Monthly Archives: November 2005

Danelle Hamilton is Brighton Estate Citizen of the Year

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Woohoo! Its true.

What a fantastic surprise!

Danelle got a phone call this afternoon from the local community development crew advising her that a bunch of people had nominated her for the Citizen of The Year award (unbeknownst to her) and that she had won. Of course she didn’t even know she had been nominated, but it seems some of the girls she hangs out with deemed her a worthy recipient.

The spiel on our local website says this:

The Individual category is open to all residents who live in Butler or are actively working towards a positive culture within the community at Brighton Estate. The selection criteria will be based on the following:

– The nominees contribution to the Brighton Community

– Any individual actions to instil positive change and add value to the community

– Inspirational qualities as a role model for the Brighton Community

So what did she do to win it?… We are yet to hear the ‘official’ version, but it seems that small acts of kindness, wonderful hospitality and genuinely loving people actually counts for a lot with the folks round here. I haven’t seen Danelle so excited for quite a while – she is quite overwhelmed that people would think so highly of her. Those of us who know her aren’t surprised at all – and yet at the same time we are quite amazed that the community has valued Danelle’s contribution so highly.

It is a fantastic affirmation of the ‘under the radar’ stuff that Danelle does every day – and really significant to know that other people notice this stuff. What we see is that people have affirmed the Jesus like qualities of Danelle as the kind of qualities they want to see more of around here.

Nice hey?!

I am a ridiculously proud husband.

5 Year Plans

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Someone told me recently that they would like to see a ‘clearly articulated 5 year vision’ for our adventure here in Brighton.

So would I.

But it aint gonna happen.

A 5 year plan assumes we know what will happen over the next 5 years and that we can do stuff to fit in with the developments in community/world/culture etc. I don’t think this is true any more. Life is much less linear and predictable than it was even 10-20 years ago.

The phrase ‘rapid discontinuous change’ is way overused these days, but it is a good descriptor of the world we live in. To make plans to accomplish a pre-determined vision is (in my opinion) fraught with difficulty because we are not able to predict what shape the future will take – in fact we are less able to than we ever were.

A real danger then of a ‘5 year vision’ is that we end up ‘serving the vision’ (to use ‘churchspeak’) rather than being able to adapt with changing cirumstances. We become locked in to a pre-determined imagination of what we have to do. I would suggest that for missionaries particularly ‘5 year plans’ are anathaema, because we can only progress as we get to know the context and as we observe what the Spirit is doing. To do otherwise would be fatal and would actually sabotage standard missionary principles.

There is much of me that would love a 5 year plan – because I am practical and like to work towards a predetermined goal – but when you live and serve as we have been doing you simply come to the point of realising that it is futile and even foolish to attempt something of this nature. This is something I just have to ‘get over’ and move on with.

I wonder, did the early church have a 5 year vision?interview divx download

Basic Instinct

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I walked into my study to check email.

Looked out the window and there are kids all over our front lawn – ‘fielding’. On the driveway across the street is a batsman and set of stumps. We are approximately ‘long on’.

I hear them running in and out of my garage to get their balls. I have tossed one back over the fence. They are about 3 metres from me and having a great time.

My first ‘basic instinct’ was to go out there and tell them to go play in their own yards. Why?…

Our street isn’t like that. The kids have one great long cricket pitch / football oval / basketball court. I think its meant to be more like this.

Might go field for a while and see if I can make it to bat!

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Competency Based Discipleship

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Ok – last post for today!

Lately in our education system we have heard a lot of talk about ‘competency based’ courses where the goal is to be able to ‘do something’ ie. achieve an outcome.

What would competency based discipleship look like?

And if there was a test would we ‘pass’?

Maybe I am declaring that I am not altogether sure that discipleship has been competency based.

Stages of Faith / Stages of Church?

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Duncan has written a very useful summary of Fowler’s stages of faith and has made some comments on how they relate to churches, based on Alan Jamieson’s work on ‘Churchless Faith. I have italicised Duncan’s stuff and the made a few comments below.

To explain what he means by growth in faith Alan draws on the work of James Fowler, especially as it’s found in “Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning”.

1. Innocent (Intuitive-Projective).

Little awareness of belief patterns – typically found in very young children.

2. Literalist (Mythical – Literal)

Security is found in literal beliefs, rules, and authoritative teaching. Usually found in the faith patterns of children.

3. Loyalist (Synthetic-Conventional)

Belief is conformist, acutely tuned to expectations and judgments of others. There is a strong sense of the peer group, expressed in belonging in the church community. Belief is often expressed in dualisms – us and them, right and wrong. Usually found in teenage patterns of faith.

4. Critic (Individuative-Reflective)

There is an emergence of new sense of self taking responsibility for actions, beliefs and values. Often this is a painful experience. There is a new objectification – the examination of beliefs, values and expectations that have been received up to now. Often young/early adults develop their own sense of faith or drop it altogether in this stage.

5. Seer (Conjunctive)

Belief develops again, with the capacity to hold together polar tensions. There is a growing awareness and acceptance of ambiguity, complexity and paradox. Once again the believer is able to engage in symbol and myth. There is an openness to other traditions and communities. This is a point usually reached in mid life and can be the result of ‘mid life crisis’.

6. Saint (Universalising)

Preservation of self is removed from the centre or focus of an individual’s life. There is a shift in motivation to complete acceptance of the ultimate authority of God in all aspects of life.

It seems to me that most Evangelical churches, particularly program-oriented congregations, when considering their Christian education needs, are working on the stage three level. Participation in the congregation’s programs is valued highly. Lone rangers are considered with suspicion or concern. Approved curriculum is preferred over open questioning and exploration.

I liked Alan’s thesis where he argues that many of those who would be considered of ‘churchless faith’ ilk are actually there not because they no longer want to follow Christ, but because they have chosen to ask questions that do not fit the system and the system has vomited them out.

Many people actually engage with the questions of discipleship in a much more rigourous way than in allowed in Stage 3 churches. For that reason they get labelled as agitators, stirrers or just difficult people.

May our churches be places where stages 4-6 are welcomed and valued.

Heresy?

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“Jesus’ life and teachings particularly the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, are normative for a follower’s lifestyle (or ethics) when empowered by the Holy Spirit. I don’t believe Jesus teaches unrealistic ideals or that Jesus teaches legalistic must do’s. Rather Jesus invites us, and the Holy Spirit empowers, to participate in God’s transformative redemptive, suffering love of the Kingdom.”

A friend has posited this as his ‘heresy’.

Is it a heresy?

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2 out of 3 = 4

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Yesterday I hit the water for the first time in 5 weeks – way too long.

1. The weather was perfect – 23 degrees and offshore

2. I had scheduled a day off – no work… and…

3. Well… the only problem was that everyone else was working… so I had to go alone.

2 out of 3 aint bad as Meatloaf would say.

I launched the boat at Ocean Reef and headed out to three mile reef, but with a dodgy anchor and unpredictable swells I decided that it was dumb place to be on my own. I cruised on down to Little Island near Hilary’s and anchored in the sand there.

Out the back were some guys getting some decent right handers – bugger – almost loaded the surfboard…

I sat and waited for a bite, just happy to be out in the ocean again after so long.

Eventually one came – a nice looking King George Whiting… I’d never caught one of those before and had heard they are top eating. I was pretty stoked. (When you are the world’s worst fisherman anything decent is a bonus.)

The next hour produced 3 more big King George. I couldn’t believe my luck. So I went home with a very decent feed. And – yes – they are very very nice eating!

Aussie Seeking Adventure

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Ok – its sounds like an ad in the personals, but its not!

This is for those in the UK and or US/Canada.

I am interested in seeing what is happening around the world in places where people are genuinely asking questions about what it means to do mission and church in new ways. I am interested in meeting the people doing it and talking with those who are really grappling with new expressions of missiology and ecclesiology. They don’t have to be ‘big names’ and more than likely they won’t be.

It’d probably mean living rough and spending a few $$ to make it happen, but my question is this:

If you had 2 or 3 weeks to spend simply meeting with key missionary practitioners from the northern hemisphere who / where would you prioritise meeting with / going to? (You can say yourself if you want to 🙂 )

Give me your top 3 or 4 northern hemispherians / centres of energy who you reckon it would be worth me hanging out with or going to.

I am not that interested in attending funky worship events.

I know enough to know that you don’t go to ‘see what someone is doing’ because most often it doesn’t look very spectacular and you don’t observe relationships developing!

But I am interested in doing some useful learning and making some good connections with people be they from small communities or large ones.

Fire away!

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Ideas and Action

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I love it when small ideas germinate and translate into action!

This morning we had another brunch with 5 or 6 local neighbourhood families who we have become good friends with. I invited my friend Steve McKinnon along to talk about what TEAR do in helping the poorest of the poor in developing countries and to offer TEAR’s ‘Most Useful Gift Catalogue’ as an alternative to the Christmas junk buying frenzy.

It seemed everyone who was there was quite impressed with TEAR’s practical approach to helping those in need to help themselves. There was an appreciation for the simple yet ingenious way TEAR have made ‘giving’ much more tangible than it used to be.

Amongst the suggestions that the group discussed afterwards were:

– rather than buying crap from the $2.oo shop for the ‘secret santa’ stuff at work we ought to look at buying someone a ‘goat’ or a ‘toilet’. Great idea.

– a finance broker who gives ‘finder fee’ gift vouchers to those referring his clients reckons he’ll give half that amount in gift vouchers and the other half in buying something from the catalogue.

– and then Grendel was the catalyst for inspiring us to try and move our local community to participate in providing a school for a community in a developing nation and possibly even establishing an ongoing relationship with another community.

He will be working on setting up a stall at the annual Brighton Celebration Day (Nov 19th) with the goal of raising $2000.00 from our local community to help those in another part of the world. The rest of the crew really liked his idea and have agreed to participate also.

I am excited because I am starting to feel like there is hope for middle-class dom after all. It was great to be with people who are willing to see beyond their own house/car/clothes/travel etc.

Jesus once said something about the kingdom of God being like a mustard seed…

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Church Marketing Sucks

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This is the name of a blog that deals in the whole area of church advertising / images etc. As much as we are not out to do much in the way of promo / advertising, I do still believe its important to have something to put on a letterhead.

As you would know I have been playing around with some logos that we may use with Upstream Communities and John suggested these guys do a peer review on the stuff we have developed.

So they did…

Check it out here

I am thinking we are down to two options:

or

The first is a little more obvious but I reckon its ok while the second looks classier to me, but is also a bit more ‘corporate’ in appearance.

Right now I’m not sure!