Moot and the Mootique

Here you can find out about Ian Mobsby and here about Moot. 
You can buy his book here
I am going to buy this one
The book above might help me to bring a little more silence to college when it is my turn to lead. I am still struggling with 'college prayer wordiness' - do we leave enough space for God to answer and come by His Spirit so that we feel his presence in manifest ways? I am not sure that we do but I am also sure that we are a learning community and under the influence of our new dean Nick Ladd, there is much to hope for. I am also aware. of course, that as a theological college, they have to be in the business of teaching us ordinands the words so it's about my patience too.

Anyway, to the point, Ian Mobsby came to talk to us today, well, those of us who wanted to find out about pioneer ministry. St John's doesn't run a separate pioneering course as such, but bucks the trend, expecting us to be pioneering from within, expecting us to work out how we are going to be fresh as we progress through our training.

A lot of what he said struck a cord with me and his work sounds exciting. I like what he said about what Church needs to become to engage with a post-secular, consumerist, spiritually seeking society and his vision for what sorts of priests we need to be.

Seeking Jesus within contemporary culture – requires apostolic and pioneering forms of leadership – need people to be missional. And yet Anglican priests are often authoritative and yet these people need to be loving and committed to mission. It's about praxis, it is now about shared leadership teams.

Need to give power away and be deeply relational. Need to be radical but work within a team. We need to make ourselves dispensable.

Integrity is vital. Need to practice radical vulnerability!!!
Need to have accountability structures.

General skills
Artistic and creative
emotionally and culturally intelligent
relational
entrepreneurial
all-rounder
team-player
pragmatist
multi-tasker and deals with complexity
well-rounded in the traditions – you cannot critique the communion service unless you understand what it is – this is where you need to understand what you can be creative with
All of the above makes for a skilled pastor

I liked his emphasis on vulnerability which is what I feel blogging, in part, is all about. I like his emphasis on ministry teams.

I wonder whether it is the case that women have an advantage over men in reaching a post-modern culture because they are presenting something fresh and alternative just by being women in the world of Church where the great majority of people imagine 'vicar' and imagine 'man'. We are radical already. We present something which is more about our age and less about traditional associations people make with Church and 'authority'. I also wonder if it is more natural for us to give away power than hold onto it but then I never was one to make gender assumptions. However, since because from the beginning we have found that culture has forced us to give power away, even when we do not want to, I wonder whether we have it inbuilt...just some thoughts.

I am glad to be a woman becoming a priest, there is something exciting about that!


As someone also who works with Open source software (ubuntu Linux), this metaphor Ian used appealed to me.
   ‘[Our] church is like an open source
computer platform of the gospel rather
 than a Microsoft product. We take the
  source code as the gospel but around
   that code, everyone has a particular
    part to play, equally in making this
   ‘kingdom-system’ work... Everyone
  contributes...offering their gifts, and
every time a new person comes into the
 community the DNA changes, it never
  stays the same, it’s not static, it’s not
        issued in a box version 2.0’