Ekklesia, Transition, Leadership and Formation
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Brian McLaren’s next book is out on February 9: A New Kind of Christianity – Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith.
Brian is not quite my guru, but I have read his last eight books and I have to say, he is insightful, honest, gutsy, and loves God and his neighbour. I begin to suspect he is a Christian! Seriously, I’ve found his books thoughtful and helpful and sometimes provocative. I won’t miss this next one. Apparently there will be some videos at the Ooze which will introduce the book.
This brother has taken a LOT of criticism, and most of it is undeserved. Keep on writing and working for the kingdom Brian. Grace in all you do.
George Barna’s new book is also out: The Second Coming of the Church. The product description at Amazon reads: “In this “blueprint for survival,” Christian sociologist George Barna evaluates the moral and spiritual decline of society and the corresponding stagnation within the Church. Using hard data, Barna unveils the status quo and argues convincingly that the Church must re-invent itself or face virtual oblivion by the mid-21st century.”
The day session was great. The evening session felt tired. I wish we had introduced it like this:
“The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to congregations comes from people aged fifty five and older) or when the remaining three fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both…
“A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost their faith. They are leaving to preserve their faith.
“We have a church in North American that is more secular than the culture. Just when the church adopted a business model, the culture went looking for God. Just when the church embraced strategic planning (linear and Newtonian), the universe shifted to preparedness (loopy and quantum). Just when the church began building recreation centers, the culture began a search for sacred space. Church people still think that secularism holds sway and that people outside the church have trouble connecting to God. The problem is that when people come to church, expecting to find God, they often encounter a religious club holding a meeting where God is conspicuously absent. It may feel like a self-help seminar or even a political rally. But if pre-Christians came expecting to find God — sorry! They may experience more spiritual energy at a U2 concert or listening to a Creed CD.”  Reggie McNeal
When I go to church on Sunday I find a meeting managed by religious technologists that offers a tame God and a managed experience in place of a journey and an adventure. But I think what God is really up to in the world is an adventure. Jesus did not say “I came that they might have church.. and that more abundantlyâ€
In his last book Alan Roxburgh says that missional is about the flowing together of three powerful currents – mystery, memory and mission.
Mystery – We can’t manage this thing. Its outside our control. The kingdom comes to us as a gift.
Memory – it is SO much bigger than we are. We step into this story that is already happening.
Mission – God is up to something in the world. He invites us into His adventure. Let’s find out what He is doing and join him in it.
That would have been a great opener for a conversation!
This is the name of the second chapter in the first part of the new book by Roxburgh and Boren.
About half way through the chapter they describe “missional” as the confluence of three powerful currents: mystery, memory and mission.
“Entering the waters is not about strategies or models; it is about working with the currents that shape our imagination of what God is doing in the world.
“Mission is not something the church does as an activity; it is what the church IS through the mystery of its formation and memory of its calling. The church is God’s missionary people.” (45)
I found this particularly helpful this morning in a conversation with a pastor who oversees spiritual formation in a large church. He was asking what is different about the frame of spiritual formation within this paradigm.
A helpful way of thinking about the church is in three overlapping circles: worship (communion), community, and mission. This frame is not new. However, what difference does it make where one starts: in typical spiritual formation, the lens that is foremost is usually communion with God. Inevitably, in our individualist and consumerist culture, the other lenses suffer.
Moreover, in a typical church based approach to spiritual formation, the gaze is inward toward the programs of the church. Mystery and memory may be respected, but mission suffers. This river has only two strong currents. In the missional frame, all three currents are powerful – no single lens dominates. And the gaze is turned outward to our neighbourhoods.
We are the people of the parenthesis –
at the end of one era and not quite at the beginning of another.
Maps no longer fit the new territory.
In order to make sense of it all,
we must cultivate a vision.
– Jean Houston
“Here is the paradox that lies at the heart of this whole project. Although the Enlightenment began as, among other things, a critique of orthodox Christianity, it can function, and in many ways has functioned, as a means of recalling Christianity to genuine history, to its necessary roots. Much Christianity is afraid of history, frightened that if we really find out what happened in the first century our faith will collapse. But without historical enquiry there is no check on Christianity’s propensity to remake Jesus, never mind the Christian god, in its own image. Equally, much Christianity is afraid of scholarly learning, and in so far as the Enlightenment program was an intellectual venture, Christianity has responded with the simplicities of faith. But, granted that learning without love is sterile and dry, enthusiasm without learning can easily become blind ignorance.â€
NT Wright, The New Testament and the People of God
It’s curious.. and part of the human condition.. that when we lack the language to articulate meaning we can’t know ourselves or our world with the depth needed to fully engage. Those “ah-ha!” moments when we acquire the language we need to describe our experience are almost revelatory.
Radical Orthodoxy is a movement and perspective that has given some of us language.. and alternatives.. for a world we intuited but could not describe. That left us without alternatives and thus limited our freedom. Alternatives are so important in theology as in life because they offer us space to grow. When we literally come to the end of a particular imaginative framework and it is no longer adequate for our experience we are stuck and have a sense that we are compromising, but we have no option.
When I read the first page of a new book by Craig R. Hovey, Speak Thus: Christian Language in Church and World, I was reminded of how much I owe to those thinkers, writers and practitioners who have not been afraid to ask new questions. Speak Thus is published by Cascade Books. Following is an excerpt from Chapter 1, “Narrative Proclamation and Gospel Truthfulness.”
“Let us begin with an observation that is at home within Radical Orthodoxy: Written texts can be misleading insofar as what they report can be imagined as free-floating facts, events, or ideas; that is, unbounded by the realities of cultural existence, of conditions surrounding both the production and reading of texts. This observation makes plain the ways we may be tempted to draw a straight line from the meaning of a text to the truth of that meaning, assuming that both can be exhaustively captured and assessed on the basis of the written word alone.
“Radical Orthodoxy pursues these kinds of hermeneutical questions in order to show two things. First, it shows that texts themselves are not the sole bearers of their own meaning. Therefore, questions of a text’s truth cannot be answered on the basis of texts alone. Second, it helps us imagine domains of truth and meaning that are embodied in time. These are, as Catherine Pickstock argues, ultimately enacted in worship and praise. The pasts intended to be reported in written texts are taken up into the present-tense actions of people for whom the truth of statements is not separable from their own participation in the truth.”
There are two distinct forces that dictate how to act within an organization: culture and climate.
Each organization has its own distinctive culture. It is a combination of the founders, past leadership, current leadership, crises, events, history, and size. This results in rites: the routines, rituals, and the “way we do things.” These rites impact individual behavior on what it takes to be in good standing (the norm) and directs the appropriate behavior for each circumstance.
The climate is the feel of the organization, the individual and shared perceptions and attitudes of the organization’s members. While the culture is the deeply rooted nature of the organization that is a result of long-held formal and informal systems, rules, traditions, and customs; climate is a short-term phenomenon created by the current leadership. Climate represents the beliefs about the “feel of the organization” by its members. This individual perception of the “feel of the organization” comes from what the people believe about the activities that occur in the organization. These activities influence both individual and team motivation and satisfaction, such as:
•   How well does the leader clarify the priorities and goals of the organization? What is expected of us?
•   What is the system of recognition, rewards, and punishments in the organization?
•   How competent are the leaders?
•   Are leaders free to make decisions?
•   What will happen if I make a mistake?
Organizational climate is directly related to the leadership and management style of the leader, based on the values, attributes, skills, and actions, as well as the priorities of the leader. Compare this to “ethical climate” — the “feel of the organization” about the activities that have ethical content or those aspects of the work environment that constitute ethical behavior. The ethical climate is the feel about whether we do things right; or the feel of whether we behave the way we ought to behave. The behavior (character) of the leader is the most important factor that impacts the climate.
On the other hand, culture is a long-term, complex phenomenon. Culture represents the shared expectations and self-image of the organization. The mature values that create “tradition” or the “way we do things here.” Things are done differently in every organization. The collective vision and common folklore that define the institution are a reflection of culture. Individual leaders, cannot easily create or change culture because culture is a part of the organization. Culture influences the characteristics of the climate by its effect on the actions and thought processes of the leader. But, everything you do as a leader will affect the climate of the organization.
From Don Clark
The Bible is fundamentally a story of a people’s journey with God… In scripture we see that God is taking the disconnected elements of our lives and pulling them together into a coherent story that means something.  Resident Aliens, 52
Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story, one so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole, one that even shines some light into the future so that we can take the next step… If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story.  Ivan Illich
It can only be that God begins in a small way, at one single place in the world. There must be a place.. Visible, tangible..where the salvation of the world may begin: that is, where the world becomes what it is supposed to be according to God’s plan. Beginning at that place, the new thing can spread abroad. All must have the chance to behold and test this new thing. Then, if they want to, they can allow themselves to be drawn into the story of salvation God is creating. Only in that way is freedom preserved.                                 Gerhard Lohfink, Does God Need the Church (24)
Annie Dillard writes,
“The shadow’s the thing. Outside shadows are blue, I read, because they are lighted by the blue sky and not the yellow sun. Their blueness bespeaks infinitesimal particles scattered down inestimable distance. Muslims, whose religion bans representational art as idolatrous, don’t observe the rule strictly; tut they do forbid sculpture, because it casts a shadow. So shadows define the real.
“If I no longer see shadows as “dark marks,” as do the newly sighted, then I see them as making some sort of sesne of the light. They five the light distance; they put it in its place. They inform my eyes of my location here, here O Israel, here in the world’s flawed sculpture, here in the flickering shade of the nothingness between me and the light.”
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 62.
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