andi's perspective

IT'S ALL STRUCTURES

Once again i am impressed by the difference that clear structures make! Everything is or follows structures: bodies, technology, language, thinking patterns, interaction, not to mention work processes or knowledge repositories!

Enjoying another intense working time here in Fribourg with my long-time Swiss business partner i was again super impressed by the way he manages his staff and overwhelming amount of projects. Besides being just a strategy genius, his key secret seems clear: diligently prepare strategically consistent structures for others to build on them.

Structures is becoming a major red line in my life and thinking.
What structures are you living in? Any to be changed?

CHURCH AS RELATIONAL ACTION

What if we would be church the following way:

• covenant with Him and celebrate life
• share our lives and celebrate each other
• open our eyes and together contradict evil around us?

Actionwise this could mean to

• teach each other how to live a good life with eternal perspectives (lecture, dialogue, workshop, training etc.)
• explore and celebrate each other (peer groups with story telling, listening & feedback, prophecy & intercession, fun & feasting...)
• meet each other's needs by sharing resources (ideas, time, money, equipment, space, contacts, know-how...)
• actively seek-out and solidarize with those in need (latch-key kids, lonely elderly, single parents, unemployed, your normal neighbor, anyone coming your way...) and find ways to do good (and no, i am not talking "servant-evangelism"!)
• understand and counteract destructive cultural  patterns around us and find ways to contradict evil in the public space (of media, professions, politics, curricula, the web, the street...)
• and to use the time freed up by less religious activities to do these things together!

Structurally this could mean to think about

• networks of and meetings with friends
• global/ local clusters of friendship networks 
• an extensive online social network environment
• specialists and interspecialists connections
• engaging the culture task forces
• specific outreach/ project/  neighborhood groups
• training workshops/ lectures
• area resource centers [term borrowed] etc.

I cannot imagine this is easily done. To start with a minimum budget of time i suggest we stop our overdose of religious activities (like singing and praying, reading and talking, and talking and reading and singing and praying...) and start Loving God, Each Other, Our Neighbor and This World together with Him.

Just for a change.

"MY PERSPECTIVE" ON CHURCH (de)

I was asked by a friend to give a "20 minute introduction" into my perspective of church. [-> German version]

Well...  Once you have more questions than answers and no more desire to "bash the system" you feel pretty humbled when confronted with this expectation... 20 min? :o ! honestly, if i had only 3 sentences (constructive and wayleading) i would already be happy!

In the end the talk did not come to place. Yet, probably out of sheer fear the question might reappear those 3 sentences emerged into my conscious mind. If you want to have my todays minimum perspective on church, here you go:

As the King's glocal body, we ought to

1. connect! This requires structures which encourage instead of limit free-flowing, God-breathed, life-giving body relationships. -> To overcome fragmentation by "loving each other".
2. progress! This requires structures (and habits) which encourage collective strategy(!) building, decision making, learning, and innovation.  -> To overcome repetitive religiosity by "loving God".
3. serve! This requires a mindset (and structures) of blending in with the world around us, of sharing the friendship we have received,  and of getting engaged with its wounds. -> To overcome ghettoism by not only "loving our neighbor", but actually "becoming our neighbor".
   

Now, what this means in practice - maybe you know?

PRAYER

"Deconstruction is Prayer".

I like that phrase as it provokingly points to the truth that prayer is not words, but an attitude of living life as an expression of trust. Throwing our lives to His feet literally demanding His trustworthiness is what i think honors the One who wants to be tested. Remember: "Israel" means "Who fights with God".

The phrase above is taken from Depone's blog who offers a thorough discussion on Caputo's book "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?"

HOW FAR OUT AM I?

Came across this helpful categorization of emerging church types. Here is the long version, andrew's last years' post on it (yep, i am slow), and Mike even allows you to cast your vote here. In this typology i am clearly a Revisionist, full of questions and the desire to break free from a heritage of a dreary know-it-all, have-it-all mentality. 

Being a "revisionist", sometimes i am not sure as to how far out from kingdom mainstream i already am...

It is those days where i should get excited about a new miracle report, or where i should get worried about  someone "diluting sound teaching by too worldly preaching". I can still feel those "shoulds" from a time past, but really i am (mostly) not touched by it anymore.

At those moments i feel like having entered the third stage of a once happy relationship (that with what we call "church"): first you love, then you hate (which is still fighting for the love you once had), and finally you slide into indifference (you start forgetting that once there was a love relationship).

The miracle in all of this is that, yes, deep down i have a very consistent belly witness that in the end i am not off track, that this is my way of persistently pushing into the yet unknown, that in the end HE Himself wants to be questioned, wants to be loved, hated and, yea, forgotten by me if necessary to teach me something real along this journey.

HE is worth it all. Isn't HE?

"GOOD" BUSINESS

I keep being asked about my last post. I admit it does sound pretty black'n white. And blackn' white is usually neither helpful nor true.

Of course only "good business" (as i said) is "good". So, i am not talking "business as usual" which all too often turns into a money obsessed enslaved and enslaving treadmill, driven by greed, injustice and fear of death. Which is obviously exactly were "we world" need the good news of an overruling (good) kingdom!

Having said this, i guess it would be fair to acknowledge (as i did) that there is a lot of "good" in church & missions today as well. I am lucky enough to be attached to some streams of this reality keeping me alive..

I guess, in the end the problem remains the age old struggle between what is "good" and what is "bad" within myself. Nothing new, but well.. you keep coming back to the basics. Just with a new freshness this time. 

I am sure u know what i mean. 

BUSINESS CHURCH OR CHURCH BUSINESS

Lately i realized that i have become much more thrilled by business than by church these days.

Honestly there is not much talk about church, evangelism, church planting or emerging church that really excites me. While the dream lives on, it sort of feels like emotionally i have started giving up on the existing Christian community (incl. myself) to ever turn into a vibrant kingdom movement.

What keeps exciting me, however, is good business. Good business as characterized first of all by excellency (without which you cannot sell in the long-term), by trustworthiness (without which you do not sell a second time) and by innovativeness, i.e. a culture of learning, radical questioning, and collaboration (whithout which you do not sell even a first time).

Only two of these essentials have i ever found in the church context, with the mission context being better, but still v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w  as compared to where the people do not vote weekly by their feet but daily by their money.

I wonder whether the heavenly oiko-despotes would not also be interested talking (his) business rather than church  business?!

THEOLOGY TYPES (PSEUDO)

I generally like personality typologies, because they offer simplicity in complexity and provide concepts for a better understanding of ourselves and those around us. As they all depend on the choice of definition, however, often a typology speaks louder about its maker than about the person tested. (That is infact very true for any kind of research results!)

The "Which theologian are you?"-test which i found on Sarah's blog  is certainly one of the worst of its kind. It is fun nevertheless and might encourage me to look into the writings of the 3 theologians that i "matched" with by 100%: Liberal Schleiermacher for his respect of the human factor, hard-core Calvin for his respect of God's sovereign kingship, and old Anselm for his orthodox confession that "Man's main sin is failing to give to God the obedience that we owe him." (which is a good example of how screwed up this test is - how important after all do i take the word "main" and what are the alternatives the test makes me rule out by agreeing to this superlative?)

While most of the questions are really ranting through boring phrases of old dogmatic debates, i found some questions particularly good expressions of a theology i could endorse:

• "We can only understand God by looking at humanity."   
• "A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human being."
• "It is necessary that the ugliness of sinners be balanced out by the moral beauty of the saints."

I scored "Orthodox Quaker" at another of these matching machines and i still guess this was closer to the truth.

Anyway, do the test, but do not believe the result! Rather reflect on your reactions to the questions... :)

MISSING REALITY

We (and in this place I) have talked a LOT about church, faith, leadership, structures, theology, practices, strategies, research and an alternative perspective on every day Christianity.

I get the feeling I am missing the point.

IF HE is risen indeed... we perhaps should rather talk about HIM, where HE is and what HE does.

I doubt that my talk is adequate to (t)HIS reality.

I might stop talking for a while and reconsider.

WHAT IF...

... HE meant it?

... HE is over here?