Small Boat Big Sea - not a bad name for an incarnational missional indigenous missio dei community - a day with Mike Frost of SBBS - at the new CMS Mission Centre in Oxford; a day trip for Steve, (and his mate Paul) Chris and myself.
We need to focus on mission rather than worship; so much of what we get up to in church is all about tinkering with our worship. Mike urged us to go for mission and as we do so we find community, discipleship and connectedness.
I liked the story of SBBS; their 5 rhythms of Blessing, Eating, Listening, Learning and being Sent; mixing and relating to people outside of the group, learning about Jesus above all else and journaling, reflecting on all the ways I've been sent this week. And their DNA groups of 2-5 people for Discipleship, Nurture and Accountability.
Then there was the third place thinking; 1st place Home, 2nd place Work, and 3rd place the Great Good Place of interaction. For most Christians their 3rd place is church so we're scarcely comnnecting with the wider community.
Many great insights, laughter and moving reflections. A consistent ambivalence concerning church - the guy who formed the chaplains of the Pine River in I think Brisbane; somewhat reluctantly having to admit that his problem was that 'I think I've actually planted a church'. No not a church - rather just a collective of people who have oriented their lives around Jesus.......
Reminds me of Robert Warren's emphasis on focussing on mission rather than maintenance. Wonderful to be free of all the baggage - yet somehow we accumulate baggage mighty fast. And the new free church becomes so quickly yet another way to become bound by just another set of traditions and preferences.
Then - as I continue in reflection mode - Mike Frost talked of the Chief and the Medecine Man. I didn't get much about indigenous leadership - but I did get the message of how important it is to have a good team leading - those who challenge and confront and live outside, on the outskirts, and those who hold things together and exercise pastoral oversight, who live in the centre.
We chatted at lunch and on the way home about ways forward, about frustrations of whether this ecclesiology is really adequate, of whether we are chiefs or medecine men. I liked being told that whilst I was 'chief' like most of the time I had a healthy tendency to be menacing -(mis-chievous) at times. What future for the initiatives on the Lickey Hills, for Open Church, for Art in Church, for shared meals, for developing further the Home / Cell groups, for connections at work?
