Sue and Andy Kalbleisch created this new video about Church on Tap, a Pub Church in Southern Ontario:
Great work!
Fresh Expressions
Churches along the Ottawa get Messy!
“The Anglican Churches Along the Ottawa” tried something new. It was a movement that came out of nowhere and re-lit their torch of faith. It is called “Messy Church”.
The first Messy Church we put on at Holy Trinity, Hawkesbury, on July 23rd was a tremendous success…over twenty children together with their parents & grandparents – plus two babies. The evening started with a “messy church” grace, then supper, and kept the tradition of “messy” alive as church parishioners served spaghetti.
It was chaotic & wild….but the sound of children laughing, crying & playing was music to our ears!
It was all about Noah. After the meal we had craft & learning stations littered at the other end of the hall. At the end, all the children boarded a three dimensional ark made from lumber and cardboard…It was picture perfect!
We borrowed a lot from a Messy Church workshop we attended in Kingston earlier this year, and we borrowed a bit from the original model, but we incorporated more of our own ideas. It was a good sign when the children were crying because they had to leave! The comments and the phone calls are still coming in from parents who are asking when the next Messy Church is going to be. Many are sad because they have to wait until September.
The amazing thing through all of this, Holy Trinity Hawkesbury has now gained a Sunday School! 9 children from across the river in Grenville, Quebec, are without a Sunday School since the United Church had stopped Sunday School this past year. They are excited that we will be accommodating them, and they are at the ages where we might be looking at a Youth Group in a couple years…
Amazing News isn’t it- The Spirit is ALIVE here!
What Nick Offers
As team leader of Fresh Expressions Canada, Nick is in a unique position to provide an introduction to Fresh Expressions, which started life in England as an initiative of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Methodist Council in 2004, with a brief to encourage churches all across England to establish new congregations and Christian communities through creative and innovative outreach. This was a response to the changes experienced in English society over the past fifty tears, many of which we have experienced here in Canada. Since 2008 Fresh Expressions Canada has been working “to encourage the development of fresh expressions of church alongside more traditional expressions, with the aim of seeing a more mission-shaped church take shape throughout the country.”
To date he has presented “Changing Times-an introduction to Fresh Expressions”, to the National House of Bishops, the Vision 2019 Planning Team, a theological college, General Synod 2010, and diocesan synods.
A Fresh Expression of Amnesia
If we are to become a church shaped by and for God’s mission in this world, the last thing we need is a fresh expression of amnesia. 233 variations of the word “remember” appear in Old and New Testaments. As poet and philosopher George Santayana has it, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So as we immerse ourselves in talk of being sensitive to the multiplicity of different contexts and cultures around us in Canada, and of the need to connect appropriately with those contexts and cultures, it is salutary to be reminded that we haven’t always thought, much less acted, in this way.
The tradition goes back at least as far as Peter the apostle and the interior struggle that ensued when God presented him first with a triple vision on a rooftop in Joppa, followed closely by the very human invitation to enter the home of a Roman. The Council of Jerusalem described in Acts 15 similarly struggled with questions of what some would call contextualisation. Should we impose our way of worshipping and following Jesus on another culture, or should we help that culture develop its own response to the God who Jesus Christ reveals?
In the clash between the Celtic church and Rome in seventh century Britain over such world-shatteringly important matters as the “right” haircut for Christians and the ”right” time to celebrate the Resurrection, we see the very human tendency to try to impose “our” way (which to us is obviously the right way) on those with whom we come into contact. Of course, the tendency is made worse when we find ourselves part of a dominant and powerful group which has the ability to enforce “our way” of doing things on others.
At the same time, there has also been a recognition that God has a different view of diverse cultural expression. The miracle on the day of Pentecost was not so much that visitors to Jerusalem from throughout the Mediterranean world suddenly became able to understand Aramaic, spoken with a decidedly Galilean accent, but that these visitors had the “mighty works of God” proclaimed to them in their own native languages by people who were previously unable to speak (or presumably understand) those languages. For some strange reason, God appears to accommodate himself to different tribes, tongues and nations.
Thomas Cranmer picked up on this theme in the sixteenth century with the move in public worship from Latin into a tongue “understanded of the people.”[1] Unfortunately, many Anglicans since Cranmer seem to have forgotten this principle, and instead we have often imposed a foreign language and culture on people to whom we went bearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. (A particularly Canadian example of this would be the Residential Schools, many of which were church-run). At the same time this attitude has sometimes led to the trivialising, belittling and dismissing of forms of worship developed by the “receiving” group in their own language and culture.
A notable exception to this attitude is Robert McDonald, the nineteenth century missionary, and translator, of the Yukon:
McDonald travelled extensively, visiting native camps throughout the area. He had a natural empathy and respect for their culture and concerned himself with teaching them to read in their own language so they would have access to the teachings of the Bible during his absences. Two years after his arrival at Fort Yukon, he baptized the first Gwitch’in converts. Over the course of his 42 years in the North, he baptized 2,000 adults and children.[2]
The confluence of First Nations people with the Christian faith has produced some distinctively First Nations expressions of the faith. One example is the continuing American Indian hymn sing tradition, in which people gather towards dusk for a communal meal, followed by story telling and hymn singing which could continue far into the night. Bishop Mark McDonald tells us these have often been looked at by some white Christian leaders as being inferior or inappropriate expressions. This propensity to judge one cultural expression of Christianity by the standards and through the lens of another is a danger that will need to be avoided if fresh expressions of church in all cultures and contexts are to flourish and to receive the respect which they deserve.
The apostle Paul offers us this model for a different way of proceeding.
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process.[3]
We are being offered the exciting opportunity of engaging with God’s mission in a post Christendom context, but this will only be realized fully if we have the courage to face the mistakes of the past, taking appropriate responsibility for them, and taking great care not to repeat them.
[1] Article 24 of the Church of England [2] http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/BishopStringer/english/mission-mcdonald.html [3] Philippians 2:5-7 (The Message)
What would it take for you to feel safe enough to . . . ?
Over the last few days, the e-mails coming into my Inbox regarding the role of the institution in supporting emergence in faith communities and networks have been so confirming. They have confirmed for me that this is an important moment in the long history of our Christian dialogue. I have come to believe that, in our relationships, there is always more potential than we realize. What is it that we say in Eucharistic Prayer C — something about “Open our eyes to see Your hand at work in the world around us . . . “?
Most of the time, the only real obstacle to moving into new life is our fear — nothing else! Fear of the unknown, fear of the known, fear of giving up control, fear of the hidden motivations of the institution, fear of __________ (please fill in the blank!). In the story of 2 Kings 7, there were four lepers hanging out at the city gates, in fear because their city was under siege. They couldn’t find a home in the city and they were terrified of the enemy outside the walls, as well. Mind you, they’d never actually encountered the enemy – just heard about it. Finally, the storyteller quotes them as saying, “Why stay here until we die? So let’s go out . . .” Well, the story goes on to confirm that the threat we are familiar with may actually be worse than the one we’re imagining!
As I respond to some of the fear-filled correspondence, I’m learning that asking, “What is it that you fear?” only makes things worse. People can expand on fear, forever. Lately, I’ve started asking, “What would you need in order to feel safe enough to try . . . ?” Now, instead of expanding on their fears, they are working toward a plan, an approach, a venture — even new partnerships!
Much of what we fear exists where there is a lack of love. In our Christian Scriptures we have the assertion that perfect love casts out all fear. I often wonder, when feeling fear (even institutional anxiety), “What (or who) is it that I need to love, right now?” I can tell you that, when the answer comes to me, and I follow the Spirit’s leading to Love, it’s actually OK to feel insecure, rather than fearful. I can live with not knowing; I cannot, however, find life through fear. Rudolf Bahro (German activist and iconoclast) explains that “When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.” Imagine us leading – loving but insecure with asserting Truth – “insecure” enough to stay curious and loving enough to stay clear of the sticky web of fear.
Postmoderns are sometimes critiqued for too glibly denouncing that which smacks of modernity. Reading religious ‘blogs lately convinces me that most of us could spend the rest of our days apophatically asserting our various realities. If we’re to prepare ourselves for the “not yet” Kin-dom of God, though, we have to gird up our loins to walk in that in-between place where the old language is inadequate and the new language is still coming to us. We’ll daily be humbled by recollections of the certainties we used to herald. We’ll more freely admit that, well, we just don’t know (yet!). All we’ll have is the Holy Visions that wake us in the night and a longing to be a part of what the Spirit has been birthing for millenia – right in our collective midst. Some of us will paint our memories of those visions; others will put music to them; fewer still will design buildings and sacred spaces and most of us will try language – old wineskins for new wine!
I imagine that when the original drafters of the 20/20 vision first came together with their love and hopes for the Episcopal Church and all that it has to offer, they shared a passion not too dissimilar from what we share on this virtual community. They were afire with visions of what might happen if we were to open our hearts and hands and churches in new ways to new possibilities. They too were concerned that the “same old – same old” might subsume their Spirit-led ventures and they were cautious not to limit the Spirit’s work with small expectations. They prayed and they hoped and they shared, tirelessly. I know, because I’ve been blessed to hear their stories. Many of them are now watching and praying and listening to this conversation regarding Angli-mergence – hoping from the sidelines that the baton they passed will be cherished, regardless.
Here are the questions that shape my conversations, these days: “How might we choose love over fear? How might we get comfortable with insecurity in this strange place we presently traverse? How might we honor the Episcopal Church we’ve inherited while preparing ourselves to offer ancient gifts to new cultures? And most of all, how might we do that, TOGETHER?” I think that courageously answering that question may be more important than many of us realize.
With crazy hopes and growing cheer,
Tom
646-203-6266
If You Build It, They Will Come
There is a well-known line from the movie, Field of Dreams, that goes, “If you build it, they will come.” While the person who said this line was referring to a baseball field, and not a church, it still fits the situation at St. John’s Church, in the Parish of Richmond, NB, quite well.
As you may recall, the parish voted to build a new church and parish centre. The design is simple yet practical, it provides for congregational worship, three Sunday school classrooms, a nursery, modern washroom facilities, kitchen and storage space. The one and only step in the entire building is the one up into the sancturay. It is warm, comfortable, useful for many kinds of functions and accessible by all.
Click here to read the rest of this article from the Diocese of Fredericton’s web site
Bishop Michael Bird Endorses Fresh Expressions
The Bishop of Niagara’s video endorsement of Fresh Expressions is no longer available from the Niagara web site. Howver, Bishop Bird said, “Iwant to invite you to particpate with me in the Fresh Expressions Vision Day…I look forward to seeing you then”
Taking It To The Streets
Pair seeks community’s input for new kind of church…an article about Lance Dixon and Rob Crosby-Shearer’s fresh expression of church in Toronto.
Click here to read the full article from the Diocese of Toronto’s “The Anglican”, by Henrieta Paukov.
