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The Indigenous people of "Aotearoa" New Zealand, the Maori, have developed since ancient times the practice of “moko” or tattooing (a practice which incidentally is experiencing a revival). It was applied to the face and buttocks of men, while in the case of women it was applied to the chin, lips and shoulders.
In the early 20th century “moko” historian James Cowan wrote, "The term for a face devoid of moko is “papa-tea”, which can be interpreted as ‘bare-boards’, another way of saying, “a face with no decoration.” A church (or “tribe”) - the public ‘face’ and ‘body’ of Jesus Christ devoid of “moko” – his distinguishing features and characteristics – might likewise be described as “papa-tea.” “Moko” portrayed information pertaining to an individual wearer. “Ta Moko” was like a history of a person's achievements and represented their status in their tribe. It was like a résumé. It also served as a reminder to people about their responsibility in life. It was a huge honour for people to have Ta Moko.
Jesus’ life and the significance of that life are our “moko,” our “body art.” “Moko” that are worn as both a profound honour and a grace-enabled responsibility.
In this essay I want to use “moko” as a visual metaphor, a way of talking about “body art,” or the visible characteristics of the so-called “emerging church” or “secondary” church forms and practices. I want to draw a preliminary sketch (new for some; ‘old hat’ for others) of just four of many characteristics or “moko.
1. Sensual / Multi-Layered.
2. People Driven.
3. Unstable / ‘Morphic’.
4. Nomadic / Exiled.
One final point before getting underway. None of these ‘four’ replace a foundational or ‘core’ reality that these emerging churches or tribes will be “Scripture-shaped communities” (to quote a phrase, I think ‘coined’ by Richard Hays). They will be communities of Biblical narrative and Spirit. Communities that in diverse ways will creatively engage with and be formed by Scripture, many would say, to a far greater extent than a lot of traditional independent or denominational churches.
FOUR CHARACTERISTICS
1. Sensual / Multi-Layered
How multi-sensory, multi-layered and ‘multi-connectional’ is your church experience? What does your church (in both the sense of church as “building” and church as “people”) look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like? What kind of ‘taste’ does it leave in your mouth? What does it ‘smell’ like? A recent article by Tim Corney highlights the fact that we learn a lot about a church community’s view of God by the kind of building they inhabit - it’s architecture; the functionality of it’s space; its diversity of ‘spaces’ and the ways in which these might connect with people’s journey’s; the choice of colours and textures; the kind of music heard within it; it’s use of technology; the place of art and creation etc. How is beauty manifested in your church community or building? How does your community process decisions about church buildings and the ‘creation of’ and usage of spaces within those buildings? What might your building say about your theology of mission? Of worship? Of community? Of indigenous context? “Is it even thought about or constructively talked about?”
Leonard Sweet, post-modern guru, sees a very close link between “physical space” and “spiritual awakening.” In his thoughtful article, “Church Architecture for the 21st Century,” he writes, “Today we are undergoing another kind of spiritual awakening as the church undergoes a postmodern reformation from print to screen, [from “text” to “image”]. That revolution can’t happen without altering the physical space of church…Architecture for the postmodern reformation is egalitarian, mobile, and adaptable for multiple use.”
Comments by a friend got me thinking recently about “gathered church” and ‘spaces.’ How well do we create “pick and mix” spaces for people, spaces that allow people to engage with God in ways that meaningfully connect with where they are on their journeys and the kinds of issues they’re dealing with in their lives? Multi-layered spaces - Quiet space; grieving space; conversation, communal, and mentoring space; interactive and participatory learning spaces; singing spaces; prayer and day-dreaming spaces; and liturgical space. How well do we respect and make space in the gathered life of the community for the life contexts within which people find themselves?
Cathedrals perhaps made some allowance for this when they created “chapels” and annexes within the larger building. McDonald’s ‘restaurants often have “children’s spaces,” while the July 2003 edition of “New Zealand House & Garden” published an article about New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox’s house in which the text included the following, “…The new addition…is bare, spare and soaring…the perfect place for a vivid imagination to run free…Elizabeth Knox considers herself a “migrator” and a “cave dweller” (“I do tend to move around the house when I’m writing.”)…The house has small “womb rooms” and big spaces. What kinds of “womb spaces” within which people’s ‘Jesus-relating’ and ‘Jesus-following’ passion and Spirituality can be nourished does your church have?
What kinds of people are represented in your church community? What does its relational life feel like? What does your seating arrangement and ‘liturgy’ (whether you call it that or not) say about the participatory nature of your church? How fluid and natural is the transition from church space to public space and vice versa? What practical things is your church doing to ensure that there is a two-way flow in and out of your church community?
There is a beautiful scene in the New Zealand movie, “Whale Rider,” (see 'footnote' for web address) where estranged son Porourangi meets with his Father Koru in the ancestral meetinghouse of the tribe. On the walls are carvings, ‘icons’ which tell the ancestral and tribal stories. There are ‘totems’ that represent ancestors. Porourangi runs his hands and eyes over the surfaces, reading the stories, connecting with and feeling “his” story. The walls tell stories. The walls have texture. The walls are both ancient text and visual image. What communal stories do the physical spaces of your church building tell? What layers of connection, shared activity and meaning are experienced? Into what story and stories are ‘your’ people both “called” and “sent” as participants and God-bearers? What experiences of God are they carrying with them into their everyday context?
2. People-driven
Increasingly, as Jonny Baker has recently commented, “ the meaning of church is not what the people who run it say it is or think it is.” More and more the question we will need to ask is ‘what does church mean to the people who come, who consume it?’
The “personalised” meaning or significance of church will increasingly be heard, seen, and discerned in peopled stories, in what is said and what is not said, in the dreams, the imaginings, the practices, and hopes of all who are the local expression of the “one…catholic and apostolic church.” Direction, formation and resourcing will become less about monologues and more about “surrendered dialogues”, loving debate, the conversations and collaboration of friends.
It will be given expression in the unique and creative ways in which this people live as “response” – response to God – response to each other, environment, and societal and cultural context. Church communities will increasingly need to become places of conversation, of a deep listening to the naming of ‘others’ “sacramental moments”, of story telling, and of the opening of our lives to Pentecost wind and fire as these shape new creation – ‘Veni Creator Spiritus.’
The meaning of “church” will increasingly be found in what Australian author David Malouf describes as the “interplay [between] extraordinary inventiveness and openness – a spirit of play” amongst the people of God.
This won’t come easily because of a tradition of disengagement in deference to remunerated Pastors and staff, to the person ‘up front!’ But “Body life” and discernment within the context of listening too, and watching for the activity of Spirit in community (and beyond community) will become an increasingly important conduit in determining “how” church will look, and the kind of ‘content’ and activity that will characterise particular churches in particular contexts and environments. Dust-off ancient Christian practices of discernment. Teach the process, experience it, and practice it! At the heart of mission is the discerning of what God is doing and joining in. That takes time. That takes eyes to see and ears to hear (listen in fresh ways for echoes of Matthew 1314-16; Mark 8:17-19)!
3. Unstable / ‘Morphic’
The present “form” of church, whatever that might be, will become increasingly short term, and therefore at any one moment in time increasingly unstable. Church will become less about what rock band U2 describe as being “stuck in the moment you can’t get out of.” “Form” and its longevity will become increasingly less important than functionality of form and journey.
In talking about this functionality and movement we might want to use a variety of words, words like “open,” “fluid,” “flexible,” “chaotic,” and “open source.” Each captures a slightly different sense. Mike Riddell writes that in communities which are open in every sense of the word; open to new people, open to God, open to new experiences, open to changing direction, open to suffering, open to both grief and celebration; in those communities “there is a spirit of adventure within them.” Openness brings with it instability but it also creates space for big “adventures.” Intentionally being “open at the edges” of church will create new space for the welcoming of the ‘chaotic’ over which the Spirit will hover. For the welcoming of Jesus as the hungry one, the thirsty one, the stranger, the naked one, the sick one, and the prisoner (Mat. 25: 31-46).
Change, instability, chaos, and adversity can stimulate life; encourage the creation of the kind of the safe contexts within which trust and vulnerability can grow. It can strengthen faith and can grow in a people an enriched sense of genuine community and interdependency. It can lead across the ‘river Jordan’ to new and better opportunities .
Michael Moynagh provocatively suggests, “…Moving church could become a sign of spiritual maturity. Rather than being confined to one fragment of church, believers will constantly move across the fragments [of diverse church experiences.]”
In a broader sense change, instability, and chaos are not unique experiences of church; they are ‘givens’ in every dimension of life at this, the leading edge of the 21st century. “We live in a time of chaos, rich in potential for new possibilities…we need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships,” so says business author Margaret Wheatley. Leonard Sweet describes this ‘chaoticness’ in terms of “wavescapes”, places where the waters are always changing and the surface is never the same. Instability is ‘rise and fall’, fluidity, and flux. Mike Riddell, utilizing the imagery of Acts 10, talks in terms of Jesus standing outside of the boat (read ‘church’), as we huddle closer in the face of the storm. The beckoning of Jesus is an ‘invitation’ to stretch beyond the comfortable and the familiar, beyond the security of the boat and “into that which is self-evidently threatening and dangerous;” into that place where Jesus already is!
In their ‘business’ book (a reality that shouldn’t stop church leaders from reading it), “Surfing on the Edge of Chaos” authors Richard Pascale, Mark Millemann, and Linda Gioja list four characteristics of “living systems” such as churches. I want to note three of the four.
(a) “Equilibrium” [maintaining the ‘status quo’] is a precursor to the death of a living system [e.g. a church community]. In this state it is less responsive or unresponsive to changes occurring around it in its environment. It lacks a will to change. It lacks prophetic vision, discernment, creativity, agility, and flexibility.
(b) In the face of threat or crisis, or when galvanised by a compelling opportunity, living things move toward the edge of chaos. Threats or opportunities stimulate higher levels of mutation and experimentation. Creativity is encouraged and new solutions become increasingly apparent.
(c) When a living system (i.e. a church community) is stimulated or galvanised by internal or external pressure (threat, challenge, opportunity etc.) the system self-organises and new expressions, forms, foci, and actions emerge from turmoil and chaos.
So, in the West, cultural and societal change has bought what some have naively describe as unprecedented pressure to bear on the Church and as a result of that “pressure’ the Church is increasingly finding itself on the back foot. But pressure and dis-ease is not new, and as noted already, is increasingly an opportunity to hear and discern afresh what the Spirit is saying to Jesus’ body, the church. Pressure provides the potentiality to birth new creativity, new emphases, new direction, new focus, new life and growth, new opportunities to experiment and change, new leaders emerge, new gifts are shared, new people join the journey, and new forms or expressions of church become reality. Emerging or secondary forms of church will have “chaos” and “flexibility” as core genetic material.
And so in these chaotic and changing contexts we will see church as “boiler room ,” church as “open source community,” church as “portal,” church as “resourcer and nourisher,” church as simultaneously “local, national, global,” church as “missionary outpost,” church as “way station,” church as “workplace,” and church as…[use your imagination]!
4. Nomadic / Exiled
We are a nomadic people. A people on a journey. A “pilgrim” people. We are a people “exiled” – a people not at home. Therefore we increasingly need to be a people who resist death (in the sense that Walter Wink and William Stringfellow develop it), who take risks, who resist resting in the familiar and the comfortable.
Again, Mike Riddell helps provide a way into beginning to think about some of the characteristics of a nomadic or pilgrim people. He draws on Celtic monasticism in which monks.
Held lightly to “place” and were therefore able to readily follow the call of God to places unknown.
Structured their lives as an act of unmediated response and devotion to God.
Were largely self-resourcing and self-directed. There was a high level of personal responsibility for growth. They were not reliant or dependent upon others. They took responsibility for the nourishing of their own spiritual lives.
Lived out of a tradition that was portable and adaptable.
Maintained a loose network of pilgrims united by a common vision, even though often geographically dispersed. They kept alive a sense of common purpose through the writing of letters, personal friendships, and occasional visits.
How defining are these ancient characteristics of your context? It’s an interesting reflection. One realisation that ‘emerged’ for me was the recognition that the nomadic and “loose networks” of Celtic monasticism are contemporised for me via the formation of geographically dispersed blogging communities where “visits” are by way of e-mail, comments, MSN, AOL, audblogging, multi-person on-line conversations across multiple time zones. I belong to what I refer to as a community of “voices” – a “portable (as close to me as an Internet portal),” “self-directed,” and “loose network” of wayfarers, priests, prophets, apostles, and friends; a community of ‘voices” that is both ‘local’ and global simultaneously.
Author Michael Moynagh has insightfully written:
“Today, although people still identify strongly with where they live, with familiar landmarks…increasingly they know people in their locality less well. Their friends are drawn from further afield. They still want to mix with people who are like-minded, but ‘like-minded’ are less often people from the same place or the same social background. ‘Like-minded’ are people who share common interests…communities of place are giving way to networks of interest…”
This is increasingly true of my experience.
In my Australasian context, immigration has become a very divisive and evocative political issue, increasingly so over the last 18months. However, with movies like “East is West” and “Bend It Like Beckham,” or a novel like Zadie Smith’s, “White Teeth” (together with it’s British TV adaptation) serving as a visual backdrop, I’m increasingly wondering if "immigration" might effectively serve as a metaphor or motif which has currency as a way of contextualizing and thinking about church as a “pilgrim people;” a dislocated or exiled people who live in particular cultural, social, and political contexts, but within those contexts are not fully at home? Might it serve as a way of talking about missional engagement with culture, whether to affirm, to hold a neutral position with regards too, or to subvert? Certainly it could be used as a metaphor with which to talk about conversation between generations, each new generation in effect having a role as “immigrants” within the cultural contexts and practices of both earlier and following generations? “Immigration” then becomes a “bridging” metaphor; a way of talking about me leaving my world to enter yours, or you leaving yours and entering mine. “Immigration” is a way of holding together distinct ‘worlds.’ “Immigration” provides a way of talking about the character of “missionaries and as a way of thinking about the reaction of culture to church and the response of church to culture.
And so you now have four “moko” to reflect upon, and I’m sure there are more you would want to ‘sketch’ out and name as the ‘body art” of emerging expressions of church and being church where you’re reading this. Feel free to imagine, to listen, to look, to dream, and to become the church of your God-gifted dreams.
FOOTNOTES
For more about “Moko” you might want to read Mark Kopua’s "More About Moko".
Whale Rider.
See Jonnybaker's blog post of Monday, July 7th 2003.
See Mike Riddell, "Threshold of the Future: Reforming the Church in the Post-Christian West," SPCK, 1998, p. 169.
A wonderful story about responses to ‘change’ is told in the little book, “Who Moved the Cheese” by Dr Spencer Johnson. Every leader should read it. Read it to your church instead of a sermon. I challenge you!
For “Church” as “boiler rooms” go here. Also visit here.
See Mike Riddell, Beyond Ground Zero.
One example is the on-line conversation facilitated by Australian “Signposts” (Phil and Danielle McCredden). Individual church communities have chosen to utilise ‘on-line’ spaces within which members of those churches can share their experiences and learning. example.
For examples of blogsites visit mine. Other sites worth regularly visiting are those created by my two fellow “Kiwi’s” (shameless plug) Steve Taylor and Rachel Cunliffe. You will find lots of other great links from these three sites.
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