Tag: church

Two years ago…

Mike Blythe shared his latest KMZ file of Jos, Nigeria yesterday.
Going back and looking at the sites make me start thinking about my trip to Nigeria.
I went back and looked at my blog posts and realized two years ago exactly I was nearing the end of my two week stay there.
Thought this was also interesting…

Nearly two years ago today (on a Monday afternoon — Oct. 9th) I was enjoying church with a group of people who didn’t speak my language and met in a warehouse with dirt floors and wooden benches.

Yesterday we did shopping in the morning and then went to a church at the Motorpark.
The Motorpark is basically a large field where people bring their cars and wait for riders to take trips across the country.
You can probably find a ride to any part of the country if you’re willing to wait for enough other riders to make it profitable for the car owner and driver.
The church at the Motorpark meets in a large building with wooden benches and dirt floors. Their numbers are few, but they’ve doubled in size since last year.
The church was large in size years ago before fighting broke out between the Muslims and Christians. The church dispersed after that but everyday a group of women would continue to meet in the afternoon and pray for God to work.
Now their numbers have at least tripled and they are excited and on fire for God.

The Church is…

Here’s another great tidbit from Tall Skinny Kiwi & Phyllis Tickle (who by the way will be at The Great Emergence Conference in Dec.). The quote was featured in Tall Skinny Kiwi’s talk at GodBlogCon and comes from Tickle’s latest book The Great Emergence (need to get me a copy of that!)

…the Church, capital C — in not really a thing so much as it is a network in exactly the same way that the Internet or the World Wide Web, or for that matter gene regularity or metabolic networks are not “things” or “entities.”

I love that! It goes right along with the ideas/thoughts that I have running through my mind right now in preparation for “speaking” at encounter on Oct 12. We’ll see where it all leads me/us.

re-posts re: church

Was reading The New Christians today at lunch and came across a familiar name :: Jonny Baker.
Thomas introduced me to Jonny a while back and while searching my site for a few things I came across these quotes I shared back in 2006 from Jonny.

This was an ad for a church on Jonny’s site:

You love God but you just can’t do Sunday morning style church?
You’re really not into singing songs all the time or you don’t believe that singing songs is the only way we can worship God?
You would like to be part of a church where you are accountable to each other and are responsible for helping each other grow?
You’re tired of professional Christianity and you just want to be church like it was with Jesus and his followers back in his human days?
You believe Church is more fluid than a building or tradition.

And how about this…

Can we imagine church as ::

  • church beyond gathering?
  • church beyond once a week?
  • church as always on connectivity to christ and one another?
  • church where community is the content?
  • theology and resources of church being open source?
  • church valuing the wisdom of the crowd rather than the knowledge of the expert?
  • our church/spirituality being easily found by seekers because we tag it that way?
  • an ethos of low control and collaboration?
  • an economy of gift?
  • church as spaces for creative production and self publishing?
  • church as providers of resources for spiritual seekers and tourists?

I hope its coming true.

Mainframe v Distributed Christianity

I had a great chat with Frank Viola yesterday, can’t wait to share it on the podcast in a few weeks.

We discussed his book Reimagining Church along with the idea of organic churches. Thought this was a great illustration shared by @darrinreeves today (you can click on the images to see them larger) ::

Which would you prefer? Which do you feel like you’re apart of? Which would you rather be a part of?

Reimagining Church

Finished “Reimagining Church” last night. A good followup to Frank Viola’s book “Pagan Christianity” The book picks up in many places where Pagan Christianity left off – but also works as a standalone piece as well. As the summaries and publishers suggest, Pagan Christianity deconstructs the church and Reimagining reconstructs it.

Don’t know if it fully reconstructs it – but it definitely get’s the ball rolling.

Viola explains in the introduction:

Herein lies the purpose of this book: to articulate a biblical, spiritual, theological, and practical answer to the question, Is there a viable way of doing church outside the institutional church experience, and if so, what does it look like?

Many could see Viola as a threat to the church – especially the institutional church – but perhaps that’s why I really enjoy the book. He adds in the introduction, “I’m writing this volume because I love the church very much.” It’s the institution that he (and I tend to) have problems with. (Viola later suggests that “institution is any patterned human activity.”)

Viola argues that the institutional church as we know it is ineffective and also without biblical merit. That our current churches are constructed more on programs and rituals than relationships. That institutional churches are built around a highly structured “worship service” where the audience is separated or set-apart from the professionals (pastors, ministers, worship leaders, etc.).

In the institutional church, congregants watch a religious performance once or twice a week led principally by one person (the pastor or minister), and then retreat home to live their individual lives.

In place of the institutional church (which Pagan Christianity explains came about through many Greco-Roman customs — especially during the Constantine era), Viola argues for a more organic approach to Christianity. One in which there is no separation between lay-persons and the clergy. One in which each person’s spiritual gifts are valued and each person takes part in the group gatherings. One that meets in homes during the week rather than multi-million dollar sanctuaries/malls.

Viola compares these two views of church throughout the book, but perhaps the most beautiful illustration is one from Hal Miller.

Miller says that institutional churches are like trains. They go a certain direction and continue on that direction making a lot of noise and blowing a lot of smoke. They’re easy to find, hard to stop and can’t change direction without coming to a crawl and someone flipping the switch on the track.

Organic churches are more like people walking through a neighborhood. They move much slower but can turn at a moment’s notice. Because of their slow pace they can be genuinely attentive to the world around them, as well as to the Lord.

And because of it’s organic nature, the organic church is always growing and reproducing. And no matter where it grows or shows up, this organic church should always reflect the same DNA elements ::

  • It will always express the headship of Jesus Christ in His church
  • It will always allow for and encourage the every-member functioning of the body
  • It will always map to the theology that’s contained in the New Testament
  • It will always be grounded in the fellowship of the triune God

Those first two points are probably the stickiest points for everyone and likely why Viola spends a vast majority of the book discussing them. Unfortunately, I felt like he spoke more on what that didn’t look like than what it did look like.

In addressing these issues, Viola argues that the body of Christ must not be about the hierarchy systems of the world but must instead be about mutual edification and mutual submission. I personally believe this is a lot of what Christ spoke of in John’s 1st letter ::

I’m praying not only for them
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—
I in them and you in me.
Then they’ll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That you’ve sent me and loved them
In the same way you’ve loved me. (john 17)

Imagine the impact this would have on the world around us if we all truly lived as one. Where no one person took precedence, where church decisions were based on consensus rather than dictatorship or democracy. If the members of Christ’s body are truly submissive to Christ and to one another, I believe Viola would argue that this would turn the world upside down.

Yet for someone who’s grown up in a traditional, institutional church, the idea of a church led not by a man (or woman or group of men) but by the headship of Christ (through the Holy Spirit) is foreign. And yet I can definitely understand the reasoning behind it. I can agree with the Scripture Viola uses to make the point — but to picture it and understand how you would bring that about is foreign to me (and probably 99% of “church-going Christians). Perhaps this will be addressed in future books.

It does look as though this is part of several more in the “series” as Viola mentions two more books coming out in the near future. “From Eternity to Here” is the next one on the map.

Regardless, this book leaves me hungry for seeing something more in our churches today. It’s a great supplement/compliment for what I’m feeling/thinking/dreaming in my soul. It leaves me aching for truer community, where there are true spaces of grace, intentional relationships and God experiences are shared by all.

I hope to come back and share some of the many quotes/thoughts that stood out to me in my reading — but I just started a new book by Greg Garrett, “Stories from the Edge – A Theology of Grace” so it might take me a week or so to get back to “Reimagining Church” :-).

related ::
www.reimaginingchurch.org
www.housechurchresource.org
www.ptmin.org
SSL :: looking back at a house of prayer
encounter :: priests in the hood
encounter :: tribal faith

How Pixar builds collective creativity

There’s a story making it’s way around the interwebs from the Harvard Business Review about How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Pixar’s the CGI animation studio (originally a division of LucasFilms, then owned by Steve Jobs and now a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company) that put out great movies like Toy Story, Monsters Inc. Cars, etc.

Since they released Toy Story in 1995, the studio has earned thirteen Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, and one Grammy.

Pixar’s President Ed Catmull writes ::

A few years ago, I had lunch with the head of a major motion picture studio, who declared that his central problem was not finding good people—it was finding good ideas….

Unlike most other studios, we have never bought scripts or movie ideas from the outside. All of our stories, worlds, and characters were created internally by our community of artists. And in making these films, we have continued to push the technological boundaries of computer animation, securing dozens of patents in the process.

In the article Catmull shares 3 key organizational principals that guide Pixar ::

  • Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone
  • It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas.
  • We must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community.

Imagine what a church could look like that implemented these ideas! An environment where everyone recognizes that they are truly a part of the priesthood of believers and that all the believers around them are as well.

Brian mentioned this morning that at encounter we try and view everything as an experiment. There are some things we try that work great and then we work to make them even better — and there are things that don’t always work out as we hope so we scrap the idea and move on.

What if everyone really felt like they could really take ownership in ideas and participate in the ongoing conversation about God and life? What if everyone realized their ideas would be listened to, valued and built upon?

How differently would we view one another? How different would our conversations be?

I hope in my own community group and all of our community groups (as well as our church as a whole) we continue to foster community and environments where everyone feels a valuable part of the experience and process.


How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.

It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore. – psalms 133