Scathing remarks

This is a copy of a post I put on my own blog, this morning, but it's mention of 'missional' makes it relevant for this blog as well. 

A friend of mine, Lynne Baab, has recently brought out a new book entitled, Joy Together: Spiritual Practices for Your Congregation.  The focus is on ways to use the well-known spiritual disciplines or practices of the Christian church in groups, or even with full congregations.

This is an interesting take on the disciplines, which have certainly been used communally at many times in their history, and it's good that Lynne has brought them back into focus in this way again.  I haven't finished the book yet, though I'm getting close, but I just wanted to make a comment on the section I was reading this morning, which is about Hospitality.  Some might not regard hospitality as a Christian discipline, any more than they might consider the first item on Lynne's list, Gratitude, to be one.   Be that as it may, both are in the book, and both need discussing in terms of our Christian lives.  (This is not to say that people of other religions, or those who don't believe in any god at all, are never grateful or hospitable.  The focus of the book is on these things from a Christian point of view.)

One thing struck me this morning in the section on hospitality.  It came out of this passage on pages 124-5.

Holding a coffee hour before or after a worship service provides perhaps the most basic opportunity for hospitality.  Recently my students engaged in a spirited online discussion about the role of coffee hour in a missional focus for a congregation.  They had scathing remarks for the poor-quality coffee and cookies that are so often offered at coffee hour.  Several of them said that we talk in Christian circles about Jesus' abundant welcome, and then we provide mediocre food and drink at coffee hour, a cognitive dissonance that does not exactly welcome the stranger. 

I stopped reading at this point.  Now, Jesus certainly talks about abundance, but while he was on earth I don't think there was any point in the many meals he shared with other people when he stopped and said, Look, I can't drink this coffee, or eat these cookies (biscuits, depending on the translation).  It's substandard.  I'm the King of Kings, for goodness' sake.  Are you seriously giving me coffee that tastes like dishwater and cookies that look as though one of the kids threw them together while they were playing on their iPhone?

My sense is that Jesus wouldn't have fussed about it.  Like Paul, he would have said, I don't speak from want, because I've learned to be content in all sorts of circumstances.  I know how to drink mediocre coffee and crummy biscuits, and I also know how to drink my skim cappuccino freddo and eat my caramel crunch slice; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

I think it was the mention of 'scathing remarks' that really struck me in the students discussion.  There's an element of arrogance here, a middle-class tone that says that proper coffee is more important than hospitality.  For me the cognitive dissonance comes between the students' attitude and the apparent lack of humility.  Surely the coffee and biscuits are merely a means to an end, and that is to relate to the people who might come to the coffee hour.  Perhaps you can agree together that the coffee isn't anything to write home about, and then get onto the more important topic of who that person is that's decided to grace your coffee hour by drinking your mediocre coffee and tired biscuits.  

Being Christian in the South Pacific....and more!

2010 Conference - Being Christian in the South Pacific: Kiwi Christian Practice
Pastoral/Practical Theology in Aotearoa New Zealand
Monday and Tuesday, November 8 and 9
Monday, 9:30 to 5:00
Tuesday, 9:30 to 3:30

Location: Knox Centre Seminar Room, Hewitson Wing, Knox College
Arden Street, off Opoho Road, Dunedin

Cost: $10 donation to cover morning and afternoon tea/coffee/biscuits
Optional group dinner on Monday night at a local restaurant

Pastoral/practical theology stands at the intersection of Christian ministry and academic research. In pastoral/practical theology, we critically examine the practices of Christian ministry using theological and historical analysis as well as humanities and social science research methods.

Please forward this email to anyone who you think would enjoy this conference. Please consider proposing a paper, and please encourage post-graduate students to think about offering a paper. If you wish to register for the conference, please email Mary Somerville with your contact information: msomer@orcon.net.nz

Looking forward to seeing you in Dunedin,

Lynne Baab, Jacky Sewell, Anne Thomson, Chris Lee, and Mary Somerville -Steering Committee


Call for Papers
Pastoral/Practical Theology in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2010 Conference

We are seeking presentations that address a wide variety of topics related to congregational life in Aotearoa. We hope that graduates and current students of MMin, MTheol, DMin and PhD programs who studied topics related to congregations will consider presenting a summary of their research or one aspect of their research.

We are seeking papers for 20 and 40 minute slots. In a 20 minute slot, please plan on speaking for 15 minutes and allow five minutes for discussion. In a 40 minute slot, please plan on a 30 minute presentation and 10 minutes for discussion.

As a rule of thumb, you talk at about 100 words a minute, so a 15 minute paper (in a 20 minute slot) should equate to roughly 1,500 words, and a 30 minute paper (in a 40 minute slot) to about 3,000 words.

In submitting a proposed paper, please,
• indicate what sort of time slot you are applying for, remembering that most of us suffer from the occupational hazard of nearly always saying more than we think we’re going to.
• include a 50-100 word abstract of the proposed paper.

These should be sent to Lynne Baab at lynne.baab@otago.ac.nz, or if necessary by post to her at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, and should be received by July 30.

Congregational Websites

A website...is an increasingly strategic tool for congregational communication. One of my sons, who is 30, calls websites “our new front door,” and he says most people in his generation would never consider visiting a place they haven’t read about online. Money spent on website design and maintenance is well spent.

From Lynne Baab - in an article called Electronic Communication and Congregations in the Presbyterian Candour magazine (unfortunately I can't link to it!) Lynne recently finished writing a book on friendship in the Facebook age.

Take Overs, Journeys, Arts, Theology

It takes nothing for the 'pseud' to take over language; church jargon itself is full of it.

A colleague at work passed on the link to Andrew Rumsey's piece on the word, 'Journey' to me today, and I thought it was worth sharing. Rumsey writes with nifty English wit, and a surreal imagination that sometimes slides off the edge of intelligibility. I've been reading a few of his other pieces (there are only about two a year on the Ship of Fools site) and in general find him good company.

Having attended Lynne Baab's Knox Inaugural Lecture on Monday, which was about the Arts and Christianity, I was interested to find that Rumsey's first piece on the list, written back back in 2000, is about the same subject: how do the arts and Christianity mesh together without stomping on each other's toes?

He talks about the group, Theology Through the Arts (the link he gives is now out of date), so I went exploring a little further, found that this group's work is now 'pursued' under the aegis of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts (which kind of makes it feel as though it's been taken over by the academics - or even hunted down?).

Theology Through the Arts' first major achievement was a festival of the arts entitled Sounding the Depths. You can still see the original programme online. Sounding the Depths was the culmination of the first phase of Theology Through the Arts. It aimed to draw together the strands of the project that [had]been most fruitful over the [previous] three years, and present them publicly in the form of a week of multi-media events.

Their second phase spanned from 2001 to 2008, when the group had its theological home at the University of St Andrews, and its church-related work at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. From there it seems to have shifted to Duke. During their second phase they engaged in rigorous academic research, as well as pursuing more fully the implications of 'theology through the arts' for the Church's engagement with culture and for 'grass roots' education.

To me this all sounds very academic - almost the antithesis of what the arts are about. And their primary aim was listed as:

to discover and demonstrate ways in which the arts can contribute towards the renewal of Christian theology

In the process, they sought:

• to find ways in which the arts can contribute to a sensitive and rigorous engagement of the Church with modern and postmodern culture
• to generate, through the arts, new methods of Christian education for use in the Church and wider community

Am I being picky, or does this all seem a bit too ivory tower for its own good? I know there are plenty of thinking artists - but do they think in the way academics think? Or is much/most of their thinking more of the reflective-active kind? Some artists, I suspect, don't 'think' in either sense; they work almost intuitively and make mistakes until they find what they're looking for.

Perhaps my use of the word 'theology' is too limited. But I'd hate to feel that art was being ramshackled into some clinical overcoat that ill-fitted it. Art, I suspect, is a much broader theology than what we mostly think of as theology - long-winded words and difficult by-ways -and probably doesn't want to be narrowed down into seminars and conferences and theses.

On the Duke site there's a summary of a lecture Nicholas Wolterstorff (author of Art in Action) gave: With analytical power and winsome directness, Wolterstorff questioned assumptions that often mark the conversation between theology and the arts today. In particular, he drew attention to the enormous changes in thinking about the arts that came about in the late eighteenth century – the appearance of the ‘fine’ arts as objects of ‘disinterested contemplation’, the notion that this represents art ‘coming into its own’, and, not least, the religious aura that art assumed to itself: art becomes the transcendent, social ‘other’, abstracted from the messy materiality of space and time.

This, he stressed is only one way of thinking about the arts, but not the way. He urged his audience to re-discover a wider vision that could embrace forms of art typically demoted (such as ‘mere’ craft), and that could therefore re-frame the theology-arts discussion for the years to come.

Sounds good - but what about the 'distinguished' lecture listed on the same webpage?: Early Visual Art as Patristic Theology: the Trinity, Christology, and the Economy of Salvation in Pictorial Form.

Does that sound like something the average artist would want looking over their shoulder while they were working?

Free Webinar

We've talked about webinars on here before (most recently, Lynne Baab's one that's coming up soon), and we've just been made aware of one that's happening on Wednesday, Sept 23, from 2 pm - 3 pm. (That's Eastern Standard Time, in the US, and according to a handy little link on the registration page, it'll be 6 am - 7 am in the morning here in New Zealand, on Thursday the 24th.)

This webinar is being run by US author, Mary Ellen Copeland, who's written extensively in the mental health area. She's the author of WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plan). This is a simple approach to self-help for those struggling with wellness; it identifies personal resources that you can use to improve recovery.

In this webinar she'll describe concrete techniques for identifying wellness tools and helpful ideas that can be used when working with others who are in need of wellness.

The webinar will also include a preview of Mary Ellen's online course, 'Wellness Tools' (I think that's called: never let a moment pass when you might be marketing!)

Registration page is here.
In case you didn't notice the heading - this is a FREE webinar.

3 Subjects: Posts, updates and a Webinar

1. I'm very surprised to find we're just about up to 500 posts on this blog. If I get some time today, we might make it.

2. I've been out of the office for a couple of days...hence the lack of updates on here. This week will see that made up for!

3. Most important of the three subjects here:

On Tuesday, September 22, 2009 4:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time - that's four hours behind Greenwich Mean Time, or 16 hours behind NZ time, if my calculations are correct - Lynne Baab will be holding a webinar called Facebook and Twitter 101 for Congregations, in other words a webinar for Facebook and Twitter Beginners.

Lynne Baab is a well-known author and experienced webinar leader. She'll be connecting with Alban Institute from New Zealand and will provide an overview of the following:

how Facebook and Twitter both work;
how groups, such as congregations, can use them;
a brief discussion of whether we need to be concerned about online relationships replacing face to face relationships.

If you've been wanting someone to help you evaluate whether or not your congregation should be considering these social networking options, this webinar has been designed just for you. (And if you're in New Zealand, you can get involved in this Webinar....just make sure you've worked out the time difference!)

Lynne M. Baab is a Presbyterian minister and author of the Alban book Reaching Out in A Networked World: Expressing Your Congregation's Heart and Soul, as well as six other books and a Bible study guide. She recently completed a Ph.D. in communication at the University of Washington. She lives with her husband in Dunedin, New Zealand, where she is a lecturer in pastoral theology at the University of Otago. She is the author of two other Alban Institute books: Personality Type in Congregations, and Embracing Midlife.

Technology and the Generation Gap

"Technology is fast becoming the latest driving force behind what is often called the 'generation gap,'" reports The Barna Group in its latest update. "Technology is shaping different experiences and expectations among generations."

My comment: I think when Barna talks about generations here, he isn't meaning parents and children, but successive groups of young people who may not be far apart in age. (My comments continue in italics below.)

While all generations benefit from the advances in technology, Barna found that "each successive generation is adopting and using technology at a significantly greater pace than their predecessors." The reliance on digital tools is exponentially greater among those under age 25. Another characteristic of the younger generations is what Barna calls "gadget lust" — 22 percent say they consider owning the latest technology to be a very high priority in life, compared to 9 percent of those over the age of 25.

Amongst the conclusions the researchers made are:

• Every age segment is becoming dependent on the Internet. (And that presumably includes seniors - over 60s)
  
• The nation's youngest adults (called Mosaics) are light-years ahead in their personal integration of these technologies. Supposedly the Barna group coined the term Mosaics; I'm not sure that it's used widely outside their perspective.
  
• All Americans (we could replace 'Americans' with 'New Zealanders') are increasingly dependent on new digital technologies to acquire entertainment, products, content, information and stimulation. All might be rather overstating the case; there are presumably a lot of people who don't have access to all technology.
  
• Churches have to work hard to keep pace with the way people access and use content, while also instructing churchgoers on the potency of electronic tools and techniques. Only a minority of churchgoing Mosaics and Busters are accessing their congregation's podcasts and Web sites. The reasons for this will be many and various: check out Lynne Baab's book, Reaching Out in a Networked World for more on this subject.
  
• Many of the same age-old questions about human development and human flourishing are taking on a new dimension. How does technology help or hinder communication and relationships between generations? How does it impact social skills, reading skills, writing skills, etc.? How will it affect tomorrow's workforce? [Barna] - And we might ask, how will affect the way people preach, or don't preach, in the future?

Thanks to the Pastors' Weekly Briefing for the original material.

Webinar & Book

After reading an article on the number of words being introduced to the English language on a daily basis - one about every hour and a half, (culminating in some million words in the language by the end of April this year) - I've just been introduced today to the word, Webinar, which is apparently a seminar conducted on the Web. You pay your sub, and you're then allowed access to the real-time audio-visual. In the case I have in mind, it will be conducted from Dunedin by Lynne Baab, a North American Presbyterian minister living here in the city. The webinar is being hosted by the Alban Institute, and the blurb states:

Words, photos, graphics, and links work together on websites to communicate the values and priorities of the congregation creating the website.

Most leaders of congregations are experts in using words for sermons and newsletters but have less experience with the ways in which photos, graphics, and links can express a congregation's values and priorities. In addition, websites require some different strategies in the way words are used.

In this webinar, we'll look at the ways words, photos, graphics and links can be used effectively on websites to meet the needs of congregation members as well as reach out to potential visitors.

The webinar starts on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 3:00 p.m. Eastern (American) time. Amusingly, if you click on the link called Registration Information, you'll find a note saying:
Unless otherwise indicated, our events start on the first day with lunch served at 12:00 noon and close on the last day with lunch served and departure immediately after lunch.
I'm guessing lunch won't be on the agenda for this webinar, although it doesn't actually say so (LOL!)

And one other thing. Lynne published a book in 2008 which relates to her webinar. (I keep repeating the word so you'll remember it!) The book is called, Reaching Out in a Networked World: expresssing your congregation's heart and soul. I've just received a copy today and am looking forward to reading it.