About Networks
Back we go to the series of posts on organic systems…
Not surprisingly as we move closer to a network structure, we will not only find ourselves closer to the structures of the NT people of God but also more aligned around the dynamics of Apostolic Genius. It is therefore critical to explore the nature and forms of networks. In doing so, we need to realize that this is closer to our truest expression of ecclesia, even though it might at first seem somewhat strange to us at first. In doing this we must realize that we explore things that relate not just to issues of reactivating missional church, but to much of what we experience in God’s world. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, the guru of network thinking says it this way.. Read more
mandela on leadership
I have to admit that I totally love Nelson Mandela. 
I do believe he is the greatest leader alive today and a remarkable example of grace. Time magazine recently did an article on him and his view of leadership. Interestingly he says that these are not principles but tactics. He is a man of principles but in terms of leadership he says it is all about tactics. Here are his eight principles… Read more
love colors our world
Why does the gospel look to so many like a bowl of lima beans? (article by Mark Labberton taken from Christian Vision Project)…… Read more
lying to god in worship
I have been part of the Presbyterian Global Fellowship’s conference on missional church (see personal blog) and one of the speakers was Mark Labberton.
I had never heard of him, but I have to say that I think he was brilliant. I ran out to buy his book, The Dangerous Act of Worship, and was not disappointed. Here is a quote from p.71… Read more
two new books by november…yay!
Just an update on the books I have been working on. They will both be published at the end of this year. Check this out…
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The Trouble with Paris (pt. II)
Why Your Faith Does Not Work: (Excepts from The Trouble with Paris)
She looked like a girl who had it all. She was strikingly beautiful, confident, and hip. Half the guys in the room were looking at her, and all the girls in the room wanted to be her. She had ticked all the boxes: she was deeply involved in her church, had a high-paying job, travelled all over the world, and had a social life most of us would be jealous of with a bevy of male suitors. Yet for her this meant nothing.
She looked me square in the eye with pain in her face and told me, “I was promised an awesome life!” I was immediately thrown. This girl had everything that society tells us will make us happy. Yet as I listened to the reality of her life, I realized nothing could be further from the truth. Behind the glamorous exterior was a person who was struggling, who was unsure of who she was, who struggled with feelings of depression and with the dissatisfaction of constantly feeling as if she needed more. Her life was in limbo, and she was constantly waiting for this awesome life to turn up, yet it never came. She had finally come to the realization that she was miserable, and she felt very, very, ripped off.
This is a story that can be heard among those who have left the Christian faith because it didn’t deliver them the perfect life they believed they were promised. It can also be heard in the dissatisfaction and frustrations of those who still have faith. And finally, it can be heard in those who never have had faith yet have invested all of their hope in the fact that one day the perfect future will arrive. If we are to live lives of meaning, satisfaction, and happiness, it is essential that we understand what effects our culture has on our quality of life and quality of faith. Let’s begin with faith.
Something Is Eating Your Faith
Throughout the developed Western world, a corrosive epidemic is eating away at the faith lives of Christians. It assails us in our darkest moments; it comes to us at three o’clock in the morning when we can’t sleep. It confronts us at every corner, three to ten thousand times a day. It whispers to our hearts that “we’ve got it wrong,” that our faith should not be in Jesus Christ of Nazareth but in something else. In this context your faith is getting torn apart and most likely will not survive. Contrary to popular belief, you and your friends probably won’t lose your faith because of sex, drugs, or doubt but for a much more insidious reason. Sure, you can fight it, you can think, It won’t be me, but how do you fight an enemy you can’t name, an opponent you can’t see?
The thing that will eat away at your faith, make it impotent, and finally kill it off cannot easily be named. It is a framework, a formation system, an entire worldview. It tells us how to live and how to act. It speaks to our sense of identity. It shapes our personality. It tells us what to love, what to commit to, and what to have hope in. It is a virus that eats our faith from the inside out. This virus is the allure of the hyperreal world.
If you want to blame someone or something for your life not ending up as wonderfully as you were led to believe it would, a good place to start is the cultural phenomenon called hyperreality. The combination of a hyper consumer culture, mass media, and rampant individualism has created a world of hyperreality. What is hyperreality? It’s a term I learned from a French guy named Jean Baudrillard. He was a twentieth-century philosopher who took a trip across America, visiting places like Las Vegas and Disneyland. He said that our culture had become hyperreal, meaning that we could now have things that were even better than the real thing. The media-drenched world in which we live has overextended our expectations of life.
Following are some examples of hyperreality: Read more
The Trouble with Paris (pt. I)
Mission in the West can be difficult, it is new uncharted terrain. Two of the great errors that we can make as we birth and nurture missional-incarnational movements, is to assume that we understand and know the context in which we incarnate, and secondly assume that we and the people that we lead have not been compromised by the culture in which we live. That is why the following resource is so needed.
My good friend and colleague Mark Sayers has just released his much anticipated book The Trouble with Paris: Following Jesus in a World of Plastic Promises. The book wrestles with the questions of why so many people in the West struggle to come to faith, and why so many Christians end up leaving their faith, particularly young adults. Mark points the finger at the way that consumer culture creates a sexy, photo-shopped, mirage-like version of reality (a hyperreality) that is supposedly only one purchase away, which has a corrosive effect upon faith and ends up directly competing with the kingdom of God.
the flight of the dove (fellowship)
What eventually became known as DOVE Christian Fellowship International (DCFI) had its roots in a bible study involving young people coming to faith in the Jesus People phenomenon in the early 1970s. Larry Kreider, the leader of the group had became increasingly frustrated with the cultural mismatch of the prevailing church and the people they were reaching, and so began to develop what he called “an underground church model.” Gaining inspiration from the house churches in the book of Acts and around the world, they structured themselves in as a movement that met regularly in cells across the city and so began the story of DCFI. When the new movement officially started in 1980 there were 25 people meeting in one house church. By adopting the networked structures of Apostolic Genius, the movement had swelled to about 2500 believers meeting in over 125 cell groups all over south-central Pennsylvania by 1992. During this period they also began planting churches in Scotland, Brazil, Kenya, and New Zealand.
Networked structures: Liquid v. Solid church
If Apostolic Genius expresses itself in a movement ethos, it forms itself around a network structure. And once again this tends to be very different to what we have come to expect from our general concept of church. When we use the word “church” it is very hard to get some kind of building out of our minds. But this is not the way that phenomenal expressions of Christian movements experience it. This is due partly to the fact that the early church didn’t have such buildings and the Chinese had all their church buildings taken away from them. But it is also because buildings are not what is meant in any of the theological images of church in the Scriptures. Since Constantine it seems that we have simply got it all mixed up. On comparison, the Chinese church is much closer to what the New Testament intends, as well as more consistent with the New Testament experience, of church. It is we who are inconsistent in this regard—it’s that simple. So what do networks look like?
Liquid vs. Solid church
Peter Ward has written an excellent book exploring the theological, ecclesiological, as well as sociological dimensions of networks. Following Zygmunt Bauman’s brilliant analysis of culture in terms of liquid and solid modernity, he uses the term liquid church to describe the essence of what a truly networked church would look like; a church responsive to that increasing fluid dimension of our culture which Bauman called liquid modernity. He contrasts liquid church with what he calls ‘solid church.’ To simplify this, solid church is roughly equivalent to what I have here described as institutional church. Because of the continuing existence of solid modernity he does not counsel the total abandonment of solid church, but he does suggest that it is one of decreasing effectiveness. Solid church is related to solid modernity. And solid church has generally mutated from its original basis into becoming communities of heritage (that embody the inherited tradition), communities of refuge (a safe place from the world,) and communities of nostalgia (live in past successes). He suggests that almost all manifestations of solid church fall into one or more of these categories.
ideas on fire
Guys, I am at the Christian Associates staff meeting in Hungary (I am a member of the leadership team) and we have had Greg Boyd as our speaker. I have to say that he is one of the finest Theologian-Prophet-Preachers I have heard. His stuff on the Kingdom of God is superb. I thought I should share him with you. Do yourself a favor, go to the ITunes store, search for podcasts by “Christian Associates” and download the podcasts (also the one by the magnificent Debra) and tune in. You can also sample some of Greg’s (sometimes controversial) writings here.
The Problem of institutions (part II)
Perhaps a further exploration of what is meant by institutionalism is needed here: Institutions are organizations initially set up in order to fill a necessary religious and social function and to provide some sort of structural support for whatever that function requires. In many ways they fulfill the very purpose of structure; organization is needed if we seek to act collectively for common cause. And all movements start this way, but in the initial stages structure exists solely to support the grassroots. The problem happens when the newly instituted structures move beyond being simply structural support and become a governing body of sorts—structure becomes centralized governance. So religious institutionalism happens when in the name of some convenience we set up a system to do what we must do ourselves so that over time the structures we create to do this take on a life of their own. A classic example is when churches outsource education to external organizations. Initially these training organizations exist to fully serve the grassroots. However, over time they increase in authority and eventually becoming ordaining bodies whose imprimatur is needed in order to minister. As the provider of degrees, they become increasingly more accountable to the government bodies than they do to the mission of the church. But the net result for the local community is that not only do they become dependent on an increasingly powerful and cloistered institution, they also lose the ancient art of discipling and educating for life in the local setting. The local church as a learning and theologizing community is degraded as a result.
Here is a bit of fun…at various politician’s expense….
The Problem of institutions (Part I)
A living system perspective of community and organization is just the one aspect of what it means to be a truly organic missional church. To get a clearer perspective of the nature of Apostolic Genius, especially as it expresses itself in the Early Church and in the Chinese phenomenon, we will need to explore the dynamics of what it means to be and to become a movement
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chad hall takes on driscoll and jones
This is a direct cut and paste from one of my fave blogs from the editors of Christianity Today….Its a stimulating and challenging discussion, but the polemics is set to continue… Read more
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mandela on leadership
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