This might be news to you

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...!

Mission/Innovative/Monastic/You Name It

A busy week on the National Mission front, with work started on enabling Supervision to become more of a reality for ministers and laypeople around the country. ('Supervision' as in the process where a person goes, about once a month, to discuss their work and life with someone trained to listen and enable them to keep moving forward.)
That's my excuse for not having posted much on this blog this week - it hasn't been for want of trying (!)
Anyway, just 'discovered' Urban Vision. No doubt they'll be happy to learn that they've been discovered after some 13 years (they 'began' in 1996). As they state on their website:
Urban Vision is a group of households and ministries in Wellington, Porirua and the Kapiti Coast who focus on building life-giving relationships with those on the margins of mainstream society, and doing justice in the midst of urban poverty. We’ve come to realise we’re a local expression of a global revolution of hope and transformation, worked out in the neighbourhoods of need we’ve relocated to.
You might consider it a church without walls, but in fact its members belong to a number of different churches and denominations. In the last couple of years however, Urban Vision has taken on a new form:
In 2007, we took the imaginative step of becoming a contemporary Order, following Jesus on the margins. In making this step, we’ve recognised Jesus is doing new things right now in Aotearoa/New Zealand (contemporary), and that we have some things in common with some of the monastic and missionary movements of old, specifically a spiritual rhythm to life (order). We have been students of history and experience: we wanted a durable structure, enabling the continuing vitality of our pioneering, prophetic and Jesus-centred threads.
There's more on their site, as you'd expect, and they're even debating how people outside Wellington can connect with their form of contemporary Order. And they're advertising some opportunities for those who are in Wellington.

Town and country

Being a townie in almost every respect (I love the country - for a couple of days) I find it hard to understand how people work as pastors in the rural sector. And plainly a lot of other people do, as a post from the blog site, Out of Ur, indicates.
The piece is written by Collin Hansen, and notes that Time magazine has recently checked out the state of rural churches, and their lack of pastors: stating the obvious, in fact. Hansen takes a good look at the difficulties involved: the fact that most pastors are trained in urban settings, that they earn more in urban settings, that the rural churches often can't afford even the minimum salary to pay a pastor. And then there's the fact that in a rural setting your parish may extend over an area vastly larger than any urban one, meaning a lot of driving, long days, and...getting lost regularly, at least in the early days.
But rural people need Christ as much as urban people.
This post is well worth checking out, and, as is usually the case, the comments that follow are equally worth noting, including the young pastor who claims that rural people are stuck in their ways and don't want to change.

Looking after the elderly

The Canadian Rural Church Network newsletter reminds us that:
A major thrust for rural churches in the immediate future is to provide adequate pastoral care for Senior Citizens (65 years plus).
Alberta's Cabinet Minister for Seniors and Community Support announced recently that the number of seniors in the Province is expected to increase by approximately 40% in the next 10 years, and to double by 2026. Similar statistics can be repeated in other regions.
Because of the Baby Boom Bulge, longer life-expectancy, and the tendency for seniors to retire from urban areas in search of cheaper costs of living, I expect similar statistics can be noted across the country.
At present, churches seem content to visit the sick, comfort the grieving and lead worship services at seniors' lodges and nursing homes. But there are very few pastoral care committees and fewer clergy and lay people learning how to address the spiritual needs of Seniors.
Gerontologists tell us that there are three stages of 'old' in our society: the young old (65-74 years), the old old (75-84 years) and the oldest old (85+). People in each of these stages face specific issues.

The issues are the same in New Zealand - and not just in rural areas. Churches have focused on youth for so long they've forgotten that older people continue to have spiritual needs, and in fact face a time of great change, what with the illnesses of old age, increasing lack of mobility, loss of faculties, losing longstanding friends to death, and many other important (and often debilitating) aspects of this stage of life.

The most recent CRCN newsletter (no 28) focuses on ministering to older people, and offers ways to think about working in this area.

The Rural Church

The Canadian Rural Church Network's latest newsletter encourages people in rural communities to be reslient and think laterally. From a section entitled RAVEing Rural, comes the following:

There is a virtual riot of lively innovation and adaptation welling up in the rural United Church. In 2007, the United Church solicited workshop proposals for an event called "More Franchises than Tim Hortons: Vital Ministry in the Canadian Context". The workshop proposals from rural leaders reveal something of the face of the 'RAVEing Rural' church. [Tim Hortons might be thought of as the Canadian equivalent of Starbucks.)

Many rural congregations are finding life through new forms of congregational partnership and innovative organizational structures. One group of 4 congregations in Northern Ontario is experimenting with a "Multi-site Congregation" model. This is not a multi-point pastoral charge, but seeks close cooperation between participating congregations with one governance body that doesn't repeat committees. It includes an organic structure, which allows for grafting on or removing existing communities as needed without changing the congregational structure.

Another congregation was experiencing the tension of a massive influx of ex-urban households in their community. They turned this into a ministry with the community by hosting discussions on what it means to be a 'new rural' context bringing healing to both church and village.

Some congregations are using reports of demographic and psychographic marketing style data to learn more about themselves, and build relationships with those outside the church. Other congregations are embracing lament as a biblical spiritual practice and are releasing energy for a new future, discovering that all change involves loss, so to change well means to grieve well.

None of this is a surprise really, since resilience and adaptability have always been the way rural communities have thrived.