futureprimitive's Xanga

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:36:46 GMT

Welcome to the conversation.

I'll be dropping some thoughts into this site and look forward to hearing from you.

what you reading?

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:23:59 GMT

This is an emergency blog which would normally appear on www.geoffreybaines.voxtropolis.com.

Welcome to the conversation.

I've got some great reading suggestions from previous what you reading? posts, so I thought I'd let you know once more what I'm reading and hear what you are reading at the moment.

Here's what I'm reading:

The 8th Habit by Stephen Covey
Reveal by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
The Unexpected Journey by Tom Rainer
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Here are some titles I've got waiting for me:

Post-Christendom by Stuart Murray
One From Many by Dee Hock
Resourcing Renewal by Martyn Atkins

If you go to http://geoffreybaines.voxtropolis.com/2007/09/22/what-you-reading-2/ you will be able to read about these books in the replies/comments as I write them out.

So, what are you reading?

win-win churches

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:27:53 GMT

This is an emergency blog for when my others are not working. This post would normally appear on www.geoffreybaines.voxtropolis.com.

Welcome to the conversation.

I'm reading Stephen Covey's The 8th Habit at the moment and have been reminded of the habit of Win-Win he's identified and defined. Basically it means that both sides in any interaction, win.

The other alternatives are (1) Win-Lose: I win, you lose; (2) Lose-Win: you win but I lose; (3) Lose-Lose: you've got the idea; (4) No Deal: we can't find a Win-Win alternative at the moment but we'll keep searching.

It made me wonder about how many of our churches are set up.

Some churches are Win-Lose, calling all the shots, as it were - time of meeting, what happens, where, and those who are "in" determine how things are for those who are "out". I think that Win-Lose eventually becomes Lose-Lose: no-one wants to join.

Other churches are Lose-Win, the church simply conforming to the culture, compromising or redefining its calling. Initially there's something very comfortable and popular because anything goes but eventually it becomes Lose-Lose because "life in all its fullness" is missing because Jesus says it can only be entered through sacrifice and death.

But what does a Win-Win community look like? Is it not about becoming a community of faith, love, and hope in all sorts of ways and places and times.

In his book Stand Against the Wind, Erwin McManus makes the delicious point -surely a testing for our churches: 'Jesus is our best example of 100 percent - a person whose entire life was given to giving. Jesus always gave more than He took, He still does. Everyone who genuinely engages Jesus in a relationship receives far more than they ever give.' I love that.

If you're part of a church, would it best be described as Win-Lose, Lose-Win, Lose-Lose, or even Win-Win?

what are missiontribes?

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:41:46 GMT

Welcome to the conversation.

I thought that I'd write up a new blog entry after the last few posts, in order to dig deeper into what we might call missiontribes: groups of people who are meeting together with the aim of dreaming up, planning, and even doing mission together.

Here are the books I'm reading at the moment:

THE PRESENT FUTURE (Reggie McNeal)
THE POST EVANGELICAL (Dave Tomlinson)
SOUL CRAVINGS (Erwin McManus)
GATEWAY COMMUNITY CHURCH: A2 CASE STUDY (Willow Creek)

It's over a year since I read George Hunter's 'The Celtic Way of Evangelism', so Anne's posting sent me back to the bookshelf so I could check out what might have struck me from chapter seven to the end. Here's what I found.

Hunter talks about the notion in many churches - unverbalised, mind you - that the new barbarians are unreachable with the gospel; as it were, they have to become civilised before they can come to faith (pre-evangelism). Hunter's personal experience is that this couldn't be farther from the truth. Interestingly, Vincent Donovan ('Christianity Rediscovered') came across the same ideas in others when it the Masai people he was seeking to evangelise (his book is a fascinating journey of sharing the essential gospel into new cultures - not wrong cultures but different cultures).

In another place, Hunter cites Methodism as an example of Celtic Christianity, that is, understanding the culture it was seeking to reach. Is it too unfair to suggest that a quick scan of today's Methodist churches would suggest that we think the culture sings 18th and 19th century songs, frequents public buildings with the least comfortable seating possible (and I'm just thinking about the knee room), involving itself in meetings that are time-wasting and often pointless, and dare we say it, boring?

Shane Claiborne, in his painfully challenging but excellent book, 'The Irresistible Revolution', talks about how the most telling thing is not that we are not concerned for the poor (we often are) - the poor being the people Hunter says Methodism made contact with - but that we don't know any poor. A few weeks ago I was talking with a true-hearted Celt, concerned to reach the estates of Edinburgh, knowing that what so many of us are about in our churches has nothing to say or do with the people living in them. (This links up with the other point, above.) Dave Tomlinson ('The Post Evangelical') makes the same noises; we have created what Tony Walters calls a "culture religion". Tomlinson quotes Walters when he says: 'Christians may not be aware of the extent to which they have conformed to a middle-class lifestyle. So many of the public values of society are middle-class that they values, which are far from inevitable or God-given, are taken for granted'. As Tomlinson follows on to say: 'The consequence of confusing Christianity with middle-class values is that people who do not identify with that culture reject the church and, in many cases, the gospel too'.

However, there are clearly cultures that are not good for people, like addictions, which carry whole culture-systems with them. Here Hunter talks about the crucial need for an alternative culture for people to be brought into if they are going to leave the old culture behind. Ethan Watters writes insightfully in his book, 'Urban Tribes' about tribes and new families in today's Western world. Watters claims no faith allegiance and his writing allows a glimpse of a new world.

A final thought pulled from Hunter's final pages, asks, What might a truly Scottish church look like, grown out of the new-found faith of the people being reached by missionaries seeking to understand the culture in which they find themselves. This is the exploration of the missiontribe and I look on it with much fear, for whatever it is we find we must do will not be easy - but it might just be glorious.

soil-breaking in the garden of ideas

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:55:07 GMT

I am very much aware of how time passes so quickly. It's almost four months since I began to work alongside the churches in Edinburgh city. It's probably to best part of six, if not eight, weeks since we began this conversation. I realise how we need to press on rather than letting things stop, and for identifying a sustainable pace to this. My apologies for not getting back to you sooner.

There does need to be a space and place to explore thoughts and ideas and to try some out. Here are some things we might like to look at:

What might a "celtic community" look like today?
What are the things that beat at the heart of a city like Edinburgh?
What might happen if a group of people decide to be missionary together?
What if the default setting of the kingdom of the heavens was "yes"?

What are some of the big questions for you at the moment? How would you be able to pursue these thoughts at this moment in time, given families, work, and everything else?

Here's my present reading list:

The Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)
Christianity Rediscovered (Vincent Donovan)
The Present Future (Reggie McNeal)
The Dream Center: A2 Case Study (Willow Creek)

gardenofdreams

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 13:42:04 GMT

Welcome.

You belong here.

garden of ideas

Last year I happened to visit an estate in Illinois, USA; one of the areas to explore was called 'the garden of ideas'. The garden designers had played around with designs for beds and mixtures of plants. The results were very imaginative.

(I'll see if I can find some pictures of the visit to post at some future juncture.)

I thought it would be good to invite a small number of experimenters into a garden of ideas or dreams of what future expressions of church might look like. This is a nursery bed for looking at things together with a view to trying out some of the dreams that have captured our hearts.

a booklist

I'll begin by mentioning the books I'm reading - as these lie behind my thinking and alongside my study of God's word (I'll include the initials from this point on too); these are: 'Birth of the Chaordic Age' BOTCA (Dee Hock); 'An Unstoppable Force' AUF (Erwin McManus); 'Small is the New Big' SITNB (Seth Godin); 'The Imperfect Board Member' TIBM (Jim Brown) - I'm also reading notes from previously read books: 'The Message in the Bottle TMITB (Walker Percy); 'The Celtic Way of Evangelism' TCWOE (George Hunter).

Into the garden of dreams ...

I've been excitedly working through Hunter's Celtic themes in the last few days (TCWOE p.47ff.). There are some amazing thoughts here around how the Celtic missionaries would go about sharing the gospel and I have to wonder about how whether there are keys to our future here.

evangelistic cells

The Celtic missionaries evangelised as a team. What might happen if we established evangelistic cells? We know we want to share Christ with others - in our actions and in our words - but we are often overwhelmed and overcome. Belonging to a mutually encouraging and supporting cell might take us beyond feeling guilty and clueless.

monastic cells

It is true that we can never move far from the need for personal transformation. To follow Jesus is the opposite of the status quo, Hunter refers to a monastic heart: "Go in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything". (This is a different kind of cell, by the way). This "cell" will look different for every person, I think; have a read through Gary Thomas' 'Sacred Pathways' for a number of "cells". Whether it be a creationist, caring, intellectual, celebratory, etc. cell, the key thing is that at the heart of all we do there is time spent alone with God.

For Jesus this pattern of time spent alone with his Abba flowed out to time spent with three others, then twelve, then one hundred and twenty, and beyond. It is very hard to stay the same in a small community of people who are living with open hearts towards one-another: we are "putting of the old and putting on the new".

(Paul talks a lot about open hearts in 2 Corinthians.)

a common and accessible life

This open-heartedness proceeds further still, beyond the little communities into the larger community, which understands itself to be about the mission of God. The Celtic saints lived their lives together in such a way as to be completely accessible to the settlement they sought permission (from the king or chief) to live by - an observable and experiential community. Erwin McManus comments that the way we do church is 'pretty much Latin to the unchurched population' (AUF p.81). This could not be said about the Celts.

I've just been reading 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 which has Paul talking about an offering but beneath the surface he is really talking about living generous lives. Here is the test: to live our lives generously to God and to others. At the end of living so generously, Paul says, will be thanks being given by many to God, which I guess infers some kind of relationship that wasn't there before.

That's more than enough to be going on with. Out of the business world, Seth Godin writes, ' you've got to either be different ... or cheaper' (SITNB p.22). Cheaper for church would be to do what everybody else is doing, but better. Cheaper also opposes generous. We need different expressions of church which are open to people observing and experiencing so that it becomes hard for them not to believe.

We have the opportunity to explore substance over form: 'Preserve substance, modify form; know the difference' counsels Dee Hock (BOTCA p.198).

The Celtic missionaries were able to use these means to engage the cultures around them with the gospel through great imagination and authenticity, and people responded to that in huge numbers.

moving to the city

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 09:47:39 GMT

I have just noticed that I ought to have let you know that I've moved to the city of voices (www.geoffreybaines.voxtropolis.com). You are welcome to drop in any time.

I'll be visiting here occasionally but my first home will be voxtropolis.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 15:53:40 GMT

in the shower OR kavanah OR failure revisited

Welcome.

Usually when I get in the shower at the beginning of the day the aim is to wake up. I don’t get too many moments when ideas come to me at 6am but this morning was the exception.

I mentioned last week that Christine and I have a decision to make. We’ve been taking our time because we think it’s such an important one.

Today, in the shower, I felt as though God was calling my bluff: “So you say you want to …” and then he reeled off a number of things that I have been thinking about as being key to my future work. And they’re all in the job specification that I’m looking at!

“So?!”, God says, and waits for my reply.

Our bible reading notes for today are headed ‘Don’t miss your destiny’, and as they are running through Esther at the moment, today’s include Mordecai’s famous line to Esther: ‘And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this’, (Esther 4:14); not that I have a royal position. Then there’s the note’s closing question: ‘Are you in danger of missing the opportunities God’s giving you to serve him today?’

Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, in their book, The Shaping of Things to Come, point out that in Judaism there is an activity called kavanah, which focuses attention, heart, and mind, so that when a person ‘does a good deed with complete kavanah, that is, completes an act in such a way that his whole existence is gathered in it, and directed in it towards God, he works on the redemption of the world’.

That’s how I want to live my life.

It is this I long to bring to bear on the smallest things I do – my talents, knowledge, skills, gifts, passion and calling, and personality - to fill a moment with these things.

(Life in all its fullness?!)

Paul said, “To me, to live is Christ”. So quotes Stephen Seamands this morning as I continue to read his book, Ministry in the Image of God.

Seamands goes on to quote Ruth Paxson: ‘To be a Christian is to have Christ the life of our minds, our hearts, our will, so that it is Christ thinking through us, living through us, willing through us. It is increasingly to have no life but the life of Christ within us filling us with ever increasing measure’.

When I say above, ‘to fill a moment with these things’, is it not this I hope for, is it not to have each moment filled with Jesus Christ?

Wherever I end up, whatever job I do, is is not this I hope for. It is hope born of entering into the mystery of God, and finding that the mystery enters into us. Here, to give up my life is to find it, to be able to say “to live is Christ” is the same as saying I am more Geoffrey than I have ever been.

Stephen Olford, pastor of a thriving church, told of how ‘The greatest moment in my life was when I discovered that God expected nothing more or nothing less of Stephen Olford than abject failure!

Olford tells of how he realised the only one able to live the Christian life is Jesus Christ, so ‘only as I trust in Him to live His life in me, can I possibly live the quality of life that satisfies the heart of God and challenges the world in which I witness’.

Here we are on the edge of failure, and mystery, and the fullness of life.

Mordecai said, ‘Who knows?’ There is no certainty. There is God.

Friday, March 31, 2006

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:43:17 GMT

into the mystery

Welcome.

My wife, Christine, and I are trying to make a decision about our future and where it will take us.

What I’d love to have at a time like this is very clear instruction from God printed on the side of the thing I have to decide over.

I wouldn’t mind, but I’d just commented to someone else making a decision, that we don’t get a map just a compass – (quoting Erwin McManus).

I’m trying to read the compass.

I’m reading Stephen Seamands' Ministry in the Image of God and have just got to the part where he’s talking about how the Trinity is a mystery.

This reminds me of Leonard Sweet’s Out of the Question ,,, Into the Mystery in which Sweet couches out the GodLife in terms of seven relationships (I very much recommend this book).

I wonder, am I being invited into the mystery?

Seamands helps me in my wondering: In the presence of this mystery, we are no longer in a position of control where we can manage or master the subject. Before this Subject, worship is more appropriate than problem solving, awe is preferable to answers.

As I step into the unknown of the future, I am stepping out the mystery of who God is. (Seamands quotes Eugene Peterson to help define mystery, which is not the mystery of darkness that must be dispelled but the mystery of light that may be entered.

I am out of my depth, I am out of control, but these are signs of my moving into the mystery of God.

I see how my future and God are one, in that I can only enter my future to the extent that I am prepared to enter deeper into God, and I can only enter into God to the extent that I am willing to leave where I am for the future that calls me thus: “Come, follow me, and I will teach you how to fish for men and women’.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:44:49 GMT

go up into the gaps

I’ve just finished reading Annie Dillard’s book in which she reflects on a year of pilgrimage at Tinker Creek.

She would say that she had explored the gaps of the world that is wider in all directions: ‘more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright’. Dillard has considered how Ezekiel reveals false prophets as those who have not gone up into the gaps.

‘The gaps are the clifts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too’.

(Dillard has been watching the glory and the horror of the natural world in her creek.)

And so it is in this large human world of cities and people upon people.

Far better is this way, Dillard exhorts, than diddling around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys: “Go up into the gaps”.

Now I’m thinking about new kinds of church and I know I must become a different kind of leader.

I must be ready to go up into the gaps, rather than make itsy-bitsy churches and things. I know I must do more than diddle around in this larger fuller world.