Simply Simon

Being church

The last month or so, I’ve hung out with a small congregation in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. After a difficult year and the painful loss of its pastor, this little community is struggling. My brief has been to fill the pulpit for a while, to be a sensitive presence. While I’m not entirely sure just what help I’ve been, I depart each Sunday encouraged, my own faith prodded into life.

When I meet with communities like this one, it strikes me afresh just how much is good about the local church. Here in this little wooden building sitting ingloriously on a bland suburban corner, Sunday by Sunday there gathers a community of people committed to each other and to God. They meet to worship, to pray, to confess their faith and dependence, to receive and offer encouragement along the way. They like each other—that’s easy to tell—but they’re weary and not especially self-confident. Still, they keep believing, they keep longing, they keep working at following Jesus… together.

There is no end of reasons why a little church like this one is ‘failing’. There’s a veritable library of books written every year documenting all that it’s getting wrong and all that it’s missing. There’s no end of conferences and experts to help these weary ones arrest their misfortunes and ‘emerge’ into something new and improved.

No doubt there is truth in all of this. But as I drive away from that little wooden building, I cannot help but feel grateful for all that is good about this place and its people. I can’t help but feel God’s delight in who they are, not just in who they might become someday. I cannot help but sense God’s pleasure in a community of faith and mission that plods along, sometimes skipping, sometimes missing a step and falling ungraciously, but then dusting itself off and continuing on regardless. The local church really is an incredible thing, not for all that it gets right, but for its extraordinary persistence as a community of faith in an ordinary place.

Mission in the backyard

It’s done my heart good tonight to see that Andrew Hamilton over at Backyard Missionary has been re-reading God Next Door and making some terrific connections with his own experience in suburban Perth. You can find his posts here, here and here.

While it’s always nice to hear that someone finds the book helpful, it’s even better to hear the ways they make concrete applications to their own context.

As I wander around the place talking on the subject of the book and related issues, I routinely hear the most delightful stories of people embodying the presence of God in quite ordinary ways and in the most unexceptional places. I recently had a woman speak to me quite tearfully after a Sunday service, saying that she had never had anyone from the pulpit tell her that what she was already doing in her daily life was so valued by God: “I’ve gotten so used to leaving church feeling guilty about everything I’m not doing and everything I’ll never be.”

Perhaps sometimes we so glorify mission as to make it almost inaccessible to ordinary people. That’s a tragedy. While God’s call to mission is indeed an extraordinary thing, it’s essential nature in daily life is about as immediate and inclusive as God’s presence. If mission is not connected to the challenges, routines and places of everyday life, it risks being left in the hands of the religious ‘experts’. God save us from that.

Three cheers!

I spoke yesterday at the 121st anniversary service of a small, inner city church here in Melbourne. It was a heart-warming occasion.

The church building is tucked away in a neighbourhood that flourished back in the late 1800s. There’s not much that’s ‘strategic’ about the structure or the community that gathers there. The majority walk to church. The masses who skirt the edges of the neighbourhood as they drive by would not even know it’s there. It’s a neighbourhood church, one of a dying breed amidst the increasing ‘regionalism’ of today’s suburbia.

I have no doubt that there’s an important place for the ‘Bunnings’ church, the regional meg-marts of faith that dot the major thoroughfares of our cities. Like shopping malls, they have a capacity to attract that older village centres can never match. My concern is that, by contrast, smaller communities feel their size as a mark of spiritual insignificance, even failure.

The reality is, truly local churches like this one are going the way of many corner hardware stores, milkbars and green grocers. No doubt a certain degree of adapting to our context is necessary, but I do wonder what’s lost in the process. Is there not a continuing place for smaller communities that make the local neighbourhood their primary concern in mission? Are we able to find ways to honour these communities, being sure their stories are told and valued by the wider church? I hope so.

Crap in the Neighbourhood?

A few weeks back, an article ran in Melbourne’s Sunday Life magazine with the title 'Love thy neighbour'. To be honest, it was a fairly cheap shot at apartment living, or rather at the lousy neighbours that Australians supposedly are in high-density environments. Apparently, according to journalist Jimmy Thomson, all the ‘evidence’ suggests that “Australians aren’t merely unused to communal, up-close-and-personal living; we’re crap at it.” He goes on to tell horror stories of the apartment-neighbours-from-hell, as if to prove his point.

Granted, I have no doubt that all of Thomson’s stories are true. As an apartment dweller, I could even add some of my own. But to suggest that there is some verifiable evidence to prove the point that we happy Australian suburbanites simply can’t cope with any other form of residential life is crap itself.

The evidence that Thomson neglects to cite is that neighbourhood disputes are on the rise across the board, and nowhere more than in the low-density suburban heartlands of our major cities. Applications for neighbourhood-based intervention orders heard in the Melbourne Magistrates Court have almost doubled in the past 7 years—from 3200 in 1999 to more than 6000 in 2006. According to the chair of Law Institute of Victoria’s family law section, this dramatic increase in neighbourhood applications “reflects a society of angry people, too quick to choose American-style litigation over old-fashioned good manners.”

Importantly, I reckon this only highlights what a crucial vocation good neighbouring is. Investing in our neighbourhoods as places of connection and cooperation is about strengthening the fabric that holds our cities and suburbs together. It’s a call worth hearing … no matter where we live.

Fences and community

There’s an interesting post by Chris Smith circulating at the moment entitled 10 ways to live more intentionally in the suburbs. It includes some great insights and is worth a read.

There is one thing in Chris’s list, though, that I’m not sure about. His point 8 reads Don’t fence in your yard, and includes the following assertion: “the fence is a major component of the impenetrable fortress syndrome; it protects our privacy and keeps out our ‘evil’ neighbors. It often is a statement of distrust.”

On one level, I understand Chris’s point. In today’s suburbia, the fence is often a marker of exclusion, a clear communal preference for anonymity, privacy and independence—the higher the fence the louder the preference.

I wonder, though, if the removal of fences is the answer. There are two reasons for this:

1. Community psychologists remind us that the human need for a sense of personal territory is a natural and universal one. Even amongst the nomadic tribes of southern Africa, personal sleeping space is defined with sticks in the ground. Where people are denied an experience of personal territory and the sense of identify that comes with it, social and individual dysfunction follows. Perhaps, at its best, our need for fences has less to do with ‘distrust’ and more to do with maintaining a healthy sense of self within community.

2. Within the biblical tradition, the city gate was commonly understood as a place of hospitality and justice (Gen. 19:1-2; Amos 5:15). It was the place at which the stranger was welcomed into the community, and the place to which people went to have their pleas for justice heard, no matter who they were. The gate was the clearly defined entrance point into full community participation for every resident and every new arrival. It was not a point of exclusion but inclusion.

Perhaps the presence of gates and fences is not the issue. Rather, the problem arises when we misuse such structures to exclude and close off relationship to those outside. The contemporary infatuation with gated communities is a case in point. Terry Veling argues that our collective existence is marked by what happens at our gates, for it is at the fence line that our attitude to the ‘stranger’ is defined.

Rather than take down our fences, perhaps we would be better to remove the sign that say ‘beware of the dog’ and replace it with a welcome mat—an indication that this space is ours and we welcome you into it.

Milkbars and Neighbourhoods

Yesterday’s Sunday Age included an interesting article on the demise of the corner milkbar. It tells the story of Chris and Maria who, for the past 30 years, have run their local business, 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a St Kilda neighbourhood. Today their little shop is sandwiched between two 24-hour 7-Eleven stores and three national brand supermarkets. Though business is tough for Chris and Maria, they survive on customer loyalty, friendship and service.

Apparently, in 1976, the year the Yellow Pages was first published, there were close to 1600 milkbars listed across suburban Melbourne. Today there are less than 450. Just a few weeks back, an article in Epicure told a similar story for the local butcher.

Granted, life has changed. I suspect the nostalgic yearning for what used to be has a limited shelf life. Our daily lives are full, and the lure of the convenient one-stop mega-store on the highway is hard to resist. But I do sometimes wonder what we lose in the process. I can hardly get the 16-year old casual to look at me in the supermarket as she scans my groceries, and likely I’ll never meet her again. Next week there will be someone else in her place. The Chris and Marias of this world will always be glad to see me, always ready for a chat and good for some neighbourhood gossip. They'll have little hand written notices sticky-taped to the window … a lost kitten, a neighbourhood reading group, a bike for sale.

I suspect that choosing the corner milkbar or butcher as a regular part of my routine will not always be the cheapest or most convenient option. But perhaps it's one of those little investments in the neighbourhood that pays important dividends in the long term.

Mark Peel on McMansion-land

If you’ve hung around this site for any length of time, you’ll know that I have an interest in suburbia. As the most dominant form of residential life here in Oz, I've long thought it’s a reality we need to pay closer attention to. As a theologian, I am most interested in what impact suburbia has upon our spirituality—individually and communally—and what impact our spiritual commitments might have upon suburbia.

In light of this, I was interested to read Mark Peel’s article in last weekend’s Sunday Age, McMansions: The Inside Story of Life on the Outer. A historian from Monash University, Peel describes his own living experience in a new housing estate on the far south-eastern edge of Melbourne. What makes Peel’s perspective on new suburbia interesting is his vantage point: he writes from within, not from a distance.

It is true that a great deal of the cultural critique of suburbia is written by those who inhabit the inner city and look out at the distant suburban ‘lands’ with a jaundiced eye. Peel is right when he asserts that there is entirely too much finger-pointing by those who want to lay blame for our social ills ‘out there’ rather than name them closer to home.

While Peel is certainly in agreement with many of the “ideals and ideas” of those who criticize new suburbia, he is also concerned about the “ease with which these problems are localised in outer suburbs rather than generalized to the metropolis as a whole.” “There's a difference,” Peel says, “ between arguing that an outer-suburban estate manifests something that is wrong in our culture and arguing that the people who live in it are causing what is wrong in our culture. There's a difference between criticising people for their choices and criticising their context that limits and defines their choices. There's also a difference between lecturing people about what they must do—lower their expectations, accept less, sacrifice more, be more like us—and talking about what we all have to do.”

No doubt, there are serious environmental and social consequences of the relentless suburban development that pushes ever further out from our major cities—consequences that should be named and addressed. That said, new suburbia continues to hold out significant promise to ordinary Australians. According to Peel, suburbia continues to embody “one of the great victories of the last century, not least the fact that more people can enjoy privacy in a place and a room of one’s own.” Home ownership runs deeply in the Australian psyche, and for many, new suburbia still holds out hope for participating in the dream.

Yes, the almost absolute car dependence of new suburbia is a serious issue. Yes, the strict zoning regulations that rule new developments significantly exacerbate the division of private and public life. Yes, the flurry of McMansion-style homes runs completely counter to the values of sustainable development. But, as Peel says so well, “If McMansions in Berwick are a problem … then so are mansions in Toorak and Brighton or, for that matter, million dollar terraces houses in Carlton. The most important conversation concerns the whole city, in all its forms of inequality."

Well said!

Roxburgh Review

Time and space to post has been almost non-existant these past few weeks. Life is full. But my thanks to both Andrew and Paul for highlighting an encouraging review of God Next Door over at Alan Roxburgh's Journal. Here's part what he says:

"What got me thinking about my neighbourhood is the wonderful little book I just finished by Simon Carey Holt called God Next Door: Spirituality and Mission in the Neighbourhood. Simon teaches at Whitley College in Melbourne, Australia ... and has wonderful insights into what it means to move back into the neighourhood as God’s missionary people. Simon takes seriously the Biblical imagination of the Incarnation – God moved in right next door and settled into these amazing places called neighborhoods.

Simon has no romantic notions about community or what people might be like in these places. This is refreshing. He’s got a realistic sense of people. His stories are about concrete men and women working at how they live their lives in the midst of atomizing and confusing social contexts. But neither is Simon a suburb basher with some naive reductionisms about what God can and can’t do in these places. Some helpful sections on the formation of the suburb as well as the problems and challenges of forming meaningful practices of Christian life reveal a theological maturity and pastoral wisdom rare in these days of ‘radical’ this and that.

I get the sense that Simon is no exile in his suburban neighborhood. He’s not trying to figure some grand set of plans or strategies. He’s digging into the local and the particularity of the streets where he lives and in so doing discovering that God is up to something worth sticking with among all kinds of people ...

This book doesn’t bash existing churches. It respects the challenges they face. At the same time it is a quiet plea for churches to rediscover neighborhood not as objects of outreach programs or social service good deeds but as the real, flesh-and-bone place were God takes up residence and meets us all. This is a plea for the rediscovery of the local, the next-doorness of Christian life in a culture that spins us apart in a thousand different directions ... Great book – hope it comes to North America very soon."

Neighbourhood Exegesis

Paul has asked for a copy of the neighbourhood exegesis exercise included in my book, God Next Door. It's a guide for an exegetical walk through the area surrounding your home.

The word 'exegesis' literally means 'a critical interpretation' and is commonly applied to the study of literature. As readers of the Bible, we exegete the text with a view to discerning its truth for our lives. In this exercise, I invite the reader to undertake an exegesis—a critical interpretation—of his or her neighbourhood. Through careful, sensitive and critical observation, the task is to discern the truth of God’s presence where we live. Quite simply, it’s about reading the neighbourhood as one of the primary texts of daily life—one through which we can expect God to speak.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here it is. You might like to give it a try.

Pleasant Street

This past Sunday I travelled to Ballarat in the central goldfields of Victoria. My friend Asher Kirby was being inducted as the pastor of Pleasant Street Baptist Church. It was my honour to speak. With the title A Matire ‘d in the House of God, I reflected on the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14.

I had never been to Pleasant Street before. I drove away feeling a bit worse for wear health-wise (a minor dose of the flu I think) but encouraged too. I was struck by this little community of faithful people. I suspect they would judge themselves to be quite ordinary, but as they stood, one after the other, to play their part in the service, I was impressed … and reminded again just how much such unassuming and unsung folks are the bedrock of the local church and its mission.

I was encouraged, too, to see a church so locally identified. The building is nestled in a neighbourhood just west of the town’s centre, a milkbar on one side, a local park across the way and surrounded by typical suburban-type homes. You can’t help but like the church’s name: Pleasant Street.

In age of increasing regionalism, local place names for churches seem to be disappearing. I wonder sometimes if we are not in danger of losing something important about the character of the church in the process. I’ve suggested elsewhere that the church is, by its nature, an ‘embedded’ and ‘local’ community. As such, the church fits the neighbourhood like a hand fits a glove:

“So much so that if the only language of place and locality that we use in reference to the church is that of world, nation or society, we’re in danger of missing the most primary implication of the Incarnation …It is the localness of the Incarnation that makes this profound act of God so confronting and so comprehensively saving. So too the church. Should the church fail to grasp its most immediate relationship to place, it may well fail to be the presence of God in a much broader context.”

From God Next Door: Spirituality and Mission in the Neighbourhood (Brunswick: Acorn Press, 2007), p 87.