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8 Responses to “Church planter’s reading list”

1. Miss Eagle on November 5th, 2006 3:23 pm

   Ho, hum - not interested anymore! Where are the women’s voices. Could be some black males there but suspect they are all white anglo-celtic voices from, descended from, or close to the old empires of the US and the UK. Where are the emerging voices - emerging voices of women, blacks, hispanics, asians - minor, eastern, northern, southern and south-eastern. And the voices of Africa and the Pacific. Well, clearly one can go on and on and on because there are so many people unheard and ignored. Am always conscious of the words of Tony Morrison, the US black American Noble Laureate, who said - in an interview with Australian journalist Jana Wendt - that white people always have to have centre stage. How true that is! We are happy to mission-ize minorites (not that all of them are minorities in all geographies - but even majorities like women virtually everywhere and the hispanics in the US don’t have any great power of any kind) but not to listen to them, their stories, and their histories. Wake me up, please, to the sound of emergent voices in the church! I want to hear their stories, their experiences, their understanding of Jesus and what it is to follow him in the 21st century.

2. Alan Hirsch on November 7th, 2006 1:50 pm

   Actually Miss Eagle,I agree. I would like to hear such voices. But where are they to be found, and when will they speak up. Though I might add that more and more women are getting a voice in the blogosphere.

3. Miss Eagle on November 8th, 2006 8:56 pm

   Well, Alan, unfortunately it is the same old story. People from former colonies don’t get heard until the old colonialists, the neo-colonialists, and the paternalists get out of the road. Women don’t get heard until men get out of the road …and so on.

   One also has to recall that men have defined the parameters of the game, church, books, ideas etc. This attitude serves to automatically declare invalid the experience of those who don’t fit or have a different story to tell. This applies to cultures, ethnicities etc. For instance men and women of one culture and ethnicity can so dominate to exclude others or determine the acceptability of what is said by them, that those excluded can have no effective voice. The first step in eradicating this is for the dominant ones to shut up, sit still, and listen and be willing to learn. Can I use, in the Australian context, the story of migration. There was a time when we excluded certain people. Then when we did let them in we certainly didn’t listen to them. In fact, some still don’t or won’t. But gradually it had to happen. Trouble is that in the context of the church, some people have been waiting for two millenia. Then there are the poor and oppressed. God has been sending messengers and prophets for more than two millenia to remind us of how things should be. How many are listening and for how long?

   And what is the impact on the church? The gospel has spread across the globe but we can see christians building ghettos within the church as surely as Israel and its concrete wall is building a ghetto in Palestine. However, there is a little preached biblical vision that is beyond this: of a truly universal church in which there is no ethnicity, no gender, and no economic or social strata. Some say that this will only occur in the next life. True - if we cop out on our responsibilities and obligations in this life.

   But Miss Eagle does not expect to get knocked down in the rush for the back pew by the current crop of anglo ‘names’ as they make way for lesser known and heard voices.

4. Alan Hirsch on November 12th, 2006 2:00 am

   I her ya Miss EAgle! Don’t quit flying around will you?

5. celtic son on November 13th, 2006 11:43 am

   flying too close to the sun?

   mr hirsch handles the eagle-eyed guilt trip with grace… i’m much less inclined to accept the guilt and condemnation… in fact, contrary to mr hirsch’s graciousness, i think miss eagle needs to review her eyesight and perhaps change her glasses…

   as a celtic descended white male i gotta admit miss eagle’s comments make some honest points about the historic inequity perpetrated by anglo-celtic descended white males… (of course all of this wonderful language is from the benefit of my education as the son of privilege… perhaps that already invalidates it!)

   good onya miss eagle… i do have many advantages by value of my gender, my colour and my religious persuasion… and, according to your philosophy, i should be grateful for my privilege and sit on my arse and do nothing else… because, if i do that, some motivated underprivileged person will rise to fill the void… ho, hum it’s a while since i’ve come across such revisionist crap… perhaps miss eagle you are unconcerned about spouting a philosophy that sustains inequity?

   i could spend my life just apologising for the accidental benefits of my birth… but i won’t… i choose not to be a victim of the victim mentality that pervades the culture of privilege… unlike some, i’m convinced it is right for me to say that i’m sorry that my white male forbears oppressed your forbears… now that i’ve said my sorry i choose not to keep living in guilt, as others remind me of my heritage of privelege… i hear ya and i acknowledge it, i apologise for it, but, contrary to your advice, i’m not living in it

   i choose, in spite of my advantages, to get off my arse and help others – which is one of the advantages of privilege, and is in danger of being perceived as paternalism… what i’ve discovered is, those who genuinely need help don’t tend to be in a position to care too much about the perception that they are being patronised. those who care about the perception of patronising tend to be educated, privileged people, who patronisingly warn the underpriveleged, that in their patronising opinion, they are being patronised… frankly that opinion does not change the reality that someone receives some help!

   there are differences between opinion and conviction. conviction has a basis in a truth beyond your personal comfort – it costs you something and it benefits others, opinion is centred in self - your thoughts, your wants, your comfort. conviction causes you to get off your comfortable arse and get involved in restoring the wrong you’re convicted of… opinion just creates whingers. conviction can be an agent of change in culture, opinion just might blow up a hot air balloon. what change has ever taken place by those in power sitting down and being quiet? are you serious or just trying your hand at irony? the only people who rush for the rear pew already consider themselves victims and spectators

   immigrants to australia didn’t get a voice by some means of osmosis, they fought for it and continue to. oppression doesn’t dissolve in the rain of well meaning platitudes, it is won, step by bloody step, in hard fought battles that cost those involved time, energy, passion, enthusiasm, money, work, reputation and for many their livelihood, their families and even their lives. the notion that we can ask the oppressors to kindly sit at the back and be quiet is offensive

   conviction motivates people to get off their arses and oppose that which is wrong, to apply life’s energies to promoting truth … frankly i’m tired of the approach to narrow minded oppressive bigotry that responds by burying its head in the sand in narrow minded bigoted opposition… that’s a response only available to the priveleged!

   get over mediocre ill-thought opinion and let a conviction take hold that motivates action. for god’s sake don’t settle for being a whinger… no matter how priveleged or underpriveleged your place

6. Peggy Brown on February 1st, 2007 6:23 am

   Miss Eagle, I have no idea whether you’re still out there or whether you’ll ever hear this, but there are sisters out there overcoming their various situations of oppression/slavery and allowing God to take our hands and bring us to the seat of privilege at the big table.

   I find that shoving my way in is not at all Christlike and doesn’t bring glory to God. It isn’t effective, either. One look at the women journalists is enough to freeze my blood. Who responds to a shrieking harpy? Women have so many more communication and relational tools available to us than men, we don’t need to do things the way they do them, do we?

   So I do everything I can to make myself usable by God and trust that he will call me in to play the game with the big boys when he needs my ability–or even my lack of ability–to accomplish whatever it is he wants done, whether it be drying tears and applying first aid or kicking butt and knocking heads. I keep my pruning shears sharp, but I don’t whack off branches unless God gives the go-ahead–it’s his vineyard!

   And there may come a day when I publish something (I have a few things I’ve written for local consumption)…but in the meantime, only those in my sphere of influence get that benefit. And that’s probably just right for now. I don’t have any of the grand credentials that go along with book publishing, and I’m not likely to go after them just so I can! But I’m pretty live and in color where I am–if that is of any consolation to you.

   When my day comes, I don’t want it to be seen as an overreacting pendulum swinging crum thrown out to placate the girls. I want it to be something that God wants to nurish and encourage and edify and bring glory to himself.

   To that end, I might suggest that some of my brothers take a look at what they’re saying and whether or not it needs to be said again…but even then, each book sent out in humility (I’m giving them that one for free) in service to the cause of Christ will resonate with someone. And that someone will be grateful and blessed. I am certainly grateful and blessed by the many good words that have come from my brothers. I take good food as it comes.

   But I echo one of the comments: don’t fill up on “seed substitute” when you’re not eating the “seed” that is the Word of God. And don’t get caught up in the 5 or 7 or 12 steps to whatever game. If it’s not simple enough for my kindergartener to share on the playground, there’s a bigger problem. Alan’s “simplex” really resonated with me: simple to understand and replicate but complex enough to fully engage heart, soul, mind and strength–like love! The Holy Spirit is very capable of teaching us everything we need to know. We just don’t always like how it tastes. I tell my sons to eat what I give them because it’s good for them…but I do try to make it taste as good as I can.

   Packaged with love and grace and mercy…

7. Jordon on February 5th, 2007 8:01 pm

   Talk about being late to a conversation

   We did contact some women church planters who either didn’t have the time or didn’t get back to us. Right now, we don’t know of any Canadian church planters outside of my own church plant’s leadership team. I come from a family where some of the women in the family were ordained but right now in the emerging church in Canada, it is dominated by men in leadership which is a bad thing but the way it is right now. Change will come I hope but for right now, it is like that.

8. PeggyBrown on February 6th, 2007 8:01 am

   I’m happy you checked back!

   We’ll just have to keep going one step at a time and trust that God will help us be more inclusive as we go. That’s my plan, at least. Looked quickly at your website, but I’m on a short blog leash already!

   Don’t take that as not having time, now…I’d be willing to make time…

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