Mission in Action

AN American comedian was talking with an Australian comedian and the American said to the Australian, “You know the trouble with you Australians? You’ve got no sense of irony.” To which the Australian replied incredulously “Don’t you mean you Americans?” To which the American replied, “See what I mean?”

Which is all just to say if you are any sort of Christian (and he means any sort - Ed) then you have to read Letters From Kamp Krusty - the best and most ironic blog Christian, American or otherwise that you are likely to read. Check it here.

http://branthansen.typepad.com/letters_from_kamp_krusty/

Cashed-Up Bogans, or CUBs for short, are an interesting phenomenon. In Australian parlance a Bogan is a… is a… well, it’s kinda hard to describe to other cultures, but imagine a bloke in an AC/DC t-shirt, tight black jeans, a hotted-up car, a mullet and a pair of Ugg Boots.  You get the idea. 

Anyway here in Western Australia we are in a resources boom and it is affecting the whole country.  So bouyant is the economy that interest rates are going up while all across the western world they are falling. We have microscopic unemployment, and many tradesmen and unskilled labourers are making it big on the mine-sites or building sites. Hence the Cashed-Up Bogans.

Swan View (our suburb) is a particularly boganesque part of the country, and I was chatting last week with Tim Chester from TCH about the difficulties of church planting in this kind of area.  He said something very interesting, albeit using terminologies more at home in the UK than Oz.  He believes the CUB types are hard to make contact with with the gospel because they are not asking the philosophical questions like the middle class do, nor are they asking the existential questions as the working class poor do. In other words they are not going to ask you “But what does it all mean?”, nor are they likely to wonder “Why has life dealt me such a difficult hand?” (unless of course being a CUB is anathema to you in the same way being a Simpson is hard to handle for Lisa).

Where do we start? In a curious way I might find out tomorrow.  I’ve been contacted by someone in the mining town of Kalgoorlie and given the number of a fly-in-fly-out miner (someone working on a mine who goes to the site hundreds of kilometres away for two weeks on and then back home for two weeks off) who lives in our area and has just hit a huge marriage crisis. He phoned a men’s helpline and the person got in touch with a church in Kalgoorlie, who then got in touch with Backyard Misso- Hamo who then said that I would be the person to speak to since I lived in the same area as the aforementioned miner.  Whether or not he is a CUB remains to be seen, however he fits several of the criteria.  What I am intrigued by is how God refuses to be left out of peoples’ lives - whether they are the types who ask philosophical/existential questions or not.    I will keep you posted.

I should feel that after so long without being able to post anything I would have heaps to say. I’m not sure I do actually. The reality is that we have been back in the country six months (surely not! -Ed) and we’re both feeling a trifle tired. The whole come-back-sort-out-house-find-job-have-baby-start-thinking-about-household-church-planting has been slightly wearing.

Work has been interesting - in both senses of the word. I’m getting to do some creative PD deliveries that I enjoy, but at the same time I have bumped into the frustration of a lack of communication about the nature of my role, and a lack of resources to be able to carry it out. In other words, it’s a bit hard at the moment. It is at times like this that the idea of a household congregation style network (of which I would be the leader) is both attractive and an idol. I hear the siren call of “professional ministry” and feel I need to avoid it. The problem is that vocationally I feel that much of what I am good at (as opposed to what I am being paid to do at the moment) is no longer an option for me to do. I have found myself saying yes to probably one too many speaking engagements. I am having to reassess why I say yes to these.
If you feel inclined to pray for me, please do.

BTW - many thanks to my young(ish) brother Paul for figuring out the problem with my blog log-in.

My blog is no longer ashamed to own me. Normal services to resume within the next day!

My laptop won’t let me log onto my blog so I am writing this (furtively) from work.  Once I figure out the problem I will be back on board.  It’s been a blogless couple of weeks, which isn’t always a bad thing.  I’ve actually played Scrabble a few times - something that pre-blog I (we) took for granted.

The Crowded House crew, Steve Timmis and Johnny Woodrow are winging their way back to the UK after their Australian tour.  We had a great time with them over the five or six days they were with us.  My harddrive is in trouble at the moment so I can’t blog too much about it - but will sort things out soon and fill in my photos and musings

Things are starting to grow. Imperceptibly, slowly, but grow they are. Tonight was our Tuesdays dinner together. We’ve been meeting fortnightly and this is the first time we’ve got together since Steve Timmis and Johnny Woodrow met with us for a brunch.

The discussion started about what this thing we are going to plant might look like. I felt a little more directive than I have for the past few months, especially in the light of Steve Timmis meeting everyone last week, so we really thrashed a few things out.

Our group of about eight or so is going to meet in a month at a property in the Hills to talk through the values that we will take on - and it’s no surprise that we are going to base it on TCH values.

The interesting thing for us is that despite the need to contextualise this thing to our Perth suburban setting rather than a Sheffield urban one a good number of us actually live within walking distance of each other - and that increases if we add in the other couples that are interested. Best of all we actually do have some good friends who aren’t Christian also virtually within walking distance or at least a few kilometres. Even the couple that live further away by several suburbs have the beginnings of an interested network within a 500metre radius of their house. We are, though I don’t want to say it too loudly, at the beginnings of a possible network. (Shhhhh - Ed).

We ended the evening praying together because when it boils down to it it is the Holy Spirit who is going to do the work of preparing the hearts of people for the gospel - and a good thing too!
Steve Timmis comes back to Perth from the Eastern States on Thursday and we have a few more busy (but positive looking) days before he and Johnny fly out again. More of that as it unfolds.

Whilst on the subject of work, I realised that I have fallen for the trap of compartmentalising my life too.  I work for a group called Swan Alliance and am seconded to the Dept of Education to run a project linking at-risk youth with industry.  Part of that role is creating and delivering professional development packages to industry about the nature of the issues surrounding at-risk students.

Today, being the last day of term, we went out for lunch together and here are all of my colleagues from the office.  They are a great bunch.

The girl at the far end of the table made an interesting comment today.  We were indeed talking about religion at work and the issue came up as to what denomination I belonged to (they know a bit about my background). This young girl (a font of all knowledge in the workplace and a great help to me) was intrigued and asked a few questions.  Then she said this:

“I’m asking, not because I’m against Christianity or anything, it’s just that I’ve never had anything to do with it and I don’t know a thing about it.”

it struck me again that our culture has definitely shifted in that direction.  It used to be that the God you didn’t believe in was the Christian one, now it seems as if many people are a tabula rasa - no opinion either way because the spiritual side of life in the form of a belief in a god has never crossed their minds.

Steve Timmis and Johnny Woodrow (that’s Steve and our Declan in the photo above just in case you’re wondering) from TCH arrived on Saturday.  We had 75mm of rain in the morning - a real tip-down - and I was wondering how I’d be getting them from the airport to the car without getting drenched.  Fortunately it was all blazing sunshine in the afternoon - or unfortunately if you were two pale looking Englishmen arriving out of a cold start to spring.  Johnny looked even paler after having been ill on the plane (something that happened to me when traveling with Steve to the US last year, and indeed something that many of his traveling companions experience).
We had a great time with them on the Sunday morning as they shared TCH vision with our proto-group and other interested parties around a brunch in a very crowded dining room.  Steve really has a clarity about him - borne out of many years having to explain missional household congregations to people I guess.  There was a genuine interest in determining how to contextualise the principles in our locale here in WA.  Jill and I, and those who have spoken to me since, were really encouraged by what was said, and the spirit in which the group heard it.  I know it isn’t going to be an easy road we’re walking, but Steve reminded us that just a few short years ago he was starting TCH with nothing but he and Janet (his wife).  God really has done amazing things with and through them since.
For me, I have had plenty of time driving to work and sitting on the train doing visits to industry in town to think about the implications for us.  We are going to have to address the issue of full-time work and what it means for our future congregation members to be committed to their jobs in a godly way, and also to be committed to each other too.  I have also felt a little pang of regret that I’m not getting on with this a lot faster. Fulltime work has precluded moving too fast and also has stopped me going to the Forge Festival - something I haven’t got to yet despite several years of trying.  Oh well, it’s time I revisited my theology of work again.

Me Leader. Me Hungry.

No seriously, the issue of how leader-hungry missional household church is has raised its hoary head once again.  I was talking to my mate in Dallas Mark Moore the other day and he mentioned that Alan Hirsch had been staying with him.  The issue of how planting is slowed down by the lack of leaders caused Alan to note (not for the first time) that perhaps Mark was looking for leaders who follow Paul, rather than leaders who follow Jesus.

Now just hold that scream for a moment confessional evangelicals.  Alan is much too smart, and much too orthodox to think that Paul and Jesus were going in different directions.  What he meant was this: In looking for leaders, and in prepping leaders, how much is enough?  Do they need a theological training that gives them what a seminary would give them, or is it enough to have a faithful follower of Jesus, who reads the Scriptures, has looked after his household well etc? (BTW - sounding familiar from the Pastorals?)

At the minute I’m with Alan on this one.  A friend of mine holds a responsible job in Christian education, has a wonderful wife and family, loves Jesus, loves the Scriptures, spent many a day counselling me with godly wisdom in my youth, and conducts a pretty open house policy when it comes to taking in waifs and strays. Yet he said to me at the start of the year that he doesn’t think he would be equipped to lead a household congregation yet because he doesn’t have enough theological training.

Sounds good enough to me, yet there appears to be a lag time in our thinking.  We’ve got a more malleable ecclesiology happening.  It’s time our training caught up.