Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada Emerging Spirit @ The United Church of Canada

Take a look at the trailer, or "sizzle reel", that WonderCafe is pitching to media outlets in hopes of making a full-length documentary on the positive spiritual based street art movement happening around the world.

Brought to you by Wondercafe.ca and First United Church Mission, the Paint Your Faith project hit the city of Vancouver in April 2010 with a stunning display of contemporary street art.

Working as collective, four internationally acclaimed aerosol artists -- Faith47 (South Africa), Titi Freak (Brazil), Peeta (Italy), and Vancouver's own Indigo -- brought their own expressions of faith to a unique and inspiring mural on the city's Downtown Eastside. As it was being created, the mural became a sign of hope for the DTES, bringing together the community in new and surprising ways.

For more information, see www.paintyourfaith.ca, or you can visit the Paint Your Faith Vancouver mural at 55-57 W. Hastings Street, across from the Woodwards Building.

Photo: Mathieu Struck*

The modern age was ushered in by the Enlightenment (mid-1600s to early 1800s). One characteristic of the Enlightenment framework was a rejection of tradition and religious sources of authority in favour of reason and knowledge. Over time, the modern age became wed to the idea of progress and the conviction that science had the ability to make things bigger and better and to solve any problem that arose. The deep assumption was that if and when we could control the natural world we would continue to grow in wealth, health, and leisure.

In the modern age religion became private - a personal matter between ourselves and God, a principle enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Reason and knowledge were part of the public realm - this is the time of the rise in public schools, universities, political parties, as well as capitalism. In the modern age we sought certainty, freedom, and progress.

Most of us in the church were born and raised in the modern age or by modern-age parents. At most, we will be students of the postmodern age.

Postmodernity refers to the progressive loss of confidence in the Enlightenment framework and process. Since 1945 the air has gone out of the Enlightenment balloon, with rapid deflation during the 1970s and 1980s.

Postmodernity has given birth to Green politics and anti-consumerism. Anxiety and fear seem to be more prevalent, perhaps a result of declining confidence that we can solve the challenges ahead - short and long term - through using science and reason. In the postmodern world, knowledge is no longer seen as inherently good. Alongside this culture of suspicion has also grown a new emphasis and delight in inclusivity and wonder. 

As society moves along the shift from modern to postmodern, what are some of the implications for the church and ministry?

Excerpted from the Emerging Spirit booklet, "Congregational Ministry in a New World," which can be downloaded here in full, along with study questions (log in required).

*Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mathieustruck/212751235/

The Christian church seeks to be a community rooted in faith and engaged in the world.

We root ourselves in faith through worship, spiritual practices, caring for each other, and learning together. We yearn to share our faith with those we love and with a world that is hungry for spiritual food. We want our own lives to have meaning, to make a difference for good in God's world.

All of this means that God calls us into relationship with the world, all of the world, not just those people who look like us and think like us. We are called to understand this world in which God calls us to minister.

The world has changed! And you know this.

We no longer live in a world where:

Share is a website which offers how-to advice on starting, developing, and sustaining fresh expressions of church based on shared experiences. Sponsored by Fresh Expressions and ChurchArmy, two organizations based in the United Kingdom which work toward the development and renewal of Christian community, the Share site is a resource for those involved with innovative expressions of church.

Among Share's growing list of resources includes a helpful overview of café-style churches which are growing in popularity in many places. Share looks at a variety of café / church hybrids, including café-style events on church premises, Christian events in commercial cafés, commercial cafés run by Christians, and doing mission within existing cafés.

See the Share website for the full inspiring collection of church café ideas, as well as additional fresh expression takes on rural ministry, workplace church, children's ministry, on-line fresh expressions, and more.

If you haven't done so already, please check out this video stream from The United Church of Canada's 85th Anniversary service, held June 20, at the More Franchises event in Toronto. 

You can also check out the insights from More Franchise participants on the Twitter stream #ucc85 or #mf2.

When aerosol artist Chor Boogie, who was part of the original Paint Your Faith event in Toronto, showed up at the recent Vancouver PYF event, no one expected him to paint. He had come to Vancouver to share his art at the Paint Your Faith show at Ayden Gallery and connect with PYF Vancouver artists Indigo, Titi Freak, Faith 47, and Peeta along the way while they worked on the new PYF mural.

While at the mural site, Chor also connected with Sandra Severs of First United Church Mission, which was co-sponsoring PYF Vancouver along with WonderCafe.ca. Chor asked if he could paint a section of First United's roof and Sandra said "Go for it!" And soon Chor, along with the Paint Your Faith documentary team, were climbing several levels of ladders to reach the steeple of First United Church, high above the Downtown Eastside.

(continued after the jump, click here)

If you are falling short on ideas to attract new people to the church (during the week) you might want to look to what people are doing online.

• Digital Photography
• Social Networking
• Genealogy

In fact, the main group that is extremely active online and are into social networking today are the retiring Baby Boomers. What a great audience to attract to your church. Many of them missed the computer age, or maybe worked in a place with a computer at a "dumb terminal" and only learned what the specific work programs required and nothing more. What a great target audience to attract. Of course there are the seniors who are the biggest buyers of laptops and want to find their old friends...dead or alive! Hey, I am not joking here.

The Paint Your Faith Vancouver mural is almost ready for its big reveal, Wednesday, April 28. Even though it has rained nearly every production day (this is Vancouver after all!), the artists have been working hard right through it. 

Ann Shin, the director of a documentary being shot about the project, wrote on the Paint Your Faith blog, "Faith47 is almost finished her inspiring centre piece for the wall mural. Indigo’s 9-foot image is finished of a girl blowing a dandelion, the fluff transforms as you follow it across the mural. Titi Freak is almost done his favela/people paintings, and Peeta has started on his second piece." 

The artists' collaborative work is a stunning, one-of-a-kind mural which is already sparking conversations about the meaning of faith among passersby in the neighbourhood and those who hear about the mural on-line. When the Vancouver Sun called it a "a large religion-themed mural" and an arts blog mistakenly reported the artists were all Christians, a discussion about faith, spirituality, and religion was sparked even among the artists themselves. 

Sojourners has posted a provocative article from their May 2010 issue asking, "Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only?" The discussion about this article on Sojourners' website, as well as on several other blogs, raises important questions and insights about diversity and the emerging church. Through these conversations, roiling at times, some potential new directions and areas of growth are beginning to emerge. And as they do, more attention is being given to the reality that the emerging church is much bigger than just what is happening in North America or the handful of well-known writers and speakers who are associated with the movement.

"Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only?"
By Soong-Chan Rah and Jason Mach, with responses by Julie Clawson, Brian McLaren, and Debbie Blue.

Sojourners has also posted a number of additional responses on their God's Politics blog, including Shane Claiborne, Soong-Chan Rah, Jarrod McKenna, and Julie Clawson.

Other blogs dicussing the article:

Tony Jones: Emergent's White Problem.

Tall Skinny Kiwi: The Future

It's been an interesting experience working for WonderCafe's Paint Your Faith project producing a wall of this size with artists who are in different parts of the world. In Toronto we had the artists Chor Boogie and Siloette flown in, Elicser and Mediah were local and when they came together they just hit the wall and it was quite spontaneous -- intense but truly original in the form of street art.

This time around in Vancouver our approach was quite different. The City of Vancouver has a tight program on street art and we had to apply for a permit, this required the submission of what the actual art work would look like on the wall we plan to create the art on. This meant reaching out to Faith47 in South Africa, Titi Freak in Sao Paulo, and Indigo, and Peeta in Vancouver and somehow coming together to plan how they would hit the wall together ahead of doing the work on-site and spontaneously.

As a producer, we are use to the many moving parts involved with creating projects the size of Toronto and Vancouver, there are so many variables and anything could go wrong, but we managed to bring an amazing crew of talent, work with so many great partners and supporters and we are all pretty excited about how the wall will look at 55-57 W. Hastings St.

It won't be news to anybody that the way we communicate has changed. In the new on-line medium shaped by social media our stories get heard based on the relationships we have formed. Communications that are based on the blunt force of a public relations machine are no longer going to be as effective as they once were. This is especially true for faith-based organizations. We can no longer assume people will listen to our message just because it comes from the church.

It's not about technology, it's about relationships. In the world of social media, this is how communication happens. And relationships are organic - they happen between humans, not machines. If we want people to pay attention to our message and share it with others, we have to build relationships with them. This is what "going viral" is all about.

Paint Your Faith | April 21-28, 2010
At the corner of W. Hastings & Abbott, Vancouver

Paint Your Faith is a remarkable project in which four celebrated artists are interpreting what faith means to them. We would love to know if any of their visions match yours.  

Paint Your Faith Vancouver brings together the top urban artists from Brazil, Canada, Italy, and South Africa to collaborate on a mural expressing what faith means to them - creating a public dialogue about how spirituality and street art can transform lives and change communities.

This edition of Paint Your Faith features the artists Faith47 (South Africa), Indigo (Canada), TitiFreak (Brazil), and Peeta (Italy).

We invite you to join us at the following events:

April 21-28 - Mural painting, W. Hastings & Abbott
April 24 - Gallery Opening: Ayden Gallery, 88 West Pender St. (2^nd fl.), 4-6 p.m.
April 28 - Mural completed. Press Event (10:00 a.m.)
May 1 - Youth Art Event, Ayden Gallery, 1-5 p.m.

Led by WonderCafe.ca, Paint Your Faith is part of The United Church of Canada's ongoing work to be a gathering place for people to share their expressions of life, faith, and spirituality. Paint Your Faith began as a bold new initiative to bring street art into that dialogue. Paint Your Faith Vancouver follows on the success of the original Paint Your Faith event in Toronto on September 19, 2009.

To learn more, visit the new website at PaintYourFaith.com.

Paint Your Faith Vancouver is brought to you by First United Church Mission, WonderCafe.ca, and the people of The United Church of Canada.

(Emerging Spirit has postcards for churches in the Vancouver area to use to promote this event. Please contact Emerging Spirit if interested.)

On the Faith & Leadership website, writer Lynn Gosnell offers a report on The Loft coffeehouse, an innovative missional community near San Antonio, Texas.

The Loft isn't just a coffeehouse, of course. It is also a church. The Loft is a core ministry of Riverside, a church community planted six years ago by San Antonio's Alamo Heights United Methodist Church. The church plant started with the coffeehouse, and eventually grew to include a food bank, thrift store, and a resource centre for the needy - and this was all before it held its first Sunday worship service. Now Riverside holds two services each Sunday with about 500 people, but there is no formal membership, and it owns no buildings, preferring to rent.

"Customers might not know that this is a church," said Tami Piatnik, who works on Saturdays. Indeed, The Loft displays few crosses or other signs of its affiliation with the United Methodist Church.

The Loft officially opened in early 2004, and it wasn't long before it became the meeting place the planters had envisioned, playing host to all sorts of people from the community. It was more than a year after the founding that they began Sunday services. "What we've found is what works best is a more organic way of life, where things are birthed spontaneously within the community," said Linda Marceau, a prayer leader with the church plant. "We're a very close-knit community, very familial."

Rev. David McNitzky, one of the original church planters of Riverside, says this set up "speaks to our point that accountability is through relationship more than rules and policies.... There's a longing here for transition for the church as a whole. From traditional, to contemporary Bible churches, to all these structures that are an organic way of doing church."

Rev. Scott Heare, the leader of the initiative, says the challenge "is how to lead during a dramatic transition in the church's history. How do you lead from the ideas of the traditional church that are so comfortable into an entirely new way of being churched?"

Read the full article on "The Coffeehouse Church" here.

Originally posted on Sojourners God's Politics blog.

One of the reasons the St. Francis quip, “Preach the gospel always, if necessary use words,” is so often quoted is because it pokes fun at Christians’ propensity to think sharing our faith is primarily about words. And for good reason. We study the words of the Bible. Our church services are filled with words. Our endless discussions on hot-button issues overflow with words. Even prayer, our most intimate form of communication, is nearly always reduced to mean those prayers we make with words.

But if mere words were enough, perhaps the Word we worship wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Sharing our faith can’t be reduced to rehearsed sound bite, but is something as complex, sensitive, and alive as we are.