212. A peek into the Fuzzy Front End of The Permanent Revolution Part 1

Warning: You are about to enter a "PLUG" zone. One of the coolest projects I have been a part of in the past 10 years was co-authoring a book entitled The Permanent Revolution: Apostolic Imagination and Practice for the 21st Century Church. It actually took about 2 1/2 years to collect all the ideas, synthesize them, and formulate them into a coherent format.

Alan helped out tremendously with the coherency factor. As an INTP (mbti) he is a more systemic thinker than I am. He is more prone to accuracy and symmetry. As an ENTP, I lean towards accuracy, but my sweet spot is in seeing things from multiple perspectives and scavenging for new ideas and information. Our strengths  turned out to complement each other quite well. Essentially, I populated the text with concepts and ideas, and Alan helped hone it into a coherent, systematic presentation. It made for a great partnership in producing the book in its final form.

Most creative projects start in what is often termed the "Fuzzy Front End." That is, they begin on a canvas cluttered with disparate, seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts.

My first canvas was this little green book that I found one Saturday on the side of the road as I delivered packages on my FedEx route. Clarksville is home to the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. This transient population sometimes produces piles of "junk" on the side of the road. When soldiers get PCS'd or get deployed, sometimes they leave things behind for their former landlord to "manage" for them. On that Saturday, a random soldiers G.I. notebook made its way from the curb to my little black duffle bag I carried with me on my routes. I ripped a few of the pages out that had writing on them, and from that Saturday on, I began to populate the canvas with all things related to five fold and the apostolic.

So this little green book marks the beginning of an epic journey for me. The graphic on the front is what I drew on my lunch breaks at FedEx. The next few posts will be snap shots of some content from this green book. Some of this content made it into the book, some of it didn't. Either way, it is a peak into the fuzzy front end.