The Christian Imperative to Honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi

This piece is adapted from a sermon Stu gave on 5th February, 2023.

On February 6th, 1840 Māori rangatira and a governor acting on the Queen of England’s behalf, signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. What was intended to bring about a desirable outcome for the prosperity of both peoples ended up being run over roughshod and largely ignored ever since. 

This is not disputable. 

Our history since this point speaks profoundly about the violence toward Māori by colonising powers, the treachery of illegal land confiscation, the entitlement of white people who felt they had superior genes, the syncretism of Christianity and civility, the swift and relentless pursuit of wealth at any cost by companies and government interests. 

These egregious actions on the colonisers’ part were a breach of Te Tiriti and the good faith with which it was signed. 

They continue today.

White Supremacy: More than Nazism

There is no question in my mind that the ongoing breaches of Te Tiriti  are driven by European exceptionalism and white supremacy.

White supremacy is often associated with Nazism, and so is easily deflected—“I’m not a Nazi so I’m not a white supremacist.” But white supremacy is most often not as extreme or as obvious as that. It is the fundamental belief that white skinned people are better. This operates often at a subterranean level so is hard to identify until it’s pointed out. We don’t need to look too closely to see how embedded this is throughout our history. 

There is a lot of talk about how we risk becoming a separatist nation if certain legislation is passed. The reality is that we already entrenched ourselves in that way by the continual and relentless abuse of Māori in particular over the last 183 years because the societal systems are Eurocentric: that is, the polite way of saying white. There is a naive utopianism where some claim that all are equal in New Zealand. Unfortunately this doesn’t bear out in reality. If we look at Māori land ownership since 1860 we see utter devastation and inequality. 

Legislation was introduced into parliament to justify the colonisers continued taking over of land. This devastated Māori not only economically but also spiritually and sociologically, whilst at the same time confirming the “superiority” of the settlers. As Manuka Henare in his 1989 paper Māori Christians and Te Tiriti comments:

“From 1863 to 1900 settler politicians had convinced themselves that Māori were a conquered and dying race and that the provident course was to ‘smooth his dying pillow’, because nothing could save them.”

The impact of this constant overpowering presence is felt today—by both Pākehā and Māori. Positively for Pākehā, not so much for Māori. This power is still operating, and it is still very real. 

Conflicting Worlds and Broken Promises 

Something is broken. The breaches are not artefacts of history, rather they evolved into subterranean systemic currents that will continually undermine Te Tiriti if not acknowledged and addressed. By its very nature, a treaty is intended to bring a solid resolution often between conflicting parties and by their very nature they are binding in perpetuity. 

Conflicting worlds were very apparent when Māori in the north enacted their laws of justice upon settlers and sailors who had breached their laws. And naturally the settlers retaliated. At the beginning the actual governing powers of the colonists were so limited that even if they wanted to enforce justice, they were unable to do so. Chaotic and unruly Pākehā behaviour turned settlements into lawless cesspits.

As Māori observed this increasing lawlessness, disrespect toward their tikanga and the pending influx of other European nations into Aotearoa, they knew a pandora’s box had been opened. There was no return to the ‘way things were’. Something needed to be done to stop the ruptures.

Te Tiriti was intended to create a boundary for negotiation. Pākehā were to look after Pākehā and Māori after Māori. Their affairs would often cross over, but each had their own sovereignty in matters of culture, law, order, and trade. Father Servant, who attended the Waitangi meeting with Pompallier made this observation:

“The governor proposes to the tribal chiefs that they recognise his authority: he gives them to understand that this authority is to maintain good order, and protect their respective interests; that all chiefs will preserve their powers and their possessions. A great number of the latter speak, and display in turn all their Māori eloquence. Most of the orators do not want the governor to extend his authority over the natives, but only over the Europeans. Others do not even want the governor to remain in New Zealand.” [Translation of letter to Fr Colin, 5 March 1840, in Turner 1986:88.]

It would be a relationship of equals to bring about a peaceable co-existence in this land. Unfortunately, as you are well aware, this never happened. 

The Treaty as a Covenant 

Manuka Henare’s take: 

“At the signing on February 6, two Anglican Rangatira, Hone Heke and Eruera Maihi Patuone of Ngāpuhi spoke of the benefits the governor would bring. Heke said it would be like that of the New Testament, Te Kawanata Hou (the new covenant). Patuone spoke strongly of the relationship with Britain and he associated Hobson with the benefits brought by the missionaries, and with Te Kawanata Hou.”

Henare shows how the treaty is a Christian covenant. It was referred to as He Kawanata by Māori and seen with all the sacredness that comes with the Christian understanding of a covenant. Think of the covenants of Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Moses, David and then most relevantly for us especially today, the New Covenant at the last supper. The sacredness of these moments is where heaven and earth meet eye to eye, to promise that the best of our divine image (true humanity) can be seen.

The missionaries at the centre, who drafted Te Tiriti and were part of the counsel for both Māori and Pākehā, were acutely aware of it being viewed as kawanata (covenant). They were not gearing up for deception. They were writing for a better hope and future. It wasn’t until decades later that the mission efforts eventually sided with colonising powers. 

Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).

A covenant is the strongest word and as such it’s a matter of the integrity of the Gospel and how Christ is represented implicitly in the agreement and absolutely misrepresented in the actions that followed. Fundamentally then, any breach of covenant veers toward blasphemy as it compromises God’s immutable “Yes”.

The Role of Repentance

It is not enough to simply say ‘sorry.’ In this case, a breach of covenant requires repentance and reparation—arguably what is really missing in the Tribunal settlements is repentance. 

The story of Zacchaeus is important here. Zacchaeus was a tax collector or, in other words, an agent of the systemic economic powers of Roman imperialism. He would abuse his power by extracting more money from citizens than the simple tax. His dishonesty would enslave citizens to him through unpaid debt. 

Jesus dines with him and his life is changed forever. Note how salvation came to the house when he repented through action. Zacchaeus could have simply said, “Oh, I won’t carry on doing that from now on”—but that doesn’t comprehend the damage he has inflicted on others. Repentance and reparation go hand in hand.

Here’s a thought experiment for us. 

• Let’s say that Zacchaeus made the promise but never followed through on it.

• Are his children or grandchildren liable for that? Do they have any responsibility here? 

• What would the children of those whom Zacchaeus impoverished think? What would you say to them?

Where is righteousness and justice in this space? 

Time only makes resolutions more complex, but doesn’t make the injustice irrelevant. For me, the key reason Te Tiriti is a Christian issue is because it’s about a relationship that needs reconciliation.

I want to put forward again my definition of sin—sin is anything that dehumanises. If we accept that definition, then we must accept that white New Zealanders have benefitted from this sin. 

I am reminded of some characters in the book of Amos. If you could read it in the framework of the ancient classics it might be a bit more palatable, as the description the prophet uses is not very woke. But I remember reading it as a teenager and the example of how God responds to the nonchalant excesses of greed and power hasn’t left me since.

Amos talks to these women who live in ignorant luxury: it’s the following caricature that makes a damning point:

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan
who are on Mount Samaria,
who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,
who say to their husbands, “Bring something to drink!”

The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness:
The time is surely coming upon you,
when they shall take you away with hooks,
even the last of you with fishhooks.

Through breaches in the wall you shall leave,
each one straight ahead;
and you shall be flung out…
says the LORD.…

Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,
and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock,
and calves from the stall;
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,
and like David improvise on instruments of music;
who drink wine from bowls,
and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,
and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.

—Amos 4:1-3; 6:4-7.

I believe the rebuke should catch our ear. It should make us pause and ask, is that directed toward me too? Realistically, there are some things mere mortals such as many of us can’t do anything about. But I can’t help feel that we should have an uncomfortable relationship with power, privilege and wealth as they so easily dehumanise people.

And now, as with all Gospel challenges, it seems too great for us to handle. It’s too idealistic and lacks the nuance of modern day living. Well, that’s a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (ironically, after the quote from Gospel of Matthew!). 

I know guilt is not the answer as it can be a paralysing force. This sermon is not meant to induce guilt for living in privilege. However, knowing what powers either ‘wish to’ or ‘do’ control us is the key to finding a way forward. Being mindful of what we benefit from because of injustice of the past is an agency for change. Understanding this and then stepping up to the challenge of societal change is where I think we need to head.

There are things we can do to call the systemic powers to account, because like climate change, our individual response is our practice—but not where the real change needs to take place. We need to tackle the systems, and that’s much better done together. In old school language, we need to repent. Reorient ourselves to a vision of the Kingdom of God’s justice. 

Put bluntly, the breach of Te Tiriti is sin. And because it acts in bad faith with the promise of the Gospel, our power and privilege needs to be held to account. And that has not happened anywhere to the extent it should have—there’s so much to do. Our role as Christians is to be ambassadors for Christ, seeking reconciliation and justice that we are implicitly embedded in.

Spiritual Practices

Ideas for spiritual practices – where ‘spiritual’ is anything that acknowledges that there’s a part of us that can’t be cured or encouraged or nurtured through aerobic exercise, a gluten-free diet, not drinking too much caffeine, blah blahh blaaaahhhh and ‘practices’ indicates intentionality.

‘ascetic’ practices – practices involving discipline

• centering prayer

• silence

• exclusion / being alone / retreating / going off the grid for the purpose of liberating space otherwise spoken for

 expression

• singing

• production

  • of arts

  • of households

  • of gardens

• writing

• dance

• acting

• gratitude

input

• study

• reading

• spiritual direction

• seeking out people with particular expertise for conversation, to listen to them

• attendance – the simple practice  of putting oneself in a place where something is being provided

• podcasts / music

• gratitude

• sacred space

output

• acts of service

  • hospitality ..and practices within hospitality such as keeping the habit of always having water available for guests or allowing guests to download whatever it is they arrive with – holding a completely open and agenda-free space that a guest can step into

  • ‘orphans and widows’ practices: caring for those who rely most on others’ support

  • listening

• gratitude

• holding sacred space

• praying for others

• petitions

• being with other Christians

awareness

• of self

• of others’ needs

• listening to your life / to life, to the accumulation of evidence that has gone before you

• the practice of drawing away to gain a broader perspective

daydreaming

• allowing oneself time off from thinking and being rational and analytical

• mind-skipping: jumping non-sensically from idea to idea, like children in their play; following the trail from one thought to the next; zoning out; getting ‘glaze-eye’

Submission to Baptist working party on same sex relationships

The following is a submission made by the leadership team of Cityside to the Baptist working party on the issues of same sex relationships. For further clarification on who this submission represents, refer to section 8 below.

Cityside Baptist Church submission to Working Party on issues of Same Sex Marriage and Local Church Autonomy.

This submission will cover the following:

1. Introductory statements: a summary of our assumptions and concerns

2. Some reflections on biblical and theological matters

3. Some reflections on marriage

4. A perspective on sexual immorality

5. Observations about change processes in church and society

6. The effect of this issue on the missional stance of our church

7. Our views on Baptist unity, and church polity.

8. Who this submission represents, and our process for determining that

We would appreciate the opportunity to speak to this submission when the working party is hearing oral submissions. The email address for contacting us is leadership@cityside.org.nz. The church phone number is 09 377 3512. 

1. Introductory statements

   1. As a church community we affirm and accept LGBT people as created by God, made in the image of God, welcomed and loved by God.

   2. We see the presence of LGBT people within human society as a naturally occurring feature of human diversity, and therefore part of God's good creation, not necessarily a sign of sin or brokenness. We recognise that all human sexual relationships have the potential for unhealthy expression and sin, but we do not consider all homosexual love to be inherently disordered, 'unnatural' or sinful, and we do not believe that the Bible or Christian theology requires us to do so.

   3. We believe that most LGBT people experience their gender identity and sexual attraction as innate and unchosen in the same way as cis-typical heterosexual people do. We do not believe that most LGBT people can or should be asked to change their sexuality, and this is being increasingly confirmed by the statistics emerging from those organisations set up with this intent and the closure of Exodus and Courage. The fruit of the 'ex-gay' teaching has been, in the main, harmful.

   4. We fully understand that some gay and lesbian Christians are persuaded in their own conscience that they must stay celibate, in obedience to how they understand the Scriptures. We affirm that choice, if made freely, and would naturally support those people to fulfil their conviction. However, we are also persuaded that nobody can impose life long celibacy on someone else if that is not their sense of call and conviction, and to do so is both unhealthy and unethical.

   5. Therefore, we believe that LGBT Christians are entitled to give and receive sexual love within faithful partnerships, in the same way as heterosexual Christians are. Many of us are witness to the grace and care and generosity present within the relationships of our gay and lesbian friends, and see the blessing and presence of God's Spirit in these relationships no less than in the heterosexual marriages of our acquaintance. We affirm that we wish to be able to celebrate these faithful partnerships in the form of marriage. Further, we feel that to deny a Christian ceremony of public witness, blessing and exchange of vows to long standing unions effectively undermines our own stated values of faithfulness, accountability, and commitment in human relationships.

   6. We grieve for the pain that the church has caused over the years to LGBT people, and for the lack of understanding and compassion that they have suffered. We note that the suicide rate of young gay people is higher among those who have had some church backgrounds than those who haven't. We are also concerned to make clear that even where individuals and churches attempt to scale back their active condemnation of LGBT people, the commitment to seeing their relationships as forbidden and unable to be blessed by God, is in itself still hurtful and alienating. We question whether it is possible for a church to be genuinely welcoming of gay Christians or seekers, while staying opposed to them finding love and fulfilment in human relationship. We reject the separation of 'orientation' and 'practice' as an artificial, even specious, distinction that leads to arbitrary lines being drawn across the whole-person experience of eros as a blend of attraction, longing, love, desire, touch, and companionship. We feel that statements like 'love the sinner, hate the sin' applied to this issue still communicate on some level the rejection of people's sexual identity that prevents gay Christians finding a place of belonging in our churches.

   7. We believe that one of the problems in this discussion is the lack of visibility and voices of gay and lesbian Christians, especially within our movement. There is still a quality of 'them' and 'us' in the debate that might make it possible to assume that we are exclusively talking about people outside the church, when we reflect on this issue. We are the poorer for having exclusively heterosexual pastors and scholars determining our stance, without having to experience in themselves any of the consequences of their teaching. We would like to see LGBT Christians welcomed into full participation in the life of the church, including visibility in leading worship and small groups, as deacons and elders, as mentors and pastors, and college faculty. As with the involvement of women in these roles in the church, the Body of Christ is enriched when the members of the Body see themselves reflected in the leadership. Conversely, the homogeneity of leadership diminishes the confidence of significant portions of the diverse Body, and thus diminishes the full expression of the reach and presence of Christ within the world

   8. We feel that the thinking within the Baptist movement on this issue has been framed within too narrow parameters of biblical interpretation, seemingly uninflected by scholarship that comes to different conclusions. There also seems to be a lack of consideration for the fluidity of gender and sexuality that we all experience, the journey of transgendered or transsexual people, and the reality of intersex people. As a community, Cityside is positively influenced by liberation theologies in their various forms, and many of us hold a literary and critical awareness in relation to the Scriptures. We accept that the biblical and theological rationale for the majority Baptist position on this issue is legitimate within its starting parameters. However, ours differ, and we also consider our own position to be faithful to Scripture, and faithful to our calling in Christ.

   9. We recognise ourselves to be in a minority position within the wider Baptist movement, and do not expect other Baptist churches to alter their stance or practice, much as we might find it distressing. We do not see a need to opt out of the Baptist Union on this matter, and feel that the wider family of churches is stronger for being able to contain the difference of our perspective. We do not believe that denominational unity should be based on lengthy confessions or moral uniformity, and we do not believe that our collective witness and mission to the wider NZ society is harmed by holding difference on this or any other issue.

2. Biblical and Theological matters

   1. It is not our intent in this submission to set out a full biblical and theological rationale in support of marriage for same gender couples. We understand that the working group is conducting its own research into the subject, and simply then note for reference the work of Nigel Chapman at Surry Hills Baptist Church: http://180.org.au/, William Loader, http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/SameSex.pdf for a brief summary of his much longer works, and the work of the NZ Anglican Commission on Doctrine before this year's General Synod, which formed an appendix to the 'Ma Whea' report that the Baptist Working Group has no doubt read. These are obviously short summary approaches to the issues but they offer a starting indication of scholarship that supports our stance.

   2. The question to ask about these kinds of argument is not 'can they be critiqued?' because every argument can be, especially those that express a minority position to a long held status quo. Indeed, the critique of the Doctrine Commission's rationale is held within its own document. The more significant question is whether the argument is legitimate within the framework in which it is being offered, and whether that framework is itself recognisable and defensible as Christian, in adherence to our received apostolic faith. We do not accept that there is only one Christian starting point in interpreting Scripture, and therefore do not accept the conclusion that there can be only one Christian view on homosexual relationships.

   3. To put it another way, we would like the Baptist churches to recognise that there are (at least) two views on this issue for which it is possible to make a thorough biblical and theological defence. While one view is clearly more prominent within evangelicalism, both are held by faithful and committed Christians, with respect for Scripture and the long held traditions of the Church. We note that, increasingly, evangelicals are shifting ground on this issue (note the emergence of organisations such as 'Accepting Evangelicals' in the UK.)

   4. Different strands of our Christian tradition privilege various emphases within Scripture. Many Citysiders, understanding the Word of God as primarily embodied in Jesus the Christ, take the life and teaching of Jesus as revealed in the gospels as our interpretive lens. We thus see kingdom, justice, pastoral, and liberation concerns outweighing purity concerns when it comes to right living. With Jesus at the centre of our hermeneutic, we pay close attention to his practice of widening the circles of inclusion, even within the course of his own ministry. We note his willingness to break the rules of his culture and religion (such as the purity laws to do with touch and women, and Sabbath observance) to enact compassion and to demonstrate the radical nearness of the kingdom of heaven to all people. Jesus' practice teaches us that rules, whether religious or moral, are to make human life better, and where the rules are applied in such a way that they create or sustain human need or human pain, the rules are to be subordinated to the well-being of the person. We see here an ethic of love over law that guides our own discernment.

   5. We see that the 'proof texting' approach that relies on quoting one or more of the six texts referencing homosexuality in the Scriptures not only tends to treat verses of the Bible out of context, but is inadequate to the fully orbed nature of complex issues to do with morality and human dignity. We note that none of the texts usually cited to condemn homosexual sex, when read in context, is intended as teaching on human sexuality per se, but as an example to support some other theological or legal point. What can be clearly inferred from them is that the biblical writers, including Paul, held, and did not question, the ancient Jewish mindset that all homosexual activity is unnatural and therefore outside the will of God. However, we do not consider the culture or worldview of the biblical authors to be inspired or authoritative in determining how we ought to live well in our own cultural setting, any more than we accept their cosmology, or their conviction that the Christ would return in their lifetimes.

   6. We note that Genesis 2 does hold a symbolically resonant image of marriage as the coming together of man and woman as 'one flesh', and we accept that Jesus upheld this image in his response to questions about marriage. We accept that this resonance is a powerful, and possibly even normative model for most human cultures and contexts. It describes what is usually true. But we are not comfortable with treating these early chapters of Genesis as anything other than poetic text, indicating at a mythical and metaphorical level the deep truths about human life, and its origins in the loving creativity of God. We therefore do not see in this text anything prescriptive or proscriptive, any more than this text could be used to say that singleness is not the intent of God for any human life. We believe that Jesus' use of Genesis 2 is to affirm the importance of marital faithfulness and the protection of the marriage relationship – particularly the woman, in response to questions about divorce and adultery, not as a teaching about the gender of the people in the couple.

   7. The life of the church is to be guided by the living Spirit, as well as the Bible, and sometimes the Spirit leads the church into new understanding, and into interpretations of Scripture that would have been unthinkable to people of faith in a previous era. We see this in the life of the early church in Acts, with Peter's vision of the animals followed by his entry into Cornelius' house, and in the Jerusalem Council where circumcision was debated. In both cases, the Spirit led the church beyond both their sacred text and their comfort zone in order to widen the scope of who was to be understood as acceptable to God. We believe that the Spirit has continued to guide the church to keep drawing the circle wider, even where this seems to come into conflict with our received understandings. We accept that it is difficult to agree on where and how the Spirit is guiding the church, and opposing views each claim the Spirit's confirmation of their own opinion. The church as a whole might be strengthened if we together developed a deeper and wiser understanding of spiritual discernment than is often practiced.

3. Marriage

   1. We would like to contest the idea that marriage has always reflected our current understanding and practice of it. There is no one endorsed view of marriage and family in the Bible. And the Christian church has, over the years, largely accepted the way marriage is practised in the wider culture, which in some cases has led the church to accept polygamy. Certainly, the church has supported marriage based on assumptions of women as property, women as submissive and obedient to their husbands, marriage as primarily procreative, and marriage that ties together families of privilege to cement social and ecclesial power, and has counselled people to continue in marriages where abuse is taking place. We are glad that these ideas of marriage have been challenged both within society and within the church. We are glad that marriage has changed and continues to change. We do not think it is defensible to argue for a certain view of marriage on the grounds that it has 'always been' a certain way.

   2. Whether our contemporary notions of marriage as a romantic coupling are sufficient to sustain social and individual well-being is itself contestable. It is time for the church to do some deeper thinking about what a genuinely Christian view of marriage might be, rather than simply reacting to social change and focusing on 'one man and one woman' to the exclusion of considering what other human 'good' marriage might provide for. One of the gifts of this time in our history is to invite such a conversation. We would hope that the church's contribution to this conversation is not just to affirm the gender binary of the participants, but to shift the discourse from exclusively romantic notions to discussions about commitment, self-giving, other-centredness, sacrificial care, and the joy that can come through years of mutual sharing through 'better and worse'. Within the church, we may want to suggest that for those who are married, their relationship is part of their ongoing sanctification in Christ.

   3. If these ideas are encouraged by the church in the way we prepare all couples for marriage, we feel that opening up the scope of marriage to include faithful LGBT couples will bear the fruit of greater stability, joy and wholeness for those who are inclined to marry, and that this will have a positive flow-on effect for our wider society. Those LGBT people who suffered the AIDS crisis in the West in the 80s, and who demonstrated faithfulness and compassion through suffering and abandonment by family, church and state are to us examples of true marriage, which we find inspiring. We feel that heterosexual couples might have something to learn from our LGBT friends who have weathered the storms not only of their own relationships but the hostile environment that has often surrounded them.

   4. We do not deny that there is a complementary symbolism in the coming together of 'male and female' that is also part of the wider symbol system of the Christian faith, that has the wedding banquet as one of its central images of union and fulfilment. However, we feel that there are other kinds of complementarity expressed whenever two different people choose to leave their family of origin and create a new family based on their own shared ground. We see the marriage symbolism in Scripture as indicative of the possibility of marriage to become an icon, or sacrament, of the love of God for all people. It is not always this, of course, in the same way as the church does not always express its own calling to embody the love of God in community. But at its best, and in the mystery of God's grace, marriage can be a covenant that embodies in a human relationship the love of Christ for the church, as Paul affirms in Ephesians 5. Just as the risen Christ and the church are non- gendered except symbolically, so we contend that committed same sex couples can and do reflect the beauty of self-giving love that is the essence of marriage.

4. Sexual immorality

   1. We affirm that the Bible teaches about sexual immorality as inimical to the life of faith. Along with Scripture, we would experience concern where any sexual relationship, whether gay or straight, is non-consensual, non-mutual, abusive, unloving, and unfaithful to previous vows, and where any person was using sex as an addiction, power game, or 'sleeping around' indiscriminately. We are persuaded that the Bible texts that are cited as prohibiting homosexuality in general assume some element of promiscuity, exploitation, adultery, or ritual practice as part of all homosexual sex. Based on our experience of same sex relationships among friends and family, and given that we do not share the cultural assumptions of the Biblical writers, we do not believe that all homosexual relationships fit this definition of 'immoral.' Some might, as do many heterosexual relationships. Our contention is that the church should have a positive vision of committed relationships, based on God's covenantal and faithful love for humanity, and be willing to share this vision even where it is counter-cultural. Part of our desire to uphold the relationships of gay Christians in marriage is to affirm, celebrate, and support all relational commitment as trending towards this positive vision.

5. Change processes in church and society

   1. We see the issue of full inclusion and marriage equality for LGBT people as consistent with other changes that church and society have gone through in the past. The conservative impulse in these changes is to cite biblical texts, without any reference to a hermeneutical principle, and without any acknowledgement that interpretation of texts changes as our human experience changes. There is a tendency to deceive ourselves that not only is the text static, but to act as though our interpretation of it occurs in a vacuum, and as though scholarship can be objectively detached from cultural moment in which it occurs. The church often looks like it is arguing on the basis of Scripture, when it is simply defending the status quo. We would like to see a greater humility that acknowledges that we all emphasise and de-emphasise parts of Scripture in accordance with our cultural understanding, and that we tend toward a kind of amnesia when it comes to change processes we have already accommodated. It has become commonplace now for this issue of LGBT relationships to be compared to the debates over slavery, and women in leadership, over divorce, miscegenation, and whether the earth moves around the sun. Those who cannot accept gay and lesbian relationships make the point that this issue is different because no biblical argument can be made in favour of them, whereas there are parts of Scripture that support those issues on which we have changed our stance. What this argument ignores is that, at the time when each of these debates began, they looked much like this one, with a small group of people concerned for change, and the majority claiming that it directly contradicts Scripture. We assert that, on the whole, change did not occur on the basis of the strength of the arguments, which have developed and deepened over time. Change occurred because the life experience of its opponents led them to alter their interpretation of Scripture, or in some cases simply to overlook inconvenient parts of the text. While many of us like to believe that we are persuaded in our minds, through new arguments, it would be more accurate to say that our minds are largely inseparable from the great cultural paradigm shifts that take place (for better or worse,) that we are changed by our experiences, primarily our relationships, and then read the text differently. We believe that at this time, the invitation of the Spirit working through our friends and through the wider culture is for the church to read Scripture anew on this issue of LGBT relationships. We expect this to take much longer than the debates on women's roles in the church, for example, simply because a much smaller proportion of the population is directly affected, and because the church can and has insulated itself against deep connections with LGBT people in a way it hasn't been able to do with women.

   2. The question of where bias lies on this issue is worth noting, along with a principle largely accepted within our society but distressingly absent from our Baptist practice so far, which is that those with most at stake should have the greatest part in the conversation. Otherwise phrased as 'nothing about us without us', this principle is recognised when it comes to issues affecting tangata whenua, who have fought for years for the right to be consulted on matters that will affect them most profoundly, and within the disability and community development sectors. The idea that our denomination would call a working group on this issue and be very deliberate to make it 'non representative' (i.e. there would be no effort to include any LGBT people or those who advocate for change) demonstrates a disturbing ignorance about perspective. It assumes that those who adopt a conservative position on an issue are free from bias and agenda, and can find an 'objective' place from which to evaluate other perspectives.

   3. We hope that part of the practice of the Working Group is to seek out gay and lesbian members of Baptist churches, both those who believe that they need to be celibate, and those who wish to be in relationships. We suspect that this might be very difficult, as the Baptist environment is not one that is particularly conducive to being 'out.' Why should gay Christians tell their stories of deep and personal struggle and desire, when they can fairly presume that they will be disapproved of, corrected, or argued with? However, without this intentional listening process, the church is essentially making decisions about other people's lives without any sense of their stories, leaving hetero-normative assumptions and biases unchallenged.

6. How this affects our mission

   1. We understand that the way Baptist congregations are governed has partly to do with being able to practice mission in context, and to discern our life together in our particular place, with our particular people. Cityside Baptist Church has, over the years, developed a niche within our movement that has an expansive theology, and an inclusive, exploratory style that embraces people at many different stages of faith, and sometimes non-faith. We have been able to support and sustain the Christian faith of people for whom other parts of the church have become either irrelevant or unsafe. We believe that our way of doing church together, while not perfect by any means, is honouring to God and faithful to the Way of Jesus Christ. For most of us, being required by our denominational affiliation not to celebrate and bless the relationships of LGBT people in our church does harm to our sense of identity and mission, compromises the good news we wish to share, and tarnishes the face of Christ that we show to the world around us. We wish to be able to offer a welcome – a full, uncompromised welcome – to our LGBT friends where other Christians have offered rejection, or unreasonable demands. We have already lost one vulnerable attender simply because we are not exercising a unanimous voice in support of LGBT people. We have to accept this, because of our commitment to walking together holding different views within our community. But it is difficult to have decisions imposed on us from outside our faith community, with little understanding, it seems, of the impact that has on our particular witness and faith expression.

7. Baptist Unity vs Conformity

   1. We observe that last year, the approach to this issue by the leadership of the movement was largely driven by fear and reaction, rather than a process of deep reflection on the issues involved, and the Baptist tradition in which we stand. We understand that there are some pastors who are concerned that, without a binding stance on the issue, they may be somehow coerced to marry a LGBT couple, or face legal action. We have two reflections on this. Firstly, it is our belief that the legislation does not compel anybody to conduct a marriage ceremony and no reasons have to be given. The religious provision in the law is an extra layer of strength to what has always been the case. Secondly, though, we wonder whether fear of legal action is a good enough reason to alter our long standing commitment to allowing congregations to act with freedom of conscience on contentious issues. We do not see wisdom or faith expressed in a hasty action designed to protect pastors in a hypothetical 'worst case scenario.' We consider that those Baptist ministers who wish to discriminate under the current law should be free to do so, and we would support Union funds being made available in any given test case to support a local church, but we do not think this issue warrants an exception to our current flexibility as a movement to make our own discernment on moral matters.

   2. While we would like to see the current Baptist policy documents pertaining to sexual relationships altered to reflect a greater diversity of views, and a more nuanced understanding of human sexuality, we are content to accept that they express the majority position, so long as they are not binding on any given congregation who wishes to dissent. We appreciate the wording of the resolution passed at the 2013 Assembly, which sees the policies as recommendations, as is the case with all Baptist policy. We note that there is diversity of practice on many policy issues, such as women in leadership and children taking communion, and there has not been any need to apply consequences to those churches that quietly defer from the recommended stance. We request that the Working Party consider the decision made by the Baptist Union in Britain, which has made room for the consciences of individual ministers and churches.

   3. We observe that there are different views about what unity is, and how to maintain and express it. On the one hand, unity is conflated with uniformity, or conformity to an agreed stance on an issue. This viewpoint maintains that if churches hold different beliefs about human sexuality, and practice differently in regard to marriage, then the witness of the whole church is compromised, and the faith of all is weakened. On the other hand, we would favour an understanding of unity that is based on mutual co-operation, respect, and relationship. We uphold our common ground of the basic Baptist principles and ways of constituting church, and yet hold to our differing consciences on some matters. Unity is only significant if it is freely held, and embraced in the midst of wrestling with differences. The kind of unity that comes from adherence to external agreements with consequences for dissent quickly becomes coercive. True unity has an interdependent, organic quality that cannot be enforced or mandated. Will we so quickly forget that the Baptist church was formed from the dissenting tradition, with a deep trust in the Spirit to guide the local congregation, and an active commitment to discerning God's will in community?

   4. We live in a post-denominational age, and while our Baptist identity may be important to some within the church, to the wider world into which we are sent, it makes no difference whether we are Baptist or Presbyterian or Pentecostal. We honestly cannot see how coming to binding agreement that we will not celebrate the union of LGBT couples will make a positive difference to the ability of Baptist churches to live out the good news in their own contexts. We can, however, see how it could have a negative affect on ours.

   5. The Baptist Constitution is effective in its simplicity. There are some who would like our confession to be made fuller and cover greater detail. We would caution against this, as each age has its own issues to wrestle with, and confessions that respond to the concerns of a given generation quickly become archaic. Would we want, for example, a clause about alcohol in our constitution? Or about whether or not Baptist Christians can serve in the armed forces? Smack children? Or participate in abortion or euthanasia? It is important that the Baptist constitution makes no mention of these kind of 'second tier' issues, and leaves this to the local congregation to determine as guided by the gathered churches through policies, as is the current approach. We are aware that for some people, a positive stance on LGBT issues contradicts the clause in the Constitution about biblical authority. However, we would claim that we have not lost sight of the Bible, or its role in our community, in the midst of our explorations on this issue. We have simply come to a different interpretation than that held by most Baptists.

   6. We would further ask our Baptist colleagues 'why this issue?' When we disagree about a great number of things, and when our practice already has so much variance, we are at a loss to understand why this issue is the only one that might potentially lead to churches and ministers being censured or excluded. It seems inconsistent, given that Jesus had nothing to say on the topic, and given that many other issues on which Christians disagree would seem to go much closer to the heart of our ability to confess and witness to Christ. It seems to us that this topic has become a Shibboleth in evangelical circles, and people and churches are being asked to take positions, and identify with one side over another, as a marker of their faithfulness to the gospel. On an issue of such pastoral sensitivity and where the church is already guilty of so much negative discourse, we think it would be better to engage in slow and careful dialogue, and patient exploration, rather than trying to force agreement to a single position.

   7. On a final note, we are disturbed that, in some Baptist contexts, this issue is being linked to salvation to the extent that a married gay couple would potentially be refused baptism and communion. (We derive this anecdotally from comments made in an online forum.) While we accept that baptism contains within its symbolism a commitment to live a new life in Christ, we also see that Baptism is the start of a life-long journey of sanctification. To withhold from people in a same sex relationship the signs whereby we respond to God's grace to us in Christ badly distorts our theology of salvation, and nullifies the God-given faith of the people concerned, because of an issue of moral practice that is held in dispute by the wider church. It sends again the message that LGBT people cannot be Christians.

   8. Our concern in all of this, is that our church, and the wider movement to which we belong, make as a primary concern the communication to LGBT people that God loves and accepts them as they are, unconditionally. We want to give expression to a welcome that frees gay and lesbian Christians from guilt and shame at a core level of identity, and where we all, male and female, gay and straight, know ourselves to be children of God through the self- giving love of Christ.

8. Who this submission represents

   1. This submission was written by the Cityside Baptist Church leadership team and reflects our views. It reflects, broadly, the convictions of the majority of the Cityside membership. We have decided not to bring this issue to a meeting or vote of the church at this stage, because we are committed to a process of exploration that doesn't force people to take a position, or to draw a line in the sand that divides our community. Our approach and intent is to dialogue with respect for our differences. However, we have conducted a survey of the whole church, in order for the leadership team to discover whether our congregation would be broadly in support of our pastor conducting a same sex wedding should this be requested of them. The response rate was very high (much higher than the numbers we have at church members meetings), and we included the option of anonymous responses. Approximately 85% of those who participated in the survey were positive about their pastor taking the marriage of a same sex couple. Therefore, while obviously not every statement in this submission represents precisely the views of those people, we feel that this submission reflects the overall convictions of that majority group.

   2. There is a group of Citysiders who are uncomfortable with the conclusions of the survey, and would want our church would take a stance on the issue that better reflects their more conservative reading of the Bible. Our approach at this time is not to try to persuade them to adopt the majority stance, but for us all to hold on to our convictions and dialogue in love, focusing our unity around our shared faith and holding as lightly as we can to our differences. All Citysiders have been invited to write individual submissions to this Working Group should they wish to, whether these are in support of, or in opposition to, the submission our leadership is making on behalf of our church.

   3. We would like to acknowledge that the writers of this submission do not primarily identify as LGBT. We therefore do not speak from within the perspective of those marginalised by this discussion, nor do we attempt to speak on their behalf. We see ourselves as allies and advocates, but recognise that we do not ourselves experience what it is to be gay in the church. We offer our perspective in humility alongside our brothers and sisters who have had to wrestle in prayer and pain, and on a personal level, with the issues we have raised.

'Participating in God' by Paul Fiddes, a book overview

An overview of Paul S. Fiddes: Participating in God – a Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity

Musings for joint Ponsonby and Cityside Baptist Church service Trinity Sunday 2012.

The theological idea – God as verb not (just?) noun

Fiddes is proposing a way of engaging with the Trinity not as three persons/entities in some mysterious unity, but as an event of loving that is made up of movements of relationships, where the idea of 'persons' is not in the 'points' of the triangle but in a dynamic understanding of the links between them (the 'sides' of the triangle.) 'God happens' rather than 'God is'. Verbs not nouns.

“Three movements of relationship...in one event', not 'three individual subjects who 'have' relationship”

These movements of relation are always a reaching of love, a self-offering, moving beyond and towards. And they are 'personal' in the sense that they have qualities or characteristics that we recognise as the love of parent to child (the Father), child to parent (the Son) and the deepening and opening of that love to new intimacy and new futures (the Spirit.) When we participate in movements in our own life that have these qualities we are leaning into, or relying on, these eternal and all-embracing movements within God. When we pray, we don't so much pray 'to' the persons of God, but 'in' the relations of God.

Knowing by way of participation, not spectator/observation

This kind of engagement can only be realised through participation, not as an object of our conceptualisation or observation. We participate in the movements of love, the steps of the dance, as we are drawn into them and follow along with them, and know ourselves held and 'pulled along' by the love that already exists in the relations of the Trinity.

'Enlightenment' forms of 'knowing'= “subjecting objects to the control of our consciousness, as things that can either literally be seen with the eyes or 'seen' in the mind. A doctrine of the Trinity in which persons are relations makes it clear it is impossible to know or speak about God in this way.” Instead when we participate in God as movements of relationship we fulfil the prayer of Christ in the Gospel of John 'as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.' 

Movements that make room – openness within the dance

God is continually 'making room' within these loving movements of relationship, for the whole universe of creation to not only participate, but also to alter outcomes and affect God. Including our human 'otherness' within the movements of the Trinity is God's humble, self-limiting willingness to include our freedom in the life of God, which means being God being genuinely changed by what we bring to the dance – both our loving co-operation and also our hostility and violent rejection. “The Trinity is a movement of relations which is as wide as the universe, as God, in an act of self-limitation, opens the divine communion of life to enable all created beings to dwell within it.”

God “freely desires to be dependent on us for the completeness of fellowship, for the joy of the dance,” even when that means that some of the steps of the dance distort or pull against the flow of love.

Thus our life in God, our being led by the Spirit, is not just about being 'full' or 'empty', as though God were a mysterious substance that is poured into us, or leaks out of us. It's also about 'joining in' – co-operating, attending to, and doing the movements of the dance as they present themselves to us.

How do we participate?

Broadly speaking, we participate in the 'Father' movement of the Trinity when we create, when we commission and send, when we provide for, guide, love, nurture and protect. We participate in the 'Son' movement of the Trinity when we respond, act in loving obedience, trust, openness, and when we absorb into our own selves the suffering that comes from being 'sent' – going into places physically or mentally where we accept a will that is not our own, for a good that is greater than our individual life. We participate in the 'Spirit' movement of the Trinity when we open, disturb, question, and bridge, communicate, reconcile and re-unite that which has been disturbed, when we love in ways that lead to new depths of intimacy beyond strangeness and disturbance, and when we create space for the interactions that happen between persons at a level too deep for words.

More specifically, we participate in the Trinity when we:

Pray

When we say 'Our Father' in the 'name' of Jesus, we are stepping into the movement of the trusting openness of the child, 'being enticed into a movement of speech that is already there before us.' We 'place ourselves into the flow or, rather, in co-operation we allow ourselves to be drawn in [to the flow of relationships that constitute God.]'

'In praying for others we are expressing our love and concern for them, and God takes that desire into the divine desire for their well-being...' 

Engage in acts of Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Practising forgiveness involves the movement of empathy, the willingness to see life and choices through the eyes and experience of the one who has wounded us. And it also involves being willing to endure and absorb the hostility of the 'forgiven', as they react to having their offence named and pardoned. Ideally it involves the dance of re-engaging with the forgiven one to draw them back into relationship again. This is the movement or journey that God made into our mortal human experience: empathising with humanity to the point of incarnating into our reality, and then absorbing the hatred of those who found their lives called into question by the loving, reconciling acts of Jesus, and the ongoing working to transform and woo humanity back into union with God. When we move beyond self for the sake of the other and in desire for the other we act in participation with the Trinity who is a continual event of such moving and reaching and loving and desiring and forgiving. 

Continue the acts of Jesus, sent by the Father, in the Spirit of Jesus.

Jesus sends the disciples to go and do as he did by breathing on them and saying 'as the Father has sent me, so I send you.' There are eternal “currents of mission in the eternal sending and breathing of Son and Spirit from the Father” and as the disciples join in on those actions Jesus did they do not merely imitate what they remember of Jesus' actions but they go on expressing the presence and activity of God in their acts in the world. As Jesus present day disciples we continue the reconciling and redemptive activity of Jesus. Which includes healing, welcoming, truth-telling, raising up, setting free, and enacting a path of transformed and transforming love. And ultimately, also suffering – either within ourselves, in the movement of loss and grief that is the rupture of the Father and Son at Golgotha, or when we walk alongside another's suffering, with costly presence, or in protest and advocacy. 

Express our specific gifts within the body of community, and make room for each other's gifts rather than drawing attention to ourselves.

The personal God is known to us and by us as we participate with others in community. The relations that make up God as 'Trinity' have a distinct personal quality – steps of the dance that are particular to the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Likewise in the body that is the flesh community of Christ in the world we have particular responsibilities, particular gifts, and it's the way these are honoured and given space that will determine the extent to which a given community will reflect the triune nature of God.

So, on Trinity Sunday, let's invite each other not just to ponder these mysteries of God, but also to join in the dance, to get 'in step' with these movements of relationship that sustain the whole of creation.

A Parable of Hope

Who: Derek Christensen
When: Sunday, 30 November 2008

I am colour blind.  Apparently 8% of the male population is colour blind too.  Colour blindness is not one of the big disabilities, like blindness, deafness or the like.  Yet it contains its own irritations.  It is hard wondering if we have dressed in the right colour combinations, forgotten the advice on what goes with what with nobody to ask.  It is no fun having to ask a shop assistant in a clothing store for help, confessing we are colour blind and occasionally getting a suppressed smirk from a pimpled youth or some odd advice to ‘test’ us.  Nor is it any fun when often the first reaction of people when we say we are colour blind is for them to ask, “So what does this colour look like to you?”  And my heart sinks every time I go to a conference and am given a coloured name tag which is the code for the breakout groups we need to go to.

Maybe the hardest thing is to know others see colours differently, more fully, more accurately, knowing there is a part of God’s world forever closed and forever a mystery.

A short time ago, I was driving home to Auckland from Putaruru after attending the funeral of a grand old matriarch of our first pastorate.  As I was driving just north of Tirau, on a stretch of road I always remember for the record multiple fatality while we lived there, my cellphone rang and foolishly I answered it to hear the voice of one of my daughters.  She started straight in.  “Dad, Caleb’s colour blindness is cured!”   Caleb is one of our two grandsons, both colour blind, probably something to do I guess with my genetic contribution.  She told me how and promised to tell me more later.  Somehow I kept the car steady and on the road as I tried to take in what she had just said.

About a week later it was my birthday and we held a family dinner.  The daughter who rang me was there and also Caleb.  As I sat opening a couple of presents, Caleb came up to me and shyly handed to me a glasses case, his new glasses, his colour blindness glasses!

“Try these Grandad” he said, so I did, carefully easing frames designed for an eight year old on to my ancient head.

We went outside onto the deck, a deck smothered in bougainvillea, above a garden lush at the peak of its spring flowering.  The bougainvillea was red, real red, red as I knew existed but had never seen.  I went downstairs and walked around the garden, a garden that had never been as bright and as sharp and as beautiful as it was that day, under a sky of a depth of blue I had never seen.

 “Is this the real world? I wondered, the world I was seeing for the first time in exactly 67 years?

For twenty minutes I wandered and wondered.  I looked at colours and then looked over the top of the glasses in ‘normal’ mode.  The difference was huge, as though everything before was faded and washed out.  I still remember the intensity of some of the flowers, their colour imprinting images on my brain that nothing will take away.

I had to give the glasses back of course but all night as I lay awake, those colours kept coming back, the secret world most know and take for granted but a world I had never known, reality so close to me and yet permanently inaccessible.  For a few minutes I had seen the world as it really is.

I can see it permanently if I want.  I simply need to drive out to an optometry firm in Kumeu, undergo colour testing to determine the exact nature of my deficiency, then hand over a large cheque and wait for the glasses to be assembled.

This Christmas season, this experience has become for me a symbol of hope.  What is hope?  Hope is a glimpse and a promise.  I have caught a glimpse and have the promise of fulfilment, the hope of seeing the real world.

Jesus came and gave us a glimpse. “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”  And He gave a promise.  “I have come that you might have life and might have it to the fullest measure.”

Hope has come alive for me as never before. 

The Lost Dimension in Religion

The Saturday Evening Post (June 14, 1958 )

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. ….It is the state of being concerned about one’s own being and being universally.

If we define religion as the state of being grasped by an infinite concern, we must say: Man in our time has lost such infinite concern.

The loss of the dimension of depth is caused by the relation of man to his world and to himself in our period, the period in which nature is being subjected scientifically and technically to the control of man. Life in the dimension of depth is replaced by life in the HORIZONTAL dimension. The driving forces of the industrial society of which we are a part, go ahead HORIZONTALLY and not VERTICALLY . … The predominance of the HORIZONTAL dimension over the DIMENSION OF DEPTH has been immensely increased by the opening of space beyond the space of the earth.

If the dimension of depth is lost, the symbols in which life in this dimension has expressed itself must also disappear.

If the symbol of CREATION, which points to the divine ground of everything, is transferred to the HORIZONTAL plane, it becomes a story of events in a removed past for which there is no evidence, but which contradicts every piece of scientific evidence.

If the idea of GOD, which expresses man’s ultimate concern is transferred to the HORIZONTAL plane, God becomes a being among others, whose existence or nonexistence is a matter of inquiry.

Under these pressures, MAN can hardly escape the fate of becoming a THING AMONG THE THING he produces, a bundle of conditioned reflexes without a free, deciding and responsible self. The immense mechanism transforms man himself into an object used by the same mechanism of production and consumption.

IS THERE AN ANSWER?

The religious answer always has the character in spite of. In spite of the loss of dimension of depth, its power is still present, and most present in those who are aware of the loss and are striving to regain it with ultimate seriousness.

The Depth of Existence

But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things God.
— I CORINTHIANS 2:10.

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, 0 Lord.
— PSALM 130:1.

From the words of Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, let us concentrate on one verse: “The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” And from this verse, let us make one word the word “deep” the subject of our meditation. And from the 130th Psalm let us concentrate on that one verse: “Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord.”; and let us make one word the word “depth” also the subject of our meditation.

The words “deep” and “depth” are used in our daily life, in poetry and philosophy, in the Bible, and in many other religious documents, to indicate a spiritual attitude, although the words themselves are taken from a spatial experience. Depth is a dimension of space; yet at the same time it is a symbol for a spiritual quality. Most of our religious symbols have this character, reminding us of our finitude and our bondage to things that are visible. We are and we remain sensuous beings even when we deal with spiritual things. There is, on the other hand, a great wisdom in our language. It is the embodiment of innumerable experiences of the past. It is not by chance alone that we use certain visible symbols and do not use others. Therefore, it is often useful to find the reasons for the choices of the collective mind of former generations. It may become of ultimate significance to us, when we see what is implied in the use of terms like “deep”, “depth”, and “profound”, for the expression of our spiritual life. It may give us the impulse to strive for our own depth.”Deep” in its spiritual use has two meanings: it means either the opposite of “shallow”, or the opposite of “high”. Truth is deep and not shallow; suffering is depth and not height. Both the light of truth and the darkness of suffering are deep. There is a depth in God, and there is a depth out of which the psalmist cries to God. Why is truth deep? And why is suffering deep? And why is the same spatial symbol used for both experiences? These questions shall guide our meditation.

All visible things have a surface. Surface is that side of things which first appears to us. If we look at it, we know what things seem to be. Yet if we act according to what things and persons seem to be, we are disappointed. Our expectations are frustrated. And so we try to penetrate below the surfaces in order to learn what things really are. Why have men always asked for truth? Is it because they have been disappointed with the surfaces, and have known that the truth which does not disappoint dwells below the surfaces in the depth? And therefore, men have dug through one level after another. What seemed true one day was experienced as superficial the next. When we encounter a person, we receive an impression. But often if we act accordingly we are disappointed by his actual behavior. We pierce a deeper level of his character, and for some time experience less disappointment. But soon he may do something which is contrary to all our expectations; and we realize that what we know about him is still superficial. Again we dig more deeply into his true being.

Science has been carried on in this way. Science questions the common assumptions which seem to be true to everyone, to the layman as well as to the average scholar. Then the genius comes and asks for the basis of these accepted assumptions; when they are proved not to be true, an earthquake in science occurs out of the depth. Such earthquakes occurred when Copernicus asked if our sense-impressions could be the ground of astronomy, and when Einstein questioned whether there is an absolute point from which the observer could look at the motions of things. An earthquake occurred when Marx questioned the existence of an intellectual and moral history independent of its economic and social basis. It occurred in the most eruptive way when the first philosophers questioned what everybody had taken for granted from times immemorial — being itself. When they became conscious of the astonishing fact, underlying all facts, that there is something and not nothing, an unsurpassable depth of thought was reached.

In the light of these great and daring steps toward the deep things of our world, we should look at ourselves and at the opinions we take for granted. And we should see what there is in these things of prejudice, derived from our individual preferences and social surroundings. We should be shocked to notice how little of our spiritual world is deeper than the surface, how little would be able to withstand a serious blow. Some-thing terribly tragic happens in all periods of man’s spiritual life: Truths, once deep and powerful, discovered by the greatest geniuses through profound suffering and incredible labor, become shallow and superficial when used in daily discussion. How can and how does this tragedy occur? It can and does unavoidably occur, because there can be no depth without the way to the depth. Truth without the way to truth is dead; if it still be used, it contributes only to the surface of things. Look at the student who knows the content of the hundred most important books of world history, and yet whose spiritual life remains as shallow as it ever was, or perhaps becomes even more superficial. And then look at an uneducated worker who performs a mechanical task day by day, but who suddenly asks himself:? What does it mean, that I do this work? What does it mean for my life? What is the meaning of my life? Because he asks these questions, that man is on the way into depth, whereas the other man, the student of history, dwells on the surface among petrified bodies, brought out of the depth by some spiritual earthquake of the past. The simple worker may grasp truth, even though he cannot answer his questions; the learned scholar may possess no truth, even though he knows all the truths of the past..

The depth of thought is a part of the depth of life. Most of our life continues on the surface. We are enslaved by the routine of our daily lives, in work and pleasure, in business and recreation. We are conquered by innumerable hazards, both good and evil. We are more driven than driving. We do not stop to look at the height above us, or to the depth below us. We are always moving forward, although usually in a circle, which finally brings us back to the place from which we first moved. We are in constant motion and never stop to plunge into the depth. We talk and talk and never listen to the voices speaking to our depth and from our depth. We accept ourselves as we appear to ourselves, and do not care what we really are. Like hit-and-run drivers, we injure our souls by the speed with which we move on the surface; and then we rush away, leaving our bleeding souls alone. We miss, therefore, our depth and our true life. And it is only when the picture that we have of ourselves breaks down completely, only when we find ourselves acting against all the expectations we had derived from that picture, and only when an earthquake shakes and disrupts the surface of our self- knowledge, that we are willing to look into a deeper level of our being.

The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth. It has been described in innumerably different ways. But all those who have been concerned mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated people with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found that they were not what they believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their very lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth.

Today a new form of this method has become famous, the so-called “psychology of depth”. It leads us from the surface of our self-knowledge into levels where things are recorded which we knew nothing about on the surface of our consciousness. It shows us traits of character which contradict everything that we believed we knew about ourselves. It can help us to find the way into our depth, although it cannot help us in an ultimate way, because it cannot guide us to the deepest ground of our being and of all being, the depth of life itself.

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God.

We have considered the depth of the world and the depth of our souls. But we are only in a world through a community of men. And we can discover our souls only through the mirror of those who look at us. There is no depth of life without the depth of the common life. We usually live in history as much on the surface as we live our individual lives. We understand our historical existence as it appears to us, and not as it really is. The stream of daily news, the waves of daily propaganda, and the tides of conventions and sensationalism keep our minds occupied. The noise of these shallow waters prevents us from listening to the sounds out of the depth, to the sounds of what really happens in the ground of our social structure, in the longing hearts of the masses, and in the struggling minds of those who are sensitive to historical changes.

Our ears are as deaf to the cries out of the social depth as they are to the cries out of the depth of our souls. We leave the bleeding victims of our social system as alone, after we have hurt them without hearing their cries in the noise of our daily lives, as we do our own bleeding souls. We believed once that we were living in a period of unavoidable progress to a better humanity. But in the depth of our social structure the forces of destruction had already gathered strength. It once seemed as if human reason had conquered nature and history. But this was surface only; and in the depth of our community the rebellion against the surface had already begun. We produced ever better and ever more perfect tools and means for the life of mankind. But in the depth they had already turned into means and tools for man’s self-destruction. Decades ago prophetic minds looked into the depth. Painters expressed their feeling of the coming catastrophe by disrupting the surface of man and of nature in their pictures. Poets used strange, offensive words and rhythms in order to throw light upon the contrast between what seemed to be and what really was. Beside the psychology of depth, a sociology of depth arose. But it is only now, in the decade in which the most horrible social earthquake of all times has grasped the whole of mankind, that the eyes of the nations have been opened to the depth below them and to the truth about their historical existence. Yet still there are people, even in high places, who turn their eyes from this depth, and who wish to return to the disrupted surface as though nothing had happened. But we who know the depth of what has happened should not be content to rest upon the level that we have reached. We might become despairing and self-despising. Let us rather plunge more deeply into the ground of our historical life, into the ultimate depth of history.

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible ground of history is God. That is what the word means, and it is that to which the words Kingdom of God and Divine Providence point. And if these words do not have much meaning for you, translate them, and speak of the depth of history, of the ground and aim of our social life, and of what you take seriously without reservation in your moral and political activities. Perhaps you should call this depth hope, simply hope. for if you find hope in the ground of history, you are united with the great prophets who were able to look into the depth of their times, who tried to escape it, because they could not stand the horror of their visions, and who yet had the strength to look to an even deeper level and there to discover hope. Their hope did not make them feel ashamed. And no hope shall make us ashamed, if we do not find it on the surface where fools cultivate vain expectations, but rather if we find it in the depth where those with trembling and contrite hearts receive the strength of a hope which is truth.These last words shall lead us to the other meaning that the words “deep” and “depth” have in both secular and religious language: The depth of suffering which is the door, the only door, to the depth of truth. That fact is obvious. It is comfortable to live on the surface so long as it remains unshaken. It is painful to break away from it and to descend into an unknown ground. The tremendous amount of resistance against that act in every human being and the many pretexts invented to avoid the road into the depth are natural. The pain of looking into one’s own depth is too intense for most people. They would rather return to the shaken and devastated surface of their former lives and thoughts.

The same is true of social groups who create all kinds of ideologies and rationalizations in order to resist those who would lead them to the road to the depth of their social existence. They would rather cover the breaches in their surface with small remedies than to dig into the ground. The prophets of all time can tell us of the hating resistance which they provoke by their daring to uncover the depths of social judgment and social hope. And who can really bear the ultimate depth, the burning fire in the ground of all being, without saying with the prophet, “Woe unto me! For I am undone. For mine eyes have seen the Lord of Hosts!”

Our attempt to avoid the road which leads to such a depth of suffering and our use of pretexts to avoid it are natural. One of the methods, and a very superficial one, is the assertion that deep things are sophisticated things, unintelligible to an uneducated mind. But the mark of real depth is its simplicity. If you should say, “This is too profound for me; I cannot grasp it”, you are self-deceptive. For you ought to know that nothing of real importance is too profound for anyone. It is not because it is too profound, but rather because it is too uncomfortable, that you shy away from the truth. Let us not confuse the sophisticated things with the deep things of life. The sophisticated things do not concern us ultimately and it does not matter whether we understand them or not. But the deep things must concern us always, because it matters infinitely whether we are grasped by them or not.

There is a more serious fact about the road to the depth which can be used as an excuse by those who wish to avoid it. The depth in religious language is often used to express the dwelling place of the evil forces, of the daemonic powers, of death and hell. Is not the road into the depth a road into the realm which is controlled by these forces? Are there not the elements of destructiveness and morbidity in the longing for depth? When an American friend of mine expressed to a group of German refugees his admiration of the German depth, we asked ourselves whether we could accept that praise. Was not that depth the soil out of which the most daemonic forces of modern history sprang? Was not that depth a morbid and destructive depth?

Let me answer these questions by telling you an old and beautiful myth: When the soul leaves the body, it must pass over many spheres where daemonic forces rule; and only the soul that knows the right and powerful word can continue its way to the ultimate depth of the Divine Ground. No soul can avoid these tests. If we consider the battles of the saints of all times, of the prophets and the reformers, and of the great creators in all realms, we can recognize the truth of that myth. Everyone has to face the deep things of life. That there is danger is no excuse. The danger must be conquered by knowledge of the liberating word. The German people and many people in all nations did not know the word, and therefore, missing the ultimate and saving depth, were caught by the evil forces of the depth.There is no excuse which permits us to avoid the depth of truth, the only way to which lies through the depth of suffering. Whether the suffering comes from outside and we take it upon ourselves as the road to the depth, or whether it be chosen voluntarily as the only way to deep things; whether it be the way of humility, or the way of revolution; whether the Cross be internal, or whether it be external, the road runs contrary to the way we formerly lived and thought. That is why Isaiah praises Israel, the Servant of God, in the depths of its suffering; and why Jesus calls those blessed who are in the depth of sorrow and persecution, of hunger and thirst in both body and spirit; and why He demands the loss of our lives for the sake of our lives. That is why two great revolutionaries, Thomas Muenzer of the sixteenth century and Karl Marx of the nineteenth century, speak in similar terms of the vocation of those who stand at the limits of humanity in the depths of emptiness, as Muenzer calls it; in the depth of inhumanity, as Marx calls it those of the proletariat to whom they pointed as the bearers of a saving future.

And as it is in our lives, so it is in our thought: every element seems to be reversed. Religion and Christianity have often been accused of an irrational and paradoxical character. Certainly much stupidity, superstition and fanaticism have been connected with them. The command to sacrifice one’s intellect is more daemonic than divine. For man ceases to be man if he ceases to be an intellect. But the depth of sacrifice, of suffering, and of the Cross is demanded of our thinking. Every step into the depth of thought is a breaking away from the surface of former thoughts. When this breaking away occurred in men like Paul, Augustine and Luther, such extreme suffering was involved that it was experienced as death and hell. But they accepted such sufferings as the road to the deep things of God, as the spiritual way, as the way to truth. They expressed the truth they envisioned in spiritual words that is, in words which were contrary to all surface reasoning, but harmonious with the depth of reason, which is divine. The paradoxical language of religion reveals the way to the truth as a way to the depth, and therefore as a way of suffering and sacrifice. He alone who is willing to go that way is able to understand the paradoxes of religion.

The last thing I want to say about the way to the depth concerns one of these paradoxes. The end of the way is joy. And joy is deeper than suffering. It is ultimate. Let me express this in the words of a man who, in passionate striving for the depth, was caught by destructive forces and did not know the word to conquer them. Friedrich Nietzsche writes: “The world is deep, and deeper than the day could read. Deep is its woe. Joy deeper still than grief can be. Woe says: Hence, go! But joys want all eternity, want deep, profound eternity”

Eternal joy is the end of the ways of God. This is the message of all religions. The Kingdom of God is peace and joy. This is the message of Christianity. But eternal joy is not to be reached by living on the surface. It is rather attained by breaking through the surface, by penetrating the deep things of ourselves, of our world, and of God. The moment in which we reach the last depth of our lives is the moment in which we can experience the joy that has eternity within it, the hope that cannot be destroyed, and the truth on which life and death are built. For in the depth is truth; and in the depth is hope; and in the depth is joy.

Futurechurch Conference - Musings for Citysiders

The Futurechurch conference was a gathering in Auckland of people from throughout NZ who were concerned to explore what the church might look like, and what it might concern itself with, in the coming years. The demographic of those who attended was interesting – significant numbers of ‘clergy’ or people in staff roles in institutional churches, probably at least half of the participants were Presbyterian, and I was the youngest person there (!) This demographic had to do with the timing of the conference…during the week...which was a deliberate but difficult decision on behalf of the planning team, and also the particular networks of those involved in planning and publicity.

A great deal of the value of the conference for me was the opportunity to prepare and offer material in the form of workshops, facilitated conversations and brief key-note input. Also, it was great being part of the planning of something like this…seeing what goes into organising a conference, and also working to generate an occasion where all participants would be fully involved, rather than passive listeners to a series of academic addresses. And, as usual with these kinds of things, the ongoing value will be in the form of contacts, conversations, relationships with people with some shared values and interests.

Most significantly for me, the conference has created a bond between Cityside and St Lukes that should result in some collaborative worship and other activities down the track. Including finding out how a formerly declining Presbyterian parish now supports two flourishing youth groups and Sunday school.

We gathered on the first day to meet and hear where we were all from, to weave fabric into our ‘loom’ to invite the Spirit into our midst, and to consider where/who we were voyaging from, with, and to. The following days began with coffee supplied by the Cityside Coffee Project (a greatly appreciated dimension of the conference!), some worship and some storytelling – brief snapshots of things people were doing or producing in their own corner of the world. Then there were workshops and facilitated conversations on topics ranging from ‘the role of the institutional church in futurechurch’ to ‘believing and belonging nowhere’ for those who travel outside the church… and a whole lot of ideas in between. After lunch, there was ‘hub exchange’ – a chance for the whole group to get together and nut out issues around the concept of the future of the church, and then more workshops and conversations. The evening sessions, open to the public and well attended, began with short addresses by the ‘animators’, and then became an ongoing conversation into which anyone could offer input. The topics covered were: ‘disconnected? our relationship to the tradition’, ‘nz metaphors in theology’, and ‘strange bedfellows…evangelicals and progressive Christians.’ On the Friday night, Antony from St Lukes and I (together with new friend Cheryl, who works down the road from Mark in Melbourne) offered some stations-based worship with Cam and Andrew creating a great soundscape. This was a highlight for many.

So, those were the nuts and bolts. What did I get out of it? What do I have to pass on to Citysiders? In one respect, the conference as it panned out didn’t really feel like it was ‘for us’ in the sense that the issues and the questions being raised didn’t always seem to fit Cityside’s identity, ethos, or phase of life. Like I said, I was the youngest person there. Also, there seemed to be a specific group of people missing from the discussion…that is, the ‘emerging church’ element…small independent groups, intentional community practitioners, people who are into reforming or emerging from the non-traditional wing of the church, or whose interests are in ‘incarnational mission’. I have felt that this group have been better represented in the events that Servants have organised with visiting speakers such as Dave Andrews and Charles Ringma.

Having said that, the discussions and conversations have yielded the following reflections:

• The institutional, traditional church is in decline. But, I don’t think it’s going to lay down and die. I think the seeds of reform are well and truly planted, and many of these churches are beginning to see how their content and structure and assumptions need to adapt to the present climate. At the same time, many people have left the church and formed communities, small groups, clusters, gatherings. My feeling is that the future of the church lies in there being a more positive interface between these smaller groups and the institutional church. I think there is a role for the church in being visible within society, offering opportunities for gathering and worship, pooling resources to fund a variety of initiatives, and being a voice and agent for social transformation. It can hold the tradition, drawing on hundreds of years of insight and learning and practice, and offering people engagement with something that is not fragile and transitory, but has a history (albeit mixed), and some sense of transcendence. However, I see the role of this church to be to free people up to engage fully in the world around them, and to resource and encourage people to form smaller, creative, experimental groups who explore, connect with the world, and who are able to inform, critique and change both the church and the society of which they’re a part.

• I don’t think it’s for the institutional church to seek to be ‘relevant’ so that more people will come in. I think that it should be authentic, and engaged and releasing of people to follow their gifts. If people connect with God by means of it, great. If people engage with God in the context of a small group and never hook into the institution, fine. But I think that the church continues to have a role in enabling and resourcing (financially, educationally, and with buildings etc.) the initiatives of those who are already a part of it, in collaboration with all sorts of groups and people in the wider community. I’m not really sure where Cityside fits in here…are we the institutional church, or one of those creative smaller groups? Sometimes I feel like we’re a mixture of both…there are many small groups and initiatives that Citysiders are involved in that I’d like to see us supporting and releasing to ‘do their thing’ under the Cityside umbrella…so in that sense maybe we’re more like ‘trad church’. But if you compare us to any of the mainline churches, and their infrastructure and hierarchy, we’re much more like an experimental group on the edge. It’s a good tension to hold.

• There are two shifts that I see taking place in relation to the Church, and some groups are making one shift without the other, while some are doing both. These are ecclesiology (the form, structure, identity, and activities of the church) and theology (understandings of who/what God is, and the related issues of salvation and what it means to be ‘Christian.’) Many within the emerging church movement have embraced creative ideas to do with reforming ecclesiology, but haven’t really begun to address the theological questions. And at the same time the progressive wing of the traditional church has done a lot of work on wrestling with the theology, but the ecclesiology hasn’t shifted. There are some conversations still to be had around these questions. An interesting experiment for Citysiders: go to www.tcpc.org, click on ‘the 8 points’ under the ‘about us’ tab and see the extent to which these points represent your own theological views. I’d be interested to hear your responses.

• In a consumer world that tends towards niche markets, it is easy to choose one dimension of Christianity and make it the thing against which all utterances are measured. It was an eye-opener for me to come from within the (largely conservative) Baptist stable, into an environment of marked ‘theological correctness’ with respect to certain specific issues (race/treaty, social justice, gender and sexual identity, for example). As it happens, I agree with the perspectives upheld by most at the conference. It was nice going from being a theological alien within the Baptist environment to a sense of like mindedness with this other church grouping. However, I did come away with the nagging feeling that some social trends had replaced the gospel, or Jesus Christ, as the measure of what it’s important to agree on, or conform to. For myself, one of the important things about the diversity of the church is that we don’t all ‘think with one mind’ on issues, but that we learn to differ graciously and respectfully with one another.

• There’s an energy that comes from being a ‘sect’ that’s different from the energy in being a ‘church.’ This was the distinction made by Kevin Ward from his research on the future of mainline Protestantism in the West. He calls churches like the Presys, the Anglicans, and the Catholics ‘Church’ because they are sustained by birth…you’re affiliated to them by birth and infant baptism, and in theory, you stay there till you die. Independent churches, including Baptists, are ‘sects’…that is, they are sustained by conversion, people choose to be part of them, and enter membership as adults. I have resisted being Baptist for a long time. But in the context of the conference, I found myself feeling strangely warm towards the particular kind of energy, a kind of ‘outward energy’, and an autonomy, a creative freedom, that is part of the Baptist tradition. What a pity it seems to revert so often as conformity, and ghetto mentality. But the potential is there for something good…

• Cityside has a great deal to offer, and as we enter into another phase in our life—that of being more suburban than urban, and increasing numbers of children—if we can work out ways of making this shift and still embracing the questions, the explorations, and still come up with creative ways of connecting to our world, the culture of which we’re a part, then we will have a story to inspire others. Most emerging church initiatives have been ‘single generation’ – they last for a while, and then fizzle when the energy of their founder/s fades, or there’s a change to the social dynamics, or burn out hits as a result of the attempt to reinvent the wheel every week/month in an attempt to avoid institutionalising. This isn’t the end of the world…many have made valuable contributions while they lasted. But on Sunday, after being at the Futurechurch conference, and then coming to be part of our congregation, with all its beautiful children, I felt strongly that it is our task to keep building something authentic, positive, courageous, creative and truthful – for ourselves, and to pass on to these young people, so that they might meet God in their own ways, in an environment that nurtures them as whole persons – body, mind, spirit.

The Big Here and the Long Now

It was 1978.
I was new to New York.

A rich acquaintance had invited me to a housewarming party, and, as my cabdriver wound his way down increasingly potholed and dingy streets, I began wondering whether he’d got the address right. Finally he stopped at the doorway of a gloomy, unwelcoming industrial building. Two winos were crumpled on the steps, oblivious. There was no other sign of life in the whole street.

“I think you may have made a mistake”, I ventured.

But he hadn’t. My friend’s voice called “Top Floor!” when I rang the bell, and I thought – knowing her sense of humour – “Oh – this is going to be some kind of joke!” I was all ready to laugh. The elevator creaked and clanked slowly upwards, and I stepped out — into a multi-million dollar palace. The contrast with the rest of the building and the street outside couldn’t have been starker.

I just didn’t understand. Why would anyone spend so much money building a place like that in a neighbourhood like this? Later I got into conversation with the hostess. “Do you like it here?” I asked. “It’s the best place I’ve ever lived”, she replied. “But I mean, you know, is it an interesting neighbourhood?” “Oh – the neighbourhood? Well…that’s outside!” she laughed.

The incident stuck in my mind. How could you live so blind to your surroundings? How could you not think of ‘where I live’ as including at least some of the space outside your four walls, some of the bits you couldn’t lock up behind you? I felt this was something particular to New York: I called it “The Small Here”. I realised that, like most Europeans, I was used to living in a bigger Here.

I noticed that this very local attitude to space in New York paralleled a similarly limited attitude to time. Everything was exciting, fast, current, and temporary. Enormous buildings came and went, careers rose and crashed in weeks. You rarely got the feeling that anyone had the time to think two years ahead, let alone ten or a hundred. Everyone seemed to be ‘passing through’. It was undeniably lively, but the downside was that it seemed selfish, irresponsible and randomly dangerous. I came to think of this as “The Short Now”, and this suggested the possibility of its opposite - “The Long Now”.

‘Now’ is never just a moment. The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you’re in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes. It’s ironic that, at a time when humankind is at a peak of its technical powers, able to create huge global changes that will echo down the centuries, most of our social systems seem geared to increasingly short nows. Huge industries feel pressure to plan for the bottom line and the next shareholders’ meeting. Politicians feel forced to perform for the next election or opinion poll. The media attract bigger audiences by spurring instant and heated reactions to ‘human interest’ stories while overlooking longer-term issues – the real human interest.

Meanwhile, we struggle to negotiate our way through an atmosphere of Utopian promises and dystopian threats, a minefield studded with pots of treasure. We face a future where almost anything could happen. Will we be crippled by global warming, weapons proliferation and species depletion, or liberated by space travel, world government and molecule-sized computers? We don’t even want to start thinking about it. This is our peculiar form of selfishness, a studied disregard of the future. Our astonishing success as a technical civilisation has led us to complacency – to expect that things will probably just keep getting better.

But there is no reason to believe this. We might be living in the last gilded bubble of a great civilisation about to collapse into a new Dark Age, which, given our hugely amplified and widespread destructive powers, could be very dark indeed.

If we want to contribute to some sort of tenable future, we have to reach a frame of mind where it comes to seem unacceptable - gauche, uncivilised - to act in disregard of our descendants. Such changes of social outlook are quite possible – it wasn’t so long ago, for example, that we accepted slavery, an idea which most of us now find repellent. We felt no compulsion to regard slaves as fellow-humans and thus placed them outside the circle of our empathy. This changed as we began to realise – perhaps it was partly the glory of their music – that they were real people, and that it was no longer acceptable that we should cripple their lives just so that ours could be freer. It just stopped feeling right.

The same type of change happened when we stopped employing kids to work in mines, or when we began to accept that women had voices too. Today we view as fellow-humans many whom our grandparents may have regarded as savages, and even feel some compulsion to share their difficulties - aid donations by individuals to others they will never meet continue to increase. These extensions of our understanding of who qualifies for our empathy, indicate that culturally, economically and emotionally we live in an increasingly Big Here – unable to lock a door behind us and pretend the rest of the world is just ‘outside’.

We don’t yet, however, live in The Long Now. Our empathy doesn’t extend far forward in time. We need now to start thinking of our great-grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren, as other fellow-humans who are going to live in a real world which we are incessantly, though only semi-consciously, building. But can we accept that our actions and decisions have distant consequences, and yet still dare do anything? It was an act of complete faith to believe, in the days of slavery, that a way of life which had been materially very successful could be abandoned and replaced by another, as yet unimagined, but somehow it happened. We need to make a similar act of imagination now.

Since this act of imagination concerns our relationship to time, a Millennium is a good moment to articulate it. Can we grasp this sense of ourselves as existing in time, part of the beautiful continuum of life? Can we become inspired by the prospect of contributing to the future? Can we shame ourselves into thinking that we really do owe those who follow us some sort of consideration – just as the people of the nineteenth century shamed themselves out of slavery? Can we extend our empathy to the lives beyond ours?

I think we can. Humans are capable of a unique trick: creating realities by first imagining them, by experiencing them in their minds. When Martin Luther King said “I have a dream…” , he was inviting others to dream it with him. Once a dream becomes shared in that way, current reality gets measured against it and then modified towards it. As soon as we sense the possibility of a more desirable world, we begin behaving differently – as though that world is starting to come into existence, as though, in our minds at least, we’re already there. The dream becomes an invisible force which pulls us forward. By this process it starts to come true. The act of imagining something makes it real.

This imaginative process can be seeded and nurtured by artists and designers, for, since the beginning of the 20th century, artists have been moving away from an idea of art as something finished, perfect, definitive and unchanging towards a view of artworks as processes or the seeds for processes – things that exist and change in time, things that are never finished. Sometimes this is quite explicit - as in Walter de Maria’s ‘Lightning Field’ – a huge grid of metal poles designed to attract lightning. Many musical compositions don’t have one form, but change unrepeatingly over time – many of my own pieces and Jem Finer’s Artangel installation “LongPlayer” are like this. Artworks in general are increasingly regarded as seeds – seeds for processes that need a viewer’s (or a whole culture’s) active mind in which to develop. Increasingly working with time, culture-makers see themselves as people who start things, not finish them.

And what is possible in art becomes thinkable in life. We become our new selves first in simulacrum, through style and fashion and art, our deliberate immersions in virtual worlds. Through them we sense what it would be like to be another kind of person with other kinds of values. We rehearse new feelings and sensitivities. We imagine other ways of thinking about our world and its future.

Danny Hillis’s Clock of the Long Now is a project designed to achieve such a result. It is, on the face of it, far-fetched to think that one could make a clock which will survive and work for the next 10,000 years. But the act of even trying is valuable: it puts time and the future on the agenda and encourages thinking about them. As Stewart Brand, a colleague in The Long Now Foundation, says:

Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think.

The 20th Century yielded its share of icons, icons like Muhammad Ali and Madonna that inspired our attempts at self-actualisation and self- reinvention. It produced icons to our careless and misdirected The Big Here power – the mushroom cloud, Auschwitz – and to our capacity for compassion – Live Aid, the Red Cross.

In this, the 21 st century, we may need icons more than ever before. Our conversation about time and the future must necessarily be global, so it needs to be inspired and consolidated by images that can transcend language and geography. As artists and culture-makers begin making time, change and continuity their subject-matter, they will legitimise and make emotionally attractive a new and important conversation.

UK Trip

Reflections on UK Trip - August/September 2004.

 (As this is written for the multiple Cityside, Urban Seed, Collins Street Baptist audiences I apologise for names and references that may be meaningless to any – or all of you.)

Being in the UK is always great fun. Getting there is never! This trip had been arranged for almost a year, and so well before my transition from Cityside to Urban Seed began or was even contemplated.

London was experiencing its wettest August in 50 years so I didn’t mind having to spend the first two days inside writing my seminars and generally preparing what I hadn’t been able to do before leaving Melbourne in a flurry of work.

I was staying with good friends Dave and Pat Tomlinson in the St. Lukes Church Vicarage – always a most hospitable place with old friends and new coming through and living nearby. I managed to catch up with Citysiders Grace Chan and Mel Taylor.

Greenbelt Festival – the 31st – began early for me with Andrew Jones http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com) organising a gathering of alternative worship/emerging church people from USA, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Over the next four days I would do two seminars and one panel discussion, and take in as many seminars and experiences as possible. Greenbelt is undoubtedly the best Christian based music and arts festival in the world. The range and depth of what is on offer is overwhelming. Around 18 000 punters turned up (www.greenbelt.org.uk) including Citysider Karl Berzins, and friends from all over the world. There are more than 30 venues operating concurrently; 100’s of seminars from people like Anita Roddick, Archbishop Williams, Jeffrey John, John Bell, Shane Claiborne; more music arts and drama than you can cope with; and around 30 different worship events from Gothic Eucharist to Catholic Mass via Taize, Iona and alt. worship.

Unfortunately an over-ripe Sweet and Sour Chicken with rice took it’s toll and I didn’t see much of the last day of the festival but did manage to stay upright long enough to complete my seminar on ‘Freedom From the Tyranny of Worship Leaders’ ie treating worship as an art form and the curator model of worship leading. It was good to spend time on several occasions with friends of Urban Seed, Ched and Elaine Meyers over from USA.

From Greenbelt (Cheltenham) to Oxford is a short trip. I stayed in an apartment at Regent’s Park College. One of the few Baptist establishments around the world with serious history. Oxford is full of history. Sipping soup (my first meal since the chicken) in the Eagle and Child Public House in St Giles; established in 1650, J R Tolkien and CS Lewis were regular patrons and often held forth there….taking time out for reflection in the Oratory – Catholic Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga. Built  in 1875 Cardinal Newman preached there and Gerard Manley Hopkins was curate. The Captain of the Wallingford 2nd Eleven Cricket team also lives in Oxford. It was great to catch up with Richard Body and Sarah and Mike Puttick.  All Citysiders. Sarah has recently had twin girls. I also visited the alternative worship community (‘Home’) that Richard is part of.

Then it was time to work again. ‘A Church for the Arts’ conference was held at the Ark-T Centre housed at John Bunyan Baptist Church in Oxford. Thursday was titled ‘ Worship as Art’, Friday ‘What Lies Beneath, and Saturday ‘Art as Worship’.  This was the first time I have spoken at depth and length about Cityside and what has shaped it and me over the last 12 years. Not wanting to present Cityside as a model for anyone else I have previously declined to do more than make passing references and illustrations in seminars. 

Around 40 –50 people attended each day with most staying through. It was great to have some Americans over for the event. Old friends and new. Pete and Tess Ward put it all together (‘Liquid Church’, etc, etc) and it was sponsored by the Church Mission Society, Regent’s Park College and the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture, Kings College, and the Ark-T Centre. The punters were a refreshing collection of mostly older people from a variety of denominations and mostly women. The response was very encouraging and I had some good conversations with people. Jonny Baker reviews the event at http://jonnybaker.blogs.com as does Karen Ward at http://submerge.typepad.com/

Then it was back to London. Sitting in the back of the car Mac Laptops on our knees exchanging files, making movies all the way with Karen Ward from Church of the Apostles (Anglican/Lutheran/Emerging) in Seattle  (http://www.apostleschurch.org/home.php). I love what Karen is doing there.

A chance to catch up with some more people (Stephanie Hoe, Cityside) and to meet properly with a young guy I have had email contact with for more than a year. Meeting Simon and attending Headspace was a delight. Sitting on the floor in Christ Church & Upton Chapel (History stretching back to 1783, but a building rebuilt in 1941 after being bombed out) where the massive pulpit used by Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, FB Meyer and others had stood until recently. It had been deconstructed and turned into the bar and counter for a café used by a new worshipping community. (http://www.church.co.uk/). I’m not sure what the ghosts of the past would have thought.

A couple of hours at the Oasis headquarters (www.oasistrust.org) was invaluable for meeting the staff, evaluating the team they sent to work with Urban Seed in May-August this year, and in planning for next years team.

I should have realised that the trip home was going to be interesting when I got onto the Underground for Heathrow airport and the electronic signs continually indicated that the train was ‘For Cockfosters’, which is in the opposite direction. But a quick check of successive stations indicated that the train was going the right way! Forty five minutes later, three stops and a few minutes from the airport we ground to a halt with the announcement that a suspicious package had been left unattended at the next station and the train could not proceed until given clearance. Twenty minutes later a further announcement indicated that no one knew how long we would be stopped. Two hundred people, mostly with large suitcases and packs piled off the train in search of a taxi or bus in the village we were stopped at. One hundred and twenty of us eventually squeezed on a double-decker bus, licensed for 60, on it’s regular run to Heathrow. Communitas resulted from the many liminal moments! Forty five minutes later and within sight of Heathrow the bus stopped and the driver announced that his driving hours were up and he could take us no further! This is the stuff that reality TV is made of. Eventually another bus on it’s regular run arrived and we were deposited at Heathrow. I made my flight, but others would not have made theirs. 

The long trip home was made pleasantly memorable by the surprise meeting of David Craig from Cityside as I wandered around Changi Airport in Singapore. We were on the same flight to New Zealand.

Thanks for your interest and support as I travelled. I appreciate everyone who made the trip possible for me. I don’t take the experience or the freedom for granted.

Read no further unless you want ramblings and reflections of a more philosophical bent….

REFLECTING ON…

Travel always makes me reflective. Much of that reflection is personal ‘meaning-of-life’ stuff. Below are some undeveloped thoughts of a broader nature.

As has been the case on some previous occasions, my experiences of the alternative worship/emerging church stream of church life continued to worry me as well as inspire me. While most alt.worship services at Greenbelt were full to their venue limits I came away from the UK feeling that it’s still all quite incestuous and self gratifying, with little happening that is making any significant impact on the shape of the Church or the culture. The 50 older people at Oxford gave me more hope for the future of the Church than most alternative worship gatherings I have attended. 

While I think that D.A. Carson’s recent body-slamming critique of the Emerging Church movement is unchristian, and yet typically Christian in attacking form rather than substance, I also believe that he misses the point entirely. What he sounds are useful warnings to the movement but hardly a significant analysis. (See www.kevers.net/mills_staley_response.pdf for an excellent summary and response)

I am more convinced than ever that the future of the Church in the West doesn’t lie in the pure alternative worship or emerging church models. Or at least not solely or predominantly in these models. In 50 years time these movements, if remembered at all, will be seen as eddies in the flow of church life rather than a new stream. As a generalisation, there is often too much emphasis on aesthetics and too little on spirituality and an encounter with God. We offer froth and bubble rather than depth. The ancient traditions of the Church are too often neglected altogether or reframed with too little understanding of the essence of what is being adapted. The Future didn’t come down in the last shower. Most groups seem unable to do worship in natural light or without heavy reliance on technology. And in particular, I think we’ve got our leadership model wrong.

My lack of enthusiasm for the corporate, pastor-driven model actively promoted in New Zealand Baptist Churches is well known. It assumes a mechanistic leadership model that will work in every situation. It ignores the intuitive, messy, subtle, and often mysterious ways in which people come together, interact and grow as followers of Christ, and the way those people might be given leadership. We’ve been misled by the ‘vision’ promoters. Worse still, while many churches, particularly Baptist Churches in New Zealand, have relentlessly been pursuing a corporate model of leadership and management, globally corporations have been looking to religion for insights into spirituality, relationships, trust, intuition, mystery, community, commitment, cooperation and even love! They’re applying these to emerging corporate leadership styles while we in the Church apply the models they are leaving behind! To be ahead of the play all the Church needs to do is to apply the values it knows best to its leadership models.

It seems to me that the rock bottom core value of any church community that will make an impact in postmodern culture is community. While the emerging church movement has always been very strong on valuing community it has rarely found a way to offer that to more than 20 people at a time. Significant community building in larger groups only comes from pastoral leadership that is truly pastoral; in touch with the real life of people, has life experience, and is self aware and self confident enough to be open ended and accepting of the breadth of life situations people now experience. It is leadership that empowers the creativity of others and isn’t threatened by that. This sort of leadership is unlikely to come from a 20, or even 30 year old creative who is anti-mainstream church.  Most alt. church settings have been loathe to acknowledge any visible form of leadership and have bent over backwards to be ‘all things to all people.’ I don’t think that works in the long term.

Other values are also important in the life of a community of Faith – creativity, acceptance, real participation, servant leadership, collaboration, minimalist structure – but without strong pastoral giftings in clear leadership I think that any new church is likely to fail. Institutions have tended to fund young, creative people to start new churches on the assumption that these are the people most in touch with emerging culture. This may or may not be correct but it is the wrong characteristic to look for. The characteristics that make up a successful pastoral leader in postmodern culture are much more complex, even mysterious, than that. Len Sweet talks about the need for ProhetPriests ie leaders who look forward from a place of being firmly grounded in the daily reality of God’s interactions with people. 

I also think we need to recognise that there is a difference between a ‘postmodern church’ and a ‘church that attracts postmodern people’. I know of some successful examples of the latter but none of the former. (I know that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.) If building ‘a postmodern church’ is the goal, I think success will always be elusive. If looking for ways to sustain and resource Christian spirituality among people who may be postmodern is the goal, success is more likely. (Maybe then we will be able to produce worship events that enable people to encounter God in the light of day as well as in the darkened, controlled-light environments we have become so good at creating!)

What is my measure of success? Numbers. I have previously steered away from making numbers a significant criteria, but if after 13 or 14 years of experimentation the movement hasn’t produced some examples of larger (say 80 plus adults in UK, Australia and New Zealand), self sustaining and growing communities, then serious questions need to be asked of the investments made. My Australian friends think I’m being overly critical and that the scene is different in Australia with it’s stronger emphasis on missional-church principles. I’m not convinced. I have no time for ‘growth for growths sake’ but equally am convinced the Church can’t stay where it is. So authentic growth should be expected.

The way forward? At least one possibility is that we should be funding ‘emerged leaders’ rather than just ‘emerging leaders’. Emerged leaders who have a track record of being able to engage with their local communities and provide rituals from a Christian worldview that engage with the needs of those communities. Pastoral giftings, creativity, integrity, openness, hospitality and life experience should be some of the primary criteria for church leaders and planters. These people may need retraining to understand the new world they are part of, and to be exposed to some new ways of doing the old tasks of pastoral care, servant leadership, worship that engages the whole person, stages of spiritual formation etc. But we shouldn’t make age a primary criteria for pastoral selection. (Perhaps I need to revive my idea for an ‘Emerged Leaders Conference’.)

I also think that when we set up an emerging leader in some entirely new emerging church project we need to invest in more accountability and much stronger mentoring/working-alongside/apprenticeship models of training. We have what we call ‘emerging leaders’ and we group them together to support each other – away from ‘traditional ‘ leadership styles so they won’t be tainted — but we assume they already know how to lead in an emerging-way. Why would they? What is an ‘emerging leader’ anyway? Generally someone under 30, with at least a measure of creativity, a dislike or disdain for mainstream church, who has a relationship with a funding provider and who can write funding proposals. Since any proposal for ‘doing church’ seems better than the status quo we fund them. But most of our new ventures don’t see themselves as church. They see themselves as small experimental communities. So they stay small. They don’t take risks. They have no models for structure or leadership except what they may have seen and rejected in other places. They are doomed to fail and we who fund them and give them hope are responsible.

Church-as-small-group doesn’t need funding. They should be led by people who do them in their spare time. The variety and intimacy they offer will always be important for a minority of people. We need to fund projects with potentially larger impact.

Maybe every new project should be under the umbrella of an established church (now there’s a thought) – perhaps where an emerged leader is being retrained? Or at least under the regular mentorship of an established yet flexible leader. This means that change and influence can go both ways and resourcing is available at all levels. Liquid church (Book of same title by Pete Ward) is a vital concept, but I don’t think it works when starting from nothing. It needs an established community of Faith to flow from and around. I think we’ve often placed too much emphasis on needing a neutral venue and looking for non-offensive strategies.

Well, that’s some random, not well-developed or integrated thoughts had while travelling. There is no personal criticism of any individual or church community intended by any of the above comments. As always I reserve the right to change my mind on further reflection or because I was wrong or for no obvious reason at all..

Mark Pierson, 20 September, 2004

mark@cityside.org.nz

mark.pierson@urbanseed.org 

Forward to Basics

>>>This article first appeared in Reality Magazine, October/November 2001 by Mark Pierson.<<<

I’m a U2 fan. I love their music, their style, their involvement in the culture and causes, their ability to not believe their own publicity, that they’re reinventing themselves as they get older, and I love their spirituality. I’m not a groupie and I don’t own every album, but I have been fortunate enough to participate in their last three concert tours – Lovetown, ZooTV and POP. Each overwhelming in it’s own way. Each an experience in which I sensed the presence of God and ‘my heart was strangely warmed’.

After the massive high tech multimedia assaults of ZooTV and POP the current Elevation tour is a low-tech contrast. As this concert is unlikely to get any further ‘downunder‘ than our cousins across the ditch, the best way to absorb some of the experience, beyond numerous replays of the album, is by visiting U2.com. And at this site the best insights, as always on a U2 tour, come from the diaries of show designer Willie Williams.

Willie is one of the top five concert lighting and show designers in the world and has worked with David Bowie, The Coors, REM, and many other artists. He’s been doing U2 shows for more than two decades. His diaries are always humorous and insightful, not only into the backstage workings of a rock’n roll tour, but in his deconstructing of it all and his making connections between that and literature, movies and world history. He provides a fascinating contextual commentary as he exegetes the daily activities of the most successful band in the world.

I think some of his comments about the Elevation Tour also have something to say about worship as we know it. On 24th of March following the opening concert in Fort Lauderdale he wrote, ‘I coined the phrase "Forward to Basics" in a Rolling Stone interview, which was a bit of a throwaway line at the time, but it could be a most apt description. There are certainly echoes of U2 shows gone by…but the whole event is certainly something new…it’s so completely against the grain of what else is out there…’ Forward to Basics. I like that. It could become the mission statement of a generation of worship curators working on new approaches to doing worship. It picks up elements of both the need to decide what is basic to what we do, and also the need to place those basics in the context of the emerging culture in which we live. It acknowledges that not all of the past is bad or unusable while at the same time it prevents us from simply repeating past patterns because ‘they worked then’. (‘The good old days’ never existed outside of churchgoer’s selective and idealised memories.) But there is much that is worth recovering and reframing from the past for current and future generations of worshippers.

What would you select as the ‘basics’ of Christian worship that should be carried forward as we shape worship for new generations and subcultures? Among the people I asked that question of, the most common response had to do with authenticity. They talked about wanting worship that was authentic and relevant to who they were and where they were at. Worship that acknowledged their humanity and the complexities and realities of their life. Worship that drew them into God and the community of God’s people where they knew they would be accepted and not despised, not dogmatic ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches.

This was felt to be one of the basics of worship: taking all that we are into dialogue with God. Not having to leave any parts of who we are at the door. Honest, non-sexist connecting with God and allowing our lives to be realigned within ourselves, with each other, and with God. Andre Tapias, in a work that I have not been able to name or source, described his top 5 qualities of worship in a postmodern culture as, authenticity, community, abandonment of dogma, focus on the arts, and diversity. To which I would add a sixth, participation. These are the six basics of worship that I am suggesting we need to move forward to.

Authenticity is the most important. It is also the most difficult to achieve. When a community gathers to worship there is a tremendous weight of history and expectation that comes into play. One person’s authenticity is seen by another person as a lack of self-control, or being overly emotional, or sloppy. At it’s heart the call for authenticity is a call for honesty and integrity in what we are asked to do in worship and in the words that are said about God and about those who are at worship. ‘Worship’ that is slick or superficial isn’t worship and doesn’t enable worship. Where is the lasting benefit and life changing power of worship that ignores or overrides the reality of how I’m encountering life?

Like the Mother’s Day service that over hypes the values of motherhood and leaves unacknowledged the childless, the single, the aborted, the stillborn, the bereaved, and those unable to have children, in-authentic worship becomes whoreship. We prostitute ourselves when the song leader drives us to expressing beliefs we don’t believe, when the preacher preaches rather than lives, when going to church is a segmented compartment of our being unconnected to any other part of our living, and when we are unable to express our doubts and fears among those who profess to being sinners saved by grace.

Community flows out of authenticity. Being loving and accepting is easier when we realise we’re all in the same boat. As long as some people check their real life at the door as they come into church, community will remain allusive. Holding common beliefs isn’t enough. Being in the same place doing the same things doesn’t help much either. We have to know each other at some level as well. Authentic worship builds community.

Abandoning dogma isn’t a plea to give up on the basics of the faith. Rather it’s a reminder that good worship is more interested in connecting the grace and love of God with the real and tangible issues of life than with theoretical ones. If our corporate worship doesn’t address the realities of our life’s it lacks authenticity and will not build community.

Focussing on the arts in worship is a plea for passion and creativity. A call to recognise a broader range of gifts in worship. A recognition that people learn in a variety of ways and through all five senses rather than just numbness in the backside. It doesn’t necessarily mean using a painting in place of a sermon (but it might).

Acceptance and encouragement of diversity in all it’s forms - ethnicity, age, background, intelligence, time on the journey, maturity, perspective, ability, etc- among the worshipping congregation can only strengthen the authenticity of the community at worship. Participation almost seems to not need to be mentioned after what has been said above. Perhaps that’s why Tapia didn’t separate it out, it flows from the other basics. But I want to emphasise it lest anyone think that authentic worship that builds community and reflects the reality of the people worshipping can be planned and led by one man. It can’t. Not even by one woman. Not even by one theologically educated and ordained person. Liturgy is the work of the people. Active involvement in shaping our worship week by week is a basic right of every follower of

Anti-Excellence

<<< this article first appeared in Reality Magazine, August/September 2001. Mark Pierson >>>

I’m anti excellence in church life.

And I’m particularly anti excellence in worship. It’s not a popular opinion to express in some churches today. In fact excellence has become such an important value in these circles that they sponsor and attend expensive conferences devoted to the theme.

I don’t know much about what happens at these junkets for pastors, but I did come very close to attending one earlier this year. I even had my ticket, but when I looked at the programme and discovered that the creative-arts-in-worship track consisted entirely of an exhaustive treatment of every aspect of vocal technique and worship-band performance I decided that staying away would be my contribution to excellence that week.

I wonder if excellence is a cultural value rather than a biblical one?

I’m sure someone will quote a First Testament verse referring to the excellence required of artisans working on the temple in King Solomon’s time, but I think they’d be hard pushed to squeeze one (even that tenuously linked) from the Second Testament. Particularly from the lips of Jesus.

I don’t think excellence in worship is a goal that has any biblical support. Which isn’t to say that excellence in church life is always bad. It doesn’t have to be, but a preoccupation with it is never good - particularly when those promoting it have been reading books like In Search of Excellence1 and A Passion for Excellence.2 Here’s what the latter of these widely read and revered books has to say about excellence.

“Even a pocket of excellence can fill your life like a wall-to-wall-revolution. We have found that the majority of passionate activists who hammer away at the old boundaries have given up family vacations . . . birthday dinners, evenings, weekends and lunch hours, gardening, reading, movies and other pastimes. We have a number of friends whose marriages or partnerships crumbled under their devotion to a dream. There are more newly single parents than we expected among our colleagues. We are frequently asked if it is possible to ’have it all’ — a full and satisfying personal life and a full and satisfying hard-working professional one. Our answer is: no. The price of excellence is time, energy, attention and focus. At the same time the energy, attention and focus could have gone toward enjoying your daughter’s soccer game. Excellence is a high cost item.”3

That sounds like a description of some Christians I know, responding to the vision and expectations of their churches. It doesn’t sound much like a statement you’d find Jesus making to his followers.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against excellence per se. Just its elevation to the level of doctrine. In fact I’m really not so much anti excellence as pro participation. I reckon participation is what church life should be about. Participation rather than performance, and a pursuit of excellence always, always, ends up being about performance.

If excellence is a primary goal, then the weak, the timid, the depressed, the disabled, the unskilled, the sick, the introverted, the overweight, the less attractive, the poor and the untalented aren’t going to get a look in. They’ll be relegated to being spectators for someone else’s worship performance.

From this perspective excellence doesn’t look so good. In fact it sounds quite unChristlike, almost evil. How can a process and a value that excludes large sections of a worshipping community from active participation be named in any other way?

Jesus had some pretty harsh words for those in his day who devised ways of making it tough for ordinary people to worship God. Something about them being as spiritually alive as painted up tombs, and not being able to see clearly because they had something in their eyes.

It seems to me that basically church must be about supporting people in their following of Christ in the world. Everything else flows from that.

We come together as followers of Jesus so we can share stories of the successes and failures of our life in the world, find encouragement and support in being with each other and in worshipping God together, and separate to follow Christ through another week. What we need to value most is community - our relationships with one another.

That’s why I’m pro participation, regardless of how excellent or poor that participation might be. It’s only in being open to as much participation as possible that community can be built. The prayer of confession I lead the church in may not be the best theology, it may not be the most polished performance, it may even offend some people with its awkward language, but it will reflect who I am and where my relationship with God is at and you’ll get to know me a little more than you did before, and maybe you’ll even get to make your confession.

During the week the pastor or some one else may talk with me about how I did, and offer some encouragement and some other perspectives on the theology of forgiveness, and next time I’ll do an even better job. Our community will be strengthened, and most importantly, I’ll have taken a little more responsibility for my own spiritual maturity.

I’ve said I’m anti excellence in church life, but I’m pro excellence in my life and in the life of every person in our congregation. I want to be the best I can be at what I do and who I am. I want the same for everyone at Cityside Baptist where I worship. I want what we offer as worship to be as good as it can be, but I’ll take participation over excellence every time.

Our worship is made up of a set liturgy that we follow pretty closely most Sundays, but variety and creativity comes from having eight or nine different people lead a segment each service. Each person can do her or his segment in whatever way they choose, eg setting up a paddling pool to throw stones into, playing a secular music track, having us paint, or singing a hymn.

We have talked together and agreed that no matter what anyone offers as worship we will support that person and participate appropriately, even if we don’t like what is being done. We will do this because we are first and foremost a community at worship. We trust each other and care about each other. We want to see everyone growing in Christ-likeness. We want everyone involved who wants to be - regardless of his or her ability or training.

There may be some robust discussion after (or during!) the worship, but the intended outcome of the discussion is a greater understanding of the variety of perspectives shared by the congregation, not conformity to a prescribed view. I may not like everything we did in worship last Sunday, but next week other people will be doing things differently and chances are it’ll be more to my taste. At least I can be sure it’ll be down to earth and real and will model for me that I too can be involved here.

At Easter our church produces an art installation consisting of 14 pieces of art, one for each of the Stations of the Cross. Any Citysider can participate by contributing art. No qualifications are required. No standards are applied. No checking of content or quality is carried out.

Artists are trusted to be involved in honest reflection on the biblical event and to produce the very best art they can in the media of their choosing. The art always comes in a wide range of media, and standards vary considerably - from the technically poor through to technically excellent. Pieces that move me through to pieces I’d like to see moved!

This year over 600 people used this installation to reflect on the Easter story. Many recorded comments to indicate they had found it a profoundly moving experience and some named specific stations that God had spoken to them through. Technically poor art can be as effective a medium for the Spirit of God as the technically excellent. (This is not to excuse shoddy work or lack of preparation. I have never been let down in my trusting the commitment of the ’artists’ to their art. They all take it very seriously).

Some of the most profound statements have come through the work of young children. The impact on the ’artist’ of being able to participate is incalculable.

I hope our worship and wider life together at Cityside will produce confident, maturing followers of Jesus Christ who live creatively and courageously in the chaotic emerging culture. Maturing followers of Jesus Christ able to interpret their faith in the market place of life.

If we produce excellence in some of our services along the way, that’s excellent, but it’s not our goal.

NOTES

1 Peters, Thomas and Waterman, Robert. 1982. New York: Warner Books.

2 Peters, Thomas and Austin, Nancy. 1985. New York: Warner Books.

3 Peters and Austin p 495-496. Quoted in Schaef, Anne and Fassel, Diane 1988. The Addictive Organisation. San Francisco: HarperCollins.

Ancient Worship

So the BBC is bringing Bill and Ben the flower pot men back to our television screens after 3 decades away! Those of us old enough to remember the pre-digital animation of the talking flowerpots will no doubt find their return a little unnerving. Our children (grandchildren?) may be surprised to discover us singing along with the theme song, but we’ll be the ones surprised by what comes along with the men in flowerpots – storybooks, videos, t-shirts, toys, cd’s and cassettes. The whole merchandising and advertising thing. None of which happened the first time around. It’ll be the same Bill and Ben, but it’ll also be different. Very different.

The Sex Pistols (founders of punk) are touring again after two decades of not playing (or liking each other apparently). ‘The Filthy Lucre Tour’. They’re doing it unashamedly for the money. Peter, Paul and Mary, the soul of the sixties, tour in the 1990’s and beyond. Some of the best selling music albums today are reissues of material recorded 30 or 40 years ago. Digitally remastered of course. Retrospective compilations are huge. Nostalgia sells. The Beatles have sold more albums since they broke up than they did when they were together. Elvis sings to us from beyond the grave and is even touring this year! (Thanks to video technology) The same, but different. Volkswagon’s Beetle rises from the rust heap, Chrysler revamps the late 1930’s American sedan and comes up with the best selling PT Cruiser. Nostalgia with electric windows and power steering.

This Easter millions of Christians around the world walked the Stations of the Cross. This very ancient walking meditation traditionally based on the events of the last week in Jesus’ life (Jesus prays in the garden, is betrayed by Judas, is condemned to death, and so on) developed as Christianity spread around the world and followers of Christ found it impossible to get to Jerusalem to walk the ‘actual’ sites of Jesus’ last week. In the fourteenth century the Franciscans established shrines outside monasteries and churches in Western Europe to help local pilgrims remember Christ’s passion. More recently the Stations have settled at fourteen and been marked on the inside of churches with small carvings or sculptures or with stained glass windows. Some as simple as a small cross and numeral.

In Auckland, and Glasgow, and London this Easter a few thousand people walked a different path. Stations of the Cross, yes. But in a very different form. Instead of using simple traditional minimalist mono symbols they used contemporary symbols and media and electronic multimedia to portray the events leading up to Jesus’ death. And they didn’t just do it for the faithful pilgrims in the Church. They opened their electronic and traditional art up for meditation by anyone, of any or no religious persuasion. Theirs was no attempt to reproduce the Stations as faithful descriptions of the events, rather it was an offering of their interpretations of and insights from meditating on these events, presented in whatever form of medium or media, electronic or otherwise they could draw on. Digital arts as well as traditional ones. Cartoon, found art, junk sculpture, video and interactivity sitting alongside gouache and oil and canvas.

Leonard Sweet describes this as AncientFuture Faith. ‘Faith that’s filled with new-old thinking, that re-appropriates the traditional into the contemporary, faith that mingles the old-fashioned with the newfangled, faith that understands the times in which we live in order to claim the era in which God has placed us for Jesus Christ.’ It’s from Len that I have taken the title for this column, AncientFuture Worship. I believe the church of the future will be radically different to the church of the past. But it will also look the same in many ways. It will draw on the best of the past and recycle it in contemporary ways. Not just repeat or reuse, but truly recycle by providing new contexts and new content for some of the old rituals, patterns, and words.

The contemporary Stations of the Cross is a good example of this AncientFuture Church in action. They have taken a very ancient and traditional form and given it a new context and content that connects with the mindset of the emerging culture. The old form remains available for those who still wish to access it in traditional ways, and the new form is offered to those who do not, or would not find that a helpful way into the Easter story - the heart of our Christian faith. They are also drawing on the interest there is in the culture for art and images, the growing hunger for mystery and spirituality, and the longing for connections with the past.

Creators of contemporary Stations of the Cross are making their Christian faith accessible to people outside the Church who have little or no understanding of the core of that faith. They may be doing this unconsciously, as a by-product of being given freedom to respond how they will to the gospel story and to create using materials and forms that reflect where they stand in contemporary culture. There is no pressure to conform in any way to either traditional thought patterns or materials. Important connections are made with a wider audience as they offer their own experience of being part of the gospel story through their art forms.

Groups who are taking this new/old dynamic and shaping it into forms like the contemporary stations of the cross are usually described as offering ‘alternative worship’. These groups, who are experimenting with new ways of being church in the emerging postmodern culture, and who often sit uncomfortably on the edge or beyond of the mainstream church are not particularly happy with the term. It begs the question, ‘alternative to what?’, especially when much of their worship involves very ancient words and rituals and symbols. ‘New Worship’ was tried but didn’t catch on. I hope that Len Sweet’s term might do better. It is a good description of what ‘alternative worship’ practitioners actually do.

With one eye always fixed firmly on the undercurrents and eddies of their contemporary culture they plunder and pillage the Christian tradition (and other traditions) as far back as it goes, for artifacts that might be useful in assisting postmodern pilgrims in search of a New World (whether they realise it or not). To better follow Jesus Christ in the Third Millennium is their goal. AncientFuture Church is about much more than just what we DO in church. It goes much deeper. It is also about structures and leadership styles and participation and theology and what you think of the culture. Running a ‘Stations of the Cross: Contemporary Icons to Reflect on at Easter’, won’t make your church an AncientFuture one. But it might not be a bad start on the journey toward modeling some new and authentic ways of being church to those who can’t understand why they should even look inside a church for the answers to their questions. And the process that you have to go through to get it approved (or declined) by your church or deacons or elders or pastor may tell you a lot about why there is little hope of your church truly becoming AncientFuture. That in itself is a worthwhile discovery. Maybe it will be the Spirit’s prompting you to start something new further out on the fringes. AncientFuture worship in the AncientFuture church. I like it. I think it’s got a great future. In fact, I think it is the future.

---

Funeral

INTEGRITY

>>> this article first appeared in Reality Magazine, April/May 2001. Mark Pierson.<<<

Today I attended a Memorial service for a young woman recently murdered. The service in the hot open sunshine of the Domain drew several hundred people, mostly her friends or acquaintances, many of whom were recovering from addictions of one sort or another. All news media were also well represented.

In his tribute her father described how she had taken him and her mother to Cityside Baptist Church one Sunday morning. He gave a glowing tribute to the peace, safety, and warmth they’d felt during the service. They were not church people or Christians he explained.

After the service, I talked with other people who weren’t Christians but who wanted to talk about how God could allow such a tragedy to take place, and why their friend had started coming to Cityside, and what did we do that she had found helpful. I met people who had been to church youth groups as teenagers and not been back for decades; young adults who saw nothing of value in institutional religion; followers of non-Christian spiritual paths; those damaged by appallingly bad (abusive) experiences of church. Some said they might come along to Cityside sometime. It sounded interesting.

I found it very difficult to explain in a few minutes what we were about as a church, to people who carried only very old, very traditional, mostly negative pictures of the Church. Their stories were sad and moving. I wondered how we will respond at Cityside if some of these people do turn up - still wearing his large pentagram around his neck, he obviously under the influence of something, she clearly selling all she has to support her habit, emotionally and spiritually starved. How would they feel in our worship services - the public face of our church? How would they feel in yours?

I am totally opposed to worship that is designed for ‘outsiders’. I think it lacks integrity and ultimately satisfies no one. It is ‘us’ trying to be something we’re not in order to impress and influence a mythical person who’s characteristics we’ve determined by some form of generalization and distillation. The outcome is a group of people trying to be something they’re not - i.e., outreaching, trendy, friendly, connected, concerned, interested, etc - toward someone who doesn’t exist in reality.

If there is one characteristic that postmoderns can smell a mile off it’s integrity- or lack of it. Their sensors are finely tuned even though their own lives may at times seem to lack what they look for in others. And their sensors tell them that the institutional church lacks integrity. The reality isn’t important. Image is everything. Perception is reality. So what we do in our public worship needs to above all, have integrity.

Integrity is slippery. My Form 1 teacher wrote in my autograph book (getting your teacher’s autograph was the done thing several decades ago), ‘An inch of integrity is worth a mile of make-believe’. If by that he meant that I shouldn’t try to be someone I’m not, it’s a good definition. If we think of integrity as ‘to thine own self be true’ it doesn’t quite hit the mark for me. It’s too narrow, too individualistic, too lacking in the breadth and depth that makes community. Integrity means that it works, it adds up. It’s whole. It brings the bits together. Think of it as integration.

Which means if our worship is to have integrity it needs to reflect who we are as a worshipping community. And your worship needs to reflect who you are as a worshipping community. Who we are as people. Worship that relates to life as our community experiences it. We shouldn’t try to be someone or something that we are not. But we do this all the time in our worship. We so often present a public face that is clean-cut, decisive, has all the answers, never has any problems, when privately the exact opposite is true.

I understand the main purpose of church as being a gathering of people on a journey toward following Christ and following Christ as best they can, who come together to support each other on that journey. I can’t see any other reason to justify meeting. If our meetings don’t do that then there is no reason to meet and we are not the church, we’re some other organization or club. When we come together, whether as the 6 who meet over breakfast or the 600 who fill the auditorium, if our being together doesn’t move us toward wholeness and healing and Christ-likeness and a deeper understanding of who we really are as people, then we have failed to be the church.

Who we are when we come together needs to have integrity, but what we do should be put under the same scrutiny. The Gospel we present, the view of God, the worldview, the language we use, the messages we communicate also need to have integrity. What we say and what we do need to line up with what we believe (and vice versa), which in turn needs to grow out of our understanding of following Jesus as the Bible portrays it.

If we can discover worship that truly reflects our humanity and the realities of who we are and how we live as well as the realities of the Gospel, then I don’t think it matters if the style is liturgical, fundamental, Celtic or Catholic, some of the people at the Memorial service may feel at home among us. The bottom line is nowhere put better than in Will Campbell’s description of the Gospel in 10 words or less, ‘We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway.’

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations

>>>This article first appeared in Reality Magazine, February/March 2001. Mark Pierson.<<<

How was Christmas for you? More specifically how was church for you this Christmas? What did you think of the services you attended? Would you have been happy taking friends who weren’t part of church culture? What did the experience of Advent and Christmas services say to you about the Christmas story? Not just the content but the feeling too? Did you come away feeling that your church had helped you celebrate, and helped you cope, and enabled you to feel confident about taking friends to experience something of the ‘greatest story ever told’? Or was the opposite true? Church added to the stress of an already stressful time of the year. It’s easy for church leaders to not stop and think seriously about what needs to be done at Christmas and what is just habit and unreasonable expectation. This is exactly the mindset that continues to draw the mainstream life of the Christian church further and further away from the orbit of Kiwi culture. We still expect people to come to us, on our terms. It’s a mindset that will ensure the continuing demise of the church. There’s another mindset that is contributing to this decline too. One I’m still grappling with.

“The Church has only 10 or 20 years left in the West.” That statement from an American (now married to an Australian and living in Australia), Episcopalian become Benedictine, Professor of World Religions, recently really surprised me. It wasn’t the kind of prediction I’d expect from someone of his cultural and religious background. After all, the church is doing well in the USA isn’t it? (Actually it isn’t. Attendance’s are dropping dramatically, but with such huge numbers to start with it will be a while before the decline strikes the awareness of the average church goer.) But there it was. 10 or 20 years. He was quick to add that he was talking about church and not about Christianity; and in the West.

His thesis was that the Christian church in the West has traditionally exerted an extrinsic authority on the culture around it and called for a response of obedience from people within the culture. In other words the Church and it’s authority figures have said ‘this is the way, walk ye in it’. And when the hoi polloi ask ‘Why?’ They’re told, ‘Because this is the way, walk ye in it’. On the other hand, New Religious Movements, New Age Movements, call them what you like, appeal to intrinsic authorities. Lived experience and existential depth bring a ‘convincedness’. “I know this is right”. It’s not hard to see what approach will be most successful in today’s culture.

The common response of the Church to this ‘attack’ on what it sees as it’s traditional values, is to try to assert more authority and demand greater obedience. In doing so it forgets that if Christian faith is to become mature and Christians become able to know what they believe and stand in the culture with and for those beliefs, extrinsic authorities must become internalised and gain intrinsic authority. How many ex-christians or ex-church goers do you know who have left the Faith or church because at some point in their life journey the Church or their church leaders or their understanding of the faith couldn’t cope with their life experience? Being told, ‘This is the way walk ye in it’, wasn’t enough on it’s own. No matter how loudly or forcefully or confidently it was said. It is the inability of the Church to help it’s communities to internalise faith in this way that leads to Christians deserting the faith. Faith that is accepted initially on extrinsic authority, perhaps in childhood, must be internalised if it is to last and mature.

In reality, being Christian involves maintaining a very important balance between both extrinsic and intrinsic authorities. There is an accountability to scripture and institutional tradition, and perhaps even to community, that is extrinsic. It’s outside of how you feel. But unless these also become internalised and transferred into something with intrinsic authority, something that you believe and know to be true from your experience, a living faith will not be maintained. Not a Christian one anyway. Western Buddhism, New Age Movements and the plethora of DIY religious alternatives available today offer an intrinsic authority (often through meditation) that either precedes any emphasis on extrinsic authorities (of perhaps food, diet, clothing, patterns of life) or ignores them entirely. You can access their spirituality directly and personally. Rules may or may not come later. Most often the opposite is true, or at least perceived to be true, of Christian faith.

It is the responsibility of the Christian Church, particularly of its ministers, Priests, preachers, teachers and leaders to understand what Christianity is competing with in the local and global market place of religions and to emphasise that perspective or aspect of Christian faith that best responds to that pressure. Right now we need to be letting people know – those already following Christ and those not doing so – that Christian Spiritually doesn’t involve only extrinsic authority. And we could start by looking no further than those already part of church communities. We could offer them some signs of hope that the Church understands what they are sensing – that there is more to faith than externals. As John Drane said at a recent Church of England conference to mark the end of their Decade of Evangelism,

“We often say that if we could only get people into the church they would realise that what it has to offer is good news. But it is the people who know us best, from the inside, who are rejecting us. If we could merely hold on to our own children, who desert the church in droves, the decline would be turned around”.

It is part of the human journey toward maturity to seek to transform extrinsic authority into intrinsic authority. By failing to recognise, understand, encourage and support that process, the church pushes out the very people it is supposed to be drawing in and drawing on to maturity.

What does this mean in practical terms? I believe there are a few simple significant ways in which we can begin to bring change that will have a significant long term positive effect on the maturity of Christians and therefore on the future of the Church in the West. One of them is to provide opportunities for contemplation and meditation in our services of worship. I hope these ‘activities’ would also become part of every Christian’s non-church life too, but that’s unlikely unless they’re modelled in our gatherings for worship.

Contemplation has to be taught. Just providing ‘a time of silence’ isn’t enough (although I hear many people saying that it would be a wonderful interlude in their current noise-filled worship). People need to be trained in contemplation and using silence. We proclaim that in Jesus and through the work of the Holy Spirit every follower of Christ has direct access to God. Our practice says that only a few special followers can be trusted to have that access. The rest of us need to be told, ‘This is the way walk ye in it’. So contemplation and silence are considered dangerous. Too dangerous for the average believer. How can the church leaders be sure that Joe and Mary are hearing God speak to them in their contemplation and not ‘someone else’? Well, how can Joe and Mary be sure that it’s God speaking to the leaders? Because they’re paid to listen to God? Because they tell us, ‘This is the way walk ye in it’? Church leaders need to recognise the power games they often play and become willing to trust that God is just as likely to speak through Joe and Mary as through any other person in our community of faith. We need to train people in spiritual exercises and contemplation so they can hear from God for themselves and realise that following Jesus doesn’t depend only on extrinsic authorities but also on that inner strength and confidence that come from an experience of knowing; of being convinced because you’ve experienced intrinsic and extrinsic motivations