Day: 3 September 2013

Are we brave enough to be ‘sent to the edge’? (John Day)

John Day asks whether we are brave enough to be 'sent to the edge'.

Fresh Expressions Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ) is about bringing the fresh learning and Fresh Expressions experience to our context – but some of the UK language does not sit easily with us.

It is difficult for us to talk about 'pioneers' for instance. This is the language of colonial days and empire. We have, however, a rich Maori tradition of exploration: of being 'sent to the edge' (tonoa ki te pito) – a phrase which appears on our logo.

As we reflect on Acts 1.8, '…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth', we smile and realise that New Zealand could not be any closer to the ,ends of earth, from a UK perspective and yet the deep irony is that the ,ends of the earth, might also be my next door neighbour.

2014 is the 200th anniversary of the Rev Samuel Marsden of the Church Missionary Society preaching the first sermon in our land. On the beach, in the sun, on Christmas Day 1814, he proclaimed the words of the angels to the shepherds: the 'glad tidings'. The ANZ Church is preparing to celebrate this anniversary.

The ANZ Church has a history of being early adopters: embracing new projects and methods, especially from the USA and the UK. The tough task facing FE ANZ is to explain that fresh expressions is not an added extra which can be bolted on to any church programme or ministry, but requires a reorientation. This is discipleship DNA.

The 200th anniversary invites us to pick up the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel today in a culture where perhaps more than 80% of Kiwis have no contact with church as we know it. Fresh expressions' principles, contextualised, can help us enormously.

Fresh Expressions Area Strategy Teams (FEASTS) are now established in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The mission shaped ministry (msm) course is being run in all three centres and has about 60 participants from the whole range of denominations and networks.

Christchurch msm was first off the mark in February with 35 participants and has just had its weekend away. The liveliest discussion occurred when we grappled with evangelism: how does it look in an earthquake-shattered city which has lost nearly 90 church buildings (of about 250)? About 170,000 homes have been damaged and an estimated 15,000 households need to move to different suburbs or new housing areas. We are being 'sent to the edge' in so many ways: structurally, emotionally and missionally.

It is clear that Fresh Expressions is driving us back to the Gospel and pushing us hard on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Evangelism should flow out of God's love and grace within us. It's not a programme, a quick fix to church decline, or the silver bullet, but being reminded of Christ's way of mission. Fresh Expressions is encouraging us to be brave like those first apostles, powered by the dynamite of the Holy Spirit, loving, listening, serving, exploring discipleship and discovering what it means to worship the God of life and love.

Open Doorway Community

A fledgling new monastic community is looking to create a space in Dublin city centre. Rev Garth Bunting explains more.

I have been Residential Priest Vicar at Christ Church Cathedral since September 2010, leading the cathedral's spirituality programme. I live in the Deanery at Werburgh Street, Dublin, and it's from there we are developing a new monastic movement that aims to look at the traditional monastic ways of life and reinterpret them for living in today's world.

We are at the very beginning of this journey but we are all longing to see what emerges. Basically, we are currently a group of seven people and we have been meeting together as community over the past year, fortnightly, over a simple meal. During that time we have felt our particular mission emerge from our discernment and recently took the decision to open a space for silence, meditation and reflection in our area of Dublin.

Open Doorway Community - sculptureIt all started when I went to do some study in Christian spirituality. I have always been interested in some sort of monastic way of life and am a tertiary of the Anglican Third Order, Society of St Francis. While I was studying I came across the stories of a new monastic movement that seems to be happening across the world. I began to look in more depth at new-monasticism and the way in which it interprets the traditional monastic model for today's society and culture. I am very interested in how that might create community, and possibly a fresh expression of church.

I came to work in Christ Church Cathedral when I had the opportunity to focus in on this world of spirituality. One of the things I got to do very early on was to host an evening when we looked at the monastic tradition and the journey has really gone from there. Six or seven people became a kind of community wanting to explore the tradition, we are now interested in creating something as community. We have spent the last nine months getting to know one another, supporting one another in life, ministry, jobs, and so on.

Then we started asking ourselves, 'how can we share what we do with others living around us?' We want to continue creating community but centre it on some sort of spiritual practice or spiritual way of life – though we would also want to emphasise that it is a spiritual way of life that is Christian. People can be looking for all sorts of spiritualities but ours is clearly focused on Christ and that's very important.

Open Doorway Community - doorsSomething interesting that has emerged for us in all of this is the recurring image of a doorway. We see it as an invitation for people to come in and it's also about us going out into our own local area and getting involved. As a result of this we have tentatively named ourselves 'An Doras Oscailte Community' – that's Irish for the Open Doorway Community.

We are an ecumenical group: Anglican, Roman Catholic and Lutheran. We meet around my kitchen table and that regular, two-hour, meeting in the same place has been very important to us; we all live in the centre of Dublin and feel it's right for this community to be in the heart of the city.

As we go on to create community we are not even going to ask if the people who come to us have a faith or not. It's about sharing our life. Now we want to create a physical space for reflection and looking for God in the midst of people's busy lives. We are still not quite sure where that space is to be though. Christ Church Cathedral is a two minute walk away from where I live and there is also a parish church close by  – or it could be somewhere else entirely. We are looking to create this space over the summer so we have something to offer to people wanting to explore more of this new monasticism.