Installment #2 was just posted over at the There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church podcast. It is available through iTunes, so that might be the best way to follow along if you’d like. There’s a link to subscribe under “feeds” in the right-hand column on that site.
This week’s chapter (chapter one) is called, “Redefining Church”. I probably won’t advertise too much more on this blog, so hop on over and bookmark, or subscribe, or whatever you need to do if you’re interested. 🙂
I finally have posted the first chapter of the audio version of the book I published last year, There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church! I may have mentioned this here before, but if I did not, I’m sure I explain it on the page I just linked you to. The plan is to record and release each chapter as a podcast, and encourage discussion and perhaps just encourage people to live in the greatness that is life with God and his Church.
If you haven’t heard of my book, published last July, you can purchase it through my bookstore (click the links at the top of this site) or you can even download a free PDF of the book there as well.
I am in the process of adding the podcast to iTunes, and hope to be able to get ahead on the recordings so that I can post a chapter at least weekly. Perhaps ambitious, but we’ll see.
Thankfully, I don’t need much sleep! 🙂
If you know anyone who is wanting more than sitting in the pew on Sundays, or going through the motions of “church life”… perhaps God is calling them to a life that is infused with more of him? We have found that to be true, and I hope that this, another version of the text collected over the past couple years, will be an encouragement to people to follow Him in that.
So check it out, and please do spread the word. I’ll have the iTunes link up as soon as they send me the link!
(I think you can drag that link to your browser bar (in Safari, at least) and it will automatically generate a bookmark!)
Last night as I cleaned up after a little family birthday party for my mother-in-law, I was listening to a podcast. The regular hosts were having a chat with a guy from Australia who has been through a few crazy cycles with the institution of the church. I believe once he was “let go” from his job as a pastor… which served as a wake-up call that “the church” (meaning, the system… the programmed institution) as it was had some pretty major flaws. So, he and his family avoided such a setting for something like nine years?
After all that time, a little Baptist church asked him to be their pastor. The church was very traditional, very Baptist, and he of course said, “No thanks!” But God said, take it. So they did. And slowly over the next few years they, along with that whole group of believers, worked themselves out of that system until nothing was left of that group. They are all still in contact, but all felt that God was leading them to something different… perhaps more free that what they had before.
As I listened, I started to think, “Man! Maybe that’s what we should do! Could we do that??? Would I have the patience to go through helping a group of people de-structurize? But it sounds so cool! What a great story! I should try to do something like that….”
Within 5 seconds after I thought all of that, I realized how silly I was. 🙂
What is this unquenchable drive to duplicate? Why is it that when we hear a story of some good thing that God did through another believer, it makes us think, “Ooo! I should do that too!” I realized that I was really just trying to do what the church has done with every current manifestation of itself (at least in this culture)… I was trying to DUPLICATE.
They spoke about this a bit later in the podcast I think. Or maybe that was just me, my thoughts, and God having a little chat in my head? For some reason we can’t help but try to capture again a moment, or a season, or whatever where we saw God do something incredible. It must somehow be able to be duplicated, right??
Not necessarily.
Yes, God seemed to have led them to take that pastorate… and yes, in my eyes, it turned out pretty great. But so far, God is not leading me to do that… so if I were to do that, it would most likely be (in some way) a big flop. I would be trying to copy – in my own effort – something that God had done somewhere else, but was not asking me to do. THERE’S the point. God leads, we follow. It’s not the other way around.
So, I’m not sure I can say that God is behind “Mega churches”, but I am saying that we probably shouldn’t be trying to copy every little thing they do. God wants to lead each of us, and even groups of us as the church wherever we are. He is our Shepherd, and we get to follow him … daily. So, if today he asks me to do something, and it works fantastically, is very “fruitful”, or whatever… tomorrow it’s not my job to go out and do it again. It’s my job to get up, listen to what he is asking me to do, and do that. It might be the same thing for another day, week…. maybe a year or two. OR, it might be something totally different. And that might be even harder! Who wants to leave something that’s going so well? (Just ask Brett Favre!)
I really don’t think formulas, systems, programs, methods, etc are helpful in the kingdom of God. From what I see in the Bible, and in the life of Jesus… he was not about that. He responded to each individual, and each situation, and each leading of God. Perhaps that’s what we could do too. Listen to where he wants ME to go, and just follow.
I don’t need to be making copies anymore.
I mentioned earlier that I would be sharing some quotes from the book I have been reading. The Starfish and the Spider is about two different ways to approach organzing people. One way is to have a structured organization with centralized leadership, like a spider whose functions are all tied into its head. When the head is destroyed, so is the spider. The other option presented is the decentralized organization, where every member is a leader – much like the starfish, who when any part is severed not only continues to exist, but the severed part can even become a new starfish!
In giving examples of recent virtual “starfish” like Skype, Craigslist, file-sharing software called eMule, Apache web server software and Wikipedia, the recurring theme is that when the users or members of an organization are not only allowed to almost required to contribute (in order for it to continue its existence), the organization – along with its members – thrives.
As I read story after story in the book of members taking on various responsibilities to the group and just to individuals within the group I couldn’t help but think of my occasional posts about life in a “Star Trek world”. (The book referenced a strange gathering in the Nevada desert called Burning Man where there is a policy of a “gift economy”. Each person may contribute any goods or services, but may not sell. Nor buy. Everything is done/offered for the good of the community.) Jen is convinced this can not work, but, at least the way it was presented in “Starfish”, it already isworking.
The strength of Skype is that it has very low costs, using its users computers to store directory information for other users, for example. The strength of CraigsList is that the focus is on the people. What the users want is what CraigsList does. Each user contributes, and there is a sense of trust and community that has been built and makes the site what it is. Similarly, Wikipedia was first begun as Nupedia – an online encyclopedia written by experts, but free to the public. It found its success when instead of traditional editors and contributors, it opened up the content creation and management to the users. Instead of 24 articles generated somewhere around a year’s time, Wikipedia users have contributed well over a million articles to the English section alone in its five years of existence. And the articles are “suprisingly accurate” says the “Starfish” author.
The other interesting thing about Wikipedia is that, although every user has an equal ability to add to, edit, or even delete content, there is virtually no vandalism. There are even self-appointed Wikipedia “custodians” who go around either cleaning up code to make a page look better, or catching any juvenile vandalism that mars otherwise excellently presented articles.
”Wikipedia proves that people are basically good.”
I can’t find the source again (sorry!) but that quote stood out to me. The problem that my wife has with decentralized organizations is that she basically doesn’t trust people. She would probably say the opposite. That people are basically bad, and Jesus helps them change… a bit. 🙂 And I know I tend toward the positive, but how can you argue with a site that has articles in 200 languages, and over a million articles in English alone with so little vandalism – though it’s so easy to do? And generally, it’s “policed” by the users.
Concluding a story from the Burning Man festival – where 30,000 people congregate in a dry lake bed in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada, the authors say:
But that demonstrated something important – open systems can’t rely on a police force. On the one hand, there’s freedom to do what you want, on the other hand, there’s added responsibility: because there are no police walking around maintaining law and order, everyone becomes a guardian of sorts. You become responsible for your own welfare and that of those around you. In open systems, the concept of “neighbor” takes on more meaning than just the person next door.
I loved this. Just loved it. This is what I want the church to be. Without a doubt. When he mentioned police, I immediately thought of the pastor, or the elders, or whoever is “responsible” for the people’s “well-being”. That level of responsiblity and oversight is not only unfair and restrictive to members, but really equally so to the leaders/pastors.
And it’s just not as good. It might be better in a way for “controlling”, but in my mind, the system where everyone is equally responsible for themselves and for others works better for everyone. And is a much more inclusive, participatory, open system. Which is what I believe the church to be. We have one head. Beyond that, we are all equal. (No slave nor free, male nor female, etc. The lines are gone.)
I think overall the coolest thing about open systems to me is that they are entrusted to each member. No one is trying to “steer the ship”. The “steering” is done together, or just not done at all. Members are free to contribute equally, and really, without their contributions to each other… the group does not exist.
I love the ideas we can learn here for the church. To live together as a family, a unit, an organization where there is no central office, no heirarchy of leadership, no CEO… everyone contributes and receives equally. Everyone is responsible for everyone else. Obviously that does not apply to a group of 10,000 people. In fact the book said it seems like somewhere around 14 people is the max for a decentralized group to function best. Beyond that you begin to have too much anonymity. I love that idea too, and am trying currently to live that. We have a small circle of people with whom we do life the most, and that is who we learn from and share with and perhaps that is our “church”.
God can always change that. And it seems he does. There are seasons when the people in that circle of 14 or so change. Where we are part of a “different church”. But it does seem that there is generally a small group of folks whom we share life with Jesus with.
It’s certainly not perfect. And I feel like we’re still actually looking for that. But perhaps we have more than I sometimes think we have. 🙂
I do encourage you to get the book if you get a chance. I would love to talk some more about it, but I have already taken enough of my family’s time here on vacation. 🙂 The kids have all awoken from their naps… time to start dinner!
If you have any thoughts on these quotes, or open systems in general, post a comment or two below!
I read a bunch more of The Starfish and the Spider on vacation, and it has so reinforced my love for open systems. The book details a bunch of successful up-start businesses and organizations that rely on a decentralized, “user-driven” organizational structure to function. And it’s just fantastic! I have mentioned before that I lean toward “Libertarian” politcally/idealogically. This certainly fits that. Open systems thrive on trust of each individual member. Trust promotes equal ownership and equal participation, and each member contributes to the advancement of the organization. Fascinating stuff.
Check and see if your local library has this book. It’s been worth the read for me. I would recommend it. (Though I was told to only read the first half, as in the second half they pretty much negate what they learned in the first half of the book… and they start trying to make a centralized system of a decentralized, open system. Ha! We’re so funny…) 🙂
I will post some quotes from the book here in a bit… there are some great applications to The Church, to be sure. I think the church thrives as a decentralized, open system. But too often we lock it up in a controlled, centralized system… and take all the life out of it. Or at least hinder it.
So… I will post quotes when we get back from vacation!
(PS… I posted this on my laptop from the indoor pool at our resort! Awesome!) 🙂
One more quick thought for the day…
I love the idea of missions. There are so many people in the world (of course, including our own towns and our country) that do now know the reality of the Kingdom. They don’t know that God takes great pleasure in knowing us, and in restoring our relationship with Him. They don’t know the joy of living loved and complete freed of shame and guilt by that love. So, it’s good to tell them.
But recently I have been thinking of “Missions” again, and “Missionaries” and there is a big disconnect, once we have met the folks we are trying to help. And I think it might be, what are we “winning” them to? What is the end goal of our missional efforts?
I really don’t want to open up a huge debate here… though if you have any thoughts, you’re welcome to share them. I just think the biggest thing we are missing as the church today is that life with God, life in his Kingdom, is not about what we do or don’t do (though that may be evidence of the kingdom) but it’s an understanding of the reality of a Father who loves us, and wants to lead us, and walk with us through every part of life. We don’t meet him at the church building. He doesn’t just come around when we’re participating in “spiritual events”. He does not reside at the “temple”. He’s with us. In person. All the time.
So when we go out, and we tell people about Jesus… what usually happens (I believe) looks a lot like what we do here in America. We meet (usually) on Sundays, and one person leads a lesson (or sermon) from the Bible, and there’s music, maybe communion (which is eating a piece of “bread” and drinking some “juice”) and it might even involve everyone being dressed up a bit more than usual. Then there are other meetings throughout the week. Whether one on one or in bigger groups… all focused on some teaching/discipling time. That’s a good thing. But it’s not the kingdom.
Missionaries are awesome. I hope they keep going to all parts of the world and loving people. The only thing I see falling short is that we’re just “converting” them to the same systems that are not working here in America. Systems will fail. Relationships will also, but genuine friendships are less likely to. Love God, and love people. Don’t tell them where they need to spend most of their time now… help them know the greatness of being loved unconditionally by their Father. Help them know the joy in loving other people as they have been loved. Can’t that be it?
I wish it could. But I’m probably just a dreamer.
Well, the good thing is… no matter what other folks do… I get to choose what I will do.
I mentioned not long ago the extensive list of books I am currently reading. One of those was the book you see to the right. I’ve been focusing on that one lately, and it’s amazing how much what this fellow is saying about the business world (really, so far it’s just an observation of various historical events, including those in the business world) so closely mirrors what the church can (or should?) be.
The chapter I am currently reading is explaining the difference between a spider and a starfish. The spider is as we would expect it. A central head, that controls everything. If you lop off a leg or two, the spider will survive, but if you destroy the head, nothing else will survive. The starfish is different. Any part can survive on its own. “If you cut a starfish in half…” says the author, “you’ll have two starfish to deal with.” The starfish can “regenerate” from any part of its body since there is no central brain or other center of operations. The creature is a sort of neural network.
Instead of having a head, like a spider, the starfish functions as a decentralized network… The starfish doesn’t have a brain. There is no central command. Biologists are still scratching their heads over how the creature operates…”
Indeed, at first glance, that seems chaotic, but somehow in God’s design, this creature works just fine as a decentralized unit.
The first case study was all of the peer to peer music/file sharing businesses. The more decentralized they got, the better they “worked” and the harder they were to kill. Record companies could shut down Napster because everything was in one place under one business name. But as it continues to decentralize, it’s harder to stop… can thrive without a “head”.
And last night, I was reading about the found of Alcoholics Anonymous. Pretty neat how it started out. The guy who started it (an alcoholic) was at the very end of his rope, and figured the only folks who could help him were the people in the same boat as him. So he created a structure that had no leaders, or heirarchy. Just people helping people.
The organization functions just like a starfish. You automatically become part of the leadership-an arm of the starfish, if you will-the moment you join…
Because there is no one in charge, everyone is responsible for keeping themselves—and everyone else—on track. … You have a sponsor, but the sponsor doesn’t lead by coercion; that person leads by example. And if you mess up and relapse or stop attending for a while, you’re always welcome to come back.
(emphasis mine)
That seems so close to what I see being the best model of life as the church. The living body of Christ. We are all equal parts of the greater whole—Christ’s body. I’m not sure how his being the “Head” fits that picture, when thinking of starfish, but as the rest of his body… it’s right on. Everyone is responsible for themselves, and cares for each other. Because they are all “in it together”.
After AA took off and became a huge success, the author says:
Bill (the founder) had a crucial decision to make. He could go with the spider option and control what the chapters could and couldn’t do. Under this scenario, he’d have to manage the brand and train applicants in the AA methodology. Or, he could go with the starfish approach and get out of the way. He chose the latter. He let go.
He trusted each chapter to do what it thought was right. And so today, whether you’re in Ancorage, Alaska or Santiago, Chile you can find an AA meeting. And if you feel like it, you can start your own. Members have always been able to directly help each other without asking permission or getting approval from Bill W. or anyone else. This quality enables open systems to quickly adapt and respond.
(emphasis mine)
Christianity could certainly learn from this model. Instead of fighting to protect and preserve, a more open system would encourage the body of Christ to be “known by our love for one another”. Not our big buildings, flashy presentations, big events, wonderfully entertaining programs, etc, etc, etc. And, the body of Christ could function so much better if our only direction came from The Head (not the pretend “heads” we have set up). Rather than chaos, wouldn’t it be much more perfect, and more quick to respond.
See, Jesus is a weird head. The starfish can regenerate and fix itself because the head is located everywhere. The brain is in every cell of the body (I guess?). Isn’t that kind of like Jesus. He’s not in a fixed location, in the Home Office at 1 Golden Street Drive. He’s here, with me right now, as much as he is with you. (“I will be with you always…”) So, he can quickly help me know that I need to go over and see my neighbor… and I might find out that she needs help with something… or maybe she’s just feeling down. Or maybe even, she has some good news she needs to share with someone? As the head of a body that has no heirarchichal leadership, he can quickly move and “regenerate” his body as he needs to. No waiting for staff or deacons meetings. 🙂
I’m enjoying the book. I’m sure I’ll post more here later. Just wanted to share a couple of quotes that stood out to me last night.
Not too sure about the results here, but saw this on Chris’ blog and thought I’d take a crack at it. Last time I was Seventh Day Adventist, which was awesome. 🙂
You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don’t think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.
What's your theological worldview? |
“If it’s about something less than him, we can fragment on anything.”
Last night I was listening to a podcast we listen to regularly, and this week’s episode just resonated with me more than I can say. The show covers all sorts of things… it’s just a weekly conversation between two guys trying to live life with God outside of any boxes we can create. This week, I believe the topic was picked from when one of the guys made a trip back to his Christian college alma mater. Many of the people there were living life with Jesus completely differently from how he currently is, or would ever want to – and still there was unity. There was commonness. There was togetherness.
The guys got talking about how if we just share Jesus, we can live together in harmony. When we make it about anything less (they meant that obviously anything in the universe is “less” than Jesus, so if we make our bond, or our unity about anything other than Jesus) then we will inevitably fragment. We’ll argue about music style, or carpet color, or what we call ourselves, or any number of silly things. We’ll even argue about what we call “truth”. But truth is a Person. Not a list of doctrines. So even THAT can get in the way of our unity – of us being a family.
I could not agree more.
Probably more than 10 years ago now, I had just begun working for a tiny “church” here in upstate NY and, being the idealist that I (still) am, I would engage the current “senior pastor” and my fellow fledgling “minister” in long discussions about the nature of what we were trying to accomplish as the Church of Christ at Victor. And when I would boil it all down, I came to the conclusion that nothing that we currently did together – none of the very helpful programs, or even the weekly worship services – were essential to us being the Church. We simple are the Church. Nothing really can change that, unless we choose to leave the Church.
And I don’t mean to put our behinds somewhere else on a Sunday morning.
God’s plan from before creation was to adopt us into his family, as his children. That is what he offers to us. Anyone who accepts his offer is now part of his family – which is The Church. His Body, of which he is the head. His body is not just some small group of people meeting across the street from another small group of people calling themselves his body also… it’s the whole of both of those groups, plus the other three groups meeting just up the street. We in America (not always, but quite often) base our “fellowship” or our connection with believers on the extra name we bear. Not that of an adopted member of God’s family… but that of our local congregation. In many ways, being a member of “First Church of the Resurrection” is more important to us than being a son or daughter of God!
Or at least, that’s the way it would appear.
One of the podcast guys told a great story about one of his instructors (I believe that’s who it was) at his college, who has since been a life-long friend. He had a falling out with the school when he left, and the bitterness continued in him for a time after that. His friend was taking communion one day and as he was holding the bread, looking at it, he saw through the bread – like a door – and on the other side was Jesus, standing there with his arm around one of the people from the school who had hurt him the most. His reaction was, “No, Jesus! You can’t do that! He’s the one who hurt me!” And Jesus’ response was, “I’m not going to stop being this guy’s friend to be your friend.”
How cool is that? Jesus does not take sides (he shows no favorites). He loves us all the same, even when we don’t or can’t. It doesn’t matter how we “do church” or where we “go to church” or anything EXTRA. All that matters is that we are his brothers, that we are all adopted sons and daughters of the same Father.
We don’t have to pretend… we just are. I know, brothers don’t always get along. Just yesterday, Alex came out from the other room to where I was and told me that Ian wasn’t his brother anymore. After stifling a little laugh, I asked, “Well what do you mean?” He told me the “horrible” thing Ian did, and said, “So he’s not my brother anymore.” I smiled at him, and hugged him and said, “You know, that’s never going to change. No matter what either of you do, you’ll always be brothers. That’s just the way it is. So what you have to do now is go back in there and figure out a way to work together.” (I wish the story had a better ending, but I think what he did was go in and demand a little louder what it was he wanted from his brother. 🙂 We’re still working on that….)
But isn’t that the point? We are brothers, and sisters in Christ. We are his family. Not multiple families bearing different names who are distant cousins. We are his family. Brother and sister. When we put anything else in the way of our common bond – Jesus – then we begin living like we are not. Even though that will never change. We will always be brothers.
I thought it was an excellent podcast, and I intend to ask some folks close to me to check it out. How I long for the unity Jesus spoke of in the book of John. We are meant to be united, but too often we make life as a believer to be “more than Jesus”… and it just gets is in a big mess.
It really is true… the more we focus on him, the more he holds all things together (that’s the name of the show…) So, today and this coming week… that’s what I will try to do. I want to focus on him in my relationship with other people, and we’ll see what happens. 🙂
On a few occasions lately, I have come across a story, or a verse from the Bible that doesn’t seem to match what I know of who God is. From my understanding of him from the whole of the Bible, and from living life with him every day, interacting with him, getting to know him… it doesn’t seem to fit. And yet it’s right there in print… in the most well-documented book ever. So I am then faced with a decision. Do I believe what “I know” about God, or what I am seeing from him right now? That’s not an easy question to answer.
I actually believe it might be a bit of both things. Certainly I can not know everything about God, just as I can’t know everything about any other person… even moreso can I not know the fullness of who God is. However, I can also trust what I do know of him as a way to interpret/understand what I am reading that seems to “contradict” that. From there, I figure I need his help to understand the stuff I don’t understand.
Some examples. Recently I was having an IM conversation with a friend and talking about how I don’t see Jesus living out life as though there are two worlds: the Sacred vs the Secular. It seems to me from all the events I see in Jesus’ life that those two worlds that I think we created were quite intermingled in Jesus’ world. He would hang with the “sinner” as well as the ultra-religiously-pious. My friend however pointed out that Jesus would often remind his disciples to not be “like the world”, or, “like the gentiles”. Seems as though Jesus was making a separation, or a distinction there, no? Still, I can not resolve that with the way Jesus treated everyone. Though there may have been a verbal distinction, all were treated equally by Jesus.
Another comes from reading some of the stories Jesus told in the last week before he was killed. My boys and I are reading through the book of Matthew, and there’s some crazy stuff in the 25th chapter. Mostly stories about “the end times” where there appear to be people who do right, and then opposing people who “do wrong” (or, don’t do right). So… it sure sounds like in story after story that either you “do good” in life, or you’ll be “thrown into the dark where people will cry and grit their teeth in pain.” Does that sound like how Jesus lived? Will he just be different when it’s the “end of the world”?
See, what I end up saying most of the time to the boys is, “I really don’t know.” They usually laugh a little, but I hope they learn from that. I don’t want them to think we have all the answers, and that once they learn them and can pass the Jesus test, that they then know God… end of story. Life is certainly not about knowing the answers. But I do want to know him, and sometimes the things I think I know of him do not match some new stuff (or sometimes, old stuff) I am learning about him. That’s when I stop to consider the fact that some of what I know of him might just be stuff I made up about him.
Confusing, I know.
Perhaps this is too much analysis… but it is what I have been thinking. And all of this makes me want to read my Bible more, and learn from everything I see of Jesus, and even his followers, contained in those pages. I want Jesus to unfold the reality of himself – who he really is – in every part of my life. I love that we don’t have a “church life” as we used to know it, and that Jesus is truly part of our entire lives these days. I only want know him more and more… really know him… not continue to create my own ideas of who he is.
That’s the amazing part about living life with Jesus, and his Spirit in us… it’s dynamic. He’s the same, but our understanding of him can change as we learn what is him, and what we have made up. Fascinating. A little scary, but exhilirating.
How incredible that he wants that relationship with us! We are friends of God! (That’s from Romans 5…) As puzzling as he may be sometimes, I know that I can count on that being true… and so we press on to know the God we could never create.
What a trip!
