Lay Forum

“Rev Dr Francis Macnab of St Michael’s Uniting Church, Melbourne has for many years sought to nurture in his parishioners a Christian faith which fits comfortably with the experiences and scholarship of the current era. He shares with the Uniting Church Lay Forum of Queensland the value of providing a safe space in which members can explore what it means to be a Jesus person in this 21st century.

The Lay Forum invites you to meet Francis Macnab from 7.00 to 9.00 p.m. at Raymont Lodge, Cadell Street, Auchenflower, Tuesday 10th November 2009.

Booking is not required and the evening is free of charge although donations to cover expenses are invited. A figure of $5 per person is suggested.

Rodney Eivers – Co-convenor Uniting Church Lay Forum

For further details: eiversrh@telstra.com

Anita Farber-Robertson, in her book, “Learning While Leading“, (Alban Institute, 2000), draws on the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schon to unpack the reasons people in the church avoid honest dialogue and learning, and provides an alternative approach that might be helpful for us here.

Argyris and Schon developed what is now known as “action science” as they worked with companies to increase professional effectiveness. They were intrigued by the level of “designed blindness” in organisations, in which rational people can see the flaws in the thinking of other people yet are unaware of their own incongruent behaviour.

Four social virtues are pivotal in constructing our interactions with others: being helpfully supportive, respecting people, being strong, and maintaining integrity. The difficulty we face is that these values can be expressed in ways that stop real engagement with our thinking and that of others.

Model I Social Virtues

Helpfully supporting people means offering approval and praise, telling them what they want to hear, minimizing disapproval and blame. Respecting people means not challenging other people’s reasoning processes, treating them as undiscussable. Being strong means showing capacity to hold your position in the face of another’s advocacy. Maintaining integrity means sticking to your values and principles and not caving in.

Model II Social Virtues

Helpfully supporting people means helping individuals to become aware of their reasoning processes, helping them become aware of gaps and inconsistencies. Respecting people means believing that human beings are capable of and interested in learning. Being strong means behaviour reflects a high capacity for advocacy coupled with a high capacity for inquiry and vulnerability without feeling threatened. Maintaining integrity means advocating and acting on your point of view in such a way as to encourage confrontation and inquiry into it.

Putting Model II Into Action

As Anita points out, anybody who’s been involved in debating understands Model II. But oh how hard it is to actually step out of the saving-face zone of Model I when it comes to the weekly life of most Christian communities. We have learned that speaking honestly can stop conversation altogether, due to defensiveness or misunderstanding. From my experience of working in inter-faith environments I’ve learned that we shy away from Model II because of anxiety that we might be seen to convert the other into ourselves, or because of anxiety that others might try and convert us. Poise in dialogue comes when there’s enough confidence to examine faith and action together, learning as a community.

What do you think? Are Models I and II incompatible? Can we engage in rigorous and honest debate without assigning shame to ourselves or others? Is there a Model III?

Book Review – Frost, Michael (2006). Exiles - Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture. Massachusetts, Hendrickson. 330pgs.

From the title Michael Frost promises a challenging read - and he delivers.

In particular Michael’s Part III on Dangerous Criticism – really hooked me.  This is, for me, the peak of the book and a challenging one to boot, ranging from a critique of the legal nature of the corporation to human rights atrocities in Darfur to social collapse through environmental exhaustion. 

I was most taken by his insightful development of the ‘critique of empire’ approach and then its incisive application as mentioned.  Frost has a somewhat conventional theology, which in a sense makes the above critique all the more trenchant and remarkable. 

I found this a bumpy yet warm book.  Bumpy from the perspective of my progressive theology and warm in that it was incisive and inclusive both of which I deeply respect.

For me I would challenge his readers to take another step beyond the post modern to a post post modern world where meta-narratives are re-applicable and are now critiquable and then beyond gain to a post post post modern world where praxis as narrative is embraced. 

For me Frost avoids the importance of action and remains at the intellectual level and understandably so he embraces the re-emergence of the meta-narrative that is Christianity.  For example the Alternative Worship diagram on pg 290 does not include action, yet in counterpoint he has a great section on pg 183 about ‘Jesus as a tradie’ in terms of his calloused hands, wood shavings, measuring, designing and general application of trade skills to trade tasks and considering customers requirements.  This recognition is hugely and profoundly important, and yet remains largely undeveloped by Frost, as it points to an important potential theme for the 21st Century church in a post christain culture that is of the importance of incarnation as action with-in and with-of Gaia.  Alternatively we run the risk of what I call ‘misplaced abstraction’ where spirituality is seen essentially as an intellectual quest, discrete from the action and the mundane, and thus in the Western sense largely devoid of action which is seen at best as an instrumentally derivative rather than potentially a conceptually initiating phenomena.

A further key to understand this book is, for me, his explication of communitas as compared to community and the importance therein of liminality. Communitas (pgs 120-125): the sense of sharing and intimacy that develops among persons who experience liminality as a group.  Communitas is as different from Community as Struggle Street is from a Nursing Home – challenge cp. Safety.  Critically communitas for Frost requires liminality: interface the transitional period or phase of a rite of passage, this is the disturbing experience of being an exile always in the situation of interface of transition of passage.

Frost delineates the sad and sorry membership situation in the West and contrasts this with that in Africa.  For instance (pg 6) in the UK Christianity, as we understand it and on current trends, will cease to exist by the mid 2030’s (our children will be alive then) whereas (pg 137) in Africa the number of Catholics has increased nearly eight fold to 120 million in the decade to 2005 and protestants in Latin America have increased by 1m per annum from 1960 to about 50m today, with most of this grown somewhat expectedly coming from Pentecostalism.

Strangely the book has no index - a possible oversight nevertheless a lack in such a lengthy and worthwhile volume.

For many of us Frost is a fellow traveller, a fellow exile.  This is the case with me and I found his book most reaffirming of a post post Christianity view point where in a sense we are all exiles.

In all, this is a great book by a great Australian Christian author who practices what he preachers and I commend it to conservatives and progressives alike.

Prepared for the Lay Forum by Paul Wildman paul at kalgrove.com 13-05-2009

This web site, and the group that has commissioned it, is currently named “Lay Forum”. There is some debate about the usefulness of that phrase. Here’s my thoughts on the pros and cons of continuing with the term.

The English word, “Lay” comes from the Latin word laicus, and the Greek words, laos (people) and laikos (of the people). As the New Testament was written, this word would have referred to all people, without any distinctions related to status or office. With the development of a clergy culture, and the privilege associated with that culture, the word lay came to mean “not clergy”, with overtones in some cases of uneducated, untrained and disempowered.

The Uniting Church’s future seems to be moving away from the clear cut delineation between the ordained and the not ordained. We have capacity to commission lay celebrants for weddings, funerals, baptism and eucharist. Many of our congregations are pastored by people who are not ordained, many of whom have no interest in being ordained.

So why set up a group called the Lay Forum? My observations tell me that the move was an effort to kickstart a movement that bypassed the control mechanisms often associated with “placement” in the Uniting Church. Australian author Gerard Arbuckle in his 1993 book, “Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership”, observes that the people who most resist prophetic examination of the foundations of any institution are the people who have the most to gain by keeping things as they are. The people who initially formed the Lay Forum, I believe, realised that something had to happen among the people.

The Uniting Church in Australia, despite its Reformation commitment to the ‘priesthood of all believers’, is still strongly focused on clergy, their recruitment, their training, their placement, their support, and their removal when things go wrong. Presbytery and Synod gatherings are dominated by clergy. Where else would you go to find such a high proportion of clergy?

It will take some time for this group to gather the confidence to converse as the people, hosting dialogue in which all voices are welcome, no matter what status or position is held in or out of the church. I am hoping that this group will start taking initiatives at a local level without waiting for a ‘top down’ leadership from our ordained ministers. I am also hoping that ordained ministers will rediscover something of what it means to be one of the people, set aside for a leadership role perhaps, but walking alongside others who also have calling and gifting for serving in the church community and beyond.

So is “Lay Forum” the most helpful name to be using? Probably not. The term “Lay” is caught up in almost two thousand years of clergy focused church culture, and suggests a looking back rather than looking forward. The word “lay” in the church context is unknown or regarded with cynicism by the emerging generations of leaders who are focused on action and reflection, not status. In fact, the term is more likely to be associated with sexual activity, or the production of eggs!

There is some discussion around the concept of “Future Church”, with a focus on progressive thinking and action. And so the Lay Forum’s Action/Learning web site has been named “Future Church in Action”. There’s some inspiration from the Future Church network in New Zealand in which people on the edges of traditional church have engaged in ’spirited conversations’ that lead to action. The Lay Forum’s conference in September is on the theme of Future Church. Maybe we’ll find a few clues there.

So how does being a lay movement pan out? For one, I’d be advocating for participation by people, without regard to their status. That might mean cutting out the use of “Rev” titles. It might mean being careful to avoid “up front” monopoly of conversation, which can be a trap anyone can fall into, ordained or not. It might mean listening to the priorities of people whose lives are not caught up in the running of local congregations, and who are able to exercise their calling in ways that aren’t associated with turning up to sing, pray and listen to sermons.

What do you think?

Question and Answer
from the weekly column of John Shelby Spong

Dear Pastor, (who asked to be kept anonymous) writes:

I struggle with reconciling my “personal” experience of God when I can no longer hold to a personal God. How do you, or would you, help a member of a congregation you are serving understand the dichotomy of progressive religion?

Dear A minister in the Deep South

Thank you for your question. I know the mindset of the state and community in which you live and work and I know the struggle that goes on in many clergy between their integrity and their desire not to offend the common wisdom of the world in which they live.

The first thing you need to do is to recognize that for most people religion is not a search for truth, but a search for security. Security is not well served by opening up questions for which there are no answers. You must begin by accepting people where they are. A good pastor, however, does not leave them there forever, for that means they will never grow.

I would avoid a frontal assault on religious ignorance from the pulpit. Remember that a sermon in church does not offer people time to process or space to disagree. They cannot talk back and so they must absorb, resist or close their minds.

There are other activities that do not have these shortcomings. Study groups, where the standard is that there is no such thing as a “dumb question,” allow dialogue and growth to take place. A book study group allows the author of the book to be the one raising the issues and thus allows the minister to facilitate the discussion. In newsletters to their congregations I think clergy should write think pieces that invite dialogue and that say, “Tell me what you think of these ideas.” People will actually read such pieces and they can be the means for opening up deep conversations and significant personal interaction.

Of course, when we say God is personal, we are not describing God; we are describing our experience of God. Since we are persons, we can receive the transcendent power of life, love and being only as “personal.” There is nothing wrong with that. To move from these to a statement about what God’s being actually is, however, is more than any of us should claim.

I have never known an honest and open theological attempt to probe the mystery of God to be destructive.

I wish you well in your ministry.

– John Shelby Spong

YOUR INVITATION
TO THE FIRST PUBLIC MEETING
OF THE LAY FORUM IN THE UNITING CHURCH!!
SUNDAY MAY 17th @ 2 30 TO 4.00 PM
Albert Room (front), Raymont Lodge, Cadell Street, Auchenflower

As the ‘progressive’ voice in the UC we need to meet to get to know each other well, to share ideas on our future directions and to create a sense of real unity of purpose. We plan a few meetings each year to do this.

This first meeting is a ‘hello and feedback’ meeting. The ‘hello’ item will be where we introduce ourselves briefly and meet both old and new friends, knowing that we already have many things in common, in particular how the ‘progressives’ can contribute towards a healthy future for the UC. The ‘feedback’ item is where we provide a brief report on the progress of the Lay Forum so far but then move to the important part- we need your opinions and advice on:.

• How we can establish a committed and active ‘progressive’ community in the UC.
• How we can take advantage of the immense amount of talent in our group
• How we can involve the younger age groups or even form a “Young Lay Forum”
• Do we need a better structure in the Lay Forum?
• Are our priorities right?

The ‘management group’ would value your opinions and discussion on these issues, even if you are unable to attend this particular meeting.

But please be warned we will be asking for volunteers for:

• A group to help Rodney Eivers organise future meetings of the Lay Forum, and
• A group with internet expertise to help Reg Collard and Duncan McLeod operate our website.

We are sending this message to all on our Lay Forum email group and to other potential supporters. We don’t have a formal list of members yet, but your name is on our list of nominal members or supporters, so please accept this as a personal invitation from the management group of the Lay Forum. Should you have friends who may be interested feel free to invite them.

The meeting will be in the Albert Room, Raymont Lodge, Cadell Street, Auchenflower. We look forward to seeing you there!

Rod Jensen (Lay Forum Convenor)

There will be no need to give notice that you will be attending. Just “come as you are”.
Further information may be obtained from Rodney Eivers ph. 3273 2049 (eiversrh@telstra.com) and about the Lay Forum in general from our website
Uniting Church Lay Forum
http://www.layforum.unitingchurch.org.au/

People interested in following this site’s progress can subscribe to updates in two ways, email and RSS software. This means that you can be informed about progress on the site without having to visit the site to check on progress. When you see that there’s been a new post, then you can visit and interact through comments.

Email

The most popular subscription method is likely to be by email. On the right sidebar of the site you’ll see a form where you can enter your email address and click “subscribe”. You’ll be taken to a new window, as below. Type in the letters you see in green, and click “Complete Subscription Request”. There’s just one step left now. You’ll be sent an email checking that you actually want to receive the email updates. Click on the link in the email or cut and paste it into an internet browser. Lay Forum site update emails will have details at the end of each message, telling you how to unsubscribe. The email system is powered by Feedburner, using the RSS feed for posts that we’ve set up.

RSS Feed Readers

At the top of the site you will see an orange image with the word Posts. Beside it is a blue image with the word Comments. These link to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, formated in XML format. They can be accessed through RSS Reader software such as Google Reader or iGoogle, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox Live Bookmarks, Mac OS X RSS Reader (Apple), Bloglines, NewsGator online, NetNewsWire (Apple), Outlook 2007, FeedReader or Vienna (Apple).

This site has been set up so that anyone can read the material on it, and a range of people can contribute on a number of levels.

Anybody anywhere in the world can view this content, unless it has been banned by some zealous government for whatever reason. The data, including Wordpress software, our text and images, articles and comments, is stored on a server hosting the unitingchurch.org.au domain name.

Access to behind the scenes, however, is restricted to people with user names and passwords. In Wordpress, the software we are using to run the site, there are five different levels of access to the site.

Administrator - Somebody who has access to all the administration features, including editing posts, changing settings and adding links.
Editor - Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
Author - Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts.
Contributor - Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts.
Subscriber - Somebody who can read comments, comment, receive news letters.

Administrators at this point are Reg Collard and myself. Paul Wildman is an author.

We anticipate that we will have a range of authors who have the capacity to write well. If we had someone who needed help with their articles, for grammatical or legal reasons, we’d invite them to be a contributor.

Users who are registered with the site are given a user name and a password for logging in.

Any questions, comments or suggestions?

The Lay Forum site is up. Not quite running.  Reg Collard and Paul Wildman are working with me to bring this site to life, adding pages, posts, links, images and design. It’s a work in progress. Leave your suggestions in the comments space below and we’ll see what we can do to put them into action.

To find your way around this site:

On the left sidebar we currently have a list of permanent but editable pages about the Lay Forum. Under “Articles” we are adding longer opinion pieces, research, sermons, prayers etc. We have a search bar (with the magnifying glass next to it). There’s a Sitemeter counter - click on that to visit our stats page. “Meta” is for people who are registered as administrators or authors for the site.

On the right sidebar we currently have a brief introduction to the Lay Forum site, a list of recent posts, archives, and a range of links categorised by Education, Research Resources, Sources for Progressive Christianity.

In the middle the default is a list of the most recent five posts. A ‘post’ might be a short opinion piece, a news article, a summary of a longer article, a poem. Ideally these should be no longer than 600 words. They may include images and video. Posts are automatically archived for future reference.

Our intention is to gather a team of authors who can write posts and articles. Examples of articles that might get us going are:

What do we mean by “Lay”?
This is the Word of God. What do we mean by that?
Can we find healthy alternatives to the usual concepts associated with ’sin’?

We’d like to see people engaging on the site through leaving comments in response to articles, posts and one another’s comments.