[ hold :: this space ]

this has been a while coming! It’s some of the notes from a conversation David, Mike, John and I had, debriefing this year’s trip.

what don’t you want to forget?
energy in leaders, a ‘looking forward’, a vitality
the personal ‘uncovering’
the concept of faithful remnants [Manchester] - not an issue, let them be a remnant, don’t try to force them into something they’re not

what sticks in your mind?
the instant hospitality offered to us by the communities we visited - we were invited in to be a part of every community
mission focus - context speaking to you - ‘what will peace look like in this place?’, rather than going in knowing what we need to offer
mission predicated by listening - and a directed listening
theology emerging from within the group [ikon], not planted onto it
the liberation of working with coordinates rather than doctrine [ikon]
all the communities we visited ‘hold lightly’ to what they are doing, they don’t see it as a finished product
it’s only an impossible workload if it’s not where your passion is

questions we’ve come away with
how do we bridge the disconnection between leadership and ‘the people’ [my note: perhaps by changing that question!]?
how do the communities we visited, which are largely made up of disaffected church goers, not get bitter?
how do we find the people who are looking for mission?
the history of the UK church is so old that perhaps alternative isn’t threatening - impact of being a state religion

what did you learn?
don’t begin with a finished product [from Manchester - ask the question 'what does it mean to be church in this place?]
we’re too dependent on funding, we let funding processes be our discernment process
don’t let the uniting church decide what your passion should be

intentions
to make a network here that deliberately sets out to support and encourage new initiatives, rather than focus on changing what already exists

I’m using these notes as a basis for planning next year’s trip… which is looking wonderful already. can’t wait.

it’s lovely to be home; it’s just as lovely to know i’m going back next year.

[The God Delusion - image by Mike]

the loveliest bit of being home is letting go of all the organisational details in my head. it’s left space for other stuff to emerge [thank heavens, i was hoping there was something else in there] - and the thoughts that have been haunting me all day have been little pieces of the Ikon service, the God Delusion, at Greenbelt. Much has been written of it elsewhere - and mike has some stunning photos of the service here. i found it profoundly beautiful and comforting - simply in the relief of knowing others are in this space too. No description will do it justice, of course. Even though the outline of the service is now up on the ikon website, the words written there give only a fragment of the picture: they have to be layered onto the images, which in turn must be layered onto the soundtrack… and then add to that the ultimate variable of an audience of a couple of thousand people… some confused, some stunned, some dismissive, some discomforted, some resonant, some finding a home they hadn’t known they were missing… all of which permeates the room and makes for something absolutely stunning.

Some dismiss Ikon by calling what they do pretentious [has anyone else noticed that 'pretentious' has become the criticism of choice within alt worship circles?]. and probably, for most of us, if we ‘did’ ikon in our own context - if we layered that as a particular theology onto our worship, rather than waiting to see if it was a reflection of the faith of the community - it could well be pretentious. But i think it can only be described as pretentious if it’s thought of as coming from a purely intellectual base - and if you think that’s where the ikon service came from, it seems to me that you missed the vulnerability of those who were telling this moment in their stories; that you are maybe disconnecting the moment of the service from the stories that led to it: of brokenness, disillusionment, fragility, despair. it’s sophisticated and complex, it’s grand and dramatic, but it’s much too real and raw to be pretentious.

[interestingly, in all the contexts in which i 'do' alt worship, the place i see a similar theology emerging, of its own accord, is in the prisons. the guys in prison get deconstruction - prison deconstructs everything, especially faith. but as they keep proving to me, deconstruction isn't inevitably the ruin of faith, it can be the making of it: in the unravelling is the ravelling.]

at the ikon service it was padraig’s piece ‘Breaking me‘ that did, indeed, break me… just as the verse in the song he sang last year, ‘i found my home in babylon’, broke me then. and, of course, the gradual cutting away and unravelling of the knitting… and the line in Pete’s introduction, as said by god: ‘i do not exist’… there’s enough in all that to feed a lifetime… and enough to remind me, in my jetlagged stupor today, why i can’t wait to go back.

i knew i wouldn’t post much while i was away, but i thought it would be more than this… i underestimated the intensity of the trip.

i’m on a last night here in london, after a fabulous few days in paris. i’m soaking up red wine and the internet connection at the baker’s before heading off on the 24 hour hell that is the plane trip from london to melbourne.

it’s good to be going home. it’s so lovely to be getting texts and emails from friends with plans for the weekend, and to be anticipating sleeping in my own bed. but, as i was just saying to jonny, i’ll miss this. something in me finds a home here too.

the most wonderful part of the trip has been watching peoples’ horizons expand, and hearing how connections have been made between experiences, contexts, theologies; watching imagination take shape and ideas form.

quite possibly that’s been the hardest part of the trip too – or at least the most work to participate in.

i’d hoped to feel a bit more inspired myself during the trip – that’s been a guaranteed part of previous trips, but this year it hasn’t been as easy to come by. i’m going home without the normal burst that fires my imagination. i think it will be more subtle and nuanced this year, and maybe the better for it.

i’ll post more about the trip that’s less about me in days to come…

we’re in London… there’s a tube strike… this is the only point of the trip where travel has got messy, so i can’t complain!

we spent 24 hours in Manchester on Sunday, and could have spent far longer - it’s an amazing city, and Sanctus is pretty extraordinary. i’ll write more about that later… today we’re meeting with Jonny Baker for lunch, and then the group begins to leave.

These are a few things i don’t want to forget from the last couple of weeks:
- the stuff we’ve seen that has legs has, in every case, begun with a question ‘what would church look like in this place’, not ‘how do we do worship in the city’.
- most people would have been willing to give up the denomination if they had to, in order to create the communities they have. excuses like ‘we couldn’t do that in the uniting church’ have no credence.
- none of the groups are in their final shape. there’s always something new forming, something to be given up…

[and mike's been taking photos as we've gone along...]

a rare moment of space in a pretty frenetic trip… we’re in belfast for the weekend and the rest of the group have gone on a tour to see murals. i’m catching up with friends instead.

it’s been a fabulous trip. Greenbelt was absolutely wonderful. I saw much less of it this year than previously, so that was a bit weird. Due to some illness in the group i didn’t get any further than the food tents for the first 36 hours, but i did get to know the inside of Cheltenham hospital pretty intimately. The last 36 hours of greenbelt were, however, absolutely brilliant. highlights were Coldcut on the saturday night, Duke Special on the Sunday night [simply wonderful], Peterson Toscano, the Ikon worship, Grace’s communion by numbers, and late nights at the beer tent with people who are now old friends and the very best of company.

The group loved it. Greenbelt is an embarrassment of riches - for many of the group, the diversity on offer was enough, even before going to anything. We’re definitely bringing another group over again next year… start planning if you’re interested. people on this trip have found it even more worthwhile than i imagined.

we’ve been travelling since greenbelt on a whirlwind tour of various communities. i’m so grateful and humbled by the generosity and hospitality people have shown us since we’ve arrived. i have to swallow my pride a little because i know that we probably won’t have the chance to reciprocate the hospitality, and it’s much easier to offer it than receive it…

we spent the first couple of days, post-greenbelt, in telford with Mark Berry’s community. i’ll reflect in more detail when my head’s clearer, but i was really, really impressed by how things are unfolding there. And the thursday night gathering that we were welcomed into was quite beautiful.

and now we’re in belfast. it’s been a big 24 hours here… spent the afternoon yesterday with Pete, Cazi, Jayne and Ricky… last night at the pub with a stack of Ikon-ers… today just catching up with people… tomorrow we’re off to manchester to spend some time with the Sanctus people, and then Monday it’s back to London to wrap things up.

it’s been exhausting but exhilarating. i had no idea it would be quite this much work to make a group trip like this work… but i also had no idea it would be such a rich experience. how lucky we are…

so, we’re in london… we’ve a great group who have come over from australia - really diverse, lots of energy, a nice collective of experience and imagination. It was a good trip over, though it is interminably long. i can report that they serve up glenlivet on demand in business class… the only problem with an unexpected upgrade is that it spoils you forever for cattle class.

we’re off to Greenbelt in a couple of hours. the weather looks absolutely perfect - a marked change to yesterday in London, which was so dismal it felt like we hadn’t left Melbourne. I have no idea who i’m looking forward to seeing at Greenbelt! I’ve barely glanced at the lineup… i am confident, however, that when i look at the program on arrival that i’ll be overwhelmed by its richness and depth. from previous experience I’ll cram as much as i can into the first 36 hours, and then collapse exhaustedly in the organic beer tent and spent the last few days catching up with people. perfect… that’s always the very best part. the people i’ve met at greenbelt have been some of my best companions and collaborators in this project, even though they live half a world away. and i guess, selfishly, that i’m hoping to find that place again that is pure gift for me - the perfect fit, someone offering worship or space in which i recognise myself completely. i found it last year at the ikon service, and realised how rare it is to be in that place. bring it on.

so we’re plying ourselves with coffee, to stave off the last remnants of jetlag, then we’re off to the sunshine… there’s wireless internet at greenbelt, but we’ll see how the time unfolds.

[look! a pretty new header! thanks claire and mike.]

today’s my last day in the office for 5 weeks… i’m off to the UK on Tuesday. As a result, blogging will be very sporadic, but i wanted to let you know first about a couple of things happening later in the year.

If you’ve been reading this blog over the last few weeks, you’ll have noticed a plethora of alternative worship workshops that are coming up. We had scheduled a stations workshop for October 20, but we’re moving that to November 10, so there is some breathing space between all the opportunities. It will still be held in the basement carpark in the city. The idea for the day is to ‘ground’ the theory of stations worship in developing Advent spaces. It’s going to be a good day.

We’ve also got some big stuff coming up in May / June next year, if you’re interested in urban ministry and alternative worship. I’ll be able to say more about that on my return, but keep the last weekend of May and the first weekend of June free if you can. i’m very excited about this.

There are about 11 of us who’ll be travelling together in the UK over the next few weeks, from Victoria and NSW, researching alternative forms of worship and community. It’s a really diverse group who’ll be going. i’m looking forward to the energy and imagination that the trip will provoke… i’m looking forward to soaking up greenbelt, and the wisdom of those we’ll be meeting afterwards… i’m looking forward to face to face conversations with people who inspire me from thousands of kilometres away. the timing couldn’t be better.

as someone said to me in an email this week, it’s obvious by the length of blog posts that things have been busy. sorry if it’s been a bit heavy here over the last few weeks! it will be lovely to take a breath and let things just unfold for a while…

we’ve been getting down to the details with planning the uk trip today, and totalling up the numbers of people who’ll be at each point… it seems there will be 16 of us from australia camping out together at greenbelt…

the itinerary for the UK trip is fairly firm, in a jelly-like way.

it goes like this:

Wednesday 22nd August… arrive in London.

Friday 24th August - Monday 27th August… Greenbelt

Wednesday 29th August… Telford

Friday 31st August… Belfast

Sunday 2nd September… Manchester

Monday 3rd September… London

Wednesday 5th September… depart london [for melbourne, sydney or paris... depending on one's inclinations...]

[i know i said i wouldn't be blogging, but we just got definite about this today...]

One of the big questions we’ve been working with this year is how to inspire thinking outside the box - to move from models of what we know in terms of faith communities and worship, into completely new headspaces. We have a growing number of people around here who want desperately for something new, but it’s hard to make a lateral jump into a whole new space when everything we’ve seen comes from the old.

One of things we think might help is to see some stuff that’s happening in other places - not to replicate it, but to stretch our thinking beyond our current reality. So the synod here has decided to invest a little into doing that. With that in mind, we’re heading off to the UK in August - me, John from St Kilda, and Mike from Healesville, along with Nic and a few others from NSW. We’ll be going to Greenbelt, and then spending a bit of time visiting some alt worship / emerging church communities over there.

There’s space for others who are interested to come along too. If you are, get in touch and i’ll let you know cost and details, etc.