Mark Pierson
Mark Pierson is the Executive Director of Urban Seed (otherwise known as the Receptionist).
Increasingly Random and Personal Reflections on Travel in the USA August 2006.
October 03, 2006
In late 2005 the Urban Seed Board granted me leave for the month of August 2006. My intention was to take a break and renew my energy and creativity by going to the Greenbelt Arts Festival in England and then hanging out with friends in the UK for a few weeks.
In the end I cancelled all those plans and spent three weeks on the West Coast of the USA, with a few days either side in New Zealand. It turned out to be a very good decision. The reduction in travel and more days to relax and be refreshed worked extremely well for me. The value of the trip was largely due to the wonderful hospitality, and inspirational creativity of the mission involvements, provided by my hosts wherever I went.
The focus of the trip, and what paid my basic airfare, was a week-long retreat in the hills of Julian (4 hours drive south of LA) with the Younger Leaders Network. This amazing group of people (50 adults and 12 children this year) has been meeting annually for 14 years. They started out with about a dozen people and each year spouses and friends have been added. The retreats alternate between east and west coasts. People came from all over the USA as well as NZ (not just me), Canada and Mozambique. They covenant to attend each year if at all possible. They are a very diverse group of people in age, occupations – filmmakers, artists, teachers, professors, an entymologist, urban mission workers, a lobbyist, students, pastors, designers - ethnicity, outlook, and circumstances. The thread that runs through the group is a commitment to environmental and justice issues.
Their statement of ‘agreements’ says,
‘We are Christians who advocate and work for peace, cultural renewal, the protection of human life, creation care, and racial, gender, and economic justice as an expression of our faith in Jesus Christ.
These activities, along with prayer, worship, evangelism and spiritual renewal are all central to following Jesus. We challenge ourselves and all Christians to obey the call of the kingdom regardless of cost or sacrifice.’
Each year they invite a resource person (me this year) to contribute. They asked me to talk about urban mission ie Urban Seed, emerging church/Emergent issues, and worship generally. The week was very leisurely with a range of other seminars and workshops offered by participants. These were as diverse as the group – power yoga, mosaic-ing, art, making transitions, neural research…. Some sessions are repeated each year – annual meeting, Arts Worship event, Ideas Incubator (people raise projects or life issues for group discernment and advice). I felt very honoured to be part of the experience and to meet some great people who are doing similar things to Urban Seed, and others who had strong interests in worship and the arts.
I was impressed with their commitment to each other and to the process of making their gatherings work well for everyone involved. It was wonderful to catch up with some friends I had made as visitors to Cityside Baptist in Auckland, and those I had met previously in other parts of the world. Five of the group in all. A very pleasant surprise.
I was delighted and inspired by the Buffalo New York crew who live in a very poor and abandoned part of the city’s Westside and lead ministries among the people there. Some of the team have been there for 10 years.
The group responded very warmly to the worship I curated and to the issues I
addressed and introduced them to. There were many hours of informal discussions at all hours of the day and night! It was a good occasion for me to re-shape some of my ideas about worship and how to present them. Particularly the ‘slow church’ ideas.
The following 12 days were divided between Los Angeles, Newberg, and Portland, (both in Oregon).
In LA I stayed with friends Rebecca, her husband David, and their adult daughter Simone. David is a professional musician, singer, drummer, and producer. Rebecca is Director of the Los Angeles Film Studies School. Together they lead The Tribe church that meets in rented space on Wilshire Boulevard on Miracle Mile between Hollywood and Beverly Hills. They are also heavily involved in the Burning Man festival (www.burningman.com) where 30 000 people gather to do wonderfully creative things in the middle of the arid and otherwise unpopulated Black Rock desert for a week each year. I had the honour of working on the ‘white rabbit art car’ and learning more about this event that has inspired me for some years, although I have never fulfilled my ambition to attend it.
Other than the general inspiration of hanging around very creative people for four days, participating in Tribe worship was a highlight. I ended up being the ‘short order’ preacher. We started with a sit down meal for 30 and moved to the next room when a drumming beat began. The feature of Tribe worship is their drum circle. Chairs in a single circle, everyone is offered or brings drums, maracas, shakers etc. David leads from his drum kit and a synthesiser providing a rhythm track. He also leads the ‘songs’ with words put up on a screen. Several people ‘danced’ in another part of the room set apart by net drapes. The drumming rises and falls as a prayer is spoken, instrumental played etc. The drumming lasted about 25 minutes. Then Communion, offering, art space were offered simultaneously. I spoke and led the Benediction. We talked and packed out and got home about 11pm. It was a great occasion.
Newberg is a small town of about 20 000 people 40 minutes drive from Portland, Oregon. I stayed with friends who are ‘Friends’ ie Quakers! Stan and Cathy pastor one of the four Friends churches in Newberg. They are wonderfully creative and deeply spiritual people. I had the privilege of talking to a group from their congregation at a church dinner (another ‘short order’ arrangement!) and over the next few days to have many other conversations about worship and different forms of church. I learned more about how their ‘unprogrammed worship’ ie silence with spontaneous contributions, works. Their form of eclessiology sees the pastor at the bottom and the congregation at the top. Very much the servant-leader role that I prefer. Unfortunately I was not around on a Sunday to participate in their worship.
Sunday I was in Portland with Ken and Deborah who lead The Bridge church (www.thebridgeportland.org). They are wonderful people. 11.30am service (‘sunrise’ service for this crew!) at a community space a few blocks away. The congregation/community is made up of all manner of people from middle class to homeless and street people, old and young. Ken and Deb have been building relationships with street people for 8 years, visiting the city centre several times a week.
The Bridge encourages participation in music making, and has a history of involvement with the punk and circuit-bending scenes. Today is acoustic worship rather than ‘worship band’. They have 4 or 5 worship bands that rotate. Not your traditional worship band though. People are banging drums, many have drumsticks or pieces of dowel and are drumming on tables, chairs, bins and the floor. Some have kitchen utensils. One guy is creating feedback via a Fisher Price children’s guitar amp and microphone (circuit bending is an art form here). Sixty adults sit in a large circle. The cacophony of drums beating on the floor/chairs/tables/each other with sticks, miscellaneous people writing poetry and yelling it into the microphone, gets so loud that I have to step outside for 20 minutes. My ears hurt! But it is truly indigenous worship. Absolutely appropriate for the community at worship and fully integrated. Wonderful stuff.
The drumming goes on for 45 minutes! Then Crystal gives some notices about events and introduces me as ‘The Thunder From Downunder’ It is the most interesting interview I have ever done. After asking me about the community I come from she asks for ‘one word or less’ response to the questions…
1. Is your accent real or just a ploy to get chicks?
2. Do you know Hugh Jackman?
3. Has a dingo ever really eaten a baby?
4. Who would win in a boxing match – Nicole Kidman or a kangaroo?
5. Is the Australian National Anthem really ‘We come from a land downunder…’?
6. Vegemite – what’s the deal?
7. Does a digeree really doo?
8. Koala Bears – friend or foe?
9. Is crocodile Dundee a real guy or just some ass trying to make money off your country?
10. Glow worm caves – really cool or really just a cave full of creepy bugs?
11. Was the ‘Lord of the Rings’ really filmed in NZ?
12. Do you know Gandolf or Liv Tyler?
13. Portland – your new home away from home or the devils playground?
Apparently this morning is less controlled than usual. Trader Joes provides a huge pile of fresh food every Sunday that is free for anyone to take. People come off the street just to get the food - and a meal follows the service. The ethos and values behind The Bridge are very similar to those at Urban Seed.
Ken is 61 and Deb is 54. They are experienced at life and at building community. I believe this is an often overlooked key to building a church community. After talking with many people connected with the very diverse and dissimilar groups I spent time with, I am more convinced than ever that the future of the church lies at least as much in emerged leaders and in inherited churches as it does in the so called emerging leaders and emerging churches. Our definitions of what will build the Kingdom of God in our changing cultures has been far too narrow and we have been too quick to write off what has been with us for decades.
The emerged groups and their leaders that I have hung out with and had the privilege of working with on this trip have all been very open to new ways of operating and are searching for substance not just froth and bubble. They are interested in the values and theology that will undergird a community of faith in the emerging cultures/subcultures. I’d like to see the wider church and parachurch organisations and Trusts putting more resources into supporting and encouraging some reshaping of inherited churches to better do mission in the emerging culture. To not do so would be an incredible waste of resources.
In September 2004, after a few weeks in the UK I wrote,
(I think) we should be funding ‘emerged leaders’ rather than just ‘emerging leaders’. Emerged leaders who have a track record of being able to engage with their local communities and provide rituals from a Christian worldview that engage with the needs of those communities. Pastoral giftings, creativity, integrity, openness, hospitality and life experience should be some of the primary criteria for church leaders and planters. These people may need retraining to understand the new world they are part of, and to be exposed to some new ways of doing the old tasks of pastoral care, servant leadership, worship that engages the whole person, stages of spiritual formation etc. But we shouldn’t make age a primary criteria for pastoral selection.’
The rest of that report is at http://cityside.org.nz/node/2 (under ‘UK Trip’)
I’m surprised that after 2 years I stand by those comments and the others made in that report. I haven’t see much in the Emerging Church movement that gives me hope for the Church in Australia or New Zealand. I was interested in the USA to find that I had to differentiate between emerging church and Emergent. The terms are not at all interchangeable. I was often called on to describe the history of both. While the terms seems to have widespread reach, they don’t carry any significant content for many church people. ‘Emerging church’ almost seems to be a luxury item for those who can afford it.
Eugene Peterson sums it up beautifully in the introduction to his book, 'Working the Angles'. He writes of the USA but what he says is true of anywhere in the West.
"(P)astors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an
alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other
jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the
church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But
they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring
after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of
pastoral ministry hasn't the remotest connection with what the church's
pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.
A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been
deserted....It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people
whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of
pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do
not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss
influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not
grist for their mills.
(P)astors have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers,
and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with
shopkeeper's concerns-how to keep the customers happy, how to lure
customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the
goods so that the customers will lay out more money.
Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers,
pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is
still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping
all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy
the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the
kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.”
Community building, pastoral care, servant leadership…I don’t see a lot of emphasis on any of those in what is being promoted as the emerging church. But they do often exist in inherited churches. So if we could help inherited churches to renew their worship in ways that sustained mission and connected with the cultures around them, that seems to me to be a better way forward than to start new ‘churches’ that struggle, cost a lot of money, and focus on worship rather than spiritual formation and community development etc.
But worship isn’t always being done well in emerging churches either. We seem to assume that because an emerging church leader is young, has some theological education (perhaps), and doesn’t like the inherited church, that he (and it is usually a male) knows how to curate worship and lead a community. Worship and mission form an endless and seamless loop. Each informs, builds, and strengthens the other. Both need to be well informed and practiced. I think we sell our communities short far too often, and probably far more often than they or their leaders realise. I think we have a crisis of worship in the Church.
I was surprised and delighted to discover that I have a strong intuitive sense of what works and what doesn’t in any worship service I am part of. As I travelled I found myself involved in many, many conversations about worship and was able to offer suggestions about how the current worship could be improved - without changing the style. My comments were about ways to add depth (which isn’t the same as density) and breadth to the worship, both vital aspects sadly missing from much worship. My comments were well received (having been mostly, but not always, requested) and feedback suggests their implementation has in many cases made a real and significant difference to the worship encounter. This experience has confirmed my desire to continue to offer writing and speaking around these issues whenever there is the opportunity. I realised that I have a contribution to make. That in itself was worth the trip!
I’ve been wondering what the implications of some emerging and converging technologies might be for the Church – its structure, leadership, worship, mission…. -for how we do some of our traditional activities as well as how we might use the technologies. I want to think about:-
Downloading
Sideloading
Convergence
Time shifting
Space shifting
Portability
MySpace
YouTube – has 2 million downloads a day and 65 000 uploads. (or is that a week?)
Technology services the idea
The average time spent on MySpace is 51 minutes, on most websites 5 minutes is a very long time
There are 2.5 billion mobile phones in the world today. 3 Billion in a few years.
Record companies now prefer to be called content companies
From 10 years old, the average spend through a lifetime on mobile phone calls is expected to be $30 000
(and a useless but local piece of info, LonelyGirl15 turns out to be an aspiring Kiwi actress Jessica Grace who is trying to break in to Hollywood!) She has created a new art form.
‘You don’t change the world by hiding in the woods, wearing a hair shirt, or buying indulgences in the form of SAVE THE EARTH bumper stickers. You do it by articulating a vision for the future and pursuing it with all the ingenuity humanity can muster. Indeed, being green at the start of the 21st century requires a whole hearted commitment to upgrading civilisation.‘ Alex Nikolai Steffen, ‘The Next Green Revolution’, p 40, Wired Magazine, May 2006.
The quote could easily be rewritten for a church context.
I’ll let Eugene Peterson have the last word,
“The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are,
instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in
towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and
does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the
sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the
community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community
attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in
spades."
Mark Pierson, September 01, 2006.
ps The day after I returned to Melbourne Amazon Books sent me one of their nuisance emails. The kind that lists some books they think you’d like to buy, ‘Amazon.co.uk has new recommendations for you based on items you purchased or told us you own.’ This was surprising since I haven’t purchased anything from Amazon UK for several years. Even more surprising was that they recommended I purchase ‘The Prodigal Project: journey into the emerging church’. This is a book I co-wrote in 2000! I also own six of the other seven books they recommended I buy, so their prediction was quite accurate.
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