Thought it was time for a quick recap and to begin a new look at the link between engaging in mission and experiential learning.
![we are safe here 430x384 The Reflective Cycle [Mission & Learning 1]](/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/we-are-safe-here.gif "We are safe here - by Dave Walker")
A while ago, I wrote a post on mission and learning, which explored the link between engaging in mission (or perhaps with culture) and Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle. This is a version of Kolb’s cycle (also known as the reflective cycle):
Links to stuff that’s taken my interest online over the last week or so.
Scot Mc Knight’s article on The Gospel for iGens in Leadership Journal is really relevant and important for those engaging in mission with young people/young adults.
I’ve just caught up with FlashForward on Five on Demand (UK only) – it’s really beginning to grow on me. Also, Design for Life on BBC iPlayer looks really interesting.
Ed Stetzer’s video for The Nines is really good – “Mission is the opposite of self” (video after the jump):
In his video for The Nines, Rick Warren talks about the need for a process of discipleship in a lot of the churches he is aware of. The question a lot of church leaders are asking is ‘how do we move people along from a needy attitude towards faith to a more committed “what can I give?” attitude?’
Is the problem that this is the wrong question? Instead, perhaps we should be asking questions about the way we market our faith in the first place?
One of my big personal struggles has always been to juggle future plans with being content and satisfied in the present. From being very young, I’ve always wanted to make dreams and plans way ahead of myself – so it wasn’t surprising to me really that I was a Dreamer on the Myers-Briggs test. And constantly being about two or three steps ahead of myself has proved a great advantage in terms of leadership and long term planning.
But the struggle that this means I’ve always faced is being able to execute my plans, and to deal with it when they ultimately work less than perfectly – which is life. And I’m not suicidal or anything, but this gap in my mind between the present and the future has always left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. It’s not that I’m trying to live up to being more than I can be (although I am) so much as that I’m impatient for the future to come now. I want to skip the hard stuff and get onto to the point where everything has come together.
Whilst babysitting for my boss last Friday I raided his bookshelf and had quick look through Roxburgh and Romanuk’s The Missional Leader. This seems like a really good book for leaders who find themselves wanting to propagate a missional environment in an established/conventional church setting. Although presenting a single model for transition towards missional community could be a little prescriptive.
What reading the book did do was to again highlight for me just how much a transformation or widening of worldview and mindset plays a role in moving a community towards mission. In working with The Lab, this has been one of the big questions we’ve faced over the last couple of years – beginning with students from conventional church backgrounds and trying to grow missional community.
Emergent Village has this interesting article today about a pastor who sold his mega-church building – if only it were true and someone had really taken that risk. Sounds like my kind of church:
Life for Hiam and the church is now more complex but, he says, more rewarding. To accommodate the lack of facilities, Hiam took the radical step and converted his basement into an administration center. “We slimmed down everything and focused on following Jesus into mission. We asked what it would mean to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. We now meet once a month for a large gathering and meal, and put all of our focus on meeting in homes. It meant really getting serious about discipleship and putting our trust into the hands of our gifted leaders.”
Once a regular speaker at evangelical conferences on topics such as leadership and church growth, Hiam says the invitations to speak have all but dried up. The shift has allowed Hiam to focus almost exclusively on meeting with leaders. He now meets almost daily with those who run discipleship groups in their homes. One leader, Bill Jarvis, liked the transition, “For the first time, I feel like I am understanding what Jesus meant when he said, ‘Go and make disciples.’ And I like it.”
Was at CMS Oxford again today to hear Mike Frost (author of Exiles and co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come) speak on "Incarnational Mission". Here's some points that stuck out for me.
With the slimline new blog design, I don't have room anymore for my Del.icio.us links and tags – so instead thought I'd try and make a habit of sticking up some recent links instead on the blog…
Frank Viola has an interview on Neue – Does the church care about the poor?
David Fitch writes about the dangers of a (post-modern) gospel message which is too big for people to understand.
Found this NYTimes article about funny little houses – kinda weird.
Leadership Journal has an interesting article about sermons and incentivisation – not sure whether I agree, but its along the right lines…
Pre-ordered the New Rob Bell book from Amazon.
Weirdest sermon series I've ever seen Mark Driscoll do.
Alan Hirsch thinks about what missional cells can learn from terrorist cells.
Five things we got wrong in the Aussie emerging-missional church.
Guerrila Gardening – fancy doing some of this in Alway. 'Course we need to sort our own jungle garden out first.
Using Wordpress for church websites. This is what we do with the Lab – and have St Paul's to get up and running in the next few months as well.
A bizarre exam answer from an American chemistry student – is hell exothermic or endothermic? Think this is an old one – probably fiction. Still pretty funny.
Downloaded Google Crome – cool in some ways, strange in others. Think I'll hang onto Firefox as my main browser for the moment.
Just caught a LeadershipJournal article in my feedreader – What the Unchurched See in a Building:
Does "sacred" space appeal to or repel the
unchurched? A recent survey probed 1,700 unchurched American adults,
putting photos of four different church exteriors in front of them.
Respondents indicated their preferences by allocating 100 points across
the four images, based on the appeal of the appearance.
The Gothic look averaged 48 points, more than double
the next-highest finisher, a white-steeple-and-pillar exterior that
averaged about 19 points. The other two churches, with more
contemporary looks, averaged 18 points and 16 points, according to the
study, commissioned by Cornerstone Knowledge Network and conducted by
LifeWay Research.
So should churches opt for the cathedral look as a way to attract the unchurched?
- Matt Branagh, Leadership Journal: http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/003/8.67.html
Obviously this is USAmerican research, but seems to agree with a general trend – especially with young people (with younger people in the research, the tend towards traditional Gothic architecture was even higher). This is true of my limited experience as well, that "unchurched" people (I love the way the article refers to "the unchurched" – it's like the new PC term for "the lost") are searching for a spirituality with truly emphasises and provides space for the sacred. Missional and emerging church leaders have been reporting this for the last five or ten years.
If young people are going to get inside a church building, they at least want it to be a spiritual experience.
The interesting irony is that there is a trend amongst the "churched" to want to de-emphasise the sacred within their own spirituality. Hence the change from church building which look like churches towards ones which look like theatres or gig venues.
Alan Hirsch reckons that the modern seeker-sensitive church only attracts or connects with between 10-20% of unchurched people. I know we're only talking architecture here, but the parallel to this research is interesting.
Closing this gap between these two polarising viewpoints will be an interesting one. It is made a little easier, I think, by an increased in "de-churched" people and a new emerging generation (the beginnings of which I am seeing in students I work with) of Post-Charismatic young people who are coming out of churches which are heavily invested in the charismatic movement – not necessarily closed off to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but very aware of it's drawbacks and failings in recent times.
Especially in the area of whole-life discipleship and incarnational living (you know what I'm hinting at).
I think that it is a dialogue between these two groups which will hold the key to the direction of the Church over the next ten-twenty years.
Finally, it's interesting in the article that the one person interviewed – who obviously has a personal investment and bias – straight away attempted to de-bunk the research, and question its relevance.
Just started working my way through Len Sweet's Summoned to Lead again tonight, and am already inspired. For me, attempting to stand out as a leader has never been simple or easy – and has always brought a kind of inner unrest or turmoil within myself. "Should I be doing something more?" "Why is this not working?" "Am I really the person God has called?"
It never used to be this way. I remember being the bossiest little boy ever – controlling, cheeky, charismatic (maybe) – but somehow as I've grown older things have become more complicated. And my leadership style is pretty complicated, unconventional – maybe unpopular.
I've always held true (as does Len) that leaders emerge rather than being made or appointed. And I can remember times when I have emerged, and still do. However, now I find myself as an appointed leader – I struggle with this. Was I supposed to emerge into this role – did I emerge? Or was I appointed?
Now I begin to see that perhaps I took on and embodied something which at the time there was no one else to embody – at least within our community. And this gives me strength.
Sweet talks about hearing your inner leadership voice – and learning to respond to it. I feel I often over-complicate things with words and terms and identifying power-plays – someone last week caught me off-guard when they said how much of a political animal I am.
I'm happy to be that animal – but at the same time must stay true to the simpleness of my voice. Politics is a means to an end, not an end in itself. I need to simplify – to learn more of how to grow and treasure people and relationships.
To listen to their voices and discern my own through them.
And I wondered what that inner voice was – what it could be for me personally – until just now, reading this…
As someone for whom a lot more tends to be going on inside than on the outside, this notion of silence seems really true. And my inner voice isn't some hidden voice of my own – it's the voice of The Word, the silence of The Word which I need to hear.
This brings me comfort – this voice is flawless, this voice is definitely there, even if my own falters. I need to learn to recognise more and more this voice inside me and to embody and incarnate the voice and the silence through my actions.
Perhaps this is what it means to truly lead. To hear and incarnate The Word through a life of devotion.
I'm fairly sure that was not the original meaning of that quote, but in that moment this is how it spoke to me so… I came over all poetic like.
Welcome to the blog of James Henley. I'm a young church leader / youth worker and student based in Newport, South Wales.
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