Gospel and Culture: churches as meeting places

In 'Gospel and Culture: churches as meeting places' at St Andrew's Wickford today we explored the image of churches as estuaries. 

We recorded as much of the event as it was possible for us to do on the day but were unable to record every session. Recordings of sessions from the day can be viewed here (Sam Wells), here (Paul Carr), and here (myself). 

Estuaries, where salt water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters, are environments of preparation where, for example, young salmon, striped bass, and other fish come downstream after hatching.

Churches that regard themselves as meeting places of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world, are functioning as estuaries. Creating cultural estuaries in churches happens when the creative capital of an artist, the social capital of a pastor or community leader, and the material capital of finance or business, converge.

We explored these ideas with:

• Revd Dr Sam Wells (Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields);
• Revd Paul Carr (Team Rector, Billericay and Little Burstead Team Ministry); 
• Nicola Ravenscroft (Sculptor); 
• Sarah Rogers (HeartEdge); and 
• Revd Jonathan Evens (Team Rector, Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry)

The programme included:

• Keynote speech – Revd Dr Sam Wells
• Engaging cultural offers – Paul Carr & Sarah Rogers in conversation with Jonathan Evens
• Engaging with artists – Nicola Ravenscroft in conversation with Jonathan Evens
• ‘Controversy and conversation: Art and churches’ – Jonathan Evens

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Woven Hand - Good Shepherd.

Coming events in the Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry

 

Messy Church is a way of being church for families and others. It is Christ-centred, for all ages, based on creativity, hospitality and celebration. Messy Holy Day, 2-4pm, 27 August, St Mary’s Vicarage garden Runwell. Kids must bring an adult. Contact Revd Sue: sue.wise@sky.com or Emma: emmacdoe@googlemail.com. Date for your diary - Messy Harvest, 8 October.

The Psalms Project

A unique event combining performances of new sacred music with interfaith discussion. Performed by acclaimed violinist Emma-Marie Kabanova, this interactive event features new psalm-inspired works written by an international collection of Jewish and Christian composers. Curated and produced by Deus Ex Musica.

Through a combination of live performances and informal discussions, this event invites listeners to consider the ways these new compositions respond to the Biblical texts that inspired them. What insight into these ancient poems do these works provide for us today? How do they help us experience the psalms in new ways? Can they teach us anything about the spiritual dimension of Scripture? What do they tell us about contemporary sacred music’s ability to contribute to dialogues about faith in our secular society? Moderated by musician, scholar, and teacher Delvyn Case, this event is open to anyone. No religious background or musical experience is necessary. Attendees may participate in the discussion or simply enjoy the music and the conversation.

Friday 2 September 2022, 19:00 – 21:00 BST, St Andrew's Church, 11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN. No tickets required. A retiring collection will be taken. Let us know you're coming by registering at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-psalms-project-tickets-387928995067.

Quiet Day: Praying through the Week 

Wednesday 14 September, 10.30 am – 3.30 pm, St Mary’s Runwell (Runwell Road, Runwell,
Essex SS11 7HS)

Explore how to hear from and encounter God in the ordinary, everyday things, people, situations and emotions around you. Reflect in the magnificent mediaeval building that is St Mary’s Runwell, and relax in its beautiful churchyard. St. Mary’s itself is often described by visitors and by regular worshippers as a powerful sacred space to which they have been drawn. Experience this for yourself, while also exploring its art and heritage. Led by Revd Jonathan Evens, Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell

Cost: £8.00 per person, including sandwich lunch (pay on the day). To book: Phone 07803 562329 or email jonathan.evens@btinternet.com.

Gospel and Culture: churches as meeting places

Explore the relationship between churches and Culture with Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on whose theology much of HeartEdge’s thinking is based. Sam Wells sees churches as meeting places of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world. As a result, they are like estuaries.

Estuaries, where salt water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters, are environments of preparation where, for example, young salmon, striped bass, and other fish come downstream after hatching. Churches that regard themselves as meeting places of the human and divine are essentially functioning as estuaries. Creating cultural estuaries in churches happens when the creative capital of an artist, the social capital of a minister or community leader, and the material capital of finance or business, converge.

Explore these ideas further with Sam Wells, Revd Paul Carr (Team Rector, Billericay and Little Burstead Team Ministry), Nicola Ravenscroft (Sculptor), Sarah Rogers (HeartEdge), and myself in ‘Gospel and Culture: Churches as meeting places’ at St Andrew’s Wickford on Tuesday 20 September, 10.30 – 3.30 pm. To register, go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gospel-and-culture-churches-as-meeting-places-tickets-391772731787.

Consultations

We are currently consulting with our congregations and the wider community on what people value about the area, issues to be addressed, and how churches should engage with the community. Would you be willing to give us your views? If you would, please complete either our our Church survey at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/QGSJJG5 or our Community survey at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/QGDCM3F.

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Sofia Gubaidulina - Offertorium.

At the heart. On the edge.

 

I wrote the following article on HeartEdge for the latest edition of the CMD Bulletin for the Diocese of Chelmsford:

Churches are closest to the heart of God when they at the heart of their communities and with those on the edge. That is the contention and belief of HeartEdge, an international, ecumenical movement that is about church becoming fully alive as it seeks to transform church and society through commerce, culture, compassion and congregational life.

HeartEdge is about churches developing four Cs:

• Commerce: Generating finance via enterprise, creatively extending mission.
• Culture: Art, music, performance re-imagining the Christian narrative for the present.
• Congregation: Inclusive liturgy, worship and common life.
• Compassion: Empowering congregations to address social need.

The network supports churches in reimagining themselves and society by working with churches moving beyond conventional notions of church, being open to partnership and collaboration with others in the wider world. Fundamentally, HeartEdge is about recognising the activity of the Holy Spirit beyond and outside the church and about a church that flourishes when it seeks to catch up with what the Spirit is already doing in the world.

There was a time when church meant a group that believed it could control access to God – access that only happened in its language on its terms. But God is bigger than that, and the church needs to be humbler than that. Kingdom churches anticipate the way things are with God forever – a culture of creativity, mercy, discovery and grace – and are grateful for the ways God renews the church through those it has despised, rejected, or ignored.

HeartEdge seeks to do all this through:

Transforming Practice

• Encouraging, fostering, training practitioners in imaginative and holistic approaches to mission.
• Through training, education, consultancy, peer support, signposting and examples.

Transforming Discourse

• Coining new language and engaging topical issues through the lens of God’s abundance.
• Through seminars, summer schools, events and conferences live and online.

Transformative Programmes

• Offering tested ‘products’ that practitioners can swiftly implement.
• Through cultivating and promoting specific mission initiatives that can be adapted for local use.

HeartEdge is active in the Diocese and in Essex through two hubs; the Harlow Archdeaconry Learning Hub (see https://www.facebook.com/Learning-Hub-545693942608410) and Shoeburyness and Thorpe Bay Baptist Church (see https://www.stbbc.org.uk/heartedge). A number of excellent awareness events have already been held as a result, that have grown and deepened the network here. 

The next focuses on Congregation and is called ‘Signs of Hope’. This is an evening at Shoeburyness and Thorpe Bay Baptist Church on Wednesday 14 September beginning at 7.30 pm where Rev Erica Wooff, Rev John Goddard and Rev Claire Nicholls will tell stories from their congregations. To book a place email Nicky Snoad at nicky.snoad@stbbc.org.uk. Then, on 8 November, there will be a similar event focusing on Culture.

In between is a further opportunity to explore the relationship between churches and Culture, this time with Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on whose theology much of HeartEdge’s thinking is based. Sam Wells sees churches as meeting places of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world. As a result, they are like estuaries.

Estuaries, where salt water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters, are environments of preparation where, for example, young salmon, striped bass, and other fish come downstream after hatching. Churches that regard themselves as meeting places of the human and divine are essentially functioning as estuaries. Creating cultural estuaries in churches happens when the creative capital of an artist, the social capital of a minister or community leader, and the material capital of finance or business, converge.

Explore these ideas further with Sam Wells, Revd Paul Carr (Team Rector, Billericay and Little Burstead Team Ministry), Nicola Ravenscroft (Sculptor), Sarah Rogers (HeartEdge), and myself in ‘Gospel and Culture: Churches as meeting places’ at St Andrew’s Wickford on Tuesday 20 September, 10.30 – 3.30 pm. To register, go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gospel-and-culture-churches-as-meeting-places-tickets-391772731787.

For more information about HeartEdge, see https://www.heartedge.org/, including information about their online learning and support groups.

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Johnny Cash - Where We'll Never Grow Old.

Signs of Hope, Gospel and Culture

 

HeartEdge is active in Essex and in the Diocese of Chelmsford through two hubs; the Harlow Archdeaconry Learning Hub (see https://www.facebook.com/Learning-Hub-545693942608410) and Shoeburyness and Thorpe Bay Baptist Church (see https://www.stbbc.org.uk/heartedge). A number of excellent awareness events have already been held as a result, that have grown and deepened the network here. 

The next focuses on Congregation and is called ‘Signs of Hope’. This is an evening at Shoeburyness and Thorpe Bay Baptist Church on Wednesday 14 September beginning at 7.30 pm where Rev Erica Wooff, Rev John Goddard and Rev Claire Nicholls will tell stories from their congregations. To book a place email Nicky Snoad at nicky.snoad@stbbc.org.uk. Then, on 8 November, there will be a similar event focusing on Culture.

In between is a further opportunity to explore the relationship between churches and Culture, this time with Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on whose theology much of HeartEdge’s thinking is based. Sam Wells sees churches as meeting places of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world. As a result, they are like estuaries.

Estuaries, where salt water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters, are environments of preparation where, for example, young salmon, striped bass, and other fish come downstream after hatching. Churches that regard themselves as meeting places of the human and divine are essentially functioning as estuaries. Creating cultural estuaries in churches happens when the creative capital of an artist, the social capital of a minister or community leader, and the material capital of finance or business, converge.

Explore these ideas further with Sam Wells, Revd Paul Carr (Team Rector, Billericay and Little Burstead Team Ministry), Nicola Ravenscroft (Sculptor), and myself in ‘Gospel and Culture: Churches as meeting places’ at St Andrew’s Wickford on Tuesday 20 September, 10.30 – 3.30 pm. To register, go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gospel-and-culture-churches-as-meeting-places-tickets-391772731787.

For more information about HeartEdge, see https://www.heartedge.org/, including information about their online learning and support groups.

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Raphael Ravenscroft - and a little child shall lead.

The Group of Seven

"The Group of Seven (sometimes referred to as the Algonquin School) was Canada's first internationally recognized art movement." They were "a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, originally consisting of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). Later, A. J. Casson (1898–1992) was invited to join in 1926, Edwin Holgate (1892–1977) became a member in 1930, and LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) joined in 1932.

Two artists commonly associated with the group are Tom Thomson (1877–1917) and Emily Carr (1871–1945). Although he died before its official formation, Thomson had a significant influence on the group. In an essay, Harris wrote that Thomson was “a part of the movement before we pinned a label on it”; Thomson’s paintings The West Wind and The Jack Pine are two of the group’s most iconic pieces. Emily Carr was also closely associated with the Group, though never an official member."

"The Group was united in the belief that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with the country's vast and unique landscape." Christopher Varley and Russell Bingham write that "The group presented the dense, northern boreal forest of the Canadian Shield as a transcendent, spiritual force." MacDonald stated that the Group's aim was "to paint the soul of things [...] the inner feeling rather than the outward form".

"For the Group of Seven, the landscape became akin to a religion. Varley and Harris particularly venerated nature, finding God's immanence within it. From their paintings, Dr. Salem Bland, a leading liberal theologian, stated that he felt, "as if the Canadian soul was unveiling to me something secret and high and beautiful which I had never guessed; a strength and self-reliance, depth and mysticism I had not suspected." Katerina Atanassova says “There is a great deal of spirituality in early twentieth century Canadian art, Varley was very influenced by Buddhism, and many of Lawren Harris’s paintings are based on theosophic principles.”

Jim Friedrich notes that, in 1927, Emily Carr saw an exhibition by the Group and that night wrote in her journal: "Oh, God, what have I seen? Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me, wonderful, mighty, not of this world. Chords way down in my being have been touched. . . Something has called out of somewhere. Something in me is trying to answer." Carr, at age 56, would go on to begin her most productive period as a painter, exploring the unique spirituality of Canadian landscapes.

Margaret Hirst writes that "Carr yearned to find and express God, and Lawren Harris ... was the catalyst for her great spiritual journey. In addition, Harris befriended and encouraged Carr, offered technical advice, and introduced her to philosophies such as Theosophy and the transcendental poetry of Walt Whitman." "An awe of great expanses became a crucial component of Carr’s religious expression, as she moved away from paintings of native scenes and totems toward a focus on the timbers and skies of the woods. Though Christian, Carr retained the Pantheistic tendencies born in her girlhood, hearing “the myriad voices of God shouting in one great voice: ‘I am one God.... I am heaven. I am earth. I am all in all’.” Her developing religious devotion began to permeate her art." "As she developed her technical skills and style, expression of the Almighty remained foremost in her artistic purpose. By 1934 she could write: “I am painting my own vision now, thinking of no one else’s approach.” Carr had synthesized her faith into a personal, non-dogmatic Christianity, accented by traces of Pantheism, all of which would be reflected in her famous “sky” paintings."

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Bruce Cockburn - Hills of Morning.