Futurist and author, Rex Miller, walks the M audience through the “technological imperative” and the seismic shifts that are rocking culture.

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It used to be that young church planters talked about starting a new churches. If they were ambitious, and they all were, they wanted it to grow and grow big, grow mega.

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.

10,000 HOURS
In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell busts some myths surrounding those really talented people who seem to appear out of the blue to take their world by storm, be it via sport, music, computers, business, or politics, and so on.

I don’t want to spoil this book for you, because it’s a great read that I recommend, but I will share one of Gladwell’s illustrations with you, as I think what he discovered is both important and fascinating.

The influence of The Beatles on the popular music scene lives on even today, and they were thought to be a unique musical phenomenon when they first exploded onto the world scene. What we don’t see, though, is how they happened to be around the right age, with a number of years already under their belts (they formed in 1957), at just the time when a Liverpudlian entrepreneur happened to meet a German nightclub owner, who happened to be in London, searching for bands to play live music in Hamburg, Germany.

The end result of all these factors; between 1960-62, The Beatles ended up playing something like 1,200 gigs, none of which was less than five hours. As you can imagine, this regimen demanded that they not only develop their own music, but cover other musicians’ work, and sample different musical genres.

Gladwell mentions that, in a survey of musicians, it had been uncovered that the most brilliant artists had some 10,000 hours (roughly ten years) of experience that made them stand out from the rest (a good musical teacher would probably have some 4,000 hours of preparation). From this finding, it could even be argued that Mozart didn’t begin composing his most exceptional pieces until he was around twenty-one (His approximate 10,000 hour mark).

A few more things that came out of the musical survey were: no one lacking musical talent could become a great musician – no matter how many hours they put in – and, no amount of talent without practice could produce a great musician. (I promise not to mention anything more from Outliers now.)

When you put all these things together: the raw talent The Beatles already had, their experience, being around at the right age at the right time when someone happened to be looking for a young band who could play long gigs, you can see how many factors can come into play to determine success.

MORE THAN WE THINK
Why am I telling you all of this?

I have met so many people who would say they have nothing to offer, that they haven’t had opportunities or any amazing experiences in their lives, that it’s always been a struggle. But when I finished reading Gladwell’s book, I found myself wondering if even these experiences – written off as toxic and perhaps even adding up to thousands of hours – might be used in such a way as to make a difference in the lives of other humans. What if there was some way of turning these experiences into something that could help others who find themselves in the same place now?

I have this thought that’s been nagging at me for some years now, that churches ought to be places which allow some of this stuff about “people with raw talent with particular experiences being in the right place at the right time and happening to meet the right people so they can make a remarkable contribution” to happen more often than anywhere else. The thing is, as I write this down, I am right in the middle of it; “it” being the life of an institutional church. And I think it’s more true that this kind of church is the last place where this convergence of people, talent, and experience can happen.

Perhaps many of those who may yet find that their lives can have purpose (the purpose God has for them) may not be people leading stuff, but people waiting to be led, and together with others, waiting to make a contribution for others that is simply remarkable (literally, something worth talking about).

I wear no rose-tinted glasses, and the last thing I can say is that the process doesn’t become easier as you become the person God made you to be. Just this morning I read the following from Seth Godin’s book, Tribes: “How was your day? If your answer is ‘fine’ then I don’t think you were leading. […] How can I create something that critics will criticise?”

AWAKENING THE MORE
Each day brings the reality of working out my decision to remain within a denomination and seeking to become a missional force. I find that it’s the tough experiences that I have had in this denomination that I find myself calling upon – like being spurred on to keep discovering things when so many are closed to the new and the different and the necessary. It’s about hoping this church is different from the ones that justified what they did to me and my family “for the good of the church” It’s about continually finding out what God really made me for. These are the times when I feel hope for the things that leaders of churches are supposed to do. If you were to ask me if I would swap my experiences for more pleasant ones, I think I would probably say no – I want to use them for something better.

All of this and more is why I hope the best for others. Perhaps, if I were to attempt to put into a nutshell what I must be about, it is this: to awaken the imaginations of others.

How about you? What MUST you do, so others might do what they MUST do?

What do you think?

(Watch out for part two …)

Erwin’s reply is basically: focus on the things you are good at doing and which make the world a better place; also, the things you are good at that make you a better person: and, the focus on the things that you are passionate about.

We’re continuing our exploration of how those of us who are in traditional churches and denominations – and are becoming more missionally centred – can prosper and flourish. Last time I shared why I have chosen: not to leave the denomination; not to stay and expect less; and, not to try and live in two worlds (church and world). I choose something more than all of these, something yet to be given shape and form.

I quoted Len Sweet, who writes at the end of his book So Beautiful:

We were made to be more than men and women. Through the Spirit, we can become a force of nature.

Through the lens of Elijah’s mountain-top experience, I suggested that we are meant to be “thin-silence” people: living in proximity to humans wherever they are, in the way that God came close to Elijah. We perhaps want to be fire-people, or earthquake-people, or wind-people, but it was in the thin-silence that God broke into Elijah’s life.

I don’t think the question is: How do we become missional leaders? – as if there’s some stereotype. The question is: How do we become more missional? – the degree to which this happens in our lives will determine whether we become leaders of anyone or anything.

You must find the freedom to be you and I must find the freedom to be me. Your life is a result of the missional activity of God, who sought to give himself in creation. God is missional. Jesus is missional. The Holy Spirit is missional. And we who bear the image of God, we too are missional. Part of what it means to be human, then, is to be missional: to reach beyond our lives to bless the lives of others, so they too can reach out to others, to be fully alive. Then, the more we live out the possibilities to give God has created us for, the more missional we become.

Steven Hawthorne anchors this freedom well when he writes:

Passion is the heart set free to pursue that which is truly worthy. Those who set their hearts on that which is most worthy – the glory of God – live with joy-filled abandon. (Perspectives)

If God’s glory is seen as one side of a coin, the flip-side is our fully-realised humanity. I sometimes ask people: What is the purpose God has made you for within his creation-mission, which you will pursue for the rest of your life?

I think that maybe twenty percent of people know sooner-rather-than-later what do with their lives. There are lots of reasons why this might be: their particular talents and abilities; their environment and experiences; and how they have connected these up in order to move towards their future. It’s really more of a spectrum than a sharp 20/80 thing, but the important thing is that every person can take an intentional way; I know because I have been walking it for more than ten years. (And it’s the best; I have been more alive on this way then at any other time in my life. I really do believe the best is in front of us.)

Thin-silence people are true to who God has made them to be. Who they are emerges out of a conversation that they are engaged in with God. (It also emerges out of the conversations they have with others – we seriously miss the point of this in traditional churches and denominations, in which we mirror the individualistic culture of which we are a part.) Out of these conversations there emerge dreams. They do not know if the dreams have come from them or from God, and it doesn’t really matter because thin-silence people find themselves talking to God about these dreams, and God is asking questions and encouraging them to begin trying out the things they are passionate about, and he tells them he likes what they are dreaming and doing.

FOUR ELEMENTS AND A MYSTERIOUS COMPANY OF TEN
Here are four elements which have really helped me explore the missional life: Self-Awareness, Ingenuity (Creativity), Love, and Heroism. I see these four elements as being key to prospering as missional people in traditional churches and denominations.

A missional company of ten began living out these four elements some 350 years ago. Within a decade this small band had journeyed to four continents.

A growing self-awareness had allowed them to be honest and confident in what they could and could not do, what they were passionate about, and how they connected with God.

Knowing what they were meant to do with their lives allowed them to move quickly and creatively – they would say “Live with one foot raised.”

As they reached out to others with the love of God, they saw the image of God in the different peoples they met and they loved them thoroughly. This extension of love saw amazing creativity being released in different peoples, and they also expressed an openness to learn from them.

This way of living saw them on an odyssey of discovery and giving. It saw them living their lives in heroic ways for others.

Self-Awareness – Ingenuity – Love – Heroism: these mark our journey of becoming a force of nature for God. There are no shortcuts.

What do you think?

Next time I’ll begin to unpack some of this.

I imagined this as a “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” question so I could use my “phone-a-friend” option. Here is the million pound/dollar question again:

• As Geoffrey becomes a more missional and less institutional, being, should he:
A) Leave the denomination and begin something new?
B) Stay in the denomination and learn to expect less?
C) Try to live in both worlds?
D) Create something bigger than A, B, and C?

Thanks to those who took my “call” – I see that “B” was definitely not an option for you.

Before I tell you what my preference is, let me share some of my thinking.

First up, here’s something that caught my attention as I was shaping my question, this from the closing of Len Sweet’s book, So Beautiful, in which he describes the MRI life (Missional, Relational, Incarnational):

We were made to be more than men and women. Through the Spirit, we can become a force of nature.

I like this a lot.

Secondly, here’s how it joined up with some of my other reading and thinking. I’ve been slowly reading through Jeremiah, following the prophet through his many years of not being listened to by his own people. Finally, the things that he has warning the people of Jerusalem and Judah about happen. The city falls and the people are taken into exile, and the only ones left in Judah are the poorest of the poor.

The Babylonians heard his message, though, and quite liked it (Jeremiah 40:1-6) and they offer the prophet his freedom. His options are: to leave his people; stay with them in Judah; or, leave with those you are going into exile.

What would you recommend he does? It’s not unlike the question I asked, above.

I was intrigued by Jeremiah’s choice. Of the two groups of Judeans, the one he picked were the least hopeful of the two: he decided to stay with the poorest of the people in Judah. (It was hardly the easy ride, being taken into

When I chose the title of whispering in the wind for the last article (what is a whisper in the presence of the wind?), I was thinking of Elijah on the mountain of God, after fleeing from Jezebel and her threats. Hiding in a cave, God promises to pass by and there follows a powerful wind, an earthquake, and a fire.

Apparently Elijah doesn’t hear God in any of these, but then, ‘After the fire came a gentle whisper’ and Elijah went out to meet with God.

The Hebrew, often translated as “gentle whisper” is more accurately translated as thin silence, but just what is this? My imagination wonders about a tear between heaven and earth, a place where two worlds meet and become one, and perhaps the thin silence is like the quietest breathing of God’s name: Yod, Heh, Vah, Heh. (We may return to Elijah to explore something more that he discovered.)

We too are whisperers of God’s name, thin silences, sometimes almost inaudible in the institutions we are part of. We sense that we are part of these but do not belong. We do not wish to, nor dare we play by the rules of organisation or institution. We are not rule-breakers either, but we breathe the deeper, more primitive sounds and consonants and vowels of faith, love, and hope to all we meet and through all we do. We know that if we are silenced in these God-rhythm breathings, then we become a part of that which we are called to change, and we may become only wind or earthquake or fire.

There is no archetypal missional leader; there is only one thing we hold in common: to discover and to be (fully) the person God has made us to be (I want to explore this more in my next article). We long to live in dynamic relationship with God with every breath we breathe; we understand ourselves to be fearfully and wonderfully made and are humbled by this; we intuitively follow our dreams; and our daily aim is to immerse all we are into the Spirit, that our life might become a force of nature.

We then increasingly see life as one; we make the invisible visible, and the visible invisible. It is not about church and world, it’s not about reaching the church and reaching the world; it is about reaching the human, wherever the centredness of their lives are found – whether ideology, consumerism, me-ism, idolatry, addiction, church, or whatever.

We know it is in reaching out beyond ourselves we feel most alive, but more: we are experiencing more for ourselves of what it means to become more human (the process we traditionally call salvation).

I therefore choose “D” – largely unimagined and not well known, but I hope bigger and more hopeful as a dream than A, B, and C.

What do you think?

In the early days, I often operated under the following principle:

“Never do anything that the newest person cannot do.”

For example, when starting a Bible study, it was more important to transfer a value and a process for Bible study than it was to share my knowledge about the Bible. Sure, sharing my knowledge was personally rewarding and often helpful to others. It was like giving a hungry man a fish. But it was not reproducible. But, if I led the Bible study in such a way the centered the Bible and not the Bible teacher, a person or group could be taught to “learn” to fish.

In order to teach people to “learn to fish”, at the prior incarnation of Mosaic known as the Church on Brady in East Los Angeles, we used an inductive Bible study method with which anyone, even the newest visitor, could lead a Bible study. The process was to ask a set of predetermined questions of the text and have each member of the group answer. What do like best? What do you like least? etc. The genius of this is that while few dare to answer questions, almost anyone can ask a question of the Bible and of the group. That’s reproducible.

If someone had a question or a challenge in a new Bible study, a well trained Bible student can often give an answer. That’s not rapidly reproducible. But you can train anyone in a “yellow pad” skill. When someone asks a question or issues a challenge anyone can say, let’s write that one down, pray, and see if the Bible answers it as we read each week. That’s reproducible.

Today, many Church Planters start churches and build them on their communication gifts and reservoir of Bible knowledge. How much more reproducible might leadership be if it modeled more listening and question asking than it does speaking and answer giving?

I grant that in my early days, a lot of my thinking centered on developing disciples in underdeveloped neighborhoods and countries, and the example of inductive Bible study above may feel less than sexy enough for today’s “edgy missional vibe”. I’ll accept that. But even when working with educated and affluent westerners, we still need to think about reproducible leadership, structures, and methods.

For example, today church planting movements strategically plant “Million Dollar Churches”. Sums of $250,000.00, $500,000.00 or more are granted in order to start a church. That’s not reproducible. (Before anyone misses my point, I favor this. I favor dedicating resources –lots of resources– to start churches). It’s good, but it is not reproducible nor is it the stuff of movements.

A have a story to share that I think will illuminate this issue.

A decade or so back, the President of a Church Planting organization visited me in order to raise money for his group. He told me his story. He was a convert to the Christ following faith during his college years in Latin America. He began to preach on the campus and the number of converts grew. After graduation he stayed with the work and his following grew into a church of mega church status.

Now, he explained, he wanted to raise the money necessary to repeat his experience in the lives of other church planters. He explained the costs of relocating and supporting a campus missionary and his team, and the costs of church plant in major cities, etc. Without the funding, it would be impossible to create the necessary movement and critical mass they needed to get a high impact church off the ground.

Of course, I loved his enthusiasm and shared his vision of reaching the world for Christ. “How many did you have on your team when you planted your church as a young believer?” I asked.

He explained that he began his work alone under the leadership of the Spirit.

“And who funded you?” I asked him. “When you were a new believer and you began to preach?”

He laughed. “No one,” he said. He then began to describe how the Spirit moved among them and the new congregation had emerged.

As we continued our conversation we began to talk about the obvious truth that we cannot create via funds what was created without them. Jesus’ movement is already viral. This Church Planting leader wanted to recreate his own success, only he wanted to do it via funds rather than the spontaneous work of the Spirit. Don’t get me wrong. I favor the delegation of funds to accomplish this work. But I do not favor missing the lesson. The lesson is that there is no way to simulate the moving of the Spirit with a budget. And, until we fix this truth as a landmark on our mental maps, we shouldn’t worry about the funding.

Jesus, when he sent out teams to take villages, sent them with nothing except a strategy and in the power of the coming Kingdom. We’ll talk about that strategy in another post, but for now, if you’re a church planter or church planting leader, as we raise the funds needed to complete our task, let’s put our communal “ideative” spirit to work and think about how to create reproducible leadership, structures, and methods.

It was a long event so I had to leave before the end, and it was some time later that one of the ministers from this church saw me and thanked me for taking part. She went on to mention that some of the people there asked who was that young man and that what I shared was like a breath of fresh air.

I had to smile, not because I enjoyed the praise in any way, but because I am fifty years old and people have been saying things like this throughout my ministry. After 26 years as a minister in plenty of churches, I’ve concluded that, whilst people enjoy a little fresh air once in a while, it’s a lot different to having to experience the fresh all the time.

A couple of years ago, I read Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways, in which he writes that, as far as he can see, no previous movement of God has ever rediscovered its original vibrancy and energy. Now, I’m part of the Methodist church, which is right up there when it comes to the tables of most frequently quoted God-movements, inspiring many churches and leaders today, so when I heard this my heart fell. Having said this, Hirsch does include these words from Stephen Addison for those who seek to be apostolic figures in the denominations:

The apostolic denominational leader needs to be a visionary, who can outlast significant opposition from within the denominational structures and can build alliances with those who desire change. Furthermore, the strategy of the apostolic leader could involve casting vision and winning approval for a shift from maintenance to mission. In addition the leader has to encourage signs of life within the existing structures and raise up a new generation of leaders and churches from the old. The apostolic denominational leader needs to ensure the new generation is not “frozen out” by those who resist change. Finally, such a leader must restructure the denomination’s institutions so that they serve mission purposes.

You’ve probably already noticed the “furthermore,” “in addition,” and “finally,” in what Addison is saying and wonder whether it’s worth it staying in a denominational church, and whether it wouldn’t be easier just to begin something new.

One of the things I’ve been discovering as I’ve been becoming more of a missional explorer – something that happens when you’re involved in the IMN – is that I find life outside the denominational structures to be way more natural than life within them. Some of the marks of this include: the human story of which we are all a part, the human conversation that can begin once we become aware of this, who we are as humans, how I connect deeply with God, and, what is still a question: how then shall I worship?

So significant has been this movement that another question is forming: Is there a point in this journey, once reached, when and where it becomes more difficult to stay within the church then to form Christ-centered communities outside? Alex McManus makes a great point, one that in certain ways has haunted me all the years I’ve been part of Methodism: even if the institution loses it’s sense of mission, it doesn’t disappear.

This is a hot issue for me, and there are a few things I’ll be exploring: my own future; how it’s possible to be a missional leader in a traditional denomination; how missional leaders connect wherever they are working with God.

I welcome your input to all of this, and so, if I put this in the form of a “Who Want to Be a Millionaire?” question, and it’s time to call a friend, this would be it:

As Geoffrey becomes a more missional and less institutional, being, should he:
A) Leave the denomination and begin something new?
B) Stay in the denomination and learn to expect less?
C) Try to live in both worlds?
D) Create something bigger than A, B, and C?

So, as you’re the friend I’m calling; which answer would you choose, and why?

Geoffrey Baines
Senior IMN Operative
Scotland