Ideas to Practice

Reading Exponential by the brothers Ferguson brought this Seth Godin idea to my mind:
“Ideas are cheap. Implementation makes the difference.”
While the ideas in this book are by no means cheap, their implementation made them valuable.

The idea true knowledge works its way into actions has been a staple of historical thought. Aristotle taught that true learning must involve an element implementation. The Hebraic concept of “knowing” is also inescapably practical. To “know” the speed limit is to drive it. To know that smoking is detrimental to your health is to abstain. The tale of Community Christian Church’s inception and growth told in Exponential is rich with such knowledge.

The Ferguson’s lay out the methodology that reproduced their church’s individual and communal leadership. Several ideas stand out:

1) Apprenticeship – a growing relationship with a leader and a follower that anticipates the feature leadership needs.

2) Growing churches attract a creative class – artists propel a church to new growth by facilitating innovation and risk.

3) Multi-site – multi-site churches have greater cost effectiveness than church plants.

In sum, there is no quick fix or magical solution to church growth. The fuel of such transformational growth starts with people moved by God to lead in the context of a life-on-life relationship with another leader. To build relational capital we must invest relational capital.

Review for Different Eyes Blog Tour

As a previous reader of Steve Chalke and Alan Mann’s The Lost Message of Jesus, I leapt at the opportunity to review their Different Eyes: The Art of Living Beautifully for Zondervan. Chalke and Mann see the pursuit of a virtuous Christian life as categorically different from a moral existence based exclusively in rule following and different from one based in a utilitarian pursuit of the greatest good. In so doing, they come along side a slew of philosophers and theologians attempting to meld virtue ethics and Christian theology. They are among those attempting to utilize resources found in the virtue tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas within the bounds of Christian ethical reflection.

They argue that this particular ethical paradigm is rooted in an accurate envisioning of holy God. The Dame Iris Murdoch once wrote, “True vision occasions right conduct.” This is a bit of what Chalke and Mann mean. However, whereas Murdoch espoused that the true vision would be beholding something of a Platonic form of the good, Chalke and Mann have their eyes set on the God of Israel who is not only transcendent, but immanent as well. Further, they envision of God in whose image humanity is created. Envisioning God helps humanity understand for what purpose they were made. In short, humans are made to reflect the image of God in this earth through word and deed. Said another way, God’s followers are to join in and become co-narrators of the ongoing story of redemption and renewal God is currently telling.

Chalke and Mann provide a pithy introduction to the virtue ethics. Theirs is a good first step for the virtue ethics dilettante. As for further reading, the authors provide a worthy “Suggested Reading” list at the end of their work for those hoping to delve deeper into some of the many areas addressed in this book. As for further doing, this reader hopes to envisage God better and therefore act in better accord with the purpose for which I was created.

Lectio Divina: An Antidote for the Internet

I began seminary with lectio divina and I am ending seminary with lectio divina. I first encountered this practice in one of my first classes nearly three years ago. Now, one of my last courses at Fuller Seminary, “Congregation as Learning Community,” begins each meeting with lectio divina. This practice demands quiet and contemplation before speech and analysis. We begin with a prayer to calm ourselves and to center our awareness on the constant work of the Spirit in our midst. Two of us then read the selected scripture aloud. Their readings are followed by 5-10 minutes (this can be longer) spent in attentive silent reading and reflection on the text. We heed words and phrases that stand out to us, for whatever the reason, and trust that the Spirit is bringing those passages not only to our own attention, but to the group’s as well. Sometimes, the every member of our group ‘noticed’ a similar word, phrase, or idea; more often, we notice different parts of the text. In both cases, we trust that we have just encountered the Spirit through the scripture.

The past weeks have reminded me of the value the practice of lectio divina, perhaps even more than our group’s findings. I find the pace of lectio divina a discipline–focusing on that passage is a battle against infiltrating distraction. In a recent article from The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, the author, Nicholas Carr, claims that media, and the way we use those media, shape the way we think. Carr laments:

[M]edia are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski (Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”).

The Internet is a teacher as much as it is an information portal. Carr goes on to claim that the Internet’s style of efficiency and immediacy inhibits our ability to engage in “deep reading.” If he is right, the Internet surfing we all practice may not just be making us stupid, but may be instilling in us a thoroughgoing distraction muting the voice of the Spirit. Yet, a more obvious conclusion is that Internet surfing is antithetical to the type of slow, disciplined reading practiced in lectio divina. In their book, Spiritual Classics, editors Richard Foster and Emile Griffin encourage practitioners of lectio divina to “[d]well inside the text” (Foster, Spiritual Classics, 35). This penetration into the text is a far cry from skimming along the surface of Internet content.

The church, myself included, would do well to recapture the cadence of lectio divina as a way to temper the pace the Internet fosters. Carr does not advocate Internet abstinence, but something like the media literacy Michael Budde suggests in his The (Magic) Kingdom of God. Though speaking primarily of the rhetorical criticism, Walter Brueggemann’s words capture the heart of lectio divina. Let his words be an exhortation to the church as he “invite[s] us to read with slowness, patience, and attentiveness, aware that disclosure (= revelation) could arise,” as the Spirit of God works ceaselessly in our midst (Brueggemann, Cadences of Home, 58).

Critical Thinking as Spiritual Discipline

On the recommendation of a seminary professor of mine, I have begun reading through several works by Dr. Stephen D. Brookfield. Brookfield has written at length concerning the development of critical thinking. For Brookfield, “[C]ritical thinking is a lived activity, not an abstract academic pastime … It involves calling into question the assumptions underlying our customary, habitual ways of thinking and acting and then being ready to think and act differently on the basis of this critical questioning” (Brookfield, Developing Critical Thinkers, 14, 1). As a practice, critical thinking: identifies and challenges cultural and ideological assumptions; accounts for the context in which ideas and practices take their shape; imaginatively explores alternatives to those dominant ideas and practices; and produces a “reflective skepticism” in those practitioners of critical thought (7-9). Additionally, critical thinking manifests emancipatory learning (building an awareness of the forces that brought you to your present and cultivating an intent to shape them), dialectical thinking (engaging understanding and resolving contradictions), and reflective learning (practicing internal reflection, which leads to a changed conceptual perspective) as constituent ingredients.

Speaking as one immersed in theological education and Christian commitment, I believe critical thinking has the makings of a fruitful spiritual discipline. I see critical thinking as a fortified, vitalized form of meditation (see Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, ch. 2 for a helpful summary and guide to Christian meditation). The priorities of critical thinking echo portions of Jesus’ message. First, Jesus called into question nearly every social, religious, and cultural assumption he confronted. He did not assume that the poor were treated as they should be, or that the most religious fully understood the message of God. Second, Jesus urged his followers to imagine the redeemed world God initiated and is bringing to fruition. He claimed that the Kingdom of God was present in the midst of his followers. Finally, Jesus called those followers to take action resonant with God’s new agenda. He impelled his disciples to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and give one’s cloak and tunic when asked. I believe Jesus, in a way far greater than I understand, was the ultimate critical thinker. I hope that my own local church, and local bodies of believers everywhere, will question the assumptions produced by their contexts, imagine the world that God is bringing together, and act in ways that hasten the coming of that renewed world.

Reading With ...

Most of my seminary studies have involved reading scripture or theology or philosophy (alone). Last week I read culture (in a group). In my class “Congregation as Learning Community,” we complied a list of cultural events occurring over the last century. Our list included a wide variety of happenings: the Great Depression, the lunar landing, the birth of TV, the internet, Ipods, the New Deal, McDonalds, Barrack Obama, and even blockbuster movies like The Lord of the Rings. Once our list was compiled, we talked about the challenges imposed upon and opportunities offered to the church by such cultural events. While our conclusions themselves were interesting, the process itself most captured my imagination.

The list we created, one of richness and depth, was the product of our group. No individual in our class could have created that list alone. Each member brought with them their unique way of remembering and interpreting history, cultural, and the church. As a group engaged in such reflection, we experienced the ideological, and perhaps even the epistemological, equivalent of ‘safety in numbers.’

This experience continued to solidify a theme I have been learning the past few years. Put simply: whom you ‘read with’ matters. Gerald West’s The Academy of the Poor: Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible speaks to this point. West proposes a reading methodology that seeks to move past dominant readings of biblical texts. It does so by involving both ‘educated’ and ‘ordinary’ readers into reading communities. Such a method uses dialogue and diversity to create a thicker interpretation of a text. By engaging West’s method, ‘educated’ readers distance themselves from reading ‘for’ a group and move closer to reading ‘with’ a group.

Both my reading of West and our group reflection underscore the need to create diverse reading communities in our churches. For West, the typical missing ingredient in a reading community is the voice of the poor. Our missing ingredient might be different, but I would venture to say that most of us have neglected part of West’s reading group recipe. What would it look like to diversify our bible studies? Who could we invite to widen our perspective? Perhaps our challenge lies even further upstream: do we have friends who are different from ourselves, whose different perspective would invariably help us see the fuller meaning of scripture? So the pertinent question for a contemporary church may not simply be, “Are we reading scripture?” Rather, we should ask our churches and ourselves, “Whom are we reading with?”

The Strange Intimacy of Exile

In a chapter entitled “Disciplines of Readiness” found within his Cadences of Home, Walter Brueggemann articulates an understanding of all God’s people as “a people [always] on the way”(110, italics mine). This journey-bound existence comprehensively characterizes the experience of those following God on earth. For Brueggemann, this journey includes three divinely directed phases: God’s sovereign promise, God’s sovereign demand, and God’s sovereign absence. At first glance, God’s sovereign absence seems to lie at the nadir. In God’s sovereign promise, the very “voice of God initiates the journey” away from “bondage, barrenness, oppression, and marginality” and leads them, albeit circuitously, toward the Promised Land (110). God’s sovereign demand draws Israel away from their idolatrous self-sufficiency and leads them back to intimacy with God. In both of these phases, God seems highly engaged, actively involved in leading and forming a people. Conversely, God’s sovereign absence seems to denote a literal distance from God.

So … what is the purpose of God’s sovereign absence? Is it to punish, shame, humble, or ignore the people of God? Is it to thrust the people of God back into a state of being “bereft, barren, powerless, without hope in the world” (112)? Punitive aims certainly are possibilities, but Brueggemann argues in favor of a surprising mission made possible by God’s sovereign absence. Brueggemann claims that exile, or God’s sovereign absence, teems with the potential for God’s sovereign newness to burst forth. The people of God within God-given exile are uniquely primed to engage in “fresh, imaginative theological work” (116). Brueggemann’s surprising, yet thoroughly biblical, claim about exile is that God is still with his people: “There is for Israel no journey without this God, but this God insists that the journey be one of a very specific kind, a journey of risk, trust, and obedience” (112, italics mine). So for the church of old and new, may we remember the God who is always present:

Psalm 139:7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

What Do We Really Want?

Michael Budde, in his The (Magic) Kingdom of God, claims that “global culture industries” invest heavily in stimulating “consumers’ desire to consume” (49). So … what’s so bad about that? The heart of Budde’s critique of this activity is not directed at the production of consumable goods, but the creation of the desire for things. Global culture industries bank on their audiences “learning to want things” (49). This acquired aptitude for consumption is hidden behind “a false deference paid to consumer rationality” and perpetuated by a manufactured “asymmetry of information” (39, 42). Yet, this asymmetry is used to covertly seduce their prey, not assault them (42). We, as consumers, are not forced into wanting. Rather, culture industries massage their message into our skin through slick and ubiquitous advertising, always getting us in the mood to want things.

Budde, a catholic educator, is not alone in his assessment of these temptresses. Douglas Rushkoff (www.rushkoff.com), a media and culture critic, has produced several persuasive pieces investigating such sirens: “The Merchants of Cool” and “The Persuaders” (see below for links to these documentaries). His most chilling conclusion in “The Merchants of Cool” is a description of a positive feedback loop of created desires. Put briefly, youth watch TV and learn to want things. Marketers watch youth to find out want they are buying. Then, like a distorting mirror at a haunted house, marketers create and film shows and events where youth are consuming their products at artificially inflated levels. Yet, they make this heightened level of consumption look authentic and normative by plastering these images everywhere a kid might look. Youth feel inadequate as they watch artificially enhanced versions of themselves consume more stuff than they themselves consume in reality. This cycle constantly undermines the contentment of youth and proffers buying things as the panacea. What we need, in Budde’s words, is a healthy dose of “media literacy,” illumined by the light of the gospel, to demystify media and reawaken true and good desires informed by God.

“The Merchants of Cool”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/

“The Persuaders”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/