Urban renewal

When I first began this blog, a few years ago now, the title and general theme reflected the fact that I was thinking rather a lot about life, work and ministry in inner-northern Melbourne. I had just moved to Preston and one of the topics that occupied a number of posts was the issue of finding a church in that area. One thing I found as I searched was that the inner-north, compared to, say, the eastern suburbs, is quite church-hungry. Churches were often very small, or very stagnant, or a bit on the odd side. I was doing a lot of thinking at the time about the so-called "emerging church" and how churches should engage with culture and be part of the community. But I didn't see any good examples of inner-northern churches doing that sort of thing effectively, well-meaning as a number of examples seemed to be.

I can't say I've thought terribly much about those kinds of issues in recent years. I found a church where I was happy, then I moved to Malaysia, then I left the north. Now I'm back, in Brunswick, and am finding myself, quite unintentionally, at a church that is about to move a tad further north for the purposes of mission.

Strangely, I am finding myself feeling much more ambivalent about this move than I would have years ago. Part of this is due to the general feeling of exhaustion that I have had in this period of post-Malaysia burnout (not necessarily something that would have been reflected in this blog, but which has been quite a present feature of my life since the middle of last year). Yet I do find myself growing somewhat excited at the thought of the inner north's "spiritual renewal", something that my new church family is keenly focused on.

The task seems a large one. Some might say insurmountable. Melbourne is one of the world's most secular cities. The inner north is one of the most secular parts of the city. How, you might ask, do we hope to renew the city? We could try to renew the way that everyone does urban renewal - through more community events, through city garden projects. These are all important. But do they renew the spirit? Truly renew the spirit, in the way that only God can?

But that's the thing. Only God can do it. So, if we succeed, it will only be through God's strength. This should bring a sense of relief. It isn't really up to us. But it's also scary, because it requires submission to God. It requires losing a sense of control.

One thing's for sure. If we plan on doing it properly, it will be quite a journey.

Some of that journey, I imagine, will be documented on the new church blog, and some of it will be documented here. It will, I'm sure, be a process worth documenting.

Watch this space.

Wanted: One church community

Sometimes I feel as if my life is being governed by two completely opposing forces. In the past, those forces have manifested themselves in the equal but irreconcilable desires to settle down and to move. This year, as I begin, a little confusedly, to make my home in the Northern suburbs, I'm finding that less of an issue. Now, it's more the tension between wanting to mix with people unlike me, and to fit in.

For some time I've found that there's a certain amount of contact with a wide variety of people that I need to feel balanced and well-rounded. I love the feeling of learning from people whose experiences in life have been nothing like mine. I love just how varied society can be, and I love getting to know lots of different people.

But there are a couple of issues that I tend to come up against reasonably often. Here they are:

1) Much as I love mixing with a wide variety of people, most people like to mix only within their own group, so I'm restricted to those who also like to meet lots of different people.
2) I'm quite shy, although you wouldn't always know it, and so, while I often like getting to know lots of different people, this isn't always as easy as I would hope.
3) I hate feeling like I don't belong.

Here I am, right now, having chosen to move to an area where I knew there wouldn't be so many like-minded people, and in some ways I'm loving the diversity and having my horizons broadened. On the other hand, I'm struggling with the lack of like-minded people. I don't want to be surrounded by them. I get sick of people like me, and I get sick of my own company. But I still need some contact with people who see the world like I do - and it's rare enough for me ever to meet anyone with the same outlook on life as me, so I'm wondering sometimes why I've willfully placed myself in an area where I'm reducing the chances of finding like-minded companions.

But here's the paradox: for me to meet people who are truly like me, they can't be complacently sitting in their huddle of like-minded companions. They too need to be out there having their horizons broadened, and associating with wide ranges of people. They probably also need to have a heart for the less glamorous, less privileged, areas of society. Meaning? On one hand, I'm reducing my chances of meeting them by making the move to this area, but, on the other hand, I'm increasing my chances.

Kind of confusing, isn't it?

I suppose at the moment this lack of companionship is at its most pointed in my search for a church community. Christians are in the minority wherever we go. And then there are fewer evangelical churches in the area I've moved into, meaning that I've chosen to move to an area with a reduced representation of a minority group. But...I could go to a church in another area, filled with people like me, but a) would not be being faithful to the direction I feel God has given me in my life, and b) would not be going to church with people who have a heart for the North-West.

I guess I've just got to keep praying, and keep trusting. It's not as if I'm completely alone at the moment, but it can be difficult to know how much we are supposed to belong, when we've already chosen to move out of our comfort zone. I know that God can be trusted. I suppose I'll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Revival in Darebin?

I think I've always had a fairly trendy, underground sense of how an "Emerging Church" would look. Down-to-earth, organic ministry has always had something of a Northcote, Bohemian feel to it in my mind, and it's interesting to think about whether or not that's always the most appropriate form of ministry. Sometimes I suspect we break so far away from the "mainstream", Christendom model of church that we assume "our" style of church is somehow more natural, more relevant and, well, more Christian.

I've finally gotten around to reading my brother's copy of Tom Sine's "Mustard Seed vs. McWorld", which I've had on my shelf for a good three and a half years. I've only just started it, but something has really stood out for me in what I've read so far. Very early on in the book, Sine has this to say about the "postmodern" or 21st century church: "Unlike many of the successful boomer churches of the nineties, post-modern churches are not interested in highly programmatic, user-friendly models that can be replicated. These young leaders are creating models that are much more relational and that are unique to each situation" (my emphasis).

Here's why this stands out to me: I'm not sure that this is any way a fault of the emerging church as much as a fault of my understanding of it, but I know that sometimes my idea of how to do "postmodern church" is itself a little "programmatic": put together some musical artistes playing something that sounds like a Sufjan Stevens and Marc Byrd collaboration, drink Fair Trade coffee during worship, followed by a visually engaging (and interactive) sermon on renewing the city for the kingdom. Now, this all sounds quite cool to me, but the question is, will this approach to ministry be "organic" (natural and symbiotic) in all communities? Well, if I were to find a church two suburbs to the south-east of where I currently live, yes, I have a feeling we'd fit right in. But in Thornbury or Preston? No, to do organic ministry there, you do need to reach out to families, to a variety of ethnicities; and has anyone thought of reaching out to the massive Koori community (the largest in Melbourne, apparently)? Is it possible for one church to minister to all these groups?

Last week I started checking out a very small, evangelical congregation in Thornbury - mostly elderly people, the second largest group being young families. Not my demographic at all, but does that mean I shouldn't try to serve there? The teaching is very engaging and interactive (although not technological - not necessarily a bad thing, disappointed as Rob Bell would be), and they do community very well. Small churches put almost everyone else to shame on this front. I've been welcomed with open arms, even though there's no-one else quite like me there. And so I suppose I'm realising that, while my idea of urban mission would not go down brilliantly in this church, that doesn't mean we can't find unique ways there, as we can anywhere else, of engaging the locals in an active, organic sense of what it is to live out the Gospel in the City of Darebin. I'm a far way from knowing what a potential revival in Darebin could look like, and I want to avoid even suggesting that revival is needed. Sure, the church looks nothing here like it does in the Bible Belt, or the inner-eastern suburbs, but is that a problem? I'd like to see it grow, but I think that first we need to start by encouraging what's already here - renovating, perhaps, instead of revolutionising.

More questions at the moment, but it's a good place to start, I think, asking questions, instead of pretending you have the answers.

Birth of a blog

Does the world really need another blog? Almost certainly not. In fact, I suspect it could do with fewer. But here's a new one, for what it's worth. Let's hope and pray it can be useful to someone.

Here's where my life is at right now. It might help explain why I've chosen to set up this blog.

This year, I have, perhaps a little thoughtlessly, done exactly what I was always told not to do. It's my first year of teaching, and here's the advice we were all given last year - avoid too much change in the one year (a piece of advice given by a graduate who had, in his first year, moved out of home and become married). No, I'm not married, but I did decide to move to be closer to work - only fifteen minutes away from where I was living, but it feels like another world. And no, I'm not one of those sheltered tribal types who feel like life has ended when they move into the house next door. I've moved around quite a bit, and am, I like to think, fairly flexible. But here's why it was a big step.

Before this year, I had been living in the inner suburbs of Melbourne for five years. I had developed something of a community there - as much as you can in the city - helped no end by my involvement in a small Anglican community church in West Hawthorn, where I had managed to make a lot of like-minded friends. But here was the difficult thing. For a while, our pastor had been teaching about "impacting the city" for God, and I found the teaching very challenging and, well, moving. No pun intended, but, on the other hand, pun intended. Reaching a point when I felt distinctly that it was no longer Hawthorn or the inner city that God was wanting me to impact, but the Northern and Western suburbs, I moved. My sense of God's direction for me was confirmed when I got a job at the school that had first given me that sense of calling, a very large government school in the North-Western suburbs (hence the convergence of North and West). I then moved into a share-house in the North, about fifteen minutes from my school, and the more that this became my life, the less relevant that Hawthorn seemed to me. After a huge amount of prayer, I came to the difficult but clear conclusion that I was to move on from my current church.

So here I am. I've moved houses, started a new job, and have been, for the last several months, without a clearly defined church community.

I'm hoping that, if I'm still writing on this blog in a few years, I will find that this strange, transitional phase of my life has developed into a clear sense of God's direction for my life - or maybe it won't, because God, though He gives us all the direction we need, is rarely very talkative about where exactly He is taking us, or why. But here I am, and we'll see where I go next.