i'm afraid i was disappointed

I read a portion of scripture at an ordination event yesterday, for which the words were projected on the screen. This is for people with hearing difficulties. I don't think I like it. I was looking out, trying to meet people in the eye as I communicated this part of their Sacred Story to them, and they weren't looking at me at all. They were distracted, and disconnected from me, and I have to wonder, then, if they weren't also disconnected from the story?

I'm all for providing the words for hearing impaired people, but I wonder if it would actually be better to do that on sheets of paper that people can choose to take, because by putting it on the wall, it's a distraction for those who can hear.

If you're going to communicate this important story, which has found its way to your heart through your preparation to read or tell it to the community, you need to connect with the listeners. I did not feel connected at all to that group of listeners, and I have to say, I think it affected my communication. There were people who expressed their thanks for the reading, so it can't have been too badly affected, but it felt disjointed at the time for me.

I have to say I was also disappointed with the words of the songs the community was invited to sing. We sang 'I' more often than 'God' - I don't think that's right. It certainly felt quite wrong and uncomfortable for me. Quite uncomfortable. I couldn't sing, and I fought the urge to sit down with some difficulty.

I was disappointed, too, that albs were not worn. The symbolism of that meant that rather than seeing servant leaders standing before us to be ordained, we saw white, middle class, educated men. For me, the alb moves those aspects of who we are to the background, and foregrounds our baptism, our role in the gathered community, and with the stole, our ordination. I heard the argument that the stole removes a leader from the community - I think that's fear of being the sign and symbol the ordained leader is within the gathered assembly. There's no avoiding it, that's who, that is what we are. After our wonderful explorations at the seminar week in Sydney on the gathered assembly, its leaders, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I was very disappointed indeed.

But to end on a positive note, the words of my friend who was ordained were a positive yesterday afternoon, expressing in words if not through the wearing of an alb, the importance of servant leadership among other things, and the celebration and support of these newly ordained leaders also a positive sign for the church.

the search for a spiritual practice that works for me

how to put the learning / self discovery of recent weeks into words?

I think it begins with my chiropractor, and his teaching about breathing and the body, and encouraging me not to hate or be angry with my body, but to like it and to care for it. Then there’s the discovery that I am a feeling person – all this time I assumed that because I’m academic and introverted I must be living in my head. I’ve been ignoring the way I actually go about my academic work – I feel my way through. I do the reading, and I let my subconscious sense its way through the argument I want to make. I don’t intellectualise it. This was on the first weekend of the introduction to spiritual formation course I'm enrolled in that this knowledge of myself fell into place. On that weekend I also rediscovered labyrinth and lectio devina. Labyrinth is a bodily meditation. Lectio devina is word / Word based, but is still stillness and reflection. And then last week when Gordon and Stephen were teaching about the centredness of the pastor in the gathered assembly – being centred in the Spirit, ready to lead, being comfortable with your role as leader, as sign, as pastor, knowing the flow of the space / liturgy and thus being able to concentrate your attention on the reader for example, and if people look at you you’re not fumbling around working out what happens next, you’re focussed on the reader and they follow your gaze and it helps their focus. I think that also helps a space to feel organic, not like a series of acts in a show, but elements to the one prayer.

All this is beginning to come together and help me find a spiritual practice that just might work for me. Gary also said something about spiritual practice being a discipline, and though I am generally quite undisciplined, in terms of not liking a rigid routing, I acknowledge that there needs to be enough discipline to make the time for God.

So I am trying this approach – I’ve been reading a psalm a day for some time, French in the morning and English in the evening, bookending the day in the psalm. I figure Jesus knew the psalms pretty well, so it seemed a good thing to do. Now I’m following a lectio devina process in the morning, focussing on a word or phrase from the psalm and meditating, praying and contemplating. As I contemplate, I find my breath beginning to lead me to a centre – then I get up and do the tai chi routine of the 18 steps of chi kung I’ve learnt. I’ve been doing the steps with my eyes closed, which actually helps to become aware of my body and my breath. And it really helps to find a centre, because you need to find your physical centre for balance. I breathe on a word like holy or sacred, which helps also to keep focus and breathe into the centre. Breath has always been a way I’ve felt connected to the Sacred – the Spirit is the breath I breathe. Breath is also important in storytelling – knowing the story deep within so that it comes from the centre with your breath makes it a very embodied experience, and that’s what makes storytelling. If you’re connected to breath and body, you’re connected to emotion, and can communicate the emotion of the story and thus invite the listeners to connect with the emotion and it becomes an embodied experience for them too. Learning is not just a head thing, it is also a heart thing, and if you learn a thing with your whole body you are more likely to remember it – it is more likely to be woven into the story of your life. And this is my passion – communicating the story from my heart to yours – from the depths of me so that it reaches the depths of you and the Sacred Story becomes woven into the story of our own lives. It is my commitment to being a storyteller that is providing the motivation to continue to seek a spiritual practice that works for me – breathing the Sacred and the Story into the very centre of my being so that I can communicate the Story with integrity.

update - Esther project

The Esther Project now has a website all of its own - from now on most of the blogging about our journey will be at estherproject.unitingchurch.org.au

Looks like we're moving towards developing a small group who will focus their reflections on the community side of the Project, which will be a great help to me, but also offers that group of people a chance to own the Project at a deeper level, and shape a Christian community from scratch. So we'll look at our roles, and I'm hoping mine will be of gentle guidance, working with the team, though still, as 'the minister' ultimately responsible for it. It's an encouraging development.

The play comes along very slowly, which is frustrating. I really need to hand over some of the jobs I've been getting started so that I can concentrate on that task. The website could be managed by someone else, for example, the finances will be managed by someone else, and the searching for financial partners by others - I've been trying to get some guidelines to give them so that I can hand over the job.

Still waiting for a director to be confirmed, so that's a pressing job for this week, as is completing some application forms for funding.

It's a hard slog, starting a new community, a new venture. I gave up on the freelance editing as a potential full time thing because the administrative and marketing set up was so time consuming I had no time or energy left for editing. I hope with this project, I am getting others on board early enough so that my energy is boosted by theirs, before I run out of my own steam ...

my first wedding

oh, here's a photo of me in a borrowed alb (thanks Jenski), about to perform my first wedding last Saturday night. It was a wonderful night, and I was grateful to have my friend and mentor, Anna, guide me and the happy couple through the preparations for the wedding. I have to say, honestly, I felt right at home leading that ritual, and feel very privileged to have had the chance to lead the ritual for such dear friends. What a special first wedding! 

Seminar - Focus on the Bible and worship

I am at a seminar week in Sydney at the UCA Centre for Ministry, focussing on the Bible and worship. Gordon Lathrop is they keynote speaker, and his reflections on the interface between the shape of the Gospels and the shape of the gathered assembly have been interacting with my reflections on the shaping of the new Christian community that is The Esther Project. 

I'm still not satisfied that the question about what happens when the Gospels aren't proclaimed in a worship event has been answered. Gordon weeps when the Gospels are absent. I wonder if, in the overall life of the worshipping assembly, the Gospels are present, enacted, proclaimed, even if they are not explicitly present in one worship event they are still present and real in the life of that assembly. 

I've become more convinced at the purpose of alternative forms of church engaging with someone who is less convinced, because of his negative encounters with emerging worship. I am really sorry he hasn't had the opportunity to encounter alt.church that does seriously engage with the Biblical narrative, that does honour the tradition, that in its engaging with the communication forms of our culture takes those forms of communication and twists them and uses them to communicate the radical and transforming message of the Sacred Story. This is what emerging church in my experience aims to do. 

I have been pondering the PhD I propose to do, developing a performance hermeneutic that offers a method for interpreting the text in order to communicate it effectively - what about developing a method for interpreting the text in order to live the story in our individual and gathered lives? I wonder if this might be too much - trying to explore the ways we communicate the Sacred Story in our gathered worship spaces, and also the ways we live out the story in our everyday lives in the world. But perhaps the two are intertwined? A new friend expressed concern at the use of the word 'performance' in relation to the worship event, and that's a fair enough concern. But performing is also what we do when we carry out a task - we perform it. And I think that both elements of the term 'perform' are present in the proclamation of the text in the gathered worship. 

And I wonder if what I am proposing is pointless - shouldn't all hermeneutical approaches be about interpreting the text in order to communicate it? I don't know. I think that hermeneutical approaches are tools for interpreting the text for the interpretation, for the making meaning for our time, not specifically for the purpose of proclaiming it in a gathered assembly. And it is this for which I have a concern - how we communicate the text in our gathered assemblies effectively, using the language of our culture, honouring the oral nature of the texts as they were formed. 

This is some of the thinking the first two days of this seminar week have produced - I wonder what will emerge from the next two? 

learning about leadership

As I've been reflecting on how I'm going with The Esther Project I've been looking back over each day in relation to the Key Learning Areas for the field education placement. One of those areas is leadership, and Sandy and I talked a bit about this area a bit this week.

There is a tendency, in ministry, when it gets hard, when there are people far more talented or intelligent or whatever than you, when breaking new ground is back breaking work, to get caught up in the negative. I've been teetering on the edge of that with certain aspects of the process lately, the placement process, the candidating, studying process, etc. And I was running the risk of dwelling on the frustration.

Sandy reminded me that it is important to be alert to these thoughts, and to constantly bring my frame of reference back to the positive. So that all the changes and uncertainty that comes with it around college and the processes at the moment do cause frustration - but if I look at it through a positive lens, I see that the changes have offered me the opportunity to start a new Christian community around Story for my field education placement. And that is a unique opportunity, and much better suited to equipping me to follow my call than an ordinary old style congregational placement. And if it gets hard to implement the vision, constantly coming across unknowns, needing to invent processes, etc., a positive lens helps you to see that the invention is an opportunity for creativity. This new community, the Esther Project, is a chance to provide authentic Christian community for people who haven't found it elsewhere, a chance to share the Sacred Story with each other, and discover new, innovative, creative ways to tell the Sacred Story for the Christian and wider community, offering a change to encounter God in the Story anew or for the first time.

This has been important learning for me this week, and will be valuable learning to carry with me through my 30+ years in ordained ministry.

[re]generate

On Monday night, I went to [re]generate, with Steve Taylor sharing about his experiences with church and mission. I really like the model of church they have at Opawa Baptist – many congregations under one umbrella. They have a shared seven practices, as opposed to shared doctrine, which along with mission activities, teaching opportunities, and shared meals for the congregations and/or leaders, give a sense of  ‘unity’ as one person at dinner tonight put it.  

We talked about the need to shift the understanding of the congregation about what church growth is – away from the idea that the church is growing if there are more bums on seats on a Sunday morning, towards the idea that the church is growing if the people are growing in their faith, their relationship with God, their discipleship; the church is growing if those who attend worship are engaging in the mission of God in new ways, are discovering God in the world outside, sharing this experience with those who worship in their congregation and those who don’t; the church is growing when more congregations form, offering authentic worship, teaching, expression and nurture of faith, and community to more; the church is growing when we send more people out, thereby losing bums off seats, but offering hope, healing, community to those who do not find their way to church, because we should not expect people to find their way to church in order to find God, to find healing, to find community – God is with people where they are, so we should go and be with them also. That is where Jesus said he would be, with the sick, the poor – when you feed them, clothe them, visit them, you do this for me. Some of this we didn’t actually talk about tonight, I’m just going on with my thoughts. 

The approach I am taking for the Esther Project is similar to, follows similar patterns and trains of thought, to that of Steve at Opawa. Through the Esther Project there will be many opportunities to connect, many ways to belong: dinner group, production teams, sponsorship partners, interfaith dinners, Friends of the Esther Project. Looks different to Opawa, but of course it does. That’s what emerging church is supposed to do, be unique to each context. Through conversations, I was encouraged that this is a community that belongs in Adelaide – with its festivals, such a community is likely to be an authentic community for our context. Hadn’t looked at it from quite that angle. 

Food is an important way to gather, and that is how we will gather. 

Steve works part time, all their staff are part time, intentionally. I would like to unpack that further, so perhaps I’ll email him some time. The very quick explanation tonight was that they don’t work, their work isn’t all about Sunday. Opawa has mission happening within and without its walls all week. They don’t pay anyone for worship coordinating or music or whatever, for the Sunday service tasks – their congregations are not just about the worship event. They ask questions of each congregation – how is this about God, about people/community, about mission? And each congregation needs to address each circle in its life, not rely on other congregations to do that for them. Small groups might be attached to a larger congregation, and therefore only with the whole congregation fully address all three circles, but to be a congregation is to be about connecting with and learning about God, building relationships, engaging in mission. 

And that's all just a small snapshot of the conversations we had over dinner. Much the best way to share ideas about God, faith, life.