Category Archives: Zzzz … Old Stuff

15 things I love about the StreetSpace Community of Practice

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1. They help me with my spelling
2. We have a laugh
3. They hold me to account, and most have no problem telling me whats what.
4. They are not too quick to label themselves a movement
5. We share, experience, stories, hopes, dreams and a generosity of spirit.
6. We gathered from Scotland to Southsea
7. The creativity is amazing,- practical and ideas wise
8. The gathering tried different ways to include those who couldn’t be there
9. We have a vicar who knows Wu Tang Clan, and another growing church in a coffee shop that used to be where Two Tone records were based
10. People have no problem with disruptive experiences.
11. We apprentice one another
12. When we gather, unless you know you cant tell who is paid and who is voluntary
13. People read stuff, write stuff and ground it.
14. They don’t take the easy road, and they make sacrifices for others and their communities.
15. If you asked me what does it look like to have a heart for young people on the edge I could say look at any one of our projects!

read up on Community of Practice HERE

Feedback On Change – Learning and Money

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Change
A process of change – Gradual Natural and chosen by young people, then Awareness of Problems, Seek Discernment about which battles to take on, Include YP with the process. Get on with it and Be the change you want to see – Internal and Outward change is vitally connected and we need both sometimes – Do we think ourselves into a new of acting or Act ourselves into a new way of thinking.

Learning
Do our methods of learning passively undermine our intention?
Balance and tension
How we live amongst people in a way that promotes learning and inclusion in what we are doing.
Authentic about the intention of learning with young people being open about this with the

Money
Position being flexible about what we communicate with authenticity? Wording and
StreetSpace to do some research into value of city centre youth work, perhaps with the O2

Social media

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Here we identified 4 questions or areas to discuss around Social Media
– Good Practice
– Can social media change the world
– How can encourage YP to use social media in a positive way
– Communication with young people via social media

The feedback was joined up so we will be writing up and revising our policy guidance around it. But if you want to see the pictures of the groups, they are uploaded on facebook.

Our final words of advice from the groups are:

– Should all conversations be recorded on the internet, and if so do we need to relook at all one-2-one work and safeguarding?

– Do viral clips (like KNOY 2012) work because of messages or the medium. To go viral and be engaging it either needs to be authentic or really high production quality – what’s in the middle space

– Power is being recaptured by the powerful in the online space.

Updated policies will be made available to the network soon.

Mysticism

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First Theme being explored Mysticism – 4 Areas
Language – needs to develop out of the experience of the young person and find their own language. – Use symbolism to bridge the gap between language and experience
How we do we encourage our own spirituality to encourage others? – we need to develop our own awareness, practice disciplines etc
Find the Thin places in ourselves, and the environment
Bigger than ourselves and need to be open to the new and different
Gender and Spirituality – Value physical Spirituality, awareness of our own gender baggage, and this

StreetSpace Mysticism – Young people are god bearers and spiritual beings not a deficit model. Draw on shared experiences and could this help us develop some common language but allow us our diversity
Wu Tang Clan 43rd Chamber and taking detached work to level 5.

The Gathering Part one

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This weekend I am at the StreetSpace Gathering. It is a coming together of about 35 people from across the network with 18 of the 36 projects represented. The whole event is developed using a participative processes. Last night we kicked off with a pictionary ice breaker (draw an activity you do the others dont know you do). The aim is to encourage an equality across the group and not go for the I am XX with this many young people in our contact etc.

We then used a random word generator to spark a creative thinking process as the begininng for the themes we will discuss as a group over the weekend. The Random words were:
– Turntable
– Leaflet
– Mystic
– Passive
Each table mind mapped the words and then people swapped tables to gather the wisdom from the other.
We ended up with three themes we will discuss as a whole group this morning:
– How do we develop mysticism and next level spirituality with young people?
– Social media – Practical advice, Benefits, and Communication
– Being Authentic Us and Others
We also developed a further 6 themes we will use in break out groups.
– Values
– Mentoring Peacemakers
– Change what does it mean?
– Learning Passive and Active – How do you build emotional intelligence in an active learning style/ with chaotic yp
– Money
– The Balance Mission/Personal/Professional

Incarnation and Disruptive experiences

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Last week in after reflecting on Petes interview and our practice around TAZ (check out Kester), Flow and our approaches around being and growing church, that collapse the idea of the idea of mission as a bridge into church I tweeted

“The process of being and growing church should be a disruptive experience that is a series of encounters with the other”

I have been thinking for a while how we are so fixed in our own paradigms that we often take an approach and deceive ourselves that we are using it as intended. A classic example is Messy Church – where people so often use it as an outreach tool into ‘proper’ church. They think they are doing something different but when pushed will not leave established services to free up time to invest in being and growing church in the Messy context.
It is interesting to look at incarnational youth work and how this spawned notions of relational youth ministry – much of which was simply a tool like youth alpha or a youth club to get young people into ‘proper’ church. As such when Pete suggests there does have to be an IN he is right.
However when we think around incarnational youth work to be and grow church (and to help us discover what the church and gospel actually are as we encounter others) there is no in. In order to make this a reality this needs to embrace both the relational nature of the incarnation and the disruptive. This is not a new to my thinking Here I wrote that faith is about the redemptive processes that consistently ruptures our worldview (inc our faith paradigm) and is a series of revolutionary moves that form and shape a new (at the time) but growing (in hindsight) understanding of God.

At the moment I am very hopeful of the work going on around the openness to genuine change both around the missionary encounter with other (Ian Adams posted a series of quotes from Christianity Rediscovered that got people talking) and to changes in the liturgical space Pete mentions that Ikon experimented with. The challenge to not allow the gravitational pull to suck us back remains, and we need to counter this by asking mission/kingdom shaped questions rather than church shaped ones.

A great interview

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I really like Pete Rollins stuff but at times it can be hard to get. Here is a great interview edited down with some of the key stuff I have gleaned from him in a really articulate and understandable presentation. Recently I have been speaking of church as the majority know it is redundant and Pete really nails this as he discusses worship and idols. It is 25 mins so grab a cuppa and a pen to take notes.

Benign Indifference and missional youth work

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Mayo, Collins and Nash’s book the Faith of Generation Y is good stuff, but the concept of Benign Indifference never sat to well with my experience and I could never quite put my finger on why. In the light of the two recent posts about there not being an In and asking the wrong questions, I wanted to revisit it.
I rarely ask questions about faith, and once a conversation is sparked rarely experience the benign indifference. I wonder if this is because I am asking different questions, and that I ask within the context of a robust relationship that allows me to probe answers and not let young people off with easy outs. For example Flow came about by asking “What does it feel like when you skate?” and taking the risk to say “I think that maybe God”. This did not locate God or Spirituality with something outside of the young persons experience but within, and this opened a journey. I never presume to have the truth or tell young people what truth is, rather create an environment for dialogue and discussion. I think StreetSpaces resistance to an eccelesiocentric (church centred) approach to mission, helps us find the questions that are rooted in the lives of young people rather than an implicit or unconsciously church led questions or experiences. It has always been this way for me 20 years I used to ask young people in detached in the summer to be quiet for two minutes and then tell me what colour was their silence was. Recently I have used the word “church” to help locate some my questions within a christian tradition, eg whilst at the skate park asking could this be church?
Central to our approach is an embedded (non dualist) notion that G-d is as present on the streets as anywhere and that of going on a journey to discover with young people who G-d is, what is church, what is belief. What has been interesting is we have robust conversation, even young people taking steps of Faith to come on a journey although are without any notions of imaginary boundaries or lines to cross, and we have “fruit” in terms of a changed landscape, improved communities, turning away from crime, better relationships, but we rarely have benign indifference except perhaps when we ask the wrong questions.

There does not need to be an In(n)

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Great chatting yesterday with Ben at Urban Hope. As part of his MA at Kings he was chatting with Pete about Inside Out – Outside In and Outside Out mission. Pete Ward had suggested there always had to be an In. I obviously had not been part of the conversation so am in a bit of a vacuum here but…..
There is only an in if your work is church centred rather than mission centred and much of so called incarnational mission is still hamstringed as it operates on a version of the eccelesiocentric the bridge model, ie youth work as bridge into church. For many relational youth work has become a corrupted tool (often unknowingly), used in place of the youth drop in, or programme or alpha as way to get young people into church (albeit a hipper, more relevant version). This approach is a long way from the kingdom/shalom notions of incarnational missio dei that inspired relational youth ministry. Here there is no in there is only being and becoming, equality, reciprocal, open set, unbounded, redefining and discovering what church can be. It is model of missional church inline what see of the metaphors of what church is in the bible, (see Off the Beaten Track) that collapses the idea of a bridge, to see church emerge, outside out!

The idea of having an in at all in a post christian mission context simply reinforces my last post that we are asking the wrong questions, often have the wrong start point, and how embedded the eccelesiocentric paragdigm is in our structures, thinking and imagination.

A parable for Occupy

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Making money had not been difficult for Jimmy, he had a good stack of cash from his dad, invested it in property, employed builders, did up houses and soon started to diversify.

At first he bought the building supplies yard, that way not only could he control the builders but also the prices. After having some stuff nicked, he started a private security business which was soon being used by most of the local shops.

Then he diversified into rentals, buying land and building small properties for renters that couldn’t afford much. It wasn’t generosity, it was an economy of scale. Lots of small flats brought in the same rent a large house.

In an age of no welfare state or government handouts, he pretty much controlled the town, owned most the land and was mayor in all but name. He had a close selection of business associates who he thought of as friends, but they knew which side their bread was buttered.

As he and a few people grew richer, the town grew poorer so Jimmy extended his security business as a sort of local police force to keep the locals in line. This meant he could increase his charges to other businesses to keep them safe and everyone knows it takes money to make money.

Jimmy thought himself happily married, with a mistress or two on the side, and two children (that he knew of). When his daughter turned 21 it was time to celebrate with a masked ball. The theme was winter and everyone would be provided with appropriate clothes, to ensure the elegance of the event and that the theme was suitably expressed.

After many months of planning he sent out invites to the great and good of the community, the people Jimmy thought of as friends. A few simply didn’t reply, probably because Jimmys private police force had been too heavy handed recently and the taxes felt more like extortion money. A few replied and said they were too busy to attend, not really wanting to come but trying to keep Jimmy on side.

As the day drew near the marquee for the party was put up covering the football pitch. Two others were erected for changing rooms for guests. Caterers were bought in, musicians prepped and waiters found. The only hitch was that no none was coming. Jimmy arranged a second invite but grew impatient. However, sending out a second invitation made good business sense,a good party was a chance to network, make a few more contacts.

Word had spread amongst the business leaders that no one was attending and so they became bolder, as in solidarity they felt more secure about their excuses or non replies. But their ‘security’ was short lived, in a rage Jimmy ordered the police to break their windows, and when the owners went for replacements he hiked the prices of repairs and controlled the supply. He increased the rent of these ‘friends’, and ordered the mayor to evict those who didn’t replace the damaged windows as it wasn’t in keeping. Soon Jimmy had driven away, beaten up, or simply killed his supposed friends and business allies.

Not wanting the party to fail he invited the tenants from the flats, knowing that people would scrub up well enough and he had the right clothes ready for them to wear. He would need to replace the business leaders he had driven out anyway and might recruit suitable people at the party. The invitation was delivered by the private police force and it was made clear attendance was required, besides which rumors and stories of what had happened to the great and good of the town were rife.

As one of the tenants explained to her husband, they had to go, even the people who had a bit of money behind them and had refused Jimmy’s invitation had been had been attacked, who were they to refuse. Besides which there may be a future in it and at least she got to wear a fine dress and eat well at Jimmy’s expense.

The party started, and was going with a swing, contacts were being made as Jimmy identified a few people to rent the shops and agreed to replace a few windows at cost to get things moving again. The only blot had been the appearance of a small tent occupying the mouth of the goal on the football pitch. No one pointed it out to Jimmy and besides, what did it matter? But Jimmy had noticed it, and started to make plans to get them removed the following day, he would do it legally, and without fuss, whilst tonight he would focus on the party, after all life goes on.

It was later that evening that Jimmy spotted him, well he could hardly be missed in his ripped jeans and t-shirt that simply said ‘Occupy’. Everyone else had worn the clothes provided as instructed. The audacity, the sheer nerve, Jimmy thought, to come in here eat the food, drink the wine, and not wear the right clothes. But by wearing a simple t-shirt the occupier showed the fine dresses and suits for what they were, a nothing, a falsehood to open doors and enable the same mistakes to be repeated. Jimmy saw the irony, the threat, and how powerful the powerless man in a t-shirt was. He called security, had the man stripped naked, beaten, and killed.

The lack of resistance from the man was breathtakingly, his quiet humility seemed to pave a way for all the onlookers to take a different path if they too would lose the trappings of power, but for many the cost would be too high a price to pay.
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Also see The wedding banquet from below