Categories: uncategorized
Date: 18 June 2005 05:23:03
I attended a cartography students dinner a couple of years ago and a visiting Canadian professor gave an interesting message that has been coming back to me lately.
As I recall it he was describing part of his Australian visit where he toured part of the Northern Territory and found himself in a 4wd far away from any track. He was with a group of aboriginals who were demonstrating how their ancestor's navigation method used singing.
The traditionally nomadic people had songs with words that recalled landmarks, and as they travelled they sang and so knew where they were. They used a “singing map”.
Anyway as they were singing along, the vehicle got a bit fast and the song couldn't keep up, with the resultant lament “slow down, we can't sing that fast”.
The professor used this anecdote to float the thought that technology is developing perhaps too fast, and maybe it should slow down so the majority of the world can catch up. The message seemed to be lost on the technology students but I reckon it was a prophetic statement. I know every time a new computer innovation is launched, I still seem to be learning the last one. Am I alone in wishing it would slow down?
However, the reason this story has been on my mind lately, is not to do with technology but, confusingly, to do with my church.
I belong to a small congregation, part of a large mainstream denomination, that started about 14 years ago with the dream of experimenting with alternatives. Our journey commenced with an emphasis on family worship, the children were never sent out and indeed were given equal time in our worship service, lots of activities and noise. As the first group of children grew older we maintained the family emphasis but developed more into looking at alternative worship styles. The challenge was to maintain the message of traditional liturgies but to participate in ways that were more relevant to the current generation.
We went through a brief café church stage and then with the new terminology started calling ourselves an “emerging church”. We purposefully kept changing our worship style so that we wouldn't develop our own worship tradition. The resultant experimentation has given us a fantastic journey, our attendance hasn't increased and not everything worked, but we have gained from the experience. Over the last 18 months we have been looking at the difference between “attractional” and “missional” models of church. We have decided we mainly follow the attractional or traditional model (i.e. provide a good worship experience that we hope will attract people). A group of the congregation is happy with that, but another group think that in the next decade that mode will become less attractive to the world, and therefore the Church will dwindle, so we should be looking at what “missional or incarnational” means and finding ways to go out into the community and try to break down the “them and us” barrier. This is where we are, waiting for direction from God.
I'm not sure how this situation makes me think of the “singing map” story. Maybe the group that want to move forward into missional church mode are the 4wd and the traditional church people are saying “slow down we can't change that fast”? I'd like to think it's somehow the other way around though...the singers (missional church people) are showing the way and the 4wd (traditional) is happy to keep up.