Liberating Leadership

As someone who has been following the Occupy movement with some intrigue I have been pondering Brian’s last post about leaderless movements.  I have visited the St Paul’s Occupy site twice recently and today I visited their newest site in London, the Bank of Ideas – a disused property owned by one of the banks recently bailed out by the British tax payer.

On each visit I have been warmly welcomed and included in discussions and even decision-making processes.  To begin with it has sometimes felt awkward not knowing who to go to for information but this has forced me to speak to one of the first people I have encountered to acknowledge my inexperience and humbly ask to glean their knowledge of the situation.  On each occasion I have received helpful, warm and empowering information.

In an age when I hardly need to be dependent on anyone for help (because my phone tells me everything I need to know!) it is actually quite liberating to rediscover this character of my humanity.

Having a visible, active, all-knowing leader may give us a sense of security but it may not always be the type of leadership that empowers and releases the most people.  Could hidden leadership which pushes others forward and enables them to discover their own talents be a strength rather than a weakness?

JK

Bank of Ideas

Rezoning

When we started this church, one of our goals was to bless and serve the community that we were in as a church. I was convicted through a question posed in something I’d read which said, “If your church left, would the community notice?” We do this serving through a whole variety of events geared at sharing God’s love in tangible non threatening ways including neighbourhood parties, playing with kids in the park, Easter egg hunts, youth after school programs, etc. Our ability to engage the community has increased through a “community space” which our church leased just over a year ago across the street from the school where we meet Sundays. Getting the space was a succession of miracles, including getting the site rezoned to have a church group using it. In order for that rezoning to happen, the city does checks with the residents within several hundred meters of our building. At our annual community pancake breakfast last month, a woman came up to one of our pastors and said, “Someone came to our door asking us to sign a petition because they didn’t want the church in the area. But I told them, “The church comes to bring life not death. They have helped my children. I’m not signing this petition. So I started one of my own to support your church…” I didn’t know this person, and we didn’t get wind of either of these petitions. But I could not help but think that our presence in the community through acts of serving, helped give legitimacy to our being here. -JLT

 

Don’t Be Sheep – Ask Questions!

Two viral videos have caught my eye in recent weeks.

The first is this very funny, controversial video made by a couple of guys questioning some of the laws and controls imposed on us here in the UK – laws which seem to have crept in and become accepted and obeyed without anyone daring to question why.  With an incredible wit and with the passion and communication skills of a seasoned evangelist they enable the scales to drop from our eyes and give us permission to ask why we don’t think twice about complying with so many unwritten and arguably unhealthy laws and expectations. (It is 8 mins long – so grab a coffee before you watch – and make sure you don’t spill it because you will laugh!)

The second video appeared on BBC News yesterday and tells of a 2yr old girl in China who was hit by a van.  Not only did the van drive off but CCTV shows that no less than 16 people walked past the fatally injured girl before someone stopped to help.  The reasons seem complex and  knee-jerk theories appear to centre around people being reluctant to help for fear of  being liable for fees for medical help or being blamed for the incident.  One quote said:

“There’s been so many cases where people have been treated unjustly after doing good things”.

A modern day Parable of the Good Samaritan if ever there was one!

These two stories cause me to ponder the gift of asking questions and I find myself reflecting on why many people, organisations and churches find it so threatening when people pose them.  Is it because when people ask questions it opens the possibility of those in authority losing control?  Is it because most of our self-confidence is so low that questions feed our insecurities?

But yet asking questions can help us to reflect on why things are the way they are and seek better possibilities.  Asking questions also releases us from the disabling fear of not conforming and gives us power to act justly even at the risk of personal cost or false accusation.

I am intrigued by the fact that Jesus seemed to ask many more questions than he appeared to give straight answers.  In fact I could well imagine Jesus standing with a megaphone pointing out the obvious, asking the questions, mocking the system, making people think and reminding people that there are always other options.

The opening verse of Romans 12 challenges us:

‘Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.’

Let’s not be sheep – Let’s ask questions!

JK

 

 

Jim and Casper

It sounds like the set up for a classic joke:  “A Christian and an Atheist walk into a church together…”  But it’s no joke, it actually happened.  In the summer of 2006, Jim Henderson, a former pastor, and now publishing executive went on a road trip with his best friend, Matt Casper, an avowed Atheist.  They visited eleven churches across the USA:  mega-churches with superstar preachers and mainline congregations with mind-numbing liturgy and an Anabaptist-related house church (way to go, Jason!).  They pooled their insights into a book:  Jim & Casper Go to Church (Barna:  2007).  www.amazon.com

At the end of the book, Jim reflects: “Casper saw and experienced – over and over and over again – what Christians do when they do church.  He saw it done with big budgets and no budgets, in large stadiums and in small buildings.  The same format repeated itself regardless of the setting.  The greet-sing-preach-collect-present form played out in front of us with unrelenting predictability.  And when it was all done, he would turn to me and ask, ‘Jim, is this what Jesus told you guys to do?’”

Ouch.

Jesus told us to go into the world and share the victory news that God does not hate anyone for anything; that God loves everyone, all the time.  Only then can we baptize – forming communities of Jesus followers.  Together we figure out how to live faithfully, in love with Jesus.

Yes, sometimes we get it backwards. We figure out how people should live; try with all our might to assemble a group of those folks; then tell them God loves them.

Is that what Jesus told us to do?  What would it look like to start a church whose focus was not on the “show” or the “shoulds” but on the good news?

Counter Cultural Engagement

There are at least three good reasons to start new Anabaptist faith communities.

First, starting a new faith community represents one important way to express faithfulness to Christ.  Following Jesus has historically led us into the development of new faith communities.

Second, it helps we Christians keep the Gospel relevant without being culture-bound.  I use the word, “relevant” with caution.  I have seen many new projects do dumb things in the name of “relevancy”.  Nevertheless, as Western culture gives way from modernity, Christendom and an industrial economy to post- all of that, the way we did church in the last century is less and less coherent.  We need new forms of church to speak into the culture being created.

Third, starting a new faith community helps the people of my tribe leave our Mennonite ethos of separation behind, and become more engaged with the wider society.  There is a lot of litter across the history of the church with the relics of expressions of churches that practiced physical separation from the world, rather than a counter-cultural engagement with the world.  Anabaptism is, at its best, a counter-cultural engagement with the world.  Mennonites and our spiritual cousins settled for separation for good historical reasons.  However, the time has come to renew our commitment to radical discipleship, authentic community, and genuine peace building, and to do so in the form of new churches.  Starting new faith communities in the brave new world we are creating must become thoroughly Anabaptist in perspective. – JW