This week the international alt worship, emerging church and writing communities are mourning the falling of a mighty totara. Mike Riddell died in his sleep this weekend and the world is the poorer for it. Mike had chutzpah, energy, panache, and simple kiwi down-to-earthedness. If he saw wrong he did something about it. He wrote from the heart. He withstood prejudice and ignorance. He welcomed people with that big grin.
I was researching the emerging church movement a while ago and was surprised to find wikipedia, that knowledgeable giant (smile), dated the beginnings of the emerging church movement to New Zealand, specifically to Mike and others. “The history of the emerging church that preceded the US Emergent organization began with Mike Riddell and Mark Pierson in New Zealand from 1989.” I remember Cathy Kirkpatrick being associated with them as co authors in The Prodigal Project, – Journey Into the Emerging Church.
Good Reads says:
The Prodigal Project argues passionately that we need to revitalise our worship, our spirituality and our theology if the church is to remain faithful in the third millennium. Mark Riddell, Mark Pierson and Cathy Kirkpatrick have discovered in ‘alternative worship’ a movement which is culturally relevant, creative and community-based. Here mystery encounters multi-media, the radical is infused with the old and familiar, the traditional and contemporary are combined. The ideas and resources contained in the Project explode into spectacular life when viewed on the accompanying CD-ROM, which contains music, video, animations and extras. This is much more than a book; it is a beginning. Passionate, messy, honest, funny, The Prodigal Project will inspire those who long to set out on a pilgrimage of their own, to discover more authentic ways of worshipping, and responding to, the adventurous and irrepressible God, made real to us in Jesus Christ.
I was intrigued to see Prodigal Project was published in 2000, 22 years ago and 11 years after the date used in Wikipedia. Where were you in 2000? Where was your spiritual journey in 2000? Where are you now in terms of theology, church, worship and spiritual journey? Have we kept faith with the kind of vision Mike and Mark and Cathy shared with us at the turn of the millennium?
I was thrilled when Mike said yes to endorsing the first book in the trilogy last year. He was very perceptive. After saying yes, he then reminded me twice before I left the writers’ retreat, probably knowing that I could well lose the courage to send my precious little baby out into the world and particularly into the computer of such an author, mystic and poet. I noticed that encouragement, that implied mentoring of a new thing. He forebore from saying that very probably stuff in that book restated what Mike, Mark and Cathy had named in 2000. It takes such a long time for a change of direction to ‘take’ especially it seems to take a long, long time in such a slow moving institution as the church.
I remember his image of the book offering ‘breadcrumbs of hope’. I made it the subject of a blog at the time
Brian McLaren, speaking in NZ, named the difference between institutions and movements. Institutions hold out against new ideas for a long long time. Their task is not primarily to innovate but to conserve, McLaren explained. Some who knock at their door persist until the door is opened at which point the institution embraces the newcomers and protects them as thoroughly as all their traditions. Others go away and try elsewhere, finding places where their ideas are accepted and welcomed. A friend of mine Yvonne Wilkie is writing about Molly Whitelaw, a Presbyterian lay woman important in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand at the beginning of the campaign to allow women to be elders and ministers. An amusing passage in one draft chapter has Molly addressing the big heavy door to New College, Edinburgh, on the topic of its forbidding size and gatekeeping skills. She warns it that it will be admitting more women in the future.
Movements are more nimble, lighter-footed, flexible, and can therefore be more responsive to the changing contexts around us. They also are often ill-resourced and depend on individuals having time and energy to contribute on their own dime. It also takes courage, when the other kind of external validations, like degrees and licensings and ordinations are not in the mix, giving us official sanction to do things. My hat is off to people who do follow their heart and make their own way through the minefields. People like Mike.
Another mighty totara (at least to me) is also teetering in the bush. Frances Porter is aging and nearing the end of an amazing life. New Zealand history is Frances’ passion. She wrote Born to New Zealand and edited My Hand will Write what my Heart Dictates about early European women settlers. She also was the editor for two books on historic buildings – one for the South and one for the North Island.
I was fortunate to be her minister from 2015 to 2019 and her ruminations on what faith was and whether she had it or felt it or had lost it were intelligent, poignant and authentic. Mike and she were in some ways poles apart and in other ways very similar. They had their own mind about ideas and principles and spoke out uncowed by disapproval or critique. I wonder what Frances would have thought of Mike had they met. She acknowledges herself that she is a bit of a snob and once told me she didn’t believe that Baptists could think (forgetting she was talking to someone born and raised in the denomination!). Mike was one ‘thinking Baptist’ who would have proved her wrong. I know he moved more into a Catholic observance but I also know from my own experience that we are always affected through our life by the faith in which we were socialised! (wink!)
Each in their own way stood tall, and will continue to stand tall, totara-like, in our Aotearoa landscape; their work offering a canopy for other species like the rest of us and for the luscious ferny underlayer which New Zealand grows so well because of the totara high above, providing shelter and refuge, filtering the rain of ideas down the levels in amounts we can handle. Yet Mike at least would not see it as a hierarchy, just a being himself and speaking the truth as much for himself to be authentic as for others to benefit. That we did benefit was a huge extra.
Both Mike (out of Cannon’s Creek) and Frances (out of Hawera in the 1920-40s) courageously listened for their own voice and followed it. So might we all.
Susan,
feeling a lot, not a little, sad today
orders: jones.rs@xtra.co.nz
information: http://www.jonessmblog.wordpress.com
Published March 2022
to be published April 2022
susan'sblog 