HUMAN EVENT. First time ever in Michigan! October 13-14. Enroll before Aug 15 and enjoy a summer discount. Join Neil Cole (Organic Church) Alex McManus (M Network) and others for conversation on mission in the 21st century. http://bit.ly/bV33G8

CULTURE PUB TRAINING. October 15 Troy, Michigan. Enroll here: http://theimn.com/culture-pubs/

7 DAY IMMERSION. October 11-17 Troy, Michigan http://theimn.com/the-mentoring-immersion/

What [...]]]>
This is our personal invite to you.
Jump in. The water’s great.

HUMAN EVENT.
First time ever in Michigan!
October 13-14.
Enroll before Aug 15 and enjoy a summer discount.
Join Neil Cole (Organic Church)
Alex McManus (M Network)
and others for conversation on mission in the 21st century.
http://bit.ly/bV33G8

CULTURE PUB TRAINING.
October 15
Troy, Michigan.
Enroll here: http://theimn.com/culture-pubs/

7 DAY IMMERSION.
October 11-17
Troy, Michigan
http://theimn.com/the-mentoring-immersion/

What Now? Click on one of the links.

REGISTER now and Save
The Fancy Website for more info

Is it okay if I tell you a little about this? It’s a really intriguing kind of thing that can emerge [...]]]> A few hours after touching down back in Scotland from The International Mentoring Network’s Immersion experience in Orlando, I found myself in a conversation about a Methodist Church initiative called Holiness and Risk.

Is it okay if I tell you a little about this? It’s a really intriguing kind of thing that can emerge in a denominational church from time to time.

Holiness and Risk is being promoted as an exploration of discipleship and vocation, but I think it can be so much more.  I mention it because it’s one of those things that opens up new ways in the most unlikely of places.  I see it connecting with the ideas being explored in the other world I live in – that of The International Mentoring Network.

In many ways, these really are different worlds – denominationalism and M – that’s why we’re calling this series Navigating the Maelstrom.  However, I see real traction here for missional thinking and living, made possible by what Alex McManus has dubbed God’s twin trajectories towards the human event – what I also want to call the purpose of God.

Here’s an overview of these trajectories:

The source of the first is found in Genesis 1:26-27 where we witness God’s creation of  human beings as bearers of his image: ‘“Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness … “.  So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’

In this line from Psalm 139 we hear the words of a person who gets this, as they declare back to God: ‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; you works are wonderful, I know that full well’ (verse 14).

The source of the second trajectory is found in Genesis 12:1-3 where we find God calling Abram and Sarai to take a risky journey, as the first generation of those who will be a people of blessing to all the people groups on earth: ‘The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.  I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing … and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”’

We catch the most complete expression of this risky journey when Paul includes these words in Philippians 2 about Jesus Christ: ‘Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage; rather, he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross’ (verses 6-8).

I believe that whatever we are about must lie along these trajectories, and if it is not, we are in danger of misrepresenting the purpose of God as something less than it ought to be – like making Christians or opening churches.

I see in the heritage of my denomination many facets of these important trajectories, espoused as personal and social holiness – now being re-explored.  But I think I’m most grateful for how Scottish Methodism’s Holiness and Risk initiative is free to find expression in different ways.  So, I’m wanting to suggest that holiness is not about becoming better Christians but is the aligning of human lives with the first trajectory: holiness is about becoming fully human as we were intended, bearers of God’s image, fully expressed by Jesus.

This opens the need for the second trajectory, understanding that we are not the special ones, but that we have found a special message that every human needs to see and hear.

So risk is about leaving what we know and feel comfortable with in order to share what we are discovering with others, wherever they are less than human.  (Through this lens I have come to see that some of the least human environments can be religious ones.)  Risk is the journey Jesus Christ took in order to become fully human, the most complete and potent expression of which is servant-hood.  It has also been said that the apostles didn’t intend planting churches in the cities they went to, so much as to take good news.

I share these things because I believe it’s upon these trajectories that all manner of churches and communities of faith can meet and mutually support one another, even though, on the surface these might look as if they come from different worlds.  Also, there might just be more hope than we often imagine in traditional churches and denominations for rediscovering the movement of God’s purpose through history.  Thirdly, I have found it so important to immerse myself in the company of others whose ideas enlarge my experience and understanding of God and his ways among humans.

If you are some kind of traditional church leader, where do the twin trajectories connect or bear up what your church is about?

If you are in no way connected with a traditional expression of church, then how we can share these things together in ways that provide the necessary human momentum to the trajectories?

This is a very vulnerable thing; there is so much more that needs to happen.

Fortune tellers make the promise that that can allay our fears with their prognostication [...]]]> Tomorrow.  Face it with either fear or anticipation, it doesn’t matter which, it is coming regardless of our grasp of it.  Fortunes have been made marketing knowledge about tomorrow whether that tomorrow is 24 hours away or 100 years distant.

Fortune tellers make the promise that that can allay our fears with their prognostication about what is coming.  Maybe, armed with their information, we can manipulate our path into the future so that what we fear can be avoided.  Or, better yet, they can assure us that what we fear doesn’t exist at all on the path of time we are traveling down. Their predictions can set us at peace in the present if they can reassure us that the fulfillment of our dreams is right around the corner.  All that energy we expend fretting about how things will turn out in the end can be saved with a few simple words from a seer that all will be well, we can relax.

Of course, the accuracy of our local forecaster’s claims aren’t always up to snuff.  In the end, they don’t really give us the confidence we are hoping to gain; they’re just another thing to doubt.

What we need is someone who has really seen the future.  Someone who has seen it and is willing to guide us from the here and now into the future that they know can be ours if we choose to walk the path to get there.  The truth is, there are people out there that have this ability.  They have the ability to see what is possible in the future.  But, not only can they see, they can also discern the paths that need to be traveled in order to arrive at the future in question.  In them, the combination of perception and passage are combined and we have better than a fortune teller.  We have a guide, an architect, and a seer that bridges the gap between us and tomorrow.

Do you remember The Terminator?  In that franchise of movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger played a cyborg that was constructed by computer driven machines to eradicate mankind.  To do so he was sent back in time to assassinate the mother of the future leader of the human resistance against the rule of machines on planet Earth.  If we can forgive the Terminator for his actions in the first movie we will find that in the second movie he has had a change of heart and now he desires to side with the humans in opposition to the machines.

Now this is the type of future seer we need.  Someone like the Terminator who knows the future like he’s been there.  But not only that.  That is the point where most fortunetellers stop, simple information.  He came equipped with the tools to communicate what tomorrow looked like and then to guide them into tomorrow.  Knowledge of tomorrow’s challenges doesn’t make the passage easy, but in the example of this movie the Terminator was there to assist in that process to ensure the safe survival of his human wards.  I don’t want to spoil the movie but, as future guides go, the Terminator did a pretty good job.

The Gallup StrengthsFinder calls this set of talents Futuristic, someone who can see tomorrow and then chart the path to get there.

Wondering what could be in your tomorrow, what is possible?  Find a Futuristic thinker to paint you a picture and draw you a map.

One day, though, the train breaks down and the commuters have to disembark by a [...]]]> In his book, The Message in the Bottle, Walker Percy tells the fictional story of a train that hurried through the countryside. The commuters on board saw the passing scenery as little more than a two-dimensional background rolling past their windows.

One day, though, the train breaks down and the commuters have to disembark by a yellow house with a stain on the wall. They had seen it before as it rushed past their windows, but now they see it for the first time as a three-dimensional object in its own right, rather then simply part of a blurred landscape. The owner of the house appears from within, offering to show one of the commuters around the place he built and telling many stories. He goes on to offer a ride to the commuter’s destination. Percy calls this a “crossing point” from one world into another.

I tell this story because for all the years I’ve known it, I have imagined myself to be the builder of the yellow house, inviting others to come and share in its stories. But one morning last week I woke up with the thought that I may actually share more in common with the commuter; intrigued by the yellow house and its life-story.

I think this breakthrough thought occurred to me because I was meeting with my community of knowing, the cohort of The International Mentoring Network, and just the day before we had been discussing the incarnational and attractional properties of churches. Things happen when we make this journey with God in his world with others.

In Navigating the Maelstrom I am exploring what happens to me as I make the journey from the center of a denomination to the edges of culture, where, like the commuter leaving his train, I am moving to investigate the lives of other denominations from a new perspective.

Since returning from the cohort, as if to underline this breakthrough thought, I happen to have read the following from Hal Miller, quoted in Frank Viola’s book, Reimagining Church:
‘Institutional churches are a lot like trains … it just follows its tracks. … Organic churches … are not trains, but groups of people out for a walk … they can be genuinely attentive to their world, to their Lord and to each other.’

Whilst it’s important to attract people it’s even more important to be attracted to people.

I know that while I remain in my traditional denomination I cannot remain alone: I need to belong to a community of knowing, a group of people who are also making this kind of journey. For me this means the IMN. One of the things we explored this last week, together with Alex McManus, was how, on the width of human consciousness, we are all born into a context, culture, and community, and that we can widen these to include other contexts, cultures, and communities. Again, I realize how much I need a community or company (literally a group of people who share bread) of knowing in order to do this.

The people who make up this company are my companions: those who share bread together – or we might say, those who feed one-another. We each know how we need to keep moving on with each other, to take our thinking and our activity further as we feed on knowledge, as Brian McLaren has his character, Neo, share in his book, The Last Word:
“I’ve found that I can only know so much until I find a community that shares my knowing. If I begin growing very far beyond what my community allows me to know, I need to persuade my community to think with me or else find or form a new community.”

Who are your companions of knowing?

Another concept shared by McLaren in this book is deep ecclesiology; don’t ask me why, but this made me think of the three-dimensional chess-set in the original Star Trek series: just google it and you’ll find that you can even get hold of one and the rules of how to play. But the thing that this emphasizes for me is that we are all connected to one another (beyond the simple locale and genre) and are more able than ever to express this amazing reality. So if you’re looking for a community of knowing, we can certainly be one of them.

At the end of the week my companions each offered a “whisper” thought so that I might better navigate the maelstrom.

Not bad at all.

Together, the journey continues.

Sometimes I’m asked, What does “M” stand for? I usually answer, “Exactly.” The question is understandable. I use M a lot.

My website is theimn. My social network [...]]]> Since Alex is publishing this blog post with the IMN newsletter, I thought it ought to have a link from the IMN as well. Enjoy. -Your friendly neighborhood editor-of-doom.

Sometimes I’m asked, What does “M” stand for? I usually answer, “Exactly.” The question is understandable. I use M a lot.

My website is theimn.
My social network is myimn.
My internet radio show is All Things M.

So while I usually answer in such a way as to increase curiosity, today, I’ll answer a different way. M stands for huMan.

(Is that any way to make an acronym? Click here to read the rest.)

A LONG WAY TO GO AND THE F WORD I [...]]]> In the first part of this article I explored something of what makes us the amazing people we are; how, when awakened, we become “forces of nature.” The bigger question for this column is: How can an awakened person live in an inherited or denominational church?

A LONG WAY TO GO AND THE F WORD
I have been on what I now see to be an odyssey for more than ten years. I want to be very honest though, for, although I have traveled a long way in thought and practice and relationship, I can’t hide the fact that I’ve got a long way to go towards being as missional as God is calling me to be.

Not long ago I heard someone say that our failures might be the platform for our humanity. I like that. I once read this advice in a Seth Godin Book: ‘Fail and Fail and Fail Again’. He was encouraging his reader to keep trying things, to take risks. I thought that would make a great title for a book if I ever wrote one!

Tim Heerebout responded to my last article, asking “Do you think an established church can ever be moved from the old mentality to really adopt this as a core value?” He allowed me to ask a question in return: “What would you say are the five most significant things for establishing a sustainable faith community?”

My thanks to Tim, who responded as follows:
1. Connection to Jesus
2. An understanding of how we’re to be involved in His mission
3. A map for the journey through discipleship
4. A radical commitment to community
5. A heart for serving the world

If Tim is right (and I think his list is powerful) then we begin to see the size of the task for the awakened person (and why there will be many instances of failure when different cultures clash). This next list shows the current state of many churches that have to be led towards Tim’s top-5:
1. Connection to (their) church and its doctrines
2. A limited understanding of mission which often sees the end result as a larger church (still doing things their way) or doing things for people that don’t connect them with a faith community.
3. An emphasis on the traditional ways (service attendance, membership, job-filling, financial giving) which tend to externalize faith
4. Deep community is an add on – “we” emerges out of “I” when it needs to be the other way around
5. Try to change the “sanctuary” and see how separated church and the world are

FAILED AGAIN
Just before Christmas I found myself reacting in a meeting to someone who wouldn’t work with the order things needed to progress to explore a mission opportunity. It became an argument and I got angry, so much so I felt it too deeply.  After apologizing to everyone, and to the focus of my anger, I knew I didn’t want to cover this over or carry on as normal. (It didn’t help when others of the meeting told me they would have strangled him.) My sadness over this resulted from my daily desire to be more open to God and his work in making me more like Jesus. Yet I “lost it,” and I felt the failure again. My response has been to begin an experiment.

Frank Laubach is one of my heroes of the faith, and inspired by – but not copying him – I have set out to be more present to God each day, and, (please God), to be made more like Jesus. I am sharing this here because I see this as being the central need for missional leaders who hope to be about all God wants of them, through all God has given them.

You can read about the experiment at: http://www.geoffreybaines@btinternet.com.

Last time I wrote how I was right in the middle of “it” – the denominational church. I can see how much of what happened in this meeting was the result of more than three years of frustration spilling over – I had not noticed how close to the surface it was until then.

ZOOMING
I think through my experience of the last few weeks, I have become more convinced of how important it is to know who we are, what we are meant to do, and how we connect with God. I am exploring how I can better make the contribution that only I can make … so watch this space. I believe the person I was arguing with has amazing talents and abilities too, but just as mine must be offered in the right places and ways, so must his.

There’s a great Marcus Buckingham line I’ve just been searching for in his books, but as I haven’t found it yet, I’ll just paraphrase: Never mind trying to put anything else into people; it’s hard enough trying to bring out what’s already in there – focus on the things that are already in there.

So my experiment includes focusing on “what’s already in there,” taking this as far as I can. Seth Godin calls this “zooming”: stretching your limits without threatening your foundation (Small is the New Big). This isn’t X-Factor (American Idol) Christianity; it’s the Philippians 2 kind. We enter the life we are meant to live in humility for the sake of others, and we find ourselves living a greater story. There are many others who will only get to live their greater stories when we live ours, living as only we can so that the gospel may enter the lives of others.

Richard Rohr (‘Adam’s Return’) writes of five elemental truths that are found in many cultures around the world when it comes to children moving into adulthood – (forming responsible and contributing humans). They are:
1. Life is hard
2. You’re not as important as you think
3. Your life is not about you
4. You are not in control
5. You are going to die

These five statements are true enough, but Jesus completes them: you might like to have a go at finishing each one off: Life is hard BUT …, etc.

A FEW QUESTIONS
Here are some questions to explore that which is already in you, needing to be brought out if we are to be forces of nature:
• How do you find yourself connecting with God, and how can you zoom this relationship?
• What are your amazing talents and abilities that energize you, formed and shaped throughout your lives?
• What are your dreams for making the world more human?
• The Holy Spirit has given you gifts to focus your life in service; what are yours?

What do you think?

The Na´vi [...]]]> By now most of you have seen James Cameron’s blockbuster movie, AVATAR.
The night I saw it I knew this movie would strike a chord with large audiences worldwide. I tweeted that anyone who saw the movie was going to want to live on Pandora, the home planet of the 10-foot tall, blue skinned Na´vi.

The Na´vi people are tall, thin, tribal, handsome and fiercely brave. Pandora, their planet, is as beautiful as it is dangerous. The Na´vi live in a ubiquitous communion with each other and their world. The conflict arises when an evil corporation (surprise!) from Earth wants to exploit large deposits of a treasured mineral located directly under the Na´vi’s ancient home.

Interestingly enough, CNN reports that audiences are experiencing depression after viewing the movie, with some even entertaining suicidal thoughts. Others are experiencing an increased disgust with humanity.

I mentioned to a new friend of mine how I felt that many viewers would want to live on Pandora. He said that he asked his wife to paint herself blue. To me, these are totally understandable responses. The Na´vi live in community. The Na´vi are exotic, wise, fierce, and sexy. Their planet, Pandora, is filled with cool flora and fauna. Life there is an adventure.

Ok, so the fantastical Pandora is cool. What’s not to like?
But thoughts of suicide? Anger with the humans?

Many of us feel a slight sadness when we finish a great novel, or when a favorite television series ends. But depression?

Still, perhaps there is something here that we should pay attention to. Sometimes we minimize the distance between the world we live in, the world “as it is”, and the world we dream of, the world as “it could be”. The Na´vi live in the kind of dense community we long for but cannot seem to find. They are exotic, fierce, wise, and sexy. We are not blue, not fierce, often confused, and mostly look awful in thong underwear. Their lush planet and colorful lives are filled with adventure. Our lives seem gray in comparison.

Here’s where it all began to break down for me. The CNN article tells us, “Compared to life on earth Pandora is beautiful and glowing utopia”.

What?

This is a line written by someone who never gets outside. Heck, you don’t even have to go outside. Get the Discovery Channel for God’s sake.

Perhaps part of the problem is that while we wished we could live on amazing fictional planets, we’ve never taken the steps to really live here on this planet.

We are estranged from each other and our world, but not because humans suck and the “world is dying” (as one of the depressed said of Earth). Our problem is that we lack a mission worth giving our lives to, something worth defending, something worth dying for. Without this we often feel an emptiness to our lives and routines. Another part of the problem is that we spend too much time being heroes in fantasy worlds and games. We live action packed lives vicariously through television and movies. Since I adore movies and TV let me qualify this. “Too much time” is a relative. Some of us live before our screens to the exclusion of a real world that is filled with amazing adventures, vicious predators, and lots of opportunities to die doing something really daring.

Just a couple of days before I heard about the “Avatar blues” I was listening to a new friend of mine, Steve, tell of his experience on a hunt in Africa. He and a mutual friend of ours, Terry, had fired on a Rhino and the behemoth charged them. Steve tells me that you could feel the ground tremble as this angered beast ran at them. Terry, he said, took two steps forward at the Rhino, ground trembling beneath their feet, cocked his gun, and fired.

That’s not fiction. That’s adventure. Earth is as beautiful, as dangerous, as lush a utopia as Pandora. There is a difference. Utopia means “no place”. That’s Pandora – no place. It’s not real. Earth, however, is real. You just gotta get out now and then.

I wonder what would happen if some of us actually got to live on Pandora? Would we spend our Pandoran days playing fantasy games in which we were Earthlings like Steve and Terry who actually went out once in a while and had adventures?

For Christ following people, Avatar is a reminder that in Christ we have a mission, and on that mission we will have adventures a plenty. We live in a real world of real splendor populated by real residents who are under attack. The cause is real. The risk is real. Because the cause and the risk are real, the conditions for dense communion with others exist. It’s up to us to step into it. So put the remote down. Here’s the call: Heroes Wanted in the fight for humanity and for the quest to save the planet. Safe Return Doubtful.

what do you think?

Have you ever reflected on your life and realized that at some point along your path you’ve forgotten what you set out to do?  Maybe you [...]]]> What is our point?  And by that question I mean to ask, where are we going?  What are we moving towards?  Is there a destination that we have clearly defined?

Have you ever reflected on your life and realized that at some point along your path you’ve forgotten what you set out to do?  Maybe you desired at one point to accomplish something great and noble, only to realize upon later reflection that you are no longer even moving remotely in the direction of the goal you set out to accomplish.

I’ve been there. At some point I always seem to lose focus. As the Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment says, people with strength of focus stay on track, they follow through.

Frodo, from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, had focus.  Early in his life, as Tolkien described it, Frodo was adventurous.  Most of Frodo’s fellow hobbits were home-bodies.  They were, by and large, happy to cerncern themselves solely with their town, their garden, their food, and their hobbit hole. They happily lived in the present with few commitments and responsibilities.  Frodo was the exception. He would dream of traveling the world like his uncle, Bilbo, had done. He fantasized about it, pretending to be on epic journeys full of danger and glory.

Maybe for him, an agricultural environment wasn’t the best place to excel, because it wasn’t until Frodo embarked on a journey destined to change his life that his true strengths became apparent. When the day came that he was handed a quest, Frodo’s obsessive search for a mission became his greatest asset.

When Gandalf tasked Frodo with delivering the Ring of Power to Mount Doom it was then that Frodo discovered his true strength; focus.  And what did focus give him?  Focus gave him the drive to clearly see his goal no matter the potential distractions. Despite all the forces at work to distract and obstruct Frodo in his task, his focus drove him on.  His focus kept his goal first among his priorities despite hardship, time, enemies, hunger, pain, and imminent death.  In fact, his focus added value to enduring those hardships.  Each hurdle crossed was a rung on the ladder that led to the mountain in his sights.

Many of us struggle at times to keep a goal in our sights because of the many distractions we face, but someone with focus finds it easy to keep an eye on the prize.  They can be counted on to keep their vision clear.  They will assign value to actions and choices based on how efficiently they move them towards their final destination.  Their actions today are based on their goals tomorrow.  Like a bloodhound given a scent, there is only one end to their activity and that is when they find the source.  Until then, they are on the hunt.

You want to stay on track but have trouble wading through all those forces that pull most of us off the path?  Partner with someone like Frodo and they simply won’t let you forget where you are going.