Music and Mission: Introduction

They've been called the worship wars for a reason. Congregations have split because of differences of opinion; new churches start because they don't find a style they prefer; relationships have been broken, people have been hurt, and worst, fewer people are shown the love of Christ, but are instead shown the malice of the humanity of his followers.

Music is a powerful tool. It provokes the deepest passions in all of us like little else can. Even the ancients knew of this; the Celtic Bards and the Greek Eunichs told stories through song. In the middle ages, music was what kept the hope of the peasants alive. The great composers of the renaissance and baroque were the celebrities of their day. In modern times, the best composers are no longer sought for their live performances, but for their ability to pair video with a soundtrack. And through the ages, music has been used to express the adoration of every ethnicity and nationality on earth to their respective deities.

But music is a cultural phenomenon. The music of one people, of one generation, of one composer, does not necessarily evoke the same response in others. The gregorian chant will quickly put a modern music history class to sleep, while the tones and rhythms of U2 or Coldplay will keep their attention riveted for hours. Most Americans have only heard a didgeridoo in movies without ever realizing that it is an Aboriginal storytelling instrument. Few even know what a Zither is, and none could replicate a 12-tone scale - but many Indians could. Every culture has their own form of audible art, and thus every culture has a language of worship entirely unique to themselves.

But have Christians been paying attention?

Rather than take the more traditional seminary courses, I studied anthropology, sociology, and psychology in preparation to be a worship pastor. I've decided it's time to explain why.

Economics, part X: Stimulus

I know, I've talked about money a lot lately. It's by far the longest series I've ever written, although I hope I haven't bored anyone. By now, though, I'm sure you've jumped ahead and concluded that I am a capitalist. You'd only be partially right, however, because as I've learned more about anthropology and sociology, I've started to think that perhaps it is as much a cultural issue as any other. For example, socialism seems to be working well enough in China, particularly because Chinese culture lends itself to a more group-oriented approach that will keep itself accountable (the honor-shame dynamic plays a vital role here, but that's another discussion). Sure it has its problems there, but this is true of any economic system in a world where men and women are flawed creatures. Socialism can be a good thing in China if it were always run by honorable, God-loving, others-oriented men and women. Likewise, I believe that capitalism is the best choice for the West, but we have to use it properly.

This brings me to a disturbing trend in our culture: the bailout. I've grown wary of the tendency for our culture to expect "handouts" from its government, precisely because of our culture's views on freedom. We believe we are all entitled as individuals to have a shot at happiness on our own terms. However, as our culture has changed over time, we've also grown a tendency to also want to be free of failure. We've been so successful as a culture in our endeavors that we've grown accustomed to getting our way. It started out innocently enough, the way success should come - hard work, perseverance, and sacrifice. But as the successes started piling up (success is a relative term, by the way), our culture began to expect them. And when something wasn't going according to our view of "success," we began to search for ways other than hard work, perseverance, and sacrifice to make our endeavors fit our ideas on success. One such measure is the stimulus, the theory being "throw money at it and the problem goes away." It's taken many forms over the years; sometimes we throw money at the military, who go and "take care of the problem." Sometimes we throw money at EHMs, who throw money and false promises at those in the way, and then the problem "goes away" (for us). And sometimes, when that doesn't work, we simply try spending money on ourselves make us feel better about not getting our way; enter the 2008 and 2009 economic stimulus packages.

The idea of the stimulus package subverts freedom because it quietly avoids the issue of responsibility. If we are free to choose our own path and insist on doing so, then we must necessarily be free to make mistakes - it's how we learn. The stimulus package is the government's way of pandering to culture, saying "it's ok, you can do whatever you want and we'll be there to hand you money when you fail; don't feel bad about yourself, be happy!" A stimulus package is subversive to freedom because it takes away responsibility of the individual, the family, and even the local and state governments to spend their money responsibly. They are in debt because they made some stupid choices, but being "bailed out" does not force them to re-evaluate their spending or to cut out unnecessary "fat" from budgets (like, why don't they try to skip on the brand-new corporate jet this year when they're laying off 10,000 people?). It simply perpetuates the problems, delays the inevitable, and ultimately makes the problems that much worse for future generations.

Let's face it; do you really want the same people to handle your health care that make you wait in line at the DMV for hours? Or do you want the same people to handle your finances that award themselves a raise when declaring a "financial crisis"?

What is all the bailout money being spent on? Well, Wall-Street executives awarded themselves $18.4 billion for a job well done. But hang on, did they actually do a good job? President Obama doesn't seem to think they deserve it, and I'm inclined to agree; but what did we expect when we handed them free money? And now we want to hand them more? I realize that there are new rules built into the measure to - theoretically - prevent abuses (for example, companies must pay their president less than $500k if they want government aid, which seems a bit high to me - why not $100k?), but it seems that they trust their rules a bit too much; the abuse of the loopholes in the rules is a major part of the problem in the first place.

This is not saying that a stimulus package can't work. However, it IS saying that the way we use it must be responsible, or else it will fail. In some ways, this package is useful(take, for instance, the money being devoted to rebuilding infrastructure such as highways and public transportation - my father, for one, is very happy about that because he sees the state of such things all the time, and they need help). However, perhaps more money ought to be devoted to the businesses that actually need the help, rather than those that are simply being evolved out of the market for building crappy products (ahem, GM) or for spending money irresponsibly (pretty much all of Wall Street). Take, for example, small businesses who are constantly forced to lay off one more worker because they can't afford the taxes on their income (I used to work for such a business), which naturally cuts back the amount of work they can do, which cuts back revenue, which perpetuates a cycle. These small businesses do not generally overspend on things they cannot afford; yet they are suffering because of the large businesses that do.

When it comes down to it, I do think that capitalism can work here in the West, but only when those who are part of the system take responsibility for their financial decisions and factor in others. Asking questions like "how will this purchase impact the people and the world around me?" are a good way to start, and then deciding to spend or not to spend based on the answers in a way that helps others, even if it means sacrifices for you. The most responsible thing we can do is consider the impact of our decisions on the world and act accordingly; that is the responsibility we are endeared with as free citizens of the world, and one we ought not take lightly.

Economics, part IX: Fair

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII

One of my mantras is "when in doubt, question the question." And so I was on my way to pick up some new contacts the other day when a thought struck me: why does it matter whose fault any of this is? The economy, the war, whatever - why does it matter who gets the blame? Then I began asking myself why this particular idea suddenly struck me as odd. I mean, I've lived with it, used it, and been used by it every day of my life; why should the concept of "fair play" strike me as strange?

I think it's because 'fault' or 'blame' makes little difference, practically speaking. Causally, there is no reason to think that there is a connection between the one who causes a problem and the one who fixes (or should fix) it. But in our culture, we use assigned blame as the means to getting a party to enact action - the person who caused the problem should be the one to fix the problem. You probably don't think that's weird, but it's actually somewhat unique to American, or at least Western culture. Let's ask the question - why would we think that a person who screwed something up be any better at fixing it?

For our culture, it's a matter of resources; a person who depleted the resources of another should be the one to deplete some of his or her own resources in compensation. We do this in almost every facet of life: in business, in our judicial system, and even in friendships. How many times have you gotten a gift from somebody and felt like you should get them something in return? It's this weird little quirk of our culture coming back to haunt you.

Back to blame, let's say that a friend comes to my house and, by accident, she knocks an expensive vase off a table. Now, our culture says she ought to replace that; she broke it, or at least, she was the cause of its demise, and so she should be the cause of its restoration. But why ought this be the case? What if she is unable to financially afford this replacement? Our culture tends to dictate that the relationship with this friend will be damaged until she offer some sort of compensation (maybe not over a vase, but let's just overgeneralize to make the point); I will not likely trust my friend as much if I follow this path. But why should this be the case? If my friend cannot afford to rebuild the vase or buy a new one, but I can, does it make sense that I feel as though she owes me?

I think our concept of fairness is built, not just on "she should have to pay for it because that's objectively fair," but on "I don't want to pay for it." We like to pass the blame because it makes us feel better about ourselves - it wasn't OUR fault. I want to restore my sense of self-worth at having lost something; when I blame others, I feel more righteous by comparison. Somebody else has to take care of the problem, and I am freed from any responsibility towards fixing it.

The trouble is, the gospel challenges those assumptions to their very core. If Jesus did in fact die on the cross to take our sin "upon his shoulders" (as they say), and we can do nothing to repay him for it, we are left at an empasse, in an awkward situation. It comes down to this: I can't repay God for what He did, and that bothers me. As an American, I have a hard time accepting a gift unconditionally because I feel like I owe something back. In short, this is a point at which the gospel and American culture part ways, and as a community of Christ-followers living within that culture, then, we have to tread lightly when it comes to addressing this issue in our own lives and in the lives of others.

Ultimately, it's about what we value; if I value the vase, the economics of the situation, then of course "fairness" dictates that I make her replace it, no matter what the subsequent consequences to her; once I get my vase back, the issue is no longer important to me. But if I value the relationship, maybe a whole other set of possibilities rises to the surface. Maybe the vase isn't that important after all and doesn't need to be replaced. Or maybe if it is important to me, I ought to replace it myself instead of holding my friend to something she can't afford. Of course, if she can afford to replace it, she is more than welcome to offer that herself, but it ought to come from a sense of giving rather than a sense of obligation.

The bottom line is, how are we living as an alternate economy? Are we living sacrificially, living in a way that honors and serves our neighbors and values the relationships we have? Are we living in a way that honors Jesus and the way He taught and lived himself? Jesus valued people, he valued relationship; by blaming others instead of assuming responsibility despite cause, we are not enacting the economy of heaven. Taking responsibility for the plight of the Other in spite of who they are, what they did, or why they did it is the mark of a Christian - scripture calls it "love." Life is not and never will be "fair," and anyone who sells visions to the contrary is doing just that: selling something. True good comes when we become servants, when we stop using "fairness" as an excuse not to help others. It means putting aside one's pride and one's sense of "fair play," and instead donning the servant's towel and washing the feet of others.

The best economy only comes when we get our hands dirty in the service of others.

(to be continued ...)

Economics, Part VIII: Freedom

Neo: The Architect told me that if I didn't return to the Source, Zion would be destroyed by midnight tonight.
Oracle: Please ... You and I may not be able to see beyond our own choices, but that man can't see past any choices.
Neo: Why not?
Oracle: He doesn't understand them - he can't. To him they are variables in an equation. One at a time each variable must be solved and countered. That's his purpose: to balance an equation.
Neo: What's your purpose?
Oracle: To unbalance it.

I know, the Matrix trillogy has been done to death, but let's face it, the fact is that freedom is more or less THE theme of the three movies. They also happen to be a personal favorite, and this is my blog. Off we go ...

We have thus far considered the nature and the endgame of economic systems. Both have their advantages and their disadvantages, yet both tend to work to the same ends, through different means. Why is it, then, that the world continues to turn? Why haven't our economic systems fallen so far into disarray that we're all subjects to a single human power? Given our collective memory of the endless cycle of rise and fall from power, why do we bother to cooperate? The answer, I think, lies in one element in this system that we have not yet considered, an element that makes or breaks the very nature of the system itself, put to good use: choice.

Choice is what gives us our ability to go against the flow, to disregard our "fight or flight" instincts, or to do something contrary to the popular opinion of the society. We can choose to go to the store or to make do with what we have; we can throw the subsequent garbage away or recycle it or even just pitch it out the window. We can wear the popular clothing or we can wear something comfortable; regardless of the pressures placed on us from many sides - society, culture, even the laws of nature - we are still able to choose.

It was C.S. Lewis that said that predestination and free will are the same thing, two sides of the same coin. Actually, to be honest, so far he's the ONLY one who I've ever heard say this. We are hybrid beings, he wrote, born into a world of sin through no fault of our own, yet we are asked to begin making choices that will affect the rest of our own lives, even our own salvation. Our choices have consequences - destinies, as it were - and our destiny presents us with choices to be made which will make or break the path we're on. Choice is to causality like yin is to yang; the one must go with the other. Freedom, then, is our capacity to make choices, our ability to weigh the consequences and choose, however consciously or subconsciously, a course of action based upon what we perceive is the best outcome. This includes our ability to choose a couse of action that might not actually be the best outcome.

Put another way, we are not held to one set of actions. The choices we make change, and indeed, shape the very future that is so uncertain. I can choose to eat a hot dog or to eat something else or even to eat nothing at all. Perhaps I choose to wait for a while and THEN eat something. Either way, the choice is still mine; I can choose to follow the law or I can choose not to. I don't even have to eat if I don't want to (though the fact that I usually want to could tell you something about my waistline).

But in the end, there is another sort of freedom which we do not have, and that is freedom from consequences. This is the "yang" to the "yin" of choice. We are not free of causality as popular culture has led us to believe; we will reap what we sow. I cannot jump from a bridge and then expect not to fall into the river below, gravity being what it is. Every choice sets in motion other events, provides new decisions to be made and eliminates others.

For example, a choice was made a long, long time ago, but human history has reflected this decision ever since. We could talk through the story of Eden at great length, but even if the story is merely metaphor, something happened to distance humanity from its Maker. The author of Genesis records that a couple ate "the fruit" of a tree of knowledge. At some point, our species made a choice that blinded us to the consequences of doing things on our own, without the Creator. We began to think - deceived or not - that maybe there were no consequences. We were wrong.

One reason that the Incarnation is such a miracle is that God did (and does) what no one else could: he interrupted us (as a species) somewhere between cause and effect. We sin, and yet he gives us the chance to avoid the ultimate consequences of those choices, taking the penalties upon himself instead. As a missionary, I usually like to look at the incarnation for the way in which it exemplifies God making himself known and making the effort to relate to us on our own terms - in the flesh, face-to-face, sandle-to-sand. But in another way, in the grand scheme of things, this is not enough by itself. It is a lot, for sure, but it is not the whole picture. The Christian story is one in which the One who was not the cause took the effects; He removevd the consequences of the actions of another and took them upon himself. God, in essence, unbalances the equation; he alone understood the consequences of our choice and took it upon himself to give us back our dignity to choose a path, rather than allowing us to reap the ultimate consequence. The Creator found a loophole in the rules; he took the fall for the Created.

And that changed everything.

(to be continued ...)

Economics, Part VI: Heuristics

An empire requires that human beings succumb to the illusion of dependence on the system. Without this illusion, the empire as such cannot exist. In a way, it is like this for every culture - the culture as a generalized whole has to buy into its own ideas, otherwise it wouldn't cohere. It is only by making processes unconscious that a culture or society can function; we call them "heuristics" in psychology.

The heuristic is a funny little idea noticed first in biopsychology. Somebody noticed that the human mind is capable of a whole lot of processing, but not enough to deal with every single stimulus that comes from the environment around us. Think about your perception for a moment; when you look at the world, what happens? You tend to focus on certain things, as opposed to others. For example, if you are sitting in class (as I am now), there are many options for your attention - you can focus on the professor, of course, but there are many other sights, sounds, and smells to notice. You can see and hear other students typing on their laptops (often in facebook, not powerpoint or onenote); you can focus on the sound of the air conditioning; you could focus on the feel of the chair beneath you; you could focus on the feel of your clothes sitting on your body; you could focus on the smell of the coffee of the guy a few rows down, or the sound of your laptop fan; you could focus on the constant shifting and sniffling of the guy behind you.

So why don't you focus on those things? Because you have heuristics - mental short-cuts - that tell you those things are not significant in the context of a classroom. Instead, you're supposed to focus on the professor, who is teaching. But ok, how do you know who the professor is? You have a heuristic for that too - it's the person who stands at the front of the classroom and tells you things from a notebook or a powerpoint. Usually the person is older than you, and usually the person is better dressed than you are. If this seems obvious to you, it's because your heuristics are working - they're those little unspoken assumptions that help you make your mental perception more accurate. Over time these heuristics become more and more unconscious, as the evidence in their favor mounts and the contradictions fade (as we get used to their use), and we become "set in our ways." They allow the mind the capacity to process higher functions, such as logic and emotions, because it doesn't need spend as many resources to process raw sensory information.

If heuristics are thus necessary to the human condition, it is their abuse that perpetuates Empire. When people take their heuristics for granted, when heuristics go unquestioned, they leave the heuristics open for someone else to take advantage of them. Heuristics are never perfect, and are meant to be dynamic rather than static; there are always "exceptions to the rule," as it were, but when someone does not allow those exceptions, he or she does not allow for the limited nature of perception in his or her tiny little corner of the world. However, if someone else were to convince a person that his or her heuristics were static (solidifying them into "stereotypes"), the person would then become trapped in an illusion of simplicity. For example, instead of allowing the category "professor" to include somebody wearing jeans and a sweater (which is less traditional), one might stubbornly maintain that professors ONLY wear suits and ties. It's too simple of a category that doesn't allow for diversity; "professors" (or whatever) become a closed system, incapable of change or addition. Amplify this to a large number of heuristics and add a dose of ethnocentrism ("our heuristics are better", as any human being does with his or her own perceptions, which is then amplified in community), and suddenly you are on the path towards Empire. When this large group of people believe the world to be starkly simple, they have given up their ability to critique themselves, and thus the ability to change for the better.

Since the heuristic element is an intrapersonal element, within the individual (although there are such things as "collective heuristics"), it is with individual heuristics that the problem of empire begins - and must end. Massive cultural shifts do not happen because of a movement that begins with the masses, with the collective, but rather at the level of the individual, with a few people that move beyond established traditions, heuristics, or cultural assumptions. Empire is thwarted primarily by individuals that then become a collective movement.

In other words, Empire is thwarted by choice.

(to be continued ...)

* * *

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

Stomach Trouble

Sometimes we use labels for ourselves to help make up for shortcomings. I'm an agnostic Christian because I have to be. I'm too naive, too trusting of people, when I should be more skeptical. I think I'm a skeptic, but then something like this happens to make me question every assumption all over again.

The world is a dangerous and uncertain place.

People are not always like you think, and they're not always like you. Not everybody has good intentions, and not everybody holds other people with high esteem. Some people think other people are there to be used. I guess we must all feel that, to some degree, but the best of us learn to deal with that inside ourselves better than the rest.

I've had a lot of thoughts popping around my head the last twelve hours ever since I found out. I'm not one hudred percent certain yet, but the evidence is mounting up. Before things happen to us we think we know how everything works, but we don't. We think we're smart enough, that we can spot the inconsistencies, but that's not really true. We don't tend to think about what we didn't do, we think about what we did, we think about the experiences we've had that make us good people, not the experiences we haven't had that make us ignorant.

We're biased.

When I first hung up the phone I thought I was going to be sick. How could I have been so blind? So stupid? I handed it all over on a silver platter and paid them for the experience. I know this all sounds very dramatic, but for someone who tends to think the best of people (despite his claims to be a real skeptic), it's a very shocking experience. Let me start back a little ways.

My wife is computer-phobic, sort of. It's not that she hates using computers, but she's convinced that they hate her. But I figured that what that really meant was that she just wanted them to do different things than they did, or at least, if they did those things, do them in a different way. PCs have a way of freezing up or not working when she uses them. It's not really that the PC is bad, just that she didn't know what to do with them. So one day I had an idea and brought her to the store and she tried an Apple iMac.

Worked like a charm.

But how to afford this little wonder? Enter craigslist and the two laptops we had, one sitting around, the other in use but potentially replaceable. The first, the older of the two, I sold in two days, to a guy here in Lexington who met me at a Starbucks. No problems, really nice guy, bought it for his kid friend to write out some "tracks" (which I found is slang for "music"). For the other laptop, the newer and far more pricey of the two, I got several offers, all of which offered to pay with paypal. I chose the buyer who offered the most (from California) and who was willing to work with my timeframe (I had to get the mac first to transfer data) and went from there. I sent her a bill using paypal, and received an email from paypal telling me that her payment had passed but would not be posted to my account until I sent confirmation tracking numbers for shipment.

To Nigeria.

What I was thinking at this point, I don't know. Hindsight is a lot better, I'm finding out, because at the time, I was quite certain that the whole thing was legit - after all, Paypal had confirmed the payment which included shipping. So I mailed it, and started getting emails from paypal about how there was a glitch with posting the money. Then one saying that the glitch had been fixed, but that she had paid too much for shipping, and that I should send the extra to her via a banking transaction service. That's when it stopped making sense to me, and I contacted paypal directly, by phone. They'd never emailed me confirmation of the payment, nor had they ever had a glitch.

I'd been had.

Now, I'm not 100% certain of this yet, and I keep hoping it's some sort of horrible mistake. But I'm more and more figuring out that it's a mistake on my part for being so naive, so blind, so stupid, and so horribly ignorant of the way the real world of the internet works. I let my own anxiousness to get that new computer for my wife blind what little street-sense I have, those little warning bells in my head - oh, and a warning from a friend at school about using craiglist - they all got covered over by my impatience.

I didn't think. And I paid dearly for the experience.

The helplessness of the whole situation is what kills me the most. I can't do a think to get the money or the laptop back. Fortunately the laptop was completely wiped of everything before I sent it, but still - a silver platter in the form of USPS International Mail, who can't recall the shipment since it's left US borders. Fedex or UPS could've, I've just learned, but the buyer specifically requested USPS. I've gone back and looked through all the emails and all the little inconsistencies are starting to add up, to fit together into a new bigger picture. And it's not pretty.

And yet I keep hearing that little voice in my head. Two of them actually; one that tells me how horribly naive and worthless I am, how I should've seen it, and the other that says "give them your coat too." One says "they hurt you, get even," the other says "love and pray for those who persecute you." I believe very strongly in free will - we choose to do what we do. Sometimes other free agents distract us as we choose, but ultimately our actions are our responsibility. But I also believe that God has plans too. I don't know how, but somehow He manages to direct all of this towards good ends. I worry about what that laptop will be used for (hopefully the worst it could be is more spam in my inbox about Nigerian fortunes just waiting to make their way into US bank accounts), but maybe some good will come of it, even if it's that I've learned something the hard way. But it'll stick, and when my stomach stops being queasy, I'll be stronger for it. I'm naive, but I do learn quickly.

Nigeria, I'm trying to forgive you, and I'm trying to pray for you. Maybe one day I'll even hand you my shirt too.

But my stomach still hurts.

Chrisitan Agnostic, part VII: Disciple

By now I hope that it makes at least a little sense how a person could start as an agnostic and end up a Christian. Perhaps Thomas' example even helps us see that it's possible to be an agnostic and still place one's faith in Christ. But - and this is directed particularly at any reader who calls him or herself a Christian - why is it important to maintain one's skepticism? Why must a person remain a Christian Agnostic once he has stepped out in faith, instead of simply a "Christian"?

The first thought that comes to mind is that it is towards our own benefit. Skeptics are ever-learning. They do not live under the illusion that they have everything together, that all the answers that are worth having have already been discovered. A skeptic is ever probing, on a journey into the mountains, its view growing ever wider, more beautiful, more complete; a skeptic begins to see connections and the bigger pictures because he has stopped dissecting the world and started building it back together. The questions asked by skeptics - disciples, really - probe ever-deeper, ever-refining the broader picture. When I said this is to "our" own benefit, I meant the plural - this is not just an individual thing, although it is that. The questions asked by the skeptic impact everyone around him, like a pebble thrown into a pond, its ripples caressing the furthest shores.

Agnosticism is really a tool, a method. It is a way of seeking answers, but realizing that those answers can never be complete. The skeptic realizes that answers only generate more question marks, not periods, produce more new subjects to investigate, new applications. How many times did Jesus answer a question with another question? To know that you don't really know, not really, is a humbling experience; when we remain skeptical, we maintain our humility towards our own abilities. We take the focus off of ourselves and begin placing it elsewhere, on the investigation of Truth. And that's what a skeptic is after: Truth. In short, a skeptic is a disciple.


A disciple does not want half-answers, to behave only a little bit like the Master; the disciple wants it just right. Skepticism not only aids us in our humility, but it also aids us in excellence. We are ever-improving, ever-growing because we see that the painting is never quite finished; we could always get the colors just a little clearer, or play with the clay just a little more, play the music just a bit better, if only we'd try one more time. It moves us forward; it does not allow stagnance or decay. We maintain awareness of our humanity, rather than becoming shells of people that find dispute with one another over the small answers. It's remarkable how often Christians proved the necessity of Christ's death and resurrection simply out of their petty disputes over a single word. Instead of acknowledging their inability to find The Answer, they allowed their own arrogance to blind them, as if God is an equation to be solved rather than a beautiful mystery that beckons to us yet is big enough that we cannot ever get to its end. That's why relationships are such an amazing image - there are always new things to learn about a person, and it takes a lifetime to learn them. Every time the world around me changes, I get to know God a little better in new circumstances.

Most importantly, skepticism helps us maintain connections with those who do not believe as we do. If Jesus was serious when he said "go make disciples of all nations," then how are we to communicate the good news and help make disciples if we do not speak the language of those we seek to help? Without a healthy sense of skepticism about our own beliefs, how are we to answer when our faith is challenged?

I've been reading Wesley this week for my Christian History class, and his answer was one of incredulity; he couldn't fathom why anyone would deny Christ, or deny God, or deny sin. Could not fathom it. It bothered him that somebody would even consider denying what was, to him, obvious. And yet he acknowledged that people still denied his message no matter how well he spoke. See, Wesley lived in an age when he could rightly assume that those things were givens, assumptions built in the very fabric of common society. Though many rebelled against it, it was still anchored within their culture to know "right" from "wrong"; a solid, universal morality still was assumed to exist, even if its finer points were debated.

But we no longer live in that time.

As Christians, if we do not understand those that we seek to help, even slightly, then any actions we take are fruitless. Skepticism of one's own position helps him see the places where the non-believer might take issue. It gives us the ability to say "well, I can see why you might think that, and this is how I've worked through the issue," or perhaps "sure, I get what you're saying, and it's hard for me too, and here's why ... but I'm still working on it." We become more real, human beings with flesh and blood and even doubts and misgivings. We remind ourselves that we are still like everybody else, that we might be wrong, and that it's not worth shedding blood over our beliefs when it's entirely possible that the other guy might be right. But it's also not an excuse to just allow them the comfort of thinking that their beliefs are just fine as they are. The Christian Agnostic does the world a favor by asking the hard questions; through the questions, everybody begins to understand reality better. If we can inspire the world to once again seek the Truth, humbly and honestly and openly, we would be in a very good place indeed. To seek is to find, and once the door has opened ... well, the story doesn't really end there, does it?

Christian Agnostic, part VI: Doubt

Sometimes I wonder if everything that will ever be thought has already been written down somewhere; we can always find precedents. For example, I just found the evolution debate in a text by Athanasius from the early fourth century. The worldview of the Christian Agnostic is not totally unprecidented. There was a man even among Jesus' disciples that was a skeptic, that was willing to voice his doubts when others were not.

His name was Thomas.

But contrary to popular belief, Thomas was not the only one who doubted. In fact, both Mark and Luke's accounts record that though the disciples are told by both Mary Magdeline and several travellers that Jesus is alive, they didn't believe it (Mark 16:9-11, Luke 24:9-12). In fact, in Luke's account, it took Jesus eating and allowing them to touch his scars to convince ALL the disciples, not just Thomas (v.36ff).

But this is not about the other disciples. Peter and John ran to the tomb and were amazed, according to John's account. Jesus appeared to the disciples and they believed. But Thomas is, for some reason, away from the other disciples on this particular day.

People give Thomas a hard time, I think, because he had to ask for proof. But this sort of condemnation misses something: the other disciples already had it. Proof, I mean. They'd already seen the indirect evidence: the empty tomb, the stone rolled away, the strips of linnen laying empty on a stone slab. They'd heard the stories told by the women of an Angel and of meeting a mysterious Gardener, and of a pair of disciples on the road to Emmaus encountering a wise stranger. But Thomas missed all this. Why, we don't know, it doesn't say. But he's not there. The disciples tell him all this stuff, but Thomas is a skeptic, a true agnostic: "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side," he said, "I will not believe."

I think we often misinterpret this skepticism. Thomas doesn't want to just be told about the whole event by others - he wants to experience Jesus himself, to feel the wounds and touch the hole in Jesus' side where the Centaurian's spear broke open his heart after death. For Thomas, someone who seems used to getting the proof he needs in a world FULL of decievers, the experience is necessary. And I think the story of the Gospel would be less without Thomas' doubt. Because Thomas asked for proof, Jesus gave it to him - he actually appeared to him and let him touch the nail marks in his wrists, the scars on his forehead, the hole in his side. He ate bread and drank wine to show the disciples that he wasn't just some apparition, some mass hallucination, but a living, breathing, back-from-the-dead guy who was who he claimed to be.

But Thomas was the one who was honest and asked.

The rest of the disciples, I think, don't admit their skepticism. The gospels resonate with their doubt, especially Mark's gospel - he likes to talk about how the disciples just didn't get it, didn't understand. But Thomas goes ahead and voices his concerns, puts himself behind his doubt, and here's the thing:

Jesus actually answered.

Thomas' response? "My Lord and my God!" It's not a question in his mind anymore - he's had the experience, and it was all he needed. He suspended disbelief and lo and behold Jesus really was there. John talks about Thomas a lot, compared to the other gospels. I think it's ironic and somewhat telling that earlier in his gospel (ch. 11), he describes a scene where Jesus is going to go and heal Lazarus in a town where the priests warned him not to return lest he be stoned. Thomas is the one who says "let's go and die with him." Thomas, incidentally, is credited (with minor historical criticism) with the evangelization of India. There are still churches there, in the southern regions, that trace their spiritual heritage to Thomas' missionary journey. The experience of being with Jesus was what Thomas needed and it transformed him into someone with enough faith to travel farther than any of the other disciples ever did to spread the good news.

Jesus goes on to say "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." I don't think that this is a condemnation - Jesus doesn't say "you moron, why didn't you believe the others?" He doesn't get angry, doesn't reproach Thomas. Instead, he simply says "you asked and I gave you the proof. But lots of people from here on out won't get that sort of direct proof; and it's to their credit that they believe anyway." It's not foolishness to ask God for the experience - but it requires a suspension of disbelief. We have to actually seek as if God is there for this to make sense. Otherwise, as the scriptures say, it appears as foolishness. But when we have the experience, what else can we do but exclaim "it's True!" and serve Him with the rest of our lives, with the best that we can give.

(to be continued)

Christian Agnostic, Part V: Forward

Let's sum up what we've said so far. We can't know everything; there's too much to know and our senses, memories, and in general, our humanity just aren't reliable enough. Because of this, we have to start with the assumption and suspician that we may be wrong. The Bible is not a science text, it is a text written by people with their own cultures and their own languages and motivations that God inspired to write the way they did. And so we read the scriptures with the assumption that our own history and culture and experiences are clouding our vision, and learn to read it from the perspective of those who wrote it, doing our best to push our own culture aside until we come around to applying it.

But apply it we must. How then can we move forward as Christians? If scripture is about a relationship with a non-verifiable being based on non-verifiable history, what's the point?

Faith.

Faith is the point. As I mentioned in my first post on this, the Christian agnostic is not just an agnostic, he is a person who realizes that he must make a choice, and chooses to believe a certain way. What is agnosticism not? It is not the belief in no God; it cannot be, by definition, because that would mean having drawn a definite conclusion on the subject. To claim to believe no God exists for sure is to claim to be an atheist. While most agnostics really end up as atheists, I think there's another way to put this that might help.

Since we look at the world based on our perspective, which is generated from our history, our culture, our (subjective) experiences, our personalities, etc, it would follow that we are unable to do much about the things we believe. But human beings have proven (within skeptical reason) their ability to freely choose to change. I'm beginning to think that this applies to our cultural lenses as well. Our ability to think creatively, through the lenses of another, change our worldview every time. By inserting ourselves into the story, by placing ourselves in the midst of a worldview and immersing ourselves in a new culture, we become different, we are able to see things we never saw before.

I learned this in Australia. Despite the fact that, to many Americans, the Aussies SEEM mostly like us, they're in fact quite different. Of course there are similarities, but they prove quite effective in masking some much larger differences that run beneath the skin. Australians, for example, do not value work in the same way that Americans do. Americans view work as a way of life; we work ourselves to the bone for the chance to get ahead in a never-ending downward spiral. The Aussies, on the other hand, strongly value relaxation, so much so that their (socialist) society has build-in safeguards, such as 4-weeks vacation to entry-level salaried positions. Americans are lucky to get that, even if they work for twenty years in the same place, and often don't bother to take all four weeks for fear of "under-performing." It took me living among the Aussies to learn to see my own view of work; being confronted with an alternative viewpoint helped me to grow in understanding myself.

Since then, I've often wished that everybody could live in another culture to learn the way I did. While it's obviously impractical and more or less impossible for 350 million Americans to go live abroad for a year, I do think it's possible to recognize that within our own country, there are many cultures, and that it IS possible to learn this way. To move forward, to learn and grow in a new perspective, the Christian Agnostic must grow beyond his self-imposed borders and try something new. Hang out at a bar with some guys playing foosball, go to a football game, spend some time with the poor in the inner city ... just do something you wouldn't normally do, and keep doing it. Put yourself out in the open, at risk, in a foreign place with foreign people - even if it's just down the road.

And this is just like the way the Christian Agnostic learns about God - he suspends disbelief, as it were, and prays. I did this when I was fourteen, and was surprised when I actually got an answer. I was so surprised that I kept on conversing.

See, relationships are about interaction, and when the Agnostic moves beyond his skepticism (though keeping it in the background, an undercurrent in our stream of investigation), he begins to see the world in a new way. By taking leaps of faith into new cultures, new surroundings, new ideas, and new practices, the agnostic begins to uncover truth in a way that, as a pure skeptic, he could not. Now, understand that the skepticism must still be maintained, lest the Chrisitan Agnostic come to believe in everything that feels good. The question "why" is always helpful and should be ever-present. Agnosticism, in other words, is always a starting point. It is a baseline that gives the story authenticity and credibility, rather than a conclusion. To conclude agnosticism is pointless and leads to depression and intellectual death and despair; to begin with agnosticism leads to investigation and discovery. While the Christian Agnostic remains ever-aware that everything he is experiencing, learning, reasoning, feeling, and practicing could turn out to be wrong, this baseline allows the Christian Agnostic to further refine attitudes and claims towards and about the Truth. By ever-questioning, we are looking ever-deeper, and thus constantly growing.

(to be continued)

Christian Agnostic, Part III: Scripture

"Is there anyone who ever remembers
changing their mind from the paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who Is there anyone who really recalls
ever breaking rank at all for something someone yelled real loud one time?
Oh everyone believes in how they think it ought to be
Oh everyone believes, and they're not going easily

Belief is a beautiful armor, it makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching underwater, you never can hit who you're tryin' for
Some need the exhibition, some have to know they tried
It's the chemical weapon for the war that's raging on inside
Oh everyone believes from emptiness to everything
Oh everyone believes, and no one's going quietly ...

[John Mayer]

I'm not a huge fan of summer school, and to make matters worse, I'm taking an online class for the first time which is turning out much as I expected it to: there have been some pleasant surprises (it seems I provoke a lot of conversation with controversial opinions), but on the whole, it's a bit rough. Suffice it to say that I'm glad it's the only online class I'll be taking. One of the aforementioned conversations that we've been having (the longest running thread to date, actually) is about scripture. What is it? How do you treat it? Who gets to say how to interpret it?

It's been tense.

And why not? Scripture is the basis for the belief of so many Christians worldwide, and so of course they want to protect it, to make sure that nobody does anything "sacriligious" to it. Truth is truth, they say, and scripture is inerrant in every way. To be clear, I have no problem with saying that - that it's inerrant, I mean. But I do have to ask, what is inerrancy? Scripture might be "inerrant" (not wrong), but what does that tell us, and how does it help?

I think what claims of biblical inerrency usually mean in context are that OUR INTERPRETATIONS of scripture are inerrant. It doesn't matter what the interpretation is, though it is usually a literalist interpretation that has little regard for anything but one's first impressions of the text. "God informs my worldview," it is claimed, "and thus I have no use for human investigation and discovery because God has already told me what it says." Most often what happens is that we start to think that as Christians, we have some sort of monopoly on Truth. And that's simply not true. The next time you go to the doctor, for instance, you're likely to be treated by an agnostic or an atheist. That's not a rule, of course, there are plenty of doctors who are Christians too ... and Hindus and Jews and Sikhs. The point is that they are very, very smart and continually making discoveries about the truths of our bodies, about chemistry and physics; they are investigating truth, and they are using it to better people.

Now, what am I NOT saying? I'm not saying that the rest of the world has salvation figured out. I'm not saying that Jesus is one among many paths to truth. I'm saying that, while a more holistic truth requires Jesus as its foundation, truth is far bigger than one simple yet necessary statement. Anything that is true must be of God because He is Truth (and that I know it says in scripture). But so many Christians resist this because it might mean sharing their perceived power over others with salvation language; it can feel very intoxicating to "know" that you are going to pardise while those around you who do not think as you do are going to some place ... else, with pain and suffering and "gnashing of teeth," and potentially, nails on chalkboard. Scripture is accorded a category unto itself; we think that because we're Christian we already know everything there is to know about the human condition because "it says so in the Bible," and all we have to do is find the relevant verse (ah, proof texting).

See, the issue is not whether somebody else is actually wrong or not. The issue is that we Christians want to be right already. We don't want to have to do the research, to go through a process of investigation and positing ideas that could turn out to be wrong ... because that would make US wrong. Furthermore, we don't want to have to rely on so-called "secular" research in the social sciences - sociology, history, archeology, psychology, etc. - because that would mean using something developed without a Christian label. We don't want to be the ones informed or influenced by those "less holy" than we are, the "heathens" who've rejected something we hold very dear (that which defines us as Christians). And so we'd rather simply confirm what we already think is true under the guise of having God "on our side" instead of taking a chance and looking through their lenses once or twice.

Searching for truth is hard; it means doubt, it means risk, it means criticism, and it means failure; it means a lot of things that make us uneasy and distort the image we want to portray of a people who have all the answers. We are uncomfortable with those three little words - "I don't know" - because those words inflict that unfomfortable feeling that we may not yet be perfect. But I have news for the Christians that the rest of the world has already figured out:

You're not.

Deal with it. Admitting this is the first step towards recovery. Or maybe re-recovery. You do not have all the answers yet. You are not yet complete, you do not yet "lack nothing," you are part of a world that is still in rebellion. This world is in the redemptive process. Your refusal to see this is, ironically, confirmation of your status as a sinner. But that's ok, there's still hope for you, you have time yet to grow in understanding and grace.

So is scripture inerrant? I think so, in the "inspired" sense of the word. Yes, God mystically, somehow (I emphasize the "somehow") influenced those who wrote the text, and that makes it good and useful and helpful and something we should preserve to the letter, but what is that to you, a mere human being with a culture and a history and a zip code? You look through a lens like everybody else, and your lens has some smudges on it (perhaps some you drew there with indellible ink) that need to be wiped away. When you read the Bible, you read it as through an opaque window; you can make out some of it, but more likely your culture and history and social influences have grown you into a person that reads things a certain way with certain biases that don't necessarily reflect God's biases.

To read scripture as an agnostic, then, is to read scripture through the lens of one who is starting from scratch, who makes every effort to draw no conclusions from the start because he or she does not live in the illusion that he or she has all the answers. The agnostic Christian reads scripture assuming that God will confront him there, but knows that God worked through particular people in particular cultures in order to create the books we read today. This isn't about taking off our lenses, it's about understanding why we have them and that we CAN'T take them off, and learning to see through them more clearly. And so we start further back than our assumptions and learn about the culture, learn about the literary elements, learn about the psychology, learn about the history ... we take apart the context and reassemble it until we understand how the authors might have thought, why they might have said things the way they did, used the images and metaphors the way they did. Those authors, the ones that God inspired, were human beings with free wills who chose to phrase things in a certain way, chose to speak to a particular people group, who had parents and kids and sore feet and sandles.

To approach it this way is to approach it with humility: you do not assume its agenda for it, but rather you learn how it was read by those who read it first, and then you begin to draw applications for our time and our little corner of the planet. In this way, you honor both the authors and the Inspiration for the scriptures. But when Christians close their minds to the outside world and its ideas, to truth in other corners of humanity, we begin a process that leads inevitably to one end: we will eventually close our minds to God.

And that is the start of our downfall.

(to be continued)

Christian Agnostic, Part II: Verb

What does it mean to call myself a "Christian Agnostic"? On the outset, the term is a loaded one, especially in today's evangelical and fundamentalist circles - agnosticism is looked upon quite disfavorably, as if it's a plague upon our nation, eroding at our values and distorting our destiny as a Christian America.

I'll get to that later in the series and why it irritates me.

For now, let's start with the basic concept of agnosticism, and go from there. To be an agnostic is to be a skeptic, to look at the world and realize that there is no possible way to know with 100% certainty anything that you want to. Our senses are not infallible; they have a remarkable tendency to fail on us from both external and internal causes. For instance, have you ever thought you heard somebody knock at the door, to discover that nobody was there? Or perhaps thought you saw something out of the corner of your eye - or perhaps even right in front of you - that wasn't there? How did you come to decide that those were hallucinations? You verified it with other people's senses that were ostensibly working well.

But why should their senses be any more accurate at that moment than your own?

True agnosticism understands that every act of belief requires a leap of faith, primarily faith that one's own senses are functioning properly and transmitting the information to one's mind in a way that is reliable and accurate. There cannot be certainty of the reliability, only relative certainty. But doubt is there, and so the agnostic is skeptical of any information he or she is given. To "know" for an agnostic, is a relative term, always heavily qualified with a statement such as "but I could be wrong, and so I continue to investigate."

However, if an agnostic was realistic, he or she would realize that taking "no position" is still making a set of belief claims. There is no such thing as a completely unbiased position, no such thing as a person that looks at the world without the influences of others or the influences of faulty equipment. Everyone has social influence, cultural influence, historical influence, and an informing worldview. In fact, to say "I take no solid beliefs" is to unconsciously take a set of beliefs and become a hypocrite! For this reason, the agnostic must still make a decision on what to believe (and a conscious decision is better than an unconscious one), and therefore must use whatever means at his or her disposal - senses (however faulty, they're all he has), experiences, investigation, and ultimately, another leap of faith - to discover the best worldview. The agnostic, though, will not cement in that worldview so strongly that it cannot be reinterpreted with new data, new input. This is not to say that every belief is ejected at the slightest whim, new information is also regarded with skepticism, especially when it conflicts with the worldview. The agnostic, in other words, is ever a seeker, drawing at best temporary conclusions, but remaining skeptical of information that challenges those conclusions.

I have chosen to put my faith in the living Triune God.

It is just as if I were to have decided that there is no God; I just happen to have experiences that testify very strongly to His existence. A Christian Agnostic, then, is one who has made the decision, in light of evidence as well as experience (and experience is a broad term that can include metaphysical realities) to believe in a "biblical" worldview. Now, what that means can be very tricky, and I think I'll wait until the next couple posts to talk about that. But suffice it to say that scripture is important.

I make no apologies for the fact that this is an imperfect worldview because that's the point - there IS no perfect worldview, at least as far as human beings are concerned. Christian Agnosticism is my effort, in a world that is broken and difficult and uncertain, to find a meaningful way of explaining the fact that I still have to live, still have to decide based on some sort of belief system. There is no such thing as "no beliefs", and you're just fooling yourself further to think otherwise. I must choose to place my faith accordingly.

You'll notice that Jesus didn't ask us to go and make believers of all nations - he asked us to make disciples. A disciple is one who follows and asks questions. In other words, Jesus expected us to forever be seekers of truth. "Seek and you shall find," he said. He was confident that our seeking would ultimately lead us to Him, as long as we didn't give up. And then we were to go out and help others begin and continue seeking. The hardest mission field for Christianity is not Islam or Hinduism, it is agnosticism for the simple reason that most agnostics are actually apathetic; they don't care about making a decision any one way and allow the currents of culture to pull them in many directions. Atheists and Muslims are far more likely to convert because they already take for granted that they believe something strongly; agnostics smile, say "that's nice" and ignore you.

It's time we contextualized the faith in a way that agnostics could appreciate. It's time we began inspiring the apathetic agnostics (and apathetic Christians as well!) to once again investigate truth because it IS important, to seek and investigate and discover in the context of a humble community.

(to be continued)

The Eroticization of Worship

Yes, it can be that bad. What happens when you get everybody into church, face them forward towards screens and a band (or a choir, or an organ, or an alter - whatever) and then sing songs about being "in love with Jesus"? Incidentally, church is the only place that this whole facing-forward-and-singing happens anyway, but are we really singing what we mean? My thanks to Al Hirsch and Matt Stone for pointing me towards this video of an interview with Matt Redman; watch it and think long and hard about this.

What Would You Say?

I wrote this as an allegory for my Doctrine class. No, the character is not me, but I was answering a question involving what I might say in similar circumstances. I have actually been in conversations a bit like this, but the circumstances were a tad different. Anyway, I hope you like it. Enjoy.

* * *

I checked my watch as I pulled into the Abuelos parking lot; half an hour late was too late for my taste. John and Mary knew I had a tendency to show up a bit off schedule, but this was pushing it, even with my lame “my cell is dead” excuse. Especially on today, of all days; the anniversary of their son’s tragic football injury, paralyzing him from the waist down. I wondered if I’d see Mark today. I expected so, since Mexican was his favorite, but then again, travel with a paraplegic is never easy, even with the new vehicle they’d had to purchase since Mark’s accident. I parked, tossed my useless cell phone onto the passenger seat, and made my way into the restaurant. The hostess smiled at me warmly; Wendy was one of my parishioners, and it seemed appropriate that she would be working here today – after all, she was Mark’s girlfriend. I tried to push thoughts of unequal yokes out of my head. She’d stuck with him after she’d been baptized, and if anyone was to reach the Smiths, it was her.

“They’re waiting for you in the back,” she said, “over there.” I thanked her, always surprised by her warmth and genuineness – she always made you feel as though you were the most important person there.

Mary waved me over and I sat down. Mark smirked as I picked up the menu and then handed it to the waiter who’d appeared promptly; I already knew what I wanted. After I’d ordered, John raised his Margarita and said “to friends, who stick with us through trouble.” He took a swig and then gave me a pointed look. “You know,” he started, “it’s polite to call. But that’s ok – they have free chips here.” I mumbled an embarrassed apology.

“No worries mate,” he said – he was Australian – “we’ll put it on your tab.” After some more polite conversation, we sat in silence for a minute, sipping our drinks, when suddenly John’s fist hit the table, hard, making water slosh around the rim of my glass. “I just don't get it,” he barked, “How could your god let something like this happen? What’s he on about?” I’d known that this was coming – he’d been hinting at it for a while now – but the force of his question worried me a little; I still wasn’t sure what to say to him.

“John,” I started, slowly, “I know it’s been hard. God knows you’ve all been through a lot …”

“Does he now?” retorted John.

“Ah, yes, He does,” I replied, “but I’m just saying, think about where you’ve come from! Your family has grown together so much since Mark … since he fell. You’re at home more, and I bet Mary appreciates that.” Mary nodded, her eyes wide. Mark looked embarrassed, staring into his cup of Pepsi and toying with the straw. John grabbed another chip, his expression turning thoughtful.

“It has been nice,” said Mary, “even if it took this to wake us up.” Mark shrugged. Teenagers.

“But couldn’t he have done something else?” asked John, “Why did it have to be our son?! If God wanted me to stay home, why didn’t he break my back?”

“I couldn’t really say,” I said, “except that … well … you sound a lot like Jesus right now.”

“Pardon?” They all looked surprised.

“Well sure,” I said, sounding the words out carefully. Where was I going with this? “Jesus gave himself up for others all the time. It was kinda his thing.”

“You reckon?”

“Sure. And I think Jesus would be happy with the way your family has come together. A lot of families let this sort of thing tear them apart, but no, not the Smiths. The Smiths don’t let a little thing like pain get in the way, they get back on their feet!” Mark grimaced.

“Sorry mate,” I said, backpedaling a bit, “but let’s face it, your arms are ripped right now.” His eyes glinted devilishly as he smiled. “Let’s face it,” I continued, “your family is a lot more like the sort of family Jesus wants to see since that accident happened. You let something good happen in your life even though it could have been ugly. I think you’re closer to Jesus than you realize.” Mary looked thoughtful. John looked incredulous. Mark turned red. I hadn’t told them that Mark had been reading through scripture with Wendy. John bristled.

“It doesn’t seem fair though; why should a good God tolerate such … evil!”

“God doesn’t like suffering, if that’s what you mean.” I paused, feeling for the words. “But we all knew that accidents were a potential risk when Mark started playing football. Why is it God’s fault if we make a choice to risk our necks – or backs – and then something bad happens? But I again point you towards the good things that have happened. You got your priorities in order, and that takes guts, man. Guts.” John sighed.

“No thanks to you,” he said, “I think that I might have just walked out, as frustrating as it was.”

“Well,” I said, “what are friends for? Besides, you’ve got a wonderful woman here, she deserves to keep you, and you deserve to keep her! Why should a little accident get in the way of stuff that’s important? Sure it’s not as convenient now, but Mark seems to be doing well.” I nodded over at Mark, whose eye had caught Wendy’s. They were grinning at each other like only teenagers could. Ah, I thought, young love.

Our food came. “Care to pray?” I asked. John looked suspicious. After a pause, he slowly nodded.

“Give it a go,” he said, “maybe there’s something to this God of yours. Should I fold my hands?”

Decentralization in Christian Missions

The Decentralized Church
Reclaiming the Spirit of the Heterarchy for Mission

By Chris Logan

In 2006, a remarkable book was released called The Starfish and the Spider. Its authors posit that there are movements in which large groups of people behave less like organizations with a clear chain of command and more like organisms. While these organizations might have clear spokesmen, distributed power and leadership (even no discernable leader), making them hard to kill, but even more so, giving them the ability to do far more than most hierarchies, to survive harsher environments, and to proliferate at astonishing rates. They called these movements “decentralized,” and there is a remarkable correlation between this concept and the many churches through history that have succeeded where others failed.

Decentralization and the Heterarchy

The Starfish and the Spider: A Metaphor
The authors of The Starfish and the Spider use the metaphor of two animals to illustrate the nature of centralized and decentralized organizations: spiders and starfish. The spider represents a concept called “hierarchy.” It is an animal with clear structure; it has a head, a body, glands for web-spinning, legs, etc. If you were to remove, for example, a leg, the spider would be clearly wounded and have a very hard time surviving at the level it had previously enjoyed. However, remove its head, and the spider would die instantly, as the head gives life to the entire organism, directing every activity in the body. Without the head, there is no spider.

The starfish, on the other hand, represents a concept called “heterarchy,” or “decentralization,” and it is much harder to locate than a hierarchy. While the starfish and spider hold similarities in their basic shape, this is where any common thread ends. The starfish has no head. It has a varying number of arms, in which organs exist in multiple redundancies. In fact, to find the most distinct commonalities of one part of a starfish to another, you have to zoom-in to the cellular level. Instead of a brain, the starfish has a neural network spread across the entire starfish[1].

If an arm is removed, rather than damaging the organism, something remarkable happens: the starfish grows another arm to replace it. And the severed arm grows another starfish. Since there is no distinct head (and thus no distinct brain), this works to the starfish’s advantage – the organism cannot be killed in a conventional fashion. Beyond this, the starfish defies our most basic assumptions; it is a simple organism, but time and time again proves it can survive much more readily than a spider can. Cut a starfish apart and you have as many new starfish as you had pieces.

Yet often, we try to find hierarchies where there is actually heterarchy[2]. This is not to say that a heterarchy has no organization, only to say that the organization is at a different level and of a different sort than the hierarchy. In a heterarchy, units are organized at a “cellular” level, in basic units rather than in a dominating structure that requires uniformity. Each cell is unique in some way, but all are connected in a way that turns an otherwise random conglomeration into a functioning whole.

Qualities of the Decentralized Organism
Autonomy and Adaptability of Individual Units
The decentralized organism allows its individual units (called “cells”) autonomy. It is this autonomy that makes the decentralized organism so mysterious; instead of what we usually expect, the units, despite no central organization, continue to work together. For the spider-hierarchy, there is a clear structure, a clear procedure by which all things are done, a clear pathway of information. The head dictates and the body moves. In contrast, a starfish has no such pathway, rather, has multiple smaller pathways that form a network. Every part of the network has a say; in order for the starfish to move, one leg must move and convince all the others to move as well. Yet it happens at a speed that defies conventional wisdom[3].

Because cells operate with their own autonomy, the decentralized organism can be much more flexible than a hierarchy. Units at the cellular level can respond to crises on their own (re-growing a severed limb, for example), rather than spending valuable time to seek authority from a central command. In other words, they have permission to act on their own, granted by the nature of the organization.

In a hierarchy, the head requires a standard set of operating procedures for the whole organism; in a heterarchy, each cell customizes the basic operating procedures for its unique circumstances; this is called “contextualization,” the indigenization of the concepts that are common to the whole. As a result, the decentralized organism is much harder to detect than the hierarchy because it blends into the culture much more readily. In effect, a heterarchy is the result of many individual units functioning in the harmony of an organic whole. The cells become less visible, and instead of cells, we see an organism[4]. Thus, each network can be readily identified as if it were a whole greater than the sum of its parts, yet the parts themselves are just as important.

Proliferation and Contextualization
The hierarchy grows by addition, because that is the speed at which growth is possible. Because of the greater size of the “canon” that must be replicated into individual units, with greater accuracy, replication becomes slow, and time- and resource-intensive. In addition, all the additional flaws of the hierarchy are replicated into new units, and if, for some reason, new flaws occur in the replication process, these flaws are replicated into every subsequent addition to the organism. Once the cell has been “indoctrinated,” it becomes another part of the chain of command in the hierarchy. It is then encouraged to grow as big as its surrounding environment will allow. Reproduction only happens when the head of the organization allows it; thus, cells are added one at a time, rather than many at once. When decentralized organisms centralize, for example, they are effectively castrated.

Small family farmers throughout Asia have for many centuries joined together to build and manage their own irrigation systems, some of which are marvels of engineering ingenuity and operating efficiency. Yet when government programs inventoried irrigation capacity, they counted only irrigation systems built by the government. They then proceeded to replace village-built and village-managed systems with more costly, less-efficient centrally managed systems. Commonly the new systems were financed by multimillion-dollar loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which the children of farmers would one day be taxed to pay.[5]

Heterarchy, on the other hand, relies on multiplication of much smaller units. Instead of requiring a lengthy indoctrination process, each cell is encouraged to divide and grow, divide and grow. The size of each cell is limited in size, and the amount of indoctrination required is minimal; only the basics of the core traits of the larger organism are communicated, allowing the organism to shape itself, customize itself to its environment[6]. As a result, the cells of a heterarchy tend to be much more outwardly-focused than the hierarchy, which spends much more time focused on indoctrination and internal growth than it does on expansion. In essence, the hierarchy makes new units “like us” while the heterarchy allows new units the freedom to allow the new path they’ve chosen to inform (but not dictate) their expression of the organization within their culture. Since each individual unit is focused on expansion, the organism grows by multiplication (sometimes, exponentially), rather than addition. And because each (new) cell is distinct from other cells, we call this “proliferation.”

The Rallying Point
The trouble with autonomous individual units is that they can easily go in whatever direction they desire. What forms them into a unique whole is the shared bond of the rallying-point, the collective thread between them. In our starfish example, the cells have coalesced into a whole because they share a common “DNA” that allows them to do so[8]. In some organizations, this common element might be a mutual enemy, in others, a philosophy or morality[9]. In many, it is combinations of these. Regardless, decentralized organisms require something common throughout all cells in order to be an organism.

Power, Rank, and Decentralization
The distinction between hierarchy and heterarchy is one of power and its uses. The hierarchy centralizes power into a chain of command; power is concentrated in one place, while the majority is simply expected to do as they’re told. The individual (or small group of individuals) at the “top” of the organization dictate what the organism is to do, and an order of rank decides who has what power and in what degree. Each level of subordinates participates in a “trickle-down” process that eventually communicates goals and procedures to the entire organization. The proverbial turning-radius of a centralized hierarchy, then, is equivalent to that of the Titanic with its three large propellers and single hull; it cannot change its direction very quickly when it sees an iceberg, and once it hits, there is no saving it.

The heterarchy is the equivalent of a fleet of speedboats. Not only does each boat have a very tight turning-radius, but as a group, they can swarm around the iceberg and meet at the other side. The mass of the organization is distributed into small units with many motors, and even if one or two were to hit the iceberg (and die), the group as a whole would be largely unaffected; their boats wouldn’t sink because one or two others did. In a heterarchy, power is distributed throughout the group. While this means that each cell must take individual responsibility for its own continuation (which involves a certain element of risk), it also means that the organization can respond much more quickly to icebergs and other maritime threats.

However, this is not to say that there is no rank among decentralized organizations. Some of our speedboats might be closer to the front of the pack than others, some might be able to hold more people, some might have bigger or better motors, but all are still at liberty to point out threats and help the entire group to move to avoid them. While hierarchies are breeding grounds for rank-based abuse of power,[10] heterarchies are about the beneficial use of the power used by each cell. Each unit is responsible for its unique territory or specialty. It is its own expert in that area, which predisposes other units to defer judgment about that particular area to that cell. This is a form of rank, but because power has been delegated away from any one particular center, it is decentralized and thus accountable to its peers (rather than its superiors).

The Church as a Decentralized Organism
Ideally, this is the way that the church functions. Through history, it has been when the church decentralized that the most beneficial expressions of church have happened. This happens on several levels: individual churches have a better grasp of their local culture than do the bishops or executives or reigning body supposedly “in charge,” and at the local church level, the “laity” has a better chance of impacting its culture if the local church government allows them freedom in communicating the gospel to their peers, and instead of acting as a direction agency (telling the peon-like laity what to do, which often translates into nothing), acts as an empowering agency for resourcing its laity for their mission. Perhaps some examples will clarify.

Models of Decentralization in the History of the Church

From Old Testament to New Testament: The Apostolic Church
It is interesting to note that the chosen people of God were not always decentralized. The Kingdom of Israel began in its lowliest origins as the nomadic extended family of Abraham, wandering from place to place. Throughout the Old Testament, what we see is a kingdom, a centralized entity. While there are certain elements of decentralization present (accountability between the King and the Prophet, the practice of the Jubilee), the people of Israel have long been ruled[11]. Along came Jesus and changed all that.

By this point in history, the Kingdom of Israel had a puppet king who was directed by the Roman Emperor; the ultimate abuse of rank. Jesus made a connection between Israel, the Gentiles, and a New Covenant; the Kingdom of God was at hand, and it included the whole world! No longer would the newly re-birthed Israel be ruled by puppet kings or powerful rulers. The Kingdom of God would belong to the meek, the humble, the poor, the servants. Jesus, in effect, distributed power across the kingdom in these very simple statements[12]. No longer were the few powerful in God’s kingdom; earthly power of kings and rulers held no sway. If you wanted to lead, you were to become a servant to others: “In humility consider others better than yourself[13].” It is in the theology of servant leadership that we find the primary decentralizing tendencies of the church. To serve one another in humility distributes power amongst everyone. If everyone plays their part, the needs of everyone are met. But it only works so long as it is intrinsically motivated within each person, so long as it is chosen. If it is forced, if it is externally-motivated, the power begins to centralize to that which is external, and the organism becomes a hierarchy (and thus loses any identity with the Kingdom of God).

Nowhere is this more evident for the first-century church than in the writings of Paul. Paul understood the church as a leveled playing field where power has been redistributed. “Neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus[14].” Paul took a common focus – Christ Jesus – and marked it as a rallying point for what is otherwise a random assortment of people and peoples with little in common. Likewise in Ephesians 4, Paul writes that the many are to be one, united in their common goals though different in their expressions.

However, the first church did not always follow this model. Its mandate was given by Jesus in Matthew 28: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit[15] …” And yet the first thing the disciples (now apostles) did upon receiving the Holy Spirit was to remain in Jerusalem and centralize. In chapter 6 of Acts, the apostles begin appointing position of authority, a sure sign of centralization. It took a “great persecution” to scatter the church away from their comfort in Jerusalem[16].

At this point things start to get interesting. Philip went to Samaria, and while there, encountered an Ethiopian. The Ethiopian, upon conversion, went back to his people (presumably the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia)[17]. Peter also began preaching as he traveled, making it as far as Joppa. Others also traveled to Antioch, Cyprus, and Phoenicia[18]. However, once again, we see the church attempt to centralize. The council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 sparks a debate about the Gentiles that have converted; are they to become Jewish before they are allowed to become Christian? This debate shows that the Jerusalem church was trying to take power itself; instead of allowing contextualized expression of the truth learned by many Gentiles, the Jewish Christians wanted to mandate their way of doing things as the universal norm. Fortunately, the prevailing opinion was that of Peter and Paul, who were in favor of the indigenous church[19]. It is after this period that the greatest growth happens, as Paul has converted and embarked on his missionary journeys, planting churches all over the Roman world. Thomas even made it to India[20]. Various persecutions rocked the Christian world yet the church was not diminished; in fact, it grew[21].

It is unfortunate, then, that in the early fourth century Constantine centralized the church by making it the official religion of the Roman Empire. He appointed positions to priests and bishops, but most importantly, funded the church and began building structures (both physical and social) in which it could settle down. It is after this period that Christianity turned from persecuted to persecutor, decentralized mass-movement to centralized conquerors. With centralization – and thus power – the church did not forget its original mandate, but instead embarked upon it with revised methods. Instead of proclaiming the truth and allowing it to transform people(s) from within (including the benevolent humanitarian work so despised by the Emperor Julian[22] and others), the newly centralized Christendom began preoccupying themselves with conquest (mission by force, as it were) and theology (the council of Nicaea and others) rather than contextualized mission for the propagation of the church.[23]

The Celtic Church
The Celtic Christian movement, begun by St. Patrick in the fifth century, is another example of decentralized Christianity at its best. From the start, the movement was promising, as there were several native factors working in Patrick’s favor: the tribal nature of the Irish, well known for their rivalry, predisposed them to a decentralized model (tribes are akin to cell-groups). Patrick himself had been a slave in Ireland for several years, learning the native language and customs and building credibility with the Irish through both[24]. Combined with Patrick’s exceptionally creative skill as an orator and singer/storyteller (in Ireland, called a Bard), the Celtic movement became a movement of the people, rather than that of the ruling classes forcing their will. The British Bishops were upset with Patrick for the very reason that he spent so much time “’pagans,’ ‘sinners,’ and ‘barbarians.’”[25]

Most importantly, the Celtic Church did not allow power to centralize in one place. Rather, power was distributed across many different tribes, each to their own, and the movement took hold as each tribe sent out missionaries to the next; it proliferated, multiplied. Patrick took special precautions not to be the person in charge; rather, he sent evangelists out who could not report to him (for example, Hilda and Brigid[26]), who he could not control. Furthermore, these evangelists worked in teams. As George Hunter writes, “Celtic Christians usually evangelized as a team – by relating to the people of a settlement; identifying with the people; engaging in friendship, conversation, ministry, and witness – with the goal of raising up a church in measurable time[27].”

Patrick, thus, was simply a catalyst, a figurehead that bore out Celtic Christianity in its natural form, not the charismatic leader of a centralized structure. And it was this movement that was responsible for reaching an entire people! The Romans had sent missionaries, but it was Patrick (and others, not the least of whom were the Celts themselves) who led the charge in an entirely new (yet ancient) method of mission that succeeded. By decentralizing their approach, by trusting the teams to their tasks, by spreading power around through networks rather than centralizing in one place, the Celtic movement reached Ireland for Christ.

The China Inland Mission
Until the opening of China to the west in the early 19th century, the Chinese interior had not met Christian missionaries since the early days of Christian expansion. The Chinese, notoriously xenophobic, had isolated themselves, claiming a certain cultural superiority over the rest of the world, and decided to remain “pure” from outside influence. That is, until the second European war with China ended in 1858 and, among other things, granted safe passage for Christians beyond the trading ports on the coastline[28]. An onslaught of mission followed, the most notorious of which was led by one Hudson Taylor.

The Chinese Inland Mission (CIM) has long been regarded as different from every other missionary movement in China, and with good reason. Taylor founded the movement on revolutionary principles, the most unique of which was that the CIM society’s headquarters were to be located in China (a first for the 19th-century mission societies). However, central to our interest is the makeup of the CIM missionary body: anybody could join; the proverbial door was opened for those with little or no formal education. All that Taylor asked was that the missionaries adopt Chinese dress and the local dialect as their own, and that the society be ever-focused on the evangelization of the Chinese[29].

Here we see many decentralized tendencies. Though he did have a headquarters, Taylor could not control the expansion of the CIM into China; it spread like wildfire. The constituents were of every class, and while few mass-movements were ever recorded, the mission truly targeted the largest groups of people. Power was thus spread across a wide group. Those that did convert were not removed from their villages and placed in mission compounds (as had been the practice in so many places), but instead became missionaries themselves. About a patient healed from a cystic tumor, Jennie Logan, a CIM medical missionary in Changteh (now Changde, in Hunan Province), wrote, “In three weeks she went back to her country home and told what had been done for her, and that it was at the “Jesus Hospital” where she had been healed. She was preaching and telling about the Gospel all day long.[30] …” In other words, the movement proliferated.

The last telling sign comes at the advent of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. When the call came from Peking (from the central government) to kill all foreigners within China, the nation rose up and obeyed. Many of the converted Chinese Christians did their best to protect their missionary comrades, but in the end, the only thing that stopped the rebellion was a military force of several different nations making its way to Peking to quell the violence[31]. Most telling, though, is that many Christians survived the uprising (though many also perished)[32] and the movement continued until the Communists took over beginning in 1927. Even today, a strong movement has resurfaced in China among the house churches, which are proliferating at an astonishing rate[33]. In any case, the Chinese indigenous church has withstood the test of time, despite many persecutions, because of its decentralized nature.

The Masai and Vincent Donovan
The last movement I’d like to explore is that of the Masai in Kenya and Tanzania in the late 1960s. Vincent Donovan, a Spiritan priest of the Catholic Church, moved there in 1965 as a young man ready to do the work of the church. But scarcely had he been there a year when he realized that nothing of much significance was happening at the mission compound. Standard practice was to help the Masai with their material needs, but little else. While the priests of the Catholic mission visited the Masai villages often (called Kraals), they did not see fit to mention the gospel. Only in the safety of the mission compound and missions schools was the gospel ever mentioned, and at that, very few Masai graduates ever retained the new religion[34]. The centralized nature of the mission compound was affecting its primary calling: to evangelize the Masai.

Instead of work through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to enact change, Donovan decided to take it upon himself to take the gospel to the Masai personally. He packed up a Ute and drove across the plains to meet the Masai face to face in their own context. He spoke their language, and he used local culture and illustrations to teach. His basic strategy was to spend one day a week with a particular tribe, teaching them what he knew of the Gospel in whatever form was required for their understanding, and then move along a circuit to another tribe (to repeat the process). At the end of a year, he would ask the tribe as a whole (Masai culture is community-oriented, not individual-oriented) whether they would accept Jesus as Lord. If they did not, then he would move on to the next Kraal. If the tribe did accept (which ended up being far more frequent than Donovan expected), first was baptism of everyone in the kraal, then an announcement: the kraal would be responsible for teaching itself, and for evangelizing the tribes around it[35]. Donovan told them he would no longer come back to teach, but would move on to another group of kraals (though he would return occasionally to check on their progress)[36].

Once again, Donovan had several advantages going into his mission that seem to appear so rarely throughout Church history (though it is possible, however grievously, that the church simply hasn’t noticed them). The Masai are a decentralized people already; spiritual, nomadic, and used to communal life, they are ideal candidates for a decentralized church. Donovan also had the trouble of distance to cover between kraals, meaning he could not simply plant himself in one place and invite the Masai to him. In addition, because Donovan was alone, he could not rely on his own inexhaustible supply of teaching energy, knowledge, and wisdom to evangelize the Masai, but instead was nearly forced to rely on the locals to begin teaching themselves. The power, then, was in the hands of each kraal, not in some central location. Donovan’s decentralized method, though it did not convince every tribe he visited (some said “no,” as was their right[37]), it was remarkably successful in its aims.

Why the Church Resists Decentralization

While I wish I had more space to talk about the Wesley Networks (mid/late 18th century), John Williams and the South Pacific (early 19th century), the CMA Organic Church movement in California (present day), and others, the real issue is why this seems to be the exception, rather than the rule. Despite the many advantages of a decentralized heterarchy, the Church still, to this day, resists the change. Decentralization is about power, and those with power are rarely persuaded to abandon it, even those in positions of authority within a church, the place where servant-hearted leadership should be the norm, not the exception.

It is when one person’s work becomes more important than another’s that a church begins centralizing and eliminating the dignity of its constituents. Sadly, this has been the pattern throughout history. The very existence of two groups (the clergy and the laity) proves this point: we still do not see our laity as missionaries, and we see our clergy as more holy, more spiritual than the unenlightened masses that go about their daily jobs blissfully unaware of the structure that has been taught them since birth. That movements of a decentralized nature have been revived through history is a note of hope, that the church can still recover its ancient mandate, but the process is slow and painful. In some respects, the reclaiming of their apostolic authority by the people is of utmost importance.

The people are stronger than their leaders, by sheer numbers, and if they change their minds as one, there is no stopping the cascade that follows. However, people can be tricked into submitting to authority by empty promises or the sheer charisma of the occasional leader, or by our human nature as “sheep,” which prefer to be led rather than to lead[38]. The few that do stand up to lead often become drunk with the power they’ve been given, and abuse their rank.

To decentralize the church, then, requires a miracle of God. It requires us to lean on the Holy Spirit like never before; it is not by our own power that heterarchy can work. Yet it has happened, when those with power and charisma have led those in their influence to greener pastures and then given away that power to the people. Decentralization is dangerous, it is messy, and it is uncontrollable, but when the rare leader sees its potential and hears the whisper of God in his ear, a movement is unleashed that will once again change the world.

Works Consulted

Church and Mission History

Bevans, Stephen B, and Schroeder, Roger P. Constants in Context: A Theology for Mission Today, Third Edition. Orbis Books: MaryKnoll NY, 2006.
Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions, Second Edition. Penguin Books: London England, 1986.
Tucker, Ruth A. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, Second Edition. Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2004.
Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, Tenth Edition. Orbis Books: MaryKnoll NY, 2005.

Decentralized/Missional/Organic Church

Claiborne, Shane. The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2006.
Cole, Neil. Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco CA, 2005.
Donovan, Vincent J. Christianity Rediscovered. Orbis Books: MaryKnoll NY, 1978.
Frost, Michael. Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture. Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody MA, 2006.
Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Brazos Press: Grand Rapids MI, 2006.
Hirsch, Alan and Frost, Michael. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church. Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody MA, 2003.
Hunter, George G. The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West … Again. Abingdon Press: Nashville TN, 2000.
Hunter, George G. Radical Outreach: The Recovery of Apostolic Ministry & Evangelism. Abingdon Press: Nashville TN, 2003.
Logan, Jennie Manget. Little Stories of China. Self-Published, No Publishing Date Available.
McLaren, Brian. A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a Missional + Evangelical + Post/Protestant + Liberal/Conservative + Mystical/Poetic + Biblical + Charismatic/Contemplative + Fundamentalist/Calvinist + Anabaptist/Anglican + Methodist + Catholic + Green + Incarnational + Depressed-Yet-Hopeful+ Emergent + Unfinished Christian. Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2004.
Seamands, Stephen. Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2005.

Group Dynamics

Brafman, Ori and Beckstrom, Rod A. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Penguin Group: New York NY, 2006.
Fuller, Robert W. All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc: San Francisco CA, 2006.
Korten, David C. The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. Berrett-Koehler Publishers: San Francisco CA, 2006.
Lencioni, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco CA, 2002.
Walker, Danielle; Walker, Thomas; and Schmitz, Joerg. Doing Business Internationally: The Guide to Cross-Cultural Success. McGraw Hill: New York NY, 2003.

Human Psychology

The Arbinger Institute. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc: San Francisco CA, 2002.
Deci, Edward L. and Ryan, Richard M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self Determination in Human Behavior. Plenum Press: New York NY, 1985.
Langer, Ellen J. Mindfulness. Da Capo Press: Cambridge MA, 1989.

Websites

Bible Gateway: http://www.biblegateway.com/
Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org/

Notes

[1] Brafman, 35.
[2] Ibid., 36.
[3] Ibid., 35. It is remarkable the similarities that can be drawn to a flock of birds, or a school of fish, or, closer to home, a riotous mob of people.
[4] For example, instead of a set of individual birds flying around, we see a flock changing direction as one.
[5] Korten, 10.
[6] Cole, 124.
[7] Brafman, 54-55.
[8] Cole,113-121.
[9] If what appears to be a decentralized group coalesces around an individual, he is usually a figurehead only; his power is like that of others, but his gift is the ability to disseminate a message. In other words, he is not in charge. The best way to tell if such an organization is truly decentralized is if it continues in like fashion after he dies or leaves, or if it disintegrates. If the organization continues, the individual was a figurehead, if the organization dies, then the individual relied on his charisma only to centralize the organization.
[10] Fuller, 7.
[11] At some level, this was self-inflicted. Recall the request of the Israelites for a king to rule them in 1 Samuel 8.
[12] Matthew 5-6, Luke 6.
[13] Philippians 2:3-4.
[14] Galatians 3:26-29 (TNIV).
[15] Matthew 28:19 (TNIV).
[16] Acts 8:1-3.
[17] Acts 8:26ff.
[18] Acts 11:19-20.
[19] Acts 15:
[20] Neill, 45.
[21] Ibid., 35.
[22] Ibid., 37.
[23] Ibid., 41, 43; and Radical Outreach, 60.
[24] The Celtic Way of Evangelism, 91.
[25] Ibid., 24.
[26] Radical Outreach, 103.
[27] The Celtic Way of Evangelism, 47.
[28] Neill, 274.
[29] Ibid., 283.
[30] Logan, 36. I am fortunate enough to have come by this manuscript because it is a family heirloom. Jennie Logan was my Great-Great-Grandmother, and in addition to this testimony, her work is the only I have read so far describing any sort of mass-movement in China during the period between 1850 and 1950.
[31] Neill, 287-288.
[32] Logan, 29.
[33] The Forgotten Ways, 19.
[34] Donovan, 12-13.
[35] In some instances, this had already begun taking place. As he instructed them, certain individuals began standing out from the group who picked up on the message more quickly than others. Donovan began using these to help teach their brethren. See pg. 84.
[36] Ibid., 72.
[37] Ibid., 81.
[38] My friend Troy once gave a sermon about this. He was confounded that there are so many illustrations of the church as a flock of sheep, given that sheep, in his eyes, are so dumb; they stand where they shouldn’t, they move away from the shepherd where there is danger, and they’ll lag behind the flock to much on one more tidbit of grass. It takes a strong shepherd to keep a flock moving in the right direction. Then he realized how much like sheep people can really be, and he made it a sermon illustration.