoration projects, and Orokonui Eco-sanctuary, all concluding with a shared meal and some kind of creation focused/contemplative worship at a nearby church. In July the group plan a camp at St Martin's Island.

"Do you want to do something for the care of Creation? Do you want to discover others with similar concerns? Do you want to be part of a movement of hope?

Join us for the first Dunedin event of A Rocha at Leith Valley Church, Malvern St, going on to Craigieburn Conservation Reserve, Sunday February 20th, beginning at 12.30pm.

For more information contact Selwyn Yeoman - (03) 4877 167 or mobile 027 357 8459.

A Rocha Aotearoa New Zealand currently has active local initiative groups in:

Photo of St Martin's Island (Quarantine Island) from flickr.com

Chuck Olsen visit

2011-02-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

“Transforming Sessions and Parish Councils Into Communities of Spiritual Leaders” a seminar led by Dr. Charles (Chuck) Olsen

Thursday 24 March 2011, from 3:30 to 5 p.m at Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership

All welcome. No charge.

A native Nebraskan, Dr. Olsen is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He has twenty-two years of pastoral and teaching experience. His special interests are church renewal and revitalization – both on a national and local church level. He was director of Project Base Church, a Lilly Endowment funded effort with the Institute of Church Renewal. Two books, The Base Church, and Cultivating Religious Growth Groups, were products of this venture into new and small group forms of Christian community.

As program director with the Heartland Presbyterian Center in Kansas City, Dr. Olsen directed the Lilly Endowment funded “Set Apart Lay Leader Project,” a four-year effort focusing on the integration of spirituality and administration in church boards and councils. His book, Transforming Church Boards Into Communities of Spiritual Leaders (Alban), tells that story. It was selected as one of the top ten religious books in 1997 by the Academy of Parish Clergy and is one of Alban’s all time best sellers.

Dr. Olsen founded Worshipful-Work: Center for Transforming Religious Leadership, an inclusive ecumenical ministry focusing on the integration of spirituality and administration. He teaches, writes, and facilitates the practice of spiritual discernment in religious bodies. And he is co-author, with Danny E. Morris, of Discerning God’s Will Together and, with Sister Ellen Morseth, of Selecting Church Leaders: A Practice in Spiritual Discernment, both from Alban and Upper Room. His latest book, The Wisdom of the Seasons: How The Church Year Helps Us Understand Our Congregational Stories, was released by Alban in October of 2009.

This will be Dr. Olsen’s second visit to Dunedin. He was last here in 2001.

Faithfulness

2011-02-08T11:59:00.000-08:00

The Biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. it is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.
Eugene Peterson, from Working the Angles.

I found this quote on a site called Epic Fail Pastors Conference. It's one of several quotes sliding past on the front page of the site. This Conference is aimed at those ministers who are sick of the kind of conferences that feature air-brushed guys who've been to the gym a lot and who run mega-churches that don't know the meaning of the word 'failure.' I suspect it could be very 'successful.'

The Out of Ur blog offers some of the thinking behind the Conference:

-What if we offered a space that is gutsy, hopeful, courageously vulnerable for pastors to let go of the burden to be a Super Pastor?
-What if we could hold an event that was free from the thrills and frills of other pastors conferences?

-What if we came together as epic failures and sought not successful models or how-do’s but instead celebrated faithfulness in ministry because of the reality of Jesus?

-What if we were reminded that we’re not responsible for being ‘successful’ in ministry, but we are responsible for being faithful to the calling that God has laid out for us – regardless of the outcome?

-What if we had a conference that was not led not by famous pastors who are household names, but by scandalously ordinary ministers and leaders who are faithfully attempting to join with God – even in the midst of glaring obscurity and anonymity?

Sounds like the type of conference that many Kiwi pastors could do with attending. Note the key word in the 'thinking': faithfulness.

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I have to include one of the comments from the Out of Ur site in relation to this post:

Hi, I'm Jarrod and I'm a failed pastor.

(Everyone: "Hi, Jarrod.")

I'm a recovering megachurch staffer. But it's been 67 days since I attended my last "How you can do what I did" conference, and I've been reading Jean Vanier every day since.

(Applause.)

I can't wait to see what I will learn at the Epic Failure gathering. Maybe I'll find a sponsor.

There are several other equally good comments...check them out!

Poster by Sean MacEntee

Closing and listening

2011-02-07T12:01:00.001-08:00

Things are a little up and down at the office here at present...hence not quite so many posts as usual, but hopefully over the next couple of weeks we'll settle into the rather odd routine of being here but not officially existing any longer.

John Daniel and I both finish at the end of March, for the record, but the National Mission Team/Office was officially closed a week ago last Friday. So it's a bit like a couple of phantoms wandering around an old house, haunting anyone who comes by, but not being particularly scary.

Jason Goroncy (pictured at right in a contemplative mood) presented the annual Inaugural Lecture at Knox College for Ministry and Leadership yesterday. It was centred around the Eucharist, had a rather odd title which currently escapes me, and hopefully will turn up as text on his blog in the next few days. At which point I'll pick up on all the things I missed either through finding neither of my pens worked, or through trying to think about something he'd just said and then missing the next bit, or through the couple of moments when I nodded off - having slept very badly the previous night. No fault of the lecture, Jason!

No offence, Jason! It was a great lecture. I just need a bit more time to absorb it...

Thinking about Giving

2011-02-07T11:56:00.000-08:00

Richard Beck doesn't call himself a theologian, but he does a lot of theological thinking. He's just started a series called Thoughts on Church Giving and begins his comments in this fashion, going on to say that while he appreciates the value of church buildings insofar as what they allow congregations to do, he also appreciates being able to give directly to people's needs as they arise....

If you are regular church goer I'm wondering if you have been experiencing something similar to what my wife and I are experiencing. Specifically, it seems harder and harder to drop money in the collection plate.

To be clear, we tithe. But we don't drop all 10% in the collection plate on Sunday morning. We devote some portion of our tithe to the weekly offering, but the rest we spread around to charities or needs where we can give more directly and/or interpersonally.

And that got me wondering. My hunch is that a lot of people give the same way. A small portion goes to the church and the rest is given directly to people with no "middle man."

Teen fathers

2011-02-03T17:20:00.000-08:00

Churches in NZ and abroad spend a lot of time ministering to youth via youth groups, but the emphasis in these groups tends to be on single youth who haven't moved up to the marriage or parenthood level yet.

A booklet called Supporting Teen Fathers has just come to my attention, and makes me wonder how many teen fathers most churches have anything to do with. My experience makes me think it's a very small number, but I guess I could be wrong. (And how many teen fathers would be inclined to go to a 'youth' group?)

The booklet has been put out by the Ministry of Social Development, and on their website they outline the way in which the booklet is laid out:

Part 1 of the resource outlines what is known about teen fathers in New Zealand, including their characteristics and needs. It discusses the roles fathers play, and the cultural context of being a father in New Zealand.

Part 2 covers things to consider when developing services for teen fathers:

finding out about teen fathers in your community
considering effective approaches to supporting teen fathers
recognising the importance of identity, mana, whakapapa and whanaungatanga
providing parenting support services to teen fathers
supporting teen fathers with other areas of their lives
deciding how to deliver services
selecting people to work with teen fathers
getting teen fathers involved and keeping them engaged
creating environments that are teen father friendly
working with families and whānau
working with other services
monitoring, evaluating and reflecting on practice.

Part 3 contains profiles of five providers currently delivering services to teen fathers in New Zealand.

One useful starting place in the book, it seems to me, is the first on the list in section two: finding out about teen fathers in your community. This could be a valuable area for your church to check out....

You can download the booklet from the website either as a pdf or Word doc, or can purchase a hard copy.

Check your facts...

2011-02-03T14:56:00.001-08:00

You may be one of a number of ministers/pastors who, over the years, have told your congregation/listeners, that the two Chinese characters that make up their word for 'crisis' mean danger and opportunity.

If you want a long and interesting/entertaining explanation of this (and an additional bit of information at the bottom of the post that has absolutely nothing to do with Chinese characters...you've been warned) have a look at Cecil Adam's explanation on The Straight Dope.

You can see a more detailed explanation on our old friend, Wikipedia.

Why am I offering you these opportunities to go chasing after the 'real' meanings of a Chinese word? Because in an article written by John Ortberg in the Leadership Online Journal, I came across this rather extraordinary statements, which just goes to prove, I suspect, the reality of the Chinese Whispers game.

'It is a little known fact that in Chinese, the word crisis is made up of two characters: "life" and "stinks."'

I suspect it's a 'little known fact' because it's pretty much incorrect - or, at best, a very loose translation! Which goes to show that if you're going to put information on the Net, or preach it to your congregation, it's best to get it right...

Therapy as defined by James

2011-02-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

In chapter seven of his book, The Great Giveaway, David Fitch writes...

“Evangelicals, like all Christians, need therapy. We need a therapy as defined by the epistle of James: “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed…” We need therapy to unwind our pasts, uncover our sins, receive forgiveness, and then forgive.. We need therapy that intervenes by speaking the truth in love into our lives when we are blinded from seeing our own sinful patterns, interventions akin to the old Christian Anabaptist practices of “binding and loosing” where two or three gather to confront on truth (Matt. 18:15-20).

“To do this kind of ‘therapy’ we need safe and confidential places in our churches to confess, discern, receive scriptural admonition and wisdom, and support and edify one another…

You can read more from this chapter here. One of Fitch's concerns is that we've replaced true pastoral counsel (which knows what sin is) with therapeutic models from a variety of sources.