Last week I was speaking in Holland at their YFC conference. Whilst they certianly do things differently (ask me sometime about angels massaging volunteers) they were a great bunch of people to be around and share with.

Over meals and conversation it quickly became clear there was a distinct difference in how people were approaching the edgy topics around mission I was teaching. In the uk I am often pinned down by people wanting to argue the theological toss, or perhaps I should say nuances but in holland there a different conversation. It was about how does this connect, how does it help me serve the young people I work with. I think it is in part a cultural openness and difference but more I think it is precipated by their closeness to the edge, their connection on the streets and in the community, where they know things have to be done differently. I was humbled by how even the younger volunteers wanted to grapple with the how the talks should change their practice and structures, how it build community in their context, deep specific and searching questions, that I simply rarly get in the UK.

My post grad work was around how Christian workers/ missionaries responded to the emerging missiology I was developing. one of the interesting things was a link between how open a person is to new ideas that push our orthodoxy around church and how experienced they were in relational based mission. The more embedded people were in the culture they were serving, the more they recognised that old ways of thinking and working werent cutting it and were more open to new ideas around eccelesiology. Yet somehow in the Netherlands even those less experienced recognised and had the desire for change. It was an honour to sit around with so many young people under 20 who are willing to grapple with the real stuff and such a contrast to my experience of similar age groups in the church in the uk.

I have started a blog I cannot finish please help…

‘Incarnational mission’ is a myth. Over the past few weeks I been exploring the connection of kenosis and incarnation, and begun to think that the language of incarnational mission has taken us down wrong track. The word “mission” is an anathema to the word “incarnational” and the twining of the two has precipitated a false understanding and often maintained a practice rooted in power, masked as doing good, humility, and service.

Years ago myself and many others shifted our language away from evangelism, towards mission, then towards missional, then towards emerging, all the time complicit in a power play, that we failed to recognise we were caught up within. Each shift of language was an attempt to move beyond the confines we discovered, and the boundaries we placed around us. Often helpful and well meaning, but rooted in a bankrupt paradigm.
Mission the act of being sent seems counter intuitive to the incarnation. Being sent to another so often comes with a sense of the need of the other. The incarnation was not about choice, it was beyond being sent, is was a vulnerable move of self emptying, an embedding of the word that was already present in the beginning.

How we connect to the word, that was and is present in the community, is key breaking the power binds we are caught up within. Our incarnation must stem from our recognition of the interconnectedness of all humanity, thinking we are sent to empty ourselves in service to others is vanity. Instead we must…..

It really isn’t rocket science. The erosion of basic day in day out youth services and shift of funding to targeted work is an oxymoron. For the most needy, most at risk, toughest NEETS, you cant have one without the other. Young people who struggle to relate appropriately to adults, systems, and structures need to use the relationships of trust and support built up between them and youth workers to access, utilise and be encouraged to stick with the targeted services that are there to supposedly help them. It is about basic equality of opportunity.

In the past few weeks I have come across countless small organistions struggling to keep basic services going, whilst target ted providers cannot get young people onto courses. Often these targeted providers are the bigger players who hear about the latest funding stream, or pot of money, they come to the week in week out community groups, to get their places filled, meet their stats, publicise the latest idea, and only those with enough social skills, where-with-it-all and confidence access these schemes, and even then the drop out rates are pretty high. As they do not have the relationship base they fail to present a genuine equality of opportunity to those most in need.

So why aren’t funders, funding those with a 100% success with getting NEETS into training or work? Or 100% success in helping those with mental health get back to work. Why wouldn’t funders bite their hands off? Because these REAL results come from small local community providers who build the relationships week in week out. After three years of building real relationships with NEET young people it is not surprising that when they volunteer on our Zine young leaders programme, they grow in confidence, we know them well enough to address the barriers they face, and they all go onto to employment or training. It is not a surprise that a peer group of people with mental health issues support one another to access employment, make community connections, and so improve their prospects, confidence and employ-ability. It is about a basic understanding of equality and taking the right steps to address the issues faced.

The local schemes work because they address he preexisting issues of inequality, by the relationships built up through regular services. Those on the ground struggle to stay afloat at the coalface as they work day in day out with young people, achieving so much with so little. BUT they dont have the time to keep up with the fast changing funding priorities of the latest government fad, so it is often outside agencies, larger providers, who sweep in to grab the funding, without the ongoing context of regular provision and achieve so little with so much.

So here is a call back to equality of opportunity, opportunity for the small grassroots organistions, that create opportunity for the most in need. A call to see the basic connection required between regular work and targeted work, if we are going help break the cycles of deprivation and poverty that are increasingly taking hold in our communities.

The space we inhabit with young people and the community is a contested space. Young people are unfortunately negatively stereotyped and scapegoated and so The council like to own the positive change stories that spring up around the work. The institutional church like to own the good news stories, but we refuse to pimp out the lived experience of young people to earn a
supposed place at these tables. Like any project we could tell these stories that would have you weeping in a quiet moment, or shock you with stories of daring do and risk, it would certainly grow our profile and funding base. but paying these games to illicit a response simply builds walls of us and them, both for us a teller and you as a hearer so instead we call these walls
to dust.

I was delighted to read reflections about a recent event run by StreetSpace Bournmouth. Which you can find here

I have been wrestling with the disconnect between what I am reading and my feelings. On facebook a friend suggested that a letter might be a helpful medium. The letters Bonhoeffer, King, Luther etc were wonderful alternatives to books and academic discourse. The wonderful Kim Hartshorne recently wrote to me following yesterdays blogpost, picking up where my words failed me, so with her permission I have adapted her email with my own stuttering thoughts as a letter to my friends on the journey.

Dear Friends

I know a lot of the time I make very little sense, struggle to communicate the depth and instinctual feelings I have about the shifts in thinking, theology and mission that are going on around me. Every step I take I feel the road rising to meet me and I am sorry, I am not an artist or a poet, so I cannot convey these tentative footsteps. The language I have and the ability of my hands fail me, so I revert to nonsensical metaphors and for the last 10 years have been talking about the church/community as the fourth part of the trinity and more recently questioning the missio dei approach.

The G-d of the street, who is with the poor and the outcast, and broken like me, has released me from worrying too much about how others view me, but I am still captive to many thought processes and my own selfish need for salvation. I apologise where I have been to quick to judge and transferred the pain I see in those around me to others, often to those who are simply trying to understand. Calling the walls to dust has been a powerful process to help me reflect and wrestle with the questions that have been building for years, and I am grateful to the poet who coined the phrase.

The foundational issues that the walls are built on, is that so much of our thinking and practice is binary, and so it fails to embrace the gospel oneness. Missio dei is still a binary way of thinking of God and human action in the world. It sees it as gods domain to be in charge and us to hunt out the scent and follow. The separation between us and G-d that the gospel expelled still remains in missio-dei and many of our ecclesiological and theological concepts.

We need to develop a different approach without the binary constructs that simply end up replacing walls that the gospel broke down. So lets return to Genesis, at creation, where humans are given a privileged place of co-creator. We are given the responsibility to create, extend, make, do justice, in the way God does. He shares his power with us and sends us out as his multipliers. The words used for ‘image’ as in man made in Gods image are ‘tselem’ and ‘demut’ in the Hebrew and mean gods, mini-me’s, like the little gods that were idols to the nations around, they looked like the bigger god they represented. We are Chips off the old block, and in you my friends I see so much my Fathers likeness. To name those likenesses here would mean I would never finish this letter, but I am privileged to journey beside so many mini-christs.

The garden of Eden, the temple and the ark of the covenant were all microcosms, experiments as to how God and his mini-gods would share living and ruling together, encompassing worship, law, justice, eating, money. They were about holistic living, working together, having access to one another. No walls. Drawing others who were outside into this well ordered creative life. At Christ’s coming, the disciples were the microcosm, the model society, having access to god found in Christ and seeing what the good life would look like in that era. They tried to rebuild the walls all the time, keeping out women or children or the sick, but he continued to model to them in his person what it looks like to make choices humanly and be one of gods mini-me’s.

Our calling as humans to include others, do justice, create and extend the kingdom, is a calling to be human which is a call to one of gods mini me’s. Yes we draw on the tradition & scripture patterns and metaphors where we can, and keep in tune with the flow of the spirit. But we are going into new territory and following the internal compass of god inside us, so as humans, we must stop waiting for the word of the external god, and grow into the sense of personhood and agency the gospel ushered in. Too often I am modelling a crippling weakness to my human identity and godly being. I have tested it and realised I have enough anchoring and experience to draw on and god is not going to tell me what to do. I have to decide and act. I have the power in me to call the walls to dust – and to recognise that in others. Humanity has no walls – all of us have god mapped in us. In some of us that has been marred by damage and abuse but it can be restored and recovered by love and acceptance and the accordance of dignity to the sacredness of humanity.

God in this era is coming in on our coat tails, not the other way around, as we empty out and see in Christ the one who utterly inhabited his limited humanity. Take care my friends and learn to walk with yourself, and embrace the liberation that comes with a life without walls. Let us see the liberation for ourselves, those around us, academia, and the emancipation of the gospel and god who we have help captive for so long.

yours with as much faith as I can muster

Richard

I started a twitter conversation last night and I wanted to try and capture it here. I kicked it off with….

…..Feeling a big disconnect between the practice I am engaged in and most of current theological thinking I am reading :(?0 replies 0 retweets 2 favorites ?

@UrbanFriar
where’s the disconnect?

Richard Passmore ?it feels like the practice is ahead of the literature and but still drawing on old paradigm literature orthodoxies? – too much synthesis rather than new conceptual frameworks practice feels beyond Hegels dialectic approach?????

simon sutcliffe
I get you. I keep coming across folk looking for something new/different but no-one quite knows where it’s coming from.?

Richard Passmore maybe need more action research approach that has a freedom beyond the current academic rigour so doesn’t get pulled back?

simon sutcliffe ? so where do we look? I’ve tended in the last few years to head towards Po-Mo philosophy. But still not satisfactory.? or a theology that is not church sponsored nor flows from the corridors of academia.??

Richard Passmore to the poor, excluded, the community and each other?
?
simon sutcliffe What would be such a theologies purpose and why would it be written/painted/sculpted …??

Richard Passmore for the emancipation of the thinkers held captive by academia;) towards fullness of life for humanity?

simon sutcliffe agree with emancipation – free me!! 😉 Have u read Revolution by Brand? He could be our new Cyrus??!!?

Richard Passmore no but on my Christmas list. I think the occupy approach has a lot to teach us??

simon sutcliffe completely agree – raises the question ‘what makes it THEOLOGY?’ But that’s a Q I’d like to attempt to answer.
??
Tim Watson ?@BeatLiturgist I want to favourite this whole thread!?

Ric Stott ?@RicStott yep, me too. Really important and invigorating questions here, thank you???

Richard Passmore ? I think yP have taught me that in community g-d is manifested and theology is embodied rather than discussed- theocardiology??

simon sutcliffe ? we should organise a symposium kinda thing.

Richard Passmore it is nice to be in the warm after cold wet detached ywrk just wish we were all in pub somewhere?- May 26th -30th StreetSpace is hosting our annual gathering we could do campfire symposiums?

simon sutcliffe I still can’t escape from theology as a communicative act. So it can be manifest and embodied but it is also per formative.??

Richard Passmore but isn’t that part of the issue why is embodied theocardiology not a commutative act ??

simon sutcliffe ?It can b but then it also has 2 have a space 4 hermeneutics/interpretation so theology recovers a need 4 others & alterity?

Richard Passmore it is formative both to me and the YP but the liberation that comes with it takes us beyond traditional formative norms?. Maybe not because the interpretation is language bound and hermeneutics too rooted to academia which why liberation is missed?

simon sutcliffe ? the theology u & the YP do is a gift to us all, but we can do nothing with the gift till it is given/performed 4 all 2 c??

Richard Passmore ? Thankyou & humbled but that’s the power of the story and weakness of definition it dies if disconnected from local/practice 1/2?

simon sutcliffe not necessarily language but definitely a public expression. And a corporate response.?

Richard Passmore 2/2 which is why we need the artists and poets like @RicStott and @BeatLiturgist?

simon sutcliffe ? completely agree. Which is why I don’t think it’s theology per se. But it’s performance.?

Richard Passmore ? maybe somewhere inbetween a constructive iconology?

simon sutcliffe ? exactly – so theology as a public act encapsulates our human condition of Otherness ?

Tim Watson ?@BeatLiturgist and the artists and poets need to hear and see the workings of the front line. The embodied gifts.?

Tim Watson This is the most exciting thread. Campfires are go.?

simon sutcliffe (Re Constructive Iconology) -that would be well worth exploring I’m looking at the idea of theology as irony where u create a new vocabulary b’cos the vocabulary they inherit is bankrupt 4 the current context. V Po-Mo. But it creates space for const. Iconology??

Richard Passmore yes yes yes I have played with theology as disinformation so g-d can be found!!!!! Love it?

simon sutcliffe ? we need that campfire!?

simon sutcliffe I’ll bring some wood! (And a few bottles).?

Richard Passmore (re constructive iconology) ?which in part how I ended up with this pic.twitter.com/VScCmkSi3m??

Ric Stott ?@RicStott ?I don’t have much to add to all this via twitter but I do really want to paint some pictures!???

The other day on a detached session, I found myself parked in a car chatting out through the window to some of the young people parked alongside us. The conversation was fine but stilted by the rain and consequently the windows were only half open. After the initial hellos and catch up the conversation stalled, and my colleague suggested we move on. It felt right to stay and just chill, which in end opened a conversation with one the young people we have found hardest to reach opening up and discussing volunteering with us. This young person would barely acknowledge us for the first 18 months we met, but slowly through the process of being around regularly he warmed to us, opening up, all leading to this conversation about possible volunteering.

The connection between regular faithful contact and building the platform for solid relationships cannot be underestimated. Equally this presence in a place itself will not bring the walls to dust between us and those young people who have been consistently let down by adults and systems so are wary of engagement. It will require working at the relationship, deliberately preserving (appropriately) with the young person who wont give you the time of day. (People + Place) x Relationship = Space. Yes, we needed to be in the right place, with the right people, but the relationship enabled the space to be created for a young person, excluded from school, shunned by much of the town and isolated from many traditional avenues of support, to offer his gift of service and volunteering, on a rainy detached evening.

Part of the balance and walking the road that rises to meet us is about finding the rhythm of creation and the creator, as Lewis might say the “deep magic”. The seasons help by bringing with them their own sense of timing and rhythm, mirroring the great consistent narrative current, we see through the bible and history. This current of birth, life, mistakes, redemption, and rebirth, is echoed in the seasons. Perhaps in the westernised world where food is no longer attached to seasons, and we have lost touch with the soil, we have have become too dislocated from this narrative. We live in a society that shields and sanitizes death, sees it as something to be dealt with quickly, hidden from children and disconnected from life. Christ broke the wall between life and death, and it no surprise that when Jesus sent out the 72 in Luke 10 they could proclaim the good news before the crucifixion had even happened. Sayings like ‘life goes on’ although true, are meant in way that suggests the wall between life and death is still there, rather than seeing death as a part of the great redemptive story that connects us all; living, present and resurrected, a world beyond the walls that christ already brought to dust.

As we reconnect with the seasons the reality of the great redemptive rhythm and drumbeat of (re)creation is brought to bear. The small differences in weather, in festivals, in short or longs days can help us be embraced by the consistent narrative current of God, swept up by the swell, and carried beyond the walls that divide us. We can use them practically to helps bring the type of balance I was trying to convey in the previous post, as signposts and staging for the deeper magic that lies beyond. The seasons help us connect with one another, in ways that call the walls to dust, they can become sledge hammers in our hands that help break through, or like water dripping slowly wear away resistance, so we can embrace one anothers humanity. The road that rises to meet us is this redemptive current, and the seasons play a part in alerting us to its possibilities.

The move towards a more wholistic approach to youth work has been helpful, and thankfully most people I encounter see the breadth of the gospel,(the social, structural, personal, ecological, community etc) which brings with it, a balance to peoples approach to mission and life. However too often this has to be a conscious balance, where people think they have focused to much on one element and so try to redress it by bringing in another aspect. In StreetSpace we seek balance, but it is not an imposed balance that arises from a theoretical or theological need to make sure we encompass all the breadth of the gospel. It is balance that comes from doing what is in front of us as well as we can, and reviewing what is happening on the ground. When we move from doing life together with those around us, to being a “missionary” to young people we build a wall between us. We often talk of the need to feel our way forward rather than think our way, and in many ways this is what brings a real balance. As we walk the narrow path, the breadth of the gospel itself can become baggage that unbalances us, but by doing what is in front of us one step at time God supplies what is needed at that moment, or in the words of an old celtic prayer “the road rises to meet us”.