Epic Fail a Success

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?

Life's big questions

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.

Congratulations

Christianity Today has published its annual Book Awards for books that in their judges' opinions best offer insights into the people, events, and ideas that shape evangelical life, thought, and mission.

I'm especially pleased to see Bradley Wright's Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites … and Other Lies You've Been Told: a Sociologist Shatters Myths from the Secular and Christian Media on the list, and not just because the author sent me a copy for free!

As someone who works with [religion-focused] stats a good deal, it's heartening to see an author get to grips with what the stats have actually said rather than what someone thinks they've said, or wants them to say. He's not alone in this, of course, (Ed Setzer seems to do a bit in this regard), but his book is the first to focus on the issue - at least as far as I know.

Interestingly enough, just this week on Facebook, a very regular participant on that site (the pastor of a large youth-focused church in Australia who I will leave unnamed) posted one of his typical updates, and quoted stats - without any source. As he's now deleted the original post and its many comments, I can't quote directly, but he claimed something along the lines that in the States 3500 churches close their doors every year (?) but 4000 other churches are planted each year. He was saying it was a cause for rejoicing that the net profit was 500 new churches.

When I asked for a source for the stats, he ignored me, but when another writer got rather shirty about the issue, a considerable argument (as opposed to a debate) ensued. Helpfully a third writer actually posted a reasonable source for the original stats, although not one that really confirmed anything. Some insults passed by, both from the original poster, who lost his temper at length (and later came back more apologetically) and from one particular other person. As I say, the whole discussion was deleted - perhaps after the original poster realised that some of his remarks sadly didn't do much for his image.

I tell this story just to prove that the world of statistics isn't all bland and boring....

Australian spirituality stats

I flew to Auckland for a day the week before last in order to attend a conference run by the Church Life Survey people. It was valuable both in terms of meeting people and in hearing the plans for the next survey coming up in 2011.

I spend a good deal of my average week working with stats, both church and government (and any other kind I can lay my hands on), so I have some idea of the state of Christianity in New Zealand. The Church Life Survey is one source of such information. It has some connections with a similar group in Australia, and I've just been reading an article by Rowland Croucher which shows that the church/spiritual/Christian stats in Australia are pretty similar to those here in NZ.

Rowland's complete article is here, but those figures are culled from Shaping Australia's Spirituality: a Review of Christian Ministry in the Australian Context, by Philip Hughes and others (2010). This is a 150 page book (with some proof-reading errors, according to Rowland - the result of a publication date not leaving enough room for thoroughness) and, as Rowland says: ...you won’t find more interesting summary-data on modern Australia and its religions, especially Christianity, anywhere else in one small readable volume.

The book was produced by the Christian Research Association in Australia - we used to have a similar body here. You can buy a copy from CRA themselves, or from some Australian bookshops (not Koorong, as far as I could see).

Feeling a little crowded lately?

Statistics New Zealand has just announced that visitor arrivals to New Zealand were 2.501 million in the June 2010 year, the first time 2.5 million has been surpassed.
"This milestone was almost reached in 2008, but the global economic downturn contributed to a decline in visitor numbers after a peak of 2.497 million in the March 2008 year," Population Statistics manager Bridget Hamilton-Seymour said.

The 2 million visitor mark was reached in the November 2002 year, and the 1 million mark in the April 1992 year.

Visitors from Australia accounted for 1.119 million or 45 percent of all visitors in the June 2010 year. A further 25 percent of visitors came from four countries; the United Kingdom (248,900), the United States (194,000), China (105,200), and Japan (83,600).

Visitor arrivals in the June month were 145,800, up 8 percent from June 2009. There were more visitors from Australia, and visitor numbers from China, Japan, and Korea recovered after the H1N1 pandemic affected arrivals from those countries in June 2009. Fewer visitors arrived from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Statistics NZ also notes that net migration continues to decrease.

Net permanent and long-term migration (arrivals minus departures) was 100 (rounded figure) in June 2010, the lowest monthly figure since the series briefly went below zero in November 2008. This series has been decreasing steadily since January 2010 (1,800). On an unadjusted basis, there were 500 fewer arrivals of non-New Zealand citizens and 900 more departures of New Zealand citizens compared with June 2009.

The annual net migration gain was 16,500 in the June 2010 year, down from the recent peak of 22,600 in the January 2010 year. The main inflows of migrants were from the United Kingdom, India, and China. There was a net outflow of 15,900 migrants to Australia, well down from 28,700 in the June 2009 year.

Life Together

LIFE TOGETHER: A Conversation About the Challenges and Opportunities of Christian Community with Dave Andrews.

SATURDAY 8 MAY, 2010

LIFE TOGETHER FORUM: 9.30-4.00pm, at Spreydon Baptist, with Dave Andrews, and friends from Urban Vision, Servants, and the Addington community. Sliding scale entry ($10-30, incl. morning and afternoon tea).

DINNER WITH DAVE ANDREWS: 6.00-8.00pm, at Addington Coffee Co-op, 297 Lincoln Rd, Chch. ($20)

As capacity in both venues is limited, please email lifetogether@spreydon.org.nz to register, indicating which events you will be attending. Registration closes May 5. For more info, contact Ants (awatt@spreydon.org.nz) or Jono (jono@servantsasia.org).

Proudly hosted by the Addington Coffee Co-op, Spreydon Baptist, and Servants to Asia's Urban Poor.

Dave, his wife Ange, and their family, have lived and worked in intentional communities with marginalised groups of people in Australia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal for more than thirty years. He now lives in a large joint household with his wife, children, grandchildren and others in an inner city community called the Waiters Union in Brisbane, Australia. Dave also works with TEAR Australia, and is a teacher for the Bible College of Queensland and the Brisbane College of Theology.

Crouch Touch Pause Engage

Crouch Touch Pause Engage?

What in the world is this? The title of some new martial arts movie? Nope, it's the Christian Sports Network (CSN) strategy to help the church in New Zealand take advantage of the World Cup. (I have to admit I wouldn't notice if the World Cup never happened, but I know I'm in the minority here.) I didn't even know there was a Christian Sports Network in New Zealand (or anywhere else for that matter), nor that they have big plans for the people - players and fans alike - who'll be visiting NZ in 2011.

Nor did I know that there were now twelve trained sports chaplains in New Zealand - Australia has 200 and says it could do with 2000. Unfortunately the CSN site is very much out of date: on its home page it's advertising something that was happening in 2008, its news stories all date from 2007, and its one article on a Christian sportsman dates from 2006. Time for a bit of an overhaul, CSN, I think!

It may be that the people running CSN are more interested in getting on with the job at ground level rather than running a website, so it's good that the Vision Network people (who are partnered with them) have done some promoting for them (see the first link above). You'll find more information there.

Photo by digiarnie

Simon Carey Holt on video

Alan Roxburgh is a name that turns up on this blog fairly frequently, but it was only today that I discovered the videos on Roxburgh Missional Network site.

The focus of these is 'moving back into the neighbourhood' and the two dozen or more videos look at different aspects of this. The softly-spoken Australian (so soft I had to turn the computer's sound up), Simon Carey Holt features in five of them, and gives as good an idea of what the focus is as anyone. He tells a story in the first of his videos about being in a Los Angeles neighbourhood when three young boys were mistakenly shot (the local gang mistook them for members of an opposing gang). In spite of there being a church of 9,000 people nearby, with 100 pastors, Holt was surprised to find that not one of those people seemed to know anything about the shooting, nor did any (as far as he knew) turn up to the spontaneous memorial that took place in the alleyway beside the Holts' kitchen window.

The problem was most of that enormous congregation drove to their church, and drove home again to a different suburb.

Holt is the author of a book, The God Next Door, which also focuses on the themes discussed in the videos.

Perhaps your church isn't very neighbourhood-connected. However, you are, and there's nothing to stop you being involved with the people who live on either side of you, or behind you, or across the street. We tend to think of our neighbours as being there by chance; perhaps the reality is, God has put them there purposely.

Australians vote Jesus as #1 most significant figure in history

I'm indebted to Rowland Croucher for alerting me to this intriguing piece of news...

In Research commissioned by www.allaboutlife.com.au 54% of Australians - both believers and non-believers - ranked Jesus as the number one most influential person in history. He beat Albert Einstein - who came in at second place (16%) - and Charles Darwin, third at 9%.

Approximately 5 in 6 (83%) said Jesus was a real figure from history.

Of those who ranked Jesus top, 43% believed he had miraculous powers, and that he was the son of God. It seems Australia still has faith: 2 out of 5 Australians stated they practice a religion and only 27% said they didn't believe in a God or universal power of any sort.

1 in 10 (10%) thought that if Jesus returned today he would be unemployed.

While the majority of Australians don't practice a religion (60%), nearly 3 in 5 (57%) pray at various times during their lives with over a third (36%) praying to God.

Of those who pray the regularity varies dramatically, with 29% praying daily. 19% are part-time prayers, praying just several times a year.

The most common situations for prayer are when people are faced with challenging times (36%) or when a loved one has fallen ill (34%). However over 1 in 3 Australians also pray when they're thankful for something good that has happened (34%)

Surprisingly Gen Y proved the most traditional generation when it comes to praying, choosing traditional methods of prayer practices such as closing eyes, placing hands together and bowing heads, which were most common amongst young adults.

3 in 5 have no particular rules for their praying. This tendency increases with age. Older Australians (aged 64+) are the most likely to have no particular rules for their prayer.

* 63% of Australians turn to their partners/spouse for help and emotional support and half of Australians turn to other family

* Nearly half (49%) of Australians turn to their friends

* Nearly a third (28%) of Australians turn to God in their time of need, while 15% turn to Jesus

* The web offers the least support with only 6% of Australians turning to online friends and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter

* Only 4% turn to the Internet to consult with sites such as Google.

Daniel Willis, co-founder of Jesus: All About Life, commented, “This research gives a great insight into people’s beliefs about Jesus and their faith today. The fact that Jesus is revealed to be the most influential figure in history shows his message is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago and people still look to him as source of inspiration.

"While not all Australians follow a religion this research reveals that many people still pray expecting an answer and especially turn to others and faith when experiencing tough times and are in need of support.

"It is surprising that Gen Y appear to be more traditional, returning to the values and practices of their grandparent’s generation to help them in times of uncertainty."

Men's Sheds

I came across an Australian book yesterday called The Real Men's Toolbox: a DIY health manual for men, by Tammy Farrell. I haven't had a change to have a good look at it yet, (I saw it in passing at a local bookshop), but it has some good things to say about men's mental health, and what's more, it introduces the concept of Men's Sheds, a significant movement in Australia.

On the Men's Sheds site they state: Problems with men's health, isolation, loneliness and depression are looming as major health issues for men. Men's sheds can play a significant and practical role in addressing these and other men's issues. Men’s sheds can help connect men with their communities and mainstream society and at the same time act as a catalyst in stimulating their community's economic activities.

The sheds appear to be focused more at older men, if the pictures are anything to go by, but by no means exclusively. They talk about mentoring younger guys; not only youths, but blokes in their 30s and 40s. What they're doing, in effect, is rebuilding what was normal in the old days, when men would get together as a matter of course and work on rebuilding, renovating, helping each other put stuff together, chewing the fat and drinking no doubt. With society having focused to such a degree on every man for himself and every family separate from other families, this natural approach to life has withered away. And brought with it issues such as those mentioned in the earlier paragraph.

The Men's Sheds site has a good deal of info on it, and several slide shows (rather than videos). Spirituality is part of the approach, though this isn't discussed from any particular religious point of view. However I get the impression Men's Sheds are varied in their style, and no doubt there's plenty of room for discussing life and death and all the issues in between.

Photo by Jim Vance

Men's Group

After my brief comments the other day about What Men Want I need to mention a feature-length movie about men, their needs, their feelings, their emotions (and the inability to express them). Men’s Group takes six men and pulls their lives together through a series of meetings. It’s raw, the language is blunt and down-to-earth (they are Australians, after all) and it’s made a huge impact wherever it’s been shown. Boris Sokratov, of the Out of the Blue depression awareness campaign, wrote: Men’s Group explores dark territory: anger, remorse, fear and regret. In ‘man speak,’ Men’s Group is a story about men talking about stuff: touchy feely emotionally hard stuff. Regrettably many of those who might benefit the most by seeing the movie are unlikely to go near it. On the other hand the more of us who do go the better. Definitely worth a look.
You can see a trailer of the movie here, and the website is here (though it’s a bit thin on information about the film itself). The film has been showing on a limited release around the main centres of New Zealand in May. Hopefully it will soon be available on DVD for all those who aren't in the main centres.

St Kilda

People tell me that it’s not always easy to be part of a church these days. We’re busy and overworked, and (some) churches feel more like hard work than we’d like them to. When I quote from Philip Yancey’s Church: Why Bother? or Alan Jamieson’s A Churchless Faith I look around the room and see nodding heads and looks of recognition.

So - why do we bother?

The lines above come from the website of the St Kilda Baptist Church. Rev Carolyn Francis goes on to say why the people at St Kilda do bother, and her statement stands as an excellent way of thinking about the value of being with other churchgoers. The site also talks about a couple of houses St Kilda runs, one for four young (otherwise) homeless people, and one for a nearly twenty people with psychiatric problems. It's interesting that a church that talks about whether to go to church or not is also well involved with mission work.

WHAT DOES A HEALTHY CHURCH LOOK LIKE?

Rowland Croucher, an Australian pastor who writes prolifically on a variety of Church-related topics, and who's the mainstay behind the John Mark Ministries in Oz, has sent me an email in which he links to material on signs of a Healthy Church/Congregation.

The page has only just been created in October 2008, so it's fresh off the block.

Rowland covers a number of areas - justice, spiritual abuse, governance, affirmation of diversity, tolerance of ambiguity, leadership styles and accountability (amongst others) - and each is linked to further material either from the John Mark site or elsewhere.

It may take you a few days to absorb all the material, but it's worth the trip, in my opinion.

Randall Prior

The keynote speaker at this year's Presbyterian General Assembly (in Wellington, New Zealand) was Randall Prior. Randall focuses a good deal on Gospel and Culture, on Church and the Future. In his addresses to the PCANZ, he spoke specifically about the Future of the Church. Although his talk had some Australian focuses, it was very applicable to the New Zealand scene (and in fact, to a much wider scene). You can download the talks here, or obtain them as audio files.

In one of the footnotes to his second talk, he notes: In my view there is still some considerable ‘dying’ of the present form of the church yet to take place. It is not a simple matter to anticipate a future shape of the church but the indications are that the church’s place in Australian [for Australian read, New Zealand, USA, UK - anywhere else where institutional churches are struggling] society will be:
as one faith group in a society of several faiths and religions;
the church will be marginal to the main interests and activities of our society;
there will be a diversity of forms and styles of church life;
congregations may be increasingly dependent on lay leadership;
there may be little interest among church people in denominational loyalty; there will be fewer resources to maintain the structures and activities and buildings which we have known in the past; for some church communities, there may be only a loose connection with buildings.

It would probably be unwise to takes these notes alone, without reading the rest of the talk, particularly because Prior is talking of the Future of the Church, not its death.

Kevin Rudd and Religion in Australia

In a blog post on the 7th August, Jim Wallis (of Sojourners) writes:

One of the stories I first heard on my recent visit to Australia was about what helped swing the vote last November to Kevin Rudd, the new Labor prime minister. I read some new political data by veteran pollster and researcher John Black, who is respected across Australia's political spectrum. Black reported that the pivotal swing vote to Labor this time was among evangelicals and Pentecostals, especially in some key seats in the states of Queensland and South Australia.

Kevin Rudd [is] a new kind of Labor candidate who speaks openly and comfortably about his faith. Rudd is a Catholic, is theologically articulate, and even likes to write articles about German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Though Jim has apparently got it wrong about Rudd being a Catholic - he was brought up as one, but is now a practising Anglican, that doesn't change the point. Here's a practising Christian in Australia's top job, and social justice issues are one of his major concerns.

Read the rest of the article here - it has some other good things to say about Australia (!)

And one other word about social justice:
Social sin is the crystallization ... of individuals’ sins into permanent structures that keeps sin in being and makes its force to be felt by the majority of people.
- Oscar Romero
Salvadoran archbishop, assassinated in 1980

It's never too late

So you thought you were up with the play? Or would you rather stick with tradition?
Olive Riley, an Australian blogger, was reputably the oldest blogger in the world. She was 108 when she died back in mid-July, and she'd embraced the idea of blogging with such enthusiasm that people around the world were leaving comments on her blog.

With all the technology that's around today, it's sometimes hard for non-technologists to know where to start. Tony Steward suggest three simple ways. If you don't know how to deal with these, ask someone in your church - in fact half your church will already know how to use these tools.
1. Facebook
2. A blog
3. A video camera (for videoing ever event that goes on in your church).

Read Tony's comments here.

The Shaping of Things to Come

I know that the book, The Shaping of Things to Come, by Mike Frost and Alan Hirsch, has been around for about four years, and most of you will have read it, or come across it.

However, for those who haven't, there's an excellent review and detailed summary of the book and its contents on the John Mark Ministries site, in Australia. It has enough detail in it for you to be able to assess the whole book without having to read it from cover to cover - something the busier ones amongst you might appreciate.

Generous Revolution

On the Australian morepraxis blog (more praxis? is that a word to attract people? interesting....) there's a post about Generous revolution, which leads onto using road signs - particularly the Give Way ones - creatively. You need to read it to make sense of it. A couple of the signs might offend, so be warned.

The writer considers 'generousity, creativity and hospitality to be very subversive practices.' What do you think?

SANE advertising

This effective 'road' sign comes from a campaign being run by SANE Australia. There's a brief video ad on the site from a campaign focusing on mental health. One of the main messages SANE is promoting is that often close family members see the signs even before the person who's having mental health problems. This leads to them needing to encourage the person to get help. The campaign is similar to the one shown in NZ in regard to depression.
It's an importantpoint to note that:

The 2005-2006 data shows that the rate of suicide is higher for Mâori (17.9 per 100,000) than non-Mâori (12.0 per 100,000). This disparity has increased over the past nine years.
While fewer Mâori people died by suicide in 2005 than in 2004, the three year moving average rates - a more robust measure of what’s happening over time – show the Mâori suicide rate has increased by 5.2 percent from 2002-2004 to 2003-2005.

Addressing the needs of Mâori is particularly important because Mâori also have poorer outcomes in other areas relating to suicide. For example, depression is a major risk factor for suicide. Te Rau Hinengaro: The New Zealand Mental Health Survey shows that Mâori report higher rates of depression than all other ethnic groups, and, with the exception of Pacific peoples, are less likely to access services for a mental health problem.