From David Byrne's blog - the END?

According to Einstein we’ve got a little over 4 years. Here’s a quote from him:

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

And in today's NY Times it says that more than a ¼ of the honeybees in the U.S. have vanished. The article continues with a lot of head scratching as to why but sort of says “gee, we dunno.”

In Speigel, the German newsmagazine, they say, “Beekeepers on the east coast of the United States complain that they have lost more than 70 percent of their stock since late last year, while the west coast has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.”

A month or so ago I read a similar article that said the bees were disappearing out west. Then, a few weeks later, I read a seemingly unrelated article that said that growers of GM tangerines were furious with beekeepers for allowing their bees to wander into the GM-planted fields.

The explanation for their anger is simple. GM crops have been carefully and sometimes expensively modified to have certain desirable characteristics — seedless tangerines, in this case. Bees, as an important part of the chain of life, cross-pollinate plants by “accidentally” rubbing pollen from one flower onto another further away. This is not really an accident, for, as Einstein points out, life as we know it has come to depend on it happening. If this “accident” or “byproduct” ceases we are goners.

Anyway, though it was not mentioned in the tangerine article I asked myself if the two articles could be related — if GM agribusiness could be trying to eliminate bees.

Call me a conspiracy nut, but it sure sounds likely to me. They are the ones who would principally benefit — they have a motive and incentive.

Would a civilization commit suicide? You bet they would — they’ve done it all the time. I read Jared Diamond’s book Collapse and, sure enough, according to him culture and greed trump common sense and reason every time — although in many cases it took a disaster like a drought or war to push things over the tipping point.

The Bible and us?

Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451

... when people become their book rather than just visit a library, then truths will have been liberated and books will be unleashed.

"What to do with an established church?"

I'm the Minister of a well established church, some 150 years old, grand old building, very well cared for on one of Adelaide's busiest streets down by the beach with almost all members living outside the area, some kms. away. An acquaintance sent me this from Alan Hirsch's blog. So, here it is and I hope it will assit me in my thinking too.

I was asked this question recently in an interview

“If you were asked to steer a conventional, western church on a missional path and were given the freedom to utilize or reallocate all funds and resources in the best way you felt this could be accomplished, how and what would you do?"

And here is my answer…

The issue of change and transition into missional forms of church is fraught with many complex problems. But again, at the heart of the problem is our ‘idea of church’—the conception we have of what it means to be God’s people as a community. Part of the problem is that we have so associated our idea of church with the institutional forms of it (including programs, services, professionalization of ministry, theologies, denominational templates, etc.) that we need to at least be given the chance to experience each other as Jesus’ church divorced from the predominance of the institution of the church.

Having said this, I do believe the building can present a real problem—for one, it staticizes our idea of church. I would certainly have the building in my sights. But that would be just one thing—the heart of my strategy would be to try to communicate a more primal and organic idea of church and mission because I think that is more who we truly are meant to be. You no doubt know that wonderful quote from Antoine de Saint Extupery “If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.” The unfolding of Christianity as the means by which people are re-connected to God has nothing to do with the institutionalized idea of church in the first instance. We need to recover our most basic, and dangerous, forms of church—that of an apostolic movement. It’s the story of the church and her mission that I outline in The Forgotten Ways. I would tell and retell of that story and then lets see what happens!

But here’s my general advice to people in this situation (note the 6 P’s you 3-B Baptists out there )

1. You need to get the right paradigm. (Clearly getting our ‘idea/conception’ of church right before we start is critical–as per comments above)
2. You need to be prayerful (It’s God’s work and God’s church, prayer is vital. Especially corporate prayer around these issues: we must come before the Lord of the Church)
3. You need to be patient (it ain’t going to happen overnight, but if you stick in there, and be consistent in your activism, it will/might eventually happen.)
4. You need to be very practical (Do something, don’t shout your mouth off. The best critique of the bad is the practice of the better)
5. You need to have some power (in any institution, you had better have some form of social power to change things. Otherwise, frustration will become your food and cynicism will follow)
6. You need to have a darn good plan (don’t just be a change agent, be a change manager. For large and complex organizations, this might take years. So buckle in.)

"Purified to the point of sterility"?

Kester's most recent piece from his blog had me stop in my tracks. I reproduce most of it as follows:

In a piece on the myth of 'Internet Neutrality' The Guardian quoted Professors Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsoson, who, way back in 1997, wrote that,

"With the customised access and search capabilities, individuals can arrange to read only news and analysis that align with their preferences. Individuals empowered to screen out material that does not conform to their existing preferences may form virtual cliques, insulate themselves from opposing points of view, and reinforce their biases."

From their paper "Global Village or CyberBalkans: Modeling and Measuring the Integration of Electronic Communities"

This made me ponder: is my RSS selection doing anything to really challenge my preferences? Or, as Jung might put it, is my content 'purified to the point of sterility?'

I'm sure that I mostly read what 'fits' with most of my views, opinions, prejudices, etc. However, & I'm going to be brave in this, I don't find many people who share my views, opinions, etc. I seem to be surrounded, mostly, by people whose life styles, views, opinions, etc. I do not like or share. These are the people I encounter in the street & the majority of people in the church. I'm talking in a sweeping manner here of politics, economics, etc. I find crass consumerism, right wing politics, racist views, gender & age discrimination, worship styles, attitude to the poor on our doorsteps, Australian nationalism - the list I reckon is huge. I seem to be out of step with most. I try really hard to read the Scriptures and commenatators that I believe help me to may sense of same & share those insights, etc. with the congregation via worship, bible studies, church mission, etc. But it seems that where I read, etc. is mostly not congruent with where others are. I don't think it the case that I filter out all with which I do not agree - I'm bombarded with our Australian values, capitalist, etc. viewpoints every day! I can't avoid it! My searching out other writers, etc. is to try & balance what is the, for me, suffocating, presentation of leaders in all walks of Australian life, the various media and the "man in the street" of views and life styles that I find opposed to what I find in the Scriptures. Now some have said that if I only read certain authors, listened to certain speakers, attended certain workshops, etc. I'd find the "true" perspective. The trouble is that what they're presenting I find, simply, obnoxious.
So, where do I go? I don't know. I just know that I'm becoming more and more disenchanted with the life I lead.
So I'll begin another review of me.
Whew - a lot of personal stuff here. Sorry.

The politics of Jesus, the politics of the Church.

I've been re-reading one of my favourite books recently as some kind of 'build up' to Easter. The book is John Howard Yoder's "The Politics of Jesus". Along the way a friend forwarded the following to me from Kester's (?) blog. I believe it a powerful comment. The piece is part of, I'm told, a longer ongoing discussion about 'emerging church' & the employment of strategy. Towards the end of his book, on page 245 in a section entitled "The War of the Lamb", Yoder writes

"Suffering is not a tool to make people come around, nor a good in itself. But the kind of faithfulness that is willing to accept evident defeat rather than complicity with evil is, by virtue of its conformity with what happens to God when he (sic) works among men (sic0, aligned with the ultimate triumph of the Lamb."

Through Game Theory we have been duped into thinking our best strategy is to not trust one another. But beyond that Christ's death on the cross - a deliberate 'loss' - subverts the very idea of strategy at all.

At Golgotha, God declares the end of strategy.
God will not play our power games.
God is.
God loves.
There is no win or lose.

All too quickly the early church - mostly under the influence of Paul, I would argue - lost this message and began to make itself into a 'strategic organization'. We don't really know the effect of Paul's journey to Rome, what we do know is that in 313CE Emperor Constantine declared himself a Christian. Why? Because he believed that the Christian God had given him victory in battle. Where did he get such a theology? Surely not from Christ. Constantine was a brilliant soldier, and an astute military strategist. Is is possible that there is a thread that leads from Paul's strategy to evangelize Rome to Constantine's conversion?

I'm clearly speculating. But what concerns me about Constantine is that from there on we see Christianity moving from a religion of the poor and the oppressed, to a religion held up by the rich and powerful as one which supports them.

This is a long way from the cross, and it seems a long way from us too. But I believe that if the church allows itself to be tied up in strategies, to 'winning' people for Christ, it will end be moving towards power-politics, towards support for wars, and away from genuine concern for 'the other'.

To give oneself for 'the other' is to lose. It is to be engaged in transformative relationships, rather than tactical change. It is to love. To know grace. And grace and love have no strategy.

Crucified - for ALL!

Three Crosses

Three Crosses
Originally uploaded by BamaWester.

The Church always seeking to 'be on mission'

The following was sent to me by a friend.

“We never have expected to hit upon that final stable structure. This is important for a church to understand, for when it starts to be the church it will be constantly be adventuring out into places where there are no tried and tested ways. If the church in our day has few prophetic voices above the noise of the street, perhaps in large part it is because the pioneering spirit has become foreign to it. It shows little willingness to explore new ways. Where it does it has often been called an experiment. We would say the church of Christ is never an experiment, but where that church is true to it’s mission it will be experimenting, pioneering, blazing new paths, seeking how to speak the reconciling words of God to it’s own age.” It cannot do this if it is held captive by the structures of another day.” (Elizabeth O’Connor….Call to Commitment)