“I love it when a plan comes together” said Hannibal of the A team. I love it when suddenly things seem to come together in a way you don’t expect. I don’t about you but I often have my head down plugging away, working away on a project and seeking to make things happen and slowly unaware to you God is doing the same. You reach the end of your efforts and God starts to unleash THE plan and opens a new way forward.
Been doing quite a bit of networking and traveling recently. Keep hearing great stories and meeting people doing creative things with concepts of church, youth work, detached stuff all sorts. Many of the people who I met have never heard of fresh expressions, emerging church etc, or read any of the books, some people may have come across bits and pieces but the great thing is that they are proactive and responding in ways that are not just following what they have heard others doing but following God into new missionary activity.
I am preparing an article on detached work. One of the questions I have is about the values of detached work. Many of these are drawn from notions of journey, core youth work values, incarnation, relationship theology etc. When i started christian detached work in the early 1990’s (how old am I) these values were still quite fresh and my observations were that they were not the same as i observed in many other christian projects. The growth of writing about relational youth work (Ward etc) and the growth of professional christian training seems to have moved the values I saw in detached work to being more a part of mainstream christian youth work. Is this true in your experience? Any help please?
I have supported the hammers since I met an older, cooler cousin, who had West ham written all over his trainers, I was nine at the time that I pledged my allegiance to the team. That season we won the FA cup and it has been a long time, through relegation, Harry moving on etc that I have stuck with them. My commitment hasn’t really changed, but I no longer have a scarf or write them on my trainers. West Ham or at least my notional commitment to them being my team is a strange constant in my life. We don’t have Sky so I rarely see them on the TV, I will make a point of seeing how they have done at the weekend but couldn’t tell you who they are playing next week. Yet I know they are the team I support. Perhaps its a wishy washy commitment by some standards, but it is a constant and open one to those who ask.
On the road to Emmaus the question asked of the stanger walking with the disciples was “Are you only a visitor here?”. Jesus’ presence, before creation and through and beyond time makes us the visitors. What sites will we see as visitors and how many will we miss if we think we are the tour guides?
A few things caught my attention and I have knitted them together chesk out this hattip to Rev TC and the quote below Hattip Steve
“…the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”
G.K.Chesterton in ‘The Paradoxes of Christianity’.
When we are spiritually free, we do not have to worry about what to say or do in unexpected, difficult circumstances. When we are not concerned about what others think of us or what we will get for what we do, the right words and actions will emerge from the center of our beings because the Spirit of God, who makes us children of God and sets us free, will speak and act through us.
Jesus says: “When you are handed over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes, because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you” (Matthew 10:19-20).
Let’s keep trusting the Spirit of God living within us, so that we can live freely in a world that keeps handing us over to judges and evalutators.
Henri Nouwen
Holidays are great. Starting back can be hard, and after a stressful few weeks followed by a couple of weeks off, it is easy to slip back into things at a breakneck pace. However I am determined to manage more effectivly. For me this isn’t just about time but also the amount of things to be juggled. Too many things hovering and needing to be done adds more stress to me than actual amount of time I spend working. So the reflecting through this post confirms that something needs to go.
Great few days with Bob and Mary Jackson and Howard Pesekett as part of the MA I studying. Looking at the issues to do with church and mission. Lots of stuff from fresh expressions and good to get such a long term view from Bob. Interesting to hear Howard’s views on the links to his mission experience and start to put it altogether.
Also with a lot of background material about church planting it helped me make sense of a lot things I had observed over the years. Good to relook at some stuff I had not seen in a while particularly, Warrens model and entry points for church planting (worship, mission, community). Also The church armys Encounter from the Edge series by George Ling, one of which reinforced the need to start with community. Together it gave me more of a context and rationale for several questions I have had in the past around church planting in UPAs and explained (at least in my head) one of the historic weaknesses that I often saw in church plants that often aimed towards the entry point of worship.
Some good implications for the Church on the edge, and need to build community, and how this can correlate. When we see mission and worship in a more wholistic sense, how more important the building and growing and exploring community stages identified so far in the church on the edge project are. Both as a startpoint and as way to move beyond some of the current models.
I did some work with some students comparing Vincent Donovan’s approach to Mission, The findings from Ambiguous Evangelism, Meet them Where there at and how all this compares and informs the Church on the Edge project. Thanks to the students for sticking with the process I will up load the PowerPoint slides. A few things that came out were:
Donovan saw leaving as one of the most important things in his context, does this apply?
How do you engage ambiguously with the young people around issues of church and use this to help enable non biased research?
Hopefully a few present may add to this via comments.
It led to me thinking about how do we ensure we hold to good youth work principles and do the research, ie not just engaging young people to do research on them. So in Chard one of the things we will say about the project is
The project will develop detached youth work with young people in the Chard area, contacting young people where they are, on the streets, in parks, and hanging around. The project will work with these young people towards their personal, social, and spiritual development in line with youth work principles. This will be an ongoing project.
The project will also invite young people to take part in action research into how young people would shape and define an expression of church relevant to them. This is part of an initiative of FYT called Church on the Edge, in partnership with Church Missionary Society, Diocese of Devon, and local churches.
In terms of how this links to the process I will use one of the ways secular agencies who have adapted the strategy to ensure those who do not want to engage with the church element that we can still work meaningfully and authentically together on the issues that affect them. So stage 9 of the detached process becomes
9. PEER EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT or CHURCH ON THE EDGE Enabling young people to become active participants in their community or to choose to take part in the action research
Developing the Church on The Edge project is throwing up a range of responses. One group linked with the local secular forum, found a very encouraging response to the proposal and no real shyness around the church issue. In another area there a more questions from church leaders than from laity to the proposal.
A couple of questions on these recent issues are:
How do you engender support for such an edgey project when there are very mixed responses?
How upfront are we about the intentional agenda of growing church and how do we enable people to see the ongoing and unconditional nature of the project with apologising for the church element?