faith praxis & simple church movements

This guy (remi gaillard) is ridiculously talented - how to really kick a soccer ball

Just ran across this French guy Remi Gaillard.  Absolutely wild ability to place the soccer ball anywhere he wants at just about anytime . . . He's also somewhat crazy (saw another vid of him impersonating a soccer player after a pro-team won a championship game - he's running around the field with them in uniform holding the trophy - being interviewed and filmed and getting doused in champagne in the locker-room - he's shown doing that a little bit in this vid).  Hilarious & gutsy.  Sometimes it's so good to break out of the conventional.  Enjoy this guy doing just that here.

Carmel Beach Bonfires? (maybe not to be anymore . . .)

The rumor is true . . . Some perfectly obtuse Carmel citizens have the horribly inane idea of banning bonfires on Carmel Beach - along with no ball-playing in Devendorf Park (yes, you cannot throw a ball in a . . . in a park) this is yet another absurd move by people who want to take away the freedom to simply be a fun-loving human being in Carmel.  

• Sometimes living in Carmel one begins to wonder whether in the not-too-distant future one will need to have a permit to smile.  "Hey there pal do I hear you laughing?  Because that most certainly is not allowed here in our town of important people.  Wipe that smile off your face or I'm issuing you a citation."  

• Doubtless, there are "valid" reasons that are being raised for passing a ban against bonfires (unattended buried coals, smoke pollution, keeping undesirable "types" at bay, etc.) but c'mon really?  This is a beach in the United States of America - not in some Orwellian-imagined state of Big Bro. 

I certainly believe that part of why life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been defended and protected in our country is so friends & families in this part of California just might be able to enjoy community together on a foggy night on Carmel Beach roasting marshmallows, drinking a glass of wine, and telling stories around the bonfire.  I could go on but I am resisting & asking God to help me love and pray for my newly discovered enemies. 

Click the petition link here and sign it asap - even if you don't live in Carmel - because it impacts you too if you enjoy bonfires on Carmel Beach.  And check the killer picture of my wife and two boys on the site.

With a deep breath & need for shalom,

-Brian

A Thought From Peter Rollins on Standing Against Power

Various systems or worldviews fight for power and authority.  Yet . . . Christ opens up the idea of a system that seeks always to find those who are excluded from the system that is in power. . .  The way this works itself out in practice is that whatever political or religious idea is dominating the society at any given time, Christ seeks out those who are excluded by it, the one sheep who is not in the pen, the one coin not in the purse, those who have not been invited to the party, the nobodies, the nothings.  The Christian ‘system’ can thus never take power for, by definition, it is always that which stands against power, seeking to identify with the powerless and the voiceless.  It is a system in the sense that it systematically seeks out those who do not fit into the system offered up by the currently prevailing political and religious authorities.

 

-Peter Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal

 

 

The Proclamations of the Adventurer & the Artist . . .

"Artists (like everyone else) have a certain conceptual inertia, a tendency to keep to their own compass heading even as the world itself veers off in another direction.  When Columbus returned from the New World and proclaimed the earth was round, almost everyone else went right on believing the earth was flat.  Then they died - and the next generation grew up believing the world was round.  That's how people change their minds."

-David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear

leading into one simple act of love right now . . .

what's one extraordinary act of love you can accomplish in the next hour?

• can you email someone letting them know in a sentence that you truly appreciate them? (consider how much of our current North American culture exists as a culture of cursing - and how little we actively bless people with our words or our time)
• what about saying hello to a stranger with a smile?
• how about a generous tip to a barista or a waitstaff person? 
• what about praying for that one person who has been on your mind today? 
• think about adding an incredibly kind comment on someone's facebook wall 
• what about leaving behind a dollar bill or some quarters on a bench for someone to pick up?  
• what about simply leaving a note saying someone really loves you on a parked car's window?
• consider a simple text saying "you mean a lot to me" to someone who really does mean a lot to you. 

  those are simple things to do in an hour and can be accomplished in less than a few minutes.  just consider how a simple act of intentional shalom can change the course of someone's day.  practice it - get creative - don't hold back - be willing to look silly - and watch how much fun you will have in the process - and once you get the hang of it try doing one simple act of shalom every day.  the weekend's here - why don't you start now.  invite a co-worker out for a cup of coffee or a beer or an ice-cream.  what do you really have to lose but the possibility of a truly fun experience?  and to be an agent of God's subversive movement of gospel & shalom? 

How Heineken "Shares the Good"

 

This is an older commercial from Heineken but it is one of their best and in many ways has subversively kidnapped the idea of gospel & turned it into a beer.  The Heineken ad agency transformed beer in a green bottle into a viral movement of peace-making in 60 seconds of masterful marketing. Sharing the good is fun, it is adventure, it is journey, it is an act of shalom, it turns strangers into friends, it compels ballerinas to go into male steam rooms, it crosses ethnic boundaries, and traverses dangerous territories all in the name of "sharing the good" - with a hip funky theme song to boot.  How does Heineken get it while so many churches don't - even when Jesus asked us to remember him by eating and drinking? I know following Jesus isn't all about smiles, parties, and beer - but certainly part of following Jesus is about smiles, parties, and beer.

To Live in the Mercy of God - Denise Levertov

To lie back under the tallest 

oldest trees.  How far the stems

rise, rise

before ribs of shelter

open!

To live in the mercy of God.  The complete

sentence too adequate, has no give.

Awe, not comfort.  Stone, elbows of

stony wood beneath lenient

moss bed.

And awe suddenly

passing beyond itself.  Becomes

a form of comfort.

Becomes the steady

air you glide on, arms

stretched like the wings of flying foxes.

To hear the multiple silence

of trees, the rainy

forest depths of their listening.

To float, upheld,

as salt water

would hold you,

once you dared.

•  

To live in the mercy of God.

To feel vibrate the enraptured

waterfall flinging itself

unabating down and down

to clenched fists of rock.

Swiftness of plunge,

hour after year after century,

O or Ah

uniterrupted, voice

many-stranded.

To breathe

spray.  The smoke of it.

Arcs

of steelwhite foam, glissades

of fugitive jade barely perceptible.  Such passion - 

rage or joy?

Thus, not mild, not temperate,

God's love for the world.  Vast

flood of mercy

flung on resistance.

church re-def.

"Church is boring.  Church is demeaning & judgemental.  Church is irrelevant.  Church simply sucks the proverbial lemon.  Yeah Jesus was certainly one of the greatest people ever to have existed on the planet but please don't tell me that the best kind of community of faith to reflect his life that you guys can come up with is to invite me inside an insipidly dull-looking building among people who look very similar to me but are nonetheless relative strangers (even if I do keep coming back) while the dudes up front keep sitting me down and standing me up for five songs, a sermon, and a platitudinous blessing I could have found in the back of a used copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul.  All this & you guys tell me this is the kind of life Jesus wants us to live. Puh-lease.  No thanks.  I pass.  Killer for you - but that ain't what I call living bro."

Perhaps I'm being too generous.  But please don't think I'm being too cynical.  Among other criticisms (church is militarisitic, homophobic, narrow-minded, etc.) the above sentiments are typically the kinds of thoughts I consistently hear launched at the rapidly fading cultural Christendom reflections of church in North America.  But it won't be too much longer (a decade perhaps less) when those criticisms become less prevalent and will undergo seismic shifts.  Instead of the church sucks routine we will begin hearing more of these comments: Church is dangerous.  Church is adventure.  Church is deep renewing friendship.  Church is resonant mystery that reaches the most profound places of my self-understanding within the cosmos.  Church is radical compassion to the marginalized.  Church reflects Jesus of the gospels & not culturual religion-focused Christianity.  You say it can't be so.  But these will be some of the prevailing cultural motifs that will be used to describe the Jesus-centered & Spirit-led collectives (churches) of the near future.  Don't be surprised.  There are churches & church movements that are already inhabiting these rhythms.  And they are fundamentally altering people's immediate perceptions of church communities & firing the imaginations of those not-yet part of these collectives.  Indeed, a new ecclesiological zeitgeist is surfacing with ever-increasing momentum & it is hurtling across the North American & global landscape with pervasive saturation. Yes it is difficult to precisely qualify what we're on the verge of witnessing on a massive and exponential scale - but nevertheless we are witnesses of a new & broader reformation that is not limited to the old divides of Protestant & Catholic, liberal & conservative, rich & poor (the rich & poor dichotomy being the most critical limiting factor in unrealized Kingdom of God movements throughout the globe).  This is something entirely different. 

What are the factors altering the landscape of North American church rhythms?  I'll work my way into the different "factor" caverns in future posts but perhaps a crucial place to begin is to reboot the word "faith."  As most of us know, in many North American realities (though certainly not all) faith is understood as something that is private & solely conceptual.  I suppose most of us have an inkling of this but thanks to Descartes & co. the modernist era lived in the "what we think is what we are" zone.  And this in so many ways was translated into church practices with the dictum: the better one believes/thinks/reasons the better a Christian one becomes.  Belief of course, inhabiting only certain circuits of the mind.  Therefore, the more propositional-based knowledge one obtains about faith the more faithful one becomes ('Christian Education' being the key discipleship conduit for the 'maturing' Christian; so inevitably the discipleship process became best suited for church-buildings & classrooms that utilized chalkboards, whiteboards, lecterns, overhead projectors, & styrofoam cups of bad coffee - don't misunderstand me though; this was not a wholesale bad development - it just placed emphasis on learning as thinking only and missed some crucial elements along the way).  And as we all know & what has been documented, written, and beaten to death in endless books, articles, & blogs this "I think therefore I am" project (otherwise known as the Enlightenment) has washed up as rotting forests of (albeit gilded) kelp on the vast California-sized shores of a new era that inhabits the world of complexity, chaos, & unpredictability.  

So while boomer-minded generations & older (though not all of them) will continue to inhabit classroom-based discipleship for deeper propositional-knowledge based faith the Gen Xers (or Busters - but not all of them) and the Millennials (or Mosaics - but not all of them) are amplifying the great sucking sound out & away from these reasoning-based institutions of faith.  These generations are not against reason or knowledge or propositions they simply want to add & inhabit different forms of "knowing" as fundamental to life itself.

  

Faith within the collective imagination of those inhabiting the "post-enlightenment" era has been in the process during the last decade and a half or so of being rebooted as something that embraces an ethos of collective every-moment journey & adventure.  Faith is becoming less about just being rationalistic & private (though it inhabits those spheres as well).  Faith is becoming (on a large scale) a way that centers around Jesus & moves with the pulse of the Spirit.  Church movements that adapt a journey & adventure ethos within their organizing DNA are the churches that are now claiming the future.  Of course I don't mean journey & adventure for their own sake - climbing K2 has a certain amount of faith attached to it but without a Jesus-centering it simply becomes a journey & adventure that serves its own purposes.  It is within journey & adventure for the sake of shalom & gospel that churches discover their vital edge of living & vibrancy - where they become the living reflections of Jesus himself.  And of course, when churches inhabit the rhythms of shalom & gospel within their actions they become renewing movements and as such cannot be self-contained or hoarded. 

But be warned: churches that wish to rhythm into journey & adventure by micro-management or top-down command and control structures where insurance policies trump Spirit-led action into dangerous territories will quite inevitably lead back to irrelevancy & stagnation . . . 

leadership lessons from tank man . . .

• One individual enactment of belief can stun the earth.     
• Circumstances never ask your permission - they beg your immediate response. 
• Doing nothing is how most people respond.
• Having nothing doesn't mean you can do nothing. 
• If you saw it live or on a newscast your first thought was, "what the hell is he doing?"
• Your next thought was, "They're gonna run him over.  He doesn't stand a chance."
• Then he jumped on top of the tank.
• Courage initially looks stupid or insane. 
• Insanity & stupidity remain as such - courage always looks different in the end. 
• Standing alone for two plus minutes can transform our perceived limitations.
• Counterintuitive action stops Goliath in his tracks (David took off his armor & used a slingshot instead of the standard sword/spear/shield).
• Someone eventually has to put their life on the line. 
• What's the worst that can happen to me is not a helpful question to ask at a time like this. 
• What's the worst that can happen to others if I don't act is the question of heroes & leaders. 
• If not me, then who will it be? 
• He only managed to stop the tanks for a few minutes but in the process he managed to transform the collective imagination of the entire globe in less than five minutes.
• His identity is still unknown. 

Join the tank man tribe & move into new fields of shalom for our world.

More thoughts on adaptive leadership - movement at the edge of chaos (& why City Team is one of the best organizational models of getting to the edge)

"The role of leaders in the equation? Well, once again this goes back to Heifetz’s understanding about the nature of adaptive leadership.  Adaptive leadership moves the system to the edge of chaos, not over, but to the edge of it. As was said before, the leader’s role is to ensure that the system is directly facing up to the issues that confront it.  Issues that if left unattended, will eventually destroy it   Because if people in the organization never seriously face the problem, and stay with it for a reasonable time, they will never feel the need to move to find a genuine and more lasting solution—hence the idea of a burning platform.  We teach the Forge interns this simple formula.  It is the role of transformative leadership to ‘sell the problem before you try evoking a solution’ because it is this being at this ‘edge of chaos’ where real innovation takes place." read the rest here.

Attended a remarkable training on CPM (church planting movements) hosted by City Team Ministries in San Jose.  A dude named David Watson (featured in David Garrison's book Church Planting Movements) was the primary trainer & facilitator for the week - he looks & often sounds like a college football coach straight out of East Texas - training people with the intensity of a savvy field general (though he's wisely wary of co-opting military terminology for leadership).  And if you are being personally trained by Watson you are issued a 2 strikes and you're out of the training policy.  I love it.  He says he doesn't have time to mess around with people who aren't continually moving ahead on the leadership path.  Coffee once/month sure no problem - but training with Watson requires consistently proving your gumption.  I'm sure this strikes some of our shepherding & overly nice-evangelical types as somewhat harsh.  But it was weirdly refreshing for me to hear & be challenged with.

One aspect of the conference that struck me so forcefully is how fundamentally vital it is to constantly get to that edge in both our individual as well as our collective lives.  Alan Hirsch writes about this extensively in his books & it was a predominant theme during this past week of training.  Without movement to the edge we are in a downward movement toward equilibirium & stasis - death to put it more succinctly.  I'll have more thoughts on the training later. . . 

One thing that must be noted is how truly remarkable the folks at City Team are - they have a radical predisposition toward hospitality.  They gave away this training to folks like myself at no charge (including meals, drinks, snacks, & training resources).  This carries with it the strong aroma of Kingdom work being advanced.  And this is one of the first trainings I've attended in the states where people from all backgrounds (from Kenya to Nicaraugua, from Mexican barrio to the streets of Oakland & Philadelphia to the tech halls of Silcon Valley).  I met a couple dudes who were only 2 & 5 years ago on the streets doped up & dropped out - but now they're cleaned up and living the edge of being gospel planters in similar communities they came from.  That is, they are not extracted away from other substance abusers - they are with them, serving, befriending, planting the gospel among them in the name of the King.  Certainly no organization is perfect but City Team seems to be constantly striving to get to the edge & there institutional ethos of discipleship is just rather jaw-dropping. Thank you to my table-mates from City Team - Carole, Trudy, Dick, Jonathan, & Tom it was a true honor to meet each one of you.  And thanks to my afternoon laborers - Elton, Massoud, Mike, David, Tom, & Arash it was likewise a great privilege to have shared some of this journey with you.