Thinking My Way Through » Mission

Rowan Williams on Fresh Expressions

Dave Fagg — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:25:02 +0000

Just been listening to Rowan Williams on Fresh Expressions, which is the UK Anglican’s effort at supporting new ways of doing missional church.

Here are some of the “enemies of renewal” that he identified:

1. Entertainment: “give them (young people) a god who can be the object of their unreconstructed emotions, and distract them endlessly from being left naked before God”. Ouch

2. Problem solving: beware problem solving as ‘plugging gaps’. “We are in a danger of putting an end to that lifelong task of listening and absorbing that is involved in growing into the space Christ has opened for us”

3. “Trying to fit God around the edges of your identity, rather than allowing God to shape us from within”

Great stuff. He is one of the pioneers in attempting to integrate inherited church with emerging/missional church. Luckily, the Bishop in my diocese has a similar mindset (Andrew Curnow).

Formulas

Dave Fagg — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:04:09 +0000

This an extract from my regular newsletter for supporters of Seeds Bendigo:

Friends, I’m finding it difficult to write you this letter at the moment. I’m finding it difficult to put into words what is going on in Long Gully, both for me and the community around me. This is not because anything particularly negative is happening, but because it’s increasingly clear that the work of ‘being neighbours’ is a mysterious one.

I’ve been catching myself saying “It depends….” a lot. Why?

I love models, and patterns; finding common things across different places is very satisfying to me. However, much as I would love to have a formula that can be ‘multiplied’ in other places, I often find that so much of what we do is very specific to our place, and the people in that place. Is it good or bad to have lots of programs? Depends on the people and the place. Should we have a paid role in the community we are serving? Depends. Should church services be held in ‘church buildings’ or somewhere else? It depends. Is it better to stay in one place for decades, or move on quickly? It depends.

To give a specific example, we don’t tend to have a lot of our neighbours over to our place. It’s not for want of inviting; it just doesn’t seem to be something they feel comfortable with. A while ago, this would have created quite a bit of anxiety for me, because home-based hospitality was the crucial in my early years of mission. But I now realize, this depends on the character of the people and place.

Why all this ambiguity? I think it is due to 3 factors: place, people & time. All of these work together to alter the way we live out our faith. When we look at Jesus in the Gospels, and at Paul and the early church, the way they did things altered according to circumstance. Jesus called some to follow, others to stay; Paul travelled constantly while others stayed put.

So what stays the same across time, space and personality, and therefore what we need to get right, is not models or patterns or formulas, but character. Both working on our character, and also being shaped by the character of God, the colour of which is most clearly shown in Jesus and the fruits of the Spirit.

In the face of transience

Dave Fagg — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:18:12 +0000

Today I got a phone call from the police. A friend of mine had been listed as missing – did I know anything? Two weeks ago, I had sat in his loungeroom-come-bedroom listening to his news that he would be moving away. Moving to a place a couple of hours drive away. “How long til you move?” “Oh, could be any day.” It was: 2 days later I got a call from the nurse at the facility he’d gone to, a much better place for him to be than in a 1 bedroom flat in Long Gully. He’d moved so quickly he hadn’t time to let his family know, hence the missing report.

Even though I know he is in improved circumstances, I feel a wave of frustration rise and fall. What is the use of building relationships when they are constantly eroded by transience? I have, many years ago, resolved that long-term relationships were necessary to unveil the reign of God, whether among the poor or whoever. I had decided that speaking out the good news needed to happen on the platform of trust and respect.

But it’s a lonely stance. Often, those we relate to want to move on to something else quickly. This is the case whether we are among the poor who want to rapidly escape, or among the general population for whom the next best thing can’t arrive too soon.

How do we deal with transience, when our theology inspires us to grounded lives and longevity?

Here’s a couple of ideas:
(1) We rid ourselves of any heroism: our desire to be the ‘key’ people in others’ transformation can cripple us when we no longer have the opportunity to be that ‘significant’ person.

(2) We re-member ourselves: “re-membering” is recalling the fact that we are members of a body, a movement, a people that is far-spread. We, as individuals, are not it. That should give us some hope in the face of transience. As the biblical saying goes: some sow, others reap, and we enter into each others’ labour. When we can no longer be a part of a person’s life, someone else will take up the labour.

(3) We recall the Trinity: relational mission struggles with the tension of ends and means. Is the relationship for the purpose of more effective evangelism, or so that the person will have a better life? Or is it simply for the sake of the relationship? I don’t think there is an answer to this one, but in the face of transience we need to remember the Trinity; the Godhead in which relationship is essential to the character of God.

Drinking Beer for Jesus

Dave Fagg — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:27:47 +0000

In the gospel of Mark, the disciples ‘strain at the oars’ as they pass from Jewish to Gentile territory. In the Old Testament, this journey was the last step in the 40 year freedom walk from Egypt. In the New Testament, it is used by Mark as a metaphor for the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, carried on by Paul. In Long Gully, the Jordan is not so much religion. Many of our neighbours are hostile to Christianity, but many more have a history of involvement with the church. The Jordan for us is culture and class. The culture of Long Gully is not consciously ethnic (though overwhelming anglo), but is formed by a common history of unemployment, alienation, addiction, powerlessness, mental illness, stigmatisation and family breakdown, feeding into and causing each other, forming a lifestyle.

I visited Greg recently to invite him to lunch at 12pm. He asked me what the time was, as he had no clock and the one on his DVD player was wrong – he had no clock. Middle-class time is so important that I was momentarily gobsmacked by this small but significant clash of cultures – it meant that Greg would always struggle to turn up to anything on time. Think about the implications for relationships, health and employment.

In the Seeds community here, we are all middle-class. Our experience has been smudged in places by the same factors that affect our neighbours, but not in combination and not for long. Though we are trying to be in solidarity with the poor, our class loyalty is still to the middle-class, which distracts us in many and specific ways from our stated desire to be amongst the poor. I say this bluntly because unless I swallow this bitter pill, this dynamic will corrupt and deflate many of my efforts to love my neighbour.

‘Class’ and ‘Culture’ are abstract terms, but they jump out when we uncover some fairly ordinary items. How does our middle-class loyalty manifest itself?:

1. Spending time with the middle-class: we know the codes of middle-class relationships (when to speak, what to say, what not to say, how often to swear etc) but we don’t know how to spend time with those who live in generational poverty. Do watch the TV that’s always on? Is laughing at crude jokes OK? Should we ask personal questions? Because we have meetings to be at and people to see, we middle-class people have a sense of time which is cut up into segments for apportioning. Sitting for an hour on someone’s dirty lounge while watching wrestling seems like a waste of time.

2. Refusing the food of the poor: food is crucial to mission, as Jesus the glutton and drunkard attests. It connotes hospitality, connection and welcome. Even in our culture, refusing to eat someone’s food is extremely rude. People often offer me a beer or a Beam and coke can at their house, but this year I’m not drinking alcohol. The issue of accepting alcohol has nothing to do with ‘getting down to their level’ (what a hypocritical phrase of misplaced superiority) but of accepting the hospitality of those who we serve. We want to extend hospitality to them, but not the other way around…well, maybe it would be OK if they would only offer nice food. In my area, people generally eat unhealthily, and their children do too. This is a sensitive issue for middle-class parents, who understandably don’t want their children eating sugary and fatty foods. Is the price of mission paying for dental work?! I don’t have children, so I’ll leave someone else to give a definitive answer.

These are just 2 examples – others are entertainment, physicality, sex, clothing etc

I don’t raise the issue of class because I want us to forget our family and friends, but to remind myself that cross-class solidarity is so difficult as to require regular self-scrutiny. Our middle-class upbringing is not evil, but has instilled norms of purity which seem as natural as the sun rising. Our desire to serve Jesus in the poor can’t be sacrificed for our middle-class sensibilities.

Incarnation & Fragmentation

Dave Fagg — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:03:41 +0000

It’s not a new thought that incarnational mission in Western contexts is fraught because we cannot assume that towns, cities, schools, or even neighbourhoods have a relatively uniform culture. Most practice of incarnational mission involves taking on aspects of the culture I am serving, and affirming the aspects of the culture that are Christ-like. But cultures are not monochrome, not even within a neighborhood. Even in the small housing commission where I live it’s impossible to incarnate in accordance with a dominant culture. Different friendship groups have different norms, there are transient groups, stable groups, elderly, youth etc. And within these groups splintering occurs.

I’m nowhere near working all this out, but one initial thought is: perhaps we need to be a distinctive community that is consistent with Jesus, but endeavouring to be ‘not inconsistent’ (whenever we can) with the norms of the multiple subcultures we are faced with, while at strategic points being deliberately ‘of’ that culture or neighbourhood, and at other points being critical and standing against it. Our practice of incarnation needs to go beyond following the ‘pattern of Jesus’ so that a desired outcome will occur, and into “place-sharing” (Andrew Root) that hopes for transformation but is not beholden to it.

Speaking in Shep this Friday

Dave Fagg — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:48:14 +0000

G’day all – I’ll be speaking in Shepparton at “Receive the Power” – it’s a reunion for people who went to World Youth Day. You can find event details here. Anyone’s who’s in the area, Catholic or just interested…come along.

I’ll be speaking on “Rearranging the pews while the neighbourhood burns”.

Radical Discipleship 101 – Part VI

Dave Fagg — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:40:04 +0000

I’ve been asked to write some website material for a Christian conference in 2010. I thought I would post the 6 sections here and see what response I get. The audience for the website is likely to be Christians who are attracted to justice but haven’t heard much of the theology behind it; this is entry level radical discipleship.

‘Where do I join this kingdom revolution?’

If you’ve read this far, you have probably already decided that you want to join this kingdom revolution. Next step is to find some people who want to do it with you. If you don’t have anyone like that, look up some of the communities mentioned previously. They’ll help you on your way.

Most importantly, do something. This movement is not about standing on the banks of the river while others swim by. It is about getting personally involved in people’s lives, people who are isolated, persecuted and poor. Knock on the door of the elderly neighbour. Stand up to bullies, be they small or large. Make peace. Spend a week’s coffee money on someone who actually needs it. Foster a child. Pray with a suffering parent. Invite the new person over for tea. Sit down with the loner at school. Sell your possessions and have a party for the outcasts. Tell the truth despite the consequences. Move to the wrong side of the tracks.

The disciples simply left their nets and followed, and Jesus wants nothing more and nothing less. Jesus doesn’t care how much we know, or what we are doing now, or what we’ve done in the past. He cares about where we’re headed. In the river of Jordan, John baptized Jesus in a symbolic drowning and rising to life. In following Jesus among the poor, we not only drown with all our inadequacies, flaws and sins, but rise to a new life of compassion, truth & justice.

Radical Discipleship 101 – Part V

Dave Fagg — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:33:21 +0000

The Road to Emmaus

‘Who can walk with me on this journey?’
Jesus walked with 12 disciples as he went about preaching, healing and casting out evil. Why? This journey of compassion & justice is joyful, but it’s also a battle against the forces of evil within ourselves and in our world. The pain in the world is real, and our own sin can often paralyse us. If we try to swim by ourselves, we will drown. We need others alongside us. It’s no surprise that Jesus sent out his disciples two-by-two and that the lion’s share of the New Testament is addressed to communities, not individuals.

Often you may feel alone as you feel your way into this way of compassion and justice. But there is a growing movement of Christians who are rediscovering the radical roots of our faith, who are seeing that life following Jesus means nothing less than allowing the Spirit to lead us into dark places, into hard places, to be light and life. We are discovering, to our surprise & joy, that Jesus was always walking before us, and beside us.

Visiting some of the communities in Part IV will put you in contact with many people who are on the same path. But if you can’t come, then check out some of these resources:

1. Websites/blogs:

2. Books:

Not Religion, But Love (Dave Andrews)
The Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)
Make Poverty Personal (Ash Barker)
Check out some of my articles

3. Conferences/Gatherings/Training (Australia)

Radical Discipleship 101 – Part III

Dave Fagg — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:20:23 +0000

‘Where does this journey start?’

The journey of compassion & justice begins when we see things clearly. When William Wilberforce set foot on a slave boat and saw, truly and clearly, the horror of oppression, his journey of radical discipleship began. When we see the injustice of the gap between our wealth and the poverty of millions, our journey of radical discipleship begins. Whenever we open our eyes to the cruelty around us, and respond with compassion, we have already embarked on the journey.

The journey starts wherever you find yourself. Zacchaeus the tax collector was in a very different place to Bartimaeus the blind man or the Samaritan woman at the well. That didn’t matter. They all followed. The journey starts despite how inadequate you feel or how little you know. The disciples knew very little of Jesus when they started and not much more by the end. That didn’t matter. They all followed.

In this river of compassion, truth and justice, Jesus doesn’t really mind what sort of stroke we do, how fast we swim or if we need floaties. In fact, knowing our own inadequacies and poverty is essential if we are to enter into the poverty of others. We do not love the poor because we have the answers. Our wealth & privilege are actually barriers to reconciliation with God, and with all those who are oppressed. By serving those on the margins, we are given the opportunity to shed the skin of privilege, thereby entering the kingdom of God, where there are no rich or poor. We love others because we know that, despite our indifference, selfishness and greed, God loves us.

Part I

Part II

Radical Discipleship 101 – Part II

Dave Fagg — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 06:56:02 +0000

‘I’m not convinced, isn’t this just for a few who are ‘called’?

In one of Jesus’ most confronting parables, He says that when we visit the sick and imprisoned, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and welcome the stranger, we actually do these things to Jesus Himself. That is, Jesus is present in all who are poor and oppressed, and when we serve them we also serve Him.

But our culture teaches us to believe that this work is best done by experts who really ‘know what they are doing’, as though poverty is a leaky tap to be fixed. Our role is to support the professionals through taxes and donations. But the parable claims that serving the poor is not a task to be completed but participation in the life of God! In serving those on the margins, we have the privilege & opportunity of encountering Jesus in the flesh. If we only pay others to do this work, and do not get involved personally, we are giving up this opportunity.

Sure, not everyone is called to live in a slum, but everyone is called to enter hard places with no weapon but love. Certainly, not everyone will sell all their possessions, but Jesus reminds us that what we have is not ours, and has been given to us by God for the sake of others. Definitely, not everyone is called to abject poverty, but we are all called to get involved personally in the lives of the poor & oppressed.

God sent Jesus, as vulnerable baby, into a world of pain, confusion and injustice. Jesus said to his followers, “As God sent me, so I send you”. We are sent by Jesus, as He was sent by God, into unfamiliar and difficult places, with nothing to lean on but His love. This is not a call for the special or the few, but for all. Following Jesus is not a matter of standing on the banks, cheering on those who are swimming. God wants us all to submerge ourselves in the river of compassion and justice, where we experience not only the pain of serving Him, but the joy of finding God amongst those who have been abandoned.

Part I