Wendell Berry

In an essay from 1993 entitled, Christianity and the Survival of Creation, author Wendell Berry writes

I have been talking, of course, about a dualism that manifests itself in several ways; it is a cleavage, a radical discontinuity, between Creator and creature, spirit and matter, religion and nature, religion and economy, worship and work, etc. This dualism, I think is the most destructive disease that afflicts us. In its best known, its most dangerous, and perhaps its fundamental version, it is the dualism of body and soul. This is an issue as difficult as it is important, and so to deal with it we should start at the beginning.

The crucial test is probably Genesis 2:7, which gives the process by which Adam was created: "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul." My mind, like most people's, has been deeply influenced by dualism, and I can see how dualistic minds deal with this verse. They conclude that the formula for man-making is: man = body + soul. But that conclusion cannot be derived, except by violence, from Genesis 2:7, which is not dualistic. The formula given in Genesis is not man = body + soul; the formula there is soul = dust + breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope. He formed man of dust; by breathing his breath into it, he made the dust live. Insofar as it lived, it was a soul. The dust, formed as man and made to live, did not embody a soul; it became a soul. "Soul" here refers to the whole creature. Humanity is thus presented to us, in Adam, not as a creature of two discrete parts temporarily glued together, but as a single mystery.

Berry has more to say about God's economy as opposed to economics, about Christianity's willingness to be part of the destructive forces of the world, about its culpability in not seeing this world as Holy, and about a number of other related issues. It isn't an essay that will encourage most of us in the way we presently conduct our lives; that's not Berry's intention. His aim is to give such breadth to our view of Creation and our part in it that we'll deeply reconsider how we behave within this world.

And just to give you a little more taste of Berry's writing, here's a quote from the title essay of his book, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays. It was published in 1998.

"If you destroy the ideal of the "gentle man" and remove from men all expectations of courtesy and consideration toward women and children, you have prepared the way for an epidemic of rape and abuse. If you depreciate the sanctity and solemnity of marriage, not just as a bond between two people, but as a bond between those two people and their forebears, their children, and their neighbors, then you have prepared the way for an epidemic of divorce, child neglect, community ruin, and loneliness. If you destroy the economies of household and community, then you destroy the bonds of mutual usefulness and practical dependence without which the other bonds will not hold."

That Mosaic Generation

The Barna Group has recently published the results of their ongoing research into the biblical worldviews of young American adults - the Mosaics, as the Barna Group calls them.
Though the results have not changed substantially for better or worse since the last poll four years ago, they are not particularly encouraging amongst the 'born-again' component of the survey, who appear to be almost as prone to believing what they prefer to believe as the non-born-again component.

The Barna Group notes:

Varying numbers of Americans embrace the different aspects of biblical worldview thinking. The survey found that:

• One-third of all adults (34%) believe that moral truth is absolute and unaffected by the circumstances. Slightly less than half of the born again adults (46%) believe in absolute moral truth.

• Half of all adults firmly believe that the Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches. That proportion includes the four-fifths of born again adults (79%) who concur.

• Just one-quarter of adults (27%) are convinced that Satan is a real force. Even a minority of born again adults (40%) adopt that perspective.

• Similarly, only one-quarter of adults (28%) believe that it is impossible for someone to earn their way into Heaven through good behavior. Not quite half of all born again Christians (47%) strongly reject the notion of earning salvation through their deeds.

• A minority of American adults (40%) are persuaded that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life while He was on earth. Slightly less than two-thirds of the born again segment (62%) strongly believes that He was sinless.

• Seven out of ten adults (70%) say that God is the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe who still rules it today. That includes the 93% of born again adults who hold that conviction.

Megachurch and Monastery

The Church of the Open Door is a megachurch in Minnesota with some 3,000 people attending weekly. In recent years they've discovered that facets of monasticism are making a great difference to the way the church functions, and the way in which members of the congregation view their lives as Christians.

At the end of his article, Keith Meyer details a number of ways in which the core members of the church function together. The first of these is:

Living in Jesus. We will have regular habits of "being with Jesus" for transformation into Trinitarian life.
-Slowing our lives down together to eliminate hurry.
-Paying attention to God together, all of the time.
-Confessing our sins to one another in safe groups.
-Memorizing and meditating together on longer, transformative passages of scripture.
-Interceding for each other, our community, and our world in prayer together.
-Mentoring and being mentored across generational, ethnic, class, and gender lines.

What is also interesting in the article is that the way in which members have acted out some of these spiritual disciplines has caused other members to react against them.

So your church is dying?

Here's part of what Steve Taylor suggests on his sustain-if-able kiwi blog if it seems as if your church is dying:

Keep meeting at 10:30 am Sunday. Keep the doors open. Keep the coffee fresh. Keep the muffins warm. But stop the sermons and stop the singing. Take all that energy and reclaim the time for mission. Read a creed. Dwell in Luke 10:1-12. Initiate some listening experiments. Share stories. Foray into the community for simple acts of service. Return to share stories. Re-read a creed. Re-dwell in Luke 10:1-12. Initiate some more listening experiments. Share stories. Foray into the community for further acts of service.

You can read the rest of the post here.

Skye Jethani's new book, The Divine Commodity, is now out and about (in the States, at least). There's a not-very-long review in a post on the signs of life blog, written by the blog owner, David Swanson.

He makes the following comment at one point, and quotes from the book:

It is the description of an alternative to consumer Christianity that is most commendable. In a chapter about the tendency to place institutions before relationships Skye writes,

What may be needed is a fundamental rethinking of the church within the minds of the members, cultivating the imagination to conceive of the church as a relational community rather than an institutional organization. Beginning on the smallest end of the scale, this means relearning the lost art of friendship.

Swanson notes elsewhere:

The Divine Commodity is organized into nine chapters, each which observe an aspect of consumerism that has infiltrated the church. Filled with stories, cultural artifacts, and Biblical reflection these observations are easily connected to the reader’s own context.

Transmitting faith

The early church had to reject culturally irrelevant traditions in order to transmit the faith across cultures.

Some of us are keenly aware of the tensions that arise while transmitting the faith. A Korean congregation must decide how to reach the second and third generation who mostly speak English. A denomination that baptizes infants is faced with Hispanic congregations who embrace believer’s baptism. A mostly White suburban church wonders how to respond to new minority residents who’ve been displaced from the city by gentrification. Paul’s rejection of cultural monopoly seems downright impractical in these situations. Wouldn’t it be simpler for new converts, new immigrants, and new generations to adapt to our established traditions?

So asks David Swanson in a post entitled Urban Exile: Whose History?

Shane Hipps responds

Just to keep you up to date with an ongoing conversation on virtual community that we began several posts ago, in which Shane Hipps said in a videoed interview (shown on the Out of Ur blog) that he didn't think virtual communities were real communities. This was responded to by Scot McKnight a few days later, and since then Hipps has replied, trying to expand on his video interview, in which, rightly, he said he was struggling to get across something for which he only had a few minutes and little preparation.
As he says in the most recent post: First, my language in the video was less nuanced than it might have been in written form. That is my tendency in a spontaneous oral interview. I will try to be more precise here.
As always the comments are full of insights, such as the following from Phil someone:
We are getting so far from the truth that I am finding it hard to believe what I am reading. The Father did not send a book, or a CD, or an article, or a music album, or a recorded sermon: He sent a Person, His Son, and said, "As the Father sent Me, into the world as a person, even so in the same way I am sending you." Paul echoes this: "You know what kind of MEN we proved to be among you." God COMMANDS us to not forsake the assembling of ourselves--not our blog posts or websites or Facebook locations--but ourselves TOGETHER. Church happens with people, together, in His name, where He agrees to come too! When will we get it???

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.

God's view of religion

From Charles Slagle's book, From the Father's Heart, page 76. God writing, with a degree of tongue-in-cheek, to his son, Charles.

Believe it or not, I too find religion boring - extremely boring. In fact, I often find it annoying. Has it occurred to you that I might be interested in many other subjects? I AM. My range of interest just might be even wider than yours!

I like various sports, arts, writing, music - and jokes. And although some would be shocked to hear it, I enjoy theatre and dancing immensely. And why not? I AM the Inventor, if you recall. I also happen to be very fond of animals. Or haven't you noticed? Oh, yes, I AM an incurable bird watcher and sparrows are some of My favourites. Geography and astronomy never cease to interest Me, and I also delight in chemistry and micro-biology. No doubt you have observed this.

Yet, like yourself, I AM repelled by meaningless rituals and routines. The realm of organised religion is very dull and drab, I think. Its goals and interests are mostly unrelated to Mine. If I attend a religious event, I do so strictly from a sense of duty - you can be sure of that. I make it a policy to attend only if I AM invited, so, as you surmise, I rarely go at all. By that I mean My heart is not in it. In one sense it would be impossible for Me not to be there. Perhaps that is what might be called one of the less fortunate aspects of being omnipresent?

We have more in common than you think! I find flowery speeches a bore, tradition tedious and I hate religiosity. But I do love people. That is why I can't just simply give up on the Church. But isn't that the way love is? Love doesn't have an 'off and on' switch. At least, My kind never does.

Besides, when I think of the Church I think of My family. In My view, the religious rat race is a universe removed from what the Church is really about.

Drinking in NZ

The Maxim Institute notes:
The Law Commission has released further detail of its review of alcohol laws and the associated controls. Looking at issues like "the minimum drinking and purchase ages," "drinking hours," "advertising" and "the number and/or type of liquor outlets," the review plans to report by 2010. "The central issue for the ... project is whether the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of liberality and the availability of alcoholic drinks, and if so, what measures can be adopted to ... limit the harm that it causes." A process of public consultation is also planned, aimed at involving the public and community groups in a sensible and prudent approach to the alcohol law.

See more on this from the NZ Herald.

And another area for innovation in the church

An increasing number of older New Zealanders past retiring age are continuing to work, many of them in part-time roles.

A recent report from Statistics NZ shows that the number of people aged 65 years and over in the workforce rose 278% between 1986 and 2006 – from 22,000 to 82,000 driven by such factors as skills shortages, increased life expectancy, more part-time opportunities, the growth of the service industry and ... a buoyant economy.

Although this trend may not survive the current downturn it put us second only to Japan for “elder” labour participation in OECD countries – in 2006, one in six older New Zealanders remained in the workforce with 66% of the women and 43% of the men holding part-time jobs.

slightly amended from the NZIM Managers’ Update, March 2009

Again, where what implications does this have for churches and their attitudes to older people?

How will churches react?

How will your church react?

Nearly one fifth of New Zealanders in employment fear they may lose their jobs this year and half of those worry they may not quickly find another. That was the outcome of a survey commissioned by the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development that polled 2852 respondents online and found the worry about job loss was greatest amongst those in low-paid jobs and in hard-hit areas like construction,
transport and storage, and forestry/agriculture. Those feeling most secure are farm owners and managers, followed by police, nurses, teachers, service workers and
public servants.
By age, those most worried about their future work prospects are in the 25-34 and 55-64 age groups.

from the NZIM Managers’ Update, March 2009

Christians under persecution

The following comes from an article in which the top ten countries persecuting Christians are listed:

For the seventh year in a row, North Korea ranked number one on Open Doors annual World Watch List for 2009. Following North Korea in the top ten spots are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Maldives, Yemen, Laos, Eritrea and Uzbekistan, respectively.

The border between China and North Korea is almost closed; everything and everyone going in and out of North Korea are monitored closely. Executions are held in secret. The number of people sentenced to a labor camp or in prison has increased compared to last year. North Korea is closing its doors and Christians are persecuted constantly. Genuine religious freedom doesn’t exist at all; and no one is allowed to be a Christian in North Korea. The constitution is firmly based on Juche ideology.

Read the rest of the article here - and pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ.

Western Values

Lecture by Baroness Caroline Cox - hosted by Maxim Institute

What is at stake?: Why we need to value the foundations of Western civilisation Around the world, countries fall apart from division, civil war and corruption. We are fortunate. Our heritage is a great one, and we owe much to the foundations of Western civilisation upon which our country is built. But these foundations, which include freedom, duty, responsibility, affection, belonging, goodness, civic service, are things we often take for granted. In this lecture Baroness Cox will draw from her experiences in various countries to explain the value of the underpinnings of Western civilisation, discussing why concepts like the rule of law, human dignity, civic and mutual responsibility, and equality are so vital to a strong and prosperous global society. EVENT WILL BE HELD IN BOTH CHRISTCHURCH AND AUCKLAND CHRISTCHURCH: Wednesday, 25 March, from 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm at Christchurch Club, 154 Worcester Street, Christchurch Drinks and canapés will be served AUCKLAND: Thursday, 26 March, from 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm at Maxim Institute, 49 Cape Horn Road, Hillsborough, Auckland Drinks and canapés will be served For both events places are limited, RSVP is therefore essential. If you wish to attend, please email rsvp@maxim.org.nz or phone Summer Haycock on (09) 627 3261 by Friday 20 March. Baroness Caroline Cox is a crossbencher peer from the British House of Lords. She is known for her active involvement in humanitarian aid and human rights, as well as for her interest and work in slavery and education. Baroness Cox was Founding Chancellor of Bournemouth University and is currently Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University, and Chief Executive of Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust. Baroness Cox's work has taken her on many assignments to conflict zones, including Sudan, Burma, Nigeria and North Korea. Her vast experience makes her a compelling and insightful speaker.

Chasing the rabbit down the hole

I've just added Jason Goroncy's blog, Per-Crucem-ad-Lucem to the list of links at the right hand side of this blog. Things being what they are in the world of blog, I only discovered Jason's blog via the UK Tall Skinny Kiwi blog where a brief mention was made of Kevin Ward's Inaugural Lecture in February, which was given at the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership.

The link on the UK site led me back to Jason's blog, where he's very helpfully provided the full text of Kevin's lecture, plus the response from Bruce Hamill. It's like travelling halfway around the world to find you're already home.

I'd attended Kevin Ward's lecture (It may be emerging, but is it church?), but my notes were a bit hazy in some areas as to what he'd said, so it's good to be able to pick up the details again. And I hadn't taken any notes of what Bruce said at all, for some reason, so finding his response there as well is a bonus.

God's guest list

God's guest list includes a disconcerting number of poor and broken people, those who appear to bring little to any gathering except their need. The distinctive quality of Christian hospitality is that it offers a generous welcome to the "least," without concern for advantage or benefit to the host. Such hospitality reflects God's greater hospitality that welcomes the undeserving, provides the lonely with a home, and sets a banquet table for the hungry.

Christine Pohl
Making Room

Stopping Violence

In an article entitled, Rethinking Stopping Violence Programmes, Stuart Birks, the director for Public Policy Evaluation at Massey University, says this:

One of the most puzzling aspects to me is that we allow interference in our lives to an extreme degree, up to and including the routine destruction of relationships between parents and their children. This is permitted despite the open admission that the theories are questionable, the data are problematic, and the effectiveness of the interventions is unknown. The people proposing and implementing these policies are subject to limited accountability and may not have the training, skills, experience, awareness and impartiality to justify our confidence in them.

Most of Stuart's article is about male/female violence and the ways our society is dealing with it, such as recent ideas that different races should be treated differently. He expresses a number of concerns, looks at readings of data that may be false, and wonders whether we're really making any inroads into treating violence - and whether there are other agendas at work complicating Government policy on the matter.

Not abandoned!

I've been off work for a week, recovering from a prostate operation last Monday, which explains in part why this site has been somewhat neglected recently. I'm still not fully back at work, so posts may come fairly spasmodically over the next week or two.
Be reassured: we have not abandoned the Mission Resource site!

God Loves Us!

All of us need to have our identity grounded in being deeply loved by our divine Lover. Sentimentalism, emotionalism, rationality and analysis all sabotage the development of such a relationship. Talking about such a relationship is easy. Actually coming to develop a love relationship with the invisible God is far from simple.

David G. Benner
Surrender to Love

Real Relationships

The Maxim Institute reports:
The British based Relationships Foundation has released a new pamphlet, estimating "the financial cost of failure" in families and relationships. Taking into account measures such as "lone parent benefits," costs in "health and social care" and "housing," as well as related social services, When Relationships Go Wrong: Counting the cost of family failure puts the cost of "relationship breakdown" at a massive £37 billion. Warning against a "focus solely on economic concerns at the expense of relationships," the Foundation calls for a policy, and a culture, which prioritises relationships, and "greater wellbeing."

The massive figure, based on more detailed calculations in the pamphlet, is food for thought enough. But it is the companion pamphlet, When Relationships Go Right: Enabling thriving lives, which contains a fruitful metaphor when it comes to the debate on family. It draws a parallel between "the wellbeing agenda" and the green movement, hoping that, just as politicians and wider culture have come to prioritise the environment, so also will government and society come to prioritise relationships and "wellbeing." The pamphlet offers a number of examples of what this might look like, from the greater use of "health visitors" and "district nurses," to proposals that encourage healthy work-life balance through things such as cutting travel time.

Read the rest of Maxim's comments here; When Relationships Go Right is the second half of the pdf file link above.

Trueblood on ministry of the laity

Simon Holt notes, in a recent post:
[Elton] Trueblood was especially critical of the diminishment of the ‘ministry of the laity’ to (i) giving support to the structures and programmes of the institution, and (ii) helping the pastor with the chores around the church buildings. Trueblood argued that "the only kind of lay ministry worth encouraging is that which makes a radical difference to the entire Christian enterprise." In other words, lay ministry is not some second rate auxiliary to the real thing. It is the real thing—men and women engaged at the very forefront of everyday life as ministers of liberation and redemption: "If Christianity is to be understood not as a retreat from life in the world but as an effort to transfigure life itself, if follows that the Church needs the service of men and women at the point where they are most exposed to the problems of our political and economic order." And that’s not in church on Sunday…”

Holt (who writes on the blog, Simply Simon) says more before and after this extract.

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.

The rocks cry out

There is a pervasive sense that things are not right in the world, and the gentle suggestion that maybe they don't have to stay this way.... But most Christian artists and preachers have remained strangely distant from human suffering, offering the world eternal assurance over prophetic imagination. Perhaps it should not surprise us that Jesus says that if the Christians remain silent, then the rocks will cry out ... or the rock stars, I guess.

Shane Claiborne
The Irresistible Revolution

Interesting statement, but is it entirely true?

More on Virtual Community - and Top Blogs

At the risk of pointing you too often towards the Out of Ur site (though it is regarded now as one of the top Christian blogs), I just want to follow up on the last post in which Shane Hipps talked about virtual communities not being 'real' communities.
Scot McKnight has written a brief but sensible response to this - and, as always, the comments that follow the post are well worth a look.

In regard to the 'top' blogs, Matt and Madeleine Flanagan have given a very up-to-date list of the top New Zealand Christian blogs. The Flanagans give the reasons behind the rankings, based on the stats from two other sites: Half Done and Tumeke, neither of which are familiar to me. In fact, only three of those listed below are ones I've heard of previously. Plainly I'm not moving in the right blog circles!

1. NZ Conservative
2. Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later
3. The Briefing Room
4. MandM
5. Kiwi Polemicist
6. Say Hello to my Little Friend
7. Put up Thy Sword
8. Samuel Dennis
9. Contra Celsum
10. Star Studded Super Step

It would be interesting to spend an afternoon checking out these blogs to see what they've got to say. And for those with absolutely nothing else to do, check out Kent Schaffer's 60 Top Christian Blogs from around the world.

Shane Hipps

The video clip below is part of an interview Out of Ur did recently with Shane Hipps. I don't know much about Hipps except that he's the author of a book due to be released this year called, Flickering Pixels - how technology shapes your faith, and that somewhere along the line he realized he was spending his life working diligently to perpetuate consumer culture and promote values that ran counter to his most deeply held beliefs.
In this brief clip (about 4 minutes) he points out two things.
1: that you can't really have 'virtual' community. The virtual negates what community is about. He lists four points relating to community:

a. communities have shared history
b. they have a sense of permanence, which gives history
c. they have proximity: people get together with each other
d. they have a shared imagination of the future.

For Hipps, only the last of these four has a possibility in virtual terms: it gains future fast, but loses the other three in the process.

2: the second life site is, for Hipps, a disembodiment of the Gospel - as were radio and tele-evangelism before it.



I suspect you won't entirely agree with Hipps, and four minutes isn't long for him to make his case, but he's worth considering, all the same.

Community and Common Purpose

Having spent a number of months over the last few years being involved (as an actor) in various amateur plays, notably the Narnia productions for Dunedin City Baptist, and many years before that as the pianist for various concert groups, I was interested to read the following in Michael Frost's book, Exiles - living missionally in a post-christian culture.

Many people undergo something of a communitas experience in their daily lives. Sporting teams, theatre companies, orchestras, bands, dance troupes – these kinds of societies all know something, perhaps just a whiff, of the concept of communitas. When a group of musicians or dancers are performing, every member must play his or her part well, not just individually, but in concert with the others. The sense of interdependence can be very exciting. Jazz musicians speak of the almost spiritual nirvana they sense when all members of the band are playing in perfect harmony. Any member of a sports team can recall something of the profound sense of intimacy felt with teammates when individual contributions to the game create a force greater than the sum of their parts.

When an amateur theatre group begins rehearsals, it can be just a rag-tag assembly of would-be thespians. But on the stage, galvanized by the urgency of the impending opening night, they are transformed into something else. With the script as their guide, they are forced together by the ‘ordeal’ of knowing that soon they will be giving public performances.

One young amateur actor once told me that he felt a greater sense of belonging and acceptance in this theatre company than in his church. I suppose he thought that it had to do with the quality of the people in the theatre as compared with those in the church. But the fact remains that churches are full of marvellous, kind, caring people, every bit as accepting as theatre people. The fundamental difference is that churches are working on community, while an amateur theatre group is a kind of communitas.

Pg 116 Hendrickson paperback edition, 2007

I'm not sure that I agree with Frost's conclusion about how the young actor felt: the quality of people in a theatre company may be just as diverse as anywhere else. In fact there will be some that you don't feel any great kinship with. But in the doing of the play together, even the most diverse people are pulled together into something greater than themselves.

Jamie Oliver as John Wesley

While I was on retreat last year, one of the other men attending mentioned Jamie Oliver on TV teaching young mothers how to give their children decent meals. My friend said he felt Oliver was like a young John Wesley feeding the young Christians.

It's an interesting concept to see Oliver as a Godly figure in the New Creation mode – reviving life in people, renewing the creation. Certainly he's set himself some major tasks in terms of trying to change the way people think about food in Britain (and presumably wherever else the programme is shown). He's come a long way from the days of his early cooking series.

Compare him to Gordon Ramsay. It's hard to get away from the impression that Ramsay, even when he's helping other restauranteurs to repair the havoc they've created in their businesses, still seems to be all about himself. He's constantly competitive; even when he’s helping people get their restaurants up and running the attitude seems to be: if you don’t do it my way you’ll fail. It's not surprising he gets quite a lot of resistance even when he's right!

Or when he invites someone in to cook their favourite meal. It seems that he's only doing it so he can show how much better his version will be.

Incidentally, the link to an article above takes you to the Socialist Worker online. It's quite perceptive about Oliver's role in changing thinking.

Ageing population

As a follow-up to my post on Monday about the elderly in our communities and congregations, I note the following projected stats:
We are in a time of rapid population ageing. In New Zealand, by 2030, for the group aged 65 to 74, numbers will double from 276,000 in 2006, to 559,000. By 2030, it is estimated that the numbers of those over 85 will almost treble, from 58,000 today to 150,0001 Treasury (2006) has also calculated that the ratio of the young to the old is transposing, and after 2020 we will have more people over age 64 than under age 15.
As I said the other day, this is no time to be ignoring children and young people. It is, however, a time to be thinking about how we are going to minister to increasing numbers of people who are over 60?

Emerging - or submerged?

One of the reasons I believe the simple, organic/house/emerging church movement is continually gaining ground and in some countries, blossoming beyond expectations, is because it is sustainable and reproducible, just as the early church was. The ministry does not get put on hold when the money runs out or loans are inaccessible. Ministry does not have to wait for a building or a paid professional to come and run the show. This recession will speak to us, if we have ears to hear, and will highlight an alternative to the church system that has flourished under Western capitalism. It will spotlight simple and sustainable church planting as it worked in the beginning of the church, as it has advanced the church through the centuries, and as it is being played out today both overseas and under the radar in Western countries.

Tall Skinny Kiwi has an interesting post on the recession, on debt and on the way Christians might be best to use money.

Networking

In his book, Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi wrote about the safety net provided by a robust network of social connections.

"Experience will not save you in hard times, nor will hard work or talent. If you need a job, money, advice, help, hope, or a means to make a sale, there's only one surefire, fail-safe place to find them - within your extended circle of friends and associates."

The same might well be said of the church. It wasn't because he thought the phrase had a good ring to it that Paul said, 'Forsake not the gathering of the saints'. He knew the value of being 'networked' within the church family, the body of Christ.

Justin Pinkerman writes about keeping up with your network in a Leadership Wired article online.
He's talking about the business network, seeing it as a kind of safety net in these difficult economic times. But the church is the same, and more so - in all times. The congregation may annoy the hell out of us (which might not be a bad thing!) but it's also a place where our particular bit of the body grows best.

Embracing the Elderly

A brief piece in the latest NZ Management says ‘Employers Should Embrace the Ageing Workforce.’ It must be an idea that's found its time, because putting this phrase in Google brings up a number of references to it around the country, including this one.

Wouldn’t it be good to see a similar heading in SPANZ or some church magazine saying: ‘Churches Should Embrace their Ageing Parishioners?’ My gut feeling is that 'Ageing Parishioners' are left to fend for themselves spiritually and emotionally, and that the big focus in most churches is on children and, even more so, young people.

Of course we should be concerned for these two groups; they're the future. But older people are not the past - they're still the present, and they bring with them, in many cases, great stores of treasures, most of it neglected by your average church.

Many churches barely acknowledge the older people, or else they leave other older people to look after them, as though only the elderly can care for the elderly. As someone in late middle-age (not quite retired, in other words), I am just as concerned as ever about the state of my faith, about how to think theologically about all the issues that beset our modern world, about how to face the fact that death creeps closer with every day, that health isn't as stable as it used to be, and a number of other matters.

I don't feel old inside. Inside I still have a sense of being about thirty (though with a bit more experience under my belt), and it's only the fact that the body doesn't agree that makes me aware of being older. My suspicion is that people much older than me don't feel old inside either. But we can be made to feel old by being put to one side or ignored or treated as though we have no past, no history.

Boomers are an increasingly large percentage of the population. And, it seems to me, an untapped resource - and mission field.

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.

Using Movie Clips

It's a big thing in some churches these days to use movie clips to add a different dimension to the service or the sermon. But one issue that churches have to deal with is that of royalties, and, on top of that, whether the church actually has permission to show the clip in the first place.

YouthTRAIN lists about a dozen sites that have movie clips for use. It provides a brief description of the kind of site - whether it provides a synopsis of the movie, whether there are study guides available, whether you have to pay a fee or a subscription, whether the clips are new or old and so on. Some of the sites have free material, and one or two are more about giving an overview of movies than providing material.

All in all, this is a useful list. Just make sure you give yourself a couple of hours to check it out!

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.

Avoiding the Worship Wars

In a Leadership Journal interview with Keith and Kristyn Getty, Keith says the following:

The contemporary generation talks a lot about songs having to sound contemporary for the unchurched to listen to. In my experience of having non-Christian friends attend Christian events or church, they're much more warmed when everyone is singing passionately and confidently, rather than somewhere somebody's trying to do something half as well as it might be done on MTV, or where everybody in the congregation is standing around and staring. Nine times out of ten, they're actually quite embarrassed by that.

If I've got non-Christian friends coming to church, I'd far rather give them four verses of comparatively heavy theology with some theological words which explains the gospel, than give them twenty repeated words that could be said about your pet horse or your girlfriend.

"Passionately and confidently"- how sweet the sound of such words! This isn't the only bit of 'wisdom' Keith and Kathy speak during the course of this interview.

One of Keith's best known songs is In Christ Alone, a prime example of how to write a 'modern' hymn.

John Updike

In a November, 2004 article on John Updike published online in the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly magazine there is the following comment on Updike's Christianity:

While much of his earlier work contains traces of Updike's furious immersion in Christian theology, he said he looked more to the congregation of his hometown Massachusetts church as the rock of his faith today.

"When I haven't been to church in a couple of Sundays I begin to hunger for it and need to be there," he said. "It's not just the words, the sacraments. It's the company of other people, who show up and pledge themselves to an invisible entity."

And in a quote from one of his books (one of the Rabbit tetralogy)

"When on Sunday morning then, when we go before their faces, we must walk up not worn out with misery but full of Christ," he tells a disconcerted Eccles. "Make no mistake. There is nothing but Christ for us. All the rest, all this decency and busyness, is nothing. It is Devil's work."

Suicides and Attendance at Church

The following paragraph comes from the Washington Times.
Psychiatric researchers at the University of Manitoba have established a link, they say, "between a person´s attendance at a religious worship service" and the desire to commit suicide.
No, this doesn't quite mean what it appears to say. Here's the next paragraph:
"The main finding of this study is that religious worship attendance is associated with a decreased risk of suicide attempts," said Daniel Rasic, who led the research. The findings were based on health surveys of 37,000 Canadians which included information about their spirituality - and specifically - their church attendance.
The article goes on to say that it's the people who actually attend church, rather than those who just consider themselves 'spiritual' who find themselves less inclined towards suicide. The study doesn't come to any conclusions as to why potentail suicides should be less suicidal as a result of attending church, but it's a good point to note, all the same.

Two takes on a 'new' religion

[The Market] promises nothing less than the blossoming of a new civilization that will eventually bring an end to international conflict, resolve hitherto intractable problems like poverty and environmental degradation, and produce increased prosperity for all--even though all the current evidence seems to contradict these promises! We are dealing with something here that is bigger than free trade, the lifting of tariffs, money speculation and exploitation. We are facing the most powerful, fastest-growing and most successful religion in the history of the world. And what is fantastic about this religion is that it actually doesn't require any volitional choice of its converts

Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat
Colossians Remixed

[We need] to embrace a "new bottom line" in which corporations, social practices, government policies and individual behaviors are judged rational, efficient or productive not only if they maximize money or power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, enhance our capacity to treat others as embodiments of the sacred and to respond with awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur of the universe.

- Rabbi Michael Lerner

Spiritual business

In a kind of going-against-the-flow post, Seth Godin notes:

Spiritual business is an interesting concept. Is what you do all day at work part of who you are? Is it possible to be a deceitful crook all week but a good person on the weekend?

Can you succeed financially by acting in an ethical way?

He goes on to explain that though there are even more unethical business people out there than ever, they don't necessarily succeed - people with ethics will progress.

In a competitive world, then, one with increasing light, the way to win is not to shave more corners or hide more behavior, because you're going against the grain, fighting the tide of increasing light. In fact, the opposite is true. Individuals and organizations that can compete on generosity and fairness repeatedly defeat those that only do it grudgingly.

I like the idea of increasing light - wonder where he got that from?

I'm still officially on holiday - back next week - but this particular post caught my eye.

Tony Morgan and Seth Godin

I'm on holiday at present, and will be until the end of January. So things on this blog will be a little slower than normal in terms of new input. However, as I come across things, I'll try and add them.

Just read the latest post on Tony Morgan's blog. He says, I just reread All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin. We discussed it together with the dudes in my coaching network on Friday. Here are some highlights that jumped out to me this time around [with my thoughts in brackets].

I'm not going to reproduce the post (it's fairly short) here. It's worth checking out, not only for Godin's usual sharp-minded points, but for Morgan's brief notes about they apply to the church. And they do.

As always, the comments are worth reading too.

Why not women?

When we think of megachurches, very often we imagine large congregations, numbering in the thousands - and we always think of them as being located in the United States.

In fact. five of the 10 largest megachurches in the world are located in South Korea. According to last year’s research by the Economist, the Yoido Full Gospel Church claims 830,000 members, (yes, no extraneous 0s in there!) and grows by 3,000 members each month.

According to the book, Why Not Women, Dr. Yonggi Cho (the founder of the Yoido Full Gospel Church) was initially unsure whether gifted women teachers should have access to the pulpit because of cultural, rather than biblical, concerns. Yet, under the encouragement of Loren Cunningham - cofounder of Youth With a Mission - Dr. Cho began to open ministry opportunities for women, including positions as ministers and cell group leaders.

Several years later, Cho visited another country and was shocked at the small size of their churches. What was his recommendation? Dr. Cho said:

I told them to release their women, but they insist that’s not the problem. They ask me “What’s the key to your church?” I tell them again, “release your women…” (Why Not Women, p. 69

This is a slightly modified version of a post that appeared in the Sojourners website, under the title, Release Your Women, by Mimi Haddad.

Focal Point

I think I've come across the FOCal website some time ago, but hadn't given it much further attention. Anyway, by serendipity I came across it today again, and thought I'd let others know about it.
FOCal's equivalent of a mission statement is:
FOCaL is set up to give a forum for those who hold to a progressive Christian faith and 'left of centre' political convictions. While not wishing to deny conservative Christians or conservative politicians their right to express their point of view, we feel that our society and the church needs to hear the voices of the Christian left.
FOCal leans towards the liberal point of view, but seems more inclusive - if that's not a contradiction in terms (!)
Anyway, the page I first alighted on was the Links page. This is worth checking out, even if you don't otherwise give the site much time - mainly because this links page will keep you busy for some time as it is!
The links are listed under various headings:

• Christian Reflections on Politics and Society (Sojourners, Third Way, WCC, for example);
• Social Services, Government Aid Agencies;
• Environmental Groups (A Rocha, ECEN, for example);
• Resources for Faith and Spirituality (Spirited Exchanges, Soulscape, Spirituality and Practice, for example)
• Worship Resources
• The "Emerging Church" (which has both Brian McLaren and the Methodist Parish of Dunedin);
• Alternative News Sources (includes Aljazeera);
• Humour and Miscellaneous (dare I say these were quite refreshing after the list above - I'm needing a holiday, obviously! This section includes the wonderful Lego Bible (the Brick Testament), and the rather odd Dog Church Org: The Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua.

There's a great mix of stuff here - enough to keep anyone occupied through their holidays....

Will Britain become Muslim?

On the 26th of December, an article appeared in the English Daily Telegraph, entitled, Indulgence of Islam is harming society. It was written by Damian Thompson.

It begins:
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in Britain: the number of Muslims has grown from 1.6 million to two million since 2000. Moreover, every major public institution has changed its policies to accommodate the demands of Islamic "community leaders". The Government, the Opposition, the police, schools, the Church of England, the BBC and now Channel 4 are all helping Muslims construct a parallel Islamic state.


The article is fair in its approach, but focuses on a number of issues that are causing a major divide within the British community: bookshops attacked for selling books on the child bride of Mohammed, Muslim girls kept from reaching their full educational potential, the 'Sharia law' being introduced into the British legal system, a National Association of Muslim Police which is consulted by the British police force, and most recently, the decision by Channel 4 to let President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deliver an alternative 'Christmas' message.

Perhaps it's too late for Britain to turn things around. On the other hand, can it sustain a Christian heritage alongside an active and dogmatic Muslim one?

Leadership by Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a book in 2005 called Team of Rivals: the political genius of Abraham Lincoln, which was about the leadership lessons to be learned from Lincoln’s administration. One of the intriguing things Lincoln showed was his willingness to embrace the concept of a leadership team composed of men who were not only diverse in their views, but were his personal rivals as well. (In the last episodes of the last season of The West Wing, we see the incoming President doing the same sort of thing, particularly in relation to asking his Republican opponent to take on the role of Secretary of State.)
Jeff Knowles writes in Leadership online: Goodwin's thesis that great leadership neither punishes nor ignores ideological foes, but rather embraces them, has important implications for our increasingly large and complex church governmental structures. The danger of group-think is ever present in congregations where dissent is seen only as a problem. Church leaders often extol the virtues of 90 percent congregational confirmation votes for the new building program or the new minister, or the elders' "unanimous agreement" that the church needs to take a certain action. But we forget that many of God's commands in Scripture required leaders to go against the tides of popular opinion. If Abraham Lincoln could use the power of diverse opinions and contrary egos to save the nation, then we ought to look more closely at the benefits of dissenting opinions in our churches as well.

Loneliness

How lonely are you? How lonely are the people in the congregations you work with?
You can check out your own state of loneliness by looking at the UCLA Loneliness Scale - it'll only take a couple of minutes.

Chronic loneliness is as unhealthy as never exercising, not looking after your heart or your blood pressure. Increasingly medical people are realising that loneliness may be a major factor in people dying younger than expected.

Salon.com published an article by Katharine Mieszkowski a few days ago on the subject. Even though it doesn't mention the spiritual side of life to any extent, it looks closely at the problems of loneliness and their physical effects.

How can congregations minister to the lonely? Can they be helped at all?

Pubs as Church?

Back in July, Todd Rhoades set off a great debate on his Monday Morning Insight page, when he wrote a British Christian couple who've not only taken over a pub, but have confronted their customers about swearing, but have banned gambling on horses, and removed the dart-board. On top of this they walk around with a Bible in their hands.
Rhoades himself doesn't comment on this innovative way of doing church (!) but the people who read his page certainly do. It sets off a great argument about the rights and wrongs of the way the couple are going about 'being Christians' in this setting.
Well worth reading the comments as a way of thinking about the debate regarding Christians in the 'world'.

Social Gospel

Any gospel which is not social is not gospel. God so loved the world that.... He didn't just sit in His great theological rocking chair stroking his white beard and glory in His love for the world. He did something about it. He became social in the form of His Son. He lived, interacted, and behaved in a real social environment, disclosing God's social way. In the incarnation the spiritual "word" became a social "event." To say it another way, the social event was itself a word which communicated to men. Word and deed are inseparably cemented into one in the incarnation.

Donald Kraybill
The Upside-down Kingdom

Daniel Oudshoorn on mission in the here and now

Just came across a very good essay that first appeared in the New Zealand magazine, Stimulus, back in February 2006. It's entitled: Speaking Christianly as a missional activity in the midst of Babel. (It has a subtitle: Christian living as the exegesis of the Gospel proclamation after the end of history.)

The piece is by Daniel Oudshoorn, about whom I can't find a lot, except that he's been a student at Regent in Vancouver.

The essay is full of great quotes, but I'll stick to just one: Western Church talk about mission is often dominated by strategising. The church, driven by a pragmatism that is itself definitive of western culture, searches for the strategy that will cause mass conversion.

You can read the complete essay here.
Stimulus doesn't have all its material online; only a selection. However, many of their printed back editions are still available.

Jim Wallis on young evangelicals

"Young evangelicals really think that Jesus probably would care more about the 30,000 children who died today because of poverty and disease than he would have about gay marriage amendments in Ohio. This is a new generation of abolitionists, you might say. And they are applying their faith, using their faith, addressing their faith to the challenges we face: the moral scandal of poverty; the degradation of the environment, which they call 'God's creation'; the threat of climate change; human rights; Darfur; pandemic diseases like HIV/AIDS; war and peace issues - the exclusive use of war to fight evil and the foreign policy disasters that has led us to. Their agenda is much wider and deeper."

--Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and author of The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America

Integral Mission

René Padilla writes on the Integral Mission blog and asks What is Integral Mission Anyway?
He begins by saying:
Although it has recently become fashionable to use the term integral mission, the approach to mission that it expresses is not new. The practice of integral mission goes back to Jesus himself and to the first century Christian church. Furthermore, a growing number of churches are putting this style of mission into practice without necessarily using this expression to refer to what they are doing: integral mission is not part of their vocabulary. It is clear that the practice of integral mission is much more important than the use of this new expression to refer to it.
He goes on to compare the traditional view of mission, with its four dichotomies, and then discusses integral mission:
When the church is committed to integral mission and to communicating the gospel through everything it is, does, and says, it understands that its goal is not to become large numerically, nor to be rich materially, nor powerful politically. Its purpose is to incarnate the values of the Kingdom of God and to witness to the love and the justice revealed in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Spirit, for the transformation of human life in all its dimensions, both on the individual level and on the community level.

An atheist looks at Africa

Here's an interesting title for an article:
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God. The subheading is: Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset.
This intriguing article comes from Matthew Pariss, someone who knows Africa well, and who has had a longstanding relationship with it. His article, which appeared in The Times Online on the 27th December, begins:

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Read the rest of the article here.

Leadership's Golden Canon

Leadership is presenting a list of the ten books of 2008 they've decided are most useful for church leaders. They're not all books specifically relating to leadership as such, but rather titles that would help a leader in two areas: The Leader's Inner World, and The Leader's Outer World.

The titles were compiled from submissions by a diverse group of more than 100 pastors from across the country. Leadership's contributing editors then voted to determine the winners in the two categories.

The list is here. Among the titles I'm pleased to see N T Wright's Surprised by Hope, Andy Crouch's Culture Making, and the third in Eugene Peterson's recent series of books on the Christian life: The Jesus Way.

Just when you thought the secularists had it made

Long considered an aggressively secular city, London has quietly become one of Britain's most Christian areas, going from the least observant region in Britain in 1979 to the second most observant today. Much of that resurgence in piety is the result of the city's expanding and devout immigrant population. But there is also a growing number of young, highly educated and moneyed Londoners who are turning to the church. Huge numbers (some 4,000) of these attend Holy Trinity Brompton, where Nicky Gumbel still presides over the Alpha course. The average age is 27, and judging by the offerings ($US7 million last year alone) many of these new Christians are well-heeled.

Read more about this surge of faith here.

It would be interesting to know where the stats for 'least observant' to 'second most observant' come from. Unfortunately the article doesn't give us any indication. In 2001, for the first time, the UK Census collected information about religious identity in England, Wales and Scotland. The subject had been included in previous Censuses in Northern Ireland.

Just over three-quarters of the UK population reported having a religion. More than seven out of ten people said that their religion was Christian (72 per cent). After Christianity, Islam was the most common faith with nearly 3 per cent describing their religion as Muslim (1.6 million).

Thought-provoking shorts

On the qideas.org site, there's a section called 'shorts'. These are essays that provide a thoughtful perspective on an important topic about faith and culture. You can preview any one of the titles, and if you like something, you can purchase it for your library and print it out. Or come back later and read online.
These shorts include a piece by Kathleen Falsani called: The Thread: when church happens online, and it begins with a Facebook experience in which Falsani learned that a good friend had died.
Tim Keel talks about not limiting the gospel, Andy Crouch about consumerism, Andrew Martin on bridging the gap between Christians and gays, Josh Jackson and Nick Purdy discuss finding the good in popular culture. There are about twenty titles to choose from and they cost US$5 each to buy.

Transitions from work to retirement

Sylvia Dixon has produced a study for NZ Stats that looks at changes in the way people now head into retirement. Whereas in the past there was a tendency for a definite cut-off point from work and a sudden move into retirement, now people tend more and more to transition. This is another aspect of the way in which older people regard their lives differently from their forebears.

Dixon's abstract is as follows:

Survey responses indicate that the majority of working-aged New Zealanders would prefer to make a gradual transition from work to retirement, rather than move abruptly from full-time work to non-employment. This study describes the employment patterns and transitions of people who were aged in their 60s and moved from employment to inactivity during the 1999–2007 period, using longitudinal data from the Linked Employer-Employee Dataset.

Four different types of transition to retirement were defined and the relative frequency of each explored. We find that phased transitions, involving either part-time work or a number of transitions in and out of employment before the final exit, were far more common than discrete transitions from full-time work to non-employment. Men were more likely than women to take a traditional path from work to retirement. Although there were some significant variations in the frequency of different work-to-retirement paths across major industries, phased transitions were more prevalent than traditional transitions in all major industries.

International evidence shows that phased retirements are also common in other countries with similar labour markets. The literature suggests that many older adults retire gradually, but some are constrained in their labour supply choices and are unable to achieve the flexible transitions to retirement they would prefer.