Category Archives: Flow

Blogging the process of a new project looking at missional church with young people

Explaining Church as way of being with AI’s help

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I recently did a podcast for Youthscape which timed in well with a lot of thinking I have been doing recently about the nature of church. my amazing friend Paul Rose gave some great thoughts that’s set my mind going on why knowledge (epistemological) based approaches to defining church are such a stumbling block. I think much of what I was arguing for in Here Be Dragons was a more ontological approach but At the time I hadn’t really encountered enough embodied theology and practice to start to frame it well. As Rachel and Martin said I use a lot of long words I thought I might just explain the ontological approach a bit more here. And then I thought as it was youth focussed and I’m into co-creation why not use the latest tech to help. So  I asked ChatGPT Ai to write it for me in the style of Sunday Papers blogpost and here with a few edits is what was created.

I think my shift reflects the growing interest among theologians and religious scholars in the use of an ontological approach and towards a deeper consideration of the fundamental nature of reality, and a rejection of the dualistic thinking that has long dominated Western thought. Part of what we learnt from being and doing church young people and Flow was we needed a different embedded joined up approach, and this was where we were heading in Here Be Dragons with sobornost.

At its heart, an ontological approach to the church emphasizes the importance of being and existence, rather than simply knowledge and understanding. While the epistemological approach tends to focus on the intellectual aspects of faith – what we know, what we believe, and how we come to know it – the ontological approach looks beyond these cognitive processes to consider the very nature of the church itself, and the role it plays in the world.

One of the key benefits of an ontological approach is that it allows us to move beyond the limitations of language and conceptual thinking. Too often, our understanding of the church is shaped by our attempts to put it into words – to define it, categorize it, and understand it within a particular framework. However, this can often lead to a narrow and limited understanding of what the church really is, and what it can be.

By adopting an ontological approach, we can begin to see the church as a dynamic, living entity that is constantly evolving and changing over time. Rather than trying to pin it down with definitions and concepts, we can appreciate the church in all its complexity, and recognize the many different ways in which it can manifest itself in the world.

Moreover, an ontological approach to the church allows us to move beyond the traditional boundaries of religious affiliation and denomination. Rather than seeing the church as a set of beliefs or practices that are unique to a particular group, we can recognize that the church exists in many different forms and contexts, and that it has the potential to transcend the divisions that often separate us.

Of course, an ontological approach is not without its challenges. It requires us to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity, and to acknowledge that our understanding of the church will always be limited by our own experiences and perspectives. However, these challenges are precisely what make the ontological approach so valuable – by embracing the unknown and the unknowable, we open ourselves up to a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the church, and with the divine.

In conclusion, the adoption of an ontological approach to the church represents an important step forward in our understanding of what it means to be religious and spiritual in the modern world. By focusing on being and existence, rather than simply knowledge and understanding, we can move beyond the limitations of language and conceptual thinking, and appreciate the church in all its complexity and diversity. So let us embrace this approach, and open ourselves up to a deeper and more profound experience of the divine.

The Ai bit ends here.

once the podcast goes fully live on the site I might say a bit more why I think how the epistemological approach showed up in the podcast discussion and how it can inoculate us from change.

 

What are we organising around?

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I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what are the things people of faith organise around and the problematic nature of this as question with all the power assumptions and notions contained within it. For the last 30 years or so it’s been a fairly common refrain that church seems to orientate and organises around gathered worship services, this where the bulk of the energy and resources go, and perhaps there needs to be a shift towards organising around mission.
At the moment as I continue to call the walls to dust, I’m struggling with the idea of “organising” in pretty much any shape, whether it is around worship, services, mission activity, practices of prayer etc. Instead I’m trying to be more chilled, chaordic, embodied and flowing, a multi directional wanderer.
Which also means I’m left wondering what might different people, thinkers, theologians, missionaries have offered in the past into this space. If ‘Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.’ Kosuke Koyama – do we orientate around being and noticing? Perhaps we orientate around the outside and “being story gatherers” an idea Al Barrett and Ruth Harley start to unpack, or “faithful improvisation” Tom Wright, or personal practices of prayer. Newbiggin would be interesting as although he was very much about the local context and community the way he viewed the space between the death of Jesus as his last public act and the resurrection as something more private could offer an orientation/organising in this in between space.
so what are are you organising around, personally and corporately and what do think different people would offer as the locus to orientate around or is the very orientation idea something we need to critique further?

 

 

You know I love a good party…

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So I collaborated on a new book that the wonderful Andy Freeman has pulled together Festival – A Tribute to the Art of Celebration, Theres 10 or so contributors and published by Proost as part of a social enterprise to support mental health well being at festivals. According to Andy apparently Ive written a ‘beautiful and prosaic to celebration in all its forms – relationships, snow days, childbirth and indeed festivals – the amazing nature of tears and communal nature of joy’

Its really reflection on the years I spent with Streetspace and in Chard, and it has been great to play with a different sort of writing for me. I think it’s a lovely little book do check it out if you get chance and pick one up to support the amazing work Andy is doing through Space to breathe

Welcome to the spacious place

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Ive been thinking a lot about the intersections of place, people and relationship. I am concerned in FX we have stopped wrestling with the WHY of we do what we do, and what kind of space are we seeking to create. It can too easily become like friendship evangelism where we make friends or create places to gather but are dehumanising because they approach people as a commodity to be banked. A friend told a story of guy who became friends with someone from a local church, they did stuff together, got to know each other, their friendship grew and over time this guy shared his faith. The friend came to faith and started to get active in the church, and after a while he joined an evangelism course. The course ran a session on friendship evangelism and he recognised that this was what had happened to him and that day he left the faith. Ill blog at some point how the four values of FXs Missional, Contextual, Ecclesial and Formational help us find a different type of approach.

A while back I created a formula People + Place x Relationship = Space. I wanted to revisit this in the light of this quote I came across from Barbara Glasson below. I wanted to respond with something practical about how we reconfigure our gathering spaces, but I was drawn back to feelings of spaciousness of the community that emerged around Flow. We tend to orientate our thinking around space as the place that we control, our events, our churches our homes, when I used that formula it was around being in the places with others, encountering people building real relationship that created a space for stuff to happen that was beyond my control or a particular place, it was a space in which we all just flowed. So I am afraid I have ditched the practical and gone with the flow, and just offer a few thoughts that I hope helps you encounter the spaciousness we felt. Do let me know.

“Our church instinct tends to want to gather people in and keep them. Postmodern society tends to configure gathering in a different way. People are wary of being trapped. They need to see their exits.”

Our life together was a space made up of many different places, this spaciousness of many places gave a newly discovered opportunity to be yourself, to find a new you, and rediscover in whose likeness we are made. There were places to be and people to see, not from a rushed consumption, but from a deeper desire to be in the spaciousness that being together created. Our space that although had its similarities (safe, welcome, friendly open) was always slightly different depending on who turned up at the time, co-creation was embedded in all we did and so spaciousness abounded.

Our space was bigger than the places we met, sometimes a place came with certain boundaries, yet the formula held and the unconditional relational Flow meant even when people felt they couldn’t stay in that place due a boundary they knew thew they weren’t leaving the space, because something other flowed between and beyond us.

The space extended beyond the people, and whist people came and went they still felt part of the space, tied with loose bounds that still draw us together.

Flow was beyond exits, beyond holding, more than gathering, more than meeting it was and always will be a spacious place…

The Dragons don’t frighten me anymore

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We have been playing with the metaphor Here be dragons as a way to describe what we are up to and where we are with Church on the edge. On old maps there is that space simply described as Here be dragons. We are committed to going to a new place with young people and have been off the map for a while now.
We simply do not buy into the language of whos in and whos out, dualism, etc, We recognise the curtain has been torn, the kingdom is now and not yet, the earth and everything it is the lords, follow missio dei and refuse to see mission as a bridge into church but simply collapse the bridge.

We described our approach to being and growing church in this new land to a young person and here is what Sam (18yrs) came up with what do you think? (click it to enlarge)

StreetSpace going to a new place with young people

We build on the idea that we tack (like a ship sailing into the wind) with young people on a journey to become fully human and in the process we discover what it means to be fully human and what it is to be/grow church. In the process I think I have learnt that actually the dragons aren’t that scarey anyway.

Missional musings with Flow 3

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This is probably one of my favorite quotes about Flow and its possible application to mission.

Action and awareness are merged.

I have been pursuing a growing missional spirituality for a number of years and I think there is weak understanding of incarnational youth work. I would want to argue that relational ministry (that is simply about spending time with young people, without intentionality and development) is the misinterpretation of incarnational ministry and often used as an excuse for lazy youth work. Youth ministry Christiology is too often explored from a ecclessiological paradigm rather than a kingdom theology, which can reinforce a lazy relational approach, that ultimately is about getting young people into church, rather than a kingdom/incarnational approach that is about journey, change and new ways of being and seeing the world and ourselves. My experience of G-d moving is within a relational/community aspect and happens in a fundamentally incarnational context, where the curtain is torn, the now and not yet kingdom is the reality of the every day. I would want to argue that we need to embrace this incarnatonal paradigm and seek to operate in it where Action and Awareness are merged. So we can be open to what G-d is doing in us, around us, with us and others beyond our current frameworks.

Learning to be Missional from Flow

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Flow was term we developed around God and Skating a few years ago. Check out the stories here

It is also used by Csikszentmihalyi in sport and he identifies several characteristics that I think are pertinent to emerging theology and mission. So over the next few posts I hope to take each characteristic and unpack a few thoughts in the light of the journey Flow has taken me on in the last few years.

There are clear goals every step of the way. Knowing what you are trying to achieve gives your actions a sense of purpose and meaning.

We use the word coined the word intentionality back in 2004 and it is used a lot around mission now to hold the desire to aim for something in what we do. However we are values informed rather than being goal centred and act out of sense of purpose and meaning. In StreetSpace we have nine stages that help us measure where we are and where we need to go, but it is about small steps that are rooted and linked to the culture/group we are in.

A lot of what I see around emerging church is great about it responds to the community needs but can still lack intentionality. Critical questions about why are we here and what are seeking to achieve are key and need to asked in a balanced way. But these questions need to be within a context of kingdom hope (which is values informed, and relational), and recognizing the need to become more powerless rather than a business driven ethos.

Holding the tension between setting goals and triple listening (to yourself, to your community, to God) is key.

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.

Put your wetsuit on

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It is not often I write out of a sense of frustration, and accordingly I have held off this post for a while. However I have growing sense that the majority of the missional conversation is still paddling in the shallow end and asking the wrong questions.

Norman Iverson blogged about a sense of a lack of real change around Fresh Expressions and church. It is interesting to see an insider raise some the same questions those on the edge have had for a number of years about the FE Movement, perhaps it is time to review those questions. My comment on the post was “The unwillingness to embrace death (of ideas, orthodox Ecclesiology , power) will mean a lack of interest on real change, so the sense of cognitive dissonance that things that FE bring will be embraced instead. But like the institution I fear they too are not really interested in real change.”
Another place of paddling in Fresh Expressions and the emerging church conversation is around the idea of relevance. As if we listened to the community we would discover how to become a relevant expression of church. But we will never really hear the community whilst we are so rooted in our current models of church and orthodox Ecclesiology . An example was a recent post Is your church too cool. My comment again was rooted in the need to practice a completely new way of being and engaging with the question. “Church can never be relevant in our understanding of the word whilst it remains rooted in a concept of gathering outside of the wider community for a supposed experience of worship. Articles like this are asking the wrong questions”
It is easy to fall into the trap of meeting with other christians and thinking we are doing something new, doing something differently. However this, gathering in an exclusive way (i think we often kid ourselves that we are more open than we are) outside of a wider community is part of the gravitational pull that produces the sense of cogitative dissonance that means a lack of real change and keeps us in the shallow end. It is rooted in our false history that we can suggests we can get closer to G-d through a worship service. There is a brilliant article here exposing this myth and its problems.

I am part of a number of emerging (note not gathered and most of which have christians as a minority) communities, and more and more I am convinced that we need to loose any ideas of coming together for a time of prayer, a time of worship, or a church service. They all simply produce a sense of security that stops us finding out what it really means to love and serve. That is not say we give up meeting together but we meet head on the myth that god is present in the gathering more than anywhere else and work out what it means to put our wetsuits on and ask better questions and swim deeply with G-d.

church on the edge – community in practice

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it was great to have people around last weekend, to see the young people who had come up through the project, linking with the professional people who help form the management committee, volunteers, their children and partners. building new forms of church isn’t rocket science, it is being real, open and relational.
People had space to be themselves, drawing away from the main group to chat, or smoke, or play. People had time to mingle over food and argue over which pudding was best, or education policy.
Here were a group of people journeying together from different startpoints towards christ. Helping to build kingdom (but not all understanding that sort of wording), and called together for a purpose. The practice of an open sobnoristic community meeting together around food, or if you want to get theological about it “a banqueting table”.