HARD MISSIONAL EDGE

Recently, well in June, there was a hui (Forum) to discuss the future of our theological college. Our Youth Commission was invited to be part of that. We worked hard to talk about where we saw the church going, and where youth ministry sat within that. I am going to put up the transcripts of the presentations we made. I look forward to some feedback. Some of my thoughts on this hui can be found here.

1.      HARD MISSIONAL EDGE

Some might say that we too often train people for the church as it is, rather than the church it will become.

This can be seen in that many of our congregations in this country are aging, struggling to engage with the wider community, and too often focused on survival rather than mission.

The world we live in is vastly and quickly changing.

We believe in and experience a God of mission. This is not a God who is overly concerned with the status quo or the survival of our churches.

This is a God who passionately cares for and loves all people;  A God who through the incarnation is offering good news in the hardest places. We are invited to join in the mission, offering life, love and hope.

We are also invited into a future that we cannot describe. It is uncertain and to a degree unknown. But there are clues and glimpses of the way ahead.

We believe that young people have a key role in helping us in our journey towards this future.

-        This new world is the world they have grown up in.

-        They are not as shaped by church as it has been up to this point

-        They are able to imagine new ways of being missional, new ways of being church

-        They are able to think creatively

-        They ask hard questions of what we do

-        They look for more

-        They are often more interested in doing rather than talking

For young people to play this key role we need to go beyond our all too often tokenistic relationships with young people.

We need to stand beside and resource young people to ‘give it a go’.

-        If we allow young people to ‘give it a go’ St John’s is an appropriate place to enable this to happen

Where we give them permission to unlock the traditions and to be missional in new, creative, relevant and authentic ways.

This is the age group of the majority of our communities and populations.

When you work with these age groups you are forced to be missional, to think creatively, to ask hard questions and to look for more, to be more interested in doing rather than talking.

A question that we could ask is what does our Anglican heritage offer us as we journey towards this future?

-        We are Haahi Mihinare – we value our traditions, our history and our stories

-        Our Liturgy offers a richness and depth of worship 

-        We can also speak about  Cramner - someone who took the traditions of his time and remolded them to create a new church, we are a church with a tradition of innovation and creativity

-        We have a Three Tikanga relationship

1b: THREE TIKANGA:

Being 3 Tikanga is one of the key facets of being Anglican in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.

We see this as being more than just a loose confederation of three churches that we at times drift into.

At its best, being 3 Tikanga means knowing and respecting each other’s identity, sharing our stories, sharing our struggles, and owning each other’s mission as our own. Our relationships are strengthened by our diversity. Our 3 Tikanga relationship also reveals our interconnectedness.

When we live out our three Tikanga-ness we become a truly prophetic community. Being three Tikanga is the heart of what it means to be missional.

St. John’s is one of the places where we can live out this relationship. It is one of the promises of St. John’s and we are expected to live this out day to day.

Young people in our Three Tikanga Church again are perfect examples of leading the way in growing and developing our understanding of what it means to be a three Tikanga church.

By sharing stories, sharing struggles, sharing priorities, sharing passions, sharing common interests and sharing our common mission in this ever-changing world, our interconnectedness is also strengthened.