Mentors & Heroes

I have just completed reading a very worthy biography of one of my seminary lecturers, the Rev'd Professor Dr Athol Gill. He was Professor of New Testament studies at Whitley College, the Baptist Theological College of Victoria from 1976 until his untimely death in March 1992 aged 54.

Pidwell, H A Gentle Bunyip: The Athol Gill Story Seaview Press: Adelaide 2007

Athol was a marvelous NT scholar but he taught in both Testaments, having a love for both the Gospels and the Prophets. His passion for these texts inspired in him a passion for a radical approach to living the Christian life inspired by various social and theological meovements of his day.

Before he came to Melbourne, he had somewhat controversially started the "House of Hope" in Brisbane where he and others began to explore this radical new kind of Christian discipleship. The authorities in his beloved Baptist Church were certainly perplexed by this and though his counter-cultural approach to the Christian life would undermine the established church structures too much.

On arrival in Melbourne, and in tandem with taking up his duties at Whitley College, he initiated a search for a place to start another community house. Within weeks he had identified the Clifton Hill Baptist Church where its remaining 10 members were willing to gamble with Athol's promise of new life. Before long, "The House of the Gentle Bunyip" was born and eventually the Community Church of St Mark.

"New and prospective members were taught a theology of mission through careful study of the Gospel of Mark." (p103) The mission of the community took three basic forms - serving the churches through training, camps, ministerial support and theological education; serving the community in which it was situated with a coffee house, street theatre, concerts, special events and publishing; and engaging in social issues such as providing counselling, forums, supporting indigenous issues, services for single parents, the homeless and political lobbying.

All of this was to happen out of a community of people, single and married, who lived together, where possible, and shared a common life. Patterns for their life together were very similar to those followed by monastic communities, although Athol never drew attention to this. They were bound to meet for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer each day, following a pattern for The Office found in the Anglican Australian Prayer book, and following a lectionary of daily Scripture reading created by Athol that ensured that the whole of the NT was read each year and the OT was read in a three-year cycle.

Members engaged in 5hrs of ministry a week, tithed their income for the community and generally contributed to the common life.

This extraordinary life was incredibly attractive to many idealistic young people during the years I was in seminary and a number of those who studied with me were members of "The Bunyip" as it was affectionately known.

I enjoyed being reminded of the people and times of my Seminary training as I read through this book. I was also encouraged to ponder these things in relation to a dream we have been nurturing of establishing an intentional community as a place for spiritual formation and Christian mission.

One of the issues that are raised in "A Gentle Bunyip" is the nature of leadership in such communities. Clearly, someone needs to be the driving thinker that shapes the vision and mission of the community, someone needs to be the bearer of the story that originates the community, someone needs to create the myths that inspire others to join. Athol did all of these. He sought to do it collaboratively, using a leadership team, but at the end of the day his death left such a gap in the leadership that within a couple of years people had drifted off - the community died.

On Tuesday I will be attending the 80th Birthday bash of another friend and mentor who has known me since I was born, but I did not notice him until I was about 15. Brian was a secondary school teacher before training for ministry in the same seminary I went to many years later.

He had a passion for engagement with young people in the church and despite a disappointing experience as Director of Youth Ministry for the whole state continued to work with young people through the church's camping programs - which was where I came across him. Having returned to teaching he took an early retirement option so that he could take up an honorary position as chaplain in the secondary school in which he had taught.

In his latter years, he developed an interest in and passion for the ancient traditions of spirituality in the church - Christian meditation in particular. He also came to the view that the struggle of many in ministry was related to a poorly formed spiritual life.

Thus began a journey that would lead to him encouraging ministers in his church more widely to explore the possibilities of the ancient Christian traditions as a support for their ministry, and the establishment of a Centre for Christian Spirituality in his local church - a place for training in and the practice of spirituality.

There is no doubt that Brian was the driving force for the establishment of this centre, although he clearly did not do it alone. He, too, was the forger and articulater of the vision.

He was smart enough to recognise that there was a need for succession planning and quite intentionally groomed up another to take his place, but I am sure that he would reflect that even so, it has been the hardest part of the life of the community - passing the mantle on successfully to new leadership that can maintain the evolutionary development of the community in a manner that is consistent with the original vision.

I will be interested in seeing how much of this he shares on this milestone occasion on Tuesday.

The First Christmas

Tomorrow we will somewhat prematurely take down our Christmas Decorations - a task usually undertaken on the Feast of Epiphany.

Since just before Christmas I have been reading the book "The First Christmas" by Marcus J Borg and John Dominic Crossman. This reading was undertaken as part of my Advent disciplines and I have really enjoyed immersing myself in this close examination of the nature of the Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke. I was further blessed with more Borg books as Christmas gifts, so I will be reading a bit over the next few weeks.

I have always been aware of the way in which the traditional Nativity story is the result of a harmonizing or blending of two very different narratives into a single story. However, I never paid enough attention to the details of each separate story to recognise the logical and historical inconsistencies such an approach created.

For example in Matthew Mary & Joseph already lived in Bethlehem while Luke has them living in Nazareth. Similarly, Luke makes no mention of the prospect of Joseph divorcing Mary when he discovers she is pregnant as we find in Matthew's account. The two stories are so different from each other that if each was purporting to be an historical account of the events surrounding Jesus' birth, one would have to be declared a fabrication - but which one.

Fact, Fable or Parable
In trying to understand how this came about, and how we should approach these stories today, Borg proposes that our obsession with the idea that the only things that are "true" are "facts" is a product of relatively recent times (from the period of The Enlightenment in the 17th century). Since the development of the scientific method in that time as well as new approaches to historiography Western people have thought about life and the world in completely different ways than their ancestors did.

The questions we instinctively ask of life are "How do we know?" and "What is true?" as well as "What is real?" and "What is possible?" This way of thinking has led to what Huston Smith called "fact fundamentalism" and according to it, if something isn't factual then it isn't true.

In addition to these changes in our world view, The Enlightenment asserted that "what is indubitably real is the time-space universe of matter and energy, operating accord with natural laws of cause and effect."

It only takes a brief consideration of these matters to realise that they pose an immense dilemma for the interpreter - If the authors of the text were not bound to facts as we are and could cope with supernatural events alongside natural events as euqally real, how do we make modern sense of what they wrote?

Borg introduces two very interesting interpretive devises that help deal legitimately with the different approaches Matthew and Luke have taken to the same story. Firstly he proposes that we look at the narratives as "neither fact nor fable, but as parables". Parable is a form of speech by which truth and meaning is conveyed without being reliant on factuality of historicity - the story of The Good Samaritan is cited as an example to help us understand how this works.

Along the way he makes the observation tha almost all of Jesus' parables had a subversive element, challenging social, religious and political assumptions and norms.

Secondly. he suggests that the birth naratives are like an overture to an orchestral piece. The term is derived from the French ouverture which was simply the opening part of a work that served as a summary, synthesis, metaphor or symbol of the whole. He cites some literary examples of overture but by bringing the two ideas together he lays the groundwork for a completely new interpretive approach to the birth narratives.

Matthew 1-2, considered as a Parabolic Overture, sets the scene and tone, as well as providing a summary of the Gospel that follows. Similarly, Luke 1-2 can be regarded as a potted version of all that will follow in both Luke and Acts.

What I found most satisfying about this was that rather than explaining everything away as the liberal-sceptical approach can sometimes do with Biblical material, Borg has provided an interpretive approach that enables the truth of the narrative to come to its fullness in a way that a merely factual approach to the interpretive task could not.

Gospel as Subversion
The consistent thread that arises from this interpretive approach is that the story is utterly subversive. Everything that is said about Jesus' birth is connected with Roman theology (not Roman Catholic, but Roman Empire and the emperors/Caesars) and it would have been plain to first century Christians and observers of Christianity that to call Jesus "Son of God" and "Saviour of the world" was to challenge the Emperor's claim to these titles. The purpose of the Birth Narratives was to assert a superior claim to these titles - each in different ways.

When this approach is taken it doesn't matter that Matthew has Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem already and that those who visited Jesus were Gentiles, while Luke has them needing to travel to Bethlehem and the birth is acknowledged by a bunch of lowley shepherd folk, presumably Jewish.

It has brought new life to the Birth Narratives for me, helped me understand that it is okay for Mark and John not to even mention it, and given me new ways of understanding a few other tricky theological ideas that we all think are important.

Aussie Saints

I smile at the hooplah surrounding the imminent canonisation of the Blessed Mary McKillop. As a dear friend commented to me, it is wonderful to think that our first Aussie Saint, according to the Roman Catholic Church, was once excommunicated by her Bishop - surely the most extreme action a Bishop can take against one of the faithful.

The church has done a great job of creating rules about something only God knows about - indeed the Christian Scriptures dare to describe all followers of Jesus as Saints.

I have become a great devotee to the idea of the Communion of Saints, and I have no problem with the idea of inviting those long dead to pray for me, just as I will ask my friends here present to pray for me. The thing that intrigues me is this idea that prayers to someone after they have died, followed by a miraculous event, are the only pathway to Canonisation.

I also wonder about the ability of someone to declare that their prayers for a miracle were absolutely and only directed to the one whose Canonisation is sought. If I was sick with terminal cancer and I asked my friends among the Communion of Saints to pray for me, how would I know whose prayer it was that God chose to listen to so that they would be able to get the credit?

And then there are the other kinds of miracles.

What about the thousands of miracles that happened in the lives of children at schools run by the Brown Joeys because someone cared enough to ensure thay had access to an education?

What about the miracles that have happened in the lives of women, inspired by Mary McKillop, who joined her religious congregation and carried on the work she began?

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands or even millions, of Australian men and women whose lives of faith and good works have brought miracles into the lives of others, and inspired many other people to live their lives in the same way, passing on the miracle of a life transformed by God. I trust that others will count me among them.

Church conflicts -musings on a tragedy that keeps on keeping on

The owner of this blog has graciously offered me space for a little musing about church conflict. It was this person who said recently "all church conflicts are unique because the factors influencing each person is unique, but all church conflicts are also fundamentally the same".

The story of the Church throughout history is the story of more conflict and more people behaving badly than will fit on the head of a pin.

I recently read a lovely book called "Blessed Among All Women" by Robert Ellsberg -a compendium of the lives of holy Christian women who, for the most part, were abused, vilified, excommunicated, martyred and betrayed -mostly by people in power in the Church. That they kep their faith in such difficulties is amazing -that no-one has ever, to my knowledge, stopped the church long enough to ask "why do we keep doing this?" is even more amazing.

Australia is about to have our first official Saint -the Blessed Mary McKillop, who was one such woman. Her bishop excommunicated her for a time!

I would like to suggest that conflict in the church has as its base the same root causes as all conflicts in the human society we belong to -power and money. Someone has power and is jealous that someone else is more popular or more succesful so that they get afraid and attack. Someone has access to the money and the presige and others want it for their own causes.

Of course we follow a crucified God who gave up power and money to show us what love is like so fights over power and money are horrendously obscene. Perhaps that is why most churches don't want to talk about conflict. They don't want to talk about their last conflict and so they are never able to learn how to work their way through the next one so that a better outcome is possible.

People are different therefore we will disagree with each other. Like married couples however, if we are to live together we need to learn to 'fight fair" and to make up before the sun goes down.

Do you know of any Church that has taken the issue of conflict seriously enough to examine its own conflicts and seek a way through them to a win-win situation?

(There are some historic Peace Churches -the Mennonites and the Quakers for example -who have some valuable things to teach us about conflict. To learn however we would first have to own up to the violence we inflict on each other>

Abuse in the Church

When we think of the church we find ourselves struggling with dissonance that we do not expect to have to deal with.

The Church, as the community of God's beloved people, should be a place in which we are able to live out the life in Christ we are called to live - a place to love and be loved, to care for others and be cared for, etc.

However, with all too great a frequency, we are confronted with the same fallen nature in the church as we struggle with within ourselves - it shouldn't be a surprise when you put it like that, but it always is. When we are confronted by violence and abuse within the community of believers our instinctive response is shock and dismay - "This shouldn't happen."

My most significant firsthand experience of abuse and violence in the church was initially shocking because of this. However, it was also shocking because what I experienced was first class workplace bullying by a person who had considerable form as a workplace bully - two of my predecessors and three subsequently have experienced the same, and a considerable number of other staff at the institution over the past 15 years have experienced the same.

Several things surprised me in the midst of this experience.

Firstly a colleague, whom I thought might support me through this, seemed to collude with my abuser and in some respects facilitated a form of secondary abuse or bullying on behalf of my abuser (I have discovered since that this is quite common).

Secondly, my Bishop also failed to offer me any support through this period of abuse, and indeed seemed to collude in the abuse by authorising a performance review of another part of my work that had nothing to do with the context in which my abuser was involved. He seemed to be carrying out part of my abuser's strategy or intention to really "destroy" me and my ministry.

I decided that since the Bishop was not going to find me any alternative employment, I should find something myself. When I subsequently found a position to go to and resigned my position, the Bishop saw fit to write an abusive letter to my future employer deploring his action in employing me without consulting him.

It was a great relief to be out of that position, but I found that the trauma lived on. So I thought I should bring these matters to the attention of those who seemed appropriate in the church.

A recently appointed body called The Professional Standards Committee seemed to have been set up just exactly for this purpose, so I prepared a very detailed submission of all aspects of my abuse and offered it to them for consideration. to give them their due, the took the matter seriously, they considered the issues raised at some length, but in the end decided that they were unable to initiate any action that might remedy the matter because the lacked jurisdiction - the statute they were set up under dealt specifically with child abuse and sexual misconduct by clergy. These were not involved in my case, so they could do nothing.

So I decided to speak directly to the Archbishop - he being the holder of ultimate authority in the Diocese. As we discussed the matter it was clear that he believed he would not be able to do anything effectively in this situation, so nothing was done.

Again I was left to work all this out by myself - and perhaps that is the way it should be, but you can see how this experience does not fit with the image of the church being a place of love, care and reconciliation.

The saddest thing for me about all this is that subsequent to my experience in that place, others have had exactly the same thing done to them and still no-one in the church seems able to act against the perpetrator of this abuse.

Violence in the Church

The General Synod of the Anglican Church in Australia gave it's Professional Standards Commission a task at the last General Synod - to investigate how they might bring issues of workplace bullying under the oversight of the PSC where they now can only consider issues of child protection and sexual misconduct.

On a shoestring budget the PSC has been gathering feedback from the Metropolitan Diocese and yesterday it was Perth's turn. The Perth Professional Standards Unit receives on average two complaints about bullying each week so this is not an isolated or insignificant issue.

About 25 people turned up to discuss this issue and perhaps even tell their own stories if they were given the chance. Most said they had been bullied. One confessed to having been a bully as well as having been bullied by others.

The facilitators tried a neat little euphemism that the group would not allow - "a misuse of power" instead of "bullying". In some ways the alternative phrase helps to distinguish bullying from a simple traumatic experience - both are painful, but one derives from an abuse that is intentional and systematic in the context of a power-based relationship - but I still prefer to have it named as bullying.

Two or three things struck me as I pondered this meeting and the issues it sought to address.

A Culture of Violence
It is sad to reflect on the observation that throughout the history of the church it seems to have been captive to a culture of violence. I don't imagine we could identify any one cause of this, but it is tragic that the followers of the Prince of Peace, who called them to love their enemies and pray for those who hated them, should be so oblivious to the contradicition they are living. The champions of non-violence in the Church have been great, but too few and far between.

I know that the church will always be just as "fallen" or imperfect as the members of it are less than what they know they are called to be by God's grace.

But if we know what we are called to be by God's grace, how is it that there seems to be so little passion and drive to eradicate the violence that pervades our church?

Living Out the Things We Pray for
One participant made a comment that has stuck with me. He made the observation that so much of the way we live together in the Church stands in stark contrast to the things we pray for in the words of the prayers in our Prayer Book. Our Prayer Book has many finely crafted prayers and they reflect both our core beliefs as well as our theology. But, when we utter these finely crafted prayers we fail, somehow, to let the truth of them enter into our being and transform the way we live in God.

So we not only live in ways that contradict our Core Values as followers of Jesus, we also fail to live out the life we seek by God's grace through our prayers.

Safe Workplace - Safe Communties
I think that the enormity of the task of changing the CULTURE of the church from one that uses, colludes with and even endorses violence to one that reflects bot the example and teaching of Jesus about Non-Violence should not be underetsimated by the PSC.

Similarly, I think the PSC will somehow need to make provision in any policy for the fact that the Church is not just a workplace - which is the way we have become accustomed to talking about bullying. This is important because while those people working in Anglican Agencies such as schools or welfare services are indeed in workplaces, clergy are officers of the church and therefore cannot be regarded as employees, and therefore do not carry out their duties in workplaces, and much also happens in the context of congregational members who are volunteers, not employees.

Any policy outcome of this process needs to recognise that the church is both a Workplace and a Community and that the principals of non-violence must govern all levels of our life together, and that all who participate in this community we call the Anglican Church of Australia, must, by some means, bind themselve to live together in this way.

The PSC needs to be able to clearly articulate what standard of life we are called together to live out, and then have the authority and resources to respond to those who do not behave appropriately.

I will write some more later about my own experiences of abuse in the church.

Last Sermon for a While

I am preaching at my church tomorrow for the last time for a while.

I returned to the parish at the beginning of 2005 and, not long after, became their regular presider/preacher on a fortnightly basis. This continued when a priest was appointed as Priest in Charge about three years ago. I was happy to offer this ministry as my gift to the parish - I have a Monday to Friday job elsewhere so Sunday Services were not a necessary part of the deal.

The gift grew to leadership of the worship team having oversight of the themes for worship through the seasons of the year and regularly providing music once a month - when I was not presiding.

About a year ago the Priest seemed intent on disempowering two Deacons who were members of the congregation. Both were passionately involved in the establishment of a community garden on church property, and each saw this as their gift to the ministry of the parish, offering a place for people from the community to learn to live more sustainably and in more harmony with God's creation. The trump card for the Priest was to invite the denominational structures to consider the land being used to develop this community garden as available for social housing if they needed it. The effect was to say that the Community Garden was now no longer a ministry priority and this had been done without consulting those most closely involved. We were in open conflict with our priest.

By Christmas time the hostility was palpable and steps were taken to mediate a reconciliation. Unfortunately, the Priest managed to portray themselves as a victim rather than accepting that they had perpetrated an abuse of power, and since no-one had done WRONG no-one was in a position to APOLOGISE. An apology was offered in May, nearly six months after the event, but it was not signed and the Priest, while present when the apology was made to at least one of the Deacons, was not in any way engaged in it - they did not apologise for the hurt and abuse they had been the instrument of.

A fake consensus was arrived at but the Deacons did not feel appeased, so I began withdrawing my labour. I reduced my fortnightly presidency to once a month in May. In June I relinquished my leadership of the Worship Team and in September I decided that I would not be available for the Presiding Roster once the current roster expired - November. At no stage has the Priest seriously engaged my in an enquiry about why I am doing this. I had offered explanations that before this I had felt like I had a half-time job over and above my regular job, and that I just felt like a needed a rest for a while, but anyone could see that something was up. If the Priest had asked me what was up I was tempted simply to reply "Go figure!!!"

So, I preach tomorrow for the last time in a while.

The lectionary reading is from Mark 12:38-44 - a great little diatribe against hypocracy, particularly among the scribes and pharisees. Fortunately, rather than being an invitation to take pot shots at various hypocrits we might see around us, I think that Jesus is actually inviting us to point the bull-dust detectors at our own lives, calling us into that level of self-examination that enables us to clearly articulate what we might ask Jesus to make whole in our lives when confronted daily with the question he asked James and John and the son of Timaeus - "What do you want me to do for you?"

Someone I heard of recently has meditated on this question daily for the past 14 years. I think it will take me as long to even begin to let it get through. I certainly have been tantelised by it for the past wo weeks - Go Jesus!!!