frank viola paints the bigger picture
For all those who read Pagan Christianity, where Frank and George hammer inherited concepts and practices of church, and were excited, disturbed, confused, or angry about it, Frank Viola has penned the more complete picture of what church can be after being de-paganized in Reimagining Church. Critics will be pleased that this is indeed is a much more positive book. This is what I wrote as an endorsement of it. Read more
reviews for The Forgotten Ways over 08
It is now two years since the release of The Forgotten Ways and the book is still Brazos’ best seller, and has been so for the last eighteen months. I don’t say this out of any personal pride as I of all people know that the idea behind the book was something ‘given to me’ by God to both steward and to articulate. I am privileged to even be a part of it all–I am all too aware of my short-fallings and am constantly amazed that God would even use me. I suppose that’s what grace is all about. Can I also take this time to remind you of the really practical and comprehensive workbook The Forgotten Ways Handbook, that is about to be published. If you benefited from TFW, you will love this book and it will make it profoundly applicable in various missional endeavors. Anyhow, here are some of the reviews from various journals and commentators over ‘08…
the future and the shaping of things to come pt.II
“Managing from the future”—establishing a compelling goal that draws the organization out of its comfort zone—is a key discipline in moving us to the edge of chaos and therefore is important in developing missional church. This means placing ourselves in the new future and then taking a series of steps, not in order to get there some day, but as if you are there already, or almost there, now. This is exactly the perspective of the Kingdom of God in the New Testament. In saying that the future (eschatological) Kingdom of God is already present in our midst, we are called to act in the knowledge that it is already here now and yet will be completed then. And so we are drawn up into God’s future for the world. This ‘now’ and ‘not yet’ tension of the Kingdom defines our reality and keeps us moving, growing, and adapting. It is in the language of living systems, our ever present strange attractor (innate guiding mechanism.)
look out! here comes everybody
I have been reading (very slowly) Clay Shirky Shirky’s generative book on distributed organizations, Here Comes Everybody:The Power of Organizing without Organizations. The book looks at how people are organizing using technology, web, and other informal, non-hierarchical, ways. It has significance for movements and so I think it is important. Here is an excellent review, from Dave Mays, on the book.
The Future and the Shaping of Things to Come pt.I
But cultivating a vigorous transformative vision can also create liminality along with the resultant communitas. Fritz Roethlisberger, the late professor at Harvard Business School and a pioneer in the field of organizational behavior, observed: “Most people think of the future as the ends and the present as the means, whereas in fact, the present is the ends and the future the means.” Translated, Roethlisberger is telling us that holding a definite sense of vision (a preferred future) and mission informs and alters how people think and how they will behave in the present. Viewed this way, the future is a means to alter behavior. The new behavior shapes the ends, which in turn alter the future, and the spiral continues.
a hopefull christmas and a brave new year 2U2
The Incarnation
Those who know me know that I have no patience with Christmassy kulcha of schmaltzcha. I seriously dislike the sentimentality of the season with its trivialization of the Biblical story. I think the reason I am so opposed to the ’silly season’ is because I so love the Reality of the Incarnation (light has come into our dark world) and I feel that the commercial crap that surrounds it obscures the wonder of God with us. So here is a reality check from my favorite theologian, Helmut Theilicke
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Artificial environments and the church
Hopefully by now we have grasped the concept of liminality and communitas. So, how does chaos theory highlight the role of communitas and liminality in shaping the church’s life and structure?’ We know from living systems theory that all living systems will tend towards equilibrium (and thus closer to death) if they fail to respond adequately to their environments. The law of requisite variety, an important law of cybernetics, states that “…the survival of any living system depends on its capacity to cultivate (not just tolerate) adaptability and diversity in its internal structure.” It also states that failure to do so will result in an inability to cope successfully with variety when it is introduced from an external source. The system in equilibrium simply hasn’t developed the internal resources or mechanisms to respond adequately to adaptive challenges when they come along and therefore faces potential demise. Hence, we can say that the survival of living systems favors heightened adrenaline levels, attentiveness, and experimentation.
Watership Down
One of the mythic literary tales involving liminality and communitas is Richard Adam’s Watership Down. Fiver, a small nervous rabbit, has a premonition something terrible is going to happen to their Sandleford warren. And he’s right; a housing developer is planning to build on their field. Fiver tells his brother Hazel and they try to warn their aging Chief Rabbit, to no avail—he doesn’t believe them. Hazel and Fiver decide they must leave, and are joined by other rabbits in their search for a new home. And no sooner than they have left, the bulldozers come and destroy the warrens and all the other rabbits. To cut the long story short, the adventure takes the rabbits out of the safety of their warrens where they do very un-rabbitlike things; like crossing rivers, fields, and roads. (Rabbits, like the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings), seldom travel far from their burrows.) At nights, out of their burrows, and feeling very insecure, they comfort and encourage each other by re-telling tales of the adventures of the great rabbit hero; El-Ahrairah and they are inspired by his story to continue their journey. They come across many other warrens and they try to warn them. They even get imprisoned and escape, but they eventually do get to Watership Down which becomes their new home, and once they find females to mate with, they settle down and start again. Read more
danger in the lakes
Back to communitas: What it teaches us is that in contexts of where people face a common evil threat and potential obliteration, people can and do find new depths of their own humanity. This is not only true in the movies. It is true there because it is true to life. Liminality can bring out the very best in us. This is because danger highlights the paradoxical nature of good and evil—at least as to how we experience it. It highlights goodness and gives it a wholesome aspect that evil in itself denies. Or as the ever insightful C.S. Lewis says “I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, not love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
Frosty on reJesus
Below is an interview that my co-conspirator, Michael Frost, did with Canadian mega-blogger Jamie Arpin-Ricci. You can find the original on his blog here.
Dan Kimball on Missional Church Effectiveness
Dan Kimball has posted some of his misgivings about the effectiveness of the missional church on the Out of Ur blog. There is an excellent conversation going on there about it. Here is my comment…..
its everywhere, its everywhere…part I
Having seen communitas for what it is, it is hard not to spot this type of communal experience in so many aspects of our lives. Already mentioned are those times of great social upheaval and disaster awakens something in us and calls us to find ourselves in a new way: the tsunami, as tragic as it was, called something really good out of us. But communitas can be found in far more common and less hazardous situations like sports teams where a group of otherwise individualistic people band together to achieve a common task. They become a team around a common challenge. This is mirrored in common work practices where a group of people in a corporate situation are called together to do something which they could not do alone. The deadline in this situation creates the ordeal where people working together can really become good colleagues. The same dynamic is at work in adventure camps and in short term missions where people are taken out of their normal safe environments and put in situations of disorientation and marginalization. So many people who go to visit the slums of Mexico are deeply and profoundly changed through that experience.
The Bible and communitas
This claim that communitas and liminality are normative for God’s people recently stirred up a bit of a storm in a recent speaking tour. Some people in the audience responded with real vehemence when Michael Frost and I proposed this way of understanding of Christian community. This negative response forced a deep reflection on the validity of these ideas but after much searching I have to say that I have not fundamentally changed my mind. On the contrary, this clash in conceptions in relation to the purpose of the church has forced me to conclude that for many of our critics, Christian community has become little more than a quiet and reflective soul-space (as in Alt Worship circles) or a spiritual buzz (as in Charismatic circles) for people trying to recuperate from an overly busy, consumerist, lifestyle. But is this really what the church is meant to be on about? Is this our grand purpose, to be a sort of refuge for recovering work addicts and experience junkies? A sort of spiritual hospital? I believe that the reason for the strong response in our critics is that they actually did ‘get the message’ about missional church but didn’t like it because, in this case, it called them out of a religion of quiet moments in quiet places and into liminality and engagement.
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Recent Blog Entries
- frank viola paints the bigger picture
- reviews for The Forgotten Ways over 08
- the future and the shaping of things to come pt.II
- look out! here comes everybody
- The Future and the Shaping of Things to Come pt.I
- a hopefull christmas and a brave new year 2U2
- The Incarnation
- Artificial environments and the church
- Watership Down
- danger in the lakes
Recent Comments
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reviews for The Forgotten Ways over 08
- Kevin Davis said: Alan - I'm still working...
- Jeff Gill said: Alan, I'd like to add my...
- Andrew Park said: Good to see... the future and the shaping of things to come pt.II
- Tim C said: God's future can also be...
- Grant said: It seems a adding a... look out! here comes everybody
- Bill Kinnon said: Al, It's one of the...
- Barb said: yes I've also been...
- dave said: I read this book a... The Future and the Shaping of Things to Come pt.I
- Lucy J said: Yep, I sure have been... a hopefull christmas and a brave new year 2U2
- Erik said: Happy New Year Alan and...