Helping churches form lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ
Here’s a free online course Introduction to Cultural Anthropology by Dr. Mark Moritz of Ohio State University. It’s been highly recommended to me.
It came from Dr Michael Wesch, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, who has also made this great video about online teaching. He’s also the author of “The Art of Being Human“.
Reflections on Doing Church Online
In recent weeks a bunch of academics in religion, media, communication and culture have put together a book of articles reflecting on ‘being church’ in the current pandemic crisis.
“In March/April 2020 most churches around the world have been forced to close their doors due to the need for social distancing and local lock-downs in order to fight off the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The result was traditional churches had to make an unplanned and swift transition towards technologically-driven forms of gathering. Many church leaders felt out of their comfort zone, while experimenting with doing church online. At the same time, scholars and theologians began studying this new trends in how churches perform worship online. “The Distanced Church” brings together religious leaders and scholar in conversation in this eBook where each group and offer reflection on lessons learned, answer questions that have been raised, and present insights gleaned from researching religion online. Contributors to this eBook come from ten different countries—within North America, Europe, and the Antipodes—and represent 12 different Christian denominations including Mainline, Catholic, and Nondenominational churches.”
You can find the book here.
Some how the last month disappeared in a blur of helping churches in our presbytery respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Now that Easter is past, I want to focus on how we can help leaders resource the faith growth and mission expressions of their communities in the coming months. What will church look like down the track? Will we simply go back to old patterns or will we build on our learning about being church differently. This is an unprecedented opportunity to help faith communities shift from a mainly gathered focus to both non-gathered and gathered expressions of discipleship. John Roberto (of Lifelongfaith.com) first talked about gathered and non-gathered ways of being church in his Comprehensive Approach back in the late 1980s.
Churches have tended to centre their programs and activities on certain locations (mainly the church premises) and times that suit the faithful. Roberto and others such as Dick Hardel pushed leaders to think about other settings – home, school, workplace, etc – as well as letting people choose their own times to engage in faith development. More recently, Roberto has prompted churches to think about the digital environment as broadening the faith formation ecosystem to include 24/7 anytime, anywhere, connection to faith development resources or opportunities.
So I’m going to exploring the intersection of three things over the coming months.
a. Daily practices of discipleship – how can these be fostered more intentionally in this time – both inward and outward practices
b. The Blended Learning spectrum – mixing online and offline learning opportunities, with people being able to make choices about when, where and how they learn
c. Local and regional strategies for Christian education and faith formation – helping congregations learn both within and beyond themselves, connecting within and drawing on wider learning resources.
This is going to be a work-in-progress within our presbytery.My aim is to help leaders’ thinking about these things as well as their practices, and to work with some congregations on some pilot stuff. I hope also to connect with what others have done or are doing in these areas, both in Australia and overseas.
Feel free to tag along.
Meanwhile, here are a couple of short videos that I made with John Roberto a couple of years ago.
Our Presbytery Mission Pilot Project kicked off last weekend with a training intensive weekend led by Phil McCredden, Duncan Macleod and myself with teams from the two participating churches plus others in our presbytery team. We had a stimulating weekend of getting to know one another, exploring changes in church and society, and reflecting on discernment in mission.
So what is the Mission Pilot? It is a twelve month partnership where the presbytery helps congregations to do two things:
1. Discern and take up a new Mission Experiment
This is about learning mission by doing it.
– seeing their local community with fresh eyes
– building new or deeper relationships with people
– seeking the hospitality of strangers
– discerning where the Spirit is at work and seeking to join in
– partnering or collaborating in creating a missional initiative
2. Help their congregation develop a Mission Posture
– sharing learnings from the mission experiment with the congregation
– seek to reshape the culture of the congregation and its leaders towards mission
The elements of the weekend included the following:
* Exploring Acts 2 and Luke 10 as early church narratives about Christian community and being sent in mission. We discussed the early church as being both a spiritual and a social transformation.
* Looking at changes in church attendance and participation in recent decades and reflecting on the challenges and opportunities for the church in a post-Christendom era.
* Phil introduced the Three Zone model by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk as described in The Missional Leader. I’ve since discovered videos of Mark Lau Branson describing the zones in a series of short videos starting here.
* Reflecting on the breadth of mission and gospel and the multiple dimensions of these.
* Examining change processes and how to lead change.
* Exploring the nature of discernment and how we being to look and listen both to our communities and the Holy Spirit.
Water for the Journey is a Lenten Study series that I wrote some time ago for Lectionary Year A, with texts from the Gospel of John and the Old Testament. It was originally written for rural congregations exploring their future.
Each study aims to explore three things:
My Story – my life and my faith
God’s Story – the Bible and the church’s teachings
Our Story – our church and our world
The intention is that study groups meet during the week, and then hear the Bible passages read on the following Sunday in worship. In this way the studies will help people prepare
for worship.
Week 1: Called to Follow
Genesis 12:1-4a The Call of Abram and Sarai
John 3:1-17 Jesus and Nicodemus
Week 2: Called to Trust
Exodus 17:1-7 Israelites at Rephidim
John 4:5-42 Jesus and the Woman at the Well
Week 3: Called to Give
1 Samuel 16:1-13 Samuel anoints David
John 9:1-41 Jesus and the Blind Man
Week 4: Called to New Life
Ezekiel 37:1-14 Valley of Dry Bones
John 11:1-45 Jesus and Lazarus
Week 5: Called to Serve
Isaiah 50:4-9a Servant Song
Philippians 2:5-11 Christ’s Humility