Change, Budgets and the Future!!

Some regular skimmers of my musings may be interested to know:

In our Uniting Church NSW/ACT Synod there have been months of discussion around merging our Boards of Mission and Education due to two factors 1. the need to trim our bidget by some 13% plus and 2. the fact both Boards forecast this over 2 years ago and the decisionmaking bodies who heard, took that as information they could do nothing about rather than facing the questions and plotting a more holistic answer to the question of how we find our missional reinvention through ministry and consultancy which will never generate it's own budget... the final motive is that in this continuing challenge, other ideas have been tried, and if we change [and demonstrate being able to let go of precious stuff] then other thinmgs may change!!
On the coming weekend a Combined Boards Working Group will present the chosen of three canvassed options for the future shape of the new Board and then on Monday 29th we have a meeting to be told of the outcomes!!
My role was reviewed recently and it was a very positive review [much better and more affirming than I expected] but of course the best offer was to the end of 2011 in the wake of the merger [fair enough]!!
I should make it clear I have and will spend months thinking and praying about my future direction and wait for what options emerge and what things wise people invite me to consider... including what creative and suited options might emerge from this weekend [certainly don't want to burn my bridges there]!!
But because I'm sharing out loud and about this topic I have to say I wish we'd had our meeting this week as scheduled so as to be told what was going to be presented and recommended, with a follow up on the ouctomes. I believe we are mature and invested enough to gain from knowing what was put forward and then how that decionmaking body dealt with the suggestions and what emerged... we have been asked and facilitated in sharing our ideas, concerns and suggestions... very much so... but what has been missing is any feedback loop sharing 'here's what we've heard' from your various papers, ideas and discussions... anyhow too late now!!
So if you're of a mind there are tens of people waiting to hear on Monday whether their role changes, disappears or is available for them to reapply given some change of focus, staff numbers or emphasis... all of which are possible and likely in a mix of changes... a few of us plan a quiet lunch and beverage afterwards to commiserate... I say that because any reduction in what these two Boards have been offering, based on funding squeezes, is a huge waste of past work, gifts and team.
It's unhelpful for me to speculate about likley scenarios but on the whole I feel deflated, pessimistic and disempowered about the future for a dedicated Youth Unit!!
Anyhow, hopefully if it simply isn't a good idea the decionmakers 'knock it back' and ask for different work to be done rather than making some noise and a few harmless edits!!
The tricky thing for me is that I believe we need 'change' motivated by our missional imperative but robust up against the funding problem and I have interest in some areas of what could be future work [yet might not be]... and while ministry with young people remains a huge challenge I accept that it needs the co-operation of all ages, needs to engage public spaces and is about experiments and trials which don't seem to be the culture we'll build!!
Partly I want to delete this post and start again BUT essentially I am inviting all comers to take me on over ideas, to pray for my colleagues and to think again about what it would look like to focus on growing people of faith...

Transforming Communities

Essentially this means becoming 'missional' as faith communities and as a wider movement. In the wider sense we'd do this by more intently focusing on whatever resourcing or encouragement or cajoling it takes to move our faith communities to the edges where they will find people with hurts and hopes they can serve!!

The Uniting Church is cash poor [arguable] and property rich... from not tackling that when [3] denominations formed our current 'Uniting' movement. There have been moves to release property and finances for missional use but it's not gone far enough.

The [1] Presbytery which had an audit caused the proponents of a Property Resources Unit focused on rationalisation and better utilisation to back off and look to 'value add' to strategic properties.... they dogged it!!

What if we adopted the model of other Synod's [roughly states] in our movement [but for different reasons] became a one Presbytery Synod for a period of set time... not forever... in order to distribute our centralised resourcing across NSW/ACT and thereby give stronger direction to all that divestment of resources... we could even then shift focus from region to region as required or according to those best responding to the synod vision...

Our central administrative structures would need reform and to embrace a missional standpoint. Our theological college should adopt the South Australian model for staffing and courses. Emphasising context, missiology but moreso teachers who are current practitioners in a variety of settings, yet academically qualified to teach!!

We need to do something about the fact Uniting Care and Uniting Financial are growing, there's a gap between both and the grassroots church in some ways and the tremendous work of both doesn't fully connect beyond their own work. It's not enough to merge our Boards of Mission and Education to solve a financial need and out of a sense that 'someone has to control the change or nobody will'... the fact this change has overshadowed a call for a wider review is a problem with as yet no solution.

More later...

"Moving with God - Transforming Communities"

The title of this post is the 'vision statement' of the Uniting Church in Australia Synod of NSW/ACT. It represents a distilling of a range of workshops held across NSW/ACT as the 'Moderator' [our elected full time leader] listened in the hope of being able to articulate OUR vision of the church as we hoped it would be...

The workshops were OK with predictable descriptions of the post modern era and the areas the church could be engaged in the mission of God in the world. Then the Councils of the church discussed and reflected and gave feedback on a version of the vision shaped very clearly [read massaged, changed, directed] by our current missional directions BUT it was eventually agreed upon as a direction we could embrace...

To my mind it lacked a feedback loop to the original sources to check if they had been heard correctly [the discussions at various councils didn't really canvass that] and while I think the overall catch phrase has lots going for it... where's the theological work, the practical workings and resources focused on our congregations as our primary mission units?

At least the Synod meeting understood that it's not an imperialistic sense of 'transforming communities' or in other words the transformation might well be in the church, the community around it or both.

Moving with God - Transforming Communities works... It should probably be followed my a maximum 5-6 dot points which point to practical focus... courageous inclusive and generous sound good and have provided a framework for the last [3] synod meetings so that our current Moderator has been able to add a layer of reflection and some quite radical ideas to the mix.

I suppose what I reckon might be the next step is a discussion guide for a four session conversation in congregations, faith communities, agencies and amongst leaders and committees about how they see this vision and how they plan to 'get onboard' in real ways...

Moving with God would address contemporary theology... not as an argument between 'progressives' and 'traditionals' but allowing people to reflect on how their faith and scripture give meaning to their lives, using scripture authoritatively, not to hit people over the head but as a mirror asking ourselves how we live it out.

We need to embrace our origin as a 'movement' not a denomination so the discussion should include reflection on key 'Basis of Union' statements.

What's our answer to the question... what difference does God actually make?

What story are we telling? a question which ought to move us to the margins

We ought to plan to practice the radical inclusion of the Spirit of God... feed, clothe, set free...

Rediscover the foolishness of the cross and the bits of God's story which can't be explained

Finding a new definition for spirituality

And while there's already some crossover, transforming communities:

Worship connecting life and faith

Missio Dei

Create transformative spaces and experiences

Give space, permission and validity to new things

Live out faith practices

Adopt an emergent manifesto

Live out our ethics

Be open to be changed by the renewing of our minds from our incarnational relationships with those around us

We need some simple resources for ideas of how to 'be connected in our community' and I've blogged before about missional youth ministry ideas... losing ourselves in serving others!!

UCA Preamble Acknowledging First Peoples

On the verge of something so significant I have rarely been so angry, dismayed and stressed at the stubbornness, lack of empathy and the dishonesty of people who were part of the Assembly meeting today at UNSW!!
I wanted to speak the other night as a supporter of the brilliant work that's been done by a Taskgroup with our Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress towards the Preamble. BUT due to something of an overrreaction to a question thr time got blown away.
We then went to working groups and listened hard to issues of: time people have had to consider the Preamble; views about it's Christology; and what people could and couldn't say!!

This was represented by a Facilitation Team in a great summary of many issues and then listed as [3] ammendments. We got within 1-4 blue cards of a decision depending on who you speak to and all those concerns tumbled out to again threaten the Proposal. Congress left an 'unsafe space' and despite standing to speak about how we felt I was so angry at the crap being spoken by some people I had to sit back down to avoid swearing and offending people.
I believe those with blinkered evangelical agendas have been pig headed and failed to listen. They have behaved like a dominant culture still rubbing it into to aboriginal people and I was disgusted with the lack of empathy [total lack] and the inability to listen and listen to ourselves.

Here's hoping tomorrow brings a decision it's something we must decide and a chance to speak about why... we'll see I guess!!

Tonight at Our National UCA Assembly

It's been another long day here at the UNSW campus as we thrash out some issues in the life of our church and work in groups around issues of: identity; agency reports; being multi-cultural; and now tonight we are hearing the significant presentation about putting a "preamble" at the start our constitution which will recognise aboriginal and islander peoples as the first peoples of this land!! It's an amazing prophetic and gutsy thing which I hope when we come to decide, does get passed!!
Amongst other things this is a symbol too of how we're moving on from some other divisive issues and still talking about and acting out important things.

The preamble takes seriously the Bonhoeffer notion of the question from Jesus of "who do you say that I am?" being tied up with the "where?" question. That location is significant.

Check out this and other Assembly developments here.

In the end the speakers took extra time so when questions and comments were called there were only a few. One question [greeted agressively as an attack] sidelined other feedback and just as I was about to stand up and say "this is a brilliant thing and I hope we can just pass it when the time comes!" The Prez needed to call 'time' and just hear from one or two who were still standing.

We were again priviledged to be a told a story from our northern synod brother about the aboriginal sense of 'good' and 'evil' and their awareness of 'God' always which underpins the ability to make statements in our proposed preamble about the history of belief and spirituality amongst aboriginal people right back to the earliest times!!

This move could lead the country in what I came to believe in the 1980s was the thing holding us back from great nationhood/community in much more subtle but just as pervasive ways as South Africa's apartheid.

No scan of life expectancy, health or literacy statistics for aboriginal and non aboriginal Australians could lead you to any other conclusion.

Anyhow, we discuss this in working group Saturday and will seek consensus Sunday!!