Did you know that your phone can copy a SIM card’s contacts?
All you need to do is copy the SIM Card to the phone, insert the new SIM Card and copy the contact from the phone to the SIM Card. I’ve just swapped from Vodafone to 2degrees and this made it easy for me on a Nokia 1200 & 1110i (though should work on any Nokia):

1. with your old Vodfone SIM card in the phone
2. goto: Menu / Contacts / Copy / From SIM to Phone / All [and choose keep existing, this means they'll stay on the old sim]
3. turn off when it has finished
4. insert new 2degrees SIM card, turn on
5. goto: Menu / Contacts / Copy / From Phone to SIM / All [ and choose delete existing, this means they'll be deleted off of the phone so you don't have two copies]

Hope this helps

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Newsletter blub, Sunday 25th January 2009
based on Mark 1:14-20

We all follow someone. Our lives are influenced by many events and many people. Sometimes we consciously follow people. Sometimes it is subconsciously. Today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel, with the call of the disciples is a challenge to us to consciously evaluate who and what we allow to guide our lives. Jesus calls some disciples, and we are told they followed; they allowed him to influence their direction. The challenge to all of us who wish to call ourselves Christian, is to allow the life of Christ to influence our direction. When our life’s direction lines up with that of Jesus’, then we are genuinely living a Christian life.

Who are you following? What do you allow to influence the direction of your life and family? And is this how you want it to be?

As we explore this, we do it with a gracious God who wants the best for us.
In Christ’s service together, Dion.

This was delivered on Sunday 18th Jan 2009
it was based on John 1:43-53 [Bible text is at the end]

We all have important people in our life who help define who we are.

We see in the story from John’s Gospel today how Philip played a small,
but key role in Nathanael’s life.

There are times in life where I get a bit down.
Where I wish people would hear my side of a story,
or come round to my way of thinking.
Sometimes I work quite hard at this, getting people round to my way of thinking,
sometimes though it doesn’t work.

Moments like these can be very hard,
not soul destroying, but hard.

John records a lament at the beginning of his Gospel,
when in the first chapter he says of Jesus:
“He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” [Jn 1:11]

There is this lament from John that the people weren’t listening to Jesus.
The key,
or critical bit is that Jesus came for the Jewish people,
but they did not listen to him.

The story of Nathanael and Philip follows straight on from this lament of John’s,
and always gives huge hope.

When Philip went to Nathanael,
Nathanael said to him:
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth!”

Here he was writing of Jesus without even talking to him;
Nathanael was a Jew, and had written off Jesus.

It was the attitude of Nathanael and others like him that John struggled with,
he was saying of them:
“He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” [Jn 1:11]

John then goes on to restore our hope,
to show us that people do indeed change,
and the story of Nathanael shows us how this can happen.

The huge hope for us in this story,
is how such a small simple act from Philip had a profound impact on Nathanael.

Sometimes the smallest acts can have the most positive effect.

Dawn Redmann sent me this week the philosophy of Charles Schulz,
he writes the cartoon Charlie Brown.
He poses some questions, I’ll give them to you now. [QUE: for dataprojector]

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners (American College football).
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is , none of us remember the head-liners of yesterday.
Yet these are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields.

Schulz goes on to say:
- But the applause dies..
- Awards tarnish.
- Achievements are forgotten.
- Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special!!
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?

The lesson that Schulz is trying to convey is that:
The people who make a difference in your life:
- are not the ones with the most credentials..
- the most money
- or the most awards.

They simply are the ones who care the most.

He concludes with:
”Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken!’

I think Schulz is trying to encourage us to be simple,
to realise that it’s the small things count.

It is here,
that we link back to our reading,
Philip shows how a small hand in the right place at the right time,
can lead to transformation in a person’s life,
all he said to Nathanael was: “Come and see.”

When we head through tragedy,
or maybe when we are feeling a bit down,
often we wonder like Nathanael (John 1:46) “can anything good come out of” the situation.

Many times when we are down,
different people will and do testify to what good can and is coming out of a situation.

And in this case it was the tiny,
but critical role of Philip,
who said “Come and see.”

Philip shows how a hand in the right place at the right time,
God’s hand and God’s timing,
can give someone the catalyst to take that first step.

After that first step amazing things happen.
Phillip being open to God’s Spirit allowed Nathanael to say:
“You are the Son of God“ and to then follow Jesus.

And for John this is critically important,
the confession that Jesus is the Son of God,
the critical moment of starting out as a disciple is in stating who Jesus is for us.

It is important too that I don’t leave out Jesus’ role in this too,
Jesus said to Nathanael “ ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ ”

We see the gracious nature of God coming through too.
Where not only does Philip say the right thing to Nathanael at the right time,
but Jesus also says to him what it is he needs to hear.

And this is the way with God,
Jesus wants to say to us what it is we need to hear,
all we need to do is be open and receptive to this.

Jesus reveals something to Nathanael no one other than God could know,
it is similar to Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan women,
where he reveals to the woman things about her life no one else knew.

It is in these “God-moments” that we are being called to respond,
we are called to respond to God’s revelation working in our lives.

We can choose to be non-responsive to God,
or we can like Nathanael respond in a positive way.

When Nathanael choose to be part of Jesus’ community,
he became someone who knew Jesus,
someone who accepted Jesus.

No longer was he one of “(God’s) own people did not accept him.” [Jn 1:11]
BUT instead he was now part of God’s new kingdom.

For Nathanael,
and indeed all who want to call themselves Disciples of Jesus,
there is no middle ground,
there is no compromise, (see Pilate John 18:28-19:16)
either Jesus is the Son of God to us,
or he is not.

Our response to this is something that is shown by not only what we say,
but also by how we respond to Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus,
and God want to convince us of the truth,
that there is a God,
that God loves us,
and Jesus wants us to be in community with him.

And as we respond to God’s call,
to be an important person in peoples lives in very small ways,
God’s Kingdom grows.

John, says at the end of the Gospel: (Jn 20:31) these (things) are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

The life of Philip, Nathanael and the other disciples,
are recorded to help transform our doubt.

As we read the story of Jesus,
it is able to transform us through the working of the Holy Spirit,
and the small input of others that God puts in our life.

Let us pray:
May Jesus transform you self-doubt into action.
May you come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.
As through believing we have life in his name. Amen.

John 1:43-51 [NRSV]
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ 44Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ 46Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ 47When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you,* you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’.

John 1:43-51 [CEV]

43-44The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. There he met Philip, who was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Jesus said to Philip, “Come with me.”
45Philip then found Nathanael and said, “We have found the one that Moses and the Prophets [a] wrote about. He is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.” 46Nathanael asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
Philip answered, “Come and see.”
47When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said, “Here is a true descendant of our ancestor Israel. And he isn’t deceitful.” [b] 48″How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.
Jesus answered, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”
49Nathanael said, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God and the King of Israel!”
50Jesus answered, “Did you believe me just because I said that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see something even greater. 51I tell you for certain that you will see heaven open and God’s angels going up and coming down on the Son of Man.”

2009-01-18

When you compress your filesystem with unionfs etc… cups then does not work, it throws up the error:

 * Restarting Common Unix Printing System: cupsd
/usr/sbin/cupsd: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libcups.so.2:
cannot apply additional memory protection after relocation: Permission denied
[fail]

It turns out that this is because of apparmor so turn this off and all is “peace-and-light.”

sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor stop
sudo apt-get purge apparmor

I’m not sure why it causes the problem, but apparmor strngthen’s Ubuntu against nasties, which I would think is not strictly needed if behind a firewall. Well at least that is how I sleep at night.

I use unionfs on my ASUS eeePC 701 4G

Dion J. Blundell – 21 October 2003An essay presented to Martin Sutherland for Mission and the Western Mind, Auckland University

In memory of Nonoriheke Kepa

1 Introduction

There is some debate over whether our current era is actually ‘post’ the modern era, or just an extension of the modern era. For the sake of my essay on mission and the implications for it in a postmodern world I will assume postmodernism exists. Postmodernism marks a paradigm shift, from one of modernism to the next (net ) era. Maybe in 40 years we will look back on this current era and call it the net era, or maybe the communications era, as this is undoubtedly what defines our current era. In this essay I will look at postmodernism and its implications for mission in a postmodern world. Some of the problems for Christianity are the loss of a narrative, or a story that defines us.

2 What is postmodernism?

It is important to note that postmodernism isn’t a phrase coined by the church or Christianity, it’s a phrase from secular culture. Significant secular works by Connor and Jameson along with the Jameson critique have appeared to help us understand it. Smaller more accessible secular works, like those of Lyon and Appignanesi have also been published to help society at large grapple with what postmodernism is and its implications for society today. I will not explain postmodernism too much, as that is not the task of this paper. However, I will give an insight into where to go for further reading.

The ring betrayed him. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend, legend became myth -Lord of the Rings

What is it that is betraying us today? What have we forgotten? Most postmodern writers suggest that the problem of society is the enlightenment and modernism that flowed out of this. The problem is one of knowledge, where we have to rely on the knowledge of those that have gone before us. As far as truth goes, postmodernity has seen a shift in society and Christianity from a state where there used to be some form of propositional (and sometimes absolute) truth to a continuum at the other extreme; where this continuum goes between no truth and many truths. Story and overarching metanarative are seen as unreliable, as they have been previously used (by those in power) to dictate the truth and maintain power structures. As such, Christianity is either not true, or just one of many truths. Structures that have contradictions in them need to be deconstructed, Derrida lead this line of thinking.

2.1 Meeting society

Meeting a society that experiences life, where people define themselves through experience and often through shopping provides the greatest challenges for Christianity. Bongardt articulates how we may incorporate a society that wants experience, into a model of community that facilitates and enables this experience. Consumerism marks our current era. Shopping for church flows out of consumerism and this is where spirituality may have an answer, something where they can experience the divine and want to change.
Some, like McGrath see postmodernism as characterised by anarchy as old authority structures are removed. Thus we mission in society without authority. Maybe Christianity could be a leader in taking a yin-yang approach to postmodernism where it is blended with modernism? Bosch points out that a possible way forward for the enlightenment thinking that Christianity must be scientifically proved is to accept Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point (1983) and embrace a yin-yang approach where there is a mutual relationship.

2.2 Shapes of postmodernism

Postmodernism has lead to postliberalism, Postevangelicals and Deconstructive theology. Reponses to these have been those of Radical Orthodoxy, Constructive theology and a lot of counter writing to these ideas.

3 A starting point

Now that we have a glimpse at what postmodernism is I will chart a way through the waters and show that Postmodernism and mission relates to three main areas:

1. Truth/ Story
2. Community
3. Spirituality

The key is how we tie these together and enact them.

4 Truth and story

4.1 Contemporary juxtaposition

The issue with truth is that it has often been used to dominate and control by those in power. Movies give us an insight into truth. We see in the Lord Of The Rings a classical view of there being an overarching story and truth is obtainable and the objective through choice. The Matrix and particularly Matrix Reloaded subtly change away from this to causality where “choice is an illusion created by those in power,” we are instead governed by causality – action and reaction. This is a contemporary reflection of societies changing understanding of truth. Truth has disappeared to leave causality – action and reaction.

4.2 Truth

Erickson and Middleton/Walsh tackle the issue of truth. Is there truth, or is truth just a made up concept by those trying to maintain control? Postmodernism asserts that absolute truth is a construct; that there is no such thing as truth. This poses a problem for us in mission. Christianity is also guilty of controlling through the subjugation of the Bible as Truth to control peoples lives. Through this Christianity has lost a lot of respect. Our task is to regain some of this respect and reclaim the Scriptures as truth and a model of how to live. The same can be said for two of our other three sources for Christianity, those of tradition and reason. Experience is not looked on with so much suspicion as it is relative.
In a sense Middleton and Walsh do a good job of deconstructing Derrida as per his own conventions. To do this they take Derrida outside of the constructs he gave himself. They do a good job of deconstructing deconstruction. The theory of deconstruction says you can’t deconstruct deconstructionalism or justice, however Walsh and Middleton do.

4.3 Relativising truth

This word relative poses a problem. One of the major issues levelled at postmodernism is that of relativism. At first glance then, a full embrace of extreme postmodernism will throw away reason (as it is a way of controlling people), scripture (as its elevated position controls, it is demoted to just another story) and finally tradition (as this is manipulation and control by those in power).

4.4 Reclaiming the text as truth

Recovering our stories is where Walker sees us heading. He sees that we have been decentred, and this has caused a losing of the interior. The recovery will involve indwelling of the story, it’s necessary to “tell the story, live the story.” In reclaiming Scriptures and Christian truth (from Stanley Fish, Rorty, Derrida who have deconstructed it) we must hold to some for of truth, otherwise there can be no dialogue, as we have no rules. Erickson sees it being the reclaiming of Christian belief that the Kingdom of God is the ultimate metanarative. Reclaiming Christianity from postmodernism will require: case studies and simulation of ideas not yet in place, thus breaking down the distinction between theoretical and the practical; this requires a greater degree of objectivity to deprive postmodernism of undeserved possibilities and to make it global, thus taking it away from Euro-American, male, Anglo and middleclass.
Christianity is suffering a bad case of ‘Enlightenment.’ Some say that the enlightenment lead to modernism, regardless, the eras commonly referred to as the Enlightenment and Modernism saw the rise of Western thought and the processes of mathematics, science and logic. This rise leads to the alienation of Biblical narrative, as God could not be proved though maths. It’s important to note that maths has gone through major transitions with the introduction of Quantum physics and fuzzy logic. Although fuzzy logic couldn’t be proved mathematically it was used: society has moved on from having to prove everything before we can use it. The Bible isn’t always factually coherent and absolute, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still use it. Living with inconsistencies is what the postmodern world is all about.
A partial solution to postmodern mission appears to be the reclaiming of Biblical narrative, and using this narrative to build communities. This requires a postmodern reading of the Bible as Jobling has gathered together. Holloway states that “At the heart of Christianity there lies a moral challenge that it as pertinent today as it ever was. I shall argue that it is more important to follow the way of Jesus than to believe or disbelieve the traditional Christian claims about him. If I am right, then the real task for Christianity today is the challenge not to go on interpreting the world in the old way, but to start disturbing it with renewed power.” So the task is to live the Christian life.

4.5 Funding postmodernism

The collapse of modern and enlightenment social structures could indeed be “God’s own spirit that is causing the collapse and demise.” This is scary for people, and society lapses into nostalgia to comfort itself, to look at the way we were. Issues amongst the church, like those of homosexuality, is “for the most part, not about sexuality, but is about the reordering of social power, the fearful effort to maintain conventional forms of power that carry less and less conviction, and the awareness that the old centre ‘will not hold.’ … The imagination of modernity is being displaced by postmodern imagination. … My topic is a more modest one: funding postmodern imagination.” This doesn’t require a “grand scheme” instead it requires the provision of “pieces, materials, and resources out of which a new world can be imagined.” In funding this we need to realise that “What is yearned for among us is not new doctrine” but instead to “move beyond the matrix of modernity and … trust the correctness of this text … to let it be our fund for counterimagination … liberating … the church as a transformational body liberating even for its ministers who must stand up and imagine.” “The church and its pastors need no longer submit to the dominant modes of power and certitude, and so stand in a place of great freedom, freedom to be our confessing selves in a faithful community, as modernity has not permitted us to be.” So through the deconstruction, Brueggemann sees there being hope of reconstruction that up until now the enlightenment and modernity have not allowed, it “is an enormous opportunity for Christian ministry.” Imagining of the world needs to be done through Scripture that is imaginative, not “objective real.”

5 Mission and the church

But does postmodernism exist? Sutherland puts up a good argument to say postmodernism doesn’t exist. Taylor on the other hand implies or assumes it does. Both are heading in the same direction, “Mission is not something we do, it’s something we are,” “the story must be lived.” Faith must be lived, not talked about. The term postmodernism gives us a entry point into mission and understanding into some of those to whom Christianity should and needs to minister to. Too many people are epistemological (world systems) focused, and this is evidenced by the lack of postmodern mission theologies. As such, our task is to develop these postmodern mission theologies. It will require many people with many different perspectives working towards the similar goals.

5.1 The gap

For the church and Christianity to move forward, we must determine why it is that there is a cultural gap:

1. Regardless of whether society is postmodern or modern, the issue for the church is that techniques and witness of years gone by do not work in today’s society. We are therefore in a different era.
2. If the Gospel has truth to it (and I believe it does), and our techniques aren’t working in today’s society, we need to re-envisage our techniques. This will require a (paradigm) shift in our thinking and method.

5.2 Is there a future in the church?

Responses to postmodernism tend to take one of two forms, either ecclesiological (issues about the church) or missiological (issues about how to do mission). Often those that respond with an ecclesiological answer imply mission in their structures, but so often mission is the poor cousin to issues of ‘building the church.’ There are funny thought s/trains that say the church is the Kingdom of God, therefore we must build the Kingdom of God and this requires fancy buildings. It reminds me of the tower of Babel. Nash’s book talks about reforming the church to let God back in. It’s one of those shameless self-serving books that seek to build Babel (otherwise known as the church) back up. Like lots of North American church growth literature, they have ideas, but the books seem to be written more for the survival of the church, rather than to build community for mission. The Kingdom of God may well be the church, but if it is the church, the church needs to be redefined as the Christian community within creation. Or as Riddell puts it, “Christianity has been smothered by churchianity.” There are various writers like Montefiore and Van Gelder that see mission as being the recovery of church. Grenz sees the church as fulfilling God’s mission in the world. He is tentatively leaning away from the reformers view of ecclesiology being word and sacrament to a more mission focused church. He sees that this overemphasis has made the church invisible, the “Missional church is called to be a “proclaiming, reconciling, sanctifying and unifying’ community.” So the church is for the divine mission of the triune God lead by the Spirit in community. “Bringing creation into the enjoyment of the fullness of fellowship as the divinely fashioned eschatological community.” I believe Grenz is heading in the right direction, that the focus should be mission not ecclesiology.
I would like to add caution through, caution that we do not continue to over focus on ecclesiology instead of mission. We must guard against church consumerism too, to make sure that we are not just offering a programme driven Sunday church, God will be dead in these churches as consumerism doesn’t allow time for God outside of Sunday church time.

5.3 The communications era

In a world dominated by Microsoft and the ‘consume as much as we can’ culture associated with companies like them, do we go with the tide or swim against the stream? The computer world has one unlikely answer. It comes in the form of Linus Torvalds. In 1991, Linus as a poverty stricken student needed good software for his computer science research. Unable to purchase what he needed, he wrote his own, the product eventually turned into an operating system and philosophy called Linux. He released his software under a license agreement called General Public License, which essentially means that you may copy and redistribute the software for free. The idea of giving something away tears the capitalist fabric out of Microsoft and society. The church has two things to learn from this:

1. Communication is the key, without the Internet there would be no Linux, it is good communication between people and the timely delivery of software that enabled Linux and Linus to succeed.
2. Grace, the free gift of Linux is what enabled Linus to overcome insurmountable odds, in tackling the corporate giants.

Today, we need to understand the pervasiveness of grace and the need to communicate this grace to people. The central message of the New Testament is that of Grace, that Jesus died on a cross for us, God showed us Grace. We must communicate this grace to people, through communicating and living grace, other aspects of Christianity can flow. Our message is one of grace. Bosch sees Christian mission as characterised by “humble witness to the ultimacey of God in Christ.” “There is no longer any room for massive affirmations of faith.”

5.4 Networking

We need to be more than small pocket community’s. An ecumenical Christianity needs to develop, one where we share, and don’t argue. We will go away to our own community’s and live our Christian lives, conformity isn’t necessary. Networking will be necessary to sustain this, so that communication channels are open and we know what’s happening around us. This will require anti-postmodern changes. We will need to slow down, to take time out to listen to each other and do less, so that we are more regularly in a state of being. Being, may at times to our modern and postmodern eyes seem to be a ‘waste of time,’ but, if we are to be a diverse community, we must be together.

6 Community and its links to education and spirituality

The Christian community will recentre us. After all the deconstruction and decentring of philosophers and theologians, Christianity needs to be recentred. This recentring needs to be on God/Jesus/Spirit. So the community will indwell the triune God in its midst. A (marginal) approach to indwelling the community is fleshed out by Dave Andrews, only this is a marginal community, lived on the edge of society.
The United Kingdom in looking at mission in a postmodern world, see community as key to mission. Community plays three parts in what they see as evangelical mission:

1. It sends people into mission outside of the community.
2. People minister to the community.

People bring their ministry back to the community
Walker notes that the parish model has broken down with the spreading of society and the social links that broke are to blame for some of Christianities problems. The way forward is to live in community. He sees it as necessary to go back to a monastic life to ‘protect the gospel.’ I don’t however think the gospel needs protecting, it’s survived quite okay on its own, as society has tried in vain to slaughter it. His overall point being that the mega churches provided safe communities and structures for Christianity, these safe structures need to be provided today for Christianity. I believe we need to be careful though that we don’t turn Christianity into a grotto community, but all the same, community is the way forward, to indwell the message.

6.1 Kiwi Identity

Tilbury in her section in Derrida Downunder notes that the ambivalence to our multiple stories will eventually lead to a loss of Kiwi identity. It’s important that we story to keep this identity and don’t become a chameleon on a rainbow coloured piece of paper, or we’ll explode in confusion. Equally so, we must be able to disagree.

6.2 Agree to disagree

We live in a postmodern world of diversity. With the embracing of the yin and yang in each denomination or sect of Christianity, we may speak as one diverse community with many voices. We cannot speak with one voice, as there is no longer one voice. We need to talk, in talking we will hopefully find so many similarities, that we don’t need to argue over our differences. Christianity can be a leader here, to demonstrate that it’s okay to disagree, that’s we can live with the diversity and see it as diversity, not as division. We can learn from politicians here; The Labour Party and The Alliance Party signed a Government agreement to say we agree to disagree, to work through the differences where possible, where not possible, we wont let them split us. As Van Gelder notes: the biggest challenge is that of creating “an adequate basis for creating a unified diversity without having to insist upon uniformity.”

6.3 Alt.lifestyle

Christianity needs to offer people an alternative lifestyle (alt.lifestyle). We need to be counter-cultural and offer people a way out, we also need to be in the world to reach people. This is the kind of statement Derrida would pull apart, but I believe it is the way ahead. The postmodern mind is “deeply disturbed” and Visser sees the way forward as the Kingdom of God, as it “is the paradigm for the creation of a humane society.” So the Christian task of mission is to create communities where people can live a life counter to society, where “Reconciliation, negotiation and dialogue are of vital importance.” It requires a certain amount of letting go, to let God take control of your life through prayer.

6.4 Reflection

And the world carries on at full speed. It seems in this postmodern world that we are racing off of the edge of the cliff, there is no looking around or back. When friends die around you it’s interesting to see how people respond. For some it’s full speed ahead, for others it’s slow down. I wanted to reflect on things when a friend died recently, however for others, they just wanted to put it behind and move on, “After all Dion, the church doesn’t stop or change just because someone has died.”
When exactly does the church and Christianity as a whole stop and evaluate what we are doing? We need to stop and reflect on life, sit down, talk and be willing to change. The church is one grotesque Theologically-Modified Animal; it is a case and point example of what happens when you let scientists lose on it as we have done during the enlightenment and modern eras. I’m suggesting we evaluate what we do as Christians in the light of postmodernism, so that we may receive a fresh mandate for mission, from our Christian community.

6.5 New community

To live in community is not to live “ancient ways, (it instead) requires new forms, new ways of incarnation and inculturation of the gospel and liturgy in relation to the new human experience and historical realities,” into a community that acknowledges we are destroying the world, into one that seeks to live in harmony. Part of the community’s job is to give God a place to indwell, and to move away from individualism that isolates God. “In this fallen age the image of a triumphalistic church has to be corrected.” And it is largely these new Christian community’s that will correct this image and give God and the Spirit a place to dwell.

6.6 Spirituality

Grey builds her thesis on the community as prophet. “To be prophetic, is inseparable from being a mystical community. …. I found myself falling back again and again on the conviction that somehow, mysticism and prophecy had to be recovered by ordinary people in community as a countercultural alternative to the death-dealing forces of much of contemporary living.” Where she sees the heart as integrating centre where there is the indwelling of God. Spirituality flows from the community and will be the centre of every postmodern Christian community. Christian spirituality will also embrace eco-spirituality and new ways of living, but there is not room to go into them here.

7 Christian responses to postmodernism

There seem to be two broad responses to postmodernism:

1. Postmodernism is unhelpful – therefore it must be countered:
   • Response 1 – resist it with all your might and go back to biblical principles
   • Response 2 – postmodernism is here; we need to find a better way forward for postmodern people.
2. Postmodernism is helpful – therefore we must:

• • Response 3 – embrace and extend it.

The problem here is differentiating between response 2 and 3. There isn’t always a lot of difference in actual method. The main difference is in the philosophical or theological response to postmodernism. Response 2 is often tied up with ecclesiology, whereas response 3 is often tied into mission. So responses 2 and 3 can almost be grouped together. This leaves two main camps:

• Reponses 2 & 3 – Those that want to create mission within postmodernity
• Response 1 – those that want to preserve an alternative modern reality outside of postmodernity.

7.1 Response 3

Response 3 would be characterised by the likes of Tomlinson, Riddell and Kirkpatrick/Pierson/Riddell where they see new churches emerging.
Having had some experience of Mark Pierson and Cityside Baptist, I’ll comment on their model that is presented in the Prodigal Project. The key to the emerging church seems to be the Café style community. But, when things got hard going at Cityside, they closed their pub ministry down. It’s easy to look in though and say, they should have tried harder. This isn’t the answer though. Community’s like Cityside are on the fringe of Christianity (Riddell acknowledges this too in Threshold of the future) the key is that there just isn’t the support for mission in the postmodern world. Our Christian structures are too interested in ecclesiological concerns (i.e. the Sunday Eucharist/service) to do mission as well. The wider church needs to wakeup, change and support and join these fringe ministries, the world does not come to church.
In the meantime, Cityside has developed a contemplative and accepting model of Christian community. Their model is very small, but holistic. They largely pastor to themselves, and people at the fringe of their community. But they are incredibly inclusive in that anyone may join them, into their exclusivity as long as they’re willing to respect others and their differences. So the model of mission is one of outreach to the fringes, so one fringe, reaches to another fringe.

7.1.1 One size fits all

Churches like Cityside are a group of community’s. These communities’s show a new model of church where one size fits all is not needed. For too long mainstream churches have thought one size fits all, it doesn’t. This is where emerging churches can help the mainstream churches become multi-fit, rather than one size.

8 Concluding thoughts

8.1 Contender or pretender

The Kingdom of God revolves and resolves itself through mission, not ecclesiology. The church, both mainline and non-denominational need to decide whether they are contenders for the Kingdom of God, or whether they are just pretenders. If we are to be contenders, mission must be our focus. The challenge for us is to evolve church out of mission, not mission out of church and its associated issues of worship.

8.2 Picking the bits

We really need to pick the bits from postmodernism that we want. Like all secular philosophies, we need to choose the bits that we think fit with Christianity and God and discard those that wont let us be true to our Christian community (a modernist would say to ourselves . We need to start to see postmodernism as helping us to understand the world, just because we call ourselves postmodern or acknowledge that we live in a postmodern world, doesn’t mean that we have to also hold to the likes of Derrida and his (systematic) deconstruction of society and Christianity.

8.3 Conclusion

The answers to mission in a postmodern western context are, community, spirituality and truth. I do however have no idea what shape postmodern community will take, or what it will mean to be a postmodern spiritual, or what it means to embody the postmodern gospel truth. Through the essay we have glimpsed hints as to what it will be, but in postmodern terms, the answers aren’t absolute. These are issues that need to be worked through.

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On Monday the 24th December 2007 at 8:50pm we welcomed the new arrival of Caitlin Grace Dorothy Blundell to our family. She was born at Papakura Maternity and weighed in at 3.220kg.

Below are some photos from the day and the next two days.