A Day at the Museum

We’ve now broken up for the Easter so I’m off college and Callie is off school. And today the men arrived to install our solar panels. So to get Callie out of the house we went to the Museum and Art Gallery. We walked into the city centre down the canal at the end of our road. After changing Callie’s books at the library we crossed the square into the museum…

There is a wonderful three dimensional optical illusion in its foyer that I loved. Up the stairs we met the centre-piece of the whole museum: an impressive sculpture of the fallen angel Lucifer based on Paradise Lost. On our way to and from the Edwardian Tea Rooms for lunch we looked at an interactive Mandela in the Buddha rooms and some wonderful stain glass windows. We spent hours exploring the museum looking at exhibitions of candlesticks, chalices, jewellery etc. as well as exploring the galleries. I was struck by how much religion and especially Christianity is a theme in art – even in some contemporary art. We stumbled across a pair of storytellers telling the story of Ezekiel in front of a painting of the Valley of Dry Bones. Callie sat at the front enthralled for about quarter of an hour. In the archaeology section we found a game of Nine Men’s Morris to play. There were some other children’s activities including some dressing up but Callie’s favourite was making an Easter card.

After our long walk home we are both very tired.

Using Art in Prayer

Last night in our home-group we spent some time meditating on the word ‘lost’. Jesus told parables about a lost coin, a lost sheep and the prodigal son. This fitted in with my prayer on Sunday for those that had left our church over the years and are now journeying on a different path from us. Our meditation involved us creating a collage each on a big sheet of paper with the word lost at the centre. We could look through some newspapers to cut out words and phrases and glue them on our sheet. We could draw, paint or crayon on our sheet but I chose to make a stamp out of some plastic and a piece of string to stamp a pattern over the words which proved very effective. I found searching through for the words and creating the collage an interesting way to pray. My mind focused on those that had rejected and so lost friends as their life had unravelled over the years.

I want to continue the idea of using art in prayer is a theme tonight in our Time with God. I’ll be getting up in the middle of the night to spend a few hours tonight in our church building. In the light of Amazing Grace Sunday I feel to pray for the slavery that still exists such as people trafficking and have in my mind the raising of Lazarus. My prayer is that God will not only bring life into these areas of death but also ‘unwind the grave clothes’ bring freedom to individuals across the world. There usually are some art materials available so hopefully I’ll be able to make a picture.

Generations

Last week I was looking at the work of Strauss & Howe on Generations. It makes a good evaluation of the material on adult development that I am teaching my second years. Just as a man’s (or woman’s) life goes in seasons from pre-adulthood spring to the winter of old age so history goes in similar cycles of about 80 years.

Their theory sees the crises of the depression and World War 2 giving way to the high of 50s prosperity. This was followed by a time of revolution starting in the 60s the time of civil rights, hippies and the charismatic renewal. After going through a time of ‘unraveling’ they said that we will face another crisis at the beginning of the 21st century. This is now interpreted as the war on terror.

So I wonder, as a Christian, what we can learn about our time from looking at other crises. Perhaps there are parallels between what we as Christians can be doing today and what heroes of faith were doing in their crisis. For instance, Bonhoeffer comes to mind, standing in opposition to the Nazi’s. But what sort of political involvement could we be involved in today? These thoughts have partly led me to look more at faithworks again and to sign up as a member.

Could this be one way to be discerning of the times?

Dorothy on Leadership

Recently Callie, Nettes & I went to see the Wizard of Oz at the mac with our church’s midweek house-group.. at the weekend!

The colour sequences were amazing to see on the big screen. They have cleaned up very nicely. Callie was a bit scared of the Wicked Witch but I think she really enjoyed it. She recognised 'Somewhere over the rainbow' as we had just been watching a performance by Tori Amos on YouTube

Interestingly enough I was just stuck by what this film has to say on the topic of ‘leadership’.

Don’t be like the Wizard who is threatening and makes a show of his power but is really a little man hiding behind a curtain.

Who should we be like then?

Dorothy of course.

What a teenage girl as a model of leadership? A girl that is bewildered and lost in a world that appears to make no sense to her?

Yes. You see Dorothy doesn’t pretend to know any more than she does. She has been told that the Wizard may be able to help and that the yellow brick road leads to the Wizard’s emerald city. She is on a journey herself and invites others to join her, because if the Wizard might be able to help her, he might - just might - be able to help others too.

Perhaps we could all do with being a bit more like Dorothy.

Children's Work Conference

Yesterday, Nettes and I drove down to Dunstable for a Children’s Workers Conference which asked some hard hitting questions like ‘Have you read your church’s child protection policy?’ and ‘How does your church engage the children in worship while they are in the main meeting?’

Guest speaker John Hardwick stressed the value of keeping families together on Sunday. I thought that he did a good job pointing out an important key getting all ages involved: story-telling. Stories can work on many levels teaching deep principles and keeping us entertained at the same time. He encouraged us to think of creative ways to tell Bible stories, such as imagining a story from many perspectives, as well as including other creative elements such as hot-spot interviews, action memory verses and even BSL signing. He also suggested having a planning team for All Age Services that included all ages i.e. at least one child.

Sam Donohue from Viz-a-viz talked about his work doing school assembles, RE lessons and after-school clubs. I liked the way that he explained the importance of not coming over too dogmatic by having class discussions and prefixing your statements with ‘I believe....’ and ‘Some Christians think....’ etc. I thought this was a good point for generally for chatting with your friends too. Interestingly he thought that using items that the church finds cringe-worthy and hackneyed, like drama sketches and puppets, could work well in mission work with kids who are seeing them for the first time.

A good day albeit tiring.

The Tipping Point

This week I mentioned to my students one of my presents over Christmas a little book that I read avidly called The Tipping Point

It’s an interesting book about how changes can occur in our society very suddenly with apparently little effort. The drop in the New York crime rate that was brought about by zero tolerance on minor crime such as vandalism is a case in point. The book identifies three rare types of people who are influential in such changes: ‘Connectors’ who at the hubs of social networks, ‘Mavens’ who are knowledgeable about the issue and ‘Salesman’ who will persuade people, consciously and unconsciously, to make the change. As such it is a good discussion of minority influence. There is also plenty of other psychology such as a discussion of the bystander effect. There is a chapter on pro-social media influence that looks at how people have communicated such ideas in memorable ways.

Incidentally, one idea in this book is that 150 is a maximum number of people that an individual can have a genuine relationship. Apparently this is taking off in Christian circles as a good size for a church to spit.

An excellent book, highly recommended.

Role Play of Luke 10

Last night in the midweek home-group that meets in our house we were looking at Luke 10. But this was no ordinary Bible study. Each of us was given a card with a character briefing of someone in the passage – a disciple, a healed person, a neighbour, someone from another town etc. First we read through the passage trying to imagine it from our characters viewpoint. We then had some nibbles and for half an hour or so we role played the character. Just like in one of those murder mystery parties. I was, aptly, the host of the party who was giving hospitality to the disciples. As I circulated it became apparent that the person from the other town had been at the receiving end of the disciples ‘woes’ as they were rejected in that town. You’ll have to read the passage. The conversations gradually came together as one group and the disciple was defending the gospel against the criticisms of the out-of-towner. This sparked off some interesting discussions about the gospel of the kingdom, healing, etc. when we came back for our ‘debriefing’. We rounded off the evening praying about the gap between the faith and experiences of the 1st century Christians and us in the 21st century. We all really enjoyed the evening and were challenged by the topic.

This is Our Church

I just found this little QuickTime video about our church with Steve and Helen Watts who lead it. It’s a pity that the producers used the title Pastor on the video – they’re just Steve & Helen. Technically Steve’s an elder but we don’t use it as a title anyway.

On the video you can see some good shots of our ‘developing city’ making it look very nice with the continental style bars and restaurants all along the canal. I was wondering where the graffiti was. But seriously they pointed out some important things about our church which I feel we are beginning to get a get a grasp of. Of course there is still further to go:

•Even though geographically we are very widespread we are a family based churched living our lives together and having fun.

•We are also church that loves to be involved in the community. With a kids club and a youth club as our mission projects, I think we are getting there.

•Yes, God has blessed us with so many creative people such as a professional mime, playwrights and artists and we are beginning to use these talents in our worship. Nettes and I have a heart for this as can be seen in the Family Services that we’ve done.

•Also it’s true that Birmingham is such a multi-cultural place. We’ve got a lot of refugees and asylum seekers. There is a lot of opportunity here to establish the kingdom. So let’s go for it.

Twelve days of Christmas

We had a great Christmas. We all opened our many presents from each other and a few from friends and family. We worshiped with a couple of our local Church of Englands (our church wasn’t meeting). We cooked several special dishes of food. We had friends visit. We visited family. Tried out their Wii. We even went out for a meal and Callie went to the Wacky Warehouse. Phew!

What all on one day? I hear you ask. But …

Well, our secret is that we have twelve days of Christmas. We are so aware of the pressure that comes with one day that we decided to spread our festivities over a longer period. We de-emphasise the actual day and don’t do too much then but have some really nice meals on other days in the twelve. After each meal we exchange small gifts – so Callie gets a present to open on all of the days. We like to keep decorations low key too mainly just displaying the cards. This year Callie and I decorated the card holders with shapes like autumn leaves. For a tree with have a Jesse tree decorated with items symbolising Jesus ancestors. And also this year an advent crown and some flowers.

Dad's Chill Out

I’ve just got back from a narrow-boat trip on Birmingham canals organised by Sure Start. I was invited as I am part of a dad’s group that chill out at our local Family Centre every Thursday. I didn’t get to the group last week but I understand that they’ve started to renovate an old piano. Now Callie is full time at nursery I missed her coming along on the trip and I’m sure some of the others did too. But never mind, today Callie is having fun on an adventure with the Nursery in Wonderland in Telford.

At last I managed to catch up with Matt at Sure Start and get my certificate from the positive parenting course that I completed before half term with the dad’s group. The point of the course was to discuss some practical methods of behaviour management of toddlers. It was a very good six week course talking about ways of building good relationships in our family, not alienating or harming our children yet at the same time not letting them run riot.

I’m looking forward to seeing the group again next week. Now, I wonder if they remembered to buy the playing cards and poker chips?

Technorati Tags: sure start, positive parenting, homedad

Family Service

Sorry not to have posted to this blog for a while but it’s been eyes down working on preparation for college – lots of PowerPoint presentations, gapped handouts and activities as well as preparing for the Family Service at church. College preparation never ends but the Family Service is now over and it went well.

A Family Service simply means that rather than going to Sunday school, the kids will be in and maybe take part, so it needs to keep their attention. Continuing our series in Nehemiah, Nettes & I were given some passages in the middle of the book full of names. So how did we manage it?

Of course everything was on PowerPoint but I think the key was an edited paraphrase come commentary that was performed by three readers alternating lines. This was split into a few very short sections that were interspersed with exhortations, songs and a couple of activities.

One activity was based around Operation Christmas Child which we as a church are supporting and another involved making a family tree of the church. Very simply people wrote names of someone who had influenced them in their spiritually journey and stuck the leaves on a painting of a tree as a representation of our spiritual genealogy. A very moving experience.

Technorati Tags: creative worship, Family Service

Time with God

Last weekend our church had what we call a ‘Time with God’ weekend. We have our building open for prayer for something like 18-24 hours from Friday night to sometime on Saturday. We have three rooms you can use and the idea is that you book a room for an hour or so or more. The rooms are laid out with a candle, supplies of Christian music and flip chart paper and markers to use how we want. I find it exciting and it enables me to create a wonderful atmosphere for prayer. During this time, among other things, I was drawn to read Luke 10, to pray about our impact on the local community and to contemplate what my part might be. I was particularly blessed this time as there were also some art materials available. So I was able to prayerfully sketch a representation of our neighbourhood with the blessing ‘Peace to this House’ and blu-tac it on the wall.

BTW last Thursday we began our new monthly prayer meetings. And we had some really good prayer activities. I do get the feeling we are moving forward as a church in prayer. Praise God!

Technorati Tags: prayer, art, Luke 10

Teaching and Learning

I can’t make the staff development that we’ve got this week at college focusing on using IT in teaching. But I have been reading this article about a school in Australia that is really pioneering in this respect. I’ve got to work on using my PowerPoint presentations to keep my students attention. This year is quite a challenge teaching in the sixth form especially the GCSE groups. I’m experimenting with different activities and finding some work a little better than others. It’s not always easy to get teenagers to work in groups or even to listen to me never mind each other.

I suppose this is all part of relating to a different culture. It makes me realise that not everyone will want to listen to someone talking for 45 minutes – especially if they have not had much success in that mode of education. I think this has important implications for the teaching in the church. Role on the day when we’ve got a much greater variety of activities including fun creative things to do in meetings and ICT teaching that can be accessed anywhere. Surely such activities would attract and motivate a much wider audience.

Technorati Tags: teaching, learning, church

Mp4s of Celebration 2006

I’ve just been looking at the mp4s of Lifelink’s conference Celebration 2006 on their website. I was inspired by Jim Munson in his leadership seminar talked about the trans-generational church as a relay race. He spoke of passing on faith for the next generation will see greater things than we have. I am itching to see the future the better ideas and visions of which he speaks. I want to inherit what previous generations have prayed for, to practice holiness and take the message to the world. How can we do this? Well…

Alan Scotland mentioned the internet. He pointed out the dangers of escaping the real world to play and chat with anonymity. Yet he also talked about the great opportunity we as Christian have to influence the world for good. Gary Finkbeiner spoke of the importance of how we understand the truth. And Ian Rawley underlined this and also criticised on our culture’s tendency to value tolerance. Interestingly, I am just reading Steve Chalke’s new book ‘Intelligent Church’ which gives a counterpoint to this, by saying that tolerance does not imply agreement but rather a confidence and security to leave others to choose their own way.

Anyway, it's good to see the speakers and to have edited highlights of this conference. Mp4s are a great facility.

Technorati Tags: mp4, truth, tolerance

ebible

I’m just exploring ebible at the moment. Though it contains search facilities and resources such as commentaries what looks most interesting is the way that we can share bookmarks and comments on this system. I’m still getting my head around it but it looks like its potential is to be more of a social network like for instance flickr. So you can look at what other people especially those you’ve nominated in your community are saying about particular verses or passages. It refers to itself as a web 2.0 application. The web 2.0 philosophy is to use the internet much more interactively rather than placing content there that someone might view in the future. So blogs are web 2.0 whereas your standard website with lots of articles would be web 1.0. At college we have a virtual learning environment called moodle which also appears to run on this philosophy. It’s not just about giving access to courses online but also enabling your learners to discuss and debate about the material and enable others to learn from them as well as from the resources. Anyway, why not have a look at this web 2.0 ebible and tell me what you think?

Technorati Tags: ebible, web2.0, moodle

Nehemiah

As a church we have just started a teaching series on Nehemiah. Nehemiah’s job was to restore the city walls of Jerusalem. Interestingly – many years before Nehemiah – Zerubabbel had rebuilt the temple. We can read about that in the book of Ezra. This can be seen as a symbol of the restoration of the church. Perhaps now is it the time to go beyond the vision of restoring the church to also restoring our city, by Christians having an influence in society.

As I read through the book of Nehemiah these ten questions occurred to me:

1.How can we be like Nehemiah who honestly looked at Jerusalem’s walls in ruins yet, like Jesus, with a burdened heart and bended knee was utterly dependant on God?

2.How can we have a clear vision to purposefully work hard to transform our city?

3.How can we as a church community work together in mission to accomplish this?

4.How can we handle criticism, discouragement and even persecution when it comes our way?

5.What can we do to stand for peace, justice and liberation politically and be inclusive, welcoming and generous personally?

6.How can we encourage diverse participation and creativity among our church to these ends?

7.As Nehemiah called people to return to God's word how can we return to these ancient ways and yet communicate them in ways that are relevant today?

8.How can we be honest and vulnerable practitioners of God’s word?

9.As we celebrate our festivals how can we both look back and take hold of the future?

10.How can we identify with Nehemiah and with Jesus?

Technorati Tags: Nehemiah

Greenbelt - part two

Greenbelt Communion
Originally uploaded byJude Adam.

Last Sunday at Greenbelt we watched the Communion service, with cups of chai, on the big screen in the arena overflow. The Israelites fleeing from Egypt was interpreted in terms of liberation with political implications for today. In the afternoon I went to a meeting that looked at the lamenting and imprecatory psalms where we were encouraged to bring to God our anger from hurts and injustice. I then explored the installations in the New Forms Café, listened in on an impressive short all age service there and visited the labyrinth. After all that I met Nettes and Callie for a meal at the Performance Café. This time we heard the haunting vocals of Levi Weaver who IMHO musically was the best I heard all weekend.

Monday was a Callie day. We looked round the exhibition stalls and bookshop in the mud but thankfully undercover from most of the rain. In the afternoon we went to a Godly Play session to see some of the wonderful resources that this children’s ministry offers. Finally it was off to some children’s theatre with Callie. Exhausted by the evening all three of us went back to our tent realising that we had never bothered to go to the mainstage.

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Greenbelt - part one

Teepee village
Originally uploaded by Roger Saner.

Last weekend we went to Greenbelt. We got up early and arrived at Cheltenham racecourse just after the opening time and there were already thousands of people there - even a few in teepees. In the evening I went to a PowerPoint workshop at the Tank – Greenbelt’s cyber-café – for some tips on technique. And then I dropped into the New Forms Café for a snack, with worship happening in the background. My destination was a gig by Fuse Factory – whose fast paced video-jockeyed images had me transfixed. Projecting on gossamer meant that their singer could walk into and behind images.

I started Saturday early with Celtic style worship from Wild Goose interspersed with contemporary stories of slavery from Christian Aid. Later I went to short session by Revelation – a DJ/dance outfit from Bristol – that used songs that we sing at our church... club style. After lunch in the New Forms Café I had a chance to get a coffee and network with a very wide variety of people involved in creative worship. I had to pick up Callie from her children’s meeting just as we were going to have communion. In the evening I joined in a beautiful Taize worship session that included a very moving few minutes of silence.

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Off to Greenbelt

We’re off to Greenbelt again this year. There are some very impressive mainstage acts such as Kevin Max (from DC talk), Martin Joseph, and All Star United not to mention Randy Stonehill relegated to a lesser stage! It’s a pity T-Bone Burnett has pulled out. Mike Rimmer recommended him to me as a must see act. Last year we found that the performance café was a good place to eat. I like the sound of the artists that are playing there this year such as Levi Weaver, Note for a Child and Shawn McDonald. But I am very interested that the new forms worship venue this year is referred to as New Forms Café. It looks like a really good place to hang out in order to experience some creative worship experiences. I’m not sure if I’ll make it to start the day with Noel Moules with the Burn Band – a vineyard worship group – but it does look good. Nettes has got a few acts she wants to take Callie too but I think Callie will also get a couple of sessions in the children’s area leaving us both free to explore. Perhaps we’ll see the stilt walker or the acrobats. I’ll let you know how we get on.

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The Miracles of Jesus

On Sunday evening I recorded the first part of this new three part BBC One docudrama: The Miracles of Jesus. I was very impressed. Rather than trying to give other explanations for the miracles it actually looked at what the miracles would have meant to the people of the first centaury. I felt that it was very cleverly scripted so that it would appeal to those of us who believe that the miracles were historical fact but at the same time not to alienate those that didn’t. But it was not the denouncing of the fact of the miracles that I feared it would be. Interestingly, the presenter said that the scholarly emphasis is moving away from this towards what he was presenting that was really a biblical exposition of the miracles that was very evangelical in its approach. Jesus miracles were references to or re-enactments of many of the miracles that had already occurred in the Bible. The feeding of the 5000 echoed the manna in the desert. The walking on water echoed Joshua crossing the Jordon. But other miracles like the calming of storm said even more pointing to Jesus actually being divine. I’m setting my video again to record part two this week.

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