Celebrate Refugees
Refugee and Migrant Sunday is this Sunday – August 31st. What is Refugee and Migrant Sunday? It is a day to celebrate and acknowledge the contribution refugees have made to Australia. It is held every year in thousands of churches around Australia. Each year, the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) produces an Education Kit for congregations and the wider community that contains education sheets and education and liturgical resources to help celebrate the day and take further action. You can download this year’s resources here
posted by Louise
Recycle? No, Precycle!
Its been around for ages. Our grandmothers did it. Some of us have done it for a long time. Even though we didnt know it’s name. Or that it was fashionable. “Precycling” is catching on as the latest fad, a timely manifestation of green marketing.
What does this trendy new buzzword actually mean? It’s apparently another way of saying “conserve.” As in, re-using plastic water bottles rather than tossing them and buying another one. Re-using plastic and paper bags. Buying large quantities rather than single-serving packaging.
Precyclers remove themselves from junk mail lists, read paper-based media online and even carry around “precycling kits” consisting of cloth napkins and silverware—anything to reduce waste and not contribute to the recycling bin.
“It’s not just about how you dispose of [products and packaging] anymore,” said Melissa Lavigne, director of marketing for The Intelligence Group [the people who came up with the word]. “It’s about being conscious about products you buy in the first place. That’s the idea behind precycling.”
Read the full post here
The you can leave a comment to let us know some of your grooviest precycling practices?
posted by Louise
Action B4 faith
I couldn’t quit drinking. My son was a baby and I couldn’t quit drinking. I knew I was drinking too much and I’d always been able to quit before and then all of a sudden I couldn’t. And a friend of mine suggested that I pray, that I get on my knees in the morning and ask God for help keeping away from a drink or a drug, and I get on my knees at night and thank God for keeping me away from a drink or a drug. And I said, ‘But I don’t believe in God,’ and she said, ‘Just do it, just do it mechanically.’
Award winning poet Mary Karr began to pray and from the day that she did she was able to stop drinking. That was 18 years ago. She didnt attribute the change in her life to God and saw these prayers as an appeal to her higher self. One day at a BBQ she confessed to a friend who was an ex-drinker that she was “mouthing prayers”. He suggested that she try thanking God as she went through the day. Mary says that this didnt come easily for her – that she wasnt a grateful person. Without much hope she began to say thank you for things like a good cup of coffee. “All of a sudden“, she says “it was like the world bloomed into being. I realised that I had been so focused on complaint for most of my life that I had just missed a lot of the good things that were going on. My world view, which I had thought of as so ‘realistic’ because I didn’t believe in God, was in fact very warped by a kind of naturally depressive state of mind. It’s almost like the world was black and white and it started to bleed into technicolour before my eyes.”
Yet it was still some years later before she could say that she believed in God. She began to attend church because one Sunday morning her five year old son came and said that he wanted to go to church. When Mary asked why, the child said, “I want to see if God is there”, which Mary says is the only thing he could have said which would have got her to go to church. After that the pair of them started this thing they called God-o-rama where they would go with anybody they knew who attended any kind of church. Eventually Mary joined the Catholic Church. She says that for her “faith isn’t a feeling, it’s a set of actions.”
to ask, a stream welled up inside me;
some jade wave bouyed me forward;
and I found myself upright
inside my own ribs aflourish. There, the arbor leafs.
The vines push out plump grapes.
You are loved, someone said. Take that
and eat it.
- from ‘Disgraceland’ by Mary Karr
Mary was a recent guest on Radio National’s Encounter program. You can read the transcript of that conversation here
Church as minority
Whether we like it or not, the Christian church is no longer a central part of most people’s lives and is now a ‘minority group’ in Australian society. That means we are at risk of doing what minority groups do – building enclaves to preserve our language, culture, music and beliefs. It’s the same process for migrants in a new country and it is important in that context especially where people have migrated out of ‘necessity’ for example as refugees. Maintaining culture in those settings is vital as culture is an essential part of identity, an identity which may have been oppressed or resulted in victimisation presenting the need to migrate or seek asylum in the first place.
It is normally the second generation migrants who as young people, begin to venture out into the ‘mainstream’ society and find themselves developing a ‘mosaic’ identity with components from the old and the new. This is where conflict begins to develop between them and their elders as they begin to talk and act in way their parents are unable to relate to.
Tony Floyd, Director of Multi-cultural Ministry with the Uniting Church talked about this in his recent visit to Adelaide. Tony indicated that it is second generation young people who are suggesting a new paradigm for multi-cultural ministry. One which has an awareness of the multiple factors which go into forming identity and begins with the common element identified in many faiths and cultures, that of Spirit. While we may have been accustomed to starting our conversations with Christ as the centre, this new paradigm suggests that we begin with Spirit as a way of building connection and shared identity with others.
So how does this relate to the church as a minority in society? Well for starters there’s the challenge to ourselves about the ‘enclaves’ we might be tempted to build. Yes maintaining culture is an important part of identity. The language, ritual, music which are part of our tradition, assist in forming our identity. But if we are going to engage with, walk beside and serve in a society where identity is plural, it will only be possible for us to ‘be Christ’ in that setting if we are open and accepting and inclusive of the other. If we go with a preparedness to learn, to listen and to be changed by our encounters, then I would suggest we have the opportunity to ‘be Christ’ wherever we go. But if we go thinking we have all the answers and that it is for us to convince others of that then we may as well stay in our enclaves.
Spirit, God, Christ. It reminds me of the ‘inclusion, control, acceptance’ model presented by David Augsburger from Fuller Theological College on his recent visit to Adelaide. Connect with others through Spirit, the ‘common’, inclusive element which may be expressed through art, a love for the outdoors, physical activity or time in community. Spirit – who some understand as the breath of God, who with that breath forms life. Life which matters and which has the capacity to act, to influence, to make a difference. That’s the ‘control’ part of the model, the part when we listen and encourage others to express their identity and their capacity for influencing the world around them. And then Christ, the one who showed that no matter what your identity is or what others say about you or what you do, you are loved and accepted for who you are.
Ten things top leaders do
The newspaper management guru Jill Geisler has assembled a list of Ten Things Great Bosses Know that draw from columns she’s written in the last decade. She makes quick summaries of her points about leadership tactics, like emotional intelligence, the value of coaching, and how to manage change. Then she links to deeper looks at each of the topics. While we might have bossy people in the church we dont really have bosses but reading the word “leader” or “Minister” instead works very well. Check it out!
Louise
In Search of Faith
Here’s a fascinating project: visit 52 churches in one year and report on the findings. That is some church crawl! And it is exactly what novelist Suzanne Strempek Shea did. Her findings were published in April this year as a book Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith. When Pope John Paul II died in 2005 Suzanne, who had turned away from the Catholic Church of her childhood, saw in his mourners a faith filled passion that she wanted to find for herself. For one year she attended different non-Catholic services across America. She wanted to learn what makes the denominations differ and different from the Catholicism she was raised in, and to understand more about faith and why people go to church.
Near the end of the book she writes, ” the past year has distilled for me the qualities I’d need in a new church home: a community that welcomed me warmly, didn’t give a whit about my politics or lifestyle, gave tons of whits about the social justice needs locally and beyond, contained little-to-no hierarchy, allowed congregants a say in decisions large and small offered a spiritual message inspired by love rather than fear, and did all this in an art-filled space that rang with awesome music.”
A reviewer of this book on the Amazon.com site says this: “By the end of this book I felt I had not only traveled roads to outlandish and inspiring places, but I also felt I had reached a personal revelation of what spirituality could be, whether or not it was tied to a religion, a creed, or a parcel of dogma. As I read I was amused, astonished, and sometimes shocked by the types of worship she observed, and ultimately I had to admit I was profoundly moved by what she showed me about faith and belief. For when we witness others’ faith, we allow our own to grow. “
The book can be purchased from Amazon. com I dont think it is available in Australia yet.
Posted by Louise
Comments on the Pope’s visit
Two articles commenting on the recent visit of the Pope to Australia:
1. Written by Associate Professor Andrew Dutney, senior lecturer in theology at Flinders University and director of the university’s Centre for Theology, Science and Culture.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,24047541-5006301,00.html
2. Written by Alexander Downer who was Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, 1996-2007.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,24085821-22202,00.html
Posted by Charlene
Virtual Church
Good Morning folks,
A really interesting article from this week’s Christianity Today ’s Leadership Weekly Newsletter Leadership Journal on virtual church and the significant number of people who are plugging into this form of religious expression. The article had a three minute U Tube Link which gave an intro to one of the sites.
Shalom
Matt
There is another life beyond this one: a realm where one’s role on earth is a distant memory, where inhabitants have new bodies and can fly anywhere they like. It sounds a bit like heaven. But it’s not. It’s cyberspace.
from the article: The First Church of second Life:What is the role of real Christians in a virtual world? by Angie Ward
Read the whole article here
Visit Second Life’s website here
More thoughts on being authentic
A couple of things have been buzzing around my head since I posted my first blog.
One is about imagery for the “kingdom of heaven” (Matthew) or “kingdom of God” (other biblical writers). I know that there are many followers of Jesus who have no problems with using this terminology. “After all, it’s scriptural”, they would say. Which is not a dig at my colleagues who have a more conservative theology or more literal understanding of the Bible. There are people I know of a more liberal or progressive theology, who are uncomfortable about changing images they find in Scripture, especially if they are quoted as being on the lips of Jesus. But the “king/kingdom” language is more problematic for others, including me, because it is non-inclusive male- oriented language but more so because it is language of domination and a language of exclusion (who’s in and who’s out). In worship, I have used “reign” instead of “kingdom” but even that doesn’t hit the spot for me. I want to speak of the sphere of God’s action – which is love, grace, presence (which is very Trinitarian – not that trinity is the be-all and end-all descriptor of God). So what words and images shall we use to describe the sphere of action of unbounded love, unmerited grace and unlimited presence? Any clues?
The other is to do with my choice of the word “hope” to be the one-word encapsulation of the significance of the kingdom of heaven/God (whatever we shall call it). For me the locus of the kingdom of God, and therefore the locus of our hope is in this world, this life. There are some for whom the only real locus of hope is in life beyond this life – whatever that may mean – but for me that draws the emphasis away from what it means to discover and participate in kingdom life now.
Which brings me back to another theme I touched on in my earlier blog – authentic living. Recently, I was privileged to spend two weeks learning from David Augsburger and the lasting memory I have of those two weeks is that David gave us of himself. Everything he taught had an integrity, an authenticity because it came from the very way he lived. (David would probably blush and offer a humble self-effacement at this point.) But he stirred in me the thought that if I could live with similar integrity and authenticity, that would be hopeful living for me and for those I encounter on the journey of life. If at the end of my life, I left an impact on others – individuals and communities – such that they said, “Here lived one who was an authentic follower of Jesus”, what a legacy that would be. And I wouldn’t need to worry or fear about what came after death!
Posted by Rob
