Tim Abbott

Change

Just having a sort out of my notes for the Missional Leadership course and I came across this quote:

change is a culture that we live in, not a task that we need to complete

It sure resonates with my own experience.

Overcoming the powers

At Saturday's Missional Leadership teaching day we were looking at The Kingdom of God and the language of Power Encounter. This is a substantial module which examine the biblical and contemporary approach to understanding and engaging the powers, and there's more to come next month. This is, of course, an area with a diversity of strongly held views about what constitutes 'the powers' and how to engage with them, tackle them or defeat them.

The starting point for the exploration of this subject is the Kingdom of God, a kingdom the perspective of which stretches way beyond the church to the life and lives of all for whom Christ died. I love this quote from George Otis, "When the Kingdom of God comes to town it makes no distinction between the restaurant and the church." God's intention is that both come under his rule. A focus on the Kingdom lifts our gaze from the inner workings of our church to the wider workings of the world.

The power of this Kingdom is exclusively the Holy Spirit's power, not ours.  Paradoxically, God's power shows up best in our powerlessness. Tragically, this is not what most people observe of most western churches where the lack of any apparent spirituality leaves many seeking spiritual reality in alternative or occult practices.

We covered a lot of ground, but here are a few of the key points that grabbed my attention.

Walter Wink's integrated worldview of spiritual powers challenges the traditional view of the physical and social world here on earth and the world of spiritual powers 'up' in the heavenlies - a spatial concept that has it's roots in the ancient belief that heaven was up above the the sky. Wink's worldview asserts that spiritual powers are 'within' the world that we experience, therefore we engage with them as we engage with the personalities, principalities and systems of this world within which they exercise their power.

Another surprise for me was that the language of 'power' or 'powers' in the New Testament is imprecise, liquid, interchangeable and unsystematic. In particular, as Michael Green says, "The truth of the matter is that words like principalities, powers and thrones are used both of human rulers and of the spiritual forces which lie behind them." The accompanying notes for the day sum it up, "Behind the ambiguity lies an ancient world view of the continuous interplay and interaction of heaven and earth. Behind the visible, physical manifestations of power is the spiritual invisible dimension constantly at work - each dimension reflects and reveals the other. The New Testament writers, particularly Paul, were not building up a hierarchy of Powers nor an esoteric demonology, for study or debate. They were simply describing the spiritual/physical context in which the gospel was growing, in order to show how Christ was supreme over all 'Powers and Authorities' through the cross."

This identifying of spiritual powers as being 'within' all the structures of our world suggests that unless the spirituality of an organisation, community, or church changes, no real change will take place, even if major restructuring takes place in the 'outer' life of the organisation. "Only by confronting the spirituality of an institution can the total entity be transformed." This resonates powerfully with experience, both personal and observed.

Wink's integrated world view, whilst not without its limitations, seems to make a lot of sense, both theologically and from experience. It affirms that spirituality is intimately woven into all structures as one might expect of a world created by God, and human life created in his image. And it relieves us of what can sometimes seem a bit like a cartoon world view of spirits fighting away 'upstairs' while we toil away in ignorance downstairs (ok - I've made it sound even more like a cartoon...) All of this encourages me to be more alert and active in spiritual warfare, recognising that whenever we seek to engage with people, organisations, communities or on a bigger scale, cities in order to advance the Kingdom of God we are simultaneously engaging with the spiritual powers that are within them.

Missional Leadership summer school

I'm away at the Pioneer Centre, Cleobury Mortimer, from Thursday to Monday on the Missional Leadership summer school. I have fond memories of the Pioneer Centre from Youth for Christ days - looks like it's gone a bit more up-market since then.
This also means I've completed my first assignment (1st Draft) which is exciting, though it turns out to be 5700 words rather than 5000. If you're bursting to know, it's on;

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a 'flat' as compared with a hierarchical leadership structure for a Christian leader and his/her organisation?

Awesome news is that apparently there's free WiFi access. If this proves to be true I shall see if I can fit in time to blog, upload pics to Flickr, keep up with my FaceBook profile and send a report to my Trustees in time for next Tuesday.

[pic: scraped from the Action Centres web site]

Swarm theory

I'm currently writing an assignment about hierarchical and flat leadership structures in Christian organisations. So I was fascinated to find this article about swarm theory, looking at the way ants and bees achieve swarm intelligence in the absence of any hierarchical leadership system. In essence, every ant or every bee acts as a researcher contributing to a collective understanding of what's the right thing to do.

Such collective intelligence is observable in a way in human society, particularly on the internet in the way that Google ranks pages, or ebay sellers build trust through feedback or Wikipedia articles are refined and improved.
And there are examples of the ways good organisations can harness the collective intelligence of everyone involved.

[via: Alan Hirsch]

Clock building

In their book, Built to Last Collins and Porras look at the factors that create exceptional and long lasting companies. The key contribution that the leaders of these companies make is to create organisational processes and training that carry their vision and values way beyond the limits of their own skills and timespan. It's not about being a charismatic one person visionary, but about building a visionary company.

Collins and Porras illustrate this difference with the story of a man who stands in the town square telling the time. People know the time, but they're depending on the guy to tell them and he's stuck there doing the telling. What would be better would be if he built a clock so that everyone can know the time after he's gone.

They write;

Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is "time telling", building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is "clock building".

The ministry of Jesus seems to be principally 'clock building', rather than 'time telling'. His focus was to impart a vision of the Kingdom of God, to equip the disciples to take the mission of God into the world after he had defeated sin and returned to heaven. In three years Jesus cast a vision that is alive and well two thousand years later. The 'time telling' that Jesus did was mainly by way of example to his disciples (though this is in no way to diminish his compassion for the poor). He wasn't driven by the overwhelming needs of the people around him, but by a vision of disciples making disciples making disciples in every nation until the very end of the age.

As church in the west we have majored on training church leaders to be pastor teachers. This works fine for maintaining a congregation and building them up in the word. But we don't seem to be so good at training leaders for the work of building the church to be a missionary organisation that's inherently capable of multiplying itself.

Time telling, ministering to people, is an essential aspect of the life of a healthy church. But clock building, equipping people for ministry, is vital if we are to create organisations, ministries and churches that have multiplication built into their dna. I'm challenged by the implications for my own ministry (in the personal sense of passing it on) and, perhaps more importantly, the implications for the organisation I serve. If we're to be truly missional, we need to make sure we're 'clock building' at least as much as 'time telling', building in multiplication as well as ministry.

Multiply

Read this today in Invading Secular Space:

The average Western church is organised to survive. A few are organised to become large. But I know of few churches in the Western world that are organised to nurture life in such a way that they multiply.

Interestingly (for me anyway) this coincided with the arrival of this month's YouthWork magazine which carries an article looking at gap year schemes. At one point the article explores the issue of whether a gap year is just 'cheap labour' (to put it bluntly); is it learner focused or mission focused? Is it about developing the person or about achieving a ministry aim? It's tempting to say something like "Both - you can't achieve one without the other" but I believe we have to be clearer than this because when there's a clash of priorities something is going to give and in cash strapped youth ministry, ten-to-one it's going to be the ministry aim that comes first. We'll justify it, of course, by saying that this kind of pressure is part of the real world of ministry.

When Amy came to work with us on our Apprentice Year Scheme we were both clear about the point of the year - it was to provide a solid foundation in preparation for her starting on the CYM degree course in Youth Work and Applied Theology. Amy did loads of youth work with us and with her church but becuse we were clear about the purpose our focus was on whatever we could provide that would help her to develop and to gain good youth work experience in preparation for her course.

The bigger issue that the quote at the top got me thinking about is how we're equipping people to fulfil their ministries and then releasing them to multiply the work of mission. It's easy to see how we might train people to do more of what we do, therefore making our work 'bigger'. But I'm interested in working out how we help people to develop the gifts and passion that God has placed in them that may well be on or even beyond the fringes of what we do.

Spontaneous vs Organised

Quite a few of us on the Missional Leadership course have been enoying Martin Robinson's book, Invading Secular Space (strategies for tomorrow's church).

In the chapter, Changing the Paradigm, he writes:

...if the church is to be renewed, it is essential for it to recover both a vision for its original purpose and a degree of spontaneous and organic growth. The problem with spontaneous movements is that by definition you cannot organise them into being.

He then goes on to illustrate the point from a remarkable story of revival in Ghana that emerged from the spontaneous activity of one indigenous preacher and observes that it would be difficult to form a mission model from this, or other stories of spontaneous growth.
The pattern seems to be:

1. Someone (or a group of people) experience the grace of God in such a life-changing way that they want to share it with others.
2. They are able to imagine and express this experience in clothing that fits their audience.
3. Someone (not always the initiator of the movement) recognises the significance of events and provides some organisational structure.

Robinson concludes;

The difficulty for the church in the West is that we have considerable organisational ability but little that is organic and spontaneous to organise. Discipling, equipping and releasing those who have had significant grace experiences and who have the desire and ability to communicate needs to be the priority for the moment. Insisting that such disciples bring the fruit of their work into existing structures will almost certainly stop spontaneous growth from taking place.

As an organisation I recognise that we could easily fall into the trap of trying to organise something into being that actually has little life in it. And it's a helpful reminder to us that we need to examine our works for signs of life, for signs of the spontaneous, lest we keep alive some amazing feat of organisation that in all honesty is dead on its feet. I confess we've had to cull a few such projects in the past.

I think our responsibility is to try things and look for the signs of God's activity - to throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. And I suspect that the signs will not be in successful programmes or projects, but in individual lives that spring into spontaneous life under the activity of God.

How does this resonate with your thoughts or experiences?

Streams of living water

I've been meaning to post a few words about the Missional Leadership course a couple of weekends ago. The bit that spoke most to me was the section on a balanced spiritual life, drawing upon Richard Foster's reflections in his book Streams of Living Water. I must buy this book.

His six dimensions of the balanced spiritual life are:

1. Contemplative - the prayer filled life. This is the place of intimacy with God, the one to one relationship. "When you pray, go into your room and close the door." (Jesus)
2. Holiness - the virtuous life. The practical outworking of being transformed from glory into glory, of shaking off the old and taking on the new, of defeating sin and becoming more Christ like.
3. Charismatic - the Spirit empowered life. The manifest presence of God, the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit at work in a believer.
4. Social Justice - The compassionate life. God's heart of justice made tangible in all areas of life.
5. Evangelical - The Word centred life. The study and application of God's word and the proclamation of the good news.
6. Incarnational - The sacramental life. Making tangible and visible the realm of the Spirit in ways that build spiritual life and testify to the reality of relationship with God.

Seeing these six aspects set out together was a revelation. I recognise each of them, but to embrace them as a fully rounded spiritual life made me reflect not only on my own life, but also the spiritual life of the organisation and people I serve in CYO.
Even more challenging was to see how these six aspects might be reflected missionally in our work with young people. I can see how we are Evangelical and seek to reflect God's heart of justice. Also how we aspire to the Charismatic and the incarnational in our relationships. Obviously we need to work out how to incorporate holiness and contemplation in appropriate ways.

How are these things reflected in your life, your church, your ministry? It's given me much to think about.

Revival, social transformation and church growth

Saturday was the first teaching day for the MA in Missional Leadership that I've embarked on, and very good it was too.
Martin Robinson, national director of Together in Mission led the day, looking at 'our missionary context'. Briefly, we covered developments in mission and the growth of the church from the 1700's to the present day, the impact of modernity and post-modernity on people's thinking, and communicating with, and changing the mind of, our culture.

I love learning new stuff about old assumptions and Saturday provided a fascinating insight into revival and the growth of the church in this country over the last 300 years. The 1700's, known for the revivals of Wesley and Whitfield, for dynamic preaching and manifestations of the Spirit, actually saw a substantial decline in numbers in the church. Such was the state of the church that some even predicted it would not survive the 1800's. However, something was stirring in the small congregations of non-conformists where evangelical faith, effective organisation and particularly a commitment to work with the poor led to dynamic growth. This growth went on to have a significant impact on society, which began to notice that Christians were making a difference, and also on other denominations, many new churches being built during the middle of the 1800's.

The 18th centuray revival did not immediately produce the growth in the church that it is often believed to have produced. That growth came in the 19th century following the re-engagement of Christians with the heart of their faith and a concern for society.

In many ways, I wonder whether we are in a similar situation. For a while I've pondered the shift from spiritual renewal in the 80's and 90's to social action in the late 90's and 2000's. The 80's were marked by ministries such as that of John Wimber, with an emphasis on spiritual gifts and intimate worship and continued into the 90's with the impact of the 'Toronto blessing'. Then, from the mid 90's onwards, we've had an increasing number and variety of community based outreach projects, such as 'The Noise' and the groundbreaking Eden projects in Manchester.
Important though these movements have been, just like the decline during the revival of the 1700's and early 1800's, the church in the UK has shrunk by 34% between 1989 and 2005 [The Christian Research English Church Census, 2005] - we have yet to see a change to significant growth.

Is there a reflection of the process of revival, social action and church growth of the 18th and 19th centuries in our accelerated culture? For that to be so there would need to be a growing recognition of the contribution the church is making to society. Whilst in no way conclusive evidence, I was surprised by the findings of our own survey of young people in Yr.8 & Yr.10 in schools here in Colchester which showed that 55% agree or agree strongly with the statement "The church does a lot for the poor in this country and around the world".

Revival renewed the church, community involvement is making the good news visible - is the church about to grow?

Missional Leadership

Well, that's it. I've finally put the form in the post and signed up for a course in Missional Leadership which is being run by Together in Mission as an extension course of Birmingham Christian College and the University of Wales. If I can keep going at an acceptable standard for three years I'll get an MA out of it. Check back here in 2010!

I've been wanting to follow some kind of study for a while now; a growing call to sharpen my understanding of what we do and what I am called to. There are quite a few good courses around now and I was starting to investigate them, download brochures and so on. But God knows I sometimes need a nudge to move from deciding to decision and it was some friends in Ipswich, 20 mins up the road, who found out about this and will be hosting it. The content of the course, the opportunity to study locally and with friends, and the need to pull my finger out and sign on the dotted line in January all seems perfectly crafted by the God I know and, more to the point, who knows me. And I have what can only be described as that hesitant certainty that this is right.

I'm looking forward to the reading, the listening, the discussing and even the writing and hope to post on it as we go along.