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I confess to a love of and a weakness for models. I like diagrams, and I am good at conceptualizing new ones.
I confess that the reason I enjoy them is primarily that they give me a sense of control. When I conceptualize a diagram it makes it easier to communicate a concept. Communication is something I value, since my own strengths are in teaching and influencing.
But the danger is in identifying our models too closely with the reality we purport to represent. Our knowledge is too limited for this; every framework is potentially an idol. And the second danger is in the sense of control they offer.
Knowledge, Certainty and Control
In this world control is dangerous because it is an illusion. When we think we stand, we need to beware lest we fall.
Yes, there are places where we ought to be in control. I hope you are in control while driving. I hope you are in control when climbing a ladder to clean out the gutters.
But we have lived with an illusion of control in many areas of our lives. While driving, for example, you may feel you are in control of your car and of your life. But what if you have a sudden blowout? Or what if a drunk driver suddenly comes through a red light as you are crossing an intersection?
There are still other areas where we shouldn't even TRY to be in control, but rather living in a surrendered manner. In an interview in Cutting Edge Magazine, Gordon Cosby commented,
There are times when we ought not to be in control, because if we are, then we have dethroned the Lord of the church. His power is made perfect in our weakness, and not in our power. All true Christian leaders want Him to be in control.
One good reason for the Lord to be in control is because of the very real limits of our knowledge. Many of the discoveries rising out of quantum physics demonstrate that on the atomic level our knowledge is severely limited. We don't understand the relationships between various particles and forces. For example, researchers have discovered that they can know the size of a particle, or its velocity, but not both simultaneously. If they stop the particle to measure its size, they don't know its velocity. If they measure the velocity of the particle, they can only approximate its size. The kinds of questions we ask profoundly affect the answers we reach.
On the spiritual level our knowledge is equally limited. When we focus on what we can quantify and control, we are like the captain of an ocean liner who carefully steers around an iceberg.. forgetting that what we don't know and can't control makes up the greater part of the unseen reality. Working with the unseen elements of growth requires intimate connection and comfort with process and paradox.
Roland Allen, "The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church"
How do we measure Spirit? How do we control love? Since love and understanding require humility, sacrifice, and emptiness, control and love are a contradiction in terms.
Models and Metaphors
In many places I hear the cry for new models. I identify with that cry. I agree that the old models no longer work, or worse.. they provide an illusion of effectiveness while actually undermining the very heart of kingdom work... the creation of transformed and surrendered communities that are missional by their very existence.
Perhaps we do need new models of leadership.. but first we need new metaphors, and new communities. The imaginative architecture of the modern world is collapsing, and we need a new architecture. And that architecture must be incarnate in transformed lives.
Models have a static and inflexible nature. If we start with models they seem to develop a life of their own that acts back on the original vision and pushes toward institutionalization.
Models are too easily reproduced, so we tend to adopt models apart from a context. Because they are highly rationalized, we often make the mistake of thinking that adopting a new model will bring a new result. In reality, a new model imposed on an old environment simply creates dissonance and dis-ease.
Furthermore, models push definition. Models require careful mapping, and as a result, we only account for the things that easily measured. But in a world where spirit and faith are primary, the things that are fixed and measurable are only a starting point. In a world where the task is love and the matter is humanity, we need to respect fluidity and mystery.
Metaphors, on the other hand, are part of a narrative. Metaphors tell a story, and so help in developing an imaginative architecture that remains flexible and evokes rather than describes.
'How beautiful it is!'
"But that is all. Clarity says everything which is to be said. The conversation is brought to an end. The soul is possessed by ten thousand things.
"The other is a dark and deep forest, hazy shapes, indefinite trees, a lonely trail which disappears in an eerie atmosphere of diffuse mist. Everything suggests mist-eerie...
When people see it they stop: they do not know what to say. But after some moments of indecision, the same question:
"I wonder...What is it which is hidden by this mist, behind the trees, in the dark?"
"This picture: a poem; it does not intend to say what it shows. The visible is only the discrete border which suggests the invisible, the nameless, that which cannot be said. The eyes which only see the visible do not see the absence which is there.
"A dream...Truth is hidden. It is absent. It is not shown, it is not said. It is only evoked....In this dark, silent space, strange creatures begin to move; absences, only visible with the eyes of desire and love....."
Rubem Alves, "The Poet, The Warrior, The Prophet"
Alves story reminds us that there is much more to reality than that which we can describe, and that love is at the center of knowledge. In telling a story, metaphors help in developing an imaginative architecture that remains flexible and evokes rather than defines reality. Description always risks becoming definition, tending to an inflexibility that loses as much information as it includes.
In appealing to imagination, metaphor involves a playful attitude that engenders risk and creativity. These are qualities essential in learning and discovery, and learning and discovery are essential to life and growth and transformation. Where a list of answers puts us in our head, stories often lead us to the heart.
Models, by their nature clear and defined, approach a kind of intellectual dishonesty. They imply a level of control we rarely attain, and a level of knowledge we don't have. Equally dangerous, they are too readily given away, granting the listener the illusion that they now have the same degree of understanding or control, as if something as mysterious as community can be reproduced in the same way as a chocolate cake, by following the correct formula.
It is this error that ends in confusing the vehicle for the journey, and the menu for the meal. Richard Rohr comments that, "The Bible seems to always be saying that this journey is indeed a journey, a journey always initiated and concluded by God, and a journey of transformation much more than mere education about anything... We would sooner have textbooks, I think. Then the journey could remain a spectator sport, as much religion seems to be." (Hope Against Darkness).
The great illusion at the heart of the modern mindset is the illusion that knowledge is enough. It is not. Nor do we have the power to create spirit; no matter how brilliant we are, no matter how much we know, we cannot establish the kingdom of God. We can only gain the kingdom in a lifetime of surrender...
But What About Leadership?
Not long ago Michael Toy mailed me a summary of a discussion with Doug Pagitt. Doug was proposing we ditch the word "leadership" with all its military implications, and find new language for talking about those who tend to communities. His preferred analogy was an organic gardener.
· take crap and use it to nourish things
· it isn't "dirt," it is soil, and the preparation and maintenance of the soil is really important
· things that are garbage are used to grow the garden
· vigilance is important
· be willing to take smaller fruit in order for it to be truly healthy
· gardening requires a systems understanding
· gardens die every winter and require replanting
· things can only grow in certain climates
· hybrids don't reproduce
· if you use miracle grow to start, you have to keep boosting the amount
· what you plant next to what is important
· you have very little to do with the success of the gardern, photosynthesis is still a mystery, you can't make it grow, it is a miracle
· backs and knees are sore because you are down in the dirt, you don't stand above the garden
· we need to protect the garden from bunnies. Worms are good, bunnies are bad.
· organic fruit doesn't all look like the stuff in the market. Quality is over beauty, and there is no uniformity.. you share from the excess.
The evidence is in favor of leadership as an organic and communal enterprise. But whatever it is that the Lord is birthing anew in our generation, the only path forward is the path of prayer and love and surrender.
Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom
As we move forward we need to live a new way of knowing. In the modern world "knowledge was power," knowledge was utilitarian, and science sought knowledge for the purpose of control. Efficiency was the watchword in the technological society. If the postmodern church is to be a different expression of the kingdom, we need a new purpose and different kind of knowledge, a knowledge that is based in love and service.
The scholastic movement in the twelfth century, founded primarily by Anselm of Canterbury, wedded Greek thought and method to the Gospel. Anselm's famous dictum, "I believe in order to understand," stood firmly in Christian thought until our own day.
Not everyone was enamored of scholastic methods, however, and there was a powerful reaction to the scholastic movement in the monastic movement. If the scholastics believed the path to God and the transformed life was via knowledge, the monks believed it was through love. Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry wrote a series of letters and pamphlets defending love as the path to knowledge. Moreover, they lived in poverty and worked among the poor!
Bernard's dictum was, "I believe in order to experience" (credo ut experiar).
I'm galvanized by the parallels in Bernard's time to our own. The center of the debate in Bernard's time was both the method of knowing, and its purpose. In some ways the debate anticipated the work of Heidegger in the last century.
At the heart of change in our culture is this same debate, albeit with new evidence that calls into question many of our previous conclusions. Moreover, as uncertainty shakes our entire culture loose from its moorings, there is a tremendous insecurity and hunger for community and relationship. When the answers no longer make sense, we look for security by other means.
If we make this time of change and relativity an opportunity for dialogue, we embrace tremendous possibilities for the Gospel. If we hold securely to our answers, we cut off dialogue and "prove" to observers that our security was not really in Christ, but in our own understanding - in our formulations and systems and structures.
In "The Geography of the Imagination" Daniel Boorstin quotes Ivan Turgenev saying to Leo Tolstoy:
The modern church embraced primarily Anselm's road. Today our culture is hungry for the way of Bernard.
Bernard was not naïve. He understood implicity the unity of the word and the Spirit. But he firmly maintained that true knowledge was founded in love, and that love had to be walked out in our relationships in community. Love for Bernard was not simply an idea, but a practice and an imitation of the beauty of His Lord and of the very nature of reality.
Love often appears as weakness. Bernard and William and the order they founded took vows of poverty, and also became involved with the poor. They came from privileged families, but gave up their rights and comforts and stepped down in the world, much like their Master.
Love is the only true knowledge. And this application is not limited to spiritual reality alone. When we approach reality with the desire for control, we have already determined the kind of questions we ask, and so the answers we receive. When we approach a community with the desire for control, we have already twisted that communal reality into our own service, wrenching it from the grip of the true Shepherd.
How has this happened? My guess is that there are two primary reasons: laziness on the part of "followers," too quick to let someone do it for them; weak character or unhealed brokenness on the part of leaders, who are insecure and have a pressing need for status and significance.
It has taken me too long to recognize the direct relationship of the personality cult to the leadership mess in the modern church. What do too many prominent leaders lack? Moral authority. Moral authority can't be achieved by study. It isn't related to knowledge or position. In fact, the higher individuals rise in popularity, the less likely they seem to have moral authority. Moral authority can only be attained by sacrifice and risk.
Moral Authority
We have few leaders who are truly heroic, too of the "Braveheart" type, too few who are willing to sacrifice for the sake of Christ. Instead, too many leaders have too much at stake. They have been hard at work climbing the ladder of popularity and success. As Mark Strom pointed out in "Reframing Paul,"
"Paul urged leaders to imitate his personal example of how the message of Jesus inverted status... He refused to show favouritism towards individuals or ekklesiai. The gospel offered him rights, but he refused them. Christ was not a means to a career. Yet the agendas and processes of maintaining and reforming evangelical life and thought remain the domain of professional scholars and clergy. Their ministry is their career.
"Dying and rising with Christ meant status reversal. In Paul's case, he deliberately stepped down in the world. We must not romanticize this choice. He felt the shame of it amongst his peers and potential patrons, yet held it as the mark of his sincerity. Moreover, it played a critical role in the interplay of his life and thought. Tentmaking was critical, even central, to his life and message. His labour and ministry were mutually explanatory. Yet, for most of us, 'tent-making' belongs in the realms of missionary journals and far-flung shores. As a model for ministry in the USA, Britain or Australia, it remains as unseemly to most of us as it did to the Corinthians. At best it is second best.
"Evangelicalism will not shake its abstraction, idealism and elitism until theologians and clergy are prepared to step down in their worlds. Some might argue that since the world often shows contempt for the pastoral role, then professional ministry is a step back. But that is to ignore the more pertinent set of social realities. Evangelicalism has its own ranks, careers, financial security, marks of prestige, and rewards. Within that world, professional ministry is rank and status.
"Ministry as profession feeds the pride that separates the seminary and the pulpit from the congregation. It makes Paul abstract."
But where truth abstracted is a lie, embodied truth has power, and this is the connection to authority and a new kind of leadership. I was stunned when I discovered this prophetic discussion from 1981 by Richard Quebedeaux. He wrote that,
"No medium or method of conveying the Christian gospel can meet people's basic needs for recognition, involvement, worthiness, growth, and indeed salvation itself without the loving give and take of person-to-person interaction over a long period of time. This is what community really means, and this is exactly where popular religion and its leaders are not successful.
"In a secular society, in a world where homelessness is the norm, the only way religion can really be "successful" is to provide a home for the homeless -- a family that includes not just my kind of people, but God's kind of people, who love him with everything they have, and who love their neighbor as much as they love themselves. The church does need to become God's ideal family, both in word and indeed. And its leaders will have to be heroic leaders ho really live and exemplify the life they preach and teach, whose authority is recognized in their nobility, in their concrete modeling of the love of God, the only force that can save and transform a world plagued with the consequences of sin. At this point we can say that the crisis of authority in our culture is ultimately a crisis caused by the lack of love, both on the part of leaders themselves and on the part of their followers….
"Like loving parents, heroic leaders will have no happiness or peace until their followers, and the rest of humanity as well, also have the same. Thus such leaders never rest in the face of suffering and tragedy. When others suffer, they suffer…
"In a word, the strongest heroic leaders are themselves servants, nay, the very servants of the servants of God. It is in the nobility of this strength-in servanthood-that their authority is both recognized and authenticated. But more than that, the truth of their teaching and their example is borne out in their fruits, in the quality of the character of their followers.
"What America-and the rest of the world-needs, then, is godly leaders who by the discipline they impose on themselves and their followers, produce saints. If Christianity wishes to have a transformative impact on America-to speak with authority-its leaders will have to provide the one thing all modern Americans need most of all: a loving family and a home. And to do this it will have to have a new medium to bring the church home in a more substantial way than the electronic church has done… "
From By What Authority: the Rise of Personality Cults in American Christianity. HarperCollins, 1982. p. 177-183
Love alone grants moral authority, the strength to stand against injustice, and the strength to sacrifice ourselves for those whom God loves.. the poor, the outcast, the homeless, the despised, those without status or power. So finally only love roots effective mission, just as only love can found true community, because only love leads us to true knowledge of the One who is Love. This is the truth the monastics understood and experienced, and the truth that was obscured in the modern scientific world.
Our need is to learn to love freely, to listen deeply, and to cleanse the lens with which we view ourselves, our God, and our culture. As we see and hear with the eyes of Christ, we will find the way forward. God bless our travels!
We shall not cease from exploration
: TS Eliot, Little Gidding
Theological Footnote: the unity of word and spirit.
I often long to escape the analytical, outlined and logical approach to life. I find it tiring and limiting.
But I have a feeling that our need for structure, and even for models, represents more than a cultural need. I have a feeling it is something in our very nature in the image of God.
God is creative, playful, spontaneous, WILD.. a consuming fire, the Love that created the worlds.
But he is also ordered and planned and purposeful. On the level of quantum physics things are all relational and probability. On the macro order of stars and planets and biology, we have predictable interactions, and careful structure.
Look at our phyical bodies on the cellular level. Order, purpose, direction.. we would die unless there remained a high level of predicatability in our functions. While there are limits to our understanding even here (the mystery of life itself), there is a lot we know and can predict.
So while an interruption in the orderly function of my body, or of the earth spinning on its axis, woudl result in death, we seem to die a different kind of death when we lose the creativity, spontaneity and playfulness of life.
Maybe I can draw a theological parallel.
We have the word.. literally, logos, a rational, communicable expression. The logos is the logical, purposeful, planned and structured expression of God in creation. He spoke a word and creation appeared. But we also have the spirit, hovering over the face of the water.. the wild, unpredictable, mysterious and powerful creative force.
We need both. The modern world emphasized one over the other. Perhaps the secret of holiness really is incarnational... Just as Jesus was God before the creation of the world, and became flesh by the power of the Spirit, so we must bring the word and the Spirit together in a hypostatic union.
But even as we recognize the power of incarnation, let us remember the paradox at the heart of reality lest we think that by our many words we can create reality. The Word is heard only in silence. In silence is the greatest power..
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• © 1999-2003 Len Hjalmarson.•
Last Updated on May 7, 2003
