Norman Iverson blogged about a sense of a lack of real change around Fresh Expressions and church. It is interesting to see an insider raise some the same questions those on the edge have had for a number of years about the FE Movement, perhaps it is time to review those questions. My comment on the post was “The unwillingness to embrace death (of ideas, orthodox Ecclesiology , power) will mean a lack of interest on real change, so the sense of cognitive dissonance that things that FE bring will be embraced instead. But like the institution I fear they too are not really interested in real change.”
Another place of paddling in Fresh Expressions and the emerging church conversation is around the idea of relevance. As if we listened to the community we would discover how to become a relevant expression of church. But we will never really hear the community whilst we are so rooted in our current models of church and orthodox Ecclesiology . An example was a recent post Is your church too cool. My comment again was rooted in the need to practice a completely new way of being and engaging with the question. “Church can never be relevant in our understanding of the word whilst it remains rooted in a concept of gathering outside of the wider community for a supposed experience of worship. Articles like this are asking the wrong questions”
It is easy to fall into the trap of meeting with other christians and thinking we are doing something new, doing something differently. However this, gathering in an exclusive way (i think we often kid ourselves that we are more open than we are) outside of a wider community is part of the gravitational pull that produces the sense of cogitative dissonance that means a lack of real change and keeps us in the shallow end. It is rooted in our false history that we can suggests we can get closer to G-d through a worship service. There is a brilliant article here exposing this myth and its problems.

I am part of a number of emerging (note not gathered and most of which have christians as a minority) communities, and more and more I am convinced that we need to loose any ideas of coming together for a time of prayer, a time of worship, or a church service. They all simply produce a sense of security that stops us finding out what it really means to love and serve. That is not say we give up meeting together but we meet head on the myth that god is present in the gathering more than anywhere else and work out what it means to put our wetsuits on and ask better questions and swim deeply with G-d.

Finding Flow (the word that last group used for God) just happened but I have been thinking about how to connect with the new group, what word they may use and spirituality for a while. After meeting with Jon in Oxford he sparked the idea about finding the words that were important to them. So I gave everyone a speech bubble card, with the questions, what word is most important to you? and what word best describes your life?. Everyone completed one of the questions and then themed the answers into groups. The themes included Food (we were at the local curry house), Vishnu, Riding, and Adventure.
Coming away I set myself the task of writing a contextualised skateresque parable on one or more of the themes to use next month with the group. So here is my offering so far…..

Finding Adventure

Charlie was a biker who loved riding, and even when she had started out on a scooter loved the adventure of riding close to the edge and pushing new tricks. She was quickly developing a reputation as an excellent rider, so in order to make the most of her growing profile she decided to set up a shop locally and online brand of clothes and equipment. Her technical skills grew and meant she could design new pedals and peripheral equipment that really enhanced riding and made the whole experience better. She even invented new alloys, that could be used in frames that were lighter and stronger than anything anyone had discovered before. She made sure that everyone working for her got a fair wage and only used ethical suppliers were possible. Charlie was quickly raking it in and the money didn’t corrupt her, she gave a portion to those who needed it and kept up her ethical stance.

The thing she loved about having money was still rooted in adventure, only now she could travel to loads of places around the country and abroad. She flew around the world and rode in well know places, that were distant dreams to many. On returning from her travels she paid attention to business and things continued to grow, but she was never quite satisfied and always longed for something else.

At about the same time a man was traveling the around the area, who also had a growing reputation but not as a skater or biker, but as a Sufi – someone who was spiritually enlightened, and at peace with themselves. People who had heard his stories or spent time with him, said he had healed the sick, and helped the poor and although he too was poor was he was rich in a different way. The group that traveled around with him were known as “the adventurers”, as the Sufi set them challenges, and was always asking questions. As a group they never knew where they were going next or what they were going to have to eat the next day, but something always turned up, and anyway what better way to keep the adventure real. Even though Charlie had been on many adventures, and always pushed her riding to the next level, she always felt something was missing. Seeking out the Sufi she went to him, explained how she loved the adventure and how she had tried to live an ethical life, and asked “what must I do to join the adventurers and journey with you?”
The Sufi replied “go and sell all your possessions, your business, your bikes and inventions and give the money to the poor, then come and join us?” Charlie went away disappointed.

Any thoughts for improvement…. we don’t interpret the parables for the young people allow their interpretations to emerge through discussion.

The notion of TAZ (temporary autonoumus zone – in a regime of power people find gaps in the maps away from the authorities to create something short lived, temporary, that dissolves before the authorities can latch on to it and it dissolves to re-emerge elsewhere. the rave scene, festivals, flash mobs and so might be examples.) is appealing and TAZ fits quite well to describe our community experiences of Flow. It has been hard for me to reconcile the idea of temporary church but instinctively the temporary nature has felt okay and that was before I found the TAZ phrase or had chance to reflect on Jonny and Kesters musings.

Part of the okayness is because we often fail to notice in our selfish search for belonging that people belong in different ways (see Myers work), so in forming community we need to accept (although we may challenge) this selfishness and recognise that relationship is beyond the confines of a time and space because it is so core to G-D. So whilst Flow might represent a TAZ, it is in it’s connection with the DNA of relationship (G-D) that these relationships supersede the physical/time limits, I can easily imagine a young person looking me up in a few years to chat, or out of need and this has often been part of my experience as 20 yr plus youth worker.

Embracing the temporary possibility of teh Flow group has also been a key in my missional thinking, leading me to seek out ways that will enable individuals to connect or be reminded of Flow that can last beyond the TAZ. In the past I called this corrupting worldviews with Christ and it is the very everyday possibilities of this, that give TAZ a kind of permanence beyond the getting together. If church exists to be missional then TAZ could be a key part of the future landscape, and whilst people may come together in TAZ type contexts because of what is going on at specific time (or out of selfishness), if it is to be an authentic expression of church (and begin a move beyond selfishness) it needs to maintain that attitude and action (see here) in its development. For us we are now experimenting with Harmony as a new engagement with the younger group coming through, whilst the older Flow group is transitioning on/moving away.

One of Jonny’s key issues was linking to Bauman and how individualism wins out over community, and can the temporary be anything like as effective as the continuity of long term engagement. Myself, I am left wondering if we ever can change community in that broad way (or even if that is our role) but by maintaining presence and through a series of TAZ adventures, enable a new type of community to emerge that is self defining as it goes. I can see this at a local level but here is also where I think it connects into Apple 7′s question. TAZ will only ever remain flash in the pan as the institution is so crippled by either looking back to tradition, or in a broader way will engage beyond its mode- to quote Aquinus (pretty out of context) for the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. The struggle is to look to the other for definition, and in the other find G-D anew.

I have always found this to be a difficult issue to address and ask myself how much of the desire to introduce Christ stems from my own conditioning rather than following the presence of christ that is in Flow and present through the trinity. Perhaps I am beginning to think the unthinkable as Bevans suggests below in his conclusion

“To think deeply about the Holy Spirit,” writes John V. Taylor, is a bewildering, tearing exercise, for whatever he touches he turns inside out” (Taylor 1972: 179). The Spirit is the Spirit as God turned inside out; the Spirit given to Jesus turned him inside out and opened him up to the vision of God’s reign among women and men; the Spirit lavished through Jesus turns his disciples inside out as they include unthinkable people and go to unthinkable places. Thinking missiologically about the Holy Spirit can turn the church inside out, and perhaps make it more responsive to where God is really leading it in today’s world.

In church on the edge, the tradition balance comes not from a replication of ritual but using traditional language a resource to locate the work in a christian tradition. As we talk about Flow and often when reworking bible passages talk about Jesus as a sufi or wise man and it would be easy to completely miss the christian underpinning. However using words like church connects with the echo of the memory that gen y still hold, or gives an opportunity to locate the project in the christian story but also importantly enables us to balance out the gravitation pulls that can come with the usual way of approaching the triangle. Then as communities of faith become more important ritual can be revisited but in a way that does without the purposed dominance that many people ascribe them, and rather genuinely allows for a reciprocal re-working that values the culture, tradition, bible balance.

The article started me thinking about the Trinity as an echo. For a while now I have had the vague idea of church being an echo of the trinity of coming from God and continuing in the unfolding revelation of God. (if the spirit sends the church what does this say about the divine nature of the church).

The reduction of G-d to the trinity is problematic and avoids the transcendent nature of G-d beyond our understandings (not mention the other characteristics of God within the biblical narrative that do not readily fit the Father Son Spirit image).

G-d echos through the creation, all our images and encounters are echos of G-d that we are swept up with (missio dei) and join the echo of G-d towards the fulfillment of creation. The power of the echo can transcend the blocks of institutions and break beyond the walls of our imaginings, it calls us forward, beyond and out of what we know, to be more and less (at times) of what we are, towards unity as the bride of christ.

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