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Standing Stones

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A friend from Adelaide who is a retired minister does wonderful wood-turning. He decided to make the off-cuts into small, irregular pieces – sets of 6 standing stones that could be stacked in multiple ways. After I saw a picture, I wanted some to use in retreat spaces, so I ordered 5 sets.

I like offering non-verbal, contemplative activities. I can imagine using these with individuals or groups as a quiet activity.

Making a stack requires concentration – it’s not easy! It requires attention to balance. I experienced frustration, and needed to slow down and lose myself in the task.

I’m really looking forward to using them myself and on retreats.

“Our Faith” Video Series

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This week the Uniting Church’s Assembly has published the video series that I produced for them about Christian beliefs from a UC perspective. The series is here. The videos are designed for use with newcomers to the Uniting Church, people preparing for baptism and confirmation, a ‘basics’ series about Christian faith, for high school religious education, etc.

Each video goes for 7-8 minutes and they feature a range of leaders from across the Uniting Church – congregational ministers, university chaplains, college lecturers, and lay members.

1. Believing in God – Rev Dave Williamson, Rev Eseta Waqabaca-Meneilly, Dr Deidre Palmer
2. Believing in Jesus Christ – Rev Dr Geoff Thompson
3. Believing in the Holy Spirit – Rev Dr Paul Dongwon Goh, Rev Steph Tai, Rev Dr Tim Hein
4. Receiving the Scriptures – Rev Dr Monica Melanchthon, Rev Stuart Cameron
5. Living as God’s Church – Rhanee Tsetsakos, Rev Dr Andrew Dutney, Rev Charissa Suli, Rev Alistair Macrae, Rev Dr Amelia Koh-Butler
6. Serving God’s Mission – Rev Alistair Macrae, Rev Dr Amelia Koh-Butler

What a fine group of people, wise and expressive. Some of the interviews went for an hour.

The videos are designed to open up discussion and be a resource for learning – they’re not statements of dogma, even through they’re full of doctrine. There’s a discussion guide currently being completed. It will be available sometime in August. There are also transcripts which will be available.Continue Reading

“Being With” in Mission

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I’m reading Sam Wells’ Incarnational Mission and immediately it resonates with our conversations with our Mission Pilot teams. Wells talks about “being with” as Jesus’primary way of being, and this as the church’s primary way of being in ministry and mission. (This is an companion volume to Incarnational Ministry.) Wells introduces and contrasts four approaches – working for, working with, being for and being with. The contrasts are about attempting to do good things for needy people without necessarily even consulting them – seeing people as objects of our charity, speaking on other people’s behalf without even needing to get involved, organising collective action that includes those being served, and being with people on their own terms and seeing their strengths, not their deficits. The latter, “being with” doesn’t seek to fix people’s problems but delights in them and accompanies them in finding fullness of life.

Wells describes eight aspects of “being with” :

  • presence – being in the same physical space
  • attention – focused interaction
  • mystery – exploring with appreciation (not problem-solving)
  • delight – recognition of abundance
  • participation – balancing our involvement
  • partnership – sharing of gifts
  • enjoyment – being with for its own sake
  • glory – God being with us in Christ

The book chapters explore what it means to be with a range of people – seekers, those of no professed faith, those of other faiths, neighbours, organisations, etc.

I’m just diving into the book now and will update this when I’ve finished it.

Here’s Sam Wells explaining the four approaches.

Digital Storytelling with Dr Mary Hess

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This week I hosted a conversation with Dr Mary Hess from Luther Seminary about Digital Storytelling in the context of lifelong faith formation and education. Mary is Professor of Education and Leadership at Luther Seminary, Minnesota USA. The online session was part of our new monthly series on Blended Faith Formation – how can the church grow disciples online as well as face to face. Mary has an extensive background in studying, writing and teaching about media, communication and religious education, including theological education. Her personal blog is here.

Mary is from Minneaoplis, and the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement provided a poignant but important starting point for talking about the power of stories to challenge and change. We talked about the central place of stories in faith formation and education, narrative pedagogies, personal stories, what it means to live in “the tragic gap”,  and why and how we can be teachers who collect, create and curate stories. It was a wonderful and generous conversation. Many people joined us on the day and you can read the chat comments here on on Presbytery Facebook page.

This version of the video has the audio looping glitch edited out! You can watch or download it from Youtube.

You can download the PDF of Mary’s slides here.

A number of resources were mentioned in the conversation. Here’s a list of them and there are more in the PDF.

Parker Palmer – The Courage to Teach, Healing the Heart of Democracy

Dr Frank Rogers

Irshad Manji – Don’t Label Me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times

Bryan Stevenson – Just Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption

Tex Sample – Ministry in an Oral Culture

Thomas Groome –  Christian Religious Education

Storying Faith website

I want to add in the Eight Aboriginal Ways of Learning which is a fantastic local resource for thinking differently than European mindsets about teaching and learning, and story sharing is key.

Huge thanks to Mary for an informative and encouraging session.

Our previous online conversation on Digital Discipleship was with Dr Bex Lewis from Manchester is here. Stay tuned for info about next month’s guest.

This was my first time using Ecamm Live for live vision mixing on my Macbook Pro. I skyped Mary in the US. Ecamm treats Skype video as a virtual camera source. Unfortunately I also had my iPhone connected wirelessly as a camera source, so there were two microphones picking up my voice and then they got looped through the computer system audio (as that was also turned on as an audio source. You live and learn. Having the iPhone as a second wired or wireless camera source (using NDI/HX Camera) will be really helpful in future.

Anyway, the output went to our Facebook page. I had three scenes set up – the pre-session countdown screen, the split screen with Mary, and a scene with Mary’s PDF and her video in the corner. I’m pretty happy with the ease of use and quality of output from Ecamm.

Fuller Seminary Introduction to the Bible

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Fuller has just released a set of short videos introducing each book of the Bible featuring it’s teaching faculty. Fuller Studio has produced some fabulous material – superb quality and editing. The production quality of these is great. The speakers are personable. The presentation is punchy. The explanations are actually invitations to experience the biblical drama and find out part in it. So the intros can be mini-sermons, but in a good way. Yes, they introduce interpretation straightaway – they’re not abstracted discussions. That’s a good thing for an introduction.

No I haven’t watched or reviewed them all yet….

The series website is here.

Here’s one I like for an obvious reason.