Great excitement in Adelaide all this week, as we’ve been teaching at Tabor College.  Lots of engagement with themes that, to be honest, we’ve become so familiar with that we’re surprised how much excitement we’ve stirred up.  New forms of church, Fresh Expressions, Mission Shaped Ministry – all stuff that we take for granted in the UK, but which is news (and very good news, it seems) to Christians in this city.  Meetings with the archbishop as well as students (all of whom are also church leaders – and from a wide variety of traditions and types of church).  Some of them have found it a bit challenging hearing from a female church mouse, but that’s not especially new in the grand scheme of things.  Overall, the experience has made us quite proud of all that has been accomplished in UK churches in recent years, and also makes a trip to the other side of the world worthwhile as we realize we have been bringing totally new thinking into this situation.  Whoever would have imagined that tired mainline churches in the UK would have so much to share with others worldwide.  Something to do with the missio Dei, probably.

And this koala came down from the tree to greet us.  Reminded us of a certain story in the gospels!

Walking round the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, we came across this exhibition:

People are often telling us we need to ‘grow up’ and ‘act our [supposedly very old] age’, yet in terms of how we see the world, its potential and possibilities, we often feel we’re still teenagers.  How can people who are not in their 20s or 30s possibly qualify as ’emerging’?  Well, this theme may be the answer.  The notion of being ’emerging elders’ appealed to us as soon as we saw it.   And of course we are not alone, by a long way.  Emergence doesn’t automatically correlate with age.  Meeting with Robert Banks in Sydney the other day, he commented that for some of the people he meets, it looks like ‘25 is the new 70′ in terms of young people’s outlooks (specifically, some Christian young people), which for him (now at 70) looks like they’re going backwards.  We recall Lesslie Newbigin saying something along the same lines twenty years ago, which shows how old we really are – and gives us something to live up to as well.  Growing old and staying young is a great adventure.

While this blog has been quiet for a bit, we’ve travelled to Australia and taught a week long intensive course in Sydney – hoping that we might find an odd moment to blog here, but it’s all been so busy this is the first chance, now the course has ended.  A good week with Australian church leaders, mostly young (20- and 30-somethings) and mostly seriously engaged with the missional questions of what church might look like for the 21st century.  And the minority who weren’t quite ready to engage with all this at least kept their opinions to themselves and didn’t disrupt things for everybody else – which is probably about as good as it gets.

The questions here have a familiar ring about them.  When is a spiritual engagement ‘real church’ being one of the most prominent.  How do you tell the difference between something that’s an outreach activity designed to get people into the churches we now have, and a missional community that is itself ‘real church’?  Issues of power and control surfaced perhaps more than they might in some UK contexts, and it’s probably fair to say that some people (maybe a majority) found it hard to believe some of the creative things happening in UK mainline churches.  Just as well we have the Fresh Expressions DVDs to show them, and all the website resources connected with that, otherwise some would have thought we were making it all up.  So we have ended the week with a feeling of gratitude for all the networks we are a part of in the UK, and those of you who are reading this in that context need to know that what we are all engaged with is out in front when compared with other places around the world.  Of course one reason for that is the reality that we know our traditional churches are in bad shape.  But we’ve also learned how to read the culture in such a way as to recognize signs of God at work.  In one discussion this week, somebody commented that our emphasis on connecting with those people we have called ’spiritual searchers’ wouldn’t work in Sydney, because there are none here.  The reality is that Sydney is host to the single largest Mind Body Spirit festival in the entire world!  How easy it is to be so insulated in our own spaces that we don’t see the bigger picture.  Yet the importance of building bridges is right there in the city centre:

And we took this ourselves.  Clearly, having something iconic helps develop your photographic skills.

Next stop is Canberra, and meetings with the Anglican diocese to help them work out how they might introduce Fresh Expressions and the Mission Shaped Ministry course there.

A good question, that in our case is easily answered: we had too much to do and not enough time to do it in.  Well, not absolutely no time – but none for additional activities like blogging.  And that’s not quite true either, because we continued to read other people’s feeds, which presumably is a less demanding thing than creating new material ourselves.  A good month, though, with meeting lots of new people at conferences and seminars – and travelling an enormous number of miles (almost 2000, which doesn’t seem much if you’re in the US or Australia, but in the UK that’s a serious number of miles).

One piece that we did read is this report from George Barna in the US.   It has some interesting statistics about different generations and how they read (or don’t read) the Bible, but we were surprised by his surprise that the younger you are the less likely your are to read the Bible.  One thought that occurred to us was that it’s quite likely that if you’d asked the generations about reading (whether the Bible or any other book), you might have come to the same conclusion – that the younger you are, the less likely you are to read any sort of book that isn’t required for school or study.  Then we also wondered what is meant by ‘Bible reading’.  Does listening to it being read count, for instance?  Since most people in the first century only encountered the Bible when they heard it read out in synagogue or church gathering, you could argue that reading it in private is a less authentic way of encountering it.  It certainly owes a good deal to the Enlightenment  emphasis on individualism.  But what if you have a Bible app on your iphone?  Or subscribe to one of the many messaging services that send ‘thoughts for the day’ direct to your phone or computer?  Or watch a movie with Bible themes, or ….   Well, you get the idea.  And it’s not just an American issue, because in the UK publishers who produce daily reading guides have seen a huge fall in their subscriber numbers over recent years – so much so that some now make them available for free on their websites, because there’s a diminishing market for printed versions.  And yes, the younger you are, the less likely you are to read those as well.  A bit of lateral thinking might suggest that the perceived problem is not so much with the young who don’t read the Bible, but with the form in which the message is put out there.  Remember that in the first century the letter form was innovative, that the early Christians more or less invented (and certainly were the first to use widely) the codex (sheets stitched up the side like a book), and that the Reformers made such rapid headway because they harnessed the power of the recently-invented printing press.   If the medium really is the message, then maybe we should be asking different questions about people’s reading habits.

It’s not often (well, hardly ever) that a book is so good that we read it through from cover to cover in one sitting – but that’s what happened with this one.  The story of how Michael Volland, with help from one or two others, brought feig to birth as a fresh expression of church in partnership with Gloucester cathedral.  The combination of a personal story really well told with reflections on how and why certain things happened is a winner.  So thanks to Michael for giving us the book.  One to be cherished – and full of wisdom, humour, and spiritual insights.

A regular reader of this blog sent us this link to a prayer specially written to be said before having sex.  Since getting it, we haven’t tried it (the prayer, that is), but it made for an interesting conversation piece because on the one hand all our instincts tell us that prayer and a sense of the divine presence should infuse the whole of life.  But praying like this before getting down to the business?  We’re tempted to ask, ‘is nothing sacred?’ – but that would be altogether the wrong question!

This blog has been quiet for a while – a combination of some complicated family situations, intense writing to meet deadlines, summer weather and the garden needing attention, and a whole lot of preparation needing to be done for engagements in the next month or two.

One of the more encouraging events we’ve been part of recently was with a Roman Catholic group who are exploring creative forms of mission.   It reminded us (as if we needed it) of the many ways in which churches of all sorts, and in all parts of the world, are wrestling with the same things as we all try to work out what it means to be spiritual and Christian in a fast-changing culture.  We shared what we thought we know, even led worship for them, but of course there’s always an elephant in the room when Catholics and Protestants meet.  Known as the mass, eucharist, communion, whatever.  It’s not the first time we’ve been to a RC event and been unable to participate in the mass, of course, so we knew what to expect.  But there’s something very odd when you’re invited to be the main speakers at an event and still banished from the sacraments.  A bit like taking the food to a party, even setting the tables out – and then being sent to the naughty corner because some long deceased ancestor had a fight about something nobody really remembers.  Not that this would prevent us going to similar events in the future – but somebody somewhere needs to realize that this is itself a missional issue.  Paradoxically, the other place where we could regularly expect to be similarly excluded would be in Plymouth Brethren type churches, which also think (for roughly similar reasons) that they are the only ‘real’ Christians on the planet.  Two traditions united by an odd mixture of self-confidence and fear.

On the train on the way home from the Society of Authors summer party.  We had lots of interesting conversations and connections – it seems like you just have to say you write about spirituality and everyone’s dying to give you half their life story – well, the bits they regard as spiritual anyway.  We are old enough to remember a time when mention of such a topic would either have been the end of the conversation, or people would have been eager to tell you which church they went to, either in real life or their imagination.  Not a single one of today’s conversations went in either of those directions - nobody turned off, but plenty of stories about fairies, angels, inner search, etc.  Some of them more believable than others but it seems like everybody who’s anybody needs to have at least one angelic encounter these days.  In fact so many of them at this event that we’re thinking of proposing a spirituality writers group.  Which could either come under fiction or non-fiction, but would certainly be fascinating.  If any society members are reading this, let us know what you think.

An interesting statement of intention from the new bishop of Shrewsbury here about local clergy needing to be more episcopal, and bishops needing to be more apostolic.  Of course, there will always be the McDonaldized systems to struggle with, but we’ll not be the only ones watching to see if he manages to put it into practice.

We haven’t done much blogging this month – not because we’ve been slacking on vacation, though.  Actually we’ve been rather busy.  John has just completed a major revision of his book, Introducing the New Testament – all 200,000 words of it (and then some).  And started on its Old Testament counterpart (3 chapters done, 10 more to go).  Olive has been working flat out with a church reassessing its mission activities in the community.  And for fun, we’ve remodelled the garden, which is a sizeable enterprise in itself (the picture only shows less than half of it).

Garden for a mousehole

Finding piles of wonderfully flat stones on a local beach has provided a great supply of materials, but by the time we’ve filled one bag of them we’re both struggling with the weight – plenty of time to reflect on other weights we all carry around in life.  And also to get rid of some of ours by throwing smaller stones into the sea with a ‘and that ones for him‘ sort of prayer (write your own script).  It may sound mad, but it’s a great way to de-stress and put awkward people in perspective.

Oh, and on top of all that, we now have a hive full of honey bees buzzing round the garden – who of course need lots of tlc and who also provide a great deal of fascination and fun.  And are amazingly docile – not a sting in sight, nor even an angry bee in fact.  Nice to know that we must be in tune with nature.

This week we’re off for a 24 hour trip to the Edinburgh Book Festival, for a Society of Authors event hosting the great and the good of the worlds of books, politics, civic life, etc.  More on that on our return.  Well, if it’s as good as the publicity suggests, otherwise there’ll be nothing to report on.