Author Archives: Richard Passmore

Emerging (verb) Fresh Expression (noun)

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I know it may be semantics BUT I have this nagging doubt about the language of Fresh Expressions and it’s link to institutional church. I have almost posted this on several occasions but a conversation with a minister within the institutional church, this week, finally prompted me – thanks Ian.

You see the wording of Emerging Church is a great VERB, and it is one that has grown through the process of dialogue and practice and has come to express an approach to church that is traveling, on a pilgrimage, developing, growing, struggling. As a phrase it has begun to take root in people’s consciousness, and as a concept that has verb as part of it’s definition, it cannot be easily fixed or described and it continues to grow as is moves. There is something very right in the theological DNA of this type approach to being church.

However since the Mission shaped Church report was published and the link to Fresh Expressions made, I cant help feeling a slight loss of momentum. It seems that Fresh Expressions are more noun, more static, more shaped, more copyable. Please note I am not criticising individual fresh expressions of church, but wondering if the institutional link of emerging church through mission shaped church to fresh expressions is really a divergence from the missiological imperative of church to be more fluid, and to continually to contextualise particularly in the post modern west. The noun like wording makes it easier for institutional church to define, and then roll out examples to copy (and some would say control). BUT those that copy will miss all the hard work that these fresh expressions had to do as they emerged all the traveling, the pilgrimage, developing, growing, the struggling.

I think it maybe a backward step, and the consumer mentality of looking for models and the latest thing is so rampant, that if new fresh expressions don’t do the hard work of emerging, we will risk losing the stories and dialogue with people who are struggling to reconfigure what church is in their context, particularly if the structures continue to mirror consumer branding (which I think Fresh Expressions is rapidly becoming) of Fresh Expressions and they let people buy into fresh expressions as the latest thing too easily. History from missiology teaches us to be aware of copying what worked in one area, in another, and the loss this was to the church. Yes by all means learn from one another, but do the hard work of contextualising, maintain the right DNA, otherwise we will fail to grow in understanding of what church is.

This brings me to my final point, which is the sense of arrival that Fresh Expression as the noun has. This is incredibly unhelpful as potentially it can move people to think they have arrived, limit experiments, and certainly has the potential to subdue thinking and redefinition about what church in post modernity is. If we have arrived why do we need to continue to journey!!

Talent – Young People in Action

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Dave Wiles (FYT The Haunted World of El Superbeasto download ) and Tim Evans (Worth Unlimited) are walking/hitching between, Bristol and Birmingham, and then heading north with only £10 in their pockets, collecting stories of hope from young people, once back they aim to release the stories to the media to counteract the predominance of negative coverage that young people seem to attract. They are in part lauching a new youth initative fund, that is to be raised by young people for young people. We are giving away £1000 to youth groups in £10 notes with the challenge to turn it into £100 by Christmas to fund the trust, if you want your youth group to get involved contact Nigel Pimlott. If you want to hear from Dave and Tim they are being interviewed tomorrow on Radio 5 Live (medium wave 693 and 909) between 10am and 10-30am
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Extract from the Project Outline

Talent Young People in Action

Introduction: Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) and Worth Unlimited are two organisations that work with and for young people on the margins of society. We have joined forces to create a trust fund that will be controlled by young people – for young people and which will enable them to act on their own concerns. We are tired of the negative stereotypes of young people and want to enable them to demonstrate that they are a positive force for change in society.

Creating the trust: In order to create the Young People in Action Trust fund we are giving away £1000 in £10 notes! We are offering 10 to any of the youth projects/groups that we link with and are asking them to take 3 months to turn this into as much as they can. As Christian organisations we see this as related to the parable of the talents (see Matthew 25:14) however we are quite happy about the double meaning in that we believe in young people and want to give them an opportunity to demonstrate their talent. We want to end the 3 months of talent multiplication by December 2006 as a symbolic gesture to celebrate Christmas. Just imagine if each group raises 100 with their 10 this would launch our youth led trust at the start of 2007 with £10,000! We also intend to continue fund raising to enable the trust to grow.

Young People in Action: We hope that the youth projects that FYT and Worth involve, in partnership with local youth workers, will catch the vision and show off their entrepreneurial skills. We will provide an ideas pack and guidelines for youth groups to use as they seek to invest their talents, but some of the ideas that have already emerged include:

Creating and selling hand made Christmas cards

Running a fare trade caf in a local hall

Selling hand made jewellery

A cake stall

Make over stall

Creating and selling a book of youth poetry

Organising a fashion show using charity shop clothes!

What we hope is that young people will invest their time and energy in some kind of action that will be fun and which will raise awareness of their potential as well as funds!

To launch the initiative the two directors of FYT and Worth Unlimited will be given £10 to go on the road for a week in order to collect 100 stories of hope about young people as a sponsored activity. During this time they will travel to Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow with no resources or arrangements other than contact with several local youth work projects, radio stations and their £10! Tim and Dave see this as an alternative model for Christian leaders to promote their ideas a substitute for large scale Christian conferences! The book with the stories of hope will be on sale during October.

The best youth work event in the world (probably)

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The planning for the next Occasion is well underway. It is shaping up to be a truly excellent event again. If you are involved in youthwork anywhere from Gloucestershire down to Cornwall, or Dorest etc this is the event for you. The feedback last year was outstanding and this year with opportunities for young leaders, extra time volunteers, and full timers it has to be the place to be. The event truly does create a sense of Occasion last year the training was great and the lunch was memorable (taking everyone out to lunch for a great all you can eat Chinese). Follow the link to book a place BUT HURRY!
shout

Great opportunity for young people to get their voice heard

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Dave Wiles from FYT and Roger Sainsbury have a meeting on 13th October with (Stephen Timms MP and Chief Secretary to the HM Treasury) to talk about issues relating to YOUTHWORK and GOVERNMENT FUNDING.

FYT are collecting young peoples views on the Young Peoples as Prophets website here and so we have a great opportunity to get young peoples views heard.

The extract from the Young people as Prophets site says
If you are a young person and want someone in POWER who has a say in how this country spends it’s money Dave will take any comments you post directly to him. If you are a youthworker, start exploring this issue with the young people you work with. Post your views under the category Politics/Funding Youth work.

SALT Oslo

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.!.

I have uploaded the slide from the sessions (see talks and Presentations) I did earlier in the week on Youth Ministry in Post modern culture. The first session is look at the links between youth ministry and emerging church, there is also some stuff on contextualisation, theological reflection and church. So it is quite a big file with around 80 slides.

Press Release

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Young People As Prophets

www.ypap.org.uk

To coincide with the launch of the Grove Booklet, Young People As Prophets, Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) is delighted to launch a new web site initiative to help young people speak out on issues that are important. Bishop Roger Sainsbury (chair of NYA and CYM) is one of the authors and he says, “I hope this booklet and web site will be used by youth workers to encourage young people to speak out in the tradition of the young biblical prophets on issues such as poverty, racism, the environment, injustice, peace and the worship of money and power. Our world needs their revolutionary voices as much today as it did in biblical times.�

Young people are often denied the opportunity to have their say. Even when they do speak their voices are often pushed to the margins and paid lip service. The YPAP web site gives the opportunity for young people’s voices to be both seen and heard and also enables young people to see what other young people are saying.

Dave Wiles, Chief Executive Officer of FYT and co-author of the YPAP Grove Booklet is delighted that the new web site has been officially launched. “This web site is a valuable tool in helping to get young people’s voices heard. I would encourage all those who work with young people to invite them to make use of the site.�

The web site is free, easy to use and also offers youth workers some free resources and tools to help young people take advantage of the opportunity to speak out. The Young People as Prophets web site can be found at www.ypap.org.uk

The ‘Young People as Prophets’ Booklet can be purchased from Grove Booklets on 01223 464 784 or e-mail: sales@grovebooks.co.uk

Further Information from:

Frontier Youth Trust

Unit 208b

The Big Peg

120 Vyse Street

Birmingham

B18 6NF

0121 687 3505

www.fyt.org.uk

Frontier Youth Trust is a Christian network dedicated to advancing the Kingdom of God by supporting, resourcing and training those working with and on behalf of disadvantaged young people. FYT is working with young people at risk towards justice, equality and community. Company Number 3264908 Registered Charity number 1059328.

Christmas at Greenbelt

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Greenbelt did not disappoint. As we had the children with us the festival had a very different spin for me. It was great to see the children get so much out of it, and thanks go out to those who made the festival work so well for families. Stuff like the drumming, statues, artwork, etc around the site was great for us, the shed camera obscurer was fantastic, and Jo as ever loved the sacred space on the top floor of the grandstand. Also the programmed family stuff was great fun, the twist and children’s festival, don’t let the pigeon drive the bus etc.

The one seminar I really wanted to go to I made – Pete Rollins who spoke about faithful betrayal, which was excellent. I recently read his book How not to speak of God which I think is a very important contribution to the current dialogue, I recommend it as the best book I have read for ten years. His talk begins to pilot a theology of redemption as a rupture and gives a great background to some of the issues I raised in the series of post about redefining church, for example see point 4 in this post.

Greenbelt for me is better than a family Christmas, I see so many people I have good relationships with, who I know are on a similar journey. People I now only reconnect with at Greenbelt, but who get me, and as ever the whole festival was a thin place where heaven and earth were a lot closer.

Greenbelt

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Getting ready for Greenbelt and really looking forward to the weekend as the line up looks great. When start looking at the programme I usually find it is either year when the speakers are the main attraction or the music but this year I cant decide as both look great. BUT as ever the best thing about Greenbelt is catching up with people.

If you are coming to Greenbelt and would like to camp in roughly the same area as us, we have a map and grid reference, we cant save you space but it may mean we have more chance of bumping into you over the weekend (probably queuing for the loo rather than the beer tent as we have the children with us). If you are interested then drop me an email and I will send out the details.