Myths From The Margins: An Ethnographic Study of Methodist Pioneering in The UK by A Pioneer in Practice.

Dissertation
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Student no. 000609375
Dissertation - TMM42360 - Student no. 000609375
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Contents
Dissertation - TMM42360 - Student no. 000609375 .............................................................. 1
Contents ............................................................................................................................... 2
Figures .................................................................................................................................. 6
Word Count .......................................................................................................................... 8
Title ....................................................................................................................................... 9
Myths from the Margins: an Ethnographic Study of Methodist Pioneering in the UK by a
Pioneer in Practice. ........................................................................................................... 9
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 10
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. 11
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 12
Aims and objectives ........................................................................................................ 12
Motivation and rationale ................................................................................................. 12
Research Environment and The Church ........................................................................... 12
Introducing Marginalisation ............................................................................................ 13
Framing Pioneer Identity ................................................................................................. 15
Literature Review and Methodology ................................................................................... 19
Ethnographic Research Approach .................................................................................... 19
Action Reflection ............................................................................................................. 21

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The Four Voices of Theology............................................................................................ 23
The Pastoral Cycle ........................................................................................................... 24
Mutually Critical Dialogue ............................................................................................... 25
‘Un-Knowing’ - The Transcendental Approach ................................................................. 26
Reflective Art .................................................................................................................. 29
Critical Realism ................................................................................................................ 30
Methodological Approach ............................................................................................... 32
Methodological Considerations ....................................................................................... 34
Approaching the Field of Research .................................................................................. 34
Handling the Data ........................................................................................................... 35
Reflective Practice ............................................................................................................... 36
The Reflective Process ..................................................................................................... 36
Developing the Themes ................................................................................................... 36
Exploring Theological Fusion ........................................................................................... 37
Recognising Marginality .................................................................................................. 38
Understanding Pioneer Identity....................................................................................... 40
Theological Analysis ............................................................................................................ 42
Analysing Theological Fusion ........................................................................................... 42
Theological Fusion and Prophetic Dialogue ..................................................................... 45
Fusing Counter-Culture and Royal Consciousness ............................................................ 48
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Transcendental Uncertainty in the Wilderness ................................................................ 52
Guests from the Margins ................................................................................................. 57
Methodists and the Marginalised Kingdom ..................................................................... 59
Hosting within the Margins ............................................................................................. 61
Pioneer Identity Mix ........................................................................................................ 65
Critical Analysis ................................................................................................................... 70
Ethnographic Research Approach .................................................................................... 70
Action Reflection ............................................................................................................. 71
Theological Reflection through ‘The Four Voices’ ............................................................ 73
Pastoral Cycle .................................................................................................................. 75
Mutually Critical Dialogue ............................................................................................... 75
The Transcendental Approach ......................................................................................... 77
Creating a Reflective Montage from Analysis of the Data ................................................ 79
Critical Realism ................................................................................................................ 81
Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 83
Reflective Art as Prophetic Voice ..................................................................................... 83
Critical Realism in Reflective Practice .............................................................................. 85
The Margins as Pioneer Identity ...................................................................................... 88
From the Margins to Institutional Change ....................................................................... 89
Prophetic Dialogue .......................................................................................................... 91
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Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 92
Appendixes ....................................................................................................................... 108
Methodological Considerations ......................................................................................... 109
The Reflective Process ....................................................................................................... 111
Timeline of research .......................................................................................................... 112
Reflective Montage ........................................................................................................... 113
Organising Data for Multimedia Production .................................................................. 113
Production Decisions through Reflection ....................................................................... 114
Presenting the Data as a Reflective Montage ................................................................ 118
Reflective Montage ....................................................................................................... 120
Release Forms ................................................................................................................... 121
Research Interview Transcripts ......................................................................................... 134
Interview: Lou Davis – Pioneer interview ....................................................................... 134
Interview: Eryl Parry ...................................................................................................... 139
Interview: Kester Brewin ............................................................................................... 147
Interview: Ric Stott ........................................................................................................ 161
Interview: Ian Mobsby ................................................................................................... 170
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Figures
Figure 1 - The Engel Scale of Spiritual Decision - James Engel, The Engel Scale of Spiritual
Decision (2012) 17
Figure 2 - The Gray Matrix - Frank Gray, The Gray Matrix (2012) 17
Figure 3 - Participant Observation - Michael Angrosino, Doing Ethnographic and
Observational Research (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008) 20
Figure 4- The Action-Reflection Cycle - Cameron, et al, Talking about God in Practice
(London: SCM, 2010) p.50. 22
Figure 5 - The Four voices of Theology - Cameron, et al, Talking about God in Practice
(London: SCM, 2010). p.54. 23
Figure 6 - The Pastoral Cycle - Zoe Bennett, Your MA In Theology, A Study Skills
Handbook. (London: SCM, 2014) p.62. 24
Figure 7 - Contextual Theology - Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992) p.166. 25
Figure 8 - Names for incultural theology - Stephen B. Bevans, An Introduction to Theology in
Global Perspective (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2009) p. 164. 26
Figure 9 - Headings for Methodological process 35
Figure 10 - Reflection Funnels 36
Figure 11 - Royal Consciousness, Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001) p.30 49
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Figure 12- Model for Inclusion and Expression leading to Social Change - Gavin Mart and
Mark Sampson, Engedi Arts: Demonstrating our Impact, A Transformational Index Analysis
(2015) p.3. 84
Figure 13 -Pioneering as Fusion 89
Figure 14 - Headings and themes as Isolated sound clips video editing software 113
Figure 15 - Data as organised in thematic timeline in video editing software 114
Figure 16 - Date as an Audio only version in Audio editing software 117
Figure 17 - Merged audio montage with accompanied music tracks in Audio editing software
118
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Word Count
Abstract 75
Acknowledgements 19
Introduction 1220
Literature Review and Methodology 2938
Reflective Practise 1196
Theological Analysis 6381
Critical Analysis 2728
Conclusions 1726
Total 16285
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Title
Myths from the Margins: an Ethnographic Study of Methodist
Pioneering in the UK by a Pioneer in Practice.
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Abstract
A theologically reflective study exploring contemporary Methodist Pioneering. The piece
uses five case studies, exploring the work of pioneers working in the margins.
Discussing Theological Fusion, Marginality and Pioneering Identity through an analytic
reflection on pioneering as Guest, Host, Counter-Culture, Context and Transcendental Art,
the researcher uses ethnography for data collection.
From these writings, an abstract multimedia piece emerges, expressing strands of the
critical analysis and the reflective process, as an artistic method of reflection.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to my tutor Cathy Ross for being so challenging and equally flexible with me in
producing this research.
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Introduction
Aims and objectives
The aim of the research is ethnologically to explore the role of pioneer ministers and their
outworking of contextual theology in practice. The writer intends to demonstrate the
complexities and struggles that the pioneer faces in creating spaces for pioneering
communities to develop prophetic dialogue.
Motivation and rationale
What are the myths a pioneer must face in their mission? The writer explores dangerous
and hidden memories, unearthing some of the Emerging Church’s distant dreams. Through
theological reflection, the process of creating a mutually critical dialogue emerges from the
margins.
Research Environment and The Church
The writer avoids being tied down to a particular research question, 1 as discussed in the
Methodological Approach, and therefore ethnographically explores the working life of UK
1
Mike Crang and Ian Cook, Doing Ethnographies (London: Sage Publications, 2007)
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pioneers. Adopting ‘participant observation’, through the theological lens of a ‘treasure-
hunter’, the writer focuses on the experiences of the pioneer in practise.
The ethnographer,2 cannot rely on any prior knowledge, assumed context or shared intrinsic
beliefs of spiritual understandings. Communities that reflect effectively within the gospel
narrative; are communities that critically analyse the impact of the oppression within which
they find themselves.3 A community that finds its own voice through prophetic dialogue
becomes a community empowered to liberate themselves.4
Introducing Marginalisation
Pioneering is located within the landscape of the ‘Emerging Church’. The emerging church is
born from within the fault lines of a widespread cultural shift amongst the traditional church
ecclesia.5 Pioneers create communities of faith within cultures of change, and within
unknown wilderness-like environments6. This takes time and requires a developing theory
‘on-the-hoof’, the experience as a whole can feel unnerving and the pioneer may feel
marginalised. They must have skills to hold open spaces for open discussion and dialogue,
2
Stephanie Taylor, Ethnographic Research, ed. by Stephanie Taylor (London: Sage Publications, 2002)
3
Gerald A. Arbuckle, Refounding the Church (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993)
4
Stephen B Bevans, Models Of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2013)
5
Steve Taylor, The Out Of Bounds Church? (El Cajon, CA: Emergent YS, 2005) p. 161.
6
Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, Emerging Churches (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005)
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these spaces might be places where the perception is that the pioneer is ‘making it up as
they go along’.7
Pioneering can lead to dialogue that directly challenges the establishment when dialogue
becomes prophetic in its nature. 8 Calling in the new, pioneers can find themselves traversing
a fine balance of sodal and modal9 ministry and navigating these boundaries can be a tricky
and dangerous task. There are many cases of pioneering ministries becoming marginalised
by their sending establishment when the pioneer unearths a dissenting voice. 10
For Nietzsche11 and neo-Nietzscheans such as Foucault,12 exclusion is often evil perpetrated
by the good and barbarity produced by civilisation. Such sweeping generalisations are
however, contested by modern critics such as Volf,13 who argues that it is impossible for all
walls of central civilisation to be torn down in the pursuit of the ideal. However, for the
pioneer who engages in radical acts of dissent that directly challenge the establishment,
7
John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007) p. 129.
8
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001) p. 116.
9
Ralph Winter, The Two Structures of God's Redemptive Mission (South Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library,
1995)
10
Gerald Arbuckle, Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993)
11
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New York: Random House, 1995)
12
Michel Foucault, Madness And Civilization (New York: Random House US, 2013).
13
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion And Embrace: A Theological Exploration Of Identity, Otherness, And
Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008)
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there ought to be an accompanying health warning: exclusion and marginalisation are often
the chosen defence mechanisms of the status quo.
Framing Pioneer Identity
Vincent Donovan, who argues that that not all evangelism is about leading individuals to the
gospel, holds “Refounding the cultural kernels of the gospel”, as evangelisation14. Donavan
talks about bringing the ‘chips’ of the gospel to the culture and letting them fall where they
may, evangelisation in this sense is essentially unpredictable. Pioneer ministry is about the
missionary carrying a sense of a story and unlocking the threads of that story within the
culture where they find themselves.
“The conversion, or metanioa, involved is a conversion of both the evangelist and the
evangelised”.15 In this mission-praxis, the pioneer missionary travels with a willingness to be
‘changed’ in themselves and in their own understanding of the gospel, a kind of ‘Un-
Knowing’. Carrying the disposition to be in the wrong, they do not claim to have the
copyright on the religious narrative, they come as guest and they are prepared to listen.
14
Vincent J. Donovan, The Church In The Midst Of Creation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989) p. 125.
15
Vincent J. Donovan, The Church In The Midst Of Creation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989) p. 125.
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Pioneering ministry practices the unearthing of spirituality, continually attempting to create
dialogue between people and faith, by working in new and fresh spaces exploring where
God is at work outside of the traditional boundaries of the established Church.
There is a process called ‘not-knowing’,16 which helps the pioneer minister to begin to do
this, often through a ‘wilderness-like’ experience. Pope Francis states “If the Christian…
[wants] everything to be clear and safe, they will find nothing… Those who today always look
for disciplinarian solutions, those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists –
they have a static and inward view of things.”17 This study argues that the bi-product of
unknowing, is the acknowledgement of potential new relationships, drawing the pioneer
towards marginalised individuals.
Relationships within this new and marginalised context are vital for the development of
pioneering mission practise. Any pioneer missionary can expect to require skills in fostering
and maintaining ongoing relationships with individuals that emerge out of missional
practice. The fruit of this labour develops slowly over time and genuine relationships are
key to helping people up the Engel scale 18 [Figure 1], which can be used as a rough guide as
to how spiritual growth might develop.
16
Gerald Arbuckle, Fundamentalism at Home and Abroad (Collegeville Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2017) p. xiv
17
Pope Francis, "A Big Heart Open To God: An Interview With Pope Francis", America Magazine, 2018
<https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2013/09/30/big-heart-open-god-interview-pope-francis> [Accessed
6 July 2018].
18
James Engel, The Engel Scale of Spiritual Decision (2012)
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Figure 1 - The Engel Scale of Spiritual Decision - James Engel, The Engel Scale of Spiritual Decision (2012)
It is vital the missionary holds a sense of ‘unknowing’ in order for the spiritual seeker to
develop their own faith and their own appropriate scale of spiritual decision. To assume
that the framework itself is the absolute truth denies the possibility of finding new forms of
spirituality as context and culture will always dictate an approach towards the mission field.
Figure 2 - The Gray Matrix - Frank Gray, The Gray Matrix (2012)
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A ‘pioneer ministry’ might fall within the far, bottom left section of the Gray Matrix, 19
[Figure 2] perhaps antagonistic in disposition, the community may know nothing of the
gospel. Creating dialogue is key to founding new relationships and the pioneer can expect
to require skills in maintaining ongoing mutuality with individuals; however estranged the
environment may feel.
19
Frank Gray, The Gray Matrix (2012)
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Literature Review and Methodology
Ethnographic Research Approach
I adopted an ethnographic methodology for my research, through my interviews I am ‘in’
and ‘of’ the field of research. Michael Angrosino argues that, “Ethnography is the art and
science of a describing a human group, its institutions, interpersonal behaviours, material
productions, and beliefs.” 20 Ethnography allows observation of others by being a
‘participant’ working the same field. As a method of social study, I adopt participant
observation based on research of Stephen Schensul et al:21
- to identify relationships with informants;
- to get the feel for how things are organised and prioritised
- to become known to the cultural members, thereby easing facilitation of the
research process; and
- to be a source of questions for participants
20
Michael Angrosino, Doing Ethnographic and Observational Research (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008)
p. 53.
21
Stephen L Schensul, Jean J Schensul and Margaret Diane LeCompte, Essential Ethnographic Methods (Walnut
Creek [etc.]: Altamira Press, 1999) p. 91.
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As a pioneer, I can adopt the position of participant observer, which increase the study's
validity according to Bernard Russell:22
- Being onsite over time, familiarises the researcher to the community
- Reduces the incidence of ‘reactivity’
- Helps the researcher develop questions that make sense
- Gives the researcher a better understanding of what is happening in the culture,
lending credence to one's interpretations of the observation
- Participant observation enables the researcher to collect both quantitative and
qualitative data through surveys and interviews.
Figure 3 - Participant Observation - Michael Angrosino, Doing Ethnographic and Observational Research (London: SAGE
Publications Ltd, 2008)
22
H. Russell Bernard, Research Methods In Anthropology, 5th edn (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Group,
2011).
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I positioned myself between ‘observer as participant’, and ‘complete participant’ [Figure 3],
and during my Theological Analysis, I add to the data as a complete participant. I collected
the data by sensing how the various environments made me feel. To understand my posture
or disposition I paid attention to who I was in the environment or how I was entering into
the culture that was not my own. I was adopting the posture of ‘entering another’s garden’
and being a theological ‘treasure hunter’.23
Action Reflection
It is important to map out how reflective cycles steer our understanding and make sense of
the emerging dialogue. The quote Vanhoozer borrows from Chesterton sets the scene
about the need for mystery and the imagination, as opposed to strategy in our quest to
understand a creator God; “Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed
insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do.”24 Using Bevan’s
‘Transcendental model’25 as a conversation partner, I map out the literature and theological
analysis using a simplified version of the ‘Theological Action Research’ [TAR] model.26 The
23
Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Prophetic Dialogue: Reflections on Christian Mission Today.
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2011)

24
Chesterton in Kevin J Vanhoozer, 'One Rule to Rule Them All', in Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an
Era of World Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006) p.88.

25
Stephen Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992)
26
Cameron, et al, Talking about God in Practice (London: SCM, 2010) p.49.
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Action-Reflection Cycle (Figure 4), adds rigour to the reflection process, adding a theological
element into ‘experience’ and ‘reflection’.
Reflection Learning
Experience Action
Figure 4- The Action-Reflection Cycle - Cameron, et al, Talking about God in Practice (London: SCM, 2010) p.50.
This TAR approach includes the ‘Four Voices of Theology’ as a framework for understanding
where our theologies come from, how they relate to each other, and helps to explain how
truth is being revealed through the ‘Spirit’.
The reflection becomes a piece of gathered experience data, formed from the social
sciences and created through interaction with practitioners from within a cultural context.
The reflection as a piece of ‘data’ is given further weight because it written from within an
intentionally theological context. The Reflective Montage explores what a theological idea
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means to a contemporary context by creating a dialogue between other disciplines including
the Arts, Sociology and Philosophical concepts.
Normative Formal
Theology: Theology:
Scripture
The theology of the
Creeds
theologian
Official Church
Dialogue with other
Teaching
disciplines
Litergies
Espoused Operant
Theology: Theology:
The theology The theology
embedded within a embedded within
group's articulation the actual practises
of its beliefs of a group
Figure 5 - The Four voices of Theology - Cameron, et al, Talking about God in Practice (London: SCM, 2010). p.54.
The Four Voices of Theology
The Four Voices model (Figure 5) analyses the reflective montage to see how the theologies
within the reflection have formed. Where there is ‘Espoused’ theology in the piece, this is
the practitioner expressing who they are and how they believe. Where the reflection is
‘Operant’, the practitioner is suggesting how they might practise theology. ‘Formal
Theologies’ calls for dialogue between the disciplines’ ‘belief ‘and ‘practise’. ‘Normative
Theology’ outlines how the piece fits into the wider church’s liturgy and teaching.
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Using reflective pieces as data allows us to reflect critically on them as a learning experience
and as theoretical text, which have developed out of the experiences within the community
of which we are a part.27
The Pastoral Cycle
The pastoral cycle (Figure 6) focuses in on a deeper engagement with the reflective process
and the role of pioneers within the Church. The pastoral cycle analyses on the sustained
connection and engagement combined with the theoretical text and the role of pioneers.
engagement
with the renewed
theological practise
experience
analysis of
that experience
experience
description
of that
experience
Figure 6 - The Pastoral Cycle - Zoe Bennett, Your MA In Theology, A Study Skills Handbook. (London: SCM, 2014) p.62.
27
Zoe Bennett, Your MA in Theology, A Study Skills Handbook (London: SCM, 2014) p.61.
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There is the expectation for the practitioner to understand their motivations for the pastoral
cycle’s use. The Scriptures help individuals recognise their own situation using a gospel
narrative relevant to their own cultural context. Consequently, Bevans’ Transcendental
Model28 aims to interpret the scriptures from a person’s own point of view and language.
This becomes very evident in the Theological Analysis, particularly in with the interview with
Ric Stott.
Mutually Critical Dialogue
In 'Models of Contextual Theology' Steve Bevans says no 'one size fits all' expression of
theology; there is only contextual theology. Contextual theology accounts for one's
experience of the past and experience of the present, which together form a mutually
critical dialogue.
Experience of the Present:

Experience of the Past:
Individual/Communal
Scripture and
experience
Tradition
Culture
Mutually Critical Dialogue Social location

Social change
Figure 7 - Contextual Theology - Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992) p.166.
28
Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992)
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Whilst mapping this theory in the wider body of theological research, it is important to note
the other names for this kind of theology:
Figure 8 - Names for incultural theology - Stephen B. Bevans, An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective (Maryknoll,
N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2009) p. 164.
Within all of these ideas, context points beyond place to include social location and practical
outworking. 29
‘Un-Knowing’ - The Transcendental Approach
In Bevans’ ‘Transcendental’ approach, the focus is on the person articulating the text rather
than the content of the text. The individual must come to a place of understanding the
scripture and making a decision within their own heart rather than grasping or maintaining
29
Stephen B. Bevans, An Introduction To Theology in Global Perspective (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2009) p.
164.
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objectively to some 'other' or holding to something which is outside of themselves. As
Lonergan states, "Genuine objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity. Objective
knowledge, knowledge of the real, can only be achieved by attaining to authentic
subjectivity"30
The focus on the individual is effective in multicultural or intercultural situations; it is within
one’s own context where one encounters God. For Bevans context is fundamentally good
and trustworthy. Being context specific helps to develop one of the key elements in the
transcendental model, synthesising with ‘Practical theology’ at this point with references to
Elaine Graham et al, who develops the lovely idea of theology as “turning life into text”.31
These ‘living documents’ or ‘heartfelt texts’ become how we communicate what it means to
be human, a theology of the heart32 begins to emerge. It is less systematically ‘top down’,
and more born of the people from the ground up, to use the language of liberation
theology.
This leads to the argument that one cannot know nor have an understanding of faith
without first having some kind of experience on which to base a subjective understanding.
This is an initial critique of transcendental theology or the concept of 'Pure Reason', which is
Kant's theory upon which Bevans is building the model. Kant argues that, "All our
30
Bernard Lonergan in Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992) p.182.
31
Elaine Graham, Theological Reflection, Methods (London: SCM, 2005) p.18.
32
Kevin J Vanhoozer, 'One Rule to Rule Them All', in Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World
Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006) p.89.
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knowledge begins with experience—there’s no doubt about that. How else would our faculty
of knowledge be stirred into activity if not by objects that stimulate our senses?" 33
Bevans develops Kant’s argument, suggesting that what is important is the authenticity of
the believer in context. You cannot split the knower from the known and “if the truth looks
different here, you have to examine it here”. 34 In theologically reflective pieces of art, an
authenticity often comes through clearly. Words are often heartfelt and although there is a
tendency towards a strong call to social action, the experience of faith is exposed by the
artist. In my interview with Eryl Parry, she talks about how she hosted the Tracy Emin
artwork commission in Liverpool Cathedral. The words used in Emin’s piece are the known
experience of the writer from the context within which she is writing. There is an inherent
compulsion for the reader, and somehow the truth behind the experience has a strong
attraction to human nature.
In Bevans’ transcendental model, a revelation of God is ‘perceived’ as personal witness, and
is ‘encountered’ in a personally subjective experience for the practitioner.35 One reads the
bible and discovers others who struggle with the presence of God. In reflective art we find
uncertainty or unknowing, a combination of sympathy and antipathy, we may hear voices
with which we resonate or not.
33
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Cosimo Classics. 2008) p.1.
34
Soskice in Zoe Bennett, Your MA In Theology, A Study Skills Handbook (London: SCM, 2014) p.59.
35
Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder, Constants in Context (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004) p. 352
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Reflective Art
Reflective art is composed in the ‘vernacular’, and emphasises the argument that no one
language or culture has the monopoly on God 36. Vanhoozer aligns his theological method
with ‘out-workings of practical theology,’ quoting Escobar: “The time of European and
Western Monologue is over.”37 Vanhoozer argues that:
“[…] it takes many interpretive communities spanning many times, places and
cultures to appreciate fully the rich, thick meaning of Scripture: call it ‘Pentecostal
plurality’”. Practical theologians such as Volf and Bass complement this argument by
saying “Christian practises address needs that are basic to human existence […] when
they participate in such Christian practises people are taking part in God’s work of
creation and thereby growing into deeper knowledge of God and creation. This is
something that is necessarily done with other people, across generations and
cultures.” 38
36
Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006)

37
Samuel E Escobar, The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 2003) p.136.

38
Miroslav Volf, Dorothy C. Bass, Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life. (Grand Rapids: Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002) p. 21.
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Here, Volf and Bass are building on the reasoning of Alasdair MacIntyre’s re-evaluation of
contemporary moral philosophy in ‘After Virtue’.39 He argued that Westernised morality
theories often fail to admit to being rational, and that they fail to account for teleological
purpose, which was evident in ancient philosophy prior to the enlightenment.
Who is to say that our modern faith frameworks are to be trusted? How do we know what
we think we know? After all, Volf and Bass’ quote goes further to outline that when people
participate in the practises of God’s creation, “[…] they always do so imperfectly and
sometimes in such a distorted manner that such practises become evil.” Who is to say when
one’s interpretation of God is no longer valid?
Critical Realism
Hiebert40 develops theoretical ways of identifying how hermeneutical communities discern
the realities, truths or how we come to form our worldviews. He states that ‘conditioning’
happens through communities and understandings constructed over time, worldviews do
not just exist because someone says they should.
39
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2007)
40
Paul G. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change (Grand
Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2008) p.274.
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Our understandings of worldviews, extracted from the historical experiences of our lives,
are tested in the community of faith. Analysed in real life, we refer to our TAR model to see
how critical realism aids us with our reflection and new learning. We offer this learning to
the wider community of faith to realise new actions that help us gather fresh experiences.
Hiebert reinforces Vanhoozer’s argument for ‘Pentecostal plurality’, and recognises the
inadequacy of language to encapsulate reality. The only way we create our images of reality
is to use language and other sign systems to paint a picture of our belief systems and shared
faith understanding. I discuss my findings on critical realism as part of the Critical Analysis.
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Methodological Approach
In ‘Doing Ethnographies’, Crang and Cook argue research projects can encounter a paralysis
or disconnection between what they set out to achieve and the results they uncover,
because the research is conducted within strict boundaries of a formal and formulaic
methodological process. 41 A formal process might involve:
- Stage 1: Topic and research question
- Stage 2: Literature Review
- Stage 3: Methodology
- Stage 4: Data Collection
- Stage 5: Data Analysis
- Stage 6: Writing and Editing 42
They suggest that such a process often goes wrong when things often don’t go to plan in the
research stage, meaning the writing becomes an attempt at shoe-horning the research
findings into the proposed research questions. The results are disjointed or weakened and
very evident to the reader who also has to deal with the fallout of a poor overall result.
Instead, they propose:
41
Mike Crang and Ian Cook, Doing Ethnographies (London: Sage Publications, 2007) p.2.
42
Cameron, H and C Duce, Researching Practice in Ministry and Mission; A Companion. (London: SCM, 2013) p.5.
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- mixing up: reading, doing, writing from the start to gradually build montage.
- Undertake detailed preparation to deal with twists and turns.
- Make ongoing attempts to rethink and rewrite research plans ‘on-the-hoof’.
- Refuse to believe that you should be able to state exactly what your research
question is about, because it will change43
My starting point was to set up a series of recorded interviews with pioneers. I hold
questions towards them lightly, but I allow them to flow or riff over their own experiences.
It is out of this methodological ‘montage-building’44 approach that I form the basis of any
emerging ‘question’ or ‘answer’.
Claire Alcock suggests modifying and the amount of material reported on, and looking for
patterns in the data, which help the reader to pull together ideas and threads of narrative. 45
The research provides “a deepening understanding of the experience we are having as
pioneers,” 46 and the researcher should be aware that all research is political because we are
a part of it; it is never wholly neutral or objective.
43
Mike Crang and Ian Cook, Doing Ethnographies (London: Sage Publications, 2007) p.150.
44
Mike Crang and Ian Cook, Doing Ethnographies (London: Sage Publications, 2007) p.150
45
Rev Claire Alcock – Research Methods, Class Handout (UK - CMS class notes: 2015)
46
Rev Dr Susie Snyder – Research Methods, Class Handout (UK - CMS class notes: 2015)
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Methodological Considerations
These are outlined in the Appendix: Methodological Considerations.
Approaching the Field of Research
I undertook the five interviews with pioneers because of their position within the story of
the emerging church and I explore the heart of pioneering through their experiences. I avoid
questions that focused on the logistical or managerial workings of being a pioneer,
unearthing the feelings that are involved in ministry.
I steer away from a defined set of questions other than to open up a conversation around
the interviewee’s experience of pioneering. I let a montage of ideas arise from the interview
and found the questions as they emerged. Interviews were recorded on camera to develop
a video montage of the ideas, or I could take out just the audio part of the recording.
I reflected back on the interviews, by listening to them in my headphones and let the
themes develop over a series of weeks and months. I transcribed the interviews and
highlighted areas categorising the information into threads and interesting themes.
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Handling the Data
To build a montage of the data, I created headings to draw on interesting ideas that had
emerged. This process of recognising patterns in the data was suggested by Claire Alcock,47
and became a part of my methodological process. The headings give a range of issues faced
by the pioneer and demonstrate the characteristics a pioneer might possess. I used the
colour codes in the transcripts (see Appendixes: Research Interview Transcripts) to identify
where the interviewee had discussed the topic.
Figure 9 - Headings for Methodological process
47
Rev Claire Alcock – Research Methods, Class Handout (UK - CMS class notes: 2015)
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Reflective Practice
The Reflective Process
The Reflective Process, detailed in the Appendix, is analysed in the Theological Analysis
where I reflect on the interviews over time. I synthesise the interviews with five types of
pioneering that emerged out of the interviews and over a period of reflection, giving a clear
starting point for theological analysis: Pioneering as Guest, Host, Counter-Culturally, in
Context and through Transcendental Art
Developing the Themes
Figure 10 - Reflection Funnels
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To relate the discussion themes to my overarching research ideas, I funnel them
categorically into appropriate reflective groups. The diagram in Figure 10 helps to explain
how I developed my three main ideas for critical analysis.
Exploring Theological Fusion
The clearest topic emerging from the interviews, was the idea of ‘Fusion’; that the ‘arts’ had
played a large role in attracting the attention and interest of the individual. On reflection I
realise this is about ‘mutual dialogue’ and I explore this in depth in my analysis. The
reflection developed into an exploration of how an understanding of God transcends
through the arts, context and culture into the individual’s relationship with God. This
developed into a discussion between the relationship of the pioneer’s understanding of
contemporary culture and scriptural teaching and tradition.
The environments that the interviewees developed were all places that allow other
individuals to express their relationship with God through their gifting or their cultural
artistic expression. For example, Kester talks about the excitement he found in meeting
people connected in city professions through their creative careers and being able
collectively create meaningful expressions of worship with these people. In synthesis, Ian
talks about meeting and experiencing new forms of emerging worship environments around
the UK where fresh expressions of worship are discovered.
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Each of the pioneers belonged to communities that share the gift of being comfortable with
deconstructing what would otherwise be untouchable and sacred in established church
environments such as the sacraments, leadership or the liturgy. The permission to
experiment with the deconstruction of the sacred seems to be at the heart of the
pioneering spirit. This is not necessarily deconstruction for the sake of destruction (as Kester
points out), but rather to see what subjects remain in order to explore, analyse and move
towards breaking new ground. However, Ian warns that deconstruction can often lead to
nihilism if not checked, and this can result in a destructive path for the pioneer.
Recognising Marginality
Marginality seems also to be intrinsic to the character make-up of the pioneer, as like Jesus
they often recognise themselves in the third-party position of both ‘guest’ and ‘host’. There
is a distinct ability for the pioneer to be able to endure long periods of wilderness or ‘desert-
like’ experiences. Sitting or waiting in unknowing, swimming in deep waters not knowing
what lies beneath, staring out at the raging ocean as it crashes all around, emerge as
common themes in the interviews. The idea of waiting, and being prepared to wait presents
itself as a gift of the pioneer that is vital to the pioneering career prior to times of clear
direction.
Such imagery are of course direct biblical references, although much of today’s
contemporary church communities present strong counter-positions with a gospel of
prosperity, or clear direction, and being a part of winning communities. There appears to be
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a distinction to the realities of the pioneering journey that is able to survive in extreme
seclusion to that of the more contemporary outlook of modern churches where success and
direction seem paramount.
Furthermore, there seems to be a stark contrast to the experience of unknowing faced by
the pioneer, to the very current clear ‘pioneering pathway’ type ministries that are being
presented in the UK Church today. If pioneering is about unknowing and discomfort, being
‘guest’ and being ‘hosted’, than such pioneering would be more akin to the experience of
the monk than to the upwardly mobile modern day contemporary thriving church
community.
Ultimately, what is expressed through the character of a pioneer is a shared understanding
that pioneering is about unearthing where God is loving people in the community as both
‘guest’ and ‘host’. If the hardship is there, it is often because the hosting pioneer is
attempting to hold the door open for marginalised members of the community to
experience an expression of God’s love for them. The pioneer character appears to be able
to align a heart for the marginalised and the unfairly treated.
This ability to share compassion for those who do not necessarily fit in to the conventional
model of UK church perhaps stems from the pioneer’s experience of not fitting in
themselves, whether that is in secular society or within the church. As a guest, the pioneer is
able to adopt the disposition of Jesus as He invites Himself into the new space, to
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experience hospitality and to encourage the host that they are practicing the gifts of the
Kingdom of God.
Understanding Pioneer Identity
I arrived at an understanding of ‘Pioneer Identity’ by funnelling all of the experiences that
developed into the makeup of a pioneering mind-set. Although not an exhaustive list, the
funnel helped to shape some reflection on how the pioneer identity had formed throughout
their practice.
For Ric there is a concern around the meaning of the word ‘pioneer’, that it is almost a word
that means repossession or is about ‘taking over’. However, for Kester the idea of
pioneering into new areas through deconstruction is a far more positive outlook; that
pioneering is interested in exploring the new, potentially from the old or from the
traditional in order to arrive at a fresh place.
Each interview touched on the feelings and experiences of pioneering and each account felt
tinged with loneliness and hardship. Being deep into the gritty areas of life and community
seemed inevitable and warnings of a long slog and an inevitable isolation seemed a distinct
part of the pioneer call. The marginalised workplace of the pioneer rings through in the
accounts, as though the wilderness-like experience would be part-and-parcel of the
pioneering encounter.
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Marginalisation appears to be a strong disposition as often the pioneering ministry is not
only with those who are unchurched or second-generation-unchurched, but also those who
have themselves felt marginalised by the establishment at some stage in the past. Eryl’s
work at Liverpool Cathedral is new ground institutionally, even though it is located in the
metropolitan heart of the city. Kester describes Lonnie Frisbee’s rejection from the
Vineyard movement for his homosexuality in the late 70’s and 80’s and Ric discusses how
his art portrays commonly frowned upon expressions of God through intimacy and sexual
encounter.
The pioneer is developing ‘theology from below’ to understand a relationship with God
through the community’s expression. ‘Pioneering Identity’ has been a strong characteristic
of the emergent; that theology is not perceived, but conceived from within, born out of the
issues that emerge from within the community itself. 48 To this extent it is understandable
that pioneer ministry could be perceived as a threat to the established church, which more
commonly hands down theology through liturgy and common worship.
48
Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, Emerging Churches (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005) p. 41.
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Theological Analysis
To guide my theological analysis, I synthesised a New Testament theology of Pioneering in
practise through the examples of Jesus’ ministry, alongside my chosen discussion themes.
Analysing Theological Fusion
According to Bevans and Schroeder in ‘Constants and Context’, 49 context gives the
opportunity for prophetic dialogue to emerge, and thus appropriate mission to follow and
develop out of specific context. Here we can see ‘theological fusion’ beginning to take
shape. Where there is dialogue and respect for what God’s Spirit has already been at work
at in a community, the pioneer as missionary, is able to develop this work of inculturation
through witness and proclamation.
Ian Mobsby50 is a pioneer working within the context of as Priest in Charge at St Mary
Aldermary in the heart of the City of London. Working within the boundaries of the
structural life of the church, he has explored ways of developing ideas as to how the church
might address the context of the city and people who occupy its workspace.
49
50
Ian Mobsby, Pioneer in Practise (London, UK, 2015).
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Ian managed to establish regular lunchtime and after-work meditative reflection sessions
for highly stressed city workers using a monastic approach to create reflective space. He has
also managed to initiate the beginnings of a sustainable church café to open up the church
building and create a welcome for local workers and visiting tourists to the Guild Church. Ian
is embodying a prophetic dialogue, which as Bevans and Schroeder suggest needs to be a
threefold dialogue, with the poor, with culture and with other religions. 51
Ian’s background stems from the experiences he had as a young man with Marxist leanings
born out of a left-wing artistic family. Like Kester Brewin,52 Ian felt he had a spiritual
experience whilst at a gospel club where the DJ was playing ‘warehouse’ tunes amongst
alternative worship imagery. Ian spent time in Cathedrals, where he felt his exposure to the
arts, such as the ‘Chagall’ stained glass windows and theatrical midnight mass, unlocked
something deeply spiritual within him. He remembers, “Meeting God in the imagination
through the artistic and creative… I couldn’t name it, you know what I mean? it was
something that I couldn’t name but just something very deep.”53 Having since become an
ordained minister he feels the church ought to offer more contextually appropriate spaces
which welcome people in order that they might experience spirituality for themselves.
51
52
Kester Brewin, Pioneer in Practice Interview (London, UK, 2015).
53
Ian Mobsby, Pioneer in Practise (London, UK, 2015)
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Using ‘Theological Fusion’, we can analyse how Jesus is able to contextualise the gospel
across cultures that are not of His own. In John 4:1-42, Jesus encounters the ‘Women at the
Well’, and Jesus begins by breaking down the cultural divisions between Himself and the
women. He is able to completely disarm the women’s predisposition and quickly engage her
in a life-changing gospel narrative. In synthesis with the reflections of the Vatican’s
‘Dialogue and Proclamation’,54 Jesus gradually reveals the meaning of the Kingdom of God
to the women through ‘divine pedagogy’, respecting the women’s freedom and slowness to
believe.55
The contextual complexities surrounding the conversation between Jesus and the woman at
the well are countless; the fact she is a woman, that she is a sinner, that she was a
Samaritan, all add to layers of context which Jesus unpacks in order to declare who He is. In
the brief encounter, they exchange religious ideology and through Jesus’ prophetic
demonstration, He is able to contextualise comprehensibly that He is the Messiah,
Returning to town, the woman shares the encounter in her own language; she has been
inculturated into God’s Kingdom. In contrast to stereotypical gender marginalisation, it is
the women’s understanding of who Christ is that creates an enquiry and understanding in
54
"Dialogue-and-Proclamation:" Vatican. Va, 2018
<http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_19051991_
dialogue-and-proclamatio_en.html> [Accessed 3 July 2018].
55
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the minds of the townspeople. It is through the unlocking of a contextual understanding
that allows the encounter to unfold into a missional success. Jesus does not settle for
perceived cultural norms, especially concerning gender, He theologically fuses culture and
context and transcendentally communicates the gospel.
Theological Fusion and Prophetic Dialogue
Ian had trained in York as an occupational therapist. He observes that people working in the
city are often spiritually poor, they are ‘stressed’, suicide rates are extremely high, and they
need somewhere that they can come and take some time to step back. When put into
context it seems plain to see how a monastic approach to reflective meditation would go a
long way towards breaking through the contextual complexities of a stressed out city
worker. Theological fusion now becomes prophetic dialogue, Ian is creating spaces for
liturgy, prayer and contemplation helping people to discover who they are as God’s people,
but also discover who God is through these acts.56
56
Don Saliers, Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Glory Devine (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1994), p.27,
quoted in Gilbert I. Bond, Liturgy, Ministry and the Stranger: The Practise of Encountering the Other in Two
Christian Communities, in Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass eds., Practising Theology: Beliefs and Practises in
Christian Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), 138, in Stephen Bevans, and Rogers Schroeder,
Constants in Context (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004) p. 362
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Ian considers himself a pioneer minister although he works as a full-time ordained minister.
His work challenges the establishment from the inside to look at its own resources and
reimagine how they might be reorganised to fit the contemporary world around them.
Originally, as a Guild Church, St Mary Aldermary would have been contextually appropriate
in its day, serving the local city as a place of worship, but also working as a guild to
commission and display the artisans of the time.
Since its foundation, the immediate surroundings have changed unrecognisably, with
towering office blocks and billions of pounds of investment brokerage flowing through the
financial community daily. It is clear that the churches community dialogue has to change to
suit the context within which it finds itself, but extraordinarily it seems the necessary
changes needed to bring such places into contextual relevance is a political battle. Ian is
exhausted and prophetically weary. He has pushed the structures as far as they will bend,
trying to encourage the institution contextualise.
In reference to Bevans and Schroeder, God’s mission has already been at work over the
centuries through St Mary Aldermary, and Ian’s role as a pioneer missionary is to join in with
the work God has already been doing. Bevans and Schroeder argue that appropriate
mission context for the Western Church in the 21st Century should take place through the
use of prophetic dialogue.57 They maintain that prophetic dialogue is achieved through the
57
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missioner’s engagement with ‘witness’ and ‘proclamation’. Ian’s witness fits alongside
Bevans and Schroeder’s example of Charles de Foucauld or Albert Schweitzer as a
demonstration of witness as ‘presence’,58 although I feel that Ian’s frustration at the
institution’s slowness to face modern culture is a hard tension for him to have to balance.
There is clearly at lot at stake for the institution over buildings such as St Mary Aldermary.
The establishment feels that the sacred ought to be protected whilst they would like to see
church attendance increased. However, what does church attendance need to look like? A
Sunday morning in the City of London is now deserted as nobody lives in the City. Critically
Bevans and Schroeder point out that whilst in the past the church has worked ‘hand-in-
glove’ with the state for the sake of the gospel, there is an opportunity for the church to
work against the state in the 21st Century through a commitment to prophetic dialogue.
They argue that it must be prophetic, because the church is obliged to preach always and
everywhere, and that is must be dialogue to preach the one faith in a particular context. 59 In
other words, perhaps it is time for the role of St Mary Aldermary to change from being a
State memorial building to being a city workers community retreat mission.
Ian has worked across many expressions of church, and has developed a deep insight into
the understanding required to engage in contextual prophetic dialogue, however it is clearly
58
59
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an exhausting labour of love. He feels torn between wanting to stay on and continue the
work and yet is in great need of some space and time to recover from the mission field.
Prophetic pioneers find themselves at the end of their resources a lot of time, yet have very
little choice but to plough through their exhaustion. Ian’s role gives us an invaluable insight
into the fine balance of working with the institution to develop a mission that is able to
engage in a contextually relevant ministry of prophetic dialogue.
Fusing Counter-Culture and Royal Consciousness
Kester Brewin60 is a pioneer who through the emerging church of the late 80’s and 90’s, has
explored a variety of counter-cultural approaches through creative worship gatherings in
London. Inspired by ‘nightclub-style’ approaches to worship, which had developed out of
the ecstatic movements and alternative gatherings such as the Nine O’clock Service in
Sheffield, Kester hosted ‘Abundant’ at St James the Less in Pimlico. Kester describes it as a
‘moment of madness’, which allowed people to break out and explore creative ways of
being, which lead to a small community gathering called ‘Vaux’. He calls it a kind of ‘Dada’
experience, it was a way of being ‘in and of culture’, exploring culture in spiritual terms.
Theologically infusing the counter-cultural mix, we can identify the marginality of women as
Jesus stays at the home of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42. Mary refuses to be confined
60
Kester Brewin, Pioneer in Practise Interview (London, UK, 2015).
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to the kitchen to do the housework in a highly counter-cultural manner. Jesus defends
Mary, even though she has chosen to break many social norms by choosing to opt out of the
prescribed social constructs by ignoring the ‘women’s work’ or place of the women in the
home.
Walter Brueggemann describes these marginalising power structures in three definitions,
which form the idea of a ‘royal consciousness’. 61 Using the Solomonic achievement as a
basis for his discussion, Brueggemann argues that Mosaic Israel was led out of King David’s
covenantal rule into a royal ideology through Affluence, Oppression and Immanence.
Figure 11 - Royal Consciousness, Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001) p.30
61
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001) p.26
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This ‘Paganisation of Israel’,62 replaced covenanting with consuming and banished all
neighbours to servants. All promises became tradable commodities, which ensured that the
rule of the sovereign king unthreatened by the energies of a free people. In effect, the
people were satiated in the eternal now; the Mosaic God of Freedom disregarded.
In Luke, we see Jesus pushing against the establishment structures, reminding the people of
their history of freedom and calling out the marginalising structures of the establishment,
which had become invisible within the culture of occupational rule. Jesus was “summoning
his hearers to be Israel in a new way, to take up their proper roles in God’s unfolding
drama”.63 Jesus’ counter-cultural theological fusion is proclaiming the Gospel through
authority dissent; He is dialectically interacting with cultures and providing us with examples
of radical inculturation.64
In Luke 13:10-17, Jesus defies convention and heals on the Sabbath further displaying His
authority dissent. Jesus’ actions raised embarrassment for the synagogue rulers, and Jesus’
62
George E. Mendenhall, "The Monarchy", Union Seminary Review, 29.2 (1975), 155-170 in Walter
Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001) p.24
63
N.T. Wright “The Mission and Message of Jesus”, in idem and Marcus Borg, The Meaning Of Jesus (San
Francisco: Harper, 2007), p.36, in Gerald Arbuckle, Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians (Collegeville, Minn.:
Liturgical Press, 2010) p. 152.
64
Thomas Groome, How to Proceed in a Pastoral Context (Concilium 2, 1994) in Gerald Arbuckle, Culture,
Inculturation, and Theologians (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2010) p. 152.
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card was marked as a troublemaker. Consequently, the people became delighted at the
things He was doing, realising their potential freedom. Simultaneously Jesus was gathering
opponents from the leaders of the establishment because of the threat He posed to their
structures and power.
Throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s, small emerging communities began to raise similar
doubts in the minds of the established UK church establishment. A small number of
emerging churches, were able to ‘permission give’ the participation of individuals through
their own expressions of worship. 65 The emerging church was pushing against the
consciousness of the established church, challenging worship styles and prescribed
theologies as they theologically fused new worship forms with contemporary culture.
Kester’s approach towards the role of a pioneer is a counter-cultural call; that pioneering
does not need to be a church role, and that pioneering can be a call to the individual who
has a personal relationship with Jesus. Jesus was consistently calling down counter-cultural
theology into His contemporary royal consciousness. Such a call is still relevant today, and
will be a challenge to anyone who dares to call himself or herself a Christian in the 21st
Century.
65
Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, Emerging Churches (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005) p. 93.
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Transcendental Uncertainty in the Wilderness
Bevans’ transcendental model of theology suggests that some things demand a radical shift
in perspective or a change of horizon, before they begin to make sense. He argues that
without this shift, whatever we are trying to understand will defy understanding. For
Bevans, the foundation of transcendental theology is not that a particular theology is
produced, but that the theologian who is producing it operates in as an authentic,
converted subject.66
Ric Stott is an ordained Methodist Minister who was one of the first people employed as a
Methodist VentureFX Pioneer. As a pioneer using art in his ministry, Ric describes spending
time in the wilderness, “there is something about getting used to living with uncertainty and
in that strange ‘in-between place’, that is neither one thing nor another, the ‘uncertain
place’”. 67 The VentureFX project had a healthy budget and management structure, but it
had little in the way of pioneering experience to fall back on. Ric felt he was making it up as
he was going along.
Initially, Ric had no base but spent time going into various communities around Sheffield
and exploring expressions of art. Early ideas led Ric to explore possibilities around hosting
66
Stephen B Bevans, Models Of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2013) p. 103.
67
Ric Stott, Pioneer in Practice Interview (Sheffield, UK, 2017).
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an art space. Ric was gifted a basement building with a shopfront below the Methodist
Church in Sheffield city centre, from there he has been able to develop his pioneer ministry
using Arts and Spirituality.
I wondered how Ric feels The Holy Spirit is guiding him in his pioneering, especially through
his times of ‘wilderness-like’ experiences, and during his times of doubt. I was interested in
how it feels to be a pioneering artist and how art helps him to unravel the mystery that
surrounds the Christian faith through transcendental theology. For Ric, being a pioneer is
being able to live with the uncertainty, he says:
“If you have got nothing solid to hang onto that can be liberating, exciting, creative
and full of life. Or it can be terrifying at the same time… there is a sublime feeling
when you encounter something that is so far beyond your understanding that is both
beautifully awesome and fearful”.68
Pioneering transcends in a place of not knowing one thing or another, this can be a numb
feeling or subliminal space where the mystery of God can unfold or not as sometimes, the
space can feel empty and silent.69 Bevans aligns this thinking with the authentic experience
of the individual who in attending to their own transcendental subjectivity, reaches out
68
69
David Dark, Everyday Apocalypse (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002)
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naturally towards the truth and in doing so finds themselves doing authentic contextual
theology.70 Transcendental pioneers try to hear God’s voice and it can feel frustrating when
guidance doesn’t come with any certainty. Nevertheless, this ‘unknowing’ is still that
person’s experience of the truth.
Applying theological fusion, God clearly speaks to His people as in the stories of Noah,
Moses, Samuel, Daniel, or gives clear messages to the prophets. In the New Testament, we
recognise prescriptive examples of God’s voice through the written word, through the
writing and interpretation of the Gospels, or through the revelation of The Saints. For
pioneers trying to discern God’s guidance, receiving a blank slate can feel difficult when the
answers remain dormant after times of prayer and waiting.
By creating spaces for art to emerge, Ric finds answers within the art itself, and expressions
of art help to unravel some of the context that is relevant to understanding God. Critically
analysing Bevans’ theory reveals this as transcendental theology in action, the aligning of
one’s own experiences and culture with an understanding of God.
Ric is prepared to sit with uncertainty however scary it might feel not to know what he
should be doing. He describes it as like standing in front of the crashing ocean and feeling
terrified of its awesomeness and beauty. He says, “There is something in the vast nobility of
70
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it all, like if you were standing over deep waters and not knowing what worlds could be
down there, not being able to control it and feeling out of depth”.71 Ric doesn’t feel he can
contain the immensity of this experience, and likens the feeling to pioneering, the great
unknown, the stepping into a space of wilderness.
For Brueggemann, the idea of wilderness becomes biblical rhetoric for a place where
ultimately God’s grace is experienced. 72 The artist might view a wilderness-like experience
as a place of nothingness, or no creation, the unknown. Although often silent, wilderness is
a space Brueggemann argues definable by God. He gives examples of the Israelites in Exodus
receiving alternative life sources such as ‘Manna from Heaven’ as a divine gesture of
enormous abundance, breaking the cycle of anxiety of scarcity. Being in wilderness allows us
to move from one place to another, from one conceptual understanding, to a new way of
thinking. Biblically God uses wilderness as a metaphor for change or preparedness, such as
Jesus’ time in the wilderness before his ministry, and for the artist it can become a way of
recognising a change towards new conceptual understanding.
Through painting, Ric feels he is able to quantify much of these experiences into context,
the way other artists have done over time; the action of a brushstroke, or the depth of a
71
72
Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010)
p.15.
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single Rothko colour, for example. For Ric, experiential art, defined through context,
transcends into theological language, which embodies many of the serious and complex
internal experiences that we share together. Ric says there are so many of these feelings
we have no words to express to each other. Ric is trying to say something, or at least ask the
question, how well do I know myself? which Bevans believes to be the basis of
transcendental theology.73
In Luke 17:20-21, Jesus is challenges Pharisees; “The Kingdom of God does not come with
your careful observation… because the Kingdom of God is within you.” This mysterious
transcendental proposition suggests a realm of possibilities for the interpretation of the
Kingdom of God. Has the Kingdom of God already come? Ric expands this theology when he
tries to explain his pioneering experiences. He suggests that perhaps the Kingdom of God is
already at hand, or as Bevans argues; transcendental theology does not provide concrete
answers but leaves the mystery of God re-imaginable. Ric commissions art to invite God’s
Kingdom, proclaiming that God’s love is available through re-imagining our practice.
In my Literature Review, I refer to Bevans’ ‘Four voices of Theology’74 analysing how Bevans
identifies that the individual must come to a place of understanding the scripture and
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74
Stephen B. Bevans, An Introduction To Theology In Global Perspective (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2009) p.
164.
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making a heartfelt decision. Ric practices this theology by giving permission to others to
explore their own heart and express feelings through art. In Acts 17:24, Paul echoes the
teachings of Jesus that God, “…does not dwell within temples made with hands”, Paul is
explaining to the Athenians that God is not in the idol but that we are born of God.
Through this ‘Transcendental Approach’, we are able to listen to God through the
murmurings of God’s Spirit within. God rarely speaks profoundly to us as pioneers, rather
inviting transition through wilderness to reflect a reinterpretation of grace. Reflecting on
artistic theological fusion of transcendental theology, we hear The Spirit’s voice.
Guests from the Margins
“In the eighteenth century, the practises of welcome were briefly but closely identified with
marginal hosts and liminal places.”75 The movement of John Wesley’s Methodists were
decidedly marginal, creating liminal spaces where people could experience personal
transformation through recovering ancient Christian practices such as small groups and
house church. Many Methodists lost their marginality very quickly as converts moved
towards a more respectable status much to the distaste of the John Wesley. 76 In 2010, the
Methodist ‘VentureFX’ programme identified pioneers who could re-imagine these lost
areas of marginality.
75
Christine Pohl, Making Room (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999) p.111
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Lou Davis is Methodist ‘VentureFX’ Pioneer who left her life in Manchester to pioneer in
Edinburgh as a guest of the hosting Methodist circuit. The situations where Jesus is a guest
are profound demonstrations of pioneer-like ministry. He invites Himself as a marginalised
guest and those that play host least expect Jesus to invite Himself into their lives.
Demonstrations of grace break down barriers of relationship with God. God, through Jesus
invites Himself into the lives of the marginally despised. Marginalised women, tax collectors,
and prostitutes find themselves hosting Jesus, consequently God’s revelation unfolds. Lou
realised that being part of God’s community meant adoption into God’s alternative Kingdom
as she reflects:
“I’m not really sure how these things were part of the structures of the church… but
something about a theology of equality and the importance of everybody. In
particular, in Northern areas of the church, how well they respected women and
women in ministry, and something about accepting the whole person”.77
Jesus adopts all parts of community engagement, angering institutional religious leaders. He
invites Himself into the homes of those marginalised by the establishment transforming
their lives through relationship and acceptance. In Matthew 9:9, Jesus is a guest with tax
77
Lou Davis, Pioneer in Practice Interview (Conwy, Uk, 2018)
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collectors, accepting their hospitality and sharing dinner with ‘sinners’. He says, “It is not the
healthy who need a doctor, but the sick… For I have not come to call the righteous, but
sinners.” Christine Pohl argues that where there are communities demonstrating this kind of
hospitality, their lives are often less individualistic, materialistic and task driven than most in
our society, and that practitioners understand the ministry of ‘presence’, not necessarily to
fix a problem but to offer healing and hope. 78
Methodists and the Marginalised Kingdom
Lou struggles with the connotations of the word ‘Kingdom’ and its reference to power,
nation states and monarchy. She explains that she has tried to communicate God’s kingdom
as an embodiment of wellbeing and wholeness, not just for the human world but for the
environment as well: “It is one the thoughts that has directed the project. I think it’s about
discipleship, but also about seeing the whole person. That has taken me back to what is
important about Methodism and taking that forward.”79 This sense of wholeness is
something that Methodism has helped Lou to identify through its deep-rooted tradition
within the marginalised. She wants to use her presence as a Methodist to build
relationships, help people partner with God’s love, and see broken people made whole.
78
Pohl, Christine D, Making Room (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999) p. 112
79
Lou Davis, Pioneer in Practice Interview (Conwy, Uk, 2018)
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In Luke 7:36 – 49 Jesus is anointed by a sinner in the home of Pharisee. Jesus is questioned
as to why as a prophet, He would let a sinner touch Him. Jesus challenges Simon the
Pharisee as to who would most accept the Kingdom of God and the forgiveness that comes
with it. He demonstrates that those who have the most sin are those that would be the
most accepting of God’s Kingdom, “He who has been forgiven little, loves little”. John
Wesley was furious that Methodism had traded its work within the margins for a seat within
the middle classes;80 however, Jesus is demonstrating the acceptance that Lou is
establishing through her pioneering.
Lou comes to community as a guest in the same way that Jesus used his position as a guest
to demonstrate God’s Kingdom in action, accepting the brokenness that is often shunned in
communities and offering acceptance to those whose lives aren’t already ‘full’ or
‘complete’. Christine Pohl makes it clear that Jesus makes hospitality more complicated for
Christians, either as a guest or a host: “The grace we experience in receiving Jesus’ welcome
energizes our hospitality, while it undermines our pride and self-righteousness. Welcoming
Christ as guest strengthens our kindness and fortitude in responding to strangers.”81
In Luke 19:1-9, Jesus invites Himself as a guest to Zacchaeus’ home. Zacchaeus’ gladness to
welcome Jesus was the key to the text. Being a wealthy chief tax collector, he realises he
80
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needs to change his ways to accept the salvation of Kingdom of God. Zacchaeus catches a
glimpse of the Kingdom of God in action and responds with kindness. Jesus’ simple act of
becoming the guest unlocks an understanding for individuals of God’s Kingdom. He
demonstrates how to enjoy the table together with others, or as Sara Miles puts it; “feeding
is always a miracle because there is a hunger beyond food that’s expressed in food.”82
Jesus comes alongside His hosts in a way that disarms them from ordinary life. In John 2:1-
11, Jesus is a wedding guest and the miraculous power of the Kingdom of God through great
abundance demonstrated; the blessings increase over time. Do we offer too much by way of
enticing people into an attractive place of community? Evidently, God’s Kingdom is
prepared to wait. Lou is as a guest levelling with the marginalised, in turn offering the hand
of relationship and restored wholeness, fully demonstrating the Kingdom of God.
Hosting within the Margins
In ‘Take this Bread’ Sara Miles explores the relationship she faces within a ministry of
hosting through service, hospitality and food. She describes her ministry as, “… a way
through the struggles the world”, and explores a gospel, which recognises the face of the
stranger as God’s face and all people as one body: God’s.83
82
Sara Miles, Take this Bread (NY:Random House 2007) p.23.
83
Sara Miles Take this Bread (London: Canterbury Press, 2012) p. 265.
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I met with Eryl Parry who shares a similar outlook to Sara Miles in her pioneering as a host
at Liverpool Cathedral and the Catholic Conference Centre at LACE in Liverpool. I
interviewed Eryl84 because of her work through the large, established churches in Liverpool
using the structures she had available to host individuals who were visiting the city.
Eryl’s early experience at LACE conference centre saw the potential for networking amongst
the backdrop of the city’s delegates and her efforts began to open up opportunities to dig
deeper into those networks. Eryl embraced the philosophy of ‘doing things well’, and she
felt that an important role for the church was to be a professional player in the conference
and hospitality industry, “…it was an incredible vision actually because underneath all of that
underpinned the need for us to work in plain sight, and I think that is really important.” Eryl
felt the importance of the church to play a visible role in hosting visitors, introducing them
to God’s Kingdom.
After 5 years of welcoming people into LACE, Eryl accepted a call to Liverpool Cathedral to
begin to develop ideas around hospitality and shared space. Eryl expressed experiences of
pioneering as being a lonely place or that the encouragement she had received had often
come from outside traditional structures. People had energised her by commenting on the
positivity of the brave vision on which she embarked. However, over time she began to
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Eryl Parry, Pioneer in Practice Interview (Conwy, North Wales, 2017)
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work off her own reputation, as people began to trust in her instincts, recognising the fruit
of her labours.
At Liverpool Cathedral, Eryl’s vision for hospitality dovetailed into the vision that the Dean
carried to develop a Cathedral Café. Initially there were objections to the idea of changing
the sacred space by introducing a licenced premises and allowing alcohol to be consumed
informally. However, the vision offered ideas of world’s bumping together inside the
cathedral, alongside a promise of a 3.2 million pound European Regional Development
grant.
Eryl held closely to the principles of Missio Dei; being a part of God’s missional work in the
world. In John 1:35-50, Jesus hosts the first disciples in a borrowed home. He invites His
chosen disciples to where He is at, albeit a borrowed space, asking them to join in with His
mission. The ideas Eryl held for the Cathedral are similar, inviting others into a space where
Jesus is already at work, to be inclusive and to begin for form relationships around the idea
of following Christ.85
After 2 years in the role, Eryl saw the opportunity for the Cathedral to join in with
Liverpool’s bid for the Capital of Culture. She says,
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“…if we hadn't have joined in the creative program for Capital of Culture, it’s like
we’d be denying God an opportunity, because God was bringing that opportunity to
us. It’s a different way of thinking about it; how are we going to serve God and serve
the city, because actually is it the same thing? To open up the space, it would have
been a travesty not to have flung those doors wide open!”86
In Matthew 14:13-21 Jesus feeds the 5000, and we see God blessing an opportunity given by
a boy to feed the multitude. This is a pioneering example of God’s Kingdom in action;
someone must take the risk to catch the opportunity. For Eryl the risk to follow the Capital
of Culture bid was rewarded tenfold over the next few years, and the legacy of the award
has been echoing around the building ever since. Liverpool Cathedral is now world famous
for hosting the contemporary Arts, the development of a high-end event space and the
cathedral’s place as a world-renowned heritage site.
A profound hosting opportunity arose when Tracey Emin’s work was commissioned into the
cathedral space as a showpiece under the Benedictine Window. The work entitled ‘For
You’87 is a contrastingly pink neon inscription, which reads, “I felt you and I knew you love
me”. Emin clearly encapsulates so much of the theology around Jesus’ ministry as both host
and guest. Here the artist communicates the powerful love of God through the witness of an
86
Eryl Parry, Pioneer in Practice Interview (Conwy, North Wales, 2017).
87
Tracy Emin, For You (Liverpool: Liverpool Cathedral, 2008).
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outsider. The message is stark and yet so poignant in its position and placement. Eryl
comments that; “if the piece was installed in a hospice it would completely change its
meaning”. 88
Jesus is the great host, as well as the guest. He invites us to His table to join with him. He
invites sinners from the margins to join him as equals. It is not a place reserved for the elite;
it is an open table with an open invitation. In Luke 24:28-32, Jesus as host is constantly
breaking bread, demonstrating the brokenness of His Body, the brokenness of the Trinity in
sacrifice for humanity. Jesus is prepared to be broken; so that the marginalised might be
hosted by God, despite our sin and un-deservedness.
Pioneer Identity Mix
The pioneering activities and contextual understanding unearthed throughout the
interviews go to blend the ‘mix’ that makes up the pioneer identity. Eryl describes her role
as acting within a ‘bridge-moment’ that is created between the sacred and the secular; a
kind of ‘thinspace’.89 She sees the opportunity for the pioneer to step into that space and
care for the individuals who have found themselves and God there.
88
89
Gavin Mart in Cathy Ross and Jonny Baker, Pioneering Spirituality: Resources for reflection and practise
(London: Canterbury Press, 2017) p.99.
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Reflecting on Eryl’s pioneering identity, she feels that standing in that bridging-moment
raises some questions for The Church’s approach to pioneer identity:
“Language we use is important, it feels like a very exciting time… about us being able
to connect with people who have spiritual thirst, but people are not going to be
attracted into what they see as institutional. Even words like ‘fundamental’ and
‘radical’ are suspect, because of global politics. We have to reimagine how we
express ourselves and we have to establish common ground.”90
Eryl feels that her identity lies outside of the church, though she feels she is working to bring
people into church, she is working within the 99% of non-attenders. This dislocation is
similar to Sara Miles that whilst she feels distant and estranged to the piety of church-going
Christians, she also feels akin with those who gaze in from the outside.
Eryl didn’t initially know that it was possible for all kinds of people to venture into sacred
spaces to experience all of things of God. She still feels there is a repositioning of the Church
that needs to happen. Like Miles, Eryl understands that her pioneering identity recognises
90
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that true belief accepts that none of us “…fundamentalist, or radical, or orthodox, Muslim or
Jew or Christian could adequately sum God up.”91
Having witnessed how the cathedral was capable of repositioning itself as ‘host’, she feels
that the wider church could adopt such examples in order to profile-raise and reach
people’s hearts. Eryl’s identity believes in the church engaging in practical care, but then
being able to lead people to a different; more ‘whole-person’ place, rather than into a place
of institution.
Contrastingly, throughout Kester and Ian’s interviews, there is an underlying feeling of
tiredness in their role as pioneers. I wonder how long pioneers can actually pioneer for
before it becomes too much? Would it be healthier to recognise pioneering identity
characteristics that have sections of sharpness to them and use them sparingly? Is
pioneering for life or for when life demands? Is it realistic to sustain the pressures of the
role over long periods and maintain a genuinely pioneering disposition?
For Kester, many church leaders find themselves in positions within the establishment,
which have compromised their initial vision and calling into the ministry. Kester expresses
feelings of sadness for his friends who he has seen grow into church leadership and then
91
Sara Miles Take this Bread (London: Canterbury Press, 2012) p. 265.
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have to face the real pressures of life, family and children. Kester feels they have lost some
of their pioneer identity because of the need to subscribe to the institution.
Jesus makes His pioneering statements during a short, sharp period. In Mark 13:2, Jesus
dangerously prophesises that the great temple buildings will be ‘torn down’. In Matthew
21:31-32, Jesus clearly states that the sinners, the tax collectors and prostitutes go ahead of
those who think they deserve heaven. Furthermore He speed-paints the compromised
disposition of institutional theology, In Matthew 22:18-21, He says, “give to Caesar what is
Caesar’s”, poignantly stating the obvious to those in doubt. Arguably, His ministry isn’t
laboured over decades.
Kester reflects on this compromised disposition of institutional theology in stark frustration
to his own pioneering identity. He asks why the church has removed itself from a position of
gift, to a position of economic power. Kester’s cultural insight into his pioneering identity
has developed through recognition of the cycle of gift giving, for him the obligation to give,
overrides the need for institutionally appointed leadership.92 He believes firmly but
arguably, that there is no real place for the institutional church as it currently exists. In other
words, for Kester, the church no longer has a pioneering identity; it is firmly part of the
status quo. He identifies the dilemma of creating paid leadership positions within pioneering
movements, muting a pioneer’s identity of flexibility and spontaneity.
92
Anthony J Gittins, Gifts and Strangers (New York: Paulist Press, 1989) p.104.
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Within Methodism, the institutional structure relies on the accumulative turnover of fresh
membership; it is in the difficult position of supporting the establishment and sustaining its
creative pioneer ministry. There is a danger that the fragile identity of its founding pioneers
is lost to the overriding issues of keeping the big ship afloat. Operating within the margins is
a costly business to pioneers whose sending institutions do not recognise and foster the
delicate makeup of the pioneering identity mix.
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Critical Analysis
Ethnographic Research Approach
The Reflective Montage embodies much of the literature reviewed for this subject and is
located in the Appendix: Reflective Montage, which contains the methodological process
used to analyse the data digitally, and the final reflective piece itself.
As I adopted the role of guest alongside the pioneer, I was able to treasure hunt through
their ideas to weave together a common theology. This was the outcome I hoped for when
undertaking Crang and Cook’s approach to ethnographic research. Ideally, the subject and
questions would arise from the research rather than the other way around. 93 The treasure,
which is evident in the theological analysis, is that each of pioneers are working directly out
of a gospel example of Jesus at work in people’s lives. Whilst some of the pioneers had
more involvement in the establishment and the structures of the church, none of them
allowed the structures to impede their ministry directly to ‘sinners’ or the needy.
Each pioneer had a clear understanding of Jesus’ teaching of the Kingdom of God and the
pioneer’s individual ministry directly reflected this understanding. Each of their projects
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were about acceptance, because each of the pioneers felt some kind of acceptance for
themselves into the Kingdom of God at some point in their own experience.
Action Reflection
For pioneer ministers, translating the learning from the artistic reflection process into action
can become an exciting process, albeit not a faultless one. Vanhoozer presents a
wonderfully rich example of ‘theodramatic improvisation’,94 a technique, which informs how
we might begin to speak and act into these new situations and cultural contexts. Through
theodramatic improvisation, we draw on the idea of disciplined spontaneity, a drawing on
the wealth of our experiences and phronesis; it is a ‘knowing what to do’ in particular
situations or a practical wisdom. However much of the spontaneity that the interviewees
evidence had been guided by an action reflection, whether the pioneers were aware they
had adopted this theory, or whether it had simply happened naturally through their own
experiences.
Improvisation begins with an assumption, we already admit that we might be wrong or
have been wrong in the past, but we are trying to build on the strength of understanding
gained through the insight of the wider faith community. The evidence suggests the
94
Christianity. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006) p.113.
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pioneers developed their assumptions using inherent memory, a nod to their traditional
formative indoctrination, and the learning gained through past cycles of the reflective
process.
We hang our riffs on cosmic principles simultaneously accepting the story of Jesus Christ as
the church’s authoritative script, and develop our vernacular performance in the patchy
light of those who have gone before us. “We are the exiles of the dispersion, resident aliens
and strangers to the world, living good lives amongst the pagans”, 1 Peter 1:11-12.95
Consequently, the evidence unearthed in the pioneer case studies suggested each pioneer
had hoped to develop ‘dialogical-systematics’ through the process of TAR in the hope of
developing a ‘faith seeking understanding’.
It is a practical theology, a critical contextualisation, strengthened through critical
realisation, yet accepting its failure to ‘authentically communicate’ reality through using
language alone. However, theological improvisation offers a positive and open dialogue, yet
although each pioneer was increasingly creative, they were able to hold and understand a
wider world, and a wider cultural and contextual landscape, which allowed them to engage
in faith conversations with new people.
95
The Bible, New International Version (Hodder & Stoughton, 2012)
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Theological Reflection through ‘The Four Voices’
There is a recurring suggestion in the interview data for the pioneering spaces that we
create to be spaces that offer genuine opportunity for transcendental experiences,
reflection and mutually critical dialogue, leading to prophetic dialogue. Such spaces offer
people the opportunity to engage in pastoral reflection, to question the world around them,
and give the opportunity to analyse such experiences within the four voices of theology
(Figure 5 – The Four Voices of Theology).
Safe spaces for reflective art might be places where people are accused of ‘making it up as
they go along’.96 However, using the warnings from Volf and Bass in the Literature Review
concerning people participating in the practices of God’s creation, we can see from the data
analysis that while fresh new ideas and mutual dialogue takes place through pioneering
activities, it needs to be married with tradition and experience.
Each person’s experience (Espoused Theology) comes from a contrasting cultural
background and needs exploring as such, giving time for learning and renewed practice to
unfold (Theological Action Reflection). We need to be honest as to whether our churches
96
John Caputo, What would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Post-Modernism for the Church (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007) p.129.
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genuinely offer that space to individuals, whether there is space for a mutually critical
dialogue to take place (Normative Theology).
For Bevans, the transcendental approach focusses on the person articulating the text. The
positive relational experiences demonstrated in the interviews all point to pioneering
projects that have focussed on the individuals coming into safe pioneering spaces, where
the individual’s stories is genuinely accepted. Across the structure of the church, perhaps
the opposite is all too common; that the focus is on the text and the individuals must
reconfigure themselves in order to make sense of the text and fit into the larger
worshipping group.
Focussing on the individual and their stories is a labour intensive process and calls for
smaller groups and spaces to form, rather than larger gathering places. This model of
meeting would point to the early church model of meeting.97 Here, small, localised groups
would meet to share context and make sense of the experience of God within their cultural
understanding. Smaller groups are able to explore how they might take their collective
theology out into the wider world (Operant Theology).
97
Robert Banks, Going to Church in the First Century (Seedsowers Christian Books Publishing, 1990)
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Pastoral Cycle
I used the Pastoral Cycle to theologically reflect on the experiences of the interviewed
pioneers. By unpacking the theology to back up how each pioneer was attempting follow
Jesus’ example, I was able to see how each pioneer’s understanding of the gospel helped
them to minister. From the interviews, it was evident that each had drawn on their own
experiences as Guest, Host, Counter-culturally, Contextually and Transcendentally, and they
had found ways to draw on their own theological understanding of those experiences and
begun to create some renewed practice.
Mutually Critical Dialogue
Arguably, it is impossible to be faithful to tradition in a contemporary post-modern
landscape which all of the interviewees in the research allude to, to some degree. I think
each of the pioneers had tried to create spaces for intercultural theology to emerge, but is it
possible to reclaim pre-modern practices for a postmodern culture? Derrida famously
states, “I don’t know… I must believe…”98
James K. A. Smith offers a theory that it is possible to carry some of our post-modern
‘unknowing’ into this kind of mission field. For the pioneers in the case studies found they
98
Jacques Derrida, Memoires for the Blind (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993) p. 155.
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were able to create a space for mutually critical dialogue to some degree. Smith draws the
distinction between ‘knowing’ and ‘believing’. He understands that the postmodern
theologian says, “We can’t know that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The
best we can do is believe.”99
How can we purport to know the truth absolute in a postmodern culture? Ian Mobsby states
in the interview that people are no longer looking towards ‘modernist truth claims’, instead
people are more in tune with the mystical and the unknown, perhaps more attuned to how
they were several centuries ago. For Ian, spiritual seekers are looking to combine modern
culture with ancient scripture and tradition. Ian claims that we are in a cycle of change and
that the Church must look to its own history for the answers. Do we appear naïve if we
attempt solely to know the story a priori, and then attempt to claim the copyright over it? A
more dignified standpoint would be to admit that we could not know anything, continue to
explore our beliefs, have faith in our convictions, and be willing to listen to others by
creating spaces for mutual dialogue.
Churches which have held on to a kind of ‘Golf Club’, in-or-out membership style approach,
have become monochrome in their outlook against the present experience of a world of
glistening high definition and multi-culture. Churches that adopt this stance present to the
99
James K. A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to church (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006) p. 119.
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newcomer a narrow range of frequency, and as Ric Stott comments, “I don’t know what
churches are for anymore?”100
Reframing history is a powerful postmodern ‘sleight-of-hand’ that results in producing
unforeseen socio-political statements on contemporary culture. The results are often quite
powerful, perhaps even disturbing but they are compelling enough to break the illusion of
the status quo and entirely incarnational. 101 My hope is that the Reflective Montage would
allow the listener to engage in an invitation towards mutual dialogue, drawing on the ideas
that are relevant to them in the past and present, and creating space for their own
prophetic dialogue that leads to new faithful exploration.
The Transcendental Approach
It is fascinating how Ric Stott has managed to outwork Bevans’ Transcendental model into
working practise by giving voice to those who wish to interpret the scriptures through their
own language through the arts. Ric spent time in the reflective process waiting on the voice
of God in what he calls a wilderness place, and consequently has outworked his theological
100
101
Stephanie Snyder, An Exchange: In Conversation with Sutapa Biswas (UK: Institute of International Visual
Arts, 2004)
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understanding of the scriptures to help others articulate or express their own faith
experience.
Eryl Parry has also managed to achieve this with her involvement in the Tracy Emin art
installation at Liverpool Cathedral. Eryl’s work in enabling the structures of the Cathedral to
embrace change and work within the remit of the ‘Capital of Culture’, led directly to the
expression of an alternative ‘outsider’ voice to become a permanent theological centrepiece
in the Cathedral. This authentic example of Practical Theology is contextually specific, as
Eryl says herself; “the piece would have meant something completely different in any other
place”.102 Using this example, we can see Bevans and Schroeder’s theory of witness and
proclamation unfold.103 Emin is the ‘authentic believer’ at this point, she ‘knows’ how she
feels, however marginalised, she encounters an experience of God through personal witness
which in turn links back to experience of the ‘Woman at the Well’. It is a personally
subjective experience for Emin to have felt God and to have known He loved her; the
resulting artwork becomes a starting point for prophetic dialogue for all who encounter it.
102
Eryl Parry, Pioneer in Practice Interview (Conwy, North Wales, 2017)
103
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Creating a Reflective Montage from Analysis of the Data
The first task in creating the Reflective Montage from the interview data was to place
various comments or themes from the interviewees into the various headings I had
identified. In real life, this unearthing process is hard to do fairly, with humility and
sympathy for each individual’s context. So often, our institutionalised religion diverts to
default dogma and indoctrination, or a kind of self-defence mode in fear of losing the
tradition we are so reliant on. This montage building approach allows us to build up a
picture of our understanding in such a way as to allow people to approach the montage on
their own terms and place themselves within the story.104
Vanhoozer states that it was a ‘golden methodological calf’ that theologians tried to use as
an interpretive framework for “discerning the meaning and truth of Scripture”. 105 Bevans’
Transcendental Model constantly allows people’s stories to reframe the gospel narrative in
relevant cultural context asking ever-changing questions such as ‘who am I?’, ‘who are we
now?’
For contextual theologians, the social sciences have replaced philosophy, the data gathered
in the ‘Experience’ element of our TAR cycle is experience gleaned through ethnographic
104
105
Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006) p.92.
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research, through being in and a part of the culture and context we are trying to
understand. We need to learn the language of these cultures, at least to listen effectively or
as Niebuhr suggests, to decide how to act as conviction to Christ refounding with culture. 106
This listening and ‘unlearning’ process is key to the transcendental, a kind of metanioa,107 a
rethinking, reflecting and a sharing of fresh understanding through community reference.
The pioneer missionary, as the ethnographer, cannot rely on any prior knowledge, assumed
context or shared intrinsic beliefs of spiritual understandings.108 Therefore, the challenge is
to ask people to unlock their histories creatively. Communities that are able to reflect are
able to begin to analyse and criticise the impact of the oppression under which they find
themselves.109 Being able to find a voice is the first step towards empowering communities
to liberate themselves through prophetic dialogue. This action in itself might be an action
point to emerge from the TAR process; how can we creatively engage our communities to
tell their own story?
In the ‘Transcendental Model’, the pioneer missionary travels with a willingness to be
changed in themselves and their understanding of the gospel through the process of ‘Un-
106
H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper, 1951)
107
Stephen B. Bevans, An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2009)
p.183.
108
Stephanie Taylor, Ethnographic Research (London: Sage Publications, 2002)
109
Gerald A. Arbuckle, Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993)
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Knowing’. They must easily carry the disposition to be in the wrong, and they must not
proclaim to have the copyright or monopoly on the religious narrative.
Critical Realism
Relationships, within this context, which appear in the Theological Analysis as discussions
around ‘community’, are key. The pioneer can expect to require skills in developing and
maintaining ongoing relationships with individuals who emerge out of the missional
practice. However, it is important that the community does not simply become too
deconstructive for its own good. Ian Mobsby suggests that managing all of these
relationships is perhaps impossible for any one individual and Kester Brewin argues that
wherever there is community, adequate leadership ought to be provided, at least so that
people are cared for appropriately.
As discussed in the Introduction, relationships develop over time and are key to helping
people up the Engel scale [Figure 1], however, it is vital that the missionary holds true to the
sense of ‘unknowing’ in order for the spiritual seeker to develop their own faith. This
personal faith will be culturally and contextually refined for the individual rather than a
perceived ‘hand-me-down’ set of beliefs held by the missionary or the establishment. This
may seem like a very deconstructive approach and the learning from the case studies
(perhaps where Vaux community faltered), was a lack of provision of opportunities for the
new learning to flourish through mutually critical dialogue.
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These pioneering models of mission initiatives are attempting to create communities of faith
within cultures of change, but this outcome does not always materialise. The reflective
process takes time and requires a certain amount of developing theory ‘on-the-hoof’. In the
end, some communities often simply run out of resources or capacity to cope with new
learning. Ric Stott suggests that it is probably unrealistic to present back to the church a 5-
year plan, when it often feels like he is unable to commit to a 5-day plan! Arguably
pioneering projects that are born out of larger structures present greater potential to
survive, given the support structures that are available to them.
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Conclusions
Reflective Art as Prophetic Voice
Art can help communities understand themselves and their own culture and brings us closer
to describing Graham’s ‘theology of the heart’.110 Ric Stott suggests this towards the end of
the Reflective Montage, that there are often no words to describe God or our relationship
to ‘Her’ or ‘Him’. I have discussed in depth that this feeling of unknowing, or starting again
with our understanding of God can be incredibly daunting especially once we think we know
who or what God is.
‘Love’ helps us to narrow our universal understanding of different contexts, but it can often
be terrifying when we see God as something other than from our own constructs, or
through the lens of another contrasting culture or worldview. Perhaps God is just too big for
our human imagination to fathom, however I have concluded that engaging in new or
countercultural understandings of God; can be incredibly liberating in helping communities
to find a voice. Engagement through theological fusion achieves wonderful change in how
people relate to their own communities. Empowerment through the prophetic voice is
transformational for communities and such transformation can develop into wider social
change.
110
Elaine Graham, et al, Theological Reflection Methods (London: SCM, 2005)
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Social change or transformation is the product of empowerment in our local communities
through inclusion and expression of people’s feelings, their cultural stories and ideas [Figure
12].
Figure 12- Model for Inclusion and Expression leading to Social Change - Gavin Mart and Mark Sampson, Engedi Arts:
Demonstrating our Impact, A Transformational Index Analysis (2015) p.3.
Pioneers become ‘hackers’ in the sense that curating new and fresh spaces allows for an
theological fusion, ideas and metaphor in combination with tradition, sacrament and liturgy.
This is the space for the transcendent, a prophetic voice through mutually critical dialogue in
action, and a working space for theological action reflection. It is a constant rebooting or
reprogramming of the system subject to the changing cultural context.
Pioneers can use their newfound prophetic voice to speak critically to the centre by offering
an understanding of cultural and contextual outsider experiences. Pioneers can unravel the
prophets hidden within our communities, shining a light on the artists who have something
new and helpful to say to our society. “A work of art is at best an articulation of something
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as much as it is a representation of someone: it is a proposal for how things could be seen,
an offering but not a hand-out.”111
This artistic ‘clumsy solution space’112 approach affords participants an articulation of their
own prophetic voice. Conversation and discussion can be encouraged through the
commissioning of the arts, exhibitions, workshops and shared mealtimes (mutually critical
dialogue). People generally wander into a ‘safe space’, which is placed in a public, non-
sacred or neutral ground. They can then get involved in one way or another and begin to
explore their own story. This practise of inclusion and expression through the arts leads to
people beginning to feel empowered.113
Critical Realism in Reflective Practice
Within safe spaces, the artist begins to feel empowered to scratch away at the sheen of
consumerist melancholy114 and begins to offer a pathway for communities to embrace
111
Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2007, in Jonny Baker, Curating Worship (New York: Seabury, 2011). p. 184.
112
Keith Grint, Leadership: A Very Short Introduction (UK: Oxford University Press, 2010) p. 25.
113
Gavin Mart and Mark Sampson, Engedi Arts: Demonstrating our Impact, A Transformational Index Analysis
(2015) p.3.
114
Barbara Kruger, I Shop Therefore I am, Photographic Silkscreen on Vinyl (Private collection, Courtesy
Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, 1987)
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critical realism.115 Creative practice helps people to dig deeper into local folklore and myth,
and unearth local treasure as they delve. It is also important for the artist to understand
their role in bringing back to life ‘dangerous memories,’ or ideas of a different time.116 The
purpose being to raise a prophetic and dissenter voice, which argues that society does not
necessarily have to create marginalisation, the status quo is subject to change (as is the
reigning monarchy).
This resurrection of dangerous memories is the role of the pioneer, for here we begin to
experience the beginnings of transformation, the beginnings of social change through
prophetic dialogue. Pioneering communities become treasure seekers, reframing the stories
of a people in the hope of resurrecting memories of the past, a kind of ‘place-making-
activity’, with the ability to give people back the gift of their own homeland.
Such dangerous, prophetic memories might contain religious or spiritual pearls, stories and
forgotten local myths or traditions, which help to unlock the numbness and silencing impact
of the all-encompassing consumerist society. Here in the in the mystery of local traditions
115
Paul G. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. (Grand
Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2008) p. 274.
116
Ann Morisy, Bothered and Bewildered: Enacting Hope in Troubled Times (London: Bloomsbury, 2009)
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the gold riches of new hope lie patiently beneath the surface of our collective memory
whispering gently to be etched back into life.117
A pioneer commissioned for such a task should have the gift of ‘unearthing’ forgotten
cultural stories explaining the passion of the local people. What were the lost local religious
practices and myths? What are the inspirations for mission as prophecy? 118 It is imperative
to remember that most people’s view of religion from wider a consumer culture is that
“religion is dodgy and dangerous”.119
If we truly believe, that God is in all things, that God exists deep within every molecule of
creation than what expression might we possibly fear? Expression leads to liberation, self-
realisation and wholesome individuals able to identify their place within society. The church
must reinstall this capacity for expression within our buildings and out in the mission field.
This will restore the lost tradition of unearthing spirituality through the arts by cultivating
individual expression, fostering empowerment in the surety of transformation and social
change.
117
Gavin Mart in Cathy Ross and Jonny Baker, Pioneering Spirituality: Resources for reflection and practise
(London: Canterbury Press, 2017) p.97
118
Stephan B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Prophetic Dialogue: Reflections on Christian Mission Today
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2011) p.52.
119
Ann Morisy, Bothered and Bewildered: Enacting Hope in Troubled Times (London: Bloomsbury, 2009)
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The Margins as Pioneer Identity
Throughout this research, I have identified that there is an underlying sense that pioneering
is a very lonely practice. Each of the interviewees expressed in their own terms a longing for
a sense of home. This idea of ‘not fitting in’ seems to be the precursor for much pioneering
activity. Often the pioneer experiences some kind of ‘wilderness-like’ period, before some
kind of direction or clarity emerges for the next place of ‘calling’.
For each interviewee the wilderness-like experience is a vital part of the ministry calling, the
change between one place and another. Here we can make direct correlations to Jesus’
ministry and key stages in the apostolic journey. Sitting and waiting in this wilderness
experience is clearly not an easy practise for those whose cultural context is the fast-paced
lifestyle of the Western World. Compromised by the present day culture of the West, much
of contemporary church life is taken up with ‘doing’ or ‘responding’ to the immediate
demands of the outside world or parish life. This constant pull to be active or busy, is a
direct odds with the experience of retreat or engaging with the practices of waiting or
silence. Pioneering is indeed a lonely activity and pioneers are often misunderstood and
marginalised as a result.
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From the Margins to Institutional Change
Figure 13 -Pioneering as Fusion
This research has suggested that pioneering is a fusion of experience and ideas with
disposition and identity. Where there is status quo, there will be a marginalised community
seeking to explore the alternative. The research has outlined that there can be a theological
framework to support the ideas of those seeking to work within the margins, and that the
emerging voice can be critically realised into a coherent and authentic prophetic voice for
transformation at the centre of the establishment.
Although pioneering theology is contemporarily in its infancy, this study has attempted to
outline ways in which abstract, creative ideas can be aligned with ancient prophetic voices,
leading to authentic pioneering practice. Figure 13 attempts to visualise how I have arrived
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at this conclusion, blending the reflective models that I have used in my analysis to frame
my theoretical outworking.
On the left of the diagram, I have shown how my three themes, ‘Theological Fusion’,
‘Marginality’ and ‘Pioneer Identity’ have become the basis for my theological action
reflection. I discussed these themes in depth in my Theological Analysis, showing at how I
arrived at them through pushing the findings from my data through three reflective funnels
in my Reflective Practice. On the right of the diagram, I argue that if these experiences are
considered reflectively in light of ‘Traditional Experience’ and ‘Scripture’, we arrive at a fair
representation of ‘Mutually Critical Dialogue’.
To develop the conversation I introduced the idea of ‘Transcendent Theology’ using the idea
of ‘Unknowing’; further pushing the Mutually Critical Dialogue towards a place of Critical
Realism. I conclude that the experiences of pioneering in practice (practically and
theologically testing the pioneer experience) amount to a ‘Prophetic Dialogue’ or ‘Prophetic
Voice’ enlisting the arguments laid out by Bevans and Schroeder. 120 In summation, I suggest
that the authentic ‘Prophetic Voice’ can lead to transformational change within
communities and potentially within established institutions such as the traditional church,
should they take it seriously.
120
Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder, Prophetic Dialogue: Reflections on Christian Mission Today
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2011)
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Prophetic Dialogue
This research has suggested repeatedly that what many pioneers are trying to achieve is
safe spaces for the manifestation of prophetic dialogue. The pursuit of which is often so
complicated to navigate that pioneers all too easily become marginalised from the Church’s
centre, which results in feelings of exclusion when the establishment cannot cope with the
challenges of the ‘Prophetic Voice’.
Pioneers that develop creative, safe spaces that incorporate the theologies of guest, host,
counter-culture, context and transcendence, offer genuine opportunity for the proclamation
and witness of spiritual experience, reflection, and mutually critical dialogue, which in turn
leads to transformational prophetic dialogue. In short, pioneers are those who eat, share
and dream together in the hope of building the Kingdom of God.
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Wheatley, Margaret J, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic
World (USA: Berrett-Koehler, 2006)
Wheatley, Margaret and Frieze, Deborah 'Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to
Scale' (The Berkana Institute, 2006) in <http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/using-
emergence.pdf> [accessed 7 January 2016]
Winter, Ralph D, The Two Structures of God's Redemptive Mission (South Pasadena, Calif.:
William Carey Library, 1995)
Winter, Ralph D, and Steven C Hawthorne, Perspectives On The World Christian
Movement (Pasadena, Calif: William Carey Library, 2009)
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Appendixes
Timeline of Research
Reflective Montage
Release Forms
Research Interview Transcripts
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Budget
I own media equipment needed for interview, writing and editing software purposes.
See Appendixes for:
Ethics permissions - Ethics Consent
I produce a ‘Research Participant Consent Form’ for use with each participant that will
outline the storage and usage of data collected and contacts for the course tutor and
institution.
Interview consent and data processing statement
I use a publically available form from the UK Data Archive 121 as the basis of my interview and
data processing statement.
For filming interviews: Participant Consent
I use the Consent Form in the appendix in the form of an abbreviated version of a standard
‘Release Form’122 used as standard in the filming industry.
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UK Data Archive, Consent and Ethics (2015)
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Indiana University, Talent Release Form (2016)
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Location Consent
I use a Standard Location Consent Form 123 in the appendix for all locations for filmed
interviews.
Artistic Materials Consent
I use a Standard Artistic Materials Release Form 124 in the appendix for all media and
material.
123
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The reflective process encompassed several stages:
- The interview experience itself
- The listening process
- Watching the videos
- Reading the interviews
- Theological analysis of the interviews.
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Timeline of research
Summer 2015 - Develop interviews with individuals to build areas of interest.
Autumn 2015 - Reflect on interviews and ideas to cross-pollinate with ongoing research.
Spring 2016 - Explore ways of analysing data and presenting research findings and
develop literature review.
Summer 2016 - Write up of collected body of work, including themes uncovered from
research, refined literature review, analysis of ideas and methods of
presentation.
Autumn 2016 - Reflect and write an artistic piece developed out of the gathered ideas.
Spring 2017 - Write up the study and structure.
Late Spring 2017 - Develop multimedia reflective piece
Summer 2017 - Finalise and complete the project
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Reflective Montage
Organising Data for Multimedia Production
The two additional themes felt important and helped to create a basic flow of ideas. The
first task was to use video editing software to upload the interview video files and to chop
up the sound clips so that the highlighted themes in the transcribed interviews] could be
isolated into separate sound files [Figure 14].
Figure 14 - Headings and themes as Isolated sound clips video editing software
From this position, the data had been categorised and could be neatly organised into a
clearer and more workable set of themes. I decided to sort of the themes into a measurable
set of title lines of audio, so that all of the clips for a particular ‘title’ were placed together in
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its own recognisable ‘row’. This ‘thematic timeline’ [Figure 15] presented me with some
decisions to make as to how to proceed.
Figure 15 - Data as organised in thematic timeline in video editing software
Production Decisions through Reflection
The first option was to create a multimedia piece of work with a kind of documentary style
approach which offered the view a theme ‘title’ i.e. ‘Leadership’ and then continued to
present the interviewee’s ideas on leadership in an ordered progression of title followed by
ideas on the title etc.
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The second and perhaps more risky option was to stick to the initial brief discussed in my
research of Crank and Cook’s ‘Doing Ethnographies research125 and create a montage of
research ideas, thus giving the viewers a landscape from which to draw their own ideas and
questions from the research.
The second option has, in this research project always been the more attractive. However,
at this point in the data analysis I realised exactly how much more work this would take over
the rather simple option 1 of simply presenting the data in a more traditional linear format. I
decided, however, to push on into the workload and take on what as the time seemed a
rather daunting task, and in fact the next part of the data analysis took at the very least a
week’s worth of work to achieve what I now feel is a desirable and presentably cohesive
result.
Having made a decision to go with option two, I then had to decide with whether or not to
use the video media parts of the interview or whether to cut my losses and work with the
audio data alone. If I had chosen to try to create a ‘video montage’ at this stage in the
analysis, I suspect the workload would have possibly become too much for me given the
time constrains I had within which to deliver the project.
Another factor in the decision was the poor quality of both the video footage and the audio
recordings of the interviews. I had, in the filming set one of the cameras to record in low
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resolution which meant that the video footage from one of the interviews was really too
poor to work with. However, although the audio recordings were not of a high quality, I had
accounted for this in my planning and made the assumption that I would be happy enough
with their rough quality and that I would be able to work that into the finished media. I
always felt that their rough quality would ultimately add to finished piece of work and was
more confident in my audio editing skills to achieve the desired effect than I was in my video
editing skills to create the same kind of raw, yet ‘earthy’ effect I was looking for.
Finally, because I am far more experienced with audio production software then video and I
knew I would be able to work relatively quickly with audio in comparison to video footage.
The combination of these factors lead me go down the audio editing route. Although I still
half felt the ‘montage’ might be given a meditative visual overlay in post-production, but
that I would cross this bridge later.
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Figure 16 - Date as an Audio only version in Audio editing software
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Presenting the Data as a Reflective Montage
Figure 16 shows the data transferred across to an audio editing suite and neatly organised
ready for editing. The next big job was to rearrange each individual slice of audio clip in to a
montage of ideas whilst still maintain some kind of flow. This part of the analysis took at
least two days alone.
Figure 17 - Merged audio montage with accompanied music tracks in Audio editing software
Figure 17 demonstrates the final version of the mixed montage in the edit. The larger blue
section in the top of the editing area is the reordered audio from the interviews and it has
been processed to blend into one continuous flow of spoken word. The themes and subject
‘heading’s’ are now no longer in order but are in a new narrative, one of millions of
potential possibilities which is subject to the editor/researcher. In this case, I felt the flow of
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words worked nicely, with the interviewees complimenting and contrasting each other on
particular ideas and conceptual opinions.
Finally, I added a meditative audio track, which I composed specifically to tie in with the feel
of the reflection and that was sympathetic to the overall reflective piece. The trance-like
track helps to glue the piece together and give the work a sense of momentum and
direction. The overall piece feels like a framed reflective listening experience, with a
suitable start, middle and end section.
Overall, the finished reflective montage is ten minutes in length and contains all of the
strongest elements of discussion and ideas that emerged from the interviews. I am
extremely happy with the final piece, both as a collection of research data and as an artistic
piece of musical work. I feel the piece can be listened to repeatedly without the listener
becoming bored, and manages to hold the attention of the listener whilst simultaneously
allowing them to float in and out of the ideas as they wish.
In the end I decided that the finished audio piece was strong enough on its own and didn’t
add a visual element, and I actually thought that a visual accompaniment might detract from
the meditative quality of the work itself.
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Reflective Montage
The finished reflective montage is available to listen to as an audio CD included with this
document.
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Release Forms
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Research Interview Transcripts
Interview: Lou Davis – Pioneer interview

GM- Gavin Mart, Interviewer
LB – Lou Davis, Interviewee
LD:
I’ve been doing this since 2011 having moved from Manchester to Edinburgh to take up the
role with VentureFX. It comes from my history as a Methodist member and being involved in
local church and had gone off to study theology because I fancied it. I explored alternative
worship and had gone along to Sanctus in Manchester. I had joined this great group of folk
who were worshipping and really caring, and the rest of life seemed really separate from
that. I wanted to build bridges between my faith and the things I’m fascinated about, people
and everyday life. The folk I work with and my friends, I think I’d found something that I
wanted to share with people, but it all seemed to be wrapped up in a fairly rigid way of
being within the church and I knew there was more to it than that. Having to live in a certain
way or within a certain culture, I knew that wasn’t really what was necessary to experience
God’s love. So I felt this tension and I wanted to do something that expressed that.
GM:
When you officially became a Pioneer, as a job, how did those feelings grow.
LD:
Before I moved up to Edinburgh I started with a certain group, a fresh expression called ‘See
Through’. They were folk from all sorts of denominations who came together to form it, and
I was leading that group. I had struggled to get this group to fit into any bigger kind of
structures, because it felt that because I wasn’t officially employed or ordained affiliated by
any one organisation it felt or official relationship with any denomination that people had
come from to form this expression, it felt like I was completely on my own.
So when I actually got a job with the Methodists, and when I had a team of colleagues it felt
a lot more secure actually. I felt that I was less adrift in a way. During that time previous to
VFX I had briefly looked in the Anglican churches pioneering track for ordination, and had
spoken to the District Director of ordinands and he’s said that really you have to feel like
you’re Anglican all the way through. And that even if the Pioneering thing doesn’t work out,
you’d still be Anglican, you’d still go to an Anglican church, and I couldn’t say that with any
church. But it got me thinking and I realised that there were things were important to me
about Methodism and that it would be quite sad to leave behind. I’m not really sure how
many of these things were really part of the structures of the church or rules and
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regulations, but something about a theology of equality and the importance of everybody’s
women in the church. And in particular in the Northern areas of the church, how well they
respected women and women in ministry, and something about accepting the whole
person. I’m not saying that you don’t get that elsewhere, but it was something that I’d
experienced through Methodism.
GM:
So moving through your feelings, how would you say your feelings developed over the
course of 6 or 7 years?
LD
I’ve been really up and down, its been all over the place! So moving to a new city was
exciting and there was lots to learn and I threw myself into it and I felt that the actual thing
that I had been asked to do, going out and meeting new people and exploring the heart of it
and the people who live here and what’s important to them. And trying to find ways of
responding to that. I found that really fascinating and quite consuming. What I found is that
it put me at a distance from the church, and that’s something that remained, that I’m living
a sort of different way and not being quite a close part of the church or a close-not
community that I have been used to. Even though there was a lot on tension there. I found
in my early days that because worship had been; lets meet with a group of mates and lets
do craft activities and baking an going for walks and photography, and at the same time we
would read the Bible together and do all that kind of stuff. But then I just couldn’t sit
through a traditional service anymore and I still can’t. I find it really hard explaining that and
trying not to make a judgement on the people who feel that’s really important. And so
there’s things like that that kind of put me at a distance from the other people in the church,
and I’m always at a distance from my colleagues, who are ministerial because they have a
completely different set of pressures and expectations on them. And most of the time that’s
OK but occasionally it creates tension.
GM
So do you think that feeling of tension has changed or evolved? And as you say you are
nearing the end of you Meth Pioneering, what’s your relationship to the structures?
LD
It seems very dependent on people or who that relationship is with. And sometimes its
about, where they’re at. At the minute we’ve got with my colleagues a good understanding
of our expectations of each other and I hope we, I think for a while a couple of years back
there was a difficult situation and it felt like we were going down separate tracks, and that
was very difficult. But I think things are a lot better now and there is a lot better
understanding between us and there is and understanding that I am never going to be
creating little Methodist congregations. I think that once we got to a point that we
understood we were all about God’s Kingdom and what that looks like and how we as the
church could be a part of that. I think that that has help to ease some of that tension, just to
understand that we are all on the same side. There was a while that we kind of trying to do
very different things and they weren’t compatible.
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GM
You mentioned God’s Kingdom in there and I wondered how you feel about communicating
that, how does that feel for you as an interpretation, and how does it feel to try and
interpret that to people that you come across within the role of Pioneer?
LD
That’s interesting, I don’t actually like the term God’s Kingdom, because its got all these kind
of power implications that comes with it, and it doesn’t seem very relevant in and age
where nation states are republics. Even though there’s a monarchy we don’t function as
one, but its hard to find alternative terminology for that. The sense that God is working in
creation and in peoples lives for a sense of wellbeing and wholeness and that’s not just for
the human world, but the environment as well. That’s something that’s become more and
more important to me and its something that I’ve tried to communicate. I think its one the
thoughts that’s directed the project I’ve been working on, because I think they are about
discipleship, but they are more about seeing the person as a whole person. I think that has
taken me back to why I think about what is important about Methodism and taking that
forward.
For example I’ve been thinking about what does work look like, what do does mental health
look like, what to community relationships look like? And how do they express themselves
in a way that is about wholeness and wellbeing for the person and for the environment and
for the whole community? I think seeing that as an outworking of God’s love for the world
and the way that we partner with God’s love to be able to bring that about is what I see for
myself and what I see that I have been doing. Then what success looks like is where you
point to the broken things being made whole and where you can point to healing and
reconciliation. It becomes less about how many people are coming to this group or how
many people am I engaging with, it becomes more about what does shalom, wholeness,
peace look like? So the people that I know and how can we as a community of God be
present and be ourselves, by following Jesus, how do we become agents of change in that
situation.
GM
I like the whole person stuff. I wonder if that’s a better analogy for God’s Kingdom anyway.
The terminology for God’s Kingdom can be exclusive, but thinking about the way Jesus
spoke to individuals that he met, the accounts that we have in the gospels, that Jesus is
trying to look for the whole person a lot of the time. The conversations He is having, he is
trying to restore wholeness in the people that He meets in everyday conversations and
meetings with people.
So to close, you’re coming to the end of a set period, which has been part of a wider
Methodist VFX project, I’m trying to get hold of people’s feelings about the work/the job
that you have done, how would you summarise the experience if you could? And how would
you realign things in the future, thinking about where pioneering is in the national
consciousness?
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LD
It’s hard to summarise feelings because they have been quite extreme and that’s probably
the best summary that you can get, that there have been some really great highs, and some
very low lows. It’s a bit of a rollercoaster. There’s been a small number of people relatively
locally that I have been supporting, that I have been walking alongside, that I see their faith
develop, and its just having been around them and seeing them slowly begin to trust in God.
That’s been amazing, but you see it happen through the worst extremes of life. Its been
traumatic, and I’ve felt quite lost on a number of occasions because I feel like I’ve been
following a thread, that the Holy Spirit is this kind of thread that weaves through life and I’m
trying to follow it, but sometimes it goes out of sight. Then you feel like you don’t know
were to turn, so there has been a lot of sadness, but then some incredible amazing things
have happen that just put you right back on track and really restore your faith in the whole
theology of God working in the world. That God goes before you and that things work out
for good.
So the other pioneers really get that and are a really great support. And one or two people
locally have really been there and have really kept me going, and its been nice to have
people to share when things have been going really good as well. The feelings about it are
all over the place because I’ve never demanded so much of me emotionally.
GM
Is there anything about VFX pioneering that would stand out in terms of feelings. I can’t see
another project like it really, it stands out as a test case, where the church has really tried to
create a framework within which pioneering can unfold, and in a way pioneers themselves
have been the experiment. It’s a bit like the intensity of the disciples in their 3 or 4 years of
intense ministry., and I think you have explained a little bit about the feelings involved in
that intensity. It’s a kind of a focus on what has happened and these are how these
pioneers feel about it.
LD
VFX has been really enlightening for me, I don’t feel like I have been subject to an
experiment, but yeah, maybe I am? Its incredibly freeing to be given a blank slate and a
methodology of go and follow this and see where it leads. Its led to some really interesting
places for me, but its nothing like I expected. That freedom has been a huge privilege, but
it’s been a huge responsibility as well and I feel the weight of that responsibility as well. I
feel guilty every day. Every day asking the question, how am I doing today, what am I doing
today that is giving back or how am I fulfilling that today, and that’s been also kind of
paralysing. Doing it at the same time as a cohort of other people gives you a sense that you
are not alone and that what you are doing and what you are sensing is normal which is
incredibly helpful. Then you always feel a sense of inadequacy when you compare yourself
to other people because what they are doing seems so much cooler than what you are
doing? You can quite easily be intimidated by feeling that other people’s projects are
further on or ahead of yours. You can feel that you are not living up to that responsibility,
but then you kind of need the other people to bring you back into the community in a way,
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as you set yourself apart from it. I don’t know if anybody else feels this but I definitely get
the ‘imposter syndrome’, like everybody else deserves to be here and I don’t and you need
the others to bring you back and say, you do belong here. They give you a sense of value
that goes beyond your own sense of pride or value.
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Interview: Eryl Parry

EP – Eryl Parry, Interviewee
I was an employed by the Roman Catholic church in Liverpool to an open up a derelict

school building but two and a half miles out of city centre which the Archbishop Patrick Kelly
had had a vision for. And what happened in terms of pioneering things I think happened
with one person's vision. Archbishop Patrick definitely had a vision. He needed to bring his
head office, church houses we would call in an Anglican setting, but his head office out of
the city centre because their old building wasn't fit for purpose. And he had this school that
was a redundant building and in one half of the building he wanted to put his head office
and in the other half he wanted a conference centre business and he called that building the
‘Liverpool Archdiocese Centre for Evangelization’.
I got the job and fortunately we were renamed ‘the Conference Centre at LACE’ and his
vision was that when you have meetings in that space then and when he came and he
would be meeting the world! And it was an incredible vision actually because underneath
all of that underpinned the need for us to work in plain sight, and I think that is really
important. The conference centre which was a 16 room conference centre which was
actually a fantastic facility. I am within a year we became conference venue of the year in
the regional tourism awards. Also going in it was it was it was a good building and I think
quality of what you doing is really important side issue but actually the winning of Awards,
not only in terms of profile and legitimacy and all of that stuff, but actually doing things well
is important.
But the people that came and used the conference centre having shared catering space and
all of that kind of thing, with people who are running the archdiocese the bumping in was
really ground-breaking, because they say ‘what goes on in head office for the archdiocese?’
Well there’s a National Brewery scheme, the third biggest purchaser of beer in country,..
And actually for those people who are working in plain sight actually having your normal
work, actually working alongside those in the world and asking really interesting questions
over lunch about Ethical Trading or the regeneration of the city… or you know,
unemployment or have you been here…?
There was some amazing conversations that happened over the 5 years that I was there and
we generated income as well. I think the challenge , one of the challenges there, and I think
this is about what does it feel like to be a pioneer… is that I was told at times that I was the
only person in the management team there who really got the Arch Bishop’s vision. A lot of
priests in Roman Catholic Church who thought it was going to be a white elephant. Why do
we need a conference centre, we've got church halls to meet in you know, and why do we
need it it's a big waste of money. And it took a while for them to see the value of it.
And I think being a Pioneer can be a lonely place, or you get more encouragement from
those outside than inside. Actually the people to energise you are the people who go…
“That's a brave vision, I like that”. Actually being somebody of faith then within the
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conference and hospitality industry, and them just try and get their head around what place
means at the beginning… quite suspicious, and then when you've earned your spurs within
the industry… then oh it's alright it's Eryl. But I think that was my first taste really or
pioneering stuff and seeing the value of it… the slow the nature of it, and the kind of
confusion internally is an organisation and then that taking a while to actually sink in and
now I don't think they’d be without LACE which still going on. My deputy that I recruited is
running it still, which is remarkable! For people who then get the vision. You start to hear
your own praises come back at you don't you? I certainly did! we had a really good time
with that facility.
I want then to Liverpool Cathedral and once again I was working to somebody else’s vision.
It became my job, once again, to translate that kernel of a vision into something that could
be delivered. And then clearly expanded beyond the vision that there had been. And within
pioneers, to draw out a kind of principle from that, I think I've learnt that you need to be
working within the agreement and be endorsed by the bishop. You know, or whoever is
leading your organisation… but quite often as a pioneer you take that original vision and
move well beyond it.
The vision that the Dean had was to put a cafe and build a cafe visible within the cathedral,
and most Cathedral cafes in a cloister not in the worship space itself and really high up so
that you got a vista from that café. And his idea was about hospitality, that actually from the
outside of Liverpool cathedral looks really austere… it's huge and it's dark and it's quite dark
inside and the idea that when you go to somebody's house be the first thing you are offered
is often a drink, so actually it was game changing in terms of atmosphere. And the fact that
it was licenced means you could have a glass of wine whilst being in a worship space.
That idea was quite ground-breaking and it was opposed by some internally who couldn't
cope with the idea of the chinking of cups etc. in sacred Space. And it was very controversial
to some of the tourists who came in from certain countries especially from Roman Catholic
culture because of that idea of sacred space and how could you enjoy beer in sacred
space??
But we massively took that idea of invitation, hospitality, worlds bumping up.. all of that to
its extreme I think and I am so grateful to ‘Chapter’ there for allowing me to simply run with
it. Because they needed somebody initially to project manage a 3.2 million pound invest
programme which had come through the European Regional Development fund. So they’d
got money to build the café and they got money to install an audio tour and have interactive
stuff and to put some sound and light in the building… But actually what they needed was
somebody to start building a team to look after all of that.
They called me Director of Enterprise in there… so we're going to see the generation of
income but this has been about generation of relationships and therefore one of the
cornerstones of mission. And in 10 years we built a space of developing wider relationships
within the city as well as an event space and as a place of hospitality.
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I think the principles of ‘pioneer’ is around then hospitality pioneer is around Missio Dei. It’s
a really important theological concept and I wouldn’t have known how to express this but I
grew to learn how to express it. If we believe that god is already at working, then the
opportunities that come our way become God's opportunities. So two years into that job
we have Capital of Culture and so actually, if we hadn't have joined in the creative program
for Capital of Culture, I’d think about it as like you've been denying God an opportunity.
Because God was bringing that opportunity to us, and it’s a totally different way of thinking
about it. How are we going to serve God and serve the city, because actually in the gift it’s
the same thing. To open up the space, it would have been a travesty not to have those
doors flung wide open!
The stuff that we did for Capital of Culture was unbelievably diverse, some incredibly high
profile and personally I mean you know, working with Paul McCartney for two days or you
know these are the kinds of great points in your career are fantastic, but it’s not about that.
Some of best memories are about the intimate stuff that happened. The following year we
got ‘Large Visitor Attraction of the Year’ for Capital of Culture as a retrospective award when
I was up against the current exhibition from the Tate and all kinds of fantastic attractions.
And was because of the fullness and diversity of the program and I'm sure God was
absolutely and completely in that.
The Tracey Emin piece was really powerful, and we got an award for that from the Chamber
of Commerce which is fascinating. Tracy Emin wanted a site-specific piece of work and her
vision for it was it would go under the ‘Benedict Window’ which comes full onto you as
you’re leaving the space. So she was very, very specific about where she wanted her neon. I
think it's a really clever piece because it begs a question, and all the best art begs
conversation and response… So that open ended “…I felt you and I knew you loved me…” if
you imagine that put in a hospice, it would change its meaning. And the range of response
that we got to it was incredible. It’s one of the most used pieces for preachers when they
have been because they're looking at it. It's used by tour groups when they're standing
under the bridge and because it excites people's enquiry.
‘Tour Groups’ will come in and one of the pioneering in public spaces is that it can be very
affirming to the existing faithful. So if you have a Christian tour group, those who may not
have come out as a Christian actually it's very easy for them to lead into a reference to Faith
and I found that in LACE as well. But some of the people who are coming on secular courses
they found themselves in a Christian setting and they found that very affirming. So that if
they're the kind of person where that you know they're only used to really having faith
talked about on a Sunday morning, actually meeting in a Christian setting for the day’s work
is a new experience.
And I think the Tracey Emin is really interesting for that because it's saying, you may be here
for all kinds of reasons, you might be coming in for a corporate dinner and we had so many
dinners because Liverpool Cathedral seats up to 1000 for conferences The reception is
spectacular afterwards as well, so those conference delegates are getting massive assault on
the senses for their surroundings. So if you're if you're doing that in in sacred space or if
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you're doing that with a piece of art that says you know you're going to be touched it works
for the sacred, it works for the secular. And then the Pioneer is in that bridge moment to
moment saying this piece of information this could really move on in your journey of life in
your faith and your understanding about what you do.
What I have to say that the position of hospitality? It's the great kinds of conversations that I
had in that space after somebody had a glass of wine, a good evening… and you'd be sitting
having a deeply pastoral conversation with some of the chief execs, who would never have
that conversation with you in a daytime meeting. The crossover then back into the life the
worshipping life of the church is really important… so under the Tracey Emin again, that
worked well as Jaguar Land Rover had launched their ‘Evoke’ [in the Cathedral] It was a
really important really important moment in the city's economy. To get to a launch because
it could have launched anywhere in the world, even though they making it in Halewood, and
the Chief Executive decided to have the launch in the Cathedral. The journalists at the
dinner in the well and what was fantastic we had 22 evenings of launch with Jaguar Land
Rover. Journalists have the power to make that product successful or not because one bad
review and they are question marks over the car. [They are the most pampered breed in the
world: automotive journalists! they get wined and dined right round the world] It was
incredibly important to the chief exec, but that that launch went well, and he experienced
something of God I am sure in that building, I’m sure. And he could see the connection of
bringing and the sacred into the secular, although he didn't name it but he would not have
had the same reaction in other places… Good people being moved to tears by the swell of
the organ… at the dimensions of the awesome nature of that building. But also that building
is created around the two natures of God is awesome an intimate and that's where the
Tracey Emin comes in again. It's an intimate message have I touched you and you know you
have been touched by something and it becomes emotional. And so there’s all kinds of
dimensions spiritual dimensions going on that even though this is a business proposition
GM:
So talking about Tracy, it's worth pointing out that these are also women's pioneering
achievements. If you had to think… is there any significant difference in the approach
through a piece of work or as a women pioneer? If you're approaching a woman do you talk
about talking about feelings and moving people etc.?
EP:
Maybe I've had to I confess that haven't thought that much about me being a woman
pioneer in terms of or rather than a being a man. I haven't thought about that but I guess
that I'm I am an Instinct person and I talk quite easily about feelings and I talk quite easily
about how concepts quickly become about people. I enjoy getting my head around theories
and concepts but ultimately forget to put a human face into them and see if they work, and
the only time that I think that you really get a response to trying to explain a concept.
I had to explain what we were doing in Liverpool Cathedral to so many different people
from the shocked, to the completely inspired, and then we would have tons of people from
the rest of the country come to see what we were doing. And it looks like the penny only
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drops when you talk about impacts, and that often about how people have responded only.
I can't talk targets and business plans, ultimately it's about people's changes in their
behaviour I guess. Quite often that you can see light bulb moments… when people are
genuinely moved by experiences and that's going to change our relationship or their
relationship with others or their relationship with God, that really makes a difference
We as women, might find it easier to admit vulnerability. I think Tracy Allen will remember,
before she launched that piece, being in a room on my own with her own standing in front
of a mirror and making sure she felt OK. When I saw her vulnerability as she takes the
message and transcribes it, it will transpose into her own language and then takes this
message off to another place. Tracy Emin… I suppose, would a man have come up with that
piece of work? …but the message is so appealing she really provokes a response and I think
it takes courage and bravery from the cathedral too, for her to be allowed to work in that
space. We trusted Tracey Emin to design that without knowing exactly how that was going
to come out, and I think that that's probably around organisation that gives somebody quite
that carte blanche, who's got that reputation.
There is something about us as Pioneers allowing those that we’re working with to thrive.
We've got to allow them space to thrive and certainly whenever artists came into our space,
I'd say, “there are there are boundaries here”, but within those boundaries we've got to
make sure that you can work in them.
I don't know if you've heard the is a little handful of theories that I kind of users touchdowns
really, and one is about bonding and bridging social capital. There was a paper in Battersea
Institute a few years back on cathedrals which was called building spiritual capital, and this
is quite interesting that sociologists divide activity into bonding or bridging capital. Bonding
activities are those you do for people like with people like yourself and church and they’re
very good and team building is important. So Sunday services and the main are bonding
activities or people like ourselves gather together and we have social activity for people like
ourselves that we know when love and they become part of the worshipping family. But and
that's important, but bridging social capital is for activities for people not like ourselves.
They’re the kind of people who might be on an ART trail who come specifically to see Tracey
Emin, and they're not necessarily be the kind of people who usually come into contact with.
So you have really significant big public spaces like the cathedral, they have to have more
generous engagement with people, and generous is my phrase but why not use it? I would
use in my team to say that whatever we do, especially when we are in bridging activity. Are
we as concerned as they are about the success of the activity as those that hired our space?
Do we want as much as they want for that to be a success?
And if we take positions on external boards, sometimes we will question the use of our
time… was that a good use of my time because I haven't been able to bring something back
from that to help our organisation? Actually if I let that go for a moment and say this is
about generous engagement, I'm going to be as concerned as they are about the success of
this board I'm on, actually it's amazingly freeing. Because if you see the world in terms of
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God at work in it, actually God's giving you the opportunity to be on that board but he wants
you to give generously. So some of my most stimulating times were on being a founder of a
community interest company that was on Hope Street, building relationship between the
other businesses in our immediate area. Of course, eventually that brings in some business,
but it's not the primary sale at the beginning. You're actually taking your part in building up
the whole aren't you?
But quite often what it leads to is bridging activity, not bonding activity, and sometimes the
place of the Pioneer within the organisation again is lonely because you are a bridge-point
to the person and to the people on that board. You're the bridge to the church. How do we
say that in church language? How has that going to affect the community out here? How's
that has that going to bring more people into the kingdom of God if you're the person who's
whose seen as the outsider?
I think I think there we're at a particular time in Wales where church attendance are along
the 1% so this is about reaching the 99 and I don't know how you do it without pioneering.
There is an enormous asset that we have in terms of heritage and sacred spaces, which it's
hard to say we haven't used imaginatively enough. So pioneering can happen outside a
community. Gathering around community need work we know all about that stuff, but I
would challenge us just to think as well in addition to our existing sacred spaces and having
bridge points creatively expressed in them. I didn't know that it is possible for all kinds of
people to be drawn into that space and experience all the things of God. I think there’s
strategically a massive learning curve, there is something that can happen at the macro level
and something at the micro level to macro level.
I think there has to be something about repositioning the church and people's perceptions.
Repositioning it completely, as there’s something to be traded and it would be relevant and
vital. Things of faith at the moment are not seen as relevant. Profile raising at the beginning
is really important and repositioning is important but on the individual level. That sound like
the little Cathedral stuff doesn’t it? It's doing things that are actually going to speak into
people's hearts, so you are you talking the head and heart stuff and things really reaching
people's hearts.
An answer that might be in terms of practical care and community or events, but they
ultimately have to be able to lead them to somewhere different, you really do, and that is a
challenge… it is a real whale challenge to us - the ‘what next?’ People already been asking
what next after festival of Light [At St Mary’s Church]. And the what next question we could
go in 20 different ways currently and I think there's something here about how does
pioneering work for you.
I think less about institution more about movement. I think there is an appetite globally
about movement and what is it to be a spirit movement as opposed to a religious society
religious or organisation. The language that we use being important, something about that
that feels like a very exciting time… about us actually being able to connect with people who
have got spiritual thirst and I do think that people have to go through a thirst but they're not
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going to be attracted into what they see is institutional because institution is not only the
church. I suspect we could both name lots of institutions out there for people and how
much distrust there is. The church is on that list, and trust is really important and the
language we use again is important. Even words like ‘fundamental’ and ‘radical’ are suspect
because of global politics.
So we had to wait. We have to reimagine where we are and how we express ourselves I
think, and I think we have to establish common ground. So I might finish with this actually,
because I'm exploring this as an idea I've been on Bardsey Island twice now as a chaplain
and much to my surprise I found that the vast majority of people who go there are not
Christian so it became a mission ground.
I worked out after my first week there, and so as I was approaching the second time, there
was some of them as I can wait and see what are the things that I have found we share
commonly together in conversation. There’s about three things one of them was a lot of
environment wildlife, all outdoor stuff that you wouldn't go to the Bardsey if you didn't love
that stuff it's about to peace and tranquillity, being away from it all. If you like bars
restaurants, theatres; people consciously make a big effort to get away they want to
experience peace. And the third is that they’ve discovered somewhere special. These three
things that are common ground, you can speak the gospel into there and I haven't heard
this explicitly before but it's something absolutely fantastic.
Then allow the gospel speak into there so that experience was very intense reflective. Some
days we talk together I did invite them to a reflective evening, I'd put on a reflective evening
and I and I did same time every night in the chapel and a huge percentage of people are
spoken to would come. I was not expecting to get to Chapel every night but we would go
from chat in candlelight into a prayer into a passage, then more chat and prayer and this
could happen over whole evening. And it was explicitly Christian, but it was chilled and I love
that ability that you've got to allow God to just to speak into that chilled moment. They
needed the common reference point you can't just take it into liturgy.
I think actually how I'm trying to examine myself now about what I did, I learn that I can
explore and ground things that we can find with our people. How creatively we can speak
into things that people care about.
I think it's especially true when tapping into the fact that I should discovering the face of a
renewed faith. It could be could be transformative to you in the stresses of you trying to
setup your own business, what you've decided to make your dream early retirement home
or whatever it is that they were drawn to. It because it was these kind of conversations I
think of what we offer.
How do we how do we use that in our worship so even though they [people of Conwy North
wales] have chosen to live here but don't feel passionate. We did a service on Sunday night
where again, actually it's really ancient stuff but such powerful reaction. I don't think all of
the stuff that we want to do is in our churches is of love so to do something outside of
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church, to do something more overtly pioneering now. Actually from where I am at the
moment just starting to do different things and getting different audiences for it is a good
stuff and we’ve done quite a bit here which is just beginning to get a wider should profile
raising and you know centre Warren park here he is ok to think outside the box ok to do
new things some of it works it works ok love mission statement is a good one but it was safe
place to do risky things advice service and we had a big consultation and Conservation
groups little cathedrals mission statement is it is a good one to pioneering this and that it
was for everybody is a safe place to do risky things in Christ service and mission statement
was written in Justin Welby's time as he was doing and we had a big consultation and
Conservation groups and everything to come up with that he coined the phrase at all that
and I loved that as a phrase because I could really work with it so safe place is about quality
for me actually people with you people have got to know that what you doing is important
thing did not move forward that risk but you you'd be challenged and staff meetings about
what did you do that was whiskey last month and if you couldn't come up with something
you needed to come up with something you had to be doing something risky and I haven't
worked in another organisation has asked that question and quite that way and you
wouldn't expect necessarily Cathedral to be asking you that and then inevitably third parties
car service you know how did you see God at work in what you do ok
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Interview: Kester Brewin

KB – Kester Brewin, Interviewee
GM The point is really to talk about emerging patterns at church, things that have
happened and people around… from like... we said the early nineties… your thoughts on the
nine o’clock service and the effect that had on going into the Nineties, and then perhaps a
little bit about how you think the institution has kind of adopted this idea of emerging if you
like and almost institutionalised it and now we have this kind of idea of pioneering and we
are kind of ... the idea is to create a kind of a montage of ideas with the research project will
basically be to basically present back this montage and allow the reader to form their own
ideas of what the emerging church is perhaps but I am interested in the story and we will
see where that goes.
So where were you in the early nineties? And who were you and what were you all about ...
K So early nineties I was at University in Bristol and I had gone there pretty much
happy to not walk into church again and two things happened I suppose. The first was on
the first night in the bar I met a guy whose brother lived in Bristol so this guy knew the city a
bit and said there is a really good club night on tonight it is not a student thing or anything
but do you fancy coming. At that point in my life I was willing to say yes to things but being
the good Christian lad at home I should have probably said no but I said yes and we had a
really fantastic evening and it sort of was part of the process of blowing my world open to
culture and music in a very different way and a couple of days later I then met a girl again in
a bar who said oh you know I am going to church tomorrow morning do you want to come
and again I was oh ok alright and I was pretty much ready to forget about it. The reason I
mention that is because then all through university I had this kind of double life almost.
They did not really touch each other at all. Like I would be wandering home five o’clock in
the morning on Sunday buying a pint of milk of a milkman whatever and while everyone else
was sleeping it off I would get up and go to church or whatever and I suppose then I was in a
band and we were recording Massive Attack and playing with people like Jamiroquai and
James Taylor Quartet you know we had a good thing going and then at the end of this
period which is then 94 I suppose I ended up in London and there was this whole Toronto
blessing thing going on and I think looking back on it now there was just a need in me or
desire in me for something ecstatic and whether that was the kind of the ecstasy of the club
thing or something ecstatic experience of the whole Toronto thing so that was where my
churchy stuff was going on in that ecstatic and moving to London these guys were putting
together a thing called Abundant run by a group of people in church and I suppose that was
the beginning of the idea I had that it was possible even tat all to fuse these two areas
whereas I had always considered them totally separate. That led I suppose to in 97/98 to me
and Nick putting together Vox which was a deliberate attempt to create an act of fusion so
we ended up in church which was stuffed full of artists, film makers, actors, super creative
people but there were no opportunities of expressing that creatively in the forms of worship
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on offer so we spoke to the guy running that and he was nice enough and he said maybe
once every couple months we can give you an hour slot
GM Where was that?
K That was at St James the Less in Pimlico and it was a HGV offshoot and we were all
part of that and I suppose what that Toronto thing did was there was always kind of shaking,
laughing, and roaring going on and I think that was basically a kind of… it was a moment of
madness… it was a moment of madness which allowed people to then break out of what
there was and there are lots of ways I could talk about that in psychoanalytic terms but in
terms of reference to culture and the beginnings of Vaux it was almost like the beginning of
a kind of darda moment
GM What is darda?
K You know it was just bloody madness and there was no way to understand it but it is
way of trashing what there currently is and we can see what then goes forward and we then
thought there is possibly to do what we wanted to do and what we wanted to was in total
continuity to what we are in terms of club church … now that I never felt happened... I walk
out of my house listening to one set of music and walk into church and had to deal with a
whole different set of other culture references which did not figure for me… they weren’t
together… so Vaux began as a way of allowing people to use the gifts that the already had as
an act of worship and that was it. So it was always about impunity of gift and if you were a
writer you could write and if you were a filmmaker you could make film... and whatever you
had you could bring that along and that was quite different then in that unless you could
arrange some flowers paly guitar or sing there was nothing for your to do in a church but
actually what that was doing was helping us kind of create a theologically space that was
beginning to in a kind of punk way deconstruct and tear things down and see what the
space looked like after that.. the other way that people talked about it was going to a big
church was a bit like being on a cruise liner with everything done for you and stuff happens
but something like Vox was much more like being in your own sailing dinghy and you have
got to do every damn thing yourself and it is exciting but you feel every blinking wave you
know so that was it but the reference point for us had been nine o’clock service which… but
I say reference point but they weren’t really a reference point… they were myths and my
issue with NOS other than the kind of abusive core of it was that they didn’t leave any ropes
they ascended to an extraordinary place and a place that was fully, fully grounded in the
place within Whitcerky .. so you have Sheffield and you have the Trance scene you had the
whole flipping hard club electronica aesthetically culturally musically it was pure and it was
absolutely integrated… mmm but there was no way of working out how to get up there
cause they didn’t leave anything and that was the kind of cultic part of it other than the
relationships, I was like you are not helping anyone else to do this just trying to do it
yourself but similarly Vox was trying to be an integrated experience it wasn’t separating out
who were one day and who were the next and that meant it did have a very strong aesthetic
like the visual presence was very important you know the kind of whole aesthetical
experience of it was really really important so I don’t know like in terms of history I think
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what we were doing was just an attempt at synthesis at like putting different parts of life
together and making sure that they existed holistically and perhaps that was what needed
to happen at that time was just the idea that don’t need to leave one part of your life here
in order to step into church like ..the whole thing is one..
GM So when you met with Vaux and thing … so how did you meeting .. talking about life
you know
K Well so Nick and I and our partners started Vox and we did not ever mean to start a
community there was never any intention that we would be a church or a community we
were just trying to express ourselves. So the meetings were basically sprang out of the fact
that we would go to the pub anyway a bunch of us and talk about ideas what have you and
we decided to set ourselves a first date in this venue we had got hold of and it simply came
from that so we ended up doing a monthly event and that was then backed up by planning
meetings this and that and the other but at no point were we trying to be a community or
trying to construct a community the problem is of course as soon as you start acting
collectively and deliberately you are being a community and communities need some sort of
leadership. Now I think naively probably back then that there was an idea that certain things
didn’t need leadership and it was possible to have something that had no leader and we
were very interested in the ideas of emergent system and complexities of float structures
and all that kind of stuff which I still think is very very relevant and important but if you are
going to care for people then you are going to need some mechanism for dealing with that
and also in any group of people spoken or unspoken there are levels of power and if you
don’t speak about them it is not that they go away it is just that they remain unspoken and
probably resentment will build up. So I remember someone talking to me .. probably
Andrew Filimgton .. who was very interesting to talk to he did the late late service in
Glasgow in probably the late Eighties early Nineties some sort of time as NOS and he said I
know that you think there is no kind of leadership but there is always leadership so the
question who is the person in the group who lies awake at night worrying about this now..
and I was like I do this that so any attempt that I have made to try and resist leadership of it
was sort of nonsense as clearly I did have some element of power within it and also people
were looking for some sort of guidance
GM How old was you then?
K How old was I? Well this was like ’98 so you know I was kind whatever that is of late
twenties..
GM That is an interesting
K …and you know both Nick and I were sons of clergyman, Anglican clergymen and we
both had a fingers badly burnt by vicarage life and our father’s means of coping with family
and with being ministers and their kind of position of being looked up to and all the rest of it
and I think we both kind of resisted quite heavily what
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GM what
K Well back then it was extremely public the door was always open, there were
meetings in the house pretty much every night it was about having a father, at that time it
was just a father there were no women ministers about, having a father who was always on
call and mum always having to be there to serve that and bring us up and then you know
wanting a bit of help with your homework Mum bless her wasn’t the best mathematician or
anything else, but walking up to the study door, the study door is shut , do I want to disturb
him, you know so it is a life lived in public in some ways like you are the vicars son and you
sit on the front row and all the rest of it but your father is not your own but is everyone’s
father and actually that can be problematic.
GM Did Nick feel the same way?
K He did very much he did and it was traumatic for him and his relationship with his
father and I think as a wider point something important about the whole emergent scene
which is to do with issues of paternity and parenting and ideas of relationship to power so
oddly enough just have a little tangent here… the churches I was going to in St James the
Less Pimlico HTV the whole thing, kind of charismatic Anglican churches heavily influenced
by the Vineyard movement now I had been over to California when I was about eighteen
basically fascinated by the whole OSD cam culture really interested in Tom Wolfe’s Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test and I had read that book and I wanted to go and see the site but like a
good Christian kids I wanted to see that but I then I quite liked to go to the Anaheim
Vineyard and see the huge mega church so me and friend went over and did both those
things and of course one did not mix with the other like didn’t flippin go from San Francisco
Hate Ashbury the whole LSD count teams and turn up at church the following day and say
where you have just been but oddly enough in 1967 the whole summer of love a guy called
Lonnie Frisby who is reading his bible while smashed off on acid and has a profound
experience of meeting Jesus and he goes along with Lowry Norman and you know no more
LSD for me I met the man from Galilee goes down the beaches and starts evangelises all
these hippies now all these hippies post summer of love are traumatised like the thing
didn’t go anywhere it was meant to be this huge revolution in peace and love and it didn’t
work like it didn’t work acid was a busted flush so what you have got are thousands of
people who are looking for some kind of home they are homeless many of them some of
them are physically homelessness moved from different parts of the states they end up
living on the beeches so out of that you get all kind of different gurus who kind of rise up
and start taking some of these guys on one of them is Charles Manson he kind of pulls you
know a kind of bunch of people together in to his family and that ends badly you know kind
of psychopathic murderers and all the rest of it you have then got people like Father Yodd
who gathers a whole bunch of people in under his restaurant called the Source in LA makes
a stack load of money starts calling himself God and flies out to Hawaii and sets up a
community out there and then one day decided he can fly takes off on a hand glider falls
400 feet off a cliff and kills himself, you know dies but then you have got this guy Lonnie
Frisbee and he is like you oh know this guys sees what’s happening and sees what’s going on
and says you know bring them into my church bring them into my church and so he takes
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uncritically this kind of acidified Christianity which is all about a direct psychedelic
relationship with god and this kind of power of god so that we can have these extraordinary
visions and transcend and ecstatic experiences and he takes it directly into church and the
guy who invited him into that church was John Wimber and the music that they take is the
kind of long ramblely hippy acoustic thing and that becomes the de facto music of this new
scene the Vineyard. Now the reason why it have probably never heard of Lonnie Frisbee is
that a few year later he reveals to John that he is gay and he is entirely written out of the
history of the Vineyard movement and he died of AIDS in 1993 but he was the one who
created the modern charismatic evangelical movement directly from a counter-cultural
hippy acid thing so there is kind of ideas of the need for the ecstatic which come out of a
trauma of a society that is not working and I think that is what I saw well that’s what I see
happening in the 60’s when you have got post World War II these are people who are born
either just before or during World War II, to absent fathers there, they are growing up in a
period of great industrialisation, alienation from labour, community, growing up thorough
all of that and you get all these different counter-cultures happening it is not just the hippies
you have got hells angels they are a counter-culture you have got the hippies doing their
things you have got the Christians zipping off into the charismatic and doing their thing but
it all moves upwards into the ecstatic because that is a way of escaping the problem on the
ground now jump back so where does the emergent church come from I will tell you where
it comes from it comes from Thatcher it comes from this trauma in, I see it, in British life of
what you have got is the ecstasy generation you have got this whole kind of clubbing raving
thing and you have got this kind of serious sense of alienation where Thatcher says there is
no society you have got all kind of things going on there and a kind of serious collapse in a
slightly different way of society and expectation and from that comes a kind of trauma
within Christianity I think which is the emergent church is again Christianity’s version of
what was going on in society in a wider sense in terms of rave culture in terms of club
culture and so on but they come form the same trauma I suppose.
GM Do you think the regionality has an part to play in that as well…. in that you are from
Yorkshire
K I think massively and I was born in Sheffield so in a small way I felt I could taste that
sense of the land within what they were doing and I think at its best what Vox did was very
much rising out of the scrubby pavements of Vauxhall where we were and it had something
of the city within it. so I think that regionality is fundamentally important and one of the
problems we had was that people want to too simplicity export that and dump it
somewhere else but that is just never going to work it has got to rise up form the gifts you
have within that community and those gifts are formed and homed by the particular culture
within which they are operating. So we did not really do much singing or have a great deal
of live performing music because there weren’t really those people around we had a lot of
contemporary dance we had a lot of film we had a lot of kind of liturgy cause those were the
people we had a lot of art installation those were the sort of people you cant say oh we
need to have an art installation cause they did it that is not the point the point is you look at
the gifts that are there within your community and you look at the community that has
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formed those gifts and you think what are the gifts this community needs so it has to be a
relationship with the region it has to be.
GM What were the people of Vox emerging from? You know if people in Sheffield were a
class potentially, you know you talked about such as no society in Yorkshire at the time…
just coming out of the miners strike but then still students then really in Sheffield what in
Vox were the issues in ’98 in London what do you think people where emerging form?
K Well… I think you have got a very strong sense of British cultural identity coming
through which I think people were very ready to own and whether you talk about you know
like new labour coming to power and you know Oasis and Blur turning up at 10 Downing
Street there was a sense of grasping onto a validation of cultural expression which I think
was a very strong sense in London there was a very strong sense of possibility but of also
this is ours and this is what we can do so it was just an idea that it was possible that we
were allowed to do it in terms of what they were coming from I suppose it was a situation
where that had not been validated and it was not felt necessary that things were great or
that ..
GM What else was there?
K What do you mean?
GM In terms of the Church..
KN Well not a lot to be honest and you now we were in a situation where there were
extraordinarily gifted people not really given permission to be anything at all and you have
got to realise this is not a time when .. it is certainly way before social media .. a lot of
people were not on line at all .. so ion terms of where do people get information from.. like
how is information spread… how do people know what might be possible.. it is not easy to
do that… or it is not so easy to do that ..
GM Were there connections to actual festivals other than the obvious ones with people
in Vauxhall for example... the scene..
K People in the local area in Vauxhall?
GM Yes or people who were part of VOX… what were they seeing to emerge?
K We had top notch designers working, we had people working in kind of government
agencies… we had people who were working very strongly in London art scene… you know
contemporary art and fine art stuff… and people working you know in justice issues and that
kind of stuff so it was a way of saying you know what all of this can be brought together and
made to play together rather than you know lets have a sermon about justice and then we
will do a chorus... like you know…. You can go to the missions board at the back of the
churches… it was an entire thing which was curated... but also one of the metaphors we
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used was about architecture in that an architect designs a space within which how the hell
you want so we were trying… we weren’t trying to tell people how to use the space but to
create a framework within which they could enjoy and use the space how it suited them so I
think there was sense in which we were trying not to be too directive and giving people
permission to explore spaces how they wanted to.
GM I am just wondering what you as individuals were, what threads were you following
in terms of, was there any sense of the wider emerging community around the UK that you
...
K The emerging …
GM You saw that this was happening elsewhere…
K ..emerging Christian communities?
GM Yes
K Yes so I mean one of the kind of exciting incidents for Vox was going along to Grace
and seeing what Jonny Baker was up to and saying to Jonny why don’t you come along and
do this in South London and he told us to bugger off and do it ourselves and that was great
there was a sense of DIY and Nick had been up to York and seen... he had been to some
alternative worship conference up in York and had heard about a few things going on
there… and we had Tom Sine come over he had come over to Greenroll I think and we had
booked him for the day and we called the day a Dreamscape and that was it... it was
basically a kind of facilitation come along and see what you dream is and basically the four
of us, me, and my then wife Becky, and Nick and Sues, we realised that we had all dreamed
the same thing which was basically a community of people doing stuff we were like ok we
need to do it and we just did get on and do it. So there were other communities around but
we didn’t really go to them very much but I think our sense was... my sense was I think we
thought we can do this better we have a kind of artistic vision which is really strong and
what we felt had lacked in some of those things was they were just a bit shabby when it
came to artistic expression. They were a bit bangy and a bit too light... and we didn’t want
that we wanted something which was probably darker. I think that you can talk about veer
positive and veer negative and Vox was always veer negative and we always pushed that
kind of brighter path. If people wanted the brighter path there were other places they could
go but we were pushing people to wards an open expression of doubt and of de-
construction and that is what it was. We helped people to take things apart and when you
have taken something apart you can then look at the pieces and then think well what do I
now do with this stuff. Now it is not necessarily a burning down it is a de-construction it is
not a destruction and that I think was a process that needed to be done carefully over some
time with serious pastoral care around them but I think the good thing about Vox is that we
realised where it had taken us to and that as soon as we were serving it rather than it
serving us we knew we had to kill it… you know it had become a monster and we never
employed anyone, we never brought a building and we never did anything... we owned a
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few bits of PA and what have you but there was nothing keeping us there so we could just
be done with it so we held one final service which was basically an assassination and we
killed it and then the following week we held a wake and held a huge party and celebrated
but we made sure that everyone had somewhere to go and the idea was that this has got us
as far as it could go and now where do we go next we will see.
GM So did you feel like that was a... the killing it was a product of the de-construction? Is
that fair to say... or
K Well I think we realised that oddly for a faith based around death and resurrection
we are afraid of letting things die and we thought it was important to show that things can
stop… We started it we can stop it.
GM I was going to ask how… Why did you feel that it owned you? You were working for it
as opposed to… what was the change?
K Emmhh... It is a hell of a lot of work putting on something like that. It takes an

enormous amount of energy and time and while that process is feeding you in terms of
what you are creating that is amazing. If you then begin to feel that I have to create
something in order to make this thing happen that is very different, that is a very different
feeling. Like you are pushing to... to produce something that isn’t coming out of you just like
I need to find that… so actually we were serving it rather than it serving that and we had
little thought experiment where as a core group we said ok think of a hypothetical button
and if you could press this button then Vox would no longer exist but everyone would be ok
i.e. we would all still be friend but we just would not be doing the services… Would you
press the button? As soon as you have got pretty much everyone say yes they would… you
haven’t got a chance you have to press it so we decided that was what we were going to
do… and there was all sorts of… and there were people from New Zealand saying you cant
stop you cant stop and we were like listen mate we are not going to carry this on because it
is a nice idea for you to think it still exists this is a real living and breathing group of people
and it is important.. this is never about the external thing.. now Jonny and I used to joke that
all of these emergent communities at one point or another have effectively been a
doughnut there is a huge amount of sense of gravity on the outside but in the middle there
is pretty much nothing there… Vox was small and Grace has always been small but the
external… from the outside… yeah there are people coming over from here there and
everywhere; like flying from Australia to come and write a PhD and the like but listen guys
you know it is tiny it is about this small group of people but I think that it was so radical in
the sense of… it was giving people permission in way that hadn’t been seen before that it
had a big resonance and I am happy for it to have had that but at the same time it wasn’t
huge .
GM So if we kind of time jump like to the present we are interesting time where the
institution or church if you like is trying to embed some of this stuff into their institutional
practice of the church, over 20 years behind but that’s ok, and we are talking about minsters
if you like what is the difference between someone trying to create, I was just thinking when
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you were talking about getting exhausted or trying to create an alternative event for want
of a better word once a week or once a month or whatever it is, and then you have got
these curates or the people who ordained into a fresh expression or a pioneering role. What
is the difference where you are potentially creating opportunities for people to do that stuff
full time. Would you say you would have carried on if you have been employed for example
if it had been a job to do that kind of stuff or what would you have done in 1998 if you were
employed as a pioneer lets say and you were doing Vox and a church was funding you or
stipending you or giving you a salary or something to think about that stuff would you have
carried it on, would you have kept it alive, would you have still killed it would you have gone
done another avenue with it? What would be your advice be?
K I had a very serious problem with the economics of church life. Now there are
various ways this happened but you know my experience of growing up in church just
before communion the central right of your spiritual experience they come round with a
plate and collect money … what the hell!!… so the whole kind of gift exchange economic
was problematic I think and Vox was a community of gift .. it was a community of gift… it
was not there in a sense of it having… because no one was paid we were in a cycle of gift
and we remained entirely in the cycle of gift and that is referencing a bit from Lewis Hyde
whose book The gift is probably the most important book in terms of what Vox was doing
where he talks about the economics of gift and what that does and the difference in terms
of the market economics now the problem with employing someone is that they then have
a vested interest in it continuing because the need to keep employment and in particular
generally the longer… you know you get someone in they are lively and good to begin with
but the longer that goes on the more likely it is they are going to have a kid and they are
going to suddenly be in a situation where they are relying on this for the life that they have
created and they are very often in a situation where they are not skilled in anything else
anymore and which means they cant stop cause they now have a blinking mortgage and
what have you now unfortunately I speak to people all the time who are in that precise
situation and they have started up on the journey of de-construction but then are in a place
where they are no longer believe or can sign up to the kind of central tenants of the
organisation that is paying them but they do not know what to do… because they have got
kids in school they have got this or that.. I am just incredibly grateful that no one ever
worked for Vox and I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to do that. I think that generates a
gravity within the kind of relational structures which is really unhealthy. So you end up like
hold on a minute we are paying you which means that you have got to do this so the
economics of it is because we pay you we expect to receive from you on a Sunday... you
know that it what we pay you for like… we pay you so that we don’t have to worry about all
that crap… whereas if no one is paid you have to take joint responsibility for it and that is
very different in terms of the kind of gifts that come forward. Now I have seen that happen
plenty of times in church’s when you get an interregnum you know when the vicar
disappears and the new one is not arriving for three or four months and flipping heck
suddenly the church is excellent as everyone has pulled together to do it. Now it is tiring and
it doesn’t necessary last for very long but what you get from that is because you have
removed that kind of economics you do get a sense of freedom and because you have
removed the person that you are paying you have to kind of hold that together so that body
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becomes something where the wisdom and the kind of function of the body has to be
shared out amongst a whole group of people as there is no one person who is paid to have
the time to gather all of the degrees in themselves and gather all the training in to that one
person so it is a more distributed relational model. So we never would have paid anyone at
Vox. It just wasn’t going to happen so what that meant was it didn’t last as long as it might
have done but good and so it shouldn’t have done. So what worries me about fresh
expression in the church is you are entering a kind of model of investment where people
want a return that is one thing like what am I getting for my money and you are entering a
model of kind of employment which is a very very risky thing to do because you are putting
someone into a economic situation where yes the gifts that they are bringing are
complicated in that way.
GM Well they are no longer gifts are they…
K Yeah they are no longer gifts… yeah I see it too often and I think very often that
youth work works on a kind of furnace model in that you get them in and you get them
cheap and then you just burn them and then you get another one… and there are ones that
come out the other side and they like flip I don’t really have any training or experience I
better go and get ordained so I can keep being paid in this way. Now that is bull shit and I
hate it and it was the way I was being pushed and I resisted and I am glad that I did resist.
You know...
GM You become a teacher instead…
K Yes I became a teacher because if I wanted to work with young people that was
working with young people for a long period of time… so I have a problem with the
professionalisation of ministry and this idea we will be able to pay for success. I don think it
is healthy or sustainable I think it distorts the gift and the relationship and the community in
which it is meant to arise from I think it is about a large dinosaur often trying to help itself to
survive. So yeah …
GM I mean that there is some… a lot of this stuff is about homes and meals and people
around tables and I was thinking about the early church and that for me is very … those kind
of meetings and gatherings seem to be … resonate strongly with the early sort of church we
imagine… and that idea of payment in that early church I am try and wonder how that might
have worked?
K One of the things that has always struck me about the difference between the gift of
commune and the market of commune so if you go to a restaurant and you pay for some
food, the fact that you have paid it has balanced the relationship. You are not going to go to
the chef and say oh my goodness that is amazing you must come over to mine for dinner.
You pay your money and that is what you pay for at the supermarket. You pay in order not
to have to reciprocate in any other way and it would be weird if you tried to.
GM Sorry battery is dying on here… hold that thought…so food…
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K The fact that you pay for the food means there is no imbalance in the relationship.
There are two things there. One if you offered to pay for the meal at the end of the night
that is bloody rude but also what that means is that there is an imbalance in that
relationship. Now the interesting thing about that is that is if that imbalance is only re-
balanced by a straight reciprocal relationship i.e. I come to your house for dinner you come
to my dinner I come to yours you know there is something slightly weird about that it
doesn’t quite work and there is a kind of old Hindu parable of two women who decide to get
round their obligation to give alms to the poor by just giving to the other and then back
again and it said that they become a well so bitter that no one could drink from it. So the
cycle of gifts in hides a gift theory that the gift always needs to go out of sight i.e. I come to
your house to dinner, you goes to someone else’s house for dinner, they might come to my
house for dinner and there is this cycle going on which is generative; and the reason it is
generative is because it has complexity it is multiple relationships at multiple levels but at
no point is there an economic transaction which means the balance now what that does is
to create a kind of interdependence within a community and a sense in which the empty
place keeps moving around. Now when the empty place keeps moving around that means
there is a drawing towards that empty place and that actually is the place of artistic
generation. You know where there isn’t any gift there can’t be any art. You know it is always
moving into that empty place and that I think is where the community needs be in a place of
a gift cycle but that gift needs to be allowed to disappear at times and that is really
complicated for churches to get their heads around because I think we are still so tied into a
kind of capitalist work ethic that we have applied that almost entirely uncritically to a
worship context and it just doesn’t work, it doesn’t generate, so if you look at gift cycles in
the early church that is what is going on the gift keeps moving…
GM What is the pioneer is the gift?
K Explain?
GM The pioneer as a gift to the community?
K I don’t think the pioneer can be the gift I don’t think the gift can be necessarily a
person …
GM Well a pioneer with gifts?
K But if those gifts are coming form one place then it is not a cycle of gifts and gift isn’t
ever allowed to disappear… you know you end up with one person who gives from a central
spoke. I think the place of … you know if you want talk into that metaphor the place for the
pioneer is to begin a cycle of gift. So that they can become for a while the empty place and
they can then begin a cycle from which they then must step out… now you can go gospel on
that and say that’s why Jesus had to go… and you know you need to step out of that gift
cycle. So that means two things you cannot be the person within... from which all gifts come
so there must be some lack within yourself so that means go to a community in order to
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receive not simply to give that means you have to be integrated into that community. You
cant be the person who has it all going in as some generous benefactor, cause that is
fraudulent, so you have to go in to be part of the gift cycle with a vision to opening up the
cycle of gifts from which if you are going to be that pioneer either you start it going and
reduce your status and simply remain within that gift cycle or you generate it if you are
wanting to remain a pioneer and make that gift cycle sustainable and then you move on
somewhere else but that is a complicated thing to do as again …
So what does a pioneer do?… well I think it is kind of an interesting idea about how
they use that resource that a group of people want to push forward or push into so many
places and yeah…
GM I love your complexity argument with the emerging so you can’t just have… you
can’t just say to someone here is a stipend or a salary now go and emerge. It doesn’t work
like that …
K No it doesn’t but I think it is still what people want to happen they want to
parachute in and emergent is a dirty business, it is a filthy dirty business and you say we are
the body of Christ ok be born in some way then.. be born somewhere spend thirty years
growing up there doing a trade and maybe then for a couple of years and then you will get
flippin done by that community but if you want to be the body of Christ that is what you are
basically going in for be born in some way and don’t be born into a religious structure be
born into a structure or something that pisses off the religious structure, the religious
structure resists, that is spate at, that is accused of being filthy and sinful and hanging out
with entirely the wrong kind of people and then die and that … maybe that is the model but
it is not an easy one ... it is not an easy one at all … yeah…. and you know people talk about
well how does the resurrection come into that… now Simon Critchley who is a philosopher I
like who has become very interested in Christian mythisim although he is a working class
atheist himself he says I believe in the afterlife and I believe in the life of those who come
after. That I think is exactly where the church should be. We go to be born and to die so that
those who come after might live… that is the resurrection that I am interested in that people
can get up from the graveside and know how to live and that is what I think is so fascinating
about the early church is, and you know this is what happens in church, in Church of
England week by week, god is destroyed and broken apart, swallowed down and digested
and then taken back out and that is what I think needs to happen…
GM Catholic…
K It is an important thing that gift is broken down and consumed and in a sense it dies
but it is about then getting up from that death and knowing how to live afterwards, that is
the gift…
GM Would you be happy to lead us in communion tonight potentially…
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K I would be very happy to … and I am very for people to come to that from where
they want to come at if from…
GM Well last time Martin lead it he gave us a pagan communion..
K Yeah so I am not necessarily interested in expanding what my version of that would

be I am interested in people breaking bread together and my view of that would be … you
know… church for me should be the place where we come to participate on the on-going
ritual of destroying the gods that keep getting thrown up and it is in that constant cycle of
putting to death of gods that we work out who we are as human people together.
GM So we want to go outside and play… one last question… where do you think your role
in the emergence is now?
K I think there is a bunch of people who are still very much in that as their thing and in
a way good luck to them. So Vox in about ‘99 started, well suggested a venue galled
Greenbelt Festival called New Forms and we sort of created an alternative worship venue
and it went on for years and years, it is still going on, but the problem that you start
something like that and people begin to copy it and they bring their group and they are
doing another bunch of tea lights – that is fine I am actually not particularly interested in
that at all. I am very interested in helping people to reflect on what that journey is and on
continuing that journey of de-construction so the extent to which people are happy to hear
some thoughts on that maybe I am still a part of it … you cant emerge forever … you have
got to get up and walk at some point and that is the thing when does it finish emerging?
What does it emerge into? Well for me it emerged into, you know, a situation where you
have to get up and walk and begin to live and to keep on emerging well that is just like a
long turd. You know you cant keep on emerging you have got to live and you have got to
think ok I have walked clear of this thing and now it is time to live it.
GM Very interesting … right at the beginning you were just talking about… couldn’t quite
get the connection between the Toronto blessing stuff you had experienced and then how
this directly related to above you…
K Well it was in that there was sense of the ecstatic which sort of gave people
permission…
GM That was happening at St James…
K It was I wasn’t there at the time I was at a sister church but it was…
GM and that abundant club wasn’t in the same building as the night club…
K No it was just all over town in proper club venues…
GM So it was a night a promoted night…
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K It was and it was run by Christians but it wasn’t a Christian night club… and it was
based on the values and the music was uplifting Christian garage and there is a place of
celebration I suppose …
GM So when you were a Uni doing like a … you went to church with the girl in the
morning and through that 4 years of Uni or whatever you were having that parallel
experience.
K They were two separate experiences and then they became to integrate and that
point of that was the permission to do that integration… anyway form that integration that
the emergent thing happened I guess… like when those two cultures start to mix what
happens? Does club culture get christianified or does Christianity get clubified? Which reacts
with which?
GM …..
K Yes I flippin love it whenever I get a chance to dance I will do. You know dancing is
dancing it is ancient … you have a sense of the ecstatic..
GM What happened?
K It stopped they did other things they did snowboarding holidays… and then people
moved out of town… It was Steve who started it… Still very occasionally the name is used
and all the kit is still there somewhere…
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Interview: Ric Stott

IN – Ric Stott, Interviewee
GM So I am interested in what it means to be a.. emmhh … lets say… I am interested to

hear what it feels like for you to be a pioneer ok… and we will break that down then… we will
break that down… you just get going and I will break that down... I am interested in hearing
what it feels like, it means to be a pioneer
IN Ok, I mean pioneer… there is all kinds of problematic stuff we can talk about but ok,
how does it feel, liberating… exciting … uncertain… emmhhh… I think there is something about
getting used to living with uncertainty and in that really kind of strange in between place that
is neither one thing or another, the uncertain place and it is like….
I was about to say something really quite profound then and it just cut off.
GM Hahaha
IN Its gone now…
GM You were saying simply liberating…
IN Yes I think there is something about sitting with the uncertainty and saying I am an
artist as well … maybe that is not a word for it Pioneering... How do you know when a piece
of art is successful… you know if you are doing a painting there is uncertainty inherent in the
process that you cant say this is good art or this is bad art... or I made some good art… I making
something meaningful… you just don’t know... when you are in the middle of it you just don’t
know and I think that is what is maybe in the middle of pioneering this just not knowing and
getting used to that feeling of genuinely not knowing and that is not knowing in terms of
purpose, so actually what am I here to do, what I am here to achieve, I don’t know – it is not
knowing in terms of identity. Because before I could decide I did circuit ministry so you kind
of have an identity as you are a reverend… you are in this community … people know the
minister, you are there on a Sunday, you doing weddings and funerals and you have an identity
so in pioneering there is a not knowing in terms of faith, and rhythms of faith practice I guess
you are not doing services every Sunday and so then what actually does it mean in the city of
Sheffield to follow Christ – if it doesn’t mean going to church on a Sunday. What does it
means? Well I am sitting down having a coffee with someone, or what does it mean, when I
have had a week when nothing seems to have really happened, so there is not knowing in
terms of faith not knowing in terms of what is the church or even the importance of the church
because you have encountered people or I have encountered people, everyone who knows
people outside of church knows this that people live their lives, and have fruitful lives, and
have good lives and fulfilling lives and spiritually rich lives but they don’t need the church to
do that so there is a not knowing of what is the church for even… I don’t know… I don’t know
the answer…
So on… and on all these kinds of strands of not knowing and uncertainty and just living
in the midst of that I think so yeah more than anything else it is getting used to that feeling
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and sometimes it is scary and sometimes, not very often now, but there is longing for a bit
more certainty something concrete to hold onto but not very often… and this kind of
personally exhilarating letting go and then living with that like living in free-fall or living in the
flow of the river and letting it go and just realising I am not in control of this wherever it goes
gracefully... grace will do something… that is a meandering answer to your question … is that
what you wanted?
GM Well you have said how does it feel to be a pioneer... you have given two feelings …
IN What two feeling?
GM Scary and exhilarating
IN Uncertain … a feeling of uncertainty
GM Well I wrote that… but I wonder how uncertainty feels?
IN Eggghhh… well it can be both those things I think that it is the uncertainty but it can be
if you … if you have got nothing solid to hang onto that can be liberating and exciting and
creative and … you know… full of life and that’s a feeling or it can be terrifying … and it can
actually be both at the same time and I think there is something about the idea of the
sublime… that was a feeling of… I don’t know what the word would be… there is a sublime
feeling when you encounter something that is like so far beyond your understanding that is
both beautiful and awesome and fearful … so if you stand in front of a vast ocean say and the
waves are really crashing it feels like father’s beauty ... there is fear… there is awe…. all that
stuff … that gets called the feeling of sublime… I think that is part of the fear… do you want
more feelings?
I think it is a practice but carry on…
GM Sublime feels like standing in front of an ocean?
IN Don’t say it like it stupid your tone of voice? Hahaha
GM Hahaha… Just say it back to you….
IN Hahaha in a conversational way…
Yes and it is that vast nobility... like if you know when you are over really deep water
particularly if you are swimming and you cant see the bottom and you know there could be
all sort of things alive down there, there is a whole world down there you cant empower, you
cant see, you cant stop to talk to… but there is this sense of something bigger than you out
there … that is the feeling. The feeling of being literally out of my death but in the sense of I
don’t know whether the immensity of this experience… I don’t think I can contain the
immensity of this experience…
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GM You just said that you can’t contain, sometimes you can’t contain the immensity of the
experience, when might you feel like that … do you feel that now? As a pioneer?
IN Hahaha talking to you… I feel it when I am painting which is what my pioneering

ministry is so… I feel it in meditation and in the absolute stillness and silence and occasionally
you get that breakthrough moment when there is an awesome experience of god and even
when use the word god that is not big enough to encompass what I am talking about, the word
god is not big enough. So yeah those moments of immensity I think but then the other side of
that is the, just the normal, really normal ordinary hands dirty stuff of life and my life and
other peoples lives which are messy and weird and contradictory… yeah just the kind of
normal stuff of life as well. So these two extremes and somehow that immensity is in the
normal stuff and maybe vice a versa. Well like, so, I love the abstract expressionists, the artists
and you can see sometimes that some of them were, Rothko was it or was it…. Sometimes
you see one brushstroke and it is just one movement, one action with this, with just this
physical stuff, which is paint at the end of a brush, this one action, but when you stand in front
of the painting and encounter that action, that thing, that object, there is just this kind of
immensity, there is so much contained in that ordinary thing, that very ordinary movement.,
which to my idea of, kind of church language, the theological language is about sacrament
these physical things in the world that a embodiments of these serious and complex internal
experience that we have.
GM Tell me about what that one action, which is really interesting, what is happening in
that…
IN Wow yeah that is massive, actually I have got a painting just there and I can talk about
that…
GM So…
IN Is it filming?
GM Yeah how is that?
IN So this is about a kind of dynamic between the two individuals two lives… I did a series
of five of these and then right at the side, I take quite a while on the oil painting and then the
last stroke is with this black gloss paint and when you have got the oil paint you can move it
around and faff around with it and so on, with the black gloss when it is on it is on, it is not
going anywhere, so the final movement, the final action, embodies something for me about
the energy between the two figures, and so in a series of five paintings each movement at the
end has a different energy to it and yeah so I have tried to make it in such a way so that one
action embodied some feeling and this is why when you asked for the words for the feelings
actually there are some many feelings that we have that don’t have words for and I think this
is why we need art that, art can start to embody some of the stuff that we cant put into
words… and so if you stand in front of say, particular in front of a (inaudible)… I have seen
some them online and I think I am not bothered about that, and when you see them in real
life these massive paintings all this energy pours off them because the object has kind of
absorbed all this kind of sidekick emotion, spiritual energy that the artist has poured into this
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piece and it just hangs there in the gallery and it is like a portal to another dimension and all
this stuff pours out of it and you stand in front of it, and if you have got eyes to see or are
receptive to it you receive all that but it is embodied in that action, you know it is about the
way your muscles move. I am not into sport or anything like that but there is something about
yeah what you do with you body so sometimes if I am painting I might really contort my arm
around and have a really strange twisted line, or use my whole arm to a big kind of sweep
across the canvass but how you are using your body is then embodied in the paint that is left
on the canvas.
GM So you talked a little bit about abstract expressionism….
IN Yeah
GM Actions in time
IN Yeah
GM … and you talked about actions representing internal complexities
IN Yes
GM and in terms of describing things that you can put into words… this embodiment of
feeling… How do you think that helps the pioneer pioneering?
IN Well I suppose the question for the pioneer is what are you trying to embody in the
world. So what am I trying to embody in the world as a pioneering Christian minister, what I
am trying to embody is something of the nature of Christ which is about, and so whether that
is embodied in the strokes of paint or that way I am with people, the way I live my life, it is
about embodying Christ in the world which is about a love, but what does that mean, it is
about liberating your birth, its about being deeply involved and deeply engaged with the world
not separated out from, being involved in the complexity and mess and ambiguity, and
sometime moral ambiguity of the world, being involved with the beauty in the world, being
involved in the pain in the world and that really deep hands dirty engagement with
communities, with, just what is really. So how does it relate to pioneering, well for me
pioneering is about embodying that spirit of Christ and that is just the word I use for it other
people might use different language for it.
GM Ok so how do you cope with these feelings? Are these easy feeling to deal with…?
IN Well they are not easy feelings to deal with but I wouldn’t have it any other way… it is
like… it would be easier not to… you know I was … I went out to the pub with my friends and
one of them said it must be so easy for you to believe and you know to have this faith and
stuff like that and I said well no it is a pain, it is really, it is not comfortable, but in the end I
don’t, I do have a choice in a sense, but it is like do you have a choice whether you love your
kids or not, well maybe in a sense you do but it is no choice is it… I want to give everything for
them… it makes Jesus the story, when, so he is doing his teaching and his ministry and
thousands of people come to see and all of a sudden he starts to talk about going to the cross
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and people found this too difficult so people would wander away and it is just his close friends
who are left and he said what about you guys are you going as well, and they said we have left
everything to follow you where else could we go, and it feels like that really. It would be so
much easier not to try and live in this flow, wouldn’t it be so much easier to just go and watch
TV and you know not bother and not engage so much with the world but how can you not
once you have tasted it and realised what, how alive the world is, you cant go back to not
living like that I think, So how do I cope with it I think sometimes it is awful but I cope with it
by prayer and mediation really and think moving into silence and not trying to conjure up a
particular way of thinking or being but just to be honest about what is. So if I am really pissed
off this is the reality of it … if I am really excited this is the reality of it… if I am upset or uncertain
this is the reality of it… and just sitting with that and that has never not been a fruitful thing
to do.
GM ….(inaudible)
IN Well in terms of I think the way the church might frame pioneering, just a space to
enable people to genuinely be and genuinely be with the reality of their experience and the
reality of the place the context they are in, and in some ways it as simple and complex as that.
I think if we can genuinely do that and genuinely be aware of who we are and what is going
on inside of us, whether that is good or bad it doesn’t matter if we can be genuinely aware of
what is around us and seek the lady of Christ in that. It is that simple and that hard I think. I
think that gets towards the essence of what pioneering really is.
GM and does pioneering have a beginning or an end for us?
IN I think it has a beginning, I don’t know what the end is. The beginning is setting out
into the world of us, being stripped away of your cues that tell you who you and what you
should be doing and sitting with that for a while maybe a month, maybe six months, maybe 2
years and waiting in the midst of the world of us, I think that is the beginning and anything
that tries to shortcut that for an easy win or the kind of comforting answer I think is selling it
short. I don’t know about an ending I think it is a continual process and well it is a cycle
sometimes for me, how long have I been doing it now 7 years, sometimes it is a wilderness
and sometimes something grows out of it. So in what I have being doing I have built up
relationships in Sheffield and then all of a sudden we have got this arts centre and community
which is running itself. The community is running it and I don’t need to do it which is great but
then moving back into the wilderness, and like where am I going now… I don’t think there is
an end to it…
GM How does it feel, you mentioned wilderness, you mentioned relationships, projects,
how does it feel?
IN I think at first it was really disconcerting, that is a feeling, but now I am used to it whilst
the feeling is still difficult I kind of know this is ok because this is the way, this is normal and
this isn’t a sign that you are not doing that you are not doing the right thing when you feel
empty and directionless, actually that is a sign that you are moving in the right direction and
so now we have a morale issue with the church and management structures when they say
what is you plan, what are you doing, or what is your five year plan, and I can genuinely say
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look I don’t know, I don’t know what my 5-day plan is but that is what happened last time and
see what grew out of it so I am quite confident I can sit in this place again, in faith, that
something will come out of it.
GM Can I ask you concerns about that before we finish?
IN I think I would say don’t underestimate how hard it is, there are times when I have
been literally on my knees not in prayer but just in… kind of collapsing and it has been… I have
got nothing left now… I am just...
(Long silence)
Yeah everything can fall apart but it is still going to be ok…
(Long silence)
GM Anything else you want to add…
IN No that sounds alright… was that ok?
GM Yeah…
IN Hahaha I can never tell with you…
GM Hahaha If its true its great…
IN Well it’s true… sometimes it is really really shit and then other times it is amazing…
GM Yeah, just thinking about… (inaudible).. kind of stuff… I guess I am trying to get to the
core of what a pioneer might go through … what his collection… I mean a pioneer is just a
word isn’t it… I am a pioneer…
IN What does it mean … yeah…
GM Actually if we were to break down how certain types of people feel that is what they
are…
IN I think it is living with that feeling of uncertainty and I mean not just getting used to it
but revelling in it and seeing the creative potential of living in that place of uncertainty. I think
that starts to get towards the heart of what this pioneer thing is…
GM Yeah… What do you do with uncertainty?
IN Don’t try and define it too quickly… don’t try and grasp onto the certainty in the midst
of it, don’t try and make it safe, always respect the strangeness of the strange in meeting
someone or encountering a situation which is strange you almost have to the let the human
temptations to almost make it safe be kind of boxing it away like saying that I can put you in a
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box because of the way you look, or because I know some of your background or whatever,
no always be open to encountering the strangeness, the strangeness of the normal person,
and I don’t just mean you.. hahaha.. Just the strangeness of the world.
GM What does it feel like to embrace the strange?
IN What is it s about an balancing act, it is always, it is like when you eyes are out of focus
or you try to focus on one thing on the picture rather than just letting the thing on it sown
time come into focus.
GM … and how does that feel?
IN You see this is, you are getting into a place where there are no words to explain this, I
think, and this is why art I think is so important so you can stand in front of some art works
that are genuinely unsettling, that are genuinely strange but then they give no concessions,
like they don’t give you any cues to make it safe so you can suddenly understand it and get
the answer and I find that sometimes when people talk to me about my work and they say
what is this about, can you tell me the story, it is like people are wanting the easy answer and
are not being able to just sit with uncertainty of it . I think Rothko’s painting are great with
this, there is no understanding them. In a sense there is nothing to understand but you need
to sit in front of one of them for half an hour or an hour and suddenly this experience unfolds
patience perhaps that is the feeling, yes it takes time, patience and boredom mainly and then
maybe enlightenment right at the end eventually…
GM What is enlightenment?
IN Hahaha what is enlightenment? A connection I suppose a sense of connection to the

other and most of the time we don’t connect and I mean connection like human beings will
connect to god and believe in god or connect to the world and reality we are just too bothered
about faffing around with our phones… and having the disembodied experiences…
GM … and how does it feel to be connected?
IN Vulnerable, sensual, excited, yeah … I think there are three areas in life where I think
that for me that connectedness happens and that is in mediation so the place of stillness, in
making art and having sex, and they are like, they all start to get towards that moment of total
exposure in front of the other this intimate entwining with the other, so yeah that…
GM & IN Hahaha (like little boys ;))
IN Ok
GM Yes
GM & IN Hahaha (like little boys again ;))
GM That was quite good

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IN Thanks
GM Is there anything else you want to say…
IN No… you are really settling in interview… would you like to say more about that ….
Would you… So sorry how have you felt doping this interview…
GM Well I think we managed to get a lot of language and we got though the language and
we got to some raw emotion…
IN But how do you feel about that….
GM I felt pleased that we got there…
IN Eventually….
GM I was pleased about that because often we don’t get there… but we I think we got to
some emotions… and maybe a little bit of embarrassment as well…
IN I wasn’t embarrassed… are you embarrassed?
GM But to talk about emotions there is a little bit about not wanting to dwell in that
thought…
IN No it is not that it is the fact that the discomfort is not about embarrassment it is about
really wrestling to do justice to the internal experience… so just saying I was happy you know
or what ever doesn’t do justice so I think that … so it is not embarrassment it is a wrestling to
do justice with something which is really amazing and words are... that is quite paling, because
words don’t, you know…
GM Yeah … yeah they are just semantics aren’t they, just trying to get there… The very core
thing with the piece is trying a look under the hood really… There won’t be any a pioneer is
happy or … it is not… I am just trying to really put the finger on the flesh these pioneers, and
understand well the process … you have been through some processes and we talked about
coping and we talked about so me physical things that happen but I am really interested in
the… what is going on with a pioneer when they do something extraordinary… and why are
we calling these people pioneers, and I am also interests in one area where this piece might
go is this idea that we have nicked this name pioneer and actually using it within stuff that
really isn’t…
IN One of the dangers of calling me a pioneer is that in the past the historically place it is
kind of a word which is associated with possession you know got out into the strange foreign
lane and possess it and claim it and then control it – that is not what I am doing that is why I
think there is kind of tension as to whether it is an appropriate word, it is a word and it is fine
but I think there are some connotations of it that are unhelpful
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GM Good maybe we have gone... we have got enough for sure… thank you Ric I really
appreciate it.
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Interview: Ian Mobsby

I – Ian Mobsby, Interviewee
GM You look good in shady sort of vestry
I This here always makes me thinks a cactus nest on a ship .. I love to see me of you ..
the next thing I am about to do is slightly terrifying
GM Yes well
I I feel really cut off from pioneers at the moment
GM Ok
I Do you know what I mean it is interesting
GM and eh… It would be good to have as ort of drop in support .. I think I am becoming a
bit less sort of
I Mental
GM .. well a visitor to communities
I ..with a pioneer feel…
GM I have spoken to some of my bosses of what that might look like…
I You almost need to be a visitor of visitors.. for example I have got to all this stuff in
the diocese of Southwark.. the people I need to talk to have become Christians.. like
Vanessa and Gary.. so it is slightly different … you know what I mean… that all
internal..
GM When do you finish here
I A couple of weeks.. and I start in September… so it is going to be challenging and

completely new which is going to be really weird but imagine 13 years of what you have
done .. you have done load already and suddenly you are not allowed to .. and you have to
move on.. it is really hard..
GM It is called a clean break.
I It is vital… but it is hard… because you know how emotional all this tuff is so it is
tough…
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GM So you have a proper sabbatical
I No I am going to have 2 months… I am going to have a break.. I have done a

retreat… sorry..
GM No this is it this is the conversation .. what a trying to do is build up a montage of ..

well for my MA I am exploring the emerging movement over the course of 25 years,
lets say
I Which has mostly been my
GM You fit that bracket perfectly…
I That’s exactly it… we can talk about that..
GM In terms of research what I am not going to do is do a lip review and then write
something and try and answered a questions but just to bring up a montage of
ideas… so there is no question .. which is a bit quirky but as an artist that’s a really
nice way to work because I think that you have got interesting things to say and …
I Ok… so do you want to start with story then?
GM Yes lets just start…
I Start with my story. So completely not a Christian quite an active Marxist, quite a left
wing family but really into the arts, my family were really into the arts so there is
something about some sacred buildings you know so something about just a
cathedral believe it or not… something about that which I couldn’t name but I had an
emotional response to. So I have this head very anti but heart there is something in
it..
and so it all came I think looking back I can see how I think God was unsettling me to
the reality of Christianity so basically there was this little steps .. Counting the CU at
sixth form college etc but it really didn’t hit home until I was in a club, it was a gospel
garage club which the DJ were playing something called warehouse as alternative
worship community and the were displaying all sorts of truth …… stuff and some
gospel garage and everything sort of came together so there was kind of a slow
openness to it ..
GM Just rewind to the Cathedral that was really interesting… I am interested in

Cathedrals what was it about the Cathedrals which was the first thing you said…
I There is something.. well… my family are very artistic and creative so I grew up with
music and I thought at the early stages I was possibly going to haver a career in
music and the arts but it didn’t work out so there was something about a big
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emotional response to this place so I would hear some of the singing.. so of the
aesthetic .. they have got a very interesting Shegal window there, I think the biggest
thing bizarrely I think this is where post secularism meets neo-medievalism they
have got shrine there to St Richard round the back and it has got this image of the
trinity and so there was something of that aesthetic that really … you know
something.. meeting the god in the imagination through the artistic and creative but
I couldn’t name it, you know what I mean, it was something that I couldn’t name but
just something very deep so my family started to get a bit worried because I seemed
to go round to the cathedral a little often and went to midnight mass and everything.
I come from a completely un-church background so didn’t know what any of it
meant and didn’t really understand the theology except that there was strong sense
of that there was a benevolent something. So as I said all that happened and then it
cam together for me in a club where everything was put together so it was gospel
garage, so it was kind of biblical text, beautiful images of very Trinitarian images,
quite Celtic, quite old so the fusion of this ..
GM Where was this now..
I I cant remember where it is now but it was in Leeds and they did a night on it and it
was called Divinations… so this is a long time ago .. 1990
GM Yeah bang on..
I So so … yes that was .. I was really into the clubbing thing, I liked the clubbing whole
thing as there was a sense of community, coming out of the factory like time where
the clubs, it was before the drugs before it got nasty and it was all the kind of rave
stuff, which is about community, a strong sense of community as well as spirituality.
So yes I had this encounter with Christ I would say at the club.
GM .. do you know
I Well that was .. at the time they were quite on the edge but they kind of did it to
death.. be careful what you say.. so this was .. I had experience of you know the 9
o’clock service, that was really important to me, really important to me before it all
got a bit dodgy…
GM Can we talk about that for a bit?
I Yes but let me just park that first, but the main bit was warehouse which was this
alternative worship thing which was attached to St Michael of Belfry and Graham
Cray was the bishop there and so I knew him and he was part of my conversion and
it was through this warehouse which was an alternative worship which at that stage
was very cutting edge.. and so that was people like Sue Wallis, and Malcolm and a
guy called Rupert Till, but he is not doing that anymore .. but they were very big and
massively important in my early sort of formation. So you know I had a strong sense
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then form that the importance of community importance of god in community., so

the trinity stuff was the key motivator for me, so for me it was less about this
banging on about Jesus and much more about the trinity and the community and the
kind of mystical, and the connection of god, the trinity to all things and that was
wonderful expressed at the 9 o’clock service and through warehouse. So that we a
real formation, very incarnational theology, very mystical not the sort of thing you
get in a traditional church.
Going back to 9o’clock service which was amazing because, it was one of though few
moments when the expression of the church was before the culture rather than
trying to catch up with it and I think it was amazing and because it came out of … a
really interesting precursor was a charismatic evangelical there was much more
openness to transcendence, much more openness to the artistic and the creative,
and that was music to my ears.. so there was sudden permission, so it wasn’t all just
thinking, cause I think the church is still very, and even more so then, very
modernist, except for the charismatic renewal so I think it was really interesting that
the attachment thing, what is his name… David Watson?? In Sheffield, ST Thomas’
yes, a former Church of England national missionary there but very famous but I cant
remember his name. All that I think was really important
GM Rob
I Yes, yes, so it was all good, I think I was there when it was all fresh but I think it all
soured as it all became a bit super cool and that I think some of the real achilles heel
of the emerging network has been this super cool thing trying to say you are a
different type of Christian due to frustrations with traditional forms of church so I
think it got vey chaotic very quickly and I think the whole, people will disagree me,
but I found Matthew Fox a little bit of cul de sac and a kind of distraction rather than
what I think was a renewal of something important. So it was really good that I had
that connection with warehouse you see and helped form me and I got quite a lot
from St Michael of Belfrey. So my history is that I became a Christian there, came
back to London to practice I was training to be an occupational therapist in York, so
that is in an art college. So I came to London didn’t know what the hell to do didn’t
really fit with traditional forms of church and got involved with setting up the
Epicentre Network which was an alternative worship community so that is around
about 1993/1994 in London which was attached to again a charismatic evangelical
church bit like what happened in York. So then I got really involved in the emerging
church thing..
GM When was that?
I 1993/1994, after I finished my training and that was really wonderful cutting edge
stuff of the time, so that we with the emerging the church who at that stage called
themselves alternative worship communities.
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GM That was after St Michaels?
I That was attached to St Marks, Battersea Rise, which is now a church but at that
time it was a very new church with a lot of openness to doing new things and that
went on for 10 years so the Epicentre network did some amazing stuff.
GM Was Colin Smith around ?
I No I don’t know that name, the vicar of the church was called Perkin. So that was
very important and I became one of the leaders of that and a Lot of that was I think
was again trying very evangalisitc, very missions and very incarnationable.. I think
that was the big thing a lot of alternative worships emerged was very focused on
culture, participated in culture and came with unconditional love rather than what
the church tended to focus on was redemptive theology which is all about you need
to change, this was all about love, people needed to hear that they were loved at
that stage and still do, as a precursor to mission. They really got into becoming
installation stuff, lots of projections, lots of multimedia stuff which was relevant at
the time.
So we had to kill that eventually after 10 years because the church it was attached to
was becoming much more conservatist and something had to give.
GM Sounds like you really loved that?
I It was good It was tough, bloody tough holding that together. I think it was particular
something we talked about last time but because it was in the 1990’s I think its focus
was very much on De-churched because that was at the time people started to leave
the church in huge numbers , so I think it had a role in the church but I think that
then made it very difficult as working with the De-churched is fundamentally one of
the hardest things to do it is much easier to work with a church although it takes
years I think the De-churched is a whole different thing as a lot of people have been
hurt and therefore there is a lot of psychology in transference and messiness.. .
GM Did you see yourself in that role with the De-Churched; but did it just come with the
role…
I I feel really called to the old church but I think whenever you do something to old
church you get a mixed bag of the old church and dechurched
GM Is everybody in the UK De-churched?
I No not at all… So well particular now no not at all… and when I think of my own
example I was never De-Churched I was un-churched background which I think may
be slightly different.
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GM Would you say that here in London it is the demograph .. would you say that people
are generations removed from the church and church heritage..
I London is bizarre in the sense that it is a well off city. So you have got the pre-
modern, the secular and post-modern all together in one big mess. So I would say a
lot of immigration particular from Africa and South America is coming from pre-
modern to modern and then the second generation of their kids will then be modern
to very supported and quite secular. So in one family you can even have three
different world views. So it is utterly fragmented so I think that is why the fresh
expression stuff is really important because you do need a mixed ecology of different
churches related to different peoples, groups, with different world views.
So what Rick has been doing her which I would say is not an emerging church but I
would say it is a new –monastic expression and that different from an emerging
church, it is very focused don’t the spiritual not religious and they seem to be two
predominant groups they are either De-churched people looking for a different form
of spirituality or un-churched people looking for something authentic.
GM So you mentioned the phrase fresh expression… what do you think that means?
Where did that come from. What is a fresh expression?
I I think it is helpful to think of it like a wave and on the very front of edge of that was
the alternative worship which became the emerging church which I think was a
number of people who are very much participating culturally ahead of the church.
Fresh expression is a denomination response.. you see that in all changes the church
… when it has responded to cultural change there has always been the missionary,
the missionary mind at the front edge with missionary communities or sodal
communities
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Dissertation

Dissertation - TMM42360 - Student no. 000609375

Dissertation - TMM42360 - Student no. 000609375 .............................................................. 1

Word Count .......................................................................................................................... 8

Myths from the Margins: an Ethnographic Study of Methodist Pioneering in the UK by a

Pioneer in Practice. ........................................................................................................... 9

Aims and objectives ........................................................................................................ 12

Motivation and rationale ................................................................................................. 12

Research Environment and The Church ........................................................................... 12

Introducing Marginalisation ............................................................................................ 13

Framing Pioneer Identity ................................................................................................. 15

Literature Review and Methodology ................................................................................... 19

Ethnographic Research Approach .................................................................................... 19

Action Reflection ............................................................................................................. 21

The Four Voices of Theology............................................................................................ 23

The Pastoral Cycle ........................................................................................................... 24

Mutually Critical Dialogue ............................................................................................... 25

‘Un-Knowing’ - The Transcendental Approach ................................................................. 26

Reflective Art .................................................................................................................. 29

Critical Realism ................................................................................................................ 30

Methodological Approach ............................................................................................... 32

Methodological Considerations ....................................................................................... 34

Approaching the Field of Research .................................................................................. 34

Handling the Data ........................................................................................................... 35

Reflective Practice ............................................................................................................... 36

The Reflective Process ..................................................................................................... 36

Developing the Themes ................................................................................................... 36

Exploring Theological Fusion ........................................................................................... 37

Recognising Marginality .................................................................................................. 38

Understanding Pioneer Identity....................................................................................... 40

Theological Analysis ............................................................................................................ 42

Analysing Theological Fusion ........................................................................................... 42

Theological Fusion and Prophetic Dialogue ..................................................................... 45

Fusing Counter-Culture and Royal Consciousness ............................................................ 48

Transcendental Uncertainty in the Wilderness ................................................................ 52

Guests from the Margins ................................................................................................. 57

Methodists and the Marginalised Kingdom ..................................................................... 59

Hosting within the Margins ............................................................................................. 61

Pioneer Identity Mix ........................................................................................................ 65

Critical Analysis ................................................................................................................... 70

Ethnographic Research Approach .................................................................................... 70

Action Reflection ............................................................................................................. 71

Theological Reflection through ‘The Four Voices’ ............................................................ 73

Pastoral Cycle .................................................................................................................. 75

Mutually Critical Dialogue ............................................................................................... 75

The Transcendental Approach ......................................................................................... 77

Creating a Reflective Montage from Analysis of the Data ................................................ 79

Critical Realism ................................................................................................................ 81

Reflective Art as Prophetic Voice ..................................................................................... 83

Critical Realism in Reflective Practice .............................................................................. 85

The Margins as Pioneer Identity ...................................................................................... 88

From the Margins to Institutional Change ....................................................................... 89

Prophetic Dialogue .......................................................................................................... 91

Appendixes ....................................................................................................................... 108

Methodological Considerations ......................................................................................... 109

The Reflective Process ....................................................................................................... 111

Timeline of research .......................................................................................................... 112

Reflective Montage ........................................................................................................... 113

Organising Data for Multimedia Production .................................................................. 113

Production Decisions through Reflection ....................................................................... 114

Presenting the Data as a Reflective Montage ................................................................ 118

Reflective Montage ....................................................................................................... 120

Release Forms ................................................................................................................... 121