Category Archives: pioneer ministry

silence, questions and directions

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The blog has been silent for a while – this is due to taking time out during August for a variety of things like holidays, but also using the traditionally quieter time to think through and reflect on stuff and read and listen a lot more rather than write.

This week the house is virtually silent for me. Sarah and the children are at Detling. I could have gone but I decided to stay home and work this week in Rochester.  I don’t really have anything against big christian conferences (lots of people seem to get things out of them, although I might question if these events actually help people in their faith journeys or not) … but after 3 years of training at SEITE and now 2 years into KCME with it’s variable quality of lectures and another year of that left – the simple thought of spending time in marquees or meetings listening to yet more lectures just fills me with dread. maybe in the future, when I have a life that is clear of compulsory lectures that things may change.

So the blog may be quiet over the next few weeks as I take time to reflect and think on certain areas of what I am doing and how I am doing it. I think in many ways I am at a crossroads – and maybe even all the roads are good …. but whether they are or not, decisions still need to be made. If decisions are not made …. well then I stay at the crossing!

Various questions I am thinking through are:

Am I called to share Jesus with people or be Jesus, and is their a difference or are they one and the same?
Is relationship building enough?
Is there ever a right time to introduce Jesus into a conversation?
Is looking, waiting and searching for what God is doing enough?
What is the next stage with the gathering?
Why is pub theology so interesting to people? (more people have spoken to be about pub theology in the last 4 weeks than about anything else I have been involved in over the past 2 years!)
Out of all the possible ways forward that look good … which way should I go?

cheat (or is that cheeky?) pioneer post!

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Wednesdays for me is a study day. In our working agreements, all curates are supposed to take a day a week for study. I’m fortunate in that Adrian sees the value of this and has encouraged me to make the space for this work. This is part of our training and formation. Personally I think it is a good discipline to protect this time, like protecting time with families and days off. If we are going to lead churches in appropriate and relevant ways it is important that we regularly keep abreast of old and new ideas so we can contemplate, study and avoid getting into a rut. If we can form good habits in our curacies then they are likely to stay in the future.  But … I digress.

My major assignment this year has been different to my fellow curates. I am to present a portfolio of my first two years work as a pioneer working out of a cathedral as an 8000 word equivalent. I have information, study notes, reflections and so on in a variety of places … podcasts that I have experimented with, journals for things and thoughts i do not wish to be public, notes from book I have red and applied to by context, and of course this blog. In fact the major part of the raw material for my portfolio will come from this blog over the last two years. There is so much reflection and information and ongoing questions that I need to make a judgement and the most sensible, to me, seems to be to take those that have come across as being the most major.

I have an opec spec on what particular facet(s) I choose to concentrate on … and this is where you, the wonderful regular readers of SHP come in. I very much consider that you have been traveling this journey with me. Many of you have been kind enough to make comments, or to email me or even meet up for coffee, beer or food to chat about some of the stuff that has been raised. I’ve valued that input and all of it has challenged me and most of it has influenced my practice.

So … I have a request. If you consider yourself to be part of this in some way (and I think you all are) I would be grateful if you could take a moment or two to consider what you think have come through as the major issues or questions that I have been experiencing or asking over the last 2 years. I would like my portfolio to reflect what others are hearing as well as what I believe I have experienced.

I hope you don’t think that is a cheeky question … but rather one that will massively help me to learn as much as I can from the last couple of years.

Cheers
R

just to say: ‘I’m still hanging in here’

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The blog has been very quiet this week … and that probably reflects that there is not a lot of questioning going on in my mind. I am continuing to be a presence in the places I hang out in and I am having  great conversation with people. I think there is still some (quite justifiable) scepticism amongst many … as we talk I get a distinct sense from some that they expect me to get the Bible out and start to bash them over the hed with it. I’m not … and I guess the longer I am around and this does not happen then the more relaxed people will become.

The blog has not been quiet due to inaction. I guess it has really been quiet as I have been too tired to think and ask the all important reflective questions that seem to fuel this blog. I am tired now but this week I have lost the discipline of reflection and I fear that if I go into a into a second week without proper reflection then could go some way to dismantling an exercise which I believe is vital to my ministry.

One observation I make as i look back over the last few weeks is that I am becoming very busy … and yet I am not. I am busy in terms of places to be present in. I now have 3 places where I attempt to invest quality time of just being around with no agenda other than I like to be there and hope and pray that God will lead me to those God wishes to lead me too. There is a 4th place on the horizon and I really cannot visit all to the same intensity that I have been. So … choices will need to made and it seems that my timetable and way of working will have to change as well.

One important reflection that I need to write here us that I have been more conscious over the last 6 weeks than ever before of the loneliness of pioneer ministry, and of my loneliness in what I do in particular. This is going to sound rather sad …. but I need a friend! I need a partner in crime or a Barnabus type figure who shares my passion for this kind of stuff … for hanging out with people and creating a new style of church with people. I am not sure what I mean by that … but I think it means someone who will seriously invest time and effort in the gathering with me, and maybe even spend some time with me in Deaf Cat, Rochester Coffee Co and Wetherspoons. I am not sure who this person could be, or even if I would recognise the person when I came across them … but I do believe that there is such a person and I hope that either our paths will cross sooner or later or that I re-meet someone I already know. I am not sure if that will make sense to anyone outside of my head …. but then if not tht can be a comment to make me think when I re-red this later.

This was going to be a one-liner blog post just to say that I am still here really (hanging on like in the pic!); but taking the time out to think and reflect has brought up some stuff that I did not realise was sitting there and waiting to crawl out! I think that alone shows the value of reflection and I’m glad I have forced myself here this evening.

pioneer training

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Jonny has blogged about the CMS Pioneer Ministry Training.

This looks really excellent and as I was reading it I found myself wishing this has been around a few years ago when I started training or OPM.

I particularly welcome the return to what it always should have been, as outlined in the Mission Shaped Church report:

‘the idea (as strongly recommended by the c of e in mission shaped church but seemingly ignored by lots of bishops and training officers up and down the country) is that training should be on the job for pioneers and not residential. and that the training will be alongside what they are pioneering.’


It is also going to be assessed by portfolio – something I have marginally achieved in my IME training for this year (but it is still to be written, in my case as an academic essay).


As I say above, this is excellent and if you are an ordinand about to start you should really be having big discussions with your bishop about this … now where is that tardis so I can go back in time?!

church: an echo chamber for the divine word

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I went to the changing the landscape conference yesterday in Lincoln which was excellent for me on a variety of different levels.

First it was great because I was able to catch up with some friends from my past. Vaughan and Karen Pollard were on the staff of Holy Trinity Nailsea, when I was the youth pastor, there and now run Connect, a new Fresh Expression in Spalding. Secondly I managed to grab coffee with new friends such as Heather who I have been chatting with over things like Twitter for a little while. It always amazes me how the emerging/fresh expression world is quite small but well connected, which I think is important for us if we are to survive!

The conference was amazing with Archbishop Rowan being his normal outstanding self. I think Heather best described his address when she likened it to steak …. amazing at first sight but then as you chew you realise how amazing it really is. Rowan said a lot in 40 or so minutes which needs to settle in my mind; but some highlights:

 – church is simply what happens when Jesus Christ is around and church is always a verb before it is a noun

– it takes time to be a Christian, and so we need patience and respect to let things unfold and not put new churches under pressure for results in a short space of time.

– for all we know, we may be the early church!

– we are not about membership, or a great new product – church is about transformation in both individuals and communities.

and my favourite ‘steak like’ comment which is going to stay with me for a while and no doubt appear in a  lot of blogs and sermons over the next few months: 

– the church is an echo chamber for the divine word; it resounds in us from our inner being. Christ needs to be audible and visible

No doubt the whole text will appear on his website or the Fresh Expressions website soon. 

Seattle time!

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The case is packed (even weighed and if the spring balance is accurate it is below weight), I’m checked in, I’ve even printed my boarding pass and, all being well, I should take off from Heathrow tomorrow at 2.20pm on a Britsh Airways flight to Seattle.

If you have missed this – I am incredibly excited to be on a 3 week placement with Church Of The Apostles and looking forward to learning lots from the community of people there as well as sharing a little bit about what I do in Rochester and pioneer ministry / fresh expressions. This is being viewed, quite rightly, as part of my training!

I will land tomorrow just after 4pm local time and will be met at the airport and attend vespers at 6.00pm in St Paul’s chapel … an excellent way to start my time with COTA.

I feel a sense of excitement as well as nervousness. I can’t believe it is over 10 years since I have properly traveled. I also feel a sense of loss … planning a trip away is exciting and I’m really pleased to be going, but I know I will miss my family here – please, when you remember to pray for me on my travels, also remember to pray for Sarah, Tom, Beth and Joe. I think it’s tough on them.

Now seems a good time to thank all of you who have made this possible – you know who you are. It’s a great opportunity and everyone tells me how much I will love it … and I’m sure they are right!

I hope to blog here about my experiences ….so watch this space!

orthopraxis vs orthodoxy

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One of the things I get to do on a regular-ish basis is meet up with Ian Mobsby who kindly agreed to be my mentor a few years back after my placement with Moot. Meeting with Ian is always a specal time as he is one of those people that can see the issues that are hovering and is not afraid to speak out, to challenge, to encourage or to kick up the backside of needed. At times. like most people, I need a combination of these.

Ian has great expertese and I consider myself really lucky to be able to spend a couple of hours every few months talking about what I am doing, where I think I might be going and what I need to be thinking about doing. The wealth of wisdom from this man is fantastic.

Today I have been encouraged and blessed as we looked at the values we as a community have been looking at, and how this has a danger of pulling us into head knowledge type orthodoxy when our gathering, if I am reading things correctly, is far more interested in orthopraxis, aspiring to live out our faith with integrity. The community, or gathering, have agreed some values, such as inclusivity, the importance of journey, mission and a few others. While I was thinking that we needed to be looking at what these mean, in other words ‘unpack them’,  it became clear after speaking with Ian that, actually, we need to be looking more at how we live these out in our world.

So … as a community we need to be asking, ‘how can we aspire to live in an inclusive way?’ rather than ‘what does it mean to be inclusive?’ and so on. This may seem only a slight shift in emphasis but it is a shift that will encourage us how to live rather than talking about how to be it – and I think that is where we want to be. I think we want to be a group of people that live out our faith authentically rather than have head knowledge about what we are doing.

As we consider this as a community I think we will be travelling into some pretty exciting times.

armour or flesh?

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A  little while ago I posted about my preparation before going on to the streets and hanging in the coffee bar or pub. The time of prayer was quite Paul-ine in its method and based on the God’s armour passage in Ephesians 6.

I have a new spiritual director and when she heard this, Sister Martha, a Dominican nun in Greenwich, seemed to raise her eyebrows (that may have been my imagination) and made a simple observation of surprise that I was praying for protection and using the armour imagery. It was a brief moment which I should have dwelt on, but I allowed it to pass.

This has been niggling at me for a while but it has not been until quite recently that I have had time to reflect, and I guess it is the approach to Christmas, and in particular the pending onset of Advent that has caused me to wonder what Martha may have been questioning and why I have started to become niggled with what I was doing.

I think it may be summed up in the word vulnerability.

I am questioning whether I have been preparing myself as well as I could or whether I have been concerned too much with my own safety. I wonder whether I should be praying for armour, or asking for sensitivity and eyes and hears to hear what is happening. Armour, it seems, sets up a false human made barrier and does not allow me to be me. If I am wanting to genuinely build relationships for the sake of just building relationships then I can’t really do that through protective armour … can !? If I go wearing God’s armour I don’t go on equal terms, and if I don’t go on equal terms then I can’t build genuine relationship. If I can’t build genuine relationship then I ask what is the point of going at all?

I have been thinking a lot about Advent over the last few weeks as we seek to try and encourage people to take a pause and reflect as they pass through the cathedral during the Christmas Dickens weekend.  There is something about the God child that shouts to me of vulnerability!

Here we see the Son of God, with no protection, totally at risk and relying on the protection of his created creatures to ensure his safety. Jesus in the flesh … quite literally and uncompromisingly. Vulnerability in a total sense – all of God’s plan invested totally in the vulnerability of this child. No armour to protect, no hoards of angels to fly in heavily armed to ward off risks … just a 100% human, 100% fallible human God child.

I think as we follow Jesus through the gospels that this vulnerability appears over and over again, culminating in his trial where he refuses to defend himself. He stands silent in face of false accusations. We see again a vulnerable Jesus whose immediate destiny is in the hands of those he created. There is no self protection here at all let alone talk of God’s armour.

I am coming around to thinking that my preparation before venturing out needs to be more an acknowledgment of my vulnerability and the fragility of who I am with prayers concentrating more on helping me see where God wants me to be and who he wants me to be with rather than prayers of concern for my protection.

try not to let the moment pass

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It’s been a little while since I have shared much of what is happening on my travels. This is mainly because things move quite slowly. There are things happening which are encouraging to me, but will probably seem quite mundane to others and so the ‘story’ does not appear here. For example; I was very encouraged the other day when a someone I walked past said good morning to me! That seems pretty mundane and nothing to write home about.

If I put that in context that I have seen this guy every day for the last 15 months and have been given the totally clear message to stay away and take my religion elsewhere which has been backed up with piss taking comments and low level threatening behaviour. A smile and a ‘good morning vic’ is, for me, a massive step forward in the realms of starting to become accepted as a person.

As far as what I do, I spend a lot of time being present in places. As I am present I continue to be available to listen or chat – depending on who I meet and where I meet them.

I am seeing more and more in my wanderings and in my ‘just being around’ that God speaks through people massively and seems to work incredibly through the mundane. By mundane I do not mean boring, but I do mean ordinary. The stuff that we do each day on automatic and not really notice as we do it. From my experience and in my particular setting it’s through normal everyday stuff that God seems to work and its through normal everyday situations that I seem to be finding evidence of God moving in peoples lives. I reckon that we miss a lot of what God is doing because we are looking for God only in the spectacular. It’s true that it is really easy to see God in an amazing sunset … but it is also possible to see God in a corner of a coffee shop or bar, if only you remember to look. The sunset and the cafe are both within the creation of God.

Currently I am reading Draper’s Spiritual Intelligence and I am being struck again and encouraged by his words of encouragement to find space to simply be and rediscover who you are by listening and noticing yourself. One way that he says we can do this is to try to notice what is happening around us. Draper has the view that most of the time we allow things to pass us by and we don’t notice God because we walk around with our eyes closed to what is happening. He encourages ‘try to notice what is happening; try not to let the moment pass’.

When we are particularly touched by what people say, or a lyric in a song, or a scene in a film in a way that makes us think Draper reckons we need to dwell on that moment and experience it, asking ourselves why that particular incident has moved us or pulled us in some emotional way. Too often, he suggests, we like the feeling but then get distracted by whatever comes along next ad the moment is totally missed. As we take time to consider and really notice stuff I think we start to see more of how God is working in the real world with real people in real ways.

I think this connects with words from Taylor’s Primal Vision who talks of people not being fully in the present. By this he means that people are always concerned about what next and rushing on to the next thing and do not live in the present. Rather than being present, they are elsewhere in thought and sometimes even action given away by body language. When people are concerned about future time and stuff then they are not ‘fully there’ in the conversation they seem to be having. I loved this quote of Taylor’s:

‘The Christian, who stands in that world in the name of Christ, has nothing to offer unless they offer to be present, really and totally present, really and totally in the present. The failure of so many ‘professional’ Christians has been that they are ‘not all there!’

I think there has been a change in my ministry. I used to talk about sitting and observing, which in some ways sounds very passive and nosey. I still sit but I think now I sit and search. Observation is more general it indicates a looking for anything and noticing any and everything of what is going on. Search, on the other hand, speaks more of looking for something in particular, and I am not just looking generally, I am looking with that focus to see what God is doing and where he is doing it! When I notice something, I now work on trying to be really present with it, rather than try to plan or think what next. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but little of what I do makes entire sense!!

It is clear to me though that as I attempt to be present I find it amazing that as I slow down, search and reflect I notice more and more of what is going on around and seeing more and more of how God is working within different aspects of his creation.

If you are looking for a personally challenging and interesting red then Spiritual Intelligence is worth looking at and I’ve just noticed that Amazon have it at priced 30% off at the moment.

COTA trip

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A number of you have asked me whether my Seattle trip which I blogged about here is going ahead.

Apologies for not saying earlier. The trip is happening, the flights are booked, I have my ESTA authorisation and am getting excited at the thought of sharing with the COTA community in January. I fly to Seattle on Jan 13 and will land at Heathrow on Feb 4th. All I can say is ‘cooooolm and big big BIG thank yous to all the people that have helped this to happen – you are stars!!

It’s not that far away timewise as Christmas will speed things along …. I’ll say more as we get closer, and no doubt a lot more on my return!