Every 500 years or so, the church universal runs a jumble sale.
That’s the view of the American Episcopalian writer Phyllis Tickle.
She reckonsthe church rummages through its accumulated baggage about that often, chucks out the junk – and charges off again, with fresh energy and conviction, and with a sharper focus.
And because it’s been 500 years since the Reformation, writes Phyllis, we’re due for another such cleanout.
Well, if you were one of the 400-plus mostly young people who turned up at Passionfest,at the Ngatiawa community, near Waikanae, this past weekend, you might have felt the winds of change coming.
You’d certainly have heard reports from various folk describing what they’re seeing and experiencing as they toil out on the margins now.
Postcards from mission’s edge, if you like.
Passionfest has been hosted by the Ngatiawa community for 10 years now.
It’s a gathering of “the radically committed”, says Bishop Justin Duckworth – practitioners who minister on the margins, who have a passion for God's justice, for community and for living out the Beatitudes.
They come to Passionfest, he says, “to share stories, to find support, to seek solace, to talk the language we’re accustomed to using, and to re-envisage what the Kingdom looks like.”
Folk from at least a dozen communities – Anabaptists, Catholic Workers, Pentecostals, Outlaw Bikers and peace and justice workers among them – were at Passionfest.
And because Ngatiawa is part of Urban Vision, and Urban Vision is a contemporary monastic order in covenant with the Anglican Church, the festival-goers were undergirded by Anglican hospitality and an Anglican rhythm of prayer.
Three times a day a bell would toll, and dozens of the young and the not-so-young would quietly file into the Chapel of Tarore for Morning Prayer, Midday Eucharist, and Evening Prayer.
That rhythm of prayer and Eucharist was the still point around which Passionfest turned.
Meanwhile, out in the marquee, the festival-goers heard from three main speakers:
• Dave Andrews,who has ministered in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India for 30 years, and who now leads an inner-city Brisbane community called The Waiter’s Union;
• Alison Robinson, who with her husband Martin is a co-founder of Urban Visionand who is, these days, a chaplain at Rimutaka Prison; and
• Andrew Jones, a nomad who blogsand is a thinker and writer on community and emergent church.
There were a host of other speakers, too, plus crafts – copper enameling, anyone? – a barn dance on Saturday evening, heaps of music, including a rousing, pulsating, Sunday lunch performance from the Sendam Raucous-tra– whose three musos who lay down a strong musical foundation to which they invite friends who live with mental illness or with intellectual disability to contribute.
There’s an Anglican connection with Sendam, too, because one of those three musos is Richard Noble, who is ordained and Community Minister for the Wellington South Parish.
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