Category Archives: Corona

Being Braver, Being Objective, leading from deeper within

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Ive been thinking a lot about the future impact the current situation will have and is having on church and how we as leaders need to respond. There is no doubt that current models of ministry and mission will need to shift as resources become more limited and how local ministry can be effectivly supported will hugely be impacted. I am for the neighbourhood, in many ways 100 years ago I would have been for the parish but most people don’t know what a parish is now. But for me the importance of the local, the rooted, the grounded is paramount, it’s one of the things I like about the local church – it’s about the LOCAL. Our greatest local resource is the people, the local community, and the response about how to allocate resources as they become scarcer will ultimately impact the local. So I am interested in thinking through the decision making processes that help us work out how we release our greatest local resource.

At a basic level decision making is easy and there are several key steps – Identify the decision needed, Gather Info, Identify alternatives, Weigh evidence, Choose among the alternatives, Take action and Review.

HOWEVER there is a whole lot going on under the surface, our bias, our known knowns, our known unknowns, who is in the room, how we shift and filter information (see Nigels post). My hunch is that throughout the process we never really know ourselves as well as we think, we don’t always have the right people in the room, and we always see the context through a particular lense. In Reinventing Organisations Laloux right at the starts talks about humanity evolving through sudden leaps, and he borrows from Wilber’s colours identifying 6 paradigms and the breakthroughs that helps us move through paradigms. You can view a short video here. For Wilber modern western society has a pathological focus on the exterior or objective perspective, and whilst I tend to agree, many of us “think” we are objective but in reality less so.

One of the things that has been encouraging is seeing many leaders become braver and more objective. People who have been questioning stuff for a number of years around the edge of missional approaches are choosing now to step up or out. People are becoming more vocal about personal views that don’t chime with the institutional line. Yesterday in Greenbelts Wild At Home workshop Brian Mclaren spoke about the Institution (institutional religion) being caught in the middle between Progressive and Regressive approaches. So for me as a progressive it encouraging to see people becoming braver in leading out of who they really are. At the same time countless studies show it is almost a universal that in times of stress institutions and people tend to regress from innovation and creativity. SO what might the key for leaders as we move on. We know from hard evidence (see the day of small things etc) the impact FX has on developing local ministry, the value for money it offers, and the way it helps develop a broader innovative and missional culture in the church. So how might we regression that inevitably seems to come with the pressure on resources etc.

There are two the key issues for leaders moving forward. Firstly I think we need to revisit what it means to embrace leading out of who we are (see Simon Walkers The undefended leader). Institutions place in the middle between Progression and Regression means in all likelyhood the key leaders have come through and are shaped by the institution, so leading out of who we are is questionable. To counter this we need to make sure that different voices are in the room and lead in teams with an undefended stance allowing that team to help us take the really hard look at ourselves needed and what is shaping us and the decisions being made.

I have been around the institution long enough to hear Einstein quoted time and time again that “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” but too often this saying is rolled out without any real change happening, precisely because the of the points raised in my first point. So the second issue, is that because of the inevitable predisposition to regress, any regressive decision needs to be seriously wrestled with, it should never be taken at face value, but held to a more serious and rigorous scrutiny. In fact I would go further and suggest that any regressive decision is simply shelved or binned and a process developed to facilitate make sure that more innovative responses are considered. Perhaps a simple process could be an adaptation of De Bonos Thinking Hats. We know from creative thinking our predisposition to travel down well worn paths and these will seem particularly inviting at the moment. But by using the Thinking Hats, perhaps with the Blue Hat (chairing hat) being particularly tasked to spot and stop regressive ideas, we can counter our regressive inherent mindset.

Leadership languages in a multi-coloured, multi-lingual world

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Nigel writes…

Sadly, my team was knocked out the of FA cup last weekend. Despite dominating large parts of the game we were out-thought tactically by a very determined Arsenal team. Their manager, Mikel Arteta is new in the leadership role of Head Coach. To make the matter of the defeat worse, it was the manager of my team that apprenticed him. Arteta’s emerging leadership skills outwitted those of his discipler.
Because there are no crowds in the stadia at the moment, you can hear on the TV coverage what the players and managers are saying and shouting at each other during the game. At one point during this game we were able to hear an example of highly astute leadership practice. Like all of the top football teams, Arteta’s Arsenal team are made up from players from all around the world. They are multi-cultural and speak a variety of languages. What was so poignant was that Arteta could be heard during the game shouting instructions and encouragement to his players in their own languages. Effortlessly and fluently, he switched from English, to French, to his native Spanish so that he most effectively led and engaged the players he was seeking to influence in the manner they best understood.
When it comes to fresh expressions and pioneering, and just about everything else in life, we know that effective leadership is key to what happens. Without effective leadership, it is almost impossible for anything to develop. We know from anecdotal evidence and more formal research (E.g. Encountering the Day of Small Things, George Lings, Methodism’s Hidden Harvest) that when it comes to fresh expressions, new forms of leadership have emerged. These are not about what titles a person has, what qualifications they have, what their ministry status is, or what training they have had. It’s about how effective their leadership is in the moment and season; this is particularly the case in this present moment of crisis and uncertainty when we can see who the players are, and who the pretenders are.
As a pioneer and ecclesiastical adventurer, I too often find I speak a different language to those who are part of inherited and attractional models of church. My conviction – like that of Mikel Arteta – is that if we want to be the best we can, we need to speak the languages of those we are seeking to engage. Of course, this understanding is not new. In the book of Acts 2: 1-21, we read how people heard things in their own language. God’s commitment to communicate in people’s native languages.
I’ve recently discovered the theory of spiral dynamics. Space doesn’t allow a full unpacking of this theory, but you can discover more about it HERE – My newly gained insight has taught me afresh, that we often think differently to each other. Spiral dynamics teaches us that we are wired in different ways and this means we might speak different philosophical languages. Those behind the idea have assigned colours to the different ways we might think. In spiral dynamics terms, I – like many pioneers and those in fresh expressions – am green (promoting community, avoiding dogma, post-modern), yellow (fluid, flexible, open to change), and turquoise (holistic, purpose-driven, integrally transcendent). However, I note that many in more inherited and attractionally orientated churches are either blue (liking authority structures, rules, hierarchy) or orange (competitive, materialistic, success driven). This presents a language and a leadership challenge when we seek to communicate with each other; as we perceive things differently.
But here is the thing – I can speak the languages of blue and orange because I live in the worlds where blue and orange are spoken frequently. I have played to the rules of blue. Operated to the materialistic demands of orange. But now, I aspire to the hope of community and common good green. Flex and flow in the chaordic needs of people, project, planet and purpose yellow. Seek the holistic, intuitive, spiritual, expansive big picture of turquoise. Being what is called a ‘spiral wizard’, I can do a little of what Arteta did and what the spirit enabled in Acts 2: speak in different ways to different people in the hope of best engaging them in ways they will best understand. However, those who come from the worlds of blue and orange don’t yet speak yellow, green, and turquoise.
This becomes a problem for me and for other similarly positioned pioneers. We get misunderstood, side-lined, sometimes maligned, and often unfairly judged for speaking a different ecclesiological language. In reality our predicament can be somewhat worse than I describe. The response from those who don’t speak green, yellow or turquoise can be worse than simply not understanding the linguistics. The very words pioneers use can produce such a negative emotional response within that blues and oranges can end up precluding themselves from even hearing what pioneers are trying to say.
I say this not to invoke sympathy or out of a sense of self-pity. It’s more that we need to help those who come from a different worldview and speak a different language to better understand how we yellow, green and turquoise pioneers think, feel and behave.
My fear is that if we can’t manage to do this we will never be able to share the joys and delights of what we see God doing in our culture and language. Those from a blue and orange culture and language risk missing out on what the founder of spiral dynamics thinking, Clare W. Graves, calls the ‘unfolding, emergent, oscillating spiralling process’ that for many of us is akin to an ongoing Pentecost experience … and I don’t want them to miss out.
Dr Nigel Pimlott
Expressing a personal reflection especially for Sunday Papers

The gift of the edge and bias as a virtue

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Nigel Pimlott and I spent well over a decade at FYT and we have both moved from there to what I would call the edge of the inside. Nigel now works with the Methodist Church as Regional Learning and Development Officer (4 days a week) and church-wide Evangelism and Growth Officer (1 day a week), and I work as the Director of Mission Innovation and Fresh Expressions in Cumbria. So, in the next few posts Nigel and I will explore some of the early and more recent pioneer learning and explore why the church can seem reluctant to draw on this resource.

To set the scene I want to revisit some of the cultural backdrop and responses to the story we now find ourselves in. The pace of cultural change has been accelerating over the last 70 years. Where previously we talked about longer term generational change, more recently significant cultural shifts have been noted at least every ten years. The Face Magazine back in the noughties was talking about significant shifts every decade: 1960’s The Decade of Optimism, 1970’s The Decade of Decline, 1980’s The Decade of the Individual, 1990’s Caring and Sharing, 2000s The Digital Decade. Although the Face article only went up to the noughties, several commentators suggest 2010’s as The Decade of Participation. This with the larger overarching constructs of Post-Modernism and Post-Christendom was the culture I swam in when I started in ministry back in the late 80s. For at least two decades I felt I was swimming in a completely different sea to everyone else. During that time I was grateful to link with Frontier Youth Trust who grew in response to the challenging culture of the 1960s seeking to respond to these new entities called “teenagers”. With FYT I started to recognise, thanks to the brilliant work of Jim Punton and Terry Dunnell, that as well as finding new ways to do things we also had to find new ways to think about things. I learnt that practice and reflection went hand in hand and as early as 1993 with others we started thinking through the need for a new type of ecclesiology. We had critical conversation partners such as Jim Punton, whose work on shalom was key, and several early pioneer workers and thinkers with decades of experience, like David Watson (and Graham Cray), Jeanne Hinton, Pip Wilson, and David Sheppard. It is interesting to reflect on how well these people were listened to at the time and how this helped prepare the way for some radical change, and later Nigel picks up why we may struggle to listen as well to edge now.

The two Loops of Change theory talks about the need for innovators to network and this was key to the survival of what was being birthed throughout the 90s and 00s. Towards the turn of the century a clear emerging church movement was building (often with youth workers getting older and trying to work out how to connect to their culture) and slowly we met others who were in the same ocean. Eventually the structures also started to recognise what was happening on the edge, and that they were perhaps not as well equipped as they thought to swim well in these fast moving currents, so Fresh Expressions was bought into being. Someone once said that Fresh Expressions was the “Research and Development wing” of the church. For the past 20 years several key denominations have been investing in Fresh Expressions, this generosity is a gift to pioneers and now maybe this wealth of learning could be a gift to the church.

With the two loops in mind churches have innovated well in the lockdown, either in the online space or in other ways, so it maybe worth asking, how are you networking with others to build knowledge and support yourselves? Many churches have been brilliantly creative, but innovators need to network not just for new ideas but more importantly to build the resilience needed to resource continuation. Someone once asked me when I was speaking at Greenbelt to say in three words what is needed in today’s missionary context and my answer was Courage, Courage, Courage. As churches reopen the pressure to restart the old will be on, but we can’t do everything, and you will need courage to say no, to not restart some things, courage to stand with what the spirit has been doing for the last weeks and courage to go to new places theologically. Networking will help you build the knowledge and story base to hold the innovative space you have found, and the friendships you build through networking will sustain and nourish your innovation, but alongside this maybe invite a local pioneer to walk with you through the processes, they will probably have more questions than answers but that is important right at the top of change curve.

Richard

Appreciating the hidden harvest: bias as virtue – Nigel writes…..

I’ve recently done some Unconscious Bias training. I’ve worked hard over the years and hopefully become more fully aware of my biases. As a white middle aged man, I think I have reasonably successfully endeavored to raise consciousness-levels regarding any gender, sexuality and race bias I may have had and I have sought to change my thinking and behaviour accordingly. However, I have recently become very aware of a whole set of biases that I embrace which I didn’t really know were there. I am pondering if these biases are a problem, or if they should not be called biases at all, but rather aspirations, virtues and/or essentials. Let me explain …

I am biased towards the ‘new’ and innovation – I think that’s an aspiration. I am committed to working in diverse and creative ways – I think this bias is a virtue. I remain passionate about involving younger people (participation) in the life of the church and I am biased to hearing all the voices in as many ways as possible, and on their terms – I think that’s an essential. Bias on the basis of gender, sexuality, or race is, I believe, a big problem, but the biases I refer to here I consider virtues, not problems. My challenge is, I note other people don’t see things this way. For them, my ‘new’, ‘creative’, ‘younger’ biases are a threat.

In 2015-16 The Methodist Church carried out research into 15 years of involvement with fresh expressions and in 2019 produced a report of the findings – Methodism’s Hidden Harvest. The research concluded that fresh expressions have been extremely successful in welcoming previously unaffiliated people into Christian faith exploration and participation, certainly much more successful than the vast majority of inherited Methodist churches. So why isn’t everybody who wants to reach unaffiliated people drawing on these research findings and deploying them?

• Why isn’t everybody looking to start something new rather than simply maintain ‘what is’? The research notes that fresh expressions are evangelistically fruitful, with an estimated 65% of those attending having no previous involvement in church.

• Why isn’t everybody looking to grow the church working in diverse and creative ways – the research notes that fresh expressions work in multiple and creative ways to make disciples and asks if this is an important factor inherited church needs to embrace if it is to similarly attract unaffiliated people.

• If the church wants to engage and disciple younger people, why does it not embrace how fresh expressions go about doing this as they appear much more successful at it?

Could it be that the reluctance to embrace the new, creativity and younger people’s participation is the unconscious bias, perhaps conscious bias, of some people against such things? If so, this bias is putting them in danger of disregarding things which don’t fit their own templates, paradigms and worldviews, at the expense of making disciples and growing the church. In other words, the problem isn’t my bias for these things, but the bias of those who will not embrace such things.

Of course, it’s not as simple as this, nor a binary choice, and hopefully not a case of inherited church vs fresh expressions; ‘them and us’. Having said that it sometimes feels like it is! Drawing on a bit of political bias thinking, I will explain what I mean.
There is what is known as Confirmation bias – in our context this is when someone favours information about church that affirms their existing paradigms and worldviews. People who like inherited models of church and who don’t want to change might, for example, draw exclusively on narratives that value tradition and predictability of output. They might use information that espouses the familiar, embeds and promotes an ‘it’s what we know’ paradigm. In my experience, whenever I draw on research findings like the Hidden Harvest? report, endeavor to facilitate debate, and/or offer suggestions to those in declining churches facing uncertain futures, there is more often than not push back and a negative response to counteracting information – like the value of new approaches, creativity, and aiming younger – which conflicts with favoured information.
Then there is what is called Coverage bias – this is when, for example, someone happily tells (covers) stories that relate to the ‘good old days’, when the church was full, overseas mission adventures from yesteryear, what happened in 1970, but rarely, if ever, tells stories or allows space for others to tell stories, about what is happening now in new forms of church and the changed lives of those becoming disciples.

Thirdly, I would highlight Concision bias – where people selectively focus on information, ignoring nuance and context, in ways that crowd out different views that take longer to explain. For example, someone will often counteract my encouragement for the new, creative and younger with a tale of when a fresh expression closed, a project failed or a young person left. The detail, reasons, learning and legacy are never portrayed, just the (perceived) negative outcome.

A couple of years back I had surgery for cancer. It was radical, impacting and has meant things will forever be different. If I had not had it, my future was uncertain, and I probably would have died many years prematurely. I needed to set aside my bias against someone chopping bits out of me, having lots of injections, not to mention several other deeply personal things that might not be appropriate to mention in a public blog. It was challenging but necessary.

If we are to set aside our biases and embrace the virtuous findings of research and development from fresh expressions of church, the consequent changes we need to make will be challenging and necessary. If we don’t make them, we may discover our end is also more premature than it might have otherwise been.

You can access the full results of the Hidden Harvest? research here

Dr Nigel Pimlott
Expressing a personal reflection especially for Sunday Papers

Why reopen, what and when?

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So it has been announced that church buildings can reopen in July, without singing and in smaller groups. This is good news for some but as Shane L Bishop a pastor in the States pointed out “If your church was ineffective and in decline before the COVID shut down; the last thing you want to be thinking about is “returning to normal.”
So I have taken the liberty of adding the previous post on Deeper Magic and and maybe if you’re not into magic before you read it check this out from the RSA.

A friend who is a political theologian in Germany recently highlighted how one symptom of the loss of power and hold of Christendom was the rush of many to reopen church buildings. Prayers are no more special or effective because they are said in a particular place, and yet, it is equally true that holy places (hills, buildings, beaches, pilgrimage sites) can bring solace, connection. The nature of corona has been apocalyptic as true to the meaning of the word apocalypse it is uncovering a lot of different stuff. Whilst the church has done some amazing things locally in it’s communities with acts of love, bravery and service, some great examples of online services, for many who have honestly asked there has been an increasing uncovering that despite this their church is no longer at the centre of the community and that’s ok. At the same time it’s clear that many have had Christendom blinkers on, evidenced by the conversations (and their tone) about getting back into church buildings, not holding Eucharist online, ‘harvesting’ the rise of people praying for the first time, a lack of critical engagement with those already in online spaces, judgements about what is or isn’t church in the online space, etc. This is uncovering that many are still oblivious to the culture shift that has happened over the last 50 years and living to a greater or lesser extent in a Christendom bubble and whilst I would like to say that’s ok too, because it can be hard to see the systems we are caught up in, but I’m not sure it is. I love the part in the Narnia story where Aslan tells the children of a “deeper magic” and I wonder with all the anxieties around if we are still trusting enough to help push deeper. I saw Ian Paul had used a quote from Alan Hirsch who suggested “If you want to learn to play chess, then take away the queen—then you see what the other pieces can do!’ For many churches, Sunday services have been the ‘queen’ that we have lost. Which I thought was a great commentary on the situation, but as a friend pointed there is an assumption you know how to play chess the first place, and we may be playing chess whilst the rest the world has moved onto Ludo or more likely in the west Monopoly.
BUT despite this once again I want to shout out and congratulate those churches who have served so well without services, wether you have been dog walking for your community, organising food, doing prescription runs, organising sunflower competitions, supporting parents home schooling, and say don’t automatically drop these things because you want to refocus on sunday gatherings. Ask yourselves how can we keep these connections going, so we can keep building on what God has been doing through lockdown, perhaps God has even been showing you, you can improvise, you can change and do things differently. So if services aren’t what’s next, what might be? How can we continue to journey with people in a new way? What about those with dogs in the church arranging mini meet ups with those who can now walk their dogs again, what might a socially distanced homework club look like with a few adults on hand to help any children who have been struggling catch up. The church has learnt to do things differently and proved to itself and many skeptics that change can be done quickly when needed but as Blanchard warns in the seven dynamics of change “If you take the pressure off, people will revert back to their old behavior.” and perhaps the best way to avoid this is to recognise the sacredness of the spaces and relationships created in lockdown. Seeing God where you have creatively and effective served and changed your actions and communities and that this may well have been about you following the missionary impetus of the Holy Spirit into the new. So let go of some things and don’t rush to pick back up other things, even if that is your queen, give yourself the time and space to keep following the missio dei to places you nor I have been before and where the deeper magic happens.
If you need resources or support to do things differently it’s ouT there, but maybe in not in the places you expect. For decades the church has been in investing in Fresh Expressions and for decades before a wealth of mission nouse has been building so maybe those pesky pioneers and prophets who have been a pain in your arse might be worth taking for a socially distanced coffee. Or if you’re in Cumbria sign up for the new pioneer mission certificate here or book on our taster day here

A deeper magic

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A friend who is a political theologian in Germany recently highlighted how one symptom of the loss of power and hold of Christendom was the rush of many to reopen church buildings. Prayers are no more special or effective because they are said in a particular place, and yet, it is equally true that holy places (hills, buildings, beaches, pilgrimage sites) can bring solace, connection. The nature of corona has been apocalyptic as true to the meaning of the word apocalypse it is uncovering a lot of different stuff. Whilst the church has done some amazing things locally in it’s communities with acts of love, bravery and service, some great examples of online services, for many who have honestly asked there has been an increasing uncovering that despite this their church is no longer at the centre of the community and that’s ok. At the same time it’s clear that many have had Christendom blinkers on, evidenced by the conversations (and their tone) about getting back into church buildings, not holding Eucharist online, ‘harvesting’ the rise of people praying for the first time, a lack of critical engagement with those already in online spaces, judgements about what is or isn’t church in the online space, etc. This is uncovering that many are still oblivious to the culture shift that has happened over the last 50 years and living to a greater or lesser extent in a Christendom bubble and whilst I would like to say that’s ok too, because it can be hard to see the systems we are caught up in, but I’m not sure it is. I love the part in the Narnia story where Aslan tells the children of a “deeper magic” and I wonder with all the anxieties around if we are still trusting enough to help push deeper. I saw Ian Paul had used a quote from Alan Hirsch who suggested “If you want to learn to play chess, then take away the queen—then you see what the other pieces can do!’ For many churches, Sunday services have been the ‘queen’ that we have lost. Which I thought was a great commentary on the situation, but as a friend pointed there is an assumption you know how to play chess the first place, and we may be playing chess whilst the rest the world has moved onto Ludo or more likely in the west Monopoly.
BUT despite this once again I want to shout out and congratulate those churches who have served so well without services, wether you have been dog walking for your community, organising food, doing prescription runs, organising sunflower competitions, supporting parents home schooling, and say don’t automatically drop these things because you want to refocus on sunday gatherings. Ask yourselves how can we keep these connections going, so we can keep building on what God has been doing through lockdown, perhaps God has even been showing you, you can improvise, you can change and do things differently. So if services aren’t what’s next, what might be? How can we continue to journey with people in a new way? What about those with dogs in the church arranging mini meet ups with those who can now walk their dogs again, what might a socially distanced homework club look like with a few adults on hand to help any children who have been struggling catch up. The church has learnt to do things differently and proved to itself and many skeptics that change can be done quickly when needed but as Blanchard warns in the seven dynamics of change “If you take the pressure off, people will revert back to their old behavior.” and perhaps the best way to avoid this is to recognise the sacredness of the spaces and relationships created in lockdown. Seeing God where you have creatively and effective served and changed your actions and communities and that this may well have been about you following the missionary impetus of the Holy Spirit into the new. So let go of some things and don’t rush to pick back up other things, even if that is your queen, give yourself the time and space to keep following the missio dei to places you nor I have been before and where the deeper magic happens.

What counts?

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How many people came to church on Sunday?  How many baptisms?  How many weddings?  How many came to the Fresh Expression gathering?  Are the numbers going up?  Are our churches growing?  These were our questions three months ago.  Then we left our buildings and we had a whole new set of questions.

How many logged into church on zoom?  How many watched the video on youtube?  Hurrah, more people are connecting remotely than ever came to church in the building!  Then more recently: How many of our online viewers will join us when we are back in the building?

But what if these are the wrong questions?  What if we are not supposed to be concerning ourselves with church growth at all, at least not in the numerical sense?  Dare I say that we should concern ourselves with other priorities than church growth?

Forty-six years ago Lesslie Newbigin returned from India and in 1989 wrote a book: ‘The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.’   It has become a classic, much read and quoted but the point often missed, because his point is that committed faithful believers will always be a minority.  It is how it always is.  It happened to Jesus so who on earth are we to think it will be different for us – he had crowds in the beginning but numbers dwindled.

Newbigin argues that the church has a key and important role to play in wider society, that our presence within society bringing challenge and change is critical.  We are to be confident in what we learn from Jesus, to live out and communicate faith.  But we are to bear in mind that our individualistic society has blinded us to communal aspects of salvation, meaning counting numbers is missing the point.  We’re to focus on changed society as the outcome rather than church growth.  Newbigin writes: ‘We get a picture of the Christian life as one in which we live in the biblical story as part of the community whose story it is… from within that indwelling try to understand and cope with the events of our time and the world about us and so carry the story forward.’ (p.99.)

What if we take seriously the calling to be salt and light, yeast in the dough, at times visible and other times invisible, a small ingredient that changes the whole?  What are our questions now?  How many people turn up on Sunday morning is no longer the priority, unless we have fallen into the trap of caring more about the institutional structures than the heart of what God is doing.

The questions then become about what the world need us to be and do, right now, as we face this crisis and wider societal challenges.  What is God working on?  What needs to be said and done in order to support society to re-engage well, to move forwards into something more connected, more earthed, more real, kinder?  Who are our partners in this work for the Common Good?

I find it hard to care as much as the church thinks I ought to about numbers coming to church.  I understand that people gathering to share together in the story of God is a good thing.  We need refreshing in what renews our vision, we need one another, we need God.

But turning up isn’t the point – the point is whole lives lived in God.  Right now, there are bigger questions at stake than numbers at church, whether in a building or online.  We have a unique moment as society, we have choices to make.  Right now, that is what I care about, that is what matters, and that is where my energy is going.

Cate Williams 1st June 2020

A parable about the unlocking of lockdown

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I was flicking through Facebook and the mix of memes about getting back to normal, hitting the shops, and comparing this to the comments of a few weeks ago about not rushing back. The FB feed included similar mixed comments about churches starting to return to buildings, at the same time as seeing a really impressive rise in the creative content and approaches from some ministers as they grow in confidence online.

When I saw this meme I was suddenly reminded of a parable I wrote for Off the Beaten Track 16 Years ago!

The prison walls had become the home they had forgotten; so long had they been there in the dust and dirt that any memory of the outside world was just a dream to them. One day they huddled together as usual to have the same conversation they’d had every day for as long as any of them could remember. They talked about escape – how they would they do it, what they would do once they got out, how much better life would be. In the middle of this discussion something unusual happened. The cell door swung open. The prisoners cowered against the back wall, shielding their eyes from the bright sunlight. A man stood there, someone they didn’t recognise, for they had not seen or heard anyone new for very many years. The man spoke to them, saying “you are free to go”. The group sat in silence, for though they had talked about leaving and made plans to leave, now they were too afraid to do so. What world was out there? It was surely a place that must have changed beyond recognition. The prison walls suddenly seemed appealing, for this had become their home. No-one moved until one man, cautiously got to his feet, crossed the small cell and, averting his gaze from what lay beyond, quietly closed the door.

Receptivity and Discipleship

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Receptivity is a fairly new term to me but has been at the heart of how I try to live as a follower of christ. Walking that balance which recognises that I both have story to tell and stories to hear, that I cannot limit something that is infinite so must keep my face set towards the person of christ (our true north) and doing so will always take me to the land of dragons.

In the midst of furlough I have been trying to take time to reflect on the missional space we find ourselves in and reading Stefan Paas’ Priests and Pilgrims when I have the head space. I loved how he picked up the true north in an early chapter talking about the danger of limiting mission (see Bosch) and said “rather than trying to describe where mission ceases and other Christian works begins we should keep stressing where the heart the magnetic pole of mission lies” and balanced this beautifully drawing in Rowan Williams work on the incarnation stating “receptivity precedes purpose, power and action”.

This really got me thinking about the importance of receptivity in relation to discipleship as we come out of lockdown. If a fraction of the people who have turned to prayer during this time want to take things further my guess is the churches first instinct will be, what do we teach these people rather than what can we learn. I also think that with all the talk of the new normal the church will double down on a kind of internal programme of theological teaching (giving people the basics first) disconnected from social learning and practices. Too often we have disconnected discipleship from the ongoing following of Jesus both infinite and finite. Too often we feel we have to get the basics right in others before journeying with them or sending them out. I’m always intrigued by how Jesus sent of the disciples and yes the 12 might have had more idea what they were doing but the 72 must had a whole series of crazy ideas about who Jesus was, what they were being sent out to do that was informed by hanging around and hearing a shed load of random stories that they may or may not have understood. But as Paas points outs they were sent out in the spirit of radical receptivity with nothing but their sandals and vulnerability as seekers, to find people of peace, learn what God was doing and find their place in gods mission. In doing so Jesus BROKE the stereotypes that we keep trying to return to of “givers” and “receivers” and set the trajectory that all mission is contextual, that God is already at work in the culture, that other is a gift and that discipleship is intrinsically linked to and flows from radical receptivity.

For a deeper look at receptivity check out Al Barrett‘s who introduced me to the term.

Continuing the digital dialogue.

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Lori Passmore writes

For better or worse many of us have been forced into the online space as our mixed economy of churches seek to connect with congregations in a virtual way because of social distancing. But what will happen to these digital spaces as we move out of lockdown?
According to a poll conducted by Tearfund, a quarter of adults in the UK have watched or listened to a religious service since the coronavirus lockdown began1 giving the church an unprecedented opportunity to reach beyond its usual contact. People are able to be curious, seek comfort in a time of uncertainty, make a faith re-connection, be globally connected…but whatever the reason for this increase, there is a hunger to connect. You can find everything from prayer meetings, to messy church, to worship, to interactive experiences being streamlined through social media. As Richard has previously spoken about we are invited from our private spaces into a.n.others private space, there is an intimacy in that connection. With a collective online community we can listen, interact and contribute with one another and the facilitator/leader.
So what happens next? We don’t know what the next months, year(s) will bring, but if we want to continue to ‘be’ in the digital space – what could/will this look like? We could, for example, streamline church or other services – as many churches did pre-lockdown. But suddenly this intimate collective online connection becomes something else. I wonder if something will be lost in that connection as we move from the private into the public space and there is a risk of excluding those who are wanting to be part of an online community, rather than just spectators.
A form of ‘digital’ church is not new and there are many who already inhabit this space such as Disability Jesus who found there emerging community online on twitter @DisabilityJ2 or d-church who are ‘’exploring spirituality, creating community in an online world’3. But for those of us seeing a new uptake in interaction and thinking about what we can do next, what could that look like? I think there will be a natural drop in demand as life get’s back to ‘normal’ but I do think there will be a group of people for whom connecting in this way is meaningful. Therefore I ask – how can we create a digital community as part of our church life and what could this look like? I’d be interested to know if anyone has been asking these questions of those who’ve connected with them online. There is an opportunity to create something that’s digitally experimental, creative, accessible and not geographically constricted. As someone involved in Fresh Expressions and pioneering I’m excited by the opportunity this gives us and hope that there will be those willing to take the leap.

The future belongs to Maureen.

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Being involved in Gods mission means we start with asking what is God doing and its a key question many people are asking. One of the joys of social distancing being played out in the public space and where I see God at work is in those moments when you catch someones eye walking down the road and you both adjust your course slightly. In that moment and action something intimate happens as you both recognise and value the humanity, preciousness and dignity of the other person, and adjust accordingly.

Back in day aka about 6 weeks ago our our physical and emotional proximity was primarily played out in four spaces public, social, personal, and intimate. (see Halls work on Proxemics). These spaces not only helped us navigate culture and communication but also belonging. Indeed the church and other institutions often sought to foster belonging within certain spaces (eg encouraging alignment with a particular discourse in the public space of preaching, promoting connections in small groups, house groups in social spaces or prayer triplets etc in personal space). And in much the same way as the public space becomes intimate for a moment as we encounter a stranger walking towards us and adjust our path, so other spaces and peoples approaches to them have changed. The internet streaming of church services has blurred the public worship space as it enters homes and the personal space of prayer has gone into quasi social/public space as people phone it into a stranger for support. Whilst the intimate acts of compline or offices are made public as they are streamed from someones lounge or personal prayer space. Our physical and emotional proximity spacing and attitudes are changed and changing. What if this dehumanising and democratisation of spaces is something that can resource us as we prepare for the new normal. Our previous default (see Myers) as church was often to inhabit two spaces a public space (both in worship services and in social action spaces) and a social space (small groups) but what if instead of slipping back in that public broadcast space and social space (often hidden away in someones house) which together have too often fostered a dualistic separateness of the spiritual and human, we build on the new proximity emerging.

In Cumbria we have often talked about the mythical Maureen, who was faithfully part of the church for most of her life and now just retired continues to serve the local church and community. What ever we provide in terms of evangelism, discipleship and mission enabling has to work for Maureen. So when we talk about growing Fresh Expressions sparked by a question from Bishop Emma we have often said “wouldn’t it be great if every Maureen could have a FX around their kitchen table or in their living room”. I think this might now be more possible than ever. But it will not happen unless we build and learn from what God is doing now, and resist the urge to return to what was. The opportunity to merge and creatively continue to disrupt the proximity spaces to enhance a missional way of life where we live out our discipleship in every space is huge. What if all public worship and compile spaces are always on online so Maureen and few pals can gather around a table and join in in her kitchen. What if the thought for the week is streamed or printed and Maureen and different bunch of pals gather around a table that has now moved into the public space at the back of church whilst Shelia is at another table with different pals and does the same over cake. What if Maureen and friends come together and for a number of weeks in their personal space plan a way to serve the community and do this on last friday of every month. What if we hold the different spaces more lightly, and think strategically how they can resource one another more intentionally. WHAT IF and WHY NOT….