112. Life Shapes

Spent this past week around 3D Ministries, a really cool organization based out of South Carolina. Mike Breen is sort of the architect of the organization. They specialize in missional tools, beginning with the foundational capacity to build a discipling culture. He has developed some material called Life Shapes to help in this process. It is quite brilliant actually.

The Circle—Choosing to Learn from Life

Identifying the events in our lives that affect our emotions and actions and that represent opportunity for learning and growth.

The Semi Circle—Living in Rhythm with Life

A process that helps us identify rhythms and patterns of work, rest, fruitfulness and abiding in our lives. Recognizing these patterns will prevent us from becoming overstretched.

The Triangle—Balancing the Relationships of Life

Three areas of life that Jesus modeled to maintain a balanced lifestyle:

   • Up—developing intimacy with Him

   • In—building the Church community

   • Out—reaching the unchurched 

The Square—Defining the Priorities of Life

Four stages of team development modeled by Jesus. These are the stages that result in any team striving to reach maturity, fruitfulness and multiplication.

The Pentagon—Knowing Your Role in Life

Five key roles (apostle, prophet, teacher, evangelist, pastor) that each of us are designed to fill. Put together, they make up the church identified in Ephesians.

The Hexagon—Praying As a Way of Life

Six petitions of prayer modeled by Jesus in Matthew 6:9-13. Learning to apply this prayer to your daily requests will strengthen and renew the prayer life of your church. 

The Heptagon—Practicing the Principles of a Vital Life

 Seven principles of growth that apply to all living things, including God's people. The anagram "MRS GREN" can help you learn how to grow a healthy church. (Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion, Nutrition)

The Octagon—Living a Mission-Minded Life

Eight evangelistic strategies for a comprehensive outreach approach. This model will help you discover the Person of Peace and how to process works from God's perspective. 

 My wife and I are going to attending one of their "taster" events in Lexington KY in June. You ought to check it out. I hear that there is nothing like this anywhere.

111. Alan Hirsch and Missional Logic

This is a great session with Alan Hirsch breaking down the logic of missional engagement at Q Ideas Conference.

110. Apostolic ministry...to boldly go where no one has gone before

I have been trying to think of a song that fits with the essence of apostolic ministry. Fortunately, I stumbled upon this by accident as I was searching youtube videos for "adventure". How much closer can you get to an accurate theme song than the original Star Trek monologue? Ok, so its not a song. But it sort of is...I guess. There is music in the back ground, so in my book that brings it close enough to qualifying.



Apostolic ministry is aground breaking, pioneering form of ministry. It is characterized by an affinity with the frontier. I thought it was interesting that Kirk says their mission is for 5 years. This is sort of the point in time that the apostolic itch, if it has not already set in, begins to move you out of your comfortable settings and forces you to adjust your life. Star Trek and the apostolic, I would have never thought of the two in the same sentence. But now that I think about, it is spok on :-)

109. Dwell, Dig and Discover

If there is anything that I have learned along the way in life, it's that I typically do not know as much as I initially think I do. Life is complex, and so are people. This means organizations and communities are bound to share in this complexity. In fact, most communities are quite complex with a host of intersecting relational and organizational dynamics. Varying interest are always floating around and do not always broadcast themselves in readily perceivable forms. Politics are an inescapable factor of all communities, even if it is down played or simply unacknowledged. Interests are tied to resources, and when there are conflicting interests, there will almost always be politics.

When you think about it, the role of a consultant can initially seem quite arrogant. Who are you to go into an environment you have never experienced before and give advice about what they should do? The consultant is often seen as the answer man. Indeed, to claim to be a consultant implies some sort of expertise or in depth knowledge of a particular field.

Yet a consultant can only be effective at giving advice if they truly understand what is going on. They have to have some inkling of where the community is, how they see reality, how they understand their dilemma, and especially how they understand themselves. Sure, you can walk in with some degree of intuitiveness and emotional intelligence and pinpoint some surface level issues in a community. But the value of a consultant is not just in their ability to identify things that are out of sync. A consultant must be able to discover the root issues, the foundational dynamics at work in a community that are not only impeding the organizations development, but also the institutional dynamics that end up concealing and even deceiving those within the organization from seeing the real issues at work right under their noses.

One of the benefits of a consultant is a fresh pair of eyes. They are, as Thom Wolfe says, the "essential outsider". They ideally do not have a stake in the power plays, politics and personality conflicts that seem to so effectively paralyze the human capital in an organization. However, as any outsider worth their while will tell you that there is always more to a situation than meets the eye. The first thing a consultant should do is literally get a panoramic view of the situation. This not only includes a horizontal look at all the personalities and organizational dynamics, but also the vertical sections of the situation. The vertical side of the equation includes the hidden ideological and theological assumptions that make up the clients worldview. You have to dig in order to find this. There is some what of an intuitive side to this, but it is also an analytical process of probing and drilling down into peoples ways of seeing. It involves the art of drawing out peoples hidden expectations, frustrations and assumptions

The first role of a consultant is that of learner. Every community is unique and has its own set of challenges that have been selectively chiseled out by their own people and context. The art of asking questions, drawing out the hidden assumptions and paradigms is an art that has to be learned. The discovery phase is not about discovering solutions. It is about discovering the obstacles, the challenges, the deficits, the incongruities in a community, along with their strengths, inherent capacities and untapped resources. Consultants are explorers who go deep into the heart of the organization and mine it not only for faulty foundations, but also for the precious jewels of human, social and systems capital. It is this dual nature of the dig and discovery that gives the consultant a prophetic tone in their relationship with their clients. They unearth what is really going on in the world of the community. Dwell, dig and discover are interrelated activities that reinforce one another. They go hand in hand and form the essential foundation of the consulting process. Another way of saying it could be Engage and Excavate.

Next, we will look at Digest, Distill and Define.

108. Consulting

I used to think that consulting was the same thing as coaching. There is actually a big difference between the two. I am finding that I thrive in the consulting role more than I do in the coaching role, although I end up doing more coaching than consulting these days.

After finding myself in a consulting role several times this year with various organizations, I began to reflect on the process of consulting I would go through. The following is what I came up with.

Dwell
Dig
Discover
Digest
Distill
Define
Diagnose
Direct
Dialogue
Develop
Distance
Dance
Download

The next few posts I will sort of put some meat on these concepts as they relate to my experience with consulting. [Pic taken from here.]

107. Entrepreneurial Intelligence

99 Percent is a great resource for apostolic folks because it is all about the start up.

Ever thought about the fact that entrepreneurial people possess their own sort of intelligence? This short talk highlights 8 aspects of what some people are calling SEQ, or, Social Entrepreneurship Intelligence.



I love the concept of being "asset Based".Basically what she is saying is that entrepreneurial people have a lot of faith and do not mind pressing forward even though there appears to be no solution or resource ahead. They are creative in accumulating and generating resources for sure. But there is another side to this kind of intelligence. There is a kind of intuition that thrives in the unknown, ambiguous, uncertain realm of the frontier. Operating on the fringe is not for everyone. Entrepreneurs thrive on the periphery, on the outer limits of the frontier. It takes a certain kind of intelligence to trek the wide open spaces of unexplored territories. Entrepreneurial Intelligence.....quite a concept.

106. Keep Inspiring Me

Ran across this really cool site. It is a good break from the tons of information on the web. Very creative and, as the site says, inspiring.

105. Ideas for missional Comunities to Cultivate Relationships in their Neighborhoods

This list of ideas has been copiled by some 20 people who have been added to a Google Wave I started.  The purpose of the wave is to brainstorm on creative ideas to build relationships in your neighborhood. I am listing them here for your enjoyment. There have been a lot of really cool contributions to this list by some very thoughtful folks.

• Host a National Night Out
• Facilitate a neighborhood yard sale
• Pass out 9 volt batteries for people to replace in their smoke detector
• Host a back yard theater and show a movie
• Prayer Walk your neighborhood at least twice a month
• Drop off a nice bottle of wine to your neighbor with a note "Love to get to know you guys sometime. Call and well enjoy this bottle together." (ripped from Hugh Halter in Tangible Kingdom)
• Pass out fliers offering free gardening or landscaping help
• Organize a play station/X Box/Wii tournament for the kids in the neighborhood. (If someone has the Beatles Rock Band kit you can even get the adults to play on that!)
• Assemble "doggie bags" with items that homeless people need like food and hygiene products and pass out to those in your community as the need arises or you encounter them.
• Shoot a video of your neighbors responding to the questions "What things do you like about this neighborhood?" and "What things would you like to change in the neighborhood?"
• During the Christmas season, facilitate a Christmas carolling event, inviting your neighbors to participate with hot chocolate and cider at the end.
• Host a front yard/backyard concert with a bring your own meat for the grill.
• Bake some chocolate chip cookies and take them next door....still warm and chewy.
• Take your office to the nearest coffee shop you can find.
• Form a Neighborhood Watch group and volunteer to be the block captain.
• Ask your neighbors if they would like you to stop by once a month to pick up items they may want to give to the local food shelf. Used shoes can also be collected and sent to this organization that has many local drop-off sites nationally: http://www.soles4souls.org/
• Create a "spiritual map" "spiritual map" of your city - and invite other missions-minded people in a process of 1- Discover, 2- Inspiration and 3- Incarnation.
• Host a party on your front yard during Halloween and serve "Hallo-weeners" (hot dogs) to all who stop by.
• Host a ground hog day party on your front yard. Fix different kinds of soup for folks to try out. 

 If you would like to contribute to the list of ideas, leave a comment and I will add it to the final list. I plan to get the word out about this list after the summer is over. Hopefully it will be helpful to some folks who are wanting to engage their local neighborhood in a meaningful way.

104. Group Multiplication

Our group here just had its first multiplication. It is quite a milestone as we have been a this thing for about 3 1/2 years. Needless to say, it has been quite a learning experience. I wanted to share the options we entertained as a group for how we were going to approach multiplying the group. They conveniently fell into a list of L's.

Launch. This option revolves around someone in the group feeling called to launch out away from the group and start another group from scratch, say two to three people. I would like to say that this is ideal, but that is my apostolic side coming out.No one in our group felt this calling, so we moved on to another option.

Like. This is when you mutliply based on existing chemistry between people in the group. This is a viable option, but it is a bit inward focused. We all did not like this idea as it lent itself to clicks and had the smell of bening self-centered. Not toally, but it smells that way.

Little Ones. This did play a factor in our multiplication process. Kids are a part of the community, and we try to include them in our discussions and factor them in to our decisions. Because we have a large number of kids in the group, we did not want one group to have all the kids and the other group to have none. Part of the reason for our multiplication was logistical issues like space. So to put all the kids in one group would create the same dilemma all over again.We wanted to make sure the kid factor was evenly distributed and did not duplicate some of our logistical issues.

List. This is where you pass around a sheet of pare with three lists on them. Group #1, Group #2, and "I'll Go Where I'm Needed." this is similar to the "like" option, but it does have a twist that allows people the somewhat anonymous option of saying, it doesn't matter.  I know some folks who use this option and sometimes it works well. But it does seem to leave out a discussion about mission.

Leanings. This has to do with giftings and passions. We also listed off everyone's giftings from APEST typology to see what each multiplication options looked like and how the gifts would be distributed in each scenario.

Location. The other option was to multiply based on geography. We ended up doing it this way, but the kid factor was  apart of this discussion. We multiplied the groups into a North Ikon and a South Ikon. We use these descriptors for communication purposes, as in our email lists etc. But there is no branding going on here. It is more in house language for distinction. Sort of the private face of the communities as opposed to the public face. there was some mission strategy involved here as we see ourselves being sent into our neighborhoods and 3rd places. When our groups begin to saturate the city, we will be strategically located to for community engagement. The location piece also vibed with our Leanings and Little one's. It turned out to be a great deal. But it did not come without much discussion and dissecting. Needless to say, some have more tolerance for dissecting than others ;-)

That being said, we are not opposed to the other models of multiplication. One thing we made sure to do was to draw this process out and approach it from as many angles as possible. It took us about a month to go through it all. We wanted to hit it from all sides because eventually each group need to revisit this process. It was sort of a foundational moment for us when it comes to multiplying a group. 

I must say that I ma quite giddy about all of this and that I can't wait to see how the two groups take on a life of their own and begin to flourish in their giftings and callings. Our goal is a movement of multiplying disciples, leaders and churches. We are learning how to do this hands on, and it is quite an adventure. We are going to be drilling down deeper into multiplying on a disciple level, and not just a group level as well. This summer we plan to blitz some neighborhoods with prayer walking, and community engagement.  Who knows what God is preparing for us!

103. Integrative Leadership

I am obviously drawn to writing about leadership that falls within the realm of the apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic (APE). I have an even stronger draw towards the apostolic as that is my gifting. But I do not want to be guilty of the same thing that I criticize the predominantly Shepherd Teacher (ST) forms of leadership the predominate the consciousness of the church. This would be a travesty too. The solution to the current exiling of the APE's is not to create a vacuum in the institution. Removing ST folks and replacing them with APE's would be just as much a travesty as a leadership system dominated by the ST's. While the APE's are the most generative forms of leadership, we need integrative forms of leadership as well. This is where the ST folks come in. Whenever you have generative forms of leadership working in tandem with integrative forms of leadership, then you ultimately have an adaptive system of leadership. Generative leadership can get things going, but it is significantly challenged with keeping them going. Integrative leadership can keep things going, but it can not generate anything new, or at least not with the intensity and efficiency as the generative types of leadership. We need both operating in the mix if we are to become adaptive. This is quite a challenge, but is feasible, if not down right critical. For too long the church as been lopsided and maladaptive. We need a family reunion under the enthroned Jesus who has given us this beautiful spectrum of gifts.

102. Adaptive Leadership vs. Generative Leadership

Peter Senge is the guru on Organizational Learning. His book The Fifth Discipline is a culminating work that brings a lot of his wisdom and insight onto one volume. It is a truly remarkable read and it brings a host of insight into the dynamics of how a group of individuals can progress as a group, or as a community, or in his field of study, as an organization. The idea is that there is an immense amount of human capital in every community, and the challenge is to draw this human capital out into the community where the rest of the organization can benefit from it as a whole. The community learns, nit just individuals.

Senge wrote an article in 1990 called the The New work of Leaders that pretty much summarizes his lengthy book on the subject. He makes a clear distinction in this article between Adaptive leadership and Generative leadership. The goal of adaptive leadership is to adapt to the environment. In a sense, adaptive leadership is provoked by a challenge, or a problem. This kind of leadership is crucial for the survival of an organization and any community that wants to endure. However, Senge does us a favor by pointing out that adaptive leadership is really just the precursor to a higher form of leadership. It is a necessary skill to keep the organization viable, but it is not the only skill required. You also need generative leadership. The difference between the two is found in the sources of energy that fund them. Adaptive leadership is funded by problems. It comes int existence when faced with a challenge that exceeds its repertoire of solutions. However, the problem with this this scenario is that once the problem is solved, leadership recedes into the background. It is critical to have adaptive leadership, but there is another form of leadership that gives adaptive leadership its proper role.

Generative leadership is funded by vision. Vision funds movement, and if you are going to have continuous movement, you are going to need a robust vision. Generative leadership is funded by a vision of what can and should be. If all we have is adaptive leadership, we will be reacting the entire time. Generative leadership moves us beyond reaction and problem focused leadership to more forward looking, advancing leadership.

I believe, that the apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic giftings are the most generative forms of leadership the church has. Whenever the full 5 fold giftings are operating, the church becomes truly adaptive, but the goal is not just to be adaptive. You also want to be generative.

You cousl also stretch this out and say that you could be generative, and not adaptive. In this sense, your capacity to generate movement is significant, but it will be short lived as it will not be able to cope with the diversity of challenges it will face along the way. Adaptability brings durability, but generativ-ity brings vitality.

101. Neil Cole on lessons from Pauls Journey's

This is a great session with Neil Cole on the leadership lessons from Paul's missionary journey's. What I appreciate about Neil is that it is obvious his ideas come from the intersection of studying the scripture and personal experience. (With a little help from a few leadership books I am sure ;-)

100. Risk and Failure

I love this quote from Theodore Roosevelt because it captures the boundary crossing, entrepreneurial spirit of apostolic ministry. If you are not able to embrace risk and the possibility of failure, you will never be able to function apostolically.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

99. Interview with Neil Cole by Charles Wear

This is a link to Charles Wear's site who interviewed Neil Cole in the foyer of the Verge Conference about his new book Church 3.0.Did not get to go to his session, and have not read his book yet, but from the interview, I wish I had done both already!

98. The Apostle and the rest of APEST

Teachers teach, Shpeherds shepherd, Evangelists evangelize, prophets prophesy, and Apostles.....apostle-ize? Not really. Out of the five gifts in the APEST typology, the apostle is a bit unique in this fashion. They are sent out by some one else. Some people wonder wether or not this is the local church or God. I would have to say both and. Apostolic ministry is not for the faint of heart. It is one of those deal that if you get into it, you had better be called by God to do it or probably wont stay n it very long. A church can send any one into a mission field, but it does not mean they are called by God. We do not determine who is called and who is not. People determine that for themselves, and sometimes in the context of an intimate community. Apostles are sent ones, and this implies that some one else is a part of the equation, doing the sending.

97. Failure and Imagination

Got this video from Crinid this morning. Quite inspirational. J.K. Rowling is  speaking at the Harvard Commencement and does a fabulous job of speaking to what is quite possibly a very aristocratic audience about the realities of failure and the need for imagination.


J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

After listening to this I was moved by her ideas about being able to inhabit the realities of other people through our imagination. I think this is at the heart of what compassion is. She has a great line about people who live within their own narrow interests develop a sense of acrophobia, a sense of spinning around that is often evoked when looking down from high places.

96. Book Notes by David Mays

This guy is a Maven - Archivist extraordinaire. He has an enormous list of books on his web sites that he has done summaries on, saving you a lot of time and maybe even some money. The best thing about it? ITS ALL FREE!!!! He even has an email list where he will send you his latest summaries of the books he is reading...FOR FREE!!!!! Check out his Site. His primary focus of book reading and summaries is Leadership, Management and Change.

I have been thinking about doing something like this for a long time. I am so glad I found some one else who is doing it. (This sort of lets me off the hook :) Very cool!

95. The Drama of Doctrine

I must admit, when I first saw this title I could not help but but think of all the needless drama that swirls around frivolous doctrinal discussions. I will spare concrete examples so as not to get my self in trouble here, but I think we all know the needless time that can be devoted to arguing and scrabbling over doctrinal minutia and details. I have typically seen doctrine play a detached, dysfunctional and even damaging role in a lot of churches. For most people, doctrine ends up being more of a theory than a vehicle and tool to engage the world.

Vanhoozer offers us a redemptive model of doctrine. He re-frames it around the concept of Dramaturgy. This word is a bit technical, but it is a very cool concept AND practice. Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Some dramatists combine writing and dramaturgy when creating a drama. Others work with a specialist, called a dramaturg, to adapt a work for the stage. Vanhoozer says that doctrine and theology should play a similar role in the Christian community. It should help us re-present the story of Jesus to the world. He offers these 5 suggestions for the role theology and doctrine should play in the community of Jesus.

Celebrating - Theology and doctrine should lead us to celebrate who God is and his activity in the world.

Coping - Theology and Doctrine should give us the tools to cope with the evil, injustice and unnecessary chaos of the world.

Criticizing - Theology and Doctrine should play a critical function in helping us discern between what is good and what is evil. It helps us pinpoint what promotes shalom, and what damages shalom in God's economy

Communicating - Theology and Doctrine should point us towards models, paradigms, metaphors and linguistic expressions that help us communicate who God is and what he is up to in the world. It gives us a way of speaking about the gospel.

Continuing - Theology and Doctrine, if it is sound and healthy, become the vehicles that allow us to continue the story of Jesus. It becomes the framework that gives structure to, and channels our energy.

Vanhoozer says that theology and doctrine, rather than being about theory, it should about Theater. It shold lead us onto the stage of the world and help us figure out our role in the story as we both speak and re-enact the story of Jesus in the world. Doctrine should be closely linked with Drama.

This has a lot of application to the apostolic as the primary vehicle for calling new communities into existence is the gospel, a story. But it is not just a spoken gospel, although the gospel was meant to be spoken! It is also about re-enacting the story of Jesus. Apostolic ministry is a lot like the  Dramaturgy. Apostles help new (or existing if they are Petrine) communities to learn how to find their role in the drama, and re-enact the story on their local stage with both words and actions, using the script-ures as their primary guide. It is not enough to indoctrinate people in the old sense of the term. Doctrine must be connected to practice. It must lead to an ethos. The literal meaning of doctrine is teaching.

94. Jesus in the Drama of Salvation Quote

 Man, this dude took a while to drop a jewel in this book, but he finally came through half way through the book. Listen to this piece on the resurrection and culture.

"In accordance with Girards theory of the sacred, cultures were regularly erected over the graves of the slain victims, as they presuppose that the society has reached an inner peace, which spontaneously sets itself up by means of the violent driving out and sacralization. The grave, which covers up the corpse , thus becomes on the one hand the symbol of that great process of veiling on which every society is based, and on the other the first clearly defined cultural sign, because with it the distinction between sacred and profane is symbolically pinned down: Culture always starts form the grave. The grave is always the first human memorial, which has to be erected over the victim  who has been driven out, the first, most elementary, most fundamental layer of cultural signs. No culture without a grave, no grave without culture. If the sealed grave is really the great symbol of the sacred cultures, insofar as they cover something over, then it is more than an accidental detail that the accounts of Easter in the gospels begin with the narration of the opened grave, in which there is no longer a corpse to be found. ... In a violent conflict, the murdered corpse is the emperical sign there from the very beginning, that there has been a victim and that some one else was the victor. Talk of an Easter victory can not therefore lightly pass by this sign....the opened grave has, against the background of Girards theory, an important symbolic meaning. It shows that the new beginning constituted by Easter reaches so deep that the ultimate foundations of human culture itself, until now veiled, are laid bare" p. 129-130


Another sign pointing us to the fact that we have not even begun to understand the riches and wisdom and depth of the gospel. The incarnation, Ministry, Death, Burial, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus are saturated with the mystery of God and the concrete ....everything. WOW! is all I have to say.

93. Competition...Good or Bad?

Competition has a always been a two edged sword to me. I am a very competitive person and I love a good challenge. Especially if it falls within the areas of my skill sets or expertise. I have been reading a cool book called Flow: The psychology of optimal experience and it has a really cool section about competition that I dont think I have ever heard any one explain the way he does. Competition can be a cut throat activity where winning is the only goal. This kind of competition borders on being only about us, what people think about us, or more importantly, what we end up deducing about ourselves if we either win or lose. Competition will always put us into the orbit of the "self", but the self is not the enemy. It is how the self interfaces with others, or with the environment, or even how the self interacts with the self.

We have all played games with people who were so intent on winning that the game was not any fun at all. Their competitive spirit sucked out any joy, or personal satisfaction that the game was designed to facilitate, and it became an intensely personal agenda, saturated in ego and insecurity. The outcome of the game merged with their own sense of personal identity, and on a micro level, their own personal destiny. They saw the results of the competition as a commentary on their own person, their own value and competence.

Mihaly makes a really cool observation about competition and how it can contribute or detract from our sense of enjoyment.

"In many ways, competition is a quick way of developing complexity: "He who wrestles with us", wrote Edmund Burke, "strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper." The challenges of competition can be stimulating and enjoyable. But when beating the opponent takes precedence in the mind over performing as well as possible, enjoyment tends to disappear. Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one's skills; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun."

There are many applications to the wisdom poured out here from Mihaly, but since I am thinking about apostolic leadership now a days, I will allow this piece throw a new shade of light into that area.

Apostles typically have dominant personalities. They have a strong sense of drive and adventure, and thrive in the midst of a challenge. Apostles are definitely prone to competition. Paul is real clear in II Corinthians 10 that he is not into competition, comparing himself with other apostles and their ministries and credentials. My college basketball coach would often tell us when we were competing against a team that all of knew were better than us "We are not competing against this team. We are competing against the game of basketball. Our goal to night is to be the best basketball players we can be" When he said this, it always took the pressure off of us and allowed us to focus on the skill of playing basketball, not the other team.

Apostolic ministry finds its metrics in the gospel, in the cross and resurrection. We are not in competition with other apostles, their ministries and their success and influence. Apostles are called by God, which means they answer to God, and not the standards of some one elses ministry. Competition implies an opponent, and our opponent is the great enemy and the powers of the present evil age. (Galatians 1:4) There is a definite skill set to be learned and perfected in apostolic ministry, but we are not competing in a tournament against other apostles. While there will always be false apostles, apostles are on the same team, though they occupy different locations on the field, different territories as Paul would say in II Cor 10. Apostolic ministry has its ups and downs, but these should arise from two kingdoms colliding, not from a misplaced focus of competition.

92. NT Wright on Social Media from Kennon

This continues my reflections on social media. As always, NT Wright is highly reflective on issues and how they relate to relationships and spirituality.

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

91. Social Media Venn Diagram

I must say, this is quite creative, and yet so painfully true. Social media can easily be the next addiction on the horizon. Who knows how or when we will be able to measure what these social media tools have done to alter the way we humans interact.

You can get a t-shirt of it right here.

90. The Two Structures of God's Redemptive Mission by Winter

This article by Winter was a ground breaking article, especially seeing it was written in 1973! It is a good read and is a major step forward in legitimizing the apostolic function in relation to the localized forms of organization that often characterize the church when it is led primarily by ST's.

89.James Choung 4 Circles

I kind of like this presentation from James Choung. It hits a few of the models of atonement, but leaves out the penal-substitution model, which I am not too excited about these days actually :) I think we need to explore and emphasize other models of the atonement, and dive deeper into Christus Victor for example. Can you tell me what model of atonement this guy is alluding to with his presentation? If no, then you probably are only familiar with the penal-substitution model.

89. Introducing Jesus

88. Template of a Missional Community from Mark 2

Spent a good bit of time meditating on Mark 2 this past month. This is what I came up with.

Four people: Missional communities can be large or small, but they function well in small bands of people. The power of small.

Paralytic: People are unable to make it to Jesus on their own. It takes a community effort, which is contrary to the hero myth of evangelism that it is a one person show. When a small community is involved, it diffuses the needs of the person among the group, lightening the load that would typically fall on one person. "Paralyzed" people are people with strongholds, they are high maintenance. This means one person is not dynamic enough to transport them to Jesus. They need multiple connections for the journey. 

They Uncovered the Roof: Innovation and creativity. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. These four friends created an innovative strategy to get their friend to Jesus. It did not include the crowd or the conventional entrance. They bypassed all of this. They were unconventional, yet highly successful. 

When they had broken through: Innovative strategies take time. Digging through a roof was no easy task, but they were determined to see their friend come to Jesus. In time, a breakthrough will happen.

They let down the bed: Working with "paralyzed" people sets you up for co-dependent relationships. They were willing to let go of their friend once he made it to Jesus. Their role was to get him to the healer. They stayed on the roof, a healthy distance, while Jesus did his work.

Arise, Take up your bed: If you have been paralyzed, the last thing you want to do is carry your mat around. It is the symbol of your hurt and disappointment. Why did Jesus want him to carry his mat? From the paralytics stand point, it showed his mastery over a situation that once mastered him. But you know eventually someone was going to ask him "Why are you carrying that mat around?" Being transparent about our past is what gives us the opportunity to share about what Jesus has done for us. 

Go to your house: Jesus did not extract him from his setting. He sent him back into his oikos, his relational hub, to be a living testimony of what Jesus could do. 

We never saw anything like this: Jesus has the power to transform people in amazing ways. But you have to wonder if part of  their amazement included the innovative and passionate ways in which that small, missional community got him to Jesus. Jesus has the ability to not only transform people, but also our strategies of getting people to him.

87. Ambiguity Tolerance

Whenever you are involved in innovative work, you will be confronted with ambiguity. It is what most people call the "Fuzzy Front End" of innovation. It is a stage when things are not well defined, there are not a lot of answers, and the future seems blurry. Ambiguity tolerance means you have some level of tolerance for this phase. Innovative type people usually have a high degree of ambiguity tolerance because there is no way you will make it past the initial phases of innovation without embracing ambiguity. In fact, the most creative and innovative people have a high ambiguity tolerance. They are able to starve their need to impose structure and delay closure.

Wilkinson has written a really cool book on this called Ambiguity Advantage. In the book he says there are 4 modes of Leadership:

1. Mode One - Technical Leadership. These leaders usually deal with ambiguity by denial or creating their own certainty. They are also more dictatorial and are very risk averse by nature.
2. Mode Two - Cooperative Leadership. The aim of mode two leaders is to disambiguate uncertainty and to build teams around them to mitigate risk.
3. Mode Three - Collaborative Leadership. Mode three leaders have a tendency towards consensual methods of leadership. They prefer to work towards aligning team members values and getting agreement. Their approach to ambiguity is for the group to examine it.
4. Mode Four - Generative Leadership. These leaders use ambiguity to find opportunity. They tend to be inveterate learners and innovators.

Apostolic ministry is saturated with ambiguity. Because it is a frontier based ministry, it will always lack definitive maps and algorithms that give all of us that needed comfort of predictability. Apostolic leaders are generative because they are able to embrace ambiguous environments and scenarios and use this fuzzy dynamic to generate solutions and strategies for starting new communities of the gospel.

86. CRINID

It's always cool when you find an entire site dedicated to innovation. That is exactly what CRINID is. It is not super exhaustive, but it does have a really good section on books to scan through about innovation and creativity.

85. Legos of beauty and hope

This is a great picture of what it means to be salt and light in the world. These pictures are from Tel Aviv, an area that has felt the brunt of violence and war. There is a small movement called Dispatchwork where people go around with Legos and patch up the holes and craters in walls and monuments with a colorful mosaic of plastic art. It is a refusal to let the effects of war brand an area with destruction.

They are filling in the wounds and scars of war with a creative, beautiful touch of art. It is a testimony that beauty can emerge after tragedy. This is exactly what Jesus does in our lives.

84. The Marathon of Project Managemnt Tools

Thanks to someone leaving a comment on the last post, I was able to learn about a whole host of project management/collaboration tools online, almost all of them FREE!

Check out the post entitled The Marathon List of Project Management

83. Cool Information and Citation Management Tool

I was recently reminded about the tool Zotero and re-downloaded it onto my laptop. It is right on time as I am becoming increasingly dis-organized in my writing project. I have read so many books that I am starting to forget where the cool stuff is that I have marked out in these books. Zotero allows me to enter these books and "tag" them with terms that I can later search for, bringing those books back up and reminding me that a particular book discusses, say, contextualization of the gospel. Here is the promo video.

82. Prophet singing about Eschatology

81. Training by Neil Cole on Mentoring

Ran across this video today while searching the internet.

Neil Cole - Mentoring/Leadership from Aaron Snow on Vimeo.

Neil has some real wisdom coming out here.

80. Slide Share and Innovation at IDEO

As a diagram junky, I always love to come across sites that attract and store other peoples innovative drawings and prototypes. I just recently came across a slideshow about innovation at posted in Slide Share. It is like a youtube for powerpoint presentations. A good resource here not only for visual learners, but also for those who like to hear neat, short summaries of ideas and concepts.

Here tis....

Innovation through design thinking

View more documents from whatidiscover.

When it comes to innovation, IDEO is...well...I'm speechless really.

79. Missional Eschatology Part 1

Eschatology, the view of last things is finding a much needed resurgence these days. I have always been drawn to apocalyptic movies as a kid. I love the end of the world movies like Deep Impact, and recently 2012. They have a riveting effect on me and fuel my fascination with the future.

What I see in the gospels is a Jesus that was fueled by a vision of the future that was radically breaking into the present. When Jesus said the Kingdom of God was at hand, he was talking about the rule of God. And the future is the only time and place that the rule of God will be consummated. When Jesus healed someone, he was pointing to the future and saying, when the rule of God is consummated, there will be no sickness. When he fed the 5000, he was pointing to the future when all physical needs would be met. When he forgave sins, he was pointing to the future when relationships would not be fractured and we ourselves would not be fractured by our experience of the fallen nature.

When we talk about being missional, we need to, as Hirsch explains in his book ReJesus, recalibrate back to Jesus. But the conversation must go a bit deeper here. Going back to Jesus is a monumental task in and of itself, but once we get there, I think we will be confronted with another question: Where did Jesus get his mission from? When we are trying to understand what our mission is, we go back to Jesus. He embodies and enacts the mission. He is our paradigm. To be missional means to tap into Jesus as the source and energy of our mission. But where did Jesus get his mission from? What was the paradigm he operated in? We tap into Jesus, but what did he tap into?

I think a better way to ask this question is: What was tapping into Jesus? The Spirit of God is what transported that future, New Creation into the present and infused Jesus with the power to embody and demonstrate the Kingdom of God. The future broke into Jesus through the Spirit in a most powerful, yet graceful way. Jesus was apocalyptic, but he was eschatological too. His message of the Kingdom was apocalyptic because it was charged with hope and judgment for the present context, but it also stretched out to encompass the meta-narrative of history, which means it was eschatological. Apocalyptic is eschatology on steroids. Jesus was both because he had a message for the present, but this message was anchored in a future that had yet to be realized. Jesus message of the Kingdom was both apocalyptic and eschatological because he was a portal through which a future rule found a present expression.





When we talk about returning to Jesus we will inevitably run into this amazing subject of the Kingdom of God and eschatology. This should have major implications for the missional conversation. I am grateful for people like NT Wright who have uncovered the sometimes mysterious connection between eschatology and mission. If the mission is understood in the context of Jesus, and Jesus understood his mission in the context of the Kingdom of God, then we have a sort missional-eschatological helix to run through. Will come up with a diagram on this one later.

78. Verge Conference

Headed to this conference called Verge on the first weekend of February. Should be a really cool gig.

77. Missional Communities

Great Video here from Mark Scandrette.

Mark Scandrette on Missional Community from TransFORM on Vimeo.

76. Symbols and the Construction of Community

Revisited a book I read a while back for the book I am working on about Apostolic Leadership. This guy is so thorough in his analysis about how symbols foster, maintain and hold community together, that it is sort of hard to find a good summary quote. Symbols are those clandestine meaning transmitters and they work in such an ambiguous way that when you stop to look more deeply into how they operate and what it is exactly that they do, you begin to see there power and presence on almost every corner. This quote is from Anthony Cohens book The Symbolic Construction of Community.

"Symbols are effective because they are imprecise. Though obviously not content-less, part of their meaning is subjective. They are, therefore, ideal media through which people can speak a 'common' language, behave in apparently similar ways, participate in the 'same' rituals...wear the same clothes and so forth, without subordinating themselves to a tyranny of orthodoxy. Individuality and community are thus reconcilable. Just as the 'common form' of the symbol aggregates the various meanings assigned to it, so the symbolic repertoire of a community aggregates the individualities and other differences found within the community and provides the means for their expression, interpretation, and containment. It provides the range within which individuality is recognizable. It continuously transforms the reality of difference into the appearance of similarity with such efficacy that people can still invest the 'community' with ideological integrity. It unites them in their opposition, both to each other, and to those 'outside.' It thereby constitutes, and gives reality to, the community's boundaries..."

An interesting question to entertain is, how does the symbol of the gospel function in this way? Symbols are fused with meaning by someone. The strength of symbols is that they can store and communicate multiple meanings at once. Their weakness is that meaning can get away from what produced the symbol in the first place. A good example of this would be the cross. Still a vibrant religious symbol in Christianity, it has been emptied of its original meaning and loaded down with centuries of domestication and cultural baggage. The most vivid display of this would be the prosperity gospel which manages to skirt the cross altogether most of the time, bypassing it for a direct line towards the resurrection, giving it a lopsided theology of naked power and naive triumphalism. Weakness and suffering, non-violent resistance and loving sacrifice seem to escape this particular ideology altogether. Instead, the prosperity gospel liquidates the meaning of the cross and shrinks it down to a purely transactional affair to secure personal salvation and forgiveness. It is a side note to the "power" of "abundant living." The current Protestant versions of the gospel have fallen into this same trap. This is quite a downsizing when compared to the massive implications Paul and other writers of the NT draw from this powerful symbol. Joel green and Mark Baker are quick to point out a foundational source of this tragedy in their book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross.
They say that part of the problem is the way in which we construe the human dilemma. Explanations of the solutions offered by the gospel are directly linked to how we understand the problem. Before Christ the human dilemma was understood within a broad spectrum of categories, including, social, physical, political, emotional, and psychological. The spiritual dimension is always present, but at times it is single voice among many. Explanations of the meaning of the cross need to first wrestle with the entire human situation in relation to God, creation and humanity. The fall reaches into every facet of our existence. It only seems right to expect the gospel, as the power of God for salvation, will speak to these categories. In fact it does. The word salvation is a medical term that is akin to the Hebrew version of shalom. Wholeness and harmony are intimately tied to the gospel, yet they are framed by a crucified messiah. A paradox indeed. The critical flaw in the prosperity gospel is that it approaches the human condition outside the framework of a crucified messiah. It is a contemporary version of the Corinthians "realized eschatology" which wants to live as though the new creation is entirely accessible in the here and now. We live between the times. We have experienced the power of the age to come, but the age to come still has yet to fully "come." We live under the sign of the cross, the spirit transporting the power of the new age into our presence, giving us a foretaste of what is to come. We have to acknowledge this tension. New life has begun, but it has infiltrated a cosmos still suffering from the brunt of the fall.

Apostolic leaders must learn how to embed the gospel in ways that reflect its multiple meanings, guarding and preserving its original potency to speak to the human condition in relation to God, people, systems and the creation.

75. Daniel Pink on Motivation

I recently read a book by Daniel Pink. This guy is worth listening to.

74. One Stop Shop for Innovation

Found this blog post listing the 7 conferences and events in America that focus on innovation.

73. Cool Video on Simple Church

This is a cool little video on Simple Church.

What Is Simple Church? from Expectation Media on Vimeo.

72. The Idea Camp

I was just thinking the other day it would be cool if we had a Christian version of www.ted.com well.....here are two sights I have seen of late that sort come within the same atmosphere of TED.

The Idea Camp

and

Q

Innovation is catching on in a lot of circles these days in the Christian community. We desperately need forums like this to explore, share and inspire us into beautiful ventures of love and good news.

71. Conductor as metaphor for Apostolic Leadership

I love this video from TED because it points to the exact dynamics of apostolic leadership. As a conductor, you help the potential come alive. But there are many ways to be a conductor, some healthy, and some unhealthy.

A spin off this metaphor is that every community has certain instruments in it. It is the task of an apostolic leader to make music with the instruments available in the community. You work with the DNA in the community to cultivate a masterpiece. This involves creativity, innovation and thinking outside the box. It also means you respect the make up of the community, allowing it to develop into its own sound and feel. Asking a 14 member orchestra to play Beethoven is ludicrous, but how many people lead under the impression that they have to s0me how sound like Beethoven when the DNA of the community is equipped to play Rae Gae, or Indy music. The goal is not to cut a record label, the goal is to make music! Check it out.

70. The Nations

This being the 70th post I think it only right to do something about the Nations. As early as Genesis 10, the nations have been on Gods mind. Living in a global village like we are today, it is still astounding that some parts of the world are still insulated form the technological advances that sweep across and entire nation like America but can somehow not make it into the places that need it the most. In his book about poverty, .... says that it is an anomaly that we can get the book "Harry Potter" half way across the world and released on the same day but we can not get mosquito masks to Africa to prevent people from dying from malaria.

Jesus commanded us to penetrate the nations in Matthew 28. In the old testament, the nations would flow into Jerusalem. The holy city was the mecca of the Jews and as such the Jews constructed an ethnocentric view of themselves. Jesus shatters this ethnocentric identity and pointed the church towards a boundary crossing adventure. The disciples were to bring a great reversal and flow into the nations with the good news of the Kingdom. God has always had a heart for the nations.

However, we should not get confused about this word "nations." In the Greek it is ethnos, which is where we get our word ethnicity. There is a difference between culture and ethnicity, but they do share some common space. Jesus was not just referring to geographic boundaries on maps. There are multiple ethnicity's and cultures shoved up against each other in urban centers and the outlying regions of the megalopolis'. Jesus points us towards these ethnic groups, subcultures, races and says "MAKE DISCIPLES"!!!!!.

In order to live into this calling, we need a specific form of leadership. A boundary crossing, multi-cultural, ethnically equipped leadership. Jesus knew it would take a specific category of people to carry out this task of infiltrating the different ethnic centers with the god news. he called the people apostles. Apostolic leadership is at the enter of God's heart for the nations.

70 has always been the representation of the Nations and finds its origins in the table of nations in Genesis 1. It is interesting that the 2nd Temple period was characterized by a form of leadership that had as its characterizing number ...70. The Sanhedrin was a doctrinal and moral council in the matters of the law. How ironic that the group who was formed around the symbolic table of nations had not intentions on being a light to the nations. They morphed into an exclusive style of leadership that narrowed its focus to the concerns of its own people. It is very analogous to the Shepherd-Teacher system of leadership in the church today cant help but have its eyes on the flock.

We need to recapture this vision for the nations and re-activate a missional posture towards the world. There are more ethnic groups than 70 in the world right now, and this is true probably true in Yuri own city!

May apostles flood the nations with the good news!

69. The Ten Faces of Innovation

Been reading a really cool book on Innovation by one of the founders of IDEO, a cutting edge design company. They list ten persona's of innovation. Here are they are in readers digest version. I especially like the first 2 sections.

The first 3 are Learning Persona's

1. The Anthropologist - brings new insight by observing human behavior - i.e. your insightful incarnationalist
2. The Experimenter - Prototypes new ideas by trial and error
3. The Cross-Pollinator - Explores other organizations and cultures and translates into unique revelations that fit their context

The next 3 are Organizing Persona's - savvy about the counter intuitive process of how organizations move ideas forward.

4. The Hurdler - develops a knack for outsmarting the road blocks to innovation
5. The Collaborator - helps bring eclectic groups together and often leads from the middle of the pack to create new combination's of multidisciplinary solutions
6. The Director - gathers together a talented cast and crew and sparks their creative talents.

The next 4 are the Building Persona's

7. The Experience Architect - designs compelling experiences that go beyond mere functionality to connect at a deeper level
8. The Set Designer - creates an environment/stage on which innovation team members can do their best work
9. The Caregiver - builds on the metaphor of a health care professional. They anticipate needs and create solutions before there is a problem
10. The Storyteller - builds internal morale and external awareness through stories

My favorite quote so far is:

"The devils advocate may never go away, but on a good day, the innovative types can keep him in his place. Or tell him to go to hell."

68. Dunbars Number and Intimacy in Community

Ever thought to take a step back and look at your social network from a numerical stand point? The diagram below groups people into various numerical segments. With the technology of facebook, twitter, and all the social networking tools out there, the number of friends eventually blends into the number of acquaintances. The question is, just how many friends can you have? I know for myself I love having a lot of friends. y wife on the other hand is more of a smaller cluster of friends type person. I am an extrovert and she is an introvert.

Seth Godin in his blog highlights the curious, but intuitively accurate concept of Dunbars Number. I think there is something to be said for larger gatherings. However, we must ask our selves, Whats the Point? If we are supposed to be making disciples, and this involves cultivating authentic relationships, why would we want to go any higher than 150 people?



It is a proven fact that any larger than this leads to the breakdown of the collective interpersonal capacities of the people in the tribe. I think a lot of churches settle for ambient intimacy and try to cultivate true intimacy in their small group ministries. I think the idea of Missional Orders being at the 5-15 level, Missional Villages at 15-35 and Missional Tribes being at the 35-150 mark is a good place to start on how to organize an organic simple church network. I would personally love to have a group of 150 people to hang out with once a month and synergize for the Kingdom. God willing, we will multiply our small missional band/order into a group this size. But the goal is transformation of people into the image of God and mission.

67. Back Yard Theater

Being a missional-incarnational community requires creativity and outside the box thinking. Once you see yourself as someone who is sent into your neighborhood, it forces you into a whole new set of questions like: How do we get to know our neighbors? How do we cultivate menaingful relationships with those in our context?

I came across this cool site today that helps you turn your back yard, or front yard for that matter, into a theater. What a great idea! Need to get to know your neighbors? Want to meet some kids from the down the street? Put on a free movie night in your front or back yard. Check out this site: Backyard Theater

A few more ideas to facilitate relationships with those in your immediate geographic community:

1. Buy a bottle of wine and leave it on your neighbors door step with a note attached saying: Would love to get to know you. Give us a call and we will do it over this bottle of wine. (Ripped from Hugh Halter:-)

2. Facilitate a neighborhood wide yard sale.

3. Conduct a door to door survey about how well people know their neighbors in your neighborhood.

4. If you are into gardening, pass out a flyer letting people know you will help them grow a garden or plant a few flowers or veggies in their yard...for free of course!

5. We have found that Prayer Walking your neighborhood before doing any of these things is crucial to God helping you find ways to engage your neighborhood.

6. Anyone else out there have any ideas about facilitating community and relationships in your neighborhood? Please leave a comment. I will add them to the list.

There are multiple spheres to connect with people on. Neighborhood, Workplace, social networks etc. I am all about connecting with people in a 3rd place like Starbucks. But what about our own neighborhoods? These kinds of ideas I listed can go over in an urban or sub-urban neighborhood. Take a stab at it.

66. Prophesying

You know, I have always been creeped out by this word because it has always been used in a context that was spooky or full of drama. I have only within the past few years been embracing this gifting within the body. The problem has of course been abuse. Last night someone operated in the gift of prophesy towards one of the people in our group and it was a beautiful picture of how the gift of prophecy is to be used to build up the body. I had to stop the group after it was done and say "This is what prophesy looks like by the way." There was a revealing of God intelligence, there was building up of someone in the body, and there was a sense of Gods presence there in the room. No shock and awe, no flashy drama, but it was definitely a God thing. So thankful for this gift in the body! A really cool book I have read lately on prophecy is The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Bruegemann.