encouragmints

Isaiah 43:9

Hi there all new-thingers

Because we are an emerging group we still don’t quite know what we are about (at least I don’t!).
We started out wanting to say that we don’t like where the church got to in 2006 but nor did we want to be a lobby group… we turned down the offer of a New Thing room because we want to mix rather than separate off as we don’t (yet) have a clear idea of what we exist for anyway! (Sounds dreadfully post-modern doesn’t it!)
We expressed some hope that there might be another way we can find to relate that gets out of the mode of I am right/you are wrong that operates in our church system… it is not easy…

One of the things we were determined to do was try to encourage people to get alongside one another more – especially those we disagree with, in the hope that from a base of better relationship we might be more reluctant to act in ways that hurt each other.

So Sally and I have come up with the idea of New Thing being the suppliers of fresh mints at Assembly. We have several kilograms of mints that we want New Thingers to pass around – along the rows of seats, among the huddles and queues – and to accompany the mints with a greeting and the opportunity to get to know the people being passed the mints in a new way. It might sound a bit simple, but we believe the mints might act as a catalyst of the kind of relating we think New Thing is looking for.

So if you are going to Assembly find Martin and Sally and they will give you a supply. It is fine to talk about New Thing with people – you won’t necessarily find that easy to explain, but it might be enough to say that we are seeking to be part of our church finding new ways to relate to one another where we find our commonality in Christ even if we don’t always agree with each other.

Sally is preparing some little tickets with something about encouragemints! And I have come up with a few posters to stick around the place… like… the above Banksy pic with Isaiah 43:9 underneath.

Have a good whatever you are having

Martin

Living in close vicinity

Given the the PCANZ in it's General Assembly is not unlike a rest home in some respects Bruce Hamill of Dunedin offers us one of his rest home 'sermons' as preparation...
Living in Close Vicinity: a sermon on hospitality and judgement for a rest home

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own Lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
Romans 14: 1, 4

I know you folk live fairly close together here. You see quite a bit of each other right? Do you ever judge other people? Do you ever find yourself writing another person off… putting up a barrier between you and another person?

The bible says to us ‘do not judge’. It’s quite a difficult thing isn’t. Deep in our human nature is this desire to be critical of others who don’t quite measure up. Actually we feel better about ourselves if we can distance ourselves from others faults… That’s kind of sad

Today’s text says that the opposite of ‘standing in judgement’ on the other person is welcoming that person, even if they are weak in faith, even if their faults seem enormous to us… welcome them

The other person is not accountable to me or to you… they are accountable to God. When you think about it we know so little about what is going on in another person’s head and life, what has lead them to their current situation. But it’s so easy to judge anyway… isn’t it?

Let me tell you a story, it’s a kind of parable about heaven and hell, written by a man called C S Lewis (Narnia fame).

The story begins in a gray and rainy place (not Dunedin funnily enough) at what seems to be dusk, time seems to have paused at the dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for the windows to look cheering. The main character finds himself at a bus stop somewhere in this grey city, he calls it twilight city… and the first thing he notices is that there are hardly any people. He gets on the bus and enters into a conversation with another passenger and begins to learn about the city and its constant expansion. The reason it is so grey is that the houses are so far apart. And the reason that is so lies in the fact that this is a place of wish fulfillment. Whatever you want you just have to think about it and it happens. Sounds like heaven… but in fact it’s a kind of hell.
Here’s how the passenger in the bus describes the situation:
As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarreled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty, because all the people there have quarreled with their neighbours – and moved…
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Macmillan 1946), pp. 8-9

So everyone moves further and further apart. This city is the opposite of hospitality. Essentially the people keep getting in each other’s road. They judge each other. And they end up on their own, with only their own company. And perhaps the fact that they can’t stand their own company makes it even harder to put up with others near them… They end up hating themselves and their neighbors. Perhaps it really would be hell having everything you wanted just by wishing it?
What our traveller on the bus eventually learns is that somewhere in this city is a bus stop. Once a week a bus leaves this place taking anyone who wants to heaven (real heaven, not just wish-fulfillment heaven). The problem is most people can’t stand long enough in the queue next to other people.

To cut a long story short the traveler catches this bus which flies to a brighter and brighter place, the further into it they get the more the passengers are revealed to be in a kind of ghost like condition. They land on a grassy plain under a penetrating blue sky. This is the beginning of heaven. Apart from the penetrating brightness the first thing the passengers discover is the hospitality, the welcome they receive… it’s so different from the other place.

But the welcome is not a comfortable thing, it is painful because entering into personal relations means also receiving the truth about themselves – it’s not easy. At first the hospitality of heaven seems almost unhospitable. The light is exposes the true nature of the travelers in all their blotches and sneers. The grass is so solid that it is hard for the ghostlike travelers to walk on… They need to be forgiven to live in this hospitality. To receive heaven’s hospitality means receiving heaven’s truth too.

I’m not sure what happens in the end to our travelers. But the story gets you thinking doesn’t it. What does it take to be hospitable and to enter into God’s hospitality … I imagine living as closely together as you folk do makes you think about that too. Can we receive God’s hospitality and be hospitable to those around us. Can we receive God’s truth about ourselves and be truthful with those around us? The two questions cannot be separated.

focal identity

I wonder what is happening to the Focal Identity Statement?
I read in the July report from the Council of Assembly that the F.I. task group had decided not to bring a statement to the Assembly because of negative feedback (http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/5033.0.html#c16884) – is this true?
I wonder what the nature of the negative feedback is.
It is not surprising that a relatively orthodox statement will get negative feedback. Some will see it as being too conservative, others will see it as being too liberal. Some will see it as being too brief and not addressing all the points they would like to have addressed, others will see it as being too long and not easily used in a worship context.
I quite like what the group have some up with. I can see why it might wind some people up by what it does and doesn’t address, but we have to have something don’t we?
Surely we need something that we can gather around and say together even if in that gathering around there are other things we would want to say that aren’t included, and even if there are people who would want to express some things differently.
Any statement of identity we come up with in a post-modern context will not speak for all. It cannot begin to speak for all. But it can be a point of gathering. It can say enough of what it means for us to be in communion. It can affirm enough of our basis for life together. It can express enough of our identity even though it cannot express how everyone sees things.
The alternative is The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms – these documents have played a role in the genesis of our Presbyterian identity, but they are historic documents that reflect the season that they were created. They cannot and should not be made to express our story in this season. We need something that expresses our identity in this season in broad and faithful terms. That’s why for the last 20 years we’ve been trying to come up with something that expresses who we are as Presbyterians in Aotearoa.
I would be very disappointed if there is no report and recommendation from the Task Group. While I don’t hold out much hope for a smooth passage for it in our current climate, I believe that the discussion and debate it generates is useful and necessary. It is not right that the Assembly’s business is derailed just because there has been negative feedback. The Assembly asked the group to come back to the church after consultation etc, so they should come back. And if they are having trouble then we should hear what that trouble is and give some thought to why that is and what we can do about it.
And if there cannot be consensus then we need to talk about why that is and be reminded again that the alternative is historic documents that can no longer speak into our life without considerable and pointless modification.
As to how we get the focal identity statement back on the Assembly’s agenda, I haven’t the faintest idea!
Martin Stewart 19-8-08

whose voices?

On the Edges - Jim Wallis
To be marginal in one’s society is not, emphatically not, to withdraw as some would charge. It is to be motivated and led by values and commitments different from and often contrary to the mainstream.... New vision is always what any society most needs, and the edges of society have always been the most likely place for it to emerge.

To generate something new, one must be listening to voices other than the loud voices of mass society. If we have read our Bibles, we will know to look and listen for the new word God wants to speak to us on the edges of things rather than at the center of wealth and power. To be on the margins, therefore, is to put ourselves in a position to watch, to listen, and to become engaged in a new way.... Part of being on the margins is new association with the people who have been made marginal. The gospel tells us that it is among “the least of these” where we find Jesus.
Source: The Call to Conversion

Ted Kennedy

The following comment appeared in the Sojourners sojomail last week. It seems that Ted Kennedy was able to hold together the tension between passion for what he believed in and the maintenance of strong relationships across party lines. This sounds like what we are aiming for in New Thing.
Martin

"[The]... genuine and generous outpouring of love and concern for Sen. Kennedy proves a very important thing. It shows that one can be an advocate, a passionate and relentless champion for clear and controversial causes, and yet still be a bridge-builder, a reconciler, and a seeker of common ground. The conventional wisdom says you must be one or the other, an advocate or a bridge-builder, but never both. Ted Kennedy, once again, proves the conventional wisdom wrong. It is because he is a lawmaker who genuinely wants to get things done, to find real and concrete solutions -- especially for people who really need them. Kennedy is known as a senator who truly wants to be effective and not just right, as so many others, on both sides of the aisle, are too often content to be." [Source Sojomail 22-5-08]

Behold!

‘When Frank (my husband) and I first got together 14 years ago, his younger daughter Jenny found it very difficult to cope with our relationship. (She was 28 at the time.) She did not come to the ceremony at our wedding, and I was not invited to hers.

Things trundled along, mostly gradually improving, (amazingly, helped indirectly by her mother) as we quietly negotiated together what being stepmother and daughter would look like.

A few years later, her mother died. I did go to her funeral, and spent some time with her in her last days. Jenny and I figured out a bit more what stepmother and stepdaughter might look like. A lot of it revolves around shopping and coffee – both good!

This year on Mother’s Day I found myself wondering what Mother’s Day would be like for Jenny and her older sister, but especially for Jenny who has no children. The next day, in my letterbox was a card ‘Thinking of you on Mother’s Day’ signed, with love, from Jenny.’

Behold, I am doing a New Thing…

Sally Carter

Welcome

Hi there, I am Martin Stewart, the moderator of the ar-tic-u-la-te blog. Sorry about the name - 'articulate' would have been easier but New Thing does not as yet have an easy sense of itself that can be simply articulated - we're working on it!
Sally Carter and I have set up ar-tic-u-la-te to enable people interested in New Thing to reflect and comment. Once a week a guest will make an offering. You can comment on these offerings or read other people's comments by clicking on the comments heading at the bottom of each offering.

"New Thing" is a group formed after the PCANZ General Assembly 2006 and is an attempt to find new ways of being Church together. Its name comes from Isaiah 42:9 – "See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them."
Following the leadership standards decision of GA06, people holding a wide range of views expressed disquiet over where the Church has found itself after this adversarial and legalistic debate. We believe that there has to be a better way of handling our differences when the matters before us are not of the substance of the faith.
For more details, have a look at http://www.newthing.net.nz/index-new.html
- Sally Carter & Martin Stewart, New Thing co-convenors.