Tag Archives: tribal

Theatre Church (part X)

I sat in Sanctuary 21 tonight waiting for the time set for the big introduction to this ‘thing’ that has been playing through my mind since Christmas to arrive. As the time ticked by and it got closer to the start, the big cloud of doubt floated into the space and hovered over me. “What if no one comes?” “What am I doing?” Throughout this all I remained optimistic “People said they’d come.” “This is clearly a need in this theatre community.” “People are excited about it.” The event was scheduled to begin at 6.45pm. Fifteen minutes after this time one person walked through the door.

Ministry training does not prepare you for this. One person! There are two responses to this fact; one, be positive or two, be disappointed. If you’re positive there’s plenty of Scripture that talks about persecution, the hard walk of faithful discipleship but then again, there’s of equal balance Scripture telling of God’s blessing to those who are faithful. I have spoken in the past about how to face disappointment and justifying reality til the metaphorical cows come home. This is not a time, while it is still raw and fresh, to justify what God is doing (or not doing). But I think it’s important to talk about failure.

In our church we hear success stories all the time, it’s not good for publicity or authority if we fail. Despite our deep understanding that for every good idea there are an average of 8 not so good ones. We push, as leaders and visionaries, our connection with God’s vision and God’s plans. In order to have the authority to lead a community one needs to have the discernment of God’s will and dream dreams and see visions. The truth is, we are not immune from spiritual confusion. But if I am to model authenticity then I need to tell the stories of failures or misguided vision as well as success and ‘wins’.

To be a pioneer is to take risks; to see an opportunity and to resolutely pursue it. I have taken a risk and it hasn’t worked so what is the response?

Return to the original, basic call.

What was it that God put on my heart that drove me to pursue this opportunity? My passion to connect with those involved in the theatre community, to offer them an opportunity to explore who they are and discover their creative voice; to give them a place where they can truly express who they are based on a knowledge of themselves.

Has that call changed? Is that not what is being asked of me now? No. That call is still there. What, therefore, is the next step? To continue and persevere with this idea or to change tact? Two interesting reflections; one, if I think back to my time in Byker (see ‘Death and Resurrection’ post) I am reminded of the power of continued presence in the face of so much temporary incarnations (quangos, consultants,etc) The second reflection is one that I want to explore in more detail and extends my reflections on the Cathedral Event that I’m apart of (see ‘Theatre Church (part VIII b)’ post).

In both the church and the theatre world the majority of thinkers and commentators would agree that to be product focussed stunts the exploration and deep reflection on culture and social movements. Both parties would bemoan the emphasis on being activity driven rather than the existence as good in and of itself. In the theatre, as the funding is cut, companies don’t have the luxury to explore, to research and develop ideas. There is no space, time or finances to allow the artists to explore, discover new things. Peter Brook suggests this replication, churning out products that are safe and driven by success, is ‘deadly’ and most people would agree. In the church, as we discover that creating a weekly event/service is sucking all our time and resources and distracts us from being community together, we speak about the ideal of being process, relationship based. The truth is, however, that processes, relationships, explorations cannot be measured. It is part of our capitalists’ mindset that if it has no profit, measurable success then it is worthless.

Success is measured on product shown, assets, ‘what have you got to show for this?’ The worth of something must be measured. Fresh Expressions are trying to counter this thinking but we can’t fight free from it. My latest experience would be measured as failure. If someone had invested in it then I would have failed and now would be the time to lessen the losses and salvage something from it. I want to shout from the rooftops “This is worth it! I have risked something, stuck my neck out and now I know what would happen!” To butcher a quote from Ernest Hemingway,

‘Only those who are prepared to go too far can possibly know how far they can go.’

I want to stay true to my call to process. To resolutely pursue this call to process, relationship and swim against the current of the capitalism that is a part of both church and theatre. I want to own my disappointment, yes, but to continue to explore the call put upon me. But how do you incarnate the importance of process in a world of product?

Well, like the Cathedral event, work with the current in order to subvert it. Sell a product in order to achieve a process and get people to explore and discover the benefits of the process. It’s a paradox that we exiles need to live in. In order to be counter cultural we need to be in the culture. To show the alternative we need to shine a light on the weakness of the option. Daniel, when in Babylon, lived the good Babylonian life and it was within this that he showed of the alternative way of life or the Pauline model, to become a Jew for the Jews, a
Gentile for the Gentiles all in order to show them the way of Jesus.

Connected with this is some thoughts on Fresh Expressions which were sparked by a fascinating conversation with Paul Burbridge from Riding Lights Theatre Company I had last weekend. He suggested the reason a theatre company cannot be church is down to the need for it to be inclusive of all people. If you limit the membership to those that understand theatre then it cannot be broad and inclusive. This is a very fair point. What makes a ‘theatre church’ church? Inclusion of those from all walks of life. Fresh Expressions need to embrace this inclusivity and not be limited to ‘skater church’, ‘curry church’, etc. Community must be defined by that which unites people in a group. These ‘expressions’ (skater, theatre, curry, etc.) gather people round something that makes them distinct but in order for them to mature into full expressions of church there needs to be deconstruction of that which excludes others.

It’s a paradox that one must define and sell the product in order to show that it’s not about the product; to show people that it’s the process of belonging that is more important than the product that you belong to.

Theatre Church (part V)

On the eve of my birthday BBC 2 was showing a programme called ‘Things to do before your thirty’ I’m willing to put money on my list being slightly different to theirs; Getting ordained is not as popular as it used to be!!! As I edged towards my quarter of a century landmark on Sunday and prepared myself for the onslaught of many people surrounding me on the eve of this momentous occasion for the sole purpose of celebrating my passing of time, I decided to meet up with a wise, sensitive and lovely friend (who also happens to be my brother in law) and who has started his walk towards 30.

One thing I love about my brother in law (among many!) is his intellectual engagement on a plethora of subjects. He invests his thought time in any topic that takes your fancy and he does so, not in a arrogant, intellectually superior way in order to show off, but in a caring, selfless way that says “I care about what you care about.” It means you can guarantee a great conversation with him and you leave feeling like you’ve learnt something new about yourself and the world around you… or at least about obscure music that’s played on 6 Music (one of his favourite topics!)

Of the many topics we discussed one stands out as particularly significant.

Fresh Expressions: The agreed process of dividing the church?

We began to discuss my placement next year and trying to work out if it could ever be ‘church’. I told him about my current thoughts on how theatre and church inter-related and where there may be potential of creating an expression of church through the theatre company model of relationship. I also started to try and formulate some thoughts on the dispersed community model of new monasticism and its potential for creating a worshipping theatre community made up of nomadic actors, directors, designers and technicians (see Riding Lights Theatre Church post). I talked about this image I was once given of a man dressed in tribal garb standing in the middle of a wilderness, underneath him it read “I am part of a tribe”. Next to this picture was an image of a block of flats, people crammed together in pokey bedsits in rows and rows, underneath it; “I am so isolated”. We both agreed that society in this country has a culture of opting into ‘community’. Centuries ago communities were a natural part of life and they weren’t created around a hobby or approach to life but around the desire to be in community. Now we join communities that share our values or approach to life, around a common interest such as a sport or leisure activity. We go out and find other people who are like us. Communities are rarely about different people coming together to be in community for the joy of being in community.

The church, surely, should be a place where people from all walks of life come together and grow alongside each other; where we learn from each other and where differences grow us rather than destroy us. I reflected, after our conversation, on the recent Synod centring on the consecration of women bishops in the Church of England. How do we live together with such opposing approaches? The concept of community seems so simple and yet we can see how difficult it is. I feel i need to say something, I won’t linger on it more than this one statement, the two Arch Bishops, Rowan and John, acted with such Christian integrity striving for the minority group at Synod to feel loved and respected.

The church should be a place where people can come together and not share cultures, interests or approaches but who all worship Jesus Christ… but most churches today fill its Sundays with ‘Family services’, ‘Youth services’, ‘Informal Service’, ‘Formal Eucharist’, ‘BCP’ and any number of Fresh Expressions or creative approaches to worship. Is this diversifying our worship and giving people the many different options of how to meet God, catering for all tastes, actually the way forward?

My brother in law and I discussed the term ‘tribal’. Are all these different groups meeting in one churches actually creating different tribes? Is the ‘tribal’ approach to worship dangerous?

The term ‘tribal’ brings to mind gang warfare, conflict, disagreements and friction but my brother in law commented on the Biblical narrative and how God worked within the tribal system. He called Abraham to be a tribe, Israel was divided into tribes and in Revelation there is no mention of destroying tribal boundaries but it claims that all tribes and all nations will have the Good News preached to them. The Bible seems to suggest that cultural divisions are ok, God knows that we are all different and that He can work with that but division is not good.

‘Unity does not equal uniformity and diversity does not equal division’

As I think about how a Theatre community could be an expression of church or ‘tribe’ I must remember its unity to the wider church, not just around the world but through history as well. Fresh Expressions could easily be seen as more opportunity for people to make a value judgement on the worship a group of people and to create ‘the right way’ but God’s church is bigger than that and Jesus is bigger than that. Fresh Expressions are not about doing new things for the sake or doing new things, they’re not about being ‘trendy’ or pandering to the whims of some. They’re not about short changing the gospel for the sake of getting people through the door but they are about creating communities that are organic and natural… I guess, like Abraham and the Levites, tribes are called out from a larger whole to be a certain thing for the good of the whole and for the glory of God.

I pray that there may be a theatre community called out to dedicate itself to communicating the story of God to all tribes and nations and tongues so that all knees will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!

Death and Resurrection

I decided to train at Durham, not because of the beautiful and inspiring cathedral nor the excellent theological and academic study programme but because I wanted to go into a rough, working class setting and show myself how much of a spoilt middle class boy that I am; hence why I find myself nearing the end of my time in Byker, one of the most deprived areas of the country. I chose Byker as my Mission Study Block because of the reasons above. I knew nothing of the place itself except of the famous TV programme that spawned Ant and Dec.

As my colleagues and I walk around the estate and hear stories of community breakdown and regeneration project after regeneration project I am struck by how comfortable I feel here. Admittedly we are walking around during the day in the glorious sunshine but I’ve met some members of the residents here and they all seem nice enough. I would like to visit at night and walk the streets to see how the place changes but at the moment I don’t hear horror stories of rough neighbourhoods, I hear stories of isolated, disillusioned and disposed individuals trying to escape the situation they find themselves. Byker is a place where you get dumped; either as an asylum seeker or as one of the people who are not needed by society anymore.

The history of this estate is long and complicated but here’s my basic understanding of it:

It grew in the industrial revolution as the centre of the glass industry. All the accommodation was built to house the workers of the factories and the subsequent industry that filled Tyneside. Byker became a place where families grew up living together, everyone knowing everyone else; a real working class community. As time went on and industry came and went the housing began to look and feel dated and so it was decided that a revamp was in order. People moved out of their houses and the place was knocked down and the terrace houses were replaced. It was done in stages and people were moved and removed and, by the end of the last set of building works, the community was, as you can imagine, dispersed. Some returned but many couldn’t afford the new housing or didn’t want to uproot again. The housing became home to the only people who could afford them; those on benefits. The community was subject to many concepts and consultations from council and committees. Plans were thrown at these people but funding and planning permission all slipped through. What is left now is an area where no one has any hope, probably because they’ve had them broken so many times, where no one knows if they belong here because it’s not clear what ‘here’ is.

As the six students from Cranmer walk and talk lots of things are coming through and it wouldn’t be right for me to try and voice them all at once (I wouldn’t know how to sew them all together anyhow!) But one thing for me seems clear…

This is a place that needs a new story and I think we can find it in an old one. The story speaks of death and resurrection.

Parallel to my time in Byker I have continued to read ‘Organic community’ by Josef Myers. At almost every meeting and conversation I’m reminded of Myers thoughts on how communities are built and sustained and I’m struck by how much Byker has been failed by those who believed they were creating community. The councillors came into Byker with grand plans and ideas of how Byker should exist in post-industrial age. What’s the problem with that?

Some quotes from ‘Organic Community’ may help,

‘people are not primarily looking to co operate with our plan for their lives.’

‘Organic community is not a product, not an end result. Organic community – belonging – is a process… it is not the product of community that we are looking for. It is the process of belonging that we long for.’

We love to fix things, don’t we? Why? I suggest we are all scared of failure. We idolise success, we are told, again and again, that we need to reach excellence, personal bests and achievements. If you don’t attain what you set out to do then you are weak and dependant on those who have. Our society is structured so that those who succeed give support to those who haven’t ‘made it’.

The situation in Byker is so complicated I can’t go into it all now but the impression I get is that the rebuilding and all the subsequent regeneration projects that have taken place have been master plans of fixing the ‘issues’ of Byker. Good willed people trying to bring life to this community by papering over cracks and thrusting false hope into a community hungry for some light.

‘Dying to live’

This is the phrase that’s been buzzing round my head as I reflect on the situation in Byker. What follows is only an impression and my reflections. To believe that i have the answer is foolish and naive but I have been hearing and seeing some profound things and I’d like to share them in the hope that they may be of some help.

The church of St Michael’s is a group of people who have moved from their building to a shop front and they don’t know whether they’ll ever return to the empty shell on the hill and if they do what happens to the shop front? How can they invest in a space they don’t know if they’re keeping? The church of St Anthony’s is a group of people who find themselves in a ‘fortress’, fenced in and separate from an evolving resident community not willing to let go of relatively superficial factors. What are they holding on to and why? These are communities that need to embrace death, knowing trusting in God who has conquered death!

This imagery of death and resurrection is everywhere.

The church of St Martin’s has experienced a death of their building; it has been taken down, every brick, and replaced by a community centre which doubles up as a worship space. A wonderful concept but this has come with some great heart ache. This community experienced a death of an old way of identifying themselves. They are now in a new stage. I feel like God is leading them through death into resurrection hope.

St Michael’s are in an Easter Saturday moment. All around them is uncertainty and ‘death’; death of a building, of their identity, of cohesion. The last thing they need is human beings giving them a metaphorical plaster to ‘make it better’. They need God’s power to bring about resurrection. They need to be reminded that in God we have hope and it is only in trusting in Him that His power is made perfect in weakness.

The Byker community, at large, needs to hear this story as well. That, in Christ, death is a victory, that it is only Christ who can turn failure into hope. Unfortunately, as I look around Byker, I see death and then human beings trying to imitate resurrection. John Sadler, vicar at St Michael’s, suggested that ‘regeneration’ is like ‘resurrection’ and I would agree with him. The impression I get, however, is that this ‘resurrection’ plan is more the work of man than of God. Yes, God will use it but I don’t feel the power that brought Christ back from the dead is at work in some for the regeneration work that is going on. At St Martin’s there is a tangible hope in and around the ‘St Martin’s Centre’ and I put it down to the faith of their new Centre manager and the relationship she has with the vicar. This partnership, a long with the congregation there, are actively seeking God’s power to bring resurrection to this community. At Kid’s Kabin, in Walker, Catholic nuns pray and discern God’s will seeking to follow where He leads them, knowing that it is only this way that will bring new life. I have seen in other areas well meaning people try and create new life without God. Yes they have some success but there lacks any meaningful hope. What they produce is resuscitation not resurrection… temporary not eternal.

What is it Byker needs? Real Hope. How will they find this? I believe in modelling the gospel message of resurrection. “Show us Christ risen again!” We show them through real new life like the one modelled in Kids Kabin and proclaim God’s marvellous works. We show them community centres like St Martin’s when God has brought about real powerful resurrection in community.

Byker needs to be helped to embrace death, in its many forms, and be shown hope of resurrection. The Church in Byker needs to be reminded of resurrection hope, the heart of our faith. They need to be encouraged to remember what we have to offer that no one else does, eternal life in resurrection hope.

This isn’t the most clear and concise explanation but I hope you can hear my excitement for this area. I know God has the power to breathe life into Byker. I have seen His power working but I also can feel darkness trying to get in.

I pray for the Christian community in Byker for the courage to stand up and proclaim from the rooftops and in every alley way of the estate,

“Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!”