Renewal and Release - Part 1

Many years ago, a small group of believers challenged the reactionary autocracy that the mainline Church had become. The church had imposed a creedal legalism on the people that effectively separated the ordinary man and woman from the simple but life-changing message of New Testament faith in Christ.

This new radical movement wanted to by-pass the religious and clerical constructs of the day and call believers to a simple Spirit-directed, Bible based faith. They studied the Scriptures together; they relished their common unity around the bread and the wine, and they proclaimed Christ - not the rituals and intrigues of established religion. The ‘brothers’, as they were known, coined the old Augustinian phrase: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.”

The fearless preaching of their leader disturbed the Church and the religious culture of his day so much that he was put to death by the religious establishment of his day! 

I speak of course, of Jan Hus and the Moravian movement of the 1400s. Though their legacy was to pave the way for the first large-scale protestant mission movement and for the Reformation a century later, the entrenched church culture of the day pushed their little movement to the very margins.

The Scripture story by which we live is about the conflict between two Kingdoms and their respective cultures – The Kingdom of this world with its powers and principalities versus the Kingdom of God, so radically proclaimed by Jesus.

The story of redemption is about personal  ‘culture change’ – it’s being birthed into God’s kingdom, a new heart and a new mind leading to new attitudes and new behaviours. Discipleship is about the lifelong, intentional reflecting on our attitudes and behaviours in the light of God’s calling. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The people of God are to be this peculiar ‘halfway’ people – journeying from Egypt to the Promised Land with God. Learning to put off the mental bondage of captivity and becoming the free covenant people of God – a Light to the nations!

And yet the Bible is marked by struggle, failure, grace and redemption. The people of God are always struggling to leave behind the gods of Egypt and Canaan. Every Judge and every King of Israel struggles with entrenched culture. Which god are we serving? Which belief system? The tribes and clans of Canaan are married into and slowly their culture becomes endemic and Yahweh is marginalised. All through the stories of the Judges and Kings there is a downward spiral ending in exile to Babylon – and then grace, and God grows a new shoot from the dead stump.

In the New Testament most of the letters are written to deal with cultural issues – almost none of the Pauline epistles are about ‘vision’ or ‘governance’ or ‘programmes’ – it’s all about Jewish Old testament culture or Gentile permissiveness or Gnostic super spirituality or the spirit of Rome – humanity’s greatest attempt at heaven on earth contrasted to the Kingdom of God’s culture - and it’s very painful for Paul and the other leaders! Two steps forward, one step back!

The history of God’s church is the same – The slide into Christendom with Constantine through to the valiant resistance of martyrs like Jan Hus, culminating in Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg cathedral door and unleashing a chaotic, powerful reaction to the decadent culture of the medieval church.
The evangelical movements or ‘Awakenings’ of the 18^th and 19^th century revolted against the immovably, nationalistic state churches of the era. You see it in the evolution of the various movements such as the Wesleyans, the Salvationists, the various Disciples, Adventists, Brethren, and others. These various ‘waves’ - overseas missions, Pentecostalism, assorted para-church movements, the church growth era, and the emerging church all emerged in response to ossified church culture and each birthed fresh, fluid expressions of faith.

Most new church h movements tumble out of such turbulence. How wonderful that the radical Moravian slogan of four hundred years before should also mark the spirit of new movement too!  “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things love.” The rich chaos of the Spirit of that time spawned many related but divergent movements. Movements always diverge and differentiate into more sharply defined entities. Out of the turbulence of the book of Judges, comes the sombre orderliness of Kings! Movements have always become ministries and then machines and then slowly un-noticed by their now conservative guardians, they freeze into stone monuments. But God in his grace sows seeds into the cracks of the weathering stone and new green shoots emerge.

And now the wheel has turned again and in 2000’s the fresh new movements of 200+ years ago are almost monuments themselves. Movements tend to be chaotic! Their members ‘live a conviction’ rather than ‘go to work’. They are highly relational, green-zone, fluid, self-organising, team focussed. The leaders proclaim the story rather than the policy! They are prophetic! They are imaginative culture-shapers – and their people interpret and build the new forms, experimentally, under-the-surface, in poverty, by faith, with passion. They expect resistance and difficulty, and learn to negotiate the possible. Sometimes they die prematurely. Too often it’s the dominant system and culture and that asphyxiate them! 

We see that our inherited paradigms are failing! Australia is not a Christian nation! Our numbers are declining; churches are aging and for most of the younger people in our society they seem way out of touch! This is no longer about servicing our going concerns but with urgency praying for renewal and creatively going out on a limb. If we fail, so be it!

We don’t want to be like the good proprietors of Cobb and Co anxiously peering out at the noisy T-model Fords puttering along asphalt roads and then turning to design a better horse! Cobb and Co exists no more! In a few years the motorcar will either be in terminal decline or will have re-invented itself for a new age. We pray for a cultural shift. How can we avoid either being immersed in consumer modernity or fortressed off from the world in a 1950s bubble.

What we aspire for our churches is cultural shift: A missionary paradigm; a bible-narrative from which to live; a contextual mission mindset; a centripetal culture, a discipleship culture, an incarnational mindset; an empowering leadership; a ‘sent’ membership and so on. 

This is not about change of programs but change of paradigm.

So – what might we respond? Our methodology will need to be different. Culture is changed in vigorous relationships, in sound pedagogy, in personal spirituality, in self-awareness, in being enabled to become response-able. It means we need to be modelling and delivering the opposite to the command and control corporation.  New movements rarely flourish long in tightly hierarchical organisations. Edgy ideas come from the edges. Can our respectable institutions, really become  dangerous insurgencies?

Click here for Part 2

21st Century Ministry.

This post is a  flashback to an original post from 2013 when we were in the UK:

A few weeks ago, I stood at the back of the little village church in Grasmere in the Lakes District. This is surely one of the most quintessential of little English villages! The poet William Wordsworth who lived in here for fourteen years, described it as "the loveliest spot that man hath ever found."

The little stone church has been there since 642. It’s one of the oldest chapels in England. With its high wooden pews, stained glass windows, pulpits, organ, fading hymn books and other pieces of typical church paraphernalia  it looked and felt and even smelt “Churchy.” I had the sense of being whisked back in my imagination to every archetypal memory of childhood associated with being in “Church.”

Anthropologists! Anthropologists!

Can you engage another culture without entering into it in some way and changing it somehow by your presence and your own world-view? 

We can't remain objective outsiders when doing mission. We become part of the changed equation. Or do we? I think the the cartoon could work just as well with the caption: "Christians! Christians!" or "Missionaries! Missionaries!" 

(There's a certain irony about this old cartoon, when you consider how out of date the gadgets already are!)

29 Predictions of the Year 2000 from December 1900

Sometime we imagine that we are the first generation to hurtle through times of rapid change. But I wonder how our great grandparents pictured the new industrial, confident, 20th century panning out. As steel, electricity, radio-waves and motor engines began to appear, and the European powers hold on colonies that spanned the globe began to waver - what might life look like in the unbelievably distant 2000AD?

The Ladies Home Journal from December 1900 contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”. Mr. Watkins wrote: “These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men [sic] in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed.”

Prediction #1: There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.”

10 Signs That a Company Has a Serious Culture Problem

Leaders need an understanding of ‘culture’ and the power of organisational culture to undermine good intentions. 

Often the focus is primarily on developing vision rather than understanding culture. Get the strategy right; make the people fit into it, and the results will come. Yet we cannot change people or groups of people by proclaiming a fresh vision and structure per se.

Culture is about the unspoken assumptions or paradigms that shape our corporate practices and personal behaviors. It’s the narrative or theology or myths or learnt ‘skills’ that define our common identity. It will contain all manner of habits and attitudes, both constrictive and dysfunctional. 

New vision or fresh priorities or revised programs or re-structuring means change – change to the ingrained culture. Change is highly energy-intensive at best - but if there are dysfunctional cultural elements or if the leadership culture is toxic then the energy required to handle the resistance; anxiety and often hostility may overwhelm the good intentions.

This article in Forbes Magazine caught my eye recently. What would you say are the signs of an unhealthy corporate culture? 

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE

The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

I found this an interesting presentation by journalist, Chris Hedges.

Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, has written twelve books, including the New York Times best seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. Some of his other books include “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. In 2011, Nation Books published a collection of Hedges’ Truthdig columns called “The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”

Hedges previously spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. The Los Angeles Press Club honored Hedges’ original columns in Truthdig by naming the author the Online Journalist of the Year in 2009 and again in 2011. The LAPC also granted him the Best Online Column award in 2010 for his Truthdig essay “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists”.

Complex civilizations have a bad habit of ultimately
destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph
Tainter in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Charles L. Redman in “Human Impact on Ancient Environments” and Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress” have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference this time is that when we go down the whole planet will go with us.

There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate. The long struggle between the human species and the earth will conclude with the remnants of the human species learning a painful lesson about unrestrained greed, hubris and idolatry.

Collapse comes throughout human history to complex societies not long after they reach their period of greatest magnificence and prosperity.!!!!!!!!!!!!

The transcript can be found: HERE

Some More Pictures ....

Glasgow: A civilised city! : )

Trip Update

We left Melbourne really late Wednesday night, or was that early Thursday morning? 2.40am  is a strange time to board -and then you get served breakfast; or is that dinner?

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur about mid Thursday morning and ended up having the afternoon and next morning to look around. With specials that Emirates and Etihad had at the time,  worked out more economical to break the trip. It was nice to look around and get a quick dose of 30 plus degrees tropical heat before braving an English summer!

We took a spin on the monorail, we walked, looked, had food and generally took in the 'vibe'.

A TIME LIKE NO OTHER?

Picture a time of incredible change and rapid progress!

The certainties of yesterday are lost in the progress of today.

As one writer enthuses: “Let the great world spin forever down the ringing groves of change!”

Another significant national leader says in a speech:

“Nobody, however, who has paid any attention to ... our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end, to which, indeed, all history points ... the unity of mankind [sic]. ....
The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are rapidly vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible ease; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirement placed within the reach of everybody; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power, of lightning. ...”

Missionaries without the Pith Helmets!

A number of years ago some good friends of ours sensed a call to go overseas as missionaries serving in Africa. As they prepared and then said their tearful farewells at the airport, I sort of imagined that they would be on some sort of permanent high intensity Billy Graham Crusade. Rallies in large halls, lights and powerful sound systems, dapper suits and ties, choirs and bands, powerful appeals, tearful responses followed by mass conversions followed in quick succession by a virtual army of builders constructing steepled chapels with rows of fixed pews, pulpits and carpeted stages across the land!

I was quite startled when I realized that much of their next five years would be spent living in an adobe hut in a far dry desert, learning a difficult dialect and making friends with and caring for a people who would never find their way into my imagined Crusade!

The Message paraphrase describes the coming of Jesus into the world like this: “... The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” (John 1:14).

Friday 22 April 2011

 ‘Boarded an A380 Airbus – interestingly at a distance they look smaller than the old jumbo Jet – probably because they don’t have the camel’s hump nose - but actually they are much bigger, a double-decker plane in fact.

I was seated next to Angela and Steve, a coupe in their early sixties from rural Victoria off to New York for a two-week holiday. “First time we’ve done anything like this.” They asked me what I was doing in Florida – It made me think -  How do you explain church planting to people who are not church goers? I said I was going to a conference about starting new churches.   “More churches? I thought no one was going to church much any more,” responded Steve.  “Our kids went to the local church children’s club sometimes when they were in primary school, but as they got older , there are so many things they can get sign up for...” said Angela.

They asked me how come I was attended. As I replied that I was a minister with an interest in learning about how churches can serve their communities, they exchanged that uneasy glance people sometime do when priests or pastors are identified and there was an awkward silence for a just moment. “Well, I hope it goes well for you, and good luck!” grinned Steve.

Some time later I looked at the little LCD screen that tells you about the route information. It informed me that the temperature around us was minus 51 Celsius; there were 12,000 kilometres still to go, and we were flying a dizzying  10 kilometres above sea level and hurtling forward at about 600K per hour.

Yet everything around me was as warm, still and peaceful as it was when we were on the tarmac. The lights were dimmed and drinks were being served. I wondered how we would all feel if the Captain could flick a switch and instantly make the whole fuselage translucent!

It’s just so hard for us as passengers to picture ourselves being in a thin metal shell at the very edges of space, hurtling six times faster than a speeding car and two kilometres above Mount Everest in bitter cold. The soft seating, mood lighting, diligent cabin staff and comforting entertainment system mean we are totally oblivious to our real location.

We in the western church have long left the comforting safety of the Christian era - but we are oblivious to it! Cocooned in our ‘cabin’ its hard to really believe that it’s all changed out there – but it has. Not so much in the non–western contexts but certainly in our western world. The Steves and the Angelas and their adult children don’t feel any antagonism towards us – just a mild bewilderment.

I recently heard Sarah Deutscher (Red Network) share from a study shows that only 15% of Aussies can connect with the things we do as ‘church’ and ‘outreach’ – That means 85% of Aussies wouldn’t ‘get it.’ We’re flying at a totally different altitude now! We need a different approach.

It can be difficult to imagine new realities. With the exception of the Great Wall of China, the Maginot Line was the greatest system of permanent fortification ever built, and probably the last. The broad purpose of the Line was to halt an invasion long enough for the French Army to fully mobilize, and then act as a base from which to conduct a counteroffensive. It was such an impressive piece of construction that dignitaries from around the world visited it.

However, the Maginot Line had two major failings – it was obviously not mobile and it assumed that the Ardennes was impenetrable. Any attack that could get around it would leave it floundering like a beached whale. Blitzkrieg was the means by which the enemy simply went around the whole Line. The speed with which Germany attacked France and Belgium in May 1940 completely isolated all the forts.

The German Army attacked through the Ardennes – such an attack was believed to be impossible by the French. One million men and 1,500 tanks crossed the seemingly impenetrable forests in the Ardennes. Once the Maginot Line had been isolated it had little military importance. One in seven French divisions was a fortress division - so the Maginot Line took out 15% of the French Army.

“... from Issachar, men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do—200 chiefs, with all their relatives under their command...”  (1 Chron 12: 32 NIV)