benedson

The Death of the Emerging Brand

There is a fascinating article in today's Guardian by Naomi Klein exploring how brands have changed since she wrote No Logo 10 years ago.  She starts by talking of a new coffee shop that has no brand identity, it is decorated with one-offs but is actually a Starbucks and an Absolut vodka bottle that has no label.  No brand has become a brand identity, no brand has become a selling point.

The corporate brand has received a hammering in the past 10 years, and so it is not surprising that the emergent brand, or the emerging church is now in some sectors, also receiving a hammering as people disassociate themselves from a movement that they once valued deeply.  No brand is the selling point. 

The article moved on to talk about Obama as the ultimate brand and how he has managed to encapsulate all that a brand can be, a person becomes the brand, the embodiment of what people aspire to.  She points out that the media only focuses on the positive things that he does - yes he publically declared that he was closing Guatanamo but he expanded the notorious Bagram prison in Afganistan -  yet the media focuses on the big selling points as the brand is so attractive.

I wonder if we can learn from this in the emerging church movement?  Have we moved from being a brand 'emerging church' a movement that has people who seem to embody the brand?  (I can't be one of them because I'm an ordained Priest in the institution). Do we look to certain people and put our hopes in them because they are the embodiment of what we want church or Christianity to be?  Obama is a powerful brand, but it is a brand that is  accountable to the people of the US, are ours?

Church and Spin

I met up with Tim Synder this week, and had a great converstaion with him about church, justice and mission.  He was interviewing me for a piece of research that he is doing and finished the interview by asking me, what is it that  going on under the surface that is not being said?  Great question, and one that had me pondering for a while.  I responded and have continued to reflect on my response since. 

Firstly, I am supportive of the movement formerly known as the emerging church (maybe we need a symbol), I still think that the term has validity, but think that we are going through and important maturing process.  During that maturing process I would suggest that alot of the hype will be pulled down and communities will get on with what they are about: mission.

However, my first comment refered to the self-referenial and self-defining nature of the emerging church. This was most apparent in the Gibbs and Bolger book where leaders of emerging church communities told the researchers what they were like, we self-defined, and this self-definition also refered to people within the movement.  Gibbs and Bolger concluded, for example, that we were centered aroun Jesus because we told them that they were.  This maybe factual correct but it is lacking a critical voice.

This self-referencing happens online aswell, I publically say that 'so-and-so' is a great prophetic voice, they then say that I am, others chip in and gradually we build the one another up until we believe the hype...but there is a danger that it can be self-generated spin...I can publically associate myself with a person because I want to be seen in the same light as them.  Peer review seems to be the way that we gain credibility and whilst peer review is valid it is also homogenous and is not as critical as it could be.

I also commented on the place of justice with the emerging church.  Whilst in my final year with Sanctus1 I used to walk from a Church in a UPA in inner city Manchester to the affluent city centre.  10 minutes walk but world apart, there is something profoundly wrong sociologically when these two exist alongside each other.  Every time I made that walk I knew that Christ would be walking with the poor and marginalised, obviously the rich have a place in God's kingdom, but in my reading of the text God sits with the poor and marginalized.  The emerging churches that are seriously engaging with issues of serious social deprivation are minimal and should cause us to self-reflect on our priorities.

 


 
 

Leaving Sanctus1 - Final Post - Goodbye and what next...

I've left, [email protected] has been deleted, I've signed off the email lists, posted my final post on the Sanctus1 blog, I've had my final night, I shed a few tears and said goodbye to the community that I have been part of for the past eight years.  I feel content and that I've done a good job.

It's a strange feeling saying goodbye, there were people there on my final evening who have been there for the last eight years and people who have only been there for a few weeks, and of course a researcher!  I have to say I feel slightly liberated, not in a negative way, but that something that I have been responsible for has been handing on in a responsible way.  The hand over is complete and so are these posts. So what next? 

Well Immediately, I'm off on holiday on Sunday.  Myself, Ruth, Jude and Lily are going down to Devon to stay with my parents for a few days and then after that I have another three weeks off.  During this time I'll be going away to St Deniols for a few days to write.   The rest of the time will be spent both writing and doing a bit of DIY. I think that the office and upstairs bathroom need sorting out...

After that well, it's all a bit secret at the moment, and that makes it sound more exciting than it really is!  But I've been told to keep it under my hat for a bit longer.  I'll still be half time at Brunswick Parish Church so still in Manchester, I'm hoping to finish my PhD in the next year, I'm also in conversation with a publisher about a book, I'll still be programming worship at Greenbelt, still networking and thinking and mission and church in contemporary culture, still doing work for Fresh Expressions and MTAG.  So I'm not going to be bored.

But now a rest...

Tags: BenEdson, Sanctus1

Called to the Centre?

The rhetoric of this second phase of Fresh Expressions seems to place a large focus on embedding fresh expressions in the ordinary life of the traditional church. Fresh Expressions, as an institution, is moving towards the centre. My personal vocation has always been to the edges, and hence I personally react against this move towards the centre. It may be that the move towards the centre is correct for Fresh Expressions, but my question is whether this centripetal movement is missional suicide for fresh expressions.

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Hinge People

I've been thinking about John the Baptist today and the significance of hinger people.  I'm preaching on this on Sunday but also had a conversation yesterday with Jonny about Gen X'ers being hinge people.  One view is that hinge people should not be focused on as they simply usher in the new, the other view that I'm developing in my talk is that actually hinge people are massive significant as they connect us with our past whilst leading us into the future.  The danger being that if you ignore the hinge people then the connection with the past goes and the future has no connection with the past...

As well as that I think that in many ways Christians are hinge people living between the future coming of christ and his incarnation 2000 years ago.  I may post more on this on Monday as I need to develop the talk further, and right now I'm off to see Primal Scream at the Apollo...

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Tags: music, hinge people, primal scream

A Conjuring Trick with Bones or the Resurrected Vaux?

So it seems that Vaux is back. I'm pleased.

But you can't just commit suicide and then come back to life, that doesn't happen...death, is death, is death, is death. Unless of course you are the son of God...and i don't think that even Vaux would claim that! So this has raised a number of questions for me:

Was it a real attempt at vauxicide?
If it wasn't death then is this simply a conjuring trick with bones?

If as I speculated here, it was part of a rite of passage then, how will the 'mature' vaux differ to the adolescent one?

Was 'vauxicide' a cry for help?
Is meaning found in death?
If this is a resurrected body then how is it different to the previous body?

Technorati Tags: Ben Edson, Vaux

The Seven Year Itch and the Bishops Mission Order

Seven years ago i stood in Sheffield Cathedral and made some promises; I did the same in Manchester Cathedral a few months later...I'd made promises to the Church, promises to obey the Bishop and committed myself for the foreseeable future to the good old C of E. Seven years on and I'm feeling rather itchy.

There are a few things that i think that are causing that, and i think that quite interesting they reflect the life of Fresh Expressions over the last 5 year. I think that part of my vocation is to walk on the edge and therefore as Fresh Expressions has got closer to the centre I question if that is where my vocation is... When Sanctus1 was first started 6 years ago there was no Mission Shaped Church Report and no mixed economy. A few months later, with a new arch-bishop there was a mixed economy and Mission Shaped Church was published. Sanctus1 was mentioned in MSC, we were moving towards the centre.

This week the Bishops Mission Order (BMO)has been finally approved (see here) what this means is that we can legally belong, we can legally be part of the C of E. This is fantastic news for Fresh Expressions all over the country including Sanctus1, it is a seismic shift in the C of E and is great, great news for the church. But personally, there is the slight feeling that i will miss the edge. I miss the excitement of not belonging, the excitement of pioneering, the excitement of new things...

I was at a FE conference a few weeks ago and there was talk of crossing the river Jordan, as Joshua did with the Israelites, and moving to the promised land...but everything within me was saying 'maybe I'm not called to settle, maybe I'm called to be a wanderer'. The exilic community of Moses is for me an attractive place to be,a place of pioneering, of survival, of establishing the ground rules...

So I'm itchy, dearly dearly love the C of E, but thinking that i need to move closer to the edge. I'll never leave it, well i don't think that i will, but know that as Fresh Expressions becomes closer to the centre there will be a loss of the exciting pioneering spirit. I've had a cursory glance at other churches, which whilst they may appear attractive on the surface, I know that I'm where I'm called to be. Sometimes, however where you called to be isn't always the easiest of places...

Technorati Tags: Ben Edson, Fresh Expressions, Bishops Mission Order

Questions at gigs...

I've just spoken at a day conference, think it went well. i always find it interesting/sad/bloody annoying that i get asked the same questions over and over again...it may be my style, but this conversation needs to move forward.

Question 1: You said that truth resides in the community, is there such a thing as absolute truth?

Question 2: How are you accountable?

Question 3: Are you just a homogenous group of people? (re Sanctus1)

I've started reflecting the bottom question back on people, i think i may start doing the same with the other two. I find the first two particularly sad as they're about power and control. I may start saying that no i don't believe in absolute truth how does that change you opinion of me? No I'm not accountable, I'm just like Chris Brian... It annoys me as it lacks generosity, it looks to judge rather than welcome, exclude rather than include.

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Communitas = short-term unsustainable mission.

I've been pondering this for some time now so here goes. About four years ago i wrote an article for a journal exploring contemporary emerging missiology, one of the conclusions that i came to was something called a hermeneutic of communitas. As the years progress I'm getting less convinced of the missiological significance of communitas, i think that is maybe as ineffective as short term mission, and that the focus should be more on aggregation than communitas...let me explain further.

Communitas arises out of situations of liminality of being on the margin, a term borrowed from Arnold van Gennep's concept of rites de passage. The transitional experience of a rite de passage is marked by three phases: separation, margin or ‘limen’, and aggregation. A participant in a rite de passage, whether in the formal sense or the informal is first separated from the social structure he or she formally occupied, then experiences a period of time on the margin during which the subject is in some way transformed and introduced to the new situation he or she will occupy next. A re-gathering or "aggregation" back into the structure of society follows and completes the process. It is the middle phase that seems to interest most writers in the emerging church, the 'liminal' period, when one is neither here nor there in terms of social structure. One is marginal and Turner calls the experience one of liminality. The experience of marginal people, experiencing liminality, is one of communitas.

Frost in Exiles (which I'm still to be convinced by) develops the notion of communitas further and has a tendency, with Turner, to glamorises communitas over community for example: ‘Attending a middle-class church in a respectable middle-class neighbourhood isn’t a liminal experience. Joining a peace movement in a neighbourhood obsessed with military might is. Travelling to Indonesia to help with the international relief effort after a tsunami is. Joining a church-planting team is’ (123, 2006). This is an unhelpful polarity as all these experiences can be an experience of liminality, or they can be incredibly safe. Experiences of communitas need to be aggregated back into the life of the wider community, or communitas becomes a short-term unsustainable mission team and hence the ideal of communitas becomes another name for short-term mission rather than long-term meaningful transformation.

Frost, to his credit, mentions that the reintegration of the communitas into the mainstream church can be a profound experience for both involved, indeed Turner suggested that it is in the dialect between communitas and normal society that the future hope resides. This dialect, or the aggregation, is therefore the most significant part of the experience of communitas. Communitas is unsustainable short-term mission whereas aggregation is the point of profound transformation for both communitas and normal society.

This is where i think that my vocation is, to be a point of dialect with the communitas and normal society, between the emerging church and the church catholic. I think that this is a step on from some of the early emerging churches, who were not interested in dialect, but only communitas. This is not a a value judgement as we would not be able to have the current dialect without the earlier experiences of liminality.

Technorati Tags: Ben Edson, emerging church, Fresh Expressions

Rowan Williams: We are witnessing an ecclesiastical big bang!

I've been at a day for pioneer ordinands at Lambeth Palace today - not that i'm one - and that was a quote from Rowan Williams. He gave a short reflection - and here are my notes from it. They're a bit random, but hopefully they make sense.

RW's moment of discovery was that chuch is something that happens, it is an event, and that a lot of confusions about church are based on the misnomer that church is institutional rather than an event. The event of death and resurection of Jesus created ripples, people have a profound experience of Christ and one another. Ecclesia as a gathering, people gather and church happens…

How do we create space for the two (FE and inherited models) without a sense of rivalry? Key is brokering the relationship is key to the bishop’s role. ‘Church Happens’.

One of the general ideas about ministry is that the ordained minister is there to experess the focus of the church, not to do all the jobs, not to be a professional Christian or a misigod. But a person who holds the focus by providing the sacraments and the teaching from the word. This is where Fresh Expressions challenge and adjust this, you cannot take a tidy sacrament word balance within communities, therefore there is a special challenge for Fresh Expressions. How do you create that gospel shaped focus without the focus of Eucharist and Word? How does this carry over into Fresh Expressions of church, how does it feel to hold the focus when the structures aren’t obviously there?

This underlines the importance of keeping the structures going - there is not a competition going on between the traditional and the Fresh Expressions. We need the nourishment of one another, but how are we going to be fed by one another?

Second interesting question? Keeping the liaison going? How do we share the common problems, common resources, common goals. There is a lot of priestly subconscious, it’s not all bad but it doesn’t do the job for those people outside of those cultures? How do we keep one another going, how do we support each other and be supported by others outside of the Fresh Expressions context. Learning from one another.

Accountability, that is not to be overdone and getting it right is a tightrope. Sometimes OPM’s don’t respond well to supervision and the absence of the accountability means that we all suffer. How do you devise the right kind of structures for OPM’s?

To live the life of a ordained minister requires character and patient formation. To keep looking even when you can’t see the way forward, it is because of that all the other things matter…

Church is running to catch-up. But we will never catch up

Technorati Tags: Fresh Expressions