The Synergy of Growth

Breath of God

Apparently from a shop window in London. Strange or ..?

"Local Maximum"

It would appear that most manifestations of church have reached a "local maximum". The particular processes that moulded them and nudged them certain ways toward their styles of worship and modes of being actually originated in small country churches hundreds of years ago. The churches developed to meet the needs of the 'Industrial Revolution' and have continued to seek out higher ground, but we in the post-Christian West, as is Australia, are beginning to see, and are being told by some 'emerging church' "types" that this "animal is now unfit for its environment". However having said that we continue to build & plan for a form of 'if we do it they'll come". However I believe the model we 'be been using, and the 'tweaking' we are trying to do is at a dead end. There is no more room for improvement. In a sense the church cannot advance further along the branch that it's on - there is no more branch! The systemic faults that are actually the root of the problem remain unchanged.
(A good reference is James Fowler "Stages of Faith: The psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning")

"The Chapel" - R.S. Thomas

A little aside from the main road
becalmed in a last-century greyness
there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal
to the tourist to stop his car
and visit it. The traffic goes by
and the river goes by, and quick shadows
of clouds too, and the chapel settles
a little deeper into the grass

But here once on an evening like this,
in the darkness that was about
his hearers, a preacher caught fire,
and burned steadily before them
with a strange light so that they saw
the splendour of the barren mountains
about them and sang their amens
fiercely, narrow but saved
in a way that men are not now.

There is a sadness about it that this happened once, but it has now gone – the glory has departed and the chapel is empty but that doesn’t mean it was now once real. The image of the preacher who ‘caught fire’ here is just right. It doesn’t say who he was, or draw attention to his gifts, preparation, or anything – just that the Spirit once fell here, the fire of heaven touched earth the word of God gripped him and he just burned before them. That describes revival perfectly, when a person in a particular place is consumed by God in worship or preaching or praise. We just have to be in the right place with the right heart for when it happens.

For reflection

From the SACC email list

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me

to make me less afraid, more accessible

to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom

and that which came to me as blossom

goes on as fruit.

‘I will not die an unlived life” by Dawna Markova, published Conari Press, California, 2000

Reality

Picked this up from Craig Mitchell's blog

Controlling Voices: Intellectual Property, Humanistic Studies and the Internet by TyAnna K. Herrington, Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.

A quote from Herrington's book:

“Reality exists only in shared perception, and this perception depends on information developed through the process of creating knowledge. Those who have access to knowledge and control its use and dissemination thus control what we perceive: ultimately our shared reality.”

"Leadership is an extension of discipleship"

Was sent to me by a friend from the blog of Alan Hirsch.

If this is not already obvious by now let me say it more explicitly: the quality of the church’s leadership is directly proportional to the quality of discipleship. if we fail in the area of making disciples we should not be surprised if we fail in the area of leadership development. I think many of the problems that the church faces in trying to cultivate missional leadership for the challenges of the 21st century would be resolved if we were to focus the solution to the problem on something prior to leadership development per se, namely that of discipleship first. Discipleship is primary, leadership is always secondary. And leadership, to be genuinely Christian, must always reflect Christlikeness and therefore…discipleship.

If we wish to develop and engender a genuinely missional leadership then we have to first plant the seed of obligation to the mission of God in the world in the earlier and more elementary phases of discipleship. This seed should be cultivated into full-blown missional leadership later on. And this is not being coercive and manipulative, but simply recognizing that as disciples we are active participants in the Missio Dei. We can’t merely create missional leadership when the DNA of missional leadership was not first laid down in the seeds of discipleship. And this is exactly how Jesus does discipleship: he organizes it around mission. As soon as they are called He takes the disciples on an adventurous journey of mission, ministry, and learning. Straightaway are involved in proclaiming the Kingdom of God, serving the poor, healing, and casting out demons. And it is active and direct disciple-making in the context of mission. And all great people movements are the same. Even the newest convert is engaged in the mission from the start; even he/she can become a spiritual hero. If we accept that Jesus forms the primary pattern of disciple-making for the church, then we must say that discipleship is our core task. But if disciple-making lies at the heart of our commission then we must organize it around mission because mission is the catalyzing principle of discipleship. In Jesus they are inexorably linked.