Seminarians with a little to learn...

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

Book catch-up

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

Decline

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.)

Mission Workshops

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

two items

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.

Another announcement

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:

• The Waikato
• Palmerston North
• Christchurch

• Auckland
• Wellington

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

Official closing

Today, the National Mission Office officially closes. John Daniel and I stay on for a period, tidying up lose ends, but in an official sense we're 'not here.' (It's debatable, according to some lights, whether we ever were, but that's another story.)

So for the time being there will continue to be blog posts. The Service of Recognition was held last night for the Team - you could take the word 'recognition' in a number of ways, I suspect: recognition for the work done, recognition that we actually existed and did do some work (in John's case, a heap of work); recognition that the National Mission team will be greatly missed; recognition, belatedly, that perhaps it shouldn't even be departing the scene - but that's a done deal.

More than one person, in presenting their tribute, gave the impression that my main work has been to blog. That's not quite the case, although I believe that the blog has been one important aspect of the last three years in the life of the NMO. I've done quite a few other things while I've been here, from admin work to running errands to making coffees to cleaning up to writing up information I've researched (mainly for John, but also for other people) to doing a heap of reading online (the distillation of much of which has appeared on here or in the ezine).

Peter Cheyne, (the current Moderator for the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa NZ) who was leading the Service last night, invited me up to speak, along with John and Heather. When I demurred, not being a person confident to speak on such occasions, he said, with a grin, Well, I guess we'll hear about it on the blog tomorrow.

Which means that there are people who read it. And one good thing about Facebook is that the blog posts published here also get published there....and get a wider readership. Considering that most of what has been presented here has been the wisdom of other people rather than mine, that's only as it should be.

An ex-bookseller dares to speak...

As a Baptist who works with a bunch of people who adhere in their own Presbyterian way to the Reformed tradition (indeed, the catchphrase of the last Moderator was 'Reformed and Reforming') I sometimes have to help them see beyond their Reformed borders. (As, no doubt, they try to help me see beyond my Catholic/Pentecostal/Baptist borders.)

Which is why I'm linking to a piece David Fitch has done on the Out of Ur blog in which he asks, Is the New Calvinism really New Fundamentalism? He makes a good case as having some serious concerns that it may be, and indeed even in New Zealand I've heard the occasional piping Presbyterian voice talking about the 'essence of Presbyterianism' with the kind of (dare I say it) smug tone indicating that Presbyterians (Reformed) have pretty much got it right and most others have got it wrong. Whatever 'it' actually is.

Shoot me down as a hybrid Catholic/Pentecostal/Baptist-ex-Christian bookseller who's been exposed to far to many different Christian viewpoints. That's fine. At least David Fitch appears to making sense.....

Supervision Scrapbook

I've just received a copy of the book, Supervision Scrapbook. It's aimed at youth workers in particular - hence the subtitle: kinda mainly for people who work with young people.

The authors are Rod Baxter (National Youth Workers Network Aotearoa) and Trissel Mayor (from NZ Aotearoa Adolescent Health and Development).

The book has been produced in a limited edition of 500 copies (we have number 50) and was published, as far as I can make out, in 2008. However, it appears that it's only been advertised more generally this year. Presbyterian Youth Ministries have got behind it strongly, encouraging all their youth workers to get a copy, and NZAAHD is also promoting it. Price is $10, from PYM, including postage.

As to the book itself, it's very readable, laid out in a typical youth-focused fashion, short (about 44 pages), with worksheets and a very solid bibliography. I've just skimmed through it, and it has material in it that every supervisor and supervisee would find worth checking out, or being reminded of. It also keeps the cultural aspects of Maori (and occasionally other ethnicities) in focus. (In fact, the NZAAHD site is advertising it as a taonga, ie, a treasure.)

Alan Roxburgh

I seem to have been remiss in not advertising Alan Roxburgh's visit to New Zealand.

He'll be in Dunedin from the 29th November to the 2nd December. For more details on this, check out the Leith Valley Presbyterian website or the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership news page.

Alan will also be in Auckland on the 26th and 27th November. He is presenting an Open Lecture: 'Where are we as church in contemporary Western Culture and what needs to happen?' on the 26th at 7 pm at Somervell Presbyterian Church, and is presenting a Missional Transitioning Consultation for Northern and Kaimai Presbyteries on the Saturday.

Incidentally, the spelling of his name above is correct; the spelling on the Knox website and on the advertising is not and may have been confused with John Roxborogh, formerly a lecturer at Knox College. John's name is spelt in the same way as the township of Roxburgh, in Otago, New Zealand.

Koreans in NZ

Stuart Vogel gives us some updated information on Koreans in New Zealand.  
 
70% of Koreans in New Zealand identify as Christians, while roughly another 20% claim to follow no religion. Buddhists number only about 5%. One Christian newspaper estimates that 35-40% of all Koreans are "active Christians" who regularly attend worship services, mostly at one of New Zealand's 100 Korean churches. Another recent study has shown that around 90 per cent of the study's participants attended Church regularly.

A weekly Christian newspaper published in the Korean language claims to have a circulation of 3,500 and discusses religious issues as well as issues of common interest to immigrants, such as migration law and property ownership. 20 years ago we had no Korean congregations within the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa-New Zealand.  Now we have 11 such congregations or groups.  We have Korean ministers graduating from our theological training and serving in a wide variety of positions. We have numerous congregations and ministers wanting to join the PCANZ. We welcome the interest without any hesitation.

Research has shown that Korean Christian churches provide much needed opportunities for support, fellowship and business networking as well as information and general assistance. This includes conversational English classes. One participant in the study said: "I had help from the Korean church in New Zealand. They gave me information about the business. It was hard to get the right information except through the local Korean church. As an immigrant with limited English language, I felt isolated and was not able to get proper information to start up the business."

And some other more general information: 

Almost 70% of New Zealand’s Koreans live in the Auckland area (2001 stats).
16% are in Christchurch with the rest scattered throughout the country, mostly in the larger towns and cities.
The majority of Korean immigrants have tertiary qualifications and are in their thirties and forties, meeting the immigration criteria.
Some chain migration has occurred as arrivals send home favourable reports to friends and relations – including elderly parents – who then came to join them.
Upon arrival most Korean families have sufficient funds to buy homes in relatively affluent suburbs like Auckland’s North Shore which.
By 2001, in North Shore City, Korean was the second most common language after English (4.1% in the 2006 Census).

Koreans attend a variety of NZ churches: the Korean Christian Churches in NZ site  lists Full Gospel, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist and various Pentecostal groups. 

Tweeting from Edinburgh

Some tweets from the Edinburgh 2010 Mission Conference, which has been taking place over the last couple of days or so. These are rather randomly listed - I copied the ones that most interested me....

First some stats:
In 1910, 80% of Christians lived in countries of at least 90% Christians. In 2010, 33% of Christians live in 90%-Christian countries – from Edinburgh 2010.

Across all faiths, the world is “less religious” in 2010 than 1910 - and yet, the world in 2010 is more religious than it was in 1970.

In 2010 about 27% of all Christians are "Renewalists": Pentecostal, Charismatic, Neo-Charismatic - Todd Johnson's report is context for...?

In 1910, 66% of all Christians were European, with an additional 15% from N America; in 2010, 25% in Europe, 12.5% in N America.

86% of Muslims, Hindus, & Buddhists do not personally know a Christian. This lack of interfaith *friendship* is a crisis in mission.

These statistics mentioned by Todd Johnson for #th2 are from the Atlas of Global Christianity project.

And some pithy statements, some of which take a bit of unravelling:

Fr. Jan Lenssen: Real, radical "communities of hospitality" make more of a difference than sheer numbers of Christians.

1910’s urgency to conquer diversity has paradigm-shifted into 2010’s reluctance to smother diversity..

In order to reach people in contexts of secularism and pluralism, witness must embrace religious tolerance rather than confront it.

*Understanding* other faiths is a priority, before either dialogue or evangelism: there is a place for the Qur'an in Sunday school...[This one struck me as adding more complications - Sunday School often seems to struggle to teach Christianity, let alone the Qur'an!]

priority: Inter-generational dialogue. Dialogue between "native speakers" of modernity and "native speakers" of postmodernity.

priority: Deepening our understanding of God's mission, rather than inventing and carrying out our own.

The secular world also adds to our discourse – it helps us “discern the spirits”. Indeed, we cannot uncritically affirm religion..

Rev Roderick Hewitt from the United Church of Jamaica talks to participants about child resiliency & building ‘youth friendly’ churches. [This should please NZ's Presbyterians, who have a Kids Friendly programme in place, and running very successfully.]

Our plurality today - diverse cultural, theological, ecclesial flourishing - is a sign of hope and vitality, not lack of direction...

"How can we possibly claim to be a credible witness community if we are still far from practicing equality, charity, etc, in our lives?”

How easy it is to be confused or dismayed when what we see in the world does not match our learned categories of understanding!

You will never see revival in the West until you are willing to use your women

When I attended a Pentecostal church, one of things that struck me most was that they took a 'Scriptural' point of view in relation to women preaching in the church, but a very non-Scriptural point of view when it came to women being missionaries overseas - on their own, without support. In other words, out of sight.

In the latest Next-Wave ezine, there's an article by Felicity Dale entitled Rethinking the Challenging Scriptures. The challenging scriptures in question concern the role(s) of women in the church. The thing that most struck me about this article are the words she quotes from Yonggi Cho, who, in 1983 (when Dale visited him) ran a church of some 350,000 members.

Yonggi Cho said: You will never see revival in the West until you are willing to use your women.

That was 1983. A good number of women in NZ have since managed - often with considerable difficulty - to become priests and ordained ministers in mainline churches. But as a colleague said to me yesterday: the average number of women in a Presbyterian Church congregation is around 70%. The average number of men in the leadership (that is, as ministers or elders) is around 80%.

Don't these figures clash just a little in your mind? Perhaps Yonggi Cho's words say more than we think.

Felicity Dale writes a blog called Simply Church which (among other things) has a focus on women in ministry and the need they have for the support and encouragement of men to achieve their goals.

Pauline Stewart on creative kids

The following is extracted from the latest Love Your Neighbour ezine,
Pauline Stewart, minister at St Heliers Bay Presbyterian Church and Community Centre said this in an interview some months ago: “Most of childhood should be joyful preparation for adulthood, but instead we entertain them to the point where they are almost throwing up. Kids really just want to be a part of making something significant happen. Jesus never entertained anyone.”

By giving children opportunities to serve others and through modeling it ourselves, we ensure that others-focused ministry will not just be a wave that passes, but a sustainable movement. When we fail to do so, in the words of George Barna “each generation feels it is re-inventing Christianity”.

Checking back on the interview mentioned above, it's worth quoting a couple of other things Stewart said.

“Lots of programmes let you be creative, but our aim is to help kids produce something of value. Rather than encourage creativity in a vacuum, Stan and I say 'let your ideas explode; but we will help you turn those ideas into something.'

and:

My philosophy is, the church should empty itself in preparing people for the world. We should be preparing people to be the best politicians and the best leaders of this country. Sometimes we think 'I've got to run these programmes so that I can fill up the church' – but you actually have to run these programmes to fill up the world, and then the church looks after itself. I'm totally committed to that journey. I am constantly looking at children to see what they are good at, and I will say to the parent 'he is good at that, you should encourage him'. “

It's never too late...

Old people and the digital age? For some the two just don't go together. Put a computer in front of an old person and they have no idea how anything works. Or so the theory goes.

But there's another approach, one that Marty Bullis talks about in a brief article on the Leadership Journal online.

Marty works as a chaplain in a Presbyterian nursing home, and wherever he goes, he takes his laptop with him. Using pictures familiar to people who have Alzheimer's, he's been able to improve some of their ability to remember; using hymns in large print, he's been able to get some people to sing along; and he's even got some of the old men 'driving' on the computer with simulated driving games.

An innovative approach to chaplaincy.

Photo by Pedro Ribeiro Simoes

The Presbyterian Stats

A report has just been released by The Presbyterian Panel, a research group that serves the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) [PCUSA].

The panel's report is presented as a "Religious and Demographic Profile of Presbyterians, 2008." The report contains relatively few surprises, and is filled with data about the beliefs of Presbyterian laypersons and clergy.

Albert Mohler, who is no doubt regarded as a Conservative in the Christian scene (though with kudos and plenty of insight and wisdom) opens his blog post on the topic with these words:

"Liberal Protestantism, in its determined policy of accommodation with the secular world, has succeeded in making itself dispensable." That was the judgment of Thomas C. Reeves in The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Protestantism, published in 1996. Fast-forward another fourteen years and it becomes increasingly clear that liberal Protestantism continues its suicide -- with even greater theological accommodations to the secular worldview.

His focus is on this point: the most significant theological question concerned the exclusivity of the Gospel and the necessity of belief in Jesus Christ for salvation. On that question there was great division, with over a third (36%) of PCUSA church members indicating that they "disagree" or "strongly disagree" with the statement that "only followers of Jesus Christ can be saved."

A much more detailed look at the stats involved appears on the GA Junkie site (GA for General Assembly, of course, and a site focused on the politics of Presbyterianism in the States). This writer looks at the actual question asked (Please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with...the following statement: only followers of Jesus Christ can be saved) and debates the case from there.

I won't go into the details of his arguments here, since they take up a fair amount of space on the original post, and he has a better head for interpreting statistics than I do.

Suffice to say, the two different perspectives expressed are both worth considering, and are perhaps not that far apart. And how does it all apply to the NZ scene?

It's worth noting the following (from Mohler's footnotes): The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was formed in 1983 as the union of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States. More conservative Presbyterian bodies include the Evangelical Presbyterian Church [EPC] and the Presbyterian Church in America [PCA].

Caribbean parallels

Somewhere along the way, says general secretary of the United Church in the Cayman Islands (UCJCI) Rev Dr Colin Cowan, the church has lost its deep-rooted connection with its people. The church had stopped being relevant amid the hardships that communities faced. It had stopped offering real answers to real problems. In short, it had stopped listening.

This is an opening paragraph from an article on the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, where the Church experience in many ways parallels the (Presbyterian/United) Church in New Zealand. After a five to six year appraisal time, the church has come to various conclusions, including:

1. Instead of putting programmes together centrally and passing them onto congregations, the church is now getting the synod to “mirror what we hear God saying about what these communities really need.” Congregations can then interpret this within their own locality. The emphasis is on the synod as facilitator, not dictator.

2. A rigorous new training and appraisal regime has been rolled out as an integral part of the programme, aiming to bring ministers up-to-date with congregational needs and how to respond to them.

"We felt that the lack of growth with the church was directly related to these deep-rooted feelings across Jamaica and the Cayman Islands,” Dr Cowan says. “Responding to people’s needs became critical and an urgent call on the church. We realised that the church couldn’t give up – that hope remained the most critical instrument available to us. We had to ask ourselves: how do we use hope?

"It became clear that it was critical to empower the local congregations, to understand what was happening in people’s lives in the here and now,” Dr Cowan says. “The time had come to put the individual at the centre of our ministry and then get our congregations supporting the individual.”

“If we had left things the way they were I think we would have become more and more nominal as a church, existing without energy, power and dynamism. Members would continue to drop off and we would start to disintegrate, losing our cutting edge and our engagement with our communities."

Does it all sound familiar - and are we prepared to do the same sort of rethinking?

Photo of the Elmslie Memorial United Church, George Town, Grand Cayman Island, by J Stephen Conn a semi-retired clergyman.

Archives Blog

This notice from the Knox College Archives Research Centre will be of interest to readers of this blog:

We are now officially on the web. A Blog called Presbyterian Research has begun that includes both the Archives Research Centre and the Presbyterian Research Network. So far we have placed a Susan Jones Lecture on-line and over the next week or so other lectures will join hers. You will also enjoy posts from the Archives that will keep you in touch with research possibilities, up-coming events, news that may interest, and the general happenings around the Archives and the Theological site.

Please make the most of the Blog, bookmark it, and do respond; we will love to hear from you. Please tell others who will be interested by passing the address around, linking it to your parish websites, your personal face book page, twitter and any other social network. This way we can reach a wider audience. Our next effort will be an official Facebook page.

I've included a link to this blog in the links in the column on the right for your reference. Looking forward to the Facebook page!

Against Happiness

Once a Protestant church was a place where one would grow to understand his severe optical limitations in comparison with the infinite vision of a ubiquitous deity, a God whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere. Now, at least in my eyes, the numerous churches devoted to Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and the like are basically happiness companies, corporations that focus on how one can achieve blessedness while living in this world. In the pews and pulpits, contrition has turned trite, and contentment has become the given. The blessed gaze of those striding from the aisles to the vestibule is inspiring to behold. The firm farewell handshake between the minister and his parishioner is a sacred seal, a bond: stay happy until next week, for God has planned for you to prosper, if only you will pray over your repasts and tithe your earnings.

...we are beginning to see that this American quest for happiness at any cost is not merely a pastime, an occasional undertaking. We are starting to realize that this push for earthly bliss is at the core of the American soul.

from Against Happiness, by Eric G Wilson, pp 19-21, Sarah Crichton Books, 2008

Dave Tomlinson in New Zealand

Dave Tomlinson comes to Wellington
(these details come from a joint newsletter put out by Presbyterian Youth Ministry and World Vision).

World Vision have brought Dave Tomlinson, an Anglican priest in London, over to New Zealand for a fleeting visit. Dave will give two keynote talks on "re-emerging church" on Thursday 10 September, 9 - 12:30 pm @ St John's in the City, Wellington. Door charge $10.

Who is he?
Dave wrote The Post-evangelical, founded "Holy Joes" church in a pub, and has recently published the excellent book, Re-enchanting Christianity, which follows on from The Post-evangelical in that it explores ways of being faithful to the Gospel/Bible for those who may be post-church or wondering about their faith. Bible, prayer, mission, theology, church, community, are some of the areas explored. Now he is the vicar of St Luke's in North London, an Anglican parish church that seeks to combine tradition with contemporary culture. He is married to Pat, and has three children and three grandchildren. Dave's website has more information about his work and ministry.

Re-emerging Church?

Mark Pierson, from World Vision, uses the term "re-emerging church", which he prefers to "emerging church" because it better reflects a desire to see existing churches resourced to re-discover their place in the culture, rather than feel that something new is going to come along and take them over. Dave has done this at St Luke's Anglican in London and his new book reflects this practice.

Dave's two keynote talks:

Church without borders
In a fractured and fragmented world where many starve for relationships and belonging, how can we build more open and inclusive communities? How can we create churches that people want to come to? How can we connect effectively with churchless spirituality?

Identity and change in an age of uncertainty
How do we listen and respond to what is happening in the world, whilst continuing to listen, and remain faithful, to our tradition? What do we let go of, and what do we hold on to? And how can our traditions and rituals be reconfigured and re-spirited to meet new needs?