Monthly Archives: January 2018

A new sort of resource church

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Came across this article on Size Matters by Paul and reminded me that I had slipped in to the church commissioners report last year that our Mountain Pilgrims group (which was also cited by the ABC) was a new sort of resource church. What makes a resource church a resource church?
Mountain Pilgrims is tiny, but massive, it is shallow but deep, it is new abut ancient, it is open but centred, but most of all it is “allelon”, it is a shape and size that allows one anothering. If you want to know more on allelon read Pauls article or I have added a quote below.

Before Christmas we had our first Mountain Pilgrims leaders Tribal Gathering, in the room there were 9 people representing about 150 others, there were two tribes missing, and on the horizon we identified another three tribes were on their way to join us in 2018. We wrestled together on values, on shapes and words, we were challenged by each other’s theology and presence. The gathering included members and leaders as we are pretty blurry as to who is who, but we were one Anothering .

We have a brilliantly supportive bunch of people creating space up here for new things to happen in the county at all levels Including in the formal diocesian structures. Generally with the desire to try and find ways to make mission happen. I am so grateful to the volunteers and officers that work behind the scenes, they are brilliant people. Recently a committee for the diocese met and it was reported back to me that the question was asked About the financing of FXs. Whilst it’s small potatoes the finance officer reported that some members of MP had started giving to MP, and this was significant to the committee. It made me wonder if it is finance that makes a resource church, a resource church, as often scale is cited as a way to become self financing to resource mission? Then as I thought further maybe as we don’t have staff costs and buildings, of a normal resource church do those small potatoes mean we are already a resource church that pays its way? We are pretty much self funding, have gone from zero – 150 people in under two years with a total cost of about 2k and a bit of my staff time. So if it’s finance or numbers that makes a resource church a resource church do we fit the bill.
Maybe it’s resourcing mission that makes a resource church, We have resourced mission across the county, have new MPs groups springing up, and have resourced traditional churches to develop outdoor based mission opportunities. In the Spring one group is refounding a redundant church and starting a monthly Celtic type Sunday service that will be followed by a 4 mile walk and discussion.

Maybe a resource church has to have a big capital investment in staff and set up costs, because it’s about speedy growth. Mountain pilgrims we grew a further 20% this month alone, imagine what might have been if we had a couple 100k to play with instead of 2?

If what makes a resource church a resource church is up front investment imagine what we could have done with 100k instead of 2.

You might read this and think Richard is anti resource churches, I’m not but we do need to ask some critical questions about how change happens. If we are going to turn this big ship we need tug boats not new rudders, but you will have to wait for the next post on “was Jesus a both/and kind of dude?” When I can explain that.

Is there any theological insight into this question of church size? John Taylor in his seminal book ‘The Go-Between God’ explores the question of church size. His starting point however is not the church as we experience it, or whether this church or that church ‘works’, but the church’s essential nature as a fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit. For Taylor a primary spiritual nature of the early church is mutuality in community, expressed by the word allelon, ‘one-another’, a word that occurs frequently in the New Testament. Taylor he argues that church must be:

of a shape and size that enables this ‘one-anothering’. This is the fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is a hallmark of the church’s spiritual identity, about what the church is before it is about what it does
of a significant enough size to ‘be an embodiment of the life of the Kingdom’ but not so big as to tend toward a withdrawal from that sense of church alongside and amidst others in the world.
not so big that it has to be structurally organised to the extent that it thinks of itself primarily as an institution rather than a community.

Midwifery, FXs and Punk

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My job title is Fresh Expressions Enabler and recently someone compared my role to a midwife. In many ways it makes sense as a description helping people prepare and respond to what is emerging, sometimes FX are planned and sometimes they are surprise.
However as I reflected on midwifes in the bible I was drawn to Exodus 1 and the role the Hebrew midwife played. They were told to kill the Hebrew boys and when challenged why this had not happened they responded, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
As Fresh Expressions have become more main stream they have become more defined, and it is great that roles like mine have emerged but with them come certain targets and ways of doing things. The gospel seed is vigorous and grows when it is nurtured, and yet recently I spoke to someone exploring pioneer ordination and she had had two projects killed before they could mature as they didn’t “fit” the church way of doing stuff. So often things seems to grow vigoursly, organically and in directions that we might not expect, so we need to make sure our imagined targets don’t get in the way.

What I have been trying to do in Cumbria is rather than having to be hands on and deliver loads of FXs, has been to encourage a (you might say promiscuous) culture, where people feel they have the freedom to experiment. Its not quite anarchy but it is punk, developing leading edge projects, with a bit of crazy energy. Punk only lasted a few months and it was never going to the dominant music of the 20th century. But the energy broke the system of music culture that had been around, and suddenly everyone thought anyone could give it a go. This was the culture changer, and if FXs are going to have any real long term impact, it will be in helping the church move from a culture of authority to participation, freeing people to pick up whats in front of them and give it a go.

Jesus didn’t sit with the marginalised

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In mission I often talk about the need to break the gravitational pull (just search “gravitational Pull for a shed load of posts on here around that) of church, and how we need to break out if we are going to engage people more meaningfully. I was wondering where the current centre of gravity was in the church, is it dispersed, centralised or on the centre, how we shift it so it becomes a centripetal force sending people out to love and serve rather than a centrifugal force that is self serving?

Yet in many ways I’ve been asking the wrong questions. When we think about the incarnation we see a move from the centre to the edge. We see a christ figure who by his presence completely shifts the centre of gravity from the religious community to the margins. The locus of God is on the edge, it is outside the church, beyond the institution, outside the doors. Jesus didn’t sit with the marginalised because by his presence the centre of gravity shifted and the margins ceased to be the margins by the presence of the incarnated God. (HT to John Swinton)

This completely shifts how real meaning making then can happen, and calls into question the validity of the meaning making that takes place within established religious communities. It completely challenges notions of discipleship based on banking knowledge within a structure. It pulls the rug out from underneath notions of sacred and secular, and calls the walls to dust.

Reframing mentoring

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I watched the film Meru recently. Spoiler alerts……

The story of three elite climbers attempt on Meru, which also tracks the story of the web of relationships that made the attempt possible. Part of the allure of the peak was that the lead, Conard own mentor Mugs had attempted the peak in the eightys and failed, and was killed on another mountain. The level of trust between the three climbers was something to behold. Conrad had mentored Jimmy and introduced Renan to the party when they made their first attempt. Jimmy trusted Conrads call even through he had not climbed with Renan before, and during their first attempt they were held back by a storm, ran out of food and had to turn back meters from the summit. Then before they make their second attempt Renan, suffers a massive ski accident,that in reality means he should not climb again, but where Conrad and Jimmy choose to trust Renan the youngest and least experienced of the three to make the call that he is fit enough for a second attempt. There is something really interesting in the mentoring relationships between Conner and Jimmy and Jimmy and Renan, around the autonomy that the younger climbers are given. On the final attempt on Meru it is clear that at times Conner has to lead certain sections, and whilst all have a part to play, he is still the Sesei.
How these different levels of experience and skills are played out in the final attempt is fascinating, the grace and understanding of one another, and the level of trust takes it way beyond my notions of mentoring. This is picked up at one point when Renan cannot speak due to some sort of mini stroke, and but presses up the mountain, and this is accepted by Jimmy. Spoiler..Then I love that Conrad asks Jimmy to lead the final climb and summit first.

We often talk about discipleship and mentoring in emerging church circles, there is a lot of coaching going on, and in most contexts we hope the mentee will go beyond us. Yet what I observed was in Meru was something different, the mutuality and autonomy that came from working together was fascinating. Even in organisations where mentors and mentees share space, work on projects etc it feels like the power dynamic was different. I think it was the recognition that the Sesei needed the younger climbers to make certain moves, a fitness and dynamic that made the relationship more mutual, built trust but at the same time held esteem, a calling to dust and reframing of the old model of power dynamic relationships. I’d be really interested to apply this to the FXs just haven’t got a clue where to start.

The polyphonic text

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I am not musical but woke up thinking about polyphonics and following on from the last post I was reflecting on how we seek harmony in the gospel texts rather than embrace a more polyphonic approach. Indeed even if you google the definition of harmony In the OED it cites the gospels as an example of parallel narratives that combine into a continuous narrative text.

Wikipedia describes “In particular, polyphony consists of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, which is called homophony.”

We tend to read the gospel stories and are drawn towards harmony, and I wonder how much of this is due to the type of cultural conditioning I mentioned in the previous post. What is the gospel if our desire for a harmonious approach is a conditioned response? What if we resisted harmony and embraced a polyphonic read of scripture? Let’s take for example the Christmas story, with four different accounts, with different empathises. When did you ever hear a polyphonic read of the Christmas story where the Mark frames the story with Jesus as an adult, and the focus on shalom, a political challenge to Ceaser and a challenge to the very notions of power. Matthew uses geneology to connect to the tradition and the Hebrews to firmly locate Jesus in that narrative, he struggles drop the dream of empire, but writes a gospel challenging the religious order and embracing the religiously excluded. Lukes story is different with the focus on the marginalised, and reimagining the story challenging the economic order, embracing the economically excluded. Then in John the word becomes flesh, moves into the neighbourhood and collapses 100s of years of Hellenistic thought. They all push for different narratives, and in doing so collapse notions of harmony, but instead offer texture, hope and a deeper polyphonic landscape, where those who have ears to hear, eyes to see, can hear and see the Christ entering into thier culture, and challenging that culture like no one before. Something that is all too easily lost in the search for harmony. I’m all for holding in tension the different narratives, but we need people who are captured by the political challenge of Mark, sold out on reworking power, people who embrace a new economic vision of Luke, and the religious order challengers of Matthew. People who push these texts to their extreme, live out and champion thier calling, not because they follow Matthew or Paul, but because they are captured by Jesus’ radical message and are confident and comfortable playing their part in the polyphonic story. This is why the metaphor of polyphony works, because it isn’t about setting up walls between the different emapathies but releasing people to be free to sing with all thier soul and when I see people living that in fullness I can see its beauty even if it’s not my for me, and so crosses my cultural boundaries at a heart level. I wonder then if this might move us beyond the divisiveness that has resulted from all trying to sing from the same hymn sheet and instead see the church starting to make a noise worth hearing.

Is the gospel always culturally contained?

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People often say the gospel never changes, but what is this gospel that speak of? For many Christians when it comes to questions about mission and culture, at the forefront are phrases like “how do we proclaim the gospel afresh to every generation? How can we speak relevantly with watering down the message? ” I wonder if these the host of other simular questions speak more of our own anxieties and cultural conditioning than we realise.

Any reading of Acts 17 will tell you that the reality is that the “how” of ministry is shaped by the “who, when and where” of culture. But maybe the question we should be asking is “what” is ministry?

Culture is thick with meaning, and we navigate culture both as individuals, (some with greater awareness of the impact culture has on how and why make certain choices) and as society (where individuals and the circuit of culture is always operating and forming). A person is both an individual and a member of society. Because of this, any personal relationship a person makes with their deity (namely God), it is a result of the relationship the greater society in which he belongs has with that deity. Our understanding is that religious belief originates in the mind of the individual, when it is actually a product of collective thought. (I nicked that last two sentences from here as its a good spin on Durkhiem but the link is broken for the whole article).

So when we use short hand like “proclaim the gospel” or “the message” It immediately slips us into a much more culturally conditioned way of operating than we think. Over on BiblePirate.com I love what Matt has been doing with the bible text in his unauthorised versions, and his playful podcasts, In particular Eve as hero rather villain (listen here) and I wonder how much that radical read of Genesis 3 should change the way we approach issues of contextualisation, and syncretism and the what of the gospel that we speak of.