Amazing Grace

A friend and college classmate of mine writes a wonderful blog on holidays and other historical events. With the movie, Amazing Grace, just released I thought I'd post his insights on John Newton. His link is below

AMAZING GRACE, part 1
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the British parliament passing a bill banning the nation's slave trade. In these two articles we'll explore the lives of two men and one song that played a large role in that effort.
John Newton's devoted Christian mother dreamed that her only son would grow up to become a preacher. But he lost his mother when he was six years old, and at the age of eleven followed his sea-captain father to sea. He did not take to the discipline of the Royal Navy and deserted ship, was flogged, and eventually discharged.
In looking for greater liberty, he ended up on the western coast of Africa in Sierra Leone, where he worked for a slave trader who mistreated him and made him a virtual slave of his black mistress. At this time he was described as "a wretched looking man toiling in a plantation of lemon trees in the Island of Plaintains... clothes had become rags, no shelter and begging for unhealthy roots to allay his hunger." After more than a year of such treatment he escaped the island through an appeal to his father in 1747.
The next year at sea, his ship was battered by a severe storm. Newton had been reading "The Imitation of Christ," and in great fear while he rowed and bailed for hours (for he could not swim!), he cried out to God to save him, a wretched sinner. Years later he looked back and penned these autobiographical words.
Amazing grace, how sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like meI once was lost, but now am foundWas blind but now I see.
Epilogue: Ironically, following his conversion to Christianity, Newton spent the next six years as captain of a slave ship. While he had religious services on board, he eventually came to abhor slavery and later to crusade against it. He influenced British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce to become active in working to abolish it. (We'll discuss Wilberforce's story in our next article.) Newton later studied for the ministry and attracted large audiences when he preached where he was known as "the old converted sea captain." He collaborated with the poet William Cowper in producing the Olney Hymns, which became the standard hymnal of evangelical Anglican churches.
In his old age, when it was suggested that he retire due to his bad health and failing recollection, he said,
"My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things:That I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior!"
His song, Amazing Grace, has become the American anthem and influenced many generations. You can learn more at https://ex1.tangogroup.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://ipost.com/rd/9z1zq3a4h1d8lsu1vt1buc1sdh4l2q36d0i46frkkr0
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historianhttps://ex1.tangogroup.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://ipost.com/rd/9z1zf7d0tt9dt91u60jltg0bskd5qqefjsf53iqbqr0

Erwin McManus on Diffusion of Innovations

Came upon this article from an interview with Erwin McManus. Great stuff on early adopters and the diffusion of big ideas.

The thing with the Mosaic Alliance is this. We have very unashamedly gone after what's called the innovators and early adopters on the adoctored categorization. Are you familiar with that grid?

No.

There's a sociological grid - not created by Christians, just a part of normal sociology - that says that 2.2% of the population are the Innovators and 12.4% are Early Adopters. 34.1 are called Early Majority. 34.1 are Late Majority and 12.4 are what are called Late Adopters. 2.2% are called Laggers, but that sounds mean so we call them Nostalgics. It's just a natural bell curve.
Now, I think one of the cultural dilemmas in Christianity is that for the last 50 years, Christianity has been dominantly led by people on the far right end of the spectrum - the Nostalgics and Late Adopters. I just met with Larry King. I mean, I didn't meet with him but I was at an event where I got to talk with him. And the first thing he says to me is, "John MacArthur. He can't decide whether it's 1936 or 1937." And I thought here's a guy who's like eighty years old. You know, it's Larry King.
But I was so embarrassed because that's the reality that the Christian leadership is the Late Adopters or Laggers. So all we tend to reach are up to this Late Majority. Megachurches tend to reach this 70% - the middle Early Majority to Late Majority. These are the people who love clustering in big groups and they want to feel they are a part of the majority or they're not safe. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

So what happened is that this movement of Jesus Christ, which started at the far left end... I mean, the book of Acts was the Innovators and the Early Adopters. These guys were risking everything. They shifted the sacred day from Saturday to Sunday. These guys were not connected to tradition or the past. They walked away from everything.
So they may have been fishermen, tax collectors and doctors but they had a certain connectedness. They were all willing to begin the new before anyone else thought that was right. So what's happened is that the church has lost this front 15% because, for one, it hasn't called people to vocational ministry who are at that end, who are willing to reach those people because they're hardest to reach. They disproportionally cluster in major cosmopolitan cities, which is why I'm in L.A. because L.A. is the capital of the future.
And that's why we're trying to plant churches in New York - we have two congregations there. And we're in Berkley, San Francisco and we're looking and doing things in England and Paris and South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia beacuse the world changes disproportionally. It doesn't changed in a balanced way. And so we've been working in China, India and the Middle East. What we need to do is target this top 15% of Innovators and Early Adopters because really the only people who are going to lead their religions, risk their family and everything to pursue Christ are these Innovators and Early Adopters. And if they move, everyone who takes their cues from them will move toward Christ.

What does the church do to reach that 15%?

Well a couple things. First, you have to have someone in that first 15% leading it and speaking on the church's behalf. Honestly, years ago, everyone who wants to be a Christian wants to be a Billy Graham. Somewhere along the road, I felt God say to me, "You're not gonna be a Billy Graham. Billy Graham speaks to that 70% - the middle. He speaks to the large giant group. But you can give your life to the top 12-15%. Nobody may ever know that you've done that, but if you reach one person in that group, you can change the course of history."
So some of the things we do consciously is, one, we move at a very fast pace, because Innovators and Early Adopters will not stay in a church that makes a major change every 120 years whether it needs to or not. (Laughs). The rate at which you bring change determines who is magnetized and who is repelled. So when you start making change rapidly, you start losing Nostalgics, you start losing the Late Adopters, you start losing the Late Majority because they think you're a heretic. They don't want that level of tension, anxiety and turbulence.
At the same time, when you start moving faster, you start drawing those Innovators and Early Adopters and for the first time, they find something that resonates with their soul. I mean, why would someone moving at lightning speed without Christ want to join something that doesn't move at all. For them, their acquiescing their significance and their capacity to do something meaningful in the world, even something good. So one thing is you have to increase the rate of change.
You have to have a lot of pliability and adaptability because Innovators and Early Adopters have low tolerance for doing something that doesn't work. So at Mosaic we say all structures, systems, programs, methods, schedules - all that stuff is disposable. Our only nonnegotiable value is people. And I think people in that top 15% understand that. If you really mean that the world is broken and lost without Christ and that people need to enter a relationship with God and are desperate to find God, then how can you justify making decisions that slow you down on this mission.

Link to complete article: http://www.infuzemag.com/interviews/archives/2006/10/erwin_mcmanus.html

Our View of the Future--February 21, 1967

A couple of days ago Liz gave me some LOOK magazines from 1967 that were on loan from a friend. The ads were really educational but what I thought was most interesting was an article called "The Future of Education: The Class of 1989" written by Marshall McLuhan and George B. Leonard. Here are a couple of great excerpts that proved to be quite prophetic:

When computers are properly used, in fact, they are almost certain to increase individual diversity. A worldwide network of computers will make all of mankind's factual knowledge available to students everywhere in a matter of minutes or seconds. Then, the human brain will not have to serve as a repository of specific facts, and the uses of memory will shift. In the new education, breaking the timeworn, rigid chains of memory may have greater priority than forging new links. New materials may be learned just as were the great myths of past cultures--as fully integrated systems that resonate on several levels and share the qualities of poetry and song....

Television will be used for involvement, for two-way communication, whether with other people or other environmental systems. It will most certainly not be used to present conventional lectures, to imitate the old classroom.

The world communications net, the all-involving linkage of electric circuitry, will grow and become more sensitive. It will also devlop new modes of feedback so that communication can become dialogue instead of monogogue. It will breach the wall between 'in' and 'out' of school. It will join all peope everywehre. When this has happened, we may at last realize that our place of learning is the world itself, the entire planet we live on.... Someday, all of us will spend our lives in our own school, the world. And education--in the sense of learning to love, to grow, to change--can become not the woeful preparatin for some job that makes us less than we could be but the very essence, the joyful whole of existence itself.

Transformational Leadership: Creating Organizations of Meaning

Hacker, Stephen, and Tammy Roberts. Transformational Leadership: Creating Organizations of Meaning. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Quality Press, 2004.

Transform, from the Latin word transformare, means to “change the nature, function, or condition of, to convert.”[i] And the concept of transformation can be applied to various entities: relationships, individuals, groups, teams, communities, or political systems. If organizational transformation is sought, it is defined by marked change in the nature or function of the systems and subsystems that comprise the organization. To be more precise, when transformation is viewed from a creation standpoint, not as an unexpected occurrence, organizational transformation takes on the added descriptor of the results created. Distinctly positive results are normally sought. Therefore, the complete definition of organizational transformation becomes the marked change in the nature or function of organizational systems creating discontinuous, step-function improvement in sought-after result areas. (p. 1)

In a statistical sense, standardization is about reducing variation, while improvement is about shifting the mean. (p. 1)

This is important because one cannot declare a transformation without the measurable results to demonstrate the change. A transformation in thinking is not hidden. Transformed thinking produces resulting actions and altered actions create changed results. (p. 2)

Through our leadership readings and experiences in working with organizations to produce transformation, we have discerned that a new kind of leadership is required. At the heart of transformational leadership is a consciousness within the self and the ability to raise consciousness in others. The required skills are both managerial and leadership, not one over the other, and knowing when to call upon a specific skill in a given situation. (p 3)

To begin our study of transformational leadership, we explore three perspectives: the leader as an individual, interpersonal relationships, and the organization as a whole. Consider each perspective a prospect for transformation. The individual leader is at the core of the change, and the change may have to be initiated at the core of the leader. P. 4

The requirements for the organization to be successful in the future may well be quite different from the present requirements. Therefore, an individual transformation often becomes a perquisite for the transformation of the organization. A personal rebirth into a perspective of possibilities, not a step-by-step managerial formula is required. P. 4

Transformation is embarked upon for the single reason of improving results—and doing so drastically. Transformation of the leader and the organization is a tough undertaking. It requires a remaking of individual skill sets and radical change within an organization. P.17

[i] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000)

The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries

Harnack, Adolf. The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. Vol. 1. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998.

“I was hungry, and ye fed me; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came to me. In as much as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.”
These words of Jesus have shone so brilliantly for many generations in his church, and exerted so powerful an influence, that one may further describe the Christian preaching as the preaching of love and charity. From this standpoint, in fact, the proclamation of the Saviour and of healing would seem to be merely subordinate, inasmuch as the words “I was sick, and ye visited me” form but one link in the larger chain.
Among the extant words and parables of Jesus, those which inculcate love and charity are especially numerous, and with them we must rank many a story of his life. Yet, apart altogether from the number of such sayings, it is plain that whenever he had in view the relations of mankind, the gist of his preaching was to enforce brotherliness and ministering love, and the surest part of the impression he left behind him was that in his own life and labors he displayed both of these very qualities. “One is your Master, and ye are all brethren”; “Whoso would be first among you shall be servant of all; for the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” It is in this sense that we are to understand the commandment to love one’s neighbor. How unqualified it is, becomes evident from the saying, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father in heaven, for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” “Blessed are the merciful”—that is the keynote of all that Jesus proclaimed, and as this merciful spirit is to extend from great things to trifles, from the inward to the outward, the saying which does not pass over even a cup of cold water (Matt. x. 42) lies side by side with that other comprehensive saying, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Brotherliness is love on a footing of equality; ministering love means to give and to forgive, and no limit is to be recognized. Besides, ministering love is the practical expression of love to God. (P. 181-182)

The new language on the lips of Christians was the language of love. But it was more than a language, it was a thing of power and action. The Christians really considered themselves brothers and sisters, and their actions corresponded to this belief. P. 183

From the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (96 AD)
“Day and night you agonized for all the brotherhood, that by means of compassion and care the number of God’s elect might be saved. You were sincere, guileless, and void of malice among yourselves. Every sedition and every schism was an abomination to you. You lamented the transgressions of your neighbours and judged their shortcomings to be your own. You never rued an act of kindness, but were ready for every good work. (p. 189

Then Justin concludes the description of Christian worship in his Apology (c.lxvii.) thus: “Those who are well-to-do and willing, give as they choose, each as he himself purposes; the collection is then deposited with the president, who succours orphans, widows, those who are in want owing to sickness or any other cause, those who are in prison, and strangers who are on a journey.” (p. 189)

Finally Tertullian (Apolog.,xxxix.) observes: “Even if there does exist a sort of common fund, it is not made up of fees, as though we contracted for our worship. Each of us puts in a small amount one day a month, or whenever he pleases; but only if he pleases and if he is able, for there is no compulsion in the matter, everyone contributing of his own free will. These monies are, as it were, the deposits of piety. They are expended upon no banquets or drinking-bouts or useless eating-houses, but on feeding and burying poor people, on behalf of boys and girls who have neither parents nor money, in support of old folk unable not to go about, as well as for people who are shipwrecked, or who may be in the mines or exiled in islands or in prison—so long as their distress is for the sake of God’s fellowship, and they themselves entitled to maintenance by their confession.” 189

One recommendation very frequently made, was to stint oneself by means of fasting in order to give alms. In this way, even the poor could afford something. See Hermas Sim . v.; Aristides, Apol . xv. (“And if anyone among them is poor or needy, and they have no food to share, they fast for two or three days, that they may meet the poor man’s need of sustenance”); Apost. Constit. v. 1, etc. p. 192

In 250 A.D. The Roman church had to support about 100 clergy and 1500 poor persons. P. 195

Wherever the early Christian records mention poor persons who require support, widows and orphans are invariably in the foreground. This corresponds, on the one hand, with the special distress of their position in the ancient world and on the other hand with the ethical injunctions which had passed over into Christianity from Judaism. As it was, widows and orphans formed the poor. The church had them always with her. “the Roman church,” wrote bishop Cornelius, “supports 15000 widows and poor persons” (Eus., H.E., vi.43). p 197

Mention has already been made of the cure of sick people; but where a cure was impossible the church was bound to support the patient by consolation (for they were remembered in the prayers of the church from the very first; cp. 1 Clem. Lix.r), visitation, and charitable gifts (usually in kind). Next to the sick came those in trouble and people sick in soul as a rule, then the helpless and disabled, finally the poor in general. P. 199

It is said of deacons in the Apostolic Constitutions: They are to be doers of good works, exercising a general supervision day and night, neither scorning the poor nor respecting the person of the rich; they must ascertain who are in distress and not exclude them from a share in the church funds, compelling also the well-to-do to put money aside for good works.” P. 199

The excellence of the church’s charitable system, the deep impression made by it, and the numbers that it won over to the faith, find their best voucher in the action of Julian the apostate, who attempted an exact reproduction of it in that artificial creation of his, the pagan State-church, in order to deprive the Christians of this very weapon. The imitation, of course, had no success. P. 200

To what extent did Christians also support non-Christians? This is a question on which we have no data adequate for an answer. The church’s fund was certainly reserved for the use of the brethren, but the charity of private individuals cannot have confined itself to fellow-believers. In a great calamity, as we know from reliable evidence, Christians did extend their aid to pagans, exciting the admiration of the latter, and their helping hand would not be wanting in other ways as well; see Paul, Gal. vi.10 and Tertull.,Apol., xlii (Our compassion gives away more money in the streets than yours does in the temples”). P. 201

The Christians in Egypt went to the most remote mines, even to Cicilia, to encourage and edify their brethren who were condemned to hard labour in these places. In the mines at Phaeno a regular church was organized. Cp. Also Apost. Constit.,v.1: “If any Christian is condemned for Christ’s sake….to the mines by the ungodly, do not overlook him, but from the proceeds of your toil and sweat send him something to support himself and to reward the soldiers.” P. 204

Clem. Rom., lv.2: (“We know that many of our own number have given themselves up to be captives, in order to ransom others; many have sold themselves to slavery, and with the price of their own bodies they have fed others:) p. 205

Apolst. Constit.,iv.9 (“All monies accruing from honest labour do ye appoint and apportion to the redeeming of the saints, ransoming thereby slaves and captive, prisoners, people who are sore abused or condemned by tyrants,” etc,) (p. 205)

Lactantius, Instit., v. 16 (“Our sole reason for giving one another the name of brother is because we believe we are equals. For since all human objects are measured by us after the spirit and not after the body, although there is a diversity of condition among human bodies, yet slaves are not slaves to us; we deem and term them brothers after the spirit and fellow-servants in religion”). P. 208

Arist., Apol ., xv.: “Slaves, male and female, are instructed so that they become Christians, on account of the love felt for them by their masters; and when this takes place, they call them brethren without any distinction whatsoever.” P. 208

Converted slaves, male or female, were regarded in the full sense of the term as brothers and sisters from the standpoint of religion. Compared to this, their position in the world was reckoned a matter of indifference. They shared the rights of church members to the fullest extent. Slaves could even become clergymen, and in fact bishops. (p. 208)

When the plague raged in Alexandria (about 259 A.D.), bishop Dionysius wrote (Euseb., H.E., vii. 22): “The most of our brethren did not spare themselves, so great was their brotherly affection. They held fast to each other, visited the sick without fear, ministered to them assiduously, and served them for the sake of Christ. Right gladly did they perish with them. . . . Indeed many did die, after caring for the sick and giving health to others, transplanting the death of others, as it were, into themselves. In this way the noblest of our brethren died, including some presbyters and deacons and people of the highest reputation. . . . . Quite the reverse was it with the heathen. They abandoned those who began to sicken, fled from their dearest friends, threw out the sick when half dead into the streets, and let the dead lie unburied.” (p 212)

(Vita, ix. f.): (“The people being assembled together, he first of all urges on them the benefits of mercy. By means of examples drawn from the sacred lessons, he teaches them. . . . Then he proceeds to add that there is nothing remarkable in cherishing merely our own people with the due attentions of love, but that one might become perfect who should do something more than heathen men or publicans, one who, overcoming evil with good, and practicing a merciful kindness like to that of God, should love his enemies as well. . . . What should a Christian people do, a people whose very name was derived from faith? The contributions are always distributed then according to the degree of the men and of their respective ranks. Many who, on the score of poverty, could not make any show of wealth, showed far more than wealth, as they made up by personal labor an offering dearer than all the riches in the world. Thus the good done was done to all men, and not merely to the household of faith, so richly did the good works overflow”). P. 214

We hear exactly the same story of practical sympathy and self-denying love displayed by Christians even to outsiders, in the great plague which occurred during the reign of Maximinus Daza (Eus., H.E., ix. 8): “Then did they show themselves to the heathen in the clearest light. For the Christians were the only people who amid such terrible ills showed their fellow feeling and humanity by their actions. Day by day some would busy themselves with attending to the dead and burying them (for there were numbers to whom no one else paid any heed); others gathered in one spot all who were afflicted by hunger throughout the whole city, and gave bread to them all. When this became known, people glorified the Christians’ God, and, convinced by the very facts, confessed the Christians alone were truly pious and religious.” It may be inferred with certainty, as Eusebius himself avows, that cases of this kind made a deep impression upon those who were not Christians, and that they gave a powerful impetus to the propaganda. P. 214-215

The Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality

Rolheiser, Ronald. The Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality (Doubleday, New York, New York, 1999)

However the human spirit is incurably religious and, secular philosophy notwithstanding, it keeps doing religious things. Thus, in the Western world, even though the Enlightenment wrote off religion, its most fervent converts continued, and continue, to be zealously religious, albeit in covert forms. Everyone worships at some shrine.
Thus, for example, ideologies of all kinds, from Marxism to secular feminism, substitute a normative theory of history for the Judeo-Christian story of salvation and propose this new story as the story of salvation; secular art turns creativity into a religion whose God is so jealous as to make the old demanding God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam appear lax; secular moralists demand a doctrinal orthodoxy (political correctness) which religious fundamentalists can only envy; secular moral zealots continue to find no end of causes that call for religious martyrdom; positive thinking and pedagogues of excellence propose a new religious hope; the cults of physical health, replete with ever more demanding forms of asceticism, replace old spiritualities regarding the should; ancient animism, the worship of nature, takes on new religious forms; myths and fairy tales replace the old Bible stories; new shrines (from Graceland to Lady Diana’s tomb) continue to appear; and secular forms of canonization, of books and people , do what religious canonization formerly did. Religion is never at the margins. Everyone has a spirituality, including today’s adult children of the Enlightenment.
The secular world too enters today’s spiritual arena carrying plenty of religious baggage. P. 49-50

Essential truths are those that are necessary for everyone, prescribed for everyone, and nonnegotiable for everyone. They cannot be ignored or bracketed on the basis of temperament, taste, situation, or lack of time. In the case of essential truths, like the ten commandments for instance, it is not a question of personal choice (“I feel like doing them or I don’t”). They are nonnegotiable, universally prescribed.
Accidental truth, on the other hand, refers to a real truth, but to truth that takes its importance only in relationship to more essential truth. Accidental truth can, for a variety of reasons, be ignored or bracketed. Thus, to give just one example, it can be true that the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared at a given shrine. However, even if it is true, that truth in no way has the same importance as does the central truth of God becoming incarnate in Christ. The truth of a Marian apparition is what classical theology calls an accidental truth. The truth it teaches is not universally prescribed, but is one that you can choose (on the basis of temperament, taste, background, culture, or time) to either respond to or not. Unlike the truth of the incarnation or of the Ten Commandments, there is a certain negotiability here, not about its being true, but about whether or not it is something to which we should attend. [from the End Notes: The word “accidental” here is used in its technical, philosophical sense (as opposed to its commonsense usage), i.e., as Aristotle defined “accident” (as opposed to “substance”). Accident refers to those qualities of something or somebody which, while part of the makeup, can (and do) change.] P. 52

More than a few Christians might be surprised to learn that the call to be involved in creating justice for the poor is just as essential and nonnegotiable within the spiritual life as is Jesus’ commandment to pray and keep our private lives in order. Jesus’ teaching on this is very strong, consistent throughout all the Gospels, and leaves no room for equivocation. In the Christian scriptures, one out of every ten lines deals directly with the physically poor and the call from God for us to respond to them. In the gospel of Luke, that becomes every sixth line, and in the epistle of James, that commission is there, in one form or another, every fifth line. P. 64

Moreover, the call to do justice as an integral part of relating to God is already strong within the Jewish scriptures. Beginning about 800B.C., the Jewish prophets made one truth central to their teaching. They taught that the quality of faith in the people depends upon the character of justice in the land—and the character of justice in the land is to be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable groups in the society, namely, widows, orphans and strangers. Thus according to the Jewish prophets, where we stand with God depends not just upon prayer and sincerity of heart but also on where we stand with the poor. P. 64-65

Jesus never disputes that. He takes it further. He identifies his own presence with the poor and tells us that, ultimately, we will be judged on how we treat the poor. Bluntly put, we will to to heaven or hell on the basis of giving or not giving food, water, clothing, shelter, and justice to the poor. How we treat the poor is how we treat God. For this reason Jesus asks us to make a preferential option for the poor: “When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your family or your relations or rich neighbors, in case they invite you back and repay you. No; when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind; then you will be blessed.” Reaching out, preferentially, to the poor is an essential component of the spiritual life.
This is not a new teaching albeit our understanding of it is deepening. All Christian churches have always taught this, in one way or the other, and they have also always, in their best expressions lived it out. Despite many embarrassing blemishes in the history of Christianity, it has too a proud history in terms of the poor. From the initial establishment of hospitals, orphanages, soup kitchens, and schools for the poor (long before secular society took any responsibility), to the role of the churches in overthrowing slavery, to the social gospel within many Protestant churches and liberation theology and the social encyclicals within Catholicism today, the Christian churches have always made the preferential option for the poor an integral part of living out of one’s faith. P. 65

When we make spirituality essentially a privatized thing, cut off from the poor and the demands for justice that are found there, it soon degenerates into mere private therapy, an art form, or worse still, an unhealthy clique.
God cannot be related to without continually digesting the uneasiness and pain that are experienced by looking, squarely and honestly, at how the weakest members in our society are faring and how our own lifestyle is contributing to that…It is something that lies at the very heart of the gospel and which Jesus himself makes the ultimate criterion for our final judgment. P.66

Only one kind of person transforms the world spiritually, someone with a grateful heart. P. 67

…a century ago, a prominent Protestant theologian, Frederick Schleiermacher, tried to point this [wanting God but not wanting the church] out in a book with a curious title: Speeches on Religion for Those Among the Cultured Who Despise It. Schleiermacher pointed out that, separate from historical religion, namely, the churches with all their faults, the individual in quest of God, however sincere that search, lives the unconfronted life. Without church, we have more private fantasy than real faith….he submits that real conversion demands that eventually its recipient be involved in both the muck and the grace of actual church life. P. 69

Social justice, therefore, tries to look at the system (political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and mythical) within which we live so as to name and change those structural things that account for the fact that some of us are unduly penalized even as others of us are unduly privileged. Thus, social justice has to do with issues such as poverty, inequality, war, racism, sexism, abortion, and lack of concern for ecology because what lies at the root of each of these is not so much someone’s private sin or some individual’s private inadequacy but rather a huge, blind system that is inherently unfair.
Hence, justice differs from private charity: Charity is about giving a hungry person some bread, while justice is about trying to change the system so that nobody has excess bread while some have none; charity is about treating your neighbors with respect, while justice is about trying to get at the deeper roots of racism; and charity is about helping specific victims of war, while justice is about trying to change the things in the world that ultimately lead to war. Charity is appeased when some rich person gives money to the poor while justice asks why one person can be that rich when so many are poor. P 169

Externally Focused Church Conference--May 21&22

I am very pleased to invite you to an event that I’m really excited about. Leadership Network is partnering with LifeBridge Christian Church in hosting the first ever Externally Focused Church Conference May 21st and 22nd in Longmont Colorado and I’d love for you to be there with me.

In addition to being with others of like mind and like heart, we will be hearing from and interacting with folks who are on the leading edge of externally focused ministry, most of whom Rick Rusaw and I wrote about in The Externally Focused Church. These are the leaders who have shaped my thinking regarding what church could be. These are the leaders whose stories I have been telling wherever I go. Here are our four keynote speakers:

Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin from the Potter’s House in Jacksonville, Florida. The first time I met Bishop I was blown away by his approach to ministry. He is the man who bought an old Bell South building and converted it to a shopping mall for his church and over a dozen for-profit businesses. Now his church has bought a shopping mall that will be transformed to transform a community. He is the one who is quoted on the back of The Externally Focused Church—“If your church vanished, would your community weep? Would anyone notice? Would anyone care?”

Laurie Beshore from Mariners Church in Irvine California. If there is one church I continually point to as an example of a church and of leaders who are leveraging their resources for the Kingdom it is this church and it is this leader. Laurie says, “We envision a time when those who have nothing will worship and serve beside those who have much, each recognizing that their worth and significance can be found in Christ alone.”

Eli Morris, Pastor of Urban Ministries at Hope Presbyterian Church outside of Memphis. Eli is the real deal… Since his early days as Young Life’s urban director, Eli has trained and mobilized thousands of people to give themselves to those who live with the challenges of living on the fringes.

Rick Rusaw from our host church—LifeBridge Christian Church. Rick and I co-authored The Externally Focused Church and Living a Life on Loan. Enough said!

Plus Leesa Bellesi, author of Kingdom Assignments…incredible, Ray Williams and Shelby Smith from Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock—the church of irresistible influence and home of Sharefest, Don Simmons, whom I consider to be the greatest resource on volunteers, Phil Olson a passionate friend from Evangelicals for Social Action, Robert Gelinas from Colorado Community Church and their Lifeboat 14 ministry, Herb Reece—the guy who is mobilizing men’s ministries to work with widows and single moms, Jim Reiner from Belay Enterprises—a spiritual entrepreneur who starts businesses for the hardest to employ. I’m running out of space, but it is enough to say that we will offer 24 different breakout sessions around externally focused church issues. Even I will be doing a three-session track on The Externally Focused Church—perfect to help churches get launched outside their walls. Fortunately all sessions will be recorded so you and those you bring with you don’t have to miss anything.

Here are the details...

When: May 21 and 22 (Monday at noon until Tuesday at 4pm) I encourage you to come early and stay a few extra days just to experience the beauty of Colorado.
Where: LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont Colorado (about one hour drive from Denver Int’l Airport—DEN)
Cost: If you register before March 31 it is only $199. After the 31st the price goes up to $249. If you bring a team of 3 or more (which we strongly suggest) the cost is reduced to $149 each. The registration fee covers your fancy nametag with lanyard, some meals, snacks and conference costs.
Registration: We are taking all registrations on line. Registration and conference link: www.externallyfocusedconference.com

Again, I can’t tell you how pleased I am that this historic event is coming together and I hope you’ll do whatever you can to be part of this conference. As much as has been done already, we are just at the beginning of a great ride!

Win, Build Send...Believe...Belong...Bless

At the last Global Learning Community, Geoffrey Hsu from San Diego had a very insightful comment on younger people's take on Win, Build and Send--basic Campus Crusade Strategy. Geoff says students today want something to believe a place to belong and someone to bless. Here is his expanded version. I couldn't get his diagrams downloaded so if you'd like a pdf version, contact Geoffrey at Geoffrey Hsu [geoff@thehsus.com].

Contextualizing Win Build and Send – A first pass by Geoffrey Hsu

This paper is an attempt to address some of the tensions that I feel when speaking about
Campus Crusade’s distinctive of Win, Build, Send. This paper is but an outline of ideas
that would take many more pages to develop fully. As a result, I’ll make statements that I
can’t defend fully here and might not make much sense. On the other hand, I hope for
many of you, much of this will appear intuitively true.

DNA, Mission and Strategy
In the conversation of what Campus Crusade’s DNA is, we are often presented with the
notion that Win, Build, Send best captures this sense of what or who we are. I, however,
am influenced by notion that Win, Build, Send is best considered an approach or a
strategy toward doing ministry1. As central as the approach has been to the tremendous
ways the Lord has used our ministry, and despite my fondness for this strategy, it seems
important to raise the question, “Is a particular strategy appropriate DNA material?”
It seems to me that a strategy or approach to anything must be largely situational. For
example, the writing is on the wall for traditional strategies of selling music. The
traditional strategy used to involve selling entire albums of music through traditional
brick and mortar stores. You can package a bunch of mediocre to lousy songs with one or
two hits and get a premium for selling the whole album.

With the advent of the Internet, mp3s and iTunes, an entirely different environment
emerged, necessitating a different approach. The most workable strategy to earn revenue
will no longer involve brick and mortar, but the sale of individual songs by download
over the Internet. There is no need to compare which approach is better. The question is
only, “Which approach is best suited toward its context?”
There is no question of how the Lord has blessed the win, build, send approach to doing
ministry. In fact there is something that feels exceptionally timeless about the approach.
However, I’m concerned that our environment has been and continues to change
radically. This is largely due to the shift in the underlying worldviews that have shaped
our understanding of the gospel, and our mission to the world as the body of Christ.
Do we want to defend and concretize our understanding of “who we are” around a timebound
and culture-bound strategy? Is our mission to preserve a strategy? I humbly
suggest we should not and to do so would be unfortunate.

I find it far more useful to return to a phrase that has shaped my understanding of our
mission. “Come Help Change the World” seems to capture for me the real mission of
Campus Crusade. It best captures the transformational nature of the gospel that I want to
be about. It reaches beyond a reductionistic gospel that is primarily interested in saving
souls and acknowledges a gospel that is able to transform lives, communities, cities and
social systems. It provides a guiding star for our discipleship, and it provides a metric for
our work. “Come Help Change the Word” is a mission.

I think our mission should shape strategy. We should not let a strategy shape our mission.
Having said that, I can’t throw out Win, Build, Send. I wouldn’t call it our DNA, but I
would say that as a strategy it is central to our sense of who we are. I don’t want to rid us
of Win, Build, Send, but rather to contextualize the approach so that it gets new life in this
new and radically different environment that we find ourselves ministering in today.

The Tension
In an increasingly postmodern world, Win, Build, Send feels very distinct, linear, and
sequential. In a modern world, the world in which Campus Crusade developed and
thrived -- separating, systematizing and quantifying was the right and normal way to
understand and do ministry. It made sense. It fit the context. But as the world around us changes, particularly the North American context that I’m in, our ways of being and doing ministry feel increasingly irrelevant to all but those deeply entrenched in our Christian subculture. For the culturally savvy evangelist, our “brick and mortar-ness” becomes more and more apparent each time we attempt to do evangelism.

Distinct and Narrow
Win, Build, Send feels too distinct. My Win activities are clearly defined and shape how I
relate to others. I approach people as lost. I treat them as non-believers. They are the
“world” that we should venture out into only for evangelistic safaris hoping to win some
to the Lord. We can hold this adversarial posture until they become believers. Until they
become believers, we hold them at arms length.

When they pray a prayer to accept Christ, they move into a new category, which dictates
a different sent of relations. Now we love them because we are Build-ing them. They are
one of us. They are “in” and need caring and nurturing. I’ve no objection to loving and
caring for new believers. My objection is that we have viewed Win, Build, Send as very
distinct categories such that my loving and nurturing posture is reserved for those who
have prayed a prayer, and not often applied to those who have yet to pray.
There is also a narrowness of our categories. When we talk of Win, I believe we are
talking about a narrow view of evangelism, which is primarily to get people to pray a
prayer. However, the gospel that will change the world must be a message that invades
and transforms every area of life and society. It will certainly include salvation, but it
must also be good news to the poor, oppressed and marginalized.

Furthermore, our tradition, for the most part, sees evangelism as primarily an event. Only
recently, with some resistance, have we begun to appreciate the dimension of the process.
A contextualized Win needs to embrace both the process and event of evangelism today.

Build needs to be more than simply training people to simply do ministry, but must
include a dimension of personal life transformation in the context of community.
Send must represent more than just more winning. The missionary nature of our faith is
not simply for the purpose of collecting more people into heaven. It is not to recruit more
into your organization. It must include a transformation of the communities and cities in
which we find ourselves.

Linear and Sequential
Win, Build, Send is also very linear. It suggests that you cannot really proceed in the
journey toward Christ with someone unless they first come to a certain intellectual
understanding of the atoning work of Jesus. The unspoken assumption has been that you
can’t really teach or disciple someone until a person makes an intellectual assent to a set
of propositions.

It is also assumed that you cannot really mobilize a person into kingdom work unless
they have reached a certain level of maturity in Christ. In the best Campus Crusade
tradition, we have placed people in points of service well beyond their abilities and watch
them grow through it. But often, our methodical and systematic approach toward building
requires certain competencies before moving someone along to the next point of service.
This linear nature of Win, Build, Send certainly prevents us from inviting non-believers to
join us in kingdom work. This is due in part to our nearsighted understanding of our
mission, but also to our sequential view of developing believers.

The Proposal
I would like to preserve the feel of Win, Build, Send, but introduce categories that might
be more useful to reach and minister to the pagan, postmodern world in which I find
myself in North America (though I think it will be a useful approach in other parts of the
world.)

I would like an approach toward ministry that understands evangelism as both a process
and an event. I need an approach that extends the generous loving posture of the
shepherd to those who have yet to “pray to receive Christ.” I want a gospel that is as
much good news to my community and city as it is to me personally.
My thought is to take the notions of Win, Build, Send, and translate them into three
“components” of healthy ministry. The similarity of these three components will be
apparent, but should not be considered sequential steps but constitutive elements of
healthy kingdom ministry.

Believe, Belong, and Bless
As we move into a new era of life and ministry, I think it will be more useful to use the
terms: Believe, Belong, and Bless. Believe shares the evangelistic thrust of Win. Healthy kingdom ministry by definition must include the bold proclamation of the gospel. Like Win, Believe concerns itself with the proclamation of the gospel.

The difference however lies in a couple of places. First, the evangelistic approach for
today’s lost has been written on extensively and I’ll not address it here. I think Ed
Stetzer’s Evangelism Journey provides helpful insights in viewing evangelism as both an
event and a process.2 Second, the content of this gospel must be more holistic. The gospel
of Jesus is certainly concerned with saving souls, but it is at least equally as concerned
with those who are hungry, abused, hungry and sick. The gospel of Believe recognizes
that our good news is both word and deed.

There is another reason to prefer Believe over Win. Win immediately frames the task of
evangelism as a contest of sorts. We can begin to view our task as a competition or a
debate where one cannot allow a happy coexistence. We must “win.” While the word
Believe might not be the best term, but was chosen because it is not combative and better
reflects the invitation to belief that one would expect from a God that does not force
himself upon us.

Belong roughly correlates with Build or the discipleship aspect of our work. Here we are
focusing on the spiritual formation and other developmental aspects of our faith. Belong
was chosen to reflect the importance of doing spiritual development in the context of
community (and, I confess, partly for the alliteration).

More importantly, discipleship must be more than a mere impartation and acquisition of
knowledge. We must return to a notion of discipleship that develops people into wellrounded
followers of Jesus who experience life transformation in the context of a
community of believers.

Bless is an attempt to capture the nature of the mission we are sent on. At times it felt as
though Send was too narrowly defined as go and make converts (as opposed to making
disciples). Or worse, Send was misunderstood as a command to go and create more staff.
Our strength of being a movement with its shared values, dreams, and commitments has
led us at times to a myopic view of our mission. This results in a focus on building our
own ministry or kingdom.

The gospel of Jesus was the arrival of the Kingdom of God. While the forgiveness of sins
and the salvation of souls is a central piece of this gospel, Jesus demonstrated a richness
to the gospel that we have lost. Jesus’ gospel demonstrated what God’s Kingdom, His
reign, would look like if the Lord’s Prayer was made operative in this world. “Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus showed us that the
good news was that poverty, oppression, and social injustices were also realms that the
gospel had the power to redeem.

To Bless, captures a fuller understanding of what Jesus’ disciples have been called to
participate in as his followers. The gospel that calls people to repentant of their sins, also
calls us to care for the sick, the hungry, the homeless, and the marginalized. It is the
gospel that Jesus modeled for us.
A “New Circle Diagram” (this is what didn't transfer)

What I find most useful about the Believe, Belong, Bless approach to ministry is that it
need not be linear and sequential, it allows for broader categories and allows for better
contextualization into various situations and cultures.

These benefits are more apparent if Believe, Belong, Bless were not placed on a line, but
drawn into a circle. This diagram better illustrates the many different “angles” that may
serve as entry points for people to enter into the discipleship of Jesus.
In many parts of the country and world where Christendom still has a foothold. It may
very well be that the best way to introduce people to Christ would be through traditional
means like the Four Spiritual Laws, evangelistic campaigns and the like. In environments
where rationalistic approaches are well received, our ministry would do well to use our
tried and true materials.

In postmodern contexts where claims to absolute truth do not inspire inquiry but suggest
intolerance, we intuitively seek a different approach. The Relational Incarnational
approaches to evangelism have recognized the importance of loving relationships that
function as bridges. They must be genuine or they will be sniffed out immediately.

Increasingly, the church has been renewing its understanding of service to the community
as a tangible means of expressing good deeds, which leads to good will, which open
doors for the good news.3 For many today, seeing the church once again return to a
posture of being a blessing to the world, is a powerful argument for Christ.
The point is that evangelism in different contexts, cultures, and with different people in
the same contexts, will require an approach from different directions. Or perhaps it is
best to say that we need to approach the task of evangelsim with some combination of all
three directions at the same time.

Final Thoughts
I’ve tried to take the best of Campus Crusade’s win, build, send tradition and update it for
the new postmodern time in which we find ourselves. I have only been able to capture
some of the larger thoughts and many are yet half-baked, but this is a work in progress. I
hope this may spur some thinking and if it does, please sharpen my thinking by sending
me an email at geoff@thehsus.com.

Subsequent versions of this paper will:
- Contain a discussion of Kingdom theology to shape our understanding of mission
- Apply a centered-set vs. bounded-set paradigm to evangelism and discipleship
- Discuss the three conversions: To Christ, To community, To mission
- Discuss the usefulness of this approach for cities

Theirs is the Kingdom by Robert Lupton

Lupton, Robert D., Theirs is the Kingdom: Celebrating the Gospel in Urban America, ed. Barbara R. Thompson (New York, New York: Harper Collins, 1989).

When my goal is to change people, I subtly communicate: Something is wrong with you; I am okay. You are ignorant; I am enlightened. You are wrong; I am right. If our relationship is defined as healer to patient, I must remain strong and you must remain sick of our interaction to continue. People don’t go to doctors when they are well. P. 6
The affluent and the disinherited have frequent contact in the city. When impoverished people become desperate for food or a fix, satisfying that need becomes more important than anything. Pride diminishes and schemes emerge. The resources of others become their mark. Those who rob are perhaps the most desperate and daring, but those who manipulate are often the most skilled. The use of truth and half-truth, colorful descriptions, moist eyes, and urgent tones are powerful tools for eliciting compassion and dollars.
I am tired of being hooked, deceived, taken from. But when I consider the safer ways of giving, the impersonal media appeals, the professional mailings that would free me from contagion and protect me from seeing the whole picture know I must continue touching and being touched. At least I am touched by persons with names and familiar faces. I can confront. I can express disappointment to the one who has betrayed my trust. I can be angry with or embrace the one who has taken from me…I will opt to be manipulated in person. For somewhere concealed in these painful interactions are the keys to my own freedom. P. 42
Ancient Hebrew wisdom describes four levels of charity. At the highest level, the giver provides a job for a person in need without that person knowing who provided it. At the next level, the giver provides work that the needy person knows the giver provided. The third level is an anonymous gift. At the lowest level of charity, which should be avoided whenever possible, the giver gives a gift to a poor person who has full knowledge of the donor’s identity.
The deepest poverty is to have nothing of value to offer. Charity that fosters such poverty must be challenged. We know that work produces dignity while welfare depletes self-esteem. We know that reciprocity builds mutual respect while one-way giving brews contempt. Yet we continue to run clothes closets and free food pantries and give-away benevolence funds, and we wonder why the joy is missing.
Perhaps it is our time and place in history to remplement the wisdom of the ages, to fashion contemporary models of thoughtful compassion. Our donated clothes could create stores and job training. Our benevolence dollars could develop economies within the economy daycare centers, janitorial help, fix-the-widow’s roo services, and other jobs that employ the jobless in esteem-building work.
‘Your work is your calling,’ declared the reformer, Martin Luther. Does not the role of the church in our day include enabling the poor to find their calling? P. 50
People with a heart to serve others want to know that their gifts are invested wisely. At least I do. I don’t want my alms squandered by the irresponsible and the ungrateful. And since I’m often in a position to determine who will or will not receive assistance, I’ve attempted to establish criteria to judge the worthiness of potential recipients. (The following is truncated to save space)
A truly worthy poor woman—is a widow over sixty-five living alone without family.
A truly worthy poor young man—out of school, unemployed but not living off his mother.
A truly worthy poor young woman—has illegitimate children conceived prior to Christina conversion is now celibate
A truly worthy poor family—is devout, close-knit. Has a responsible father working long hours at minimum wage wherever he can find work.
I want to serve truly worthy poor people. The problem is they are hard to find. Someone on our staff thought he remembered seeing one back in ’76 but can’t remember for sure. Someone else reminded me that maybe to be truly poor means to be prideless, impatient, manipulative, desperate, grasping at every straw, and clutching the immediate with little energy left for future plans. But truly worthy? Are any of us truly worthy? P. 60-61
Strange things happen in kingdom playgrounds. Adults become children and learn to play again. They bring their best tools and talents (the toys of the kingdom) and dream together. They invent ingenious methods to feed and clothe the poor, methods that enhance rather than destroy. They create new economics in destitute neighborhoods, and build homes and businesses and hope where despair has reigned.
In kingdom playgrounds God’s children play with great intensity. At times they may grow weary, but they are never bored. They learn that their gifts, which they once thought were useful only for making money in the marketplace, are the exact abilities needed to work in God’s kingdom. In these unlikely places, Gods children discover that the serious work of eternity is simply the joyful employment of the talents they desire most to express….[After the work is done] [t]hey return once again to their adult obligations, not knowing that they were never created to be adults anyway: “Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3) P. 88-89

The Convergence of Hope

The Convergence of Hope

In Harvard Business Review this month there is a great little article on the topic of Hope. Let me quote a few highlights:

“What is hope? Something more than wishful thinking but short of expectation. A rejection of cynicism and dispiritedness. An a state, we believe, quite central to the work of a leader.”

“Yet work connected to the positive-psychology movement has made hope discussable in new ways. How has been shown to be the key ingredient of resilience in survivors of traumas ranging from prison camps to natural disasters. Many studies have shown that people who score higher on measures of hope also cope better with injuries, diseases, and physical pain; perform better in school; and prove more competitive in sports. Our contribution has been to outline the elements of hope—possibility, agency, worth, openness, and connection—in a way that guides efforts to nurture it in the work place. The first two are central to the definition of hope: people must see that change is possible and how they can engage personally in that change. The remaining elements have to do with how hope is cultivated in organizations.”

Hope is the reigning champion of Christian virtue—even above character, as it is the fruit of character. Romans 5 exhorts us to “rejoice in our tribulations, knowing that tribulations bring about perseverance and perseverance proven character and proven character hope and hope does not disappoint.”

Last week at the global learning community, pastor Dan Nold from Calvary Baptist Church in State College made the remark, “The one who offers the most hope, leads.” He is so right!

This weekend I’ve been at Hope Evangelical Free Church in Oakdale Minnesota. Hope is doing a wonderful job of giving hope to their community through their creative and innovative expressions of externally focused ministries. They come under the umbrella of “Bridges of Hope.”

Malcom Gladwell Might be Wrong

Harvard Business Review this month (February 2007) has an interesting article by Duncan J Watts, Professor of Sociology at Columbi University in New York and author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (2003).

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell posits that "social epidemics" are the result of a minority of of "influentials" who are especially informed, connected and persuasive. The idea is that these influentials cause the ripples of change.

Instead Watts and his colleague, Peter Dodds, actually did some research. Here's what they found:

"Our work shows that the principle requirement for what we call "global cascades"--the widespread propagation of influence through neworks--is the presence not of a few influentials, but rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people, each of whom adopts, say, a look or a brand after being exposed to a single adoptin neighbor. Regardless of how influential an individual is locally, he or she can exert global influence only if this critical mass is available to propagate a chain reaction.

Mostly...cascade size and frequency depend on the availability and connectedness of easily influenced people, not on the characteristics of the initiators--just as the size of a forest fire often has little to do with the spark that started it and lots to do with the state of the forest. If the network permits global cascades because it it has the right concentration and configuration of adopters, virtually anyone can start one. If it doesn't permit cascades, nobody can. What seems in retrospect to be the special influential quality of a particular person (or group) is, therefore, mostly an accident of location and timing.

Understanding that trends in public opinion are driven not by a few influential influencing everyone else but by by many eaasily inflenced people influencing one another should change how many companies incorporate social influence into their marketing campaigns."

I like the phrase, just as the size of a forest fire often has little to do with the spark that started it and lots to do with the state of the forest. Isn't that what movements are about? The ideas are always bigger than the people who expound them. And people are the tinder on which the ideas fall.

GoodCities

For the past few years my friend and co-worker, Sam Williams and I have been working together in several cities of the world. We've been flying under the banner of CitiReach, the organization founded by Jack Dennison. Working with the leaders from the Global Learnng Community (www.globallearncomm.blogspot.com) convinced us of our need to expand our capacity. We've been in some very good conversations with Glenn Barth. Glenn probably is the person most connected to those in the city reaching world, having run City Impact Roundtable and having a working knowledge of 1,600 leaders committed to city reaching.

Yesterday was the official founding date of GoodCities.net. We have the URL and will get the Website up soon (speaking in glacial time). More details will come but this is a good move.

Street Signs by Ray Bakke and Jon Sharpe

Bakke, Ray, and Jon Sharpe. Street Signs. Birmingham, Alabama: New Hope Publishers, 2006.
As I read this book on Simeon by Moule, I realized what a pastor was like. A pastor pastors the poor, brings them into the church, hassles the elite, holds possible different congregations together, stays through years of trouble, and finally stays for a lifetime. During that lifetime he or she helps found organizations such as Intervarsity, produces ministers such as Henry Martyn and the Cambridge Seven with missions to China, appoints chaplains to work in social justice, and teaches at the university during the week. P. 54

Saving grace, the primary work of local churches, is paid by tithe money. Common grace is paid by tax money, but it is all God’s money. A city hospital, a good school, a strong wall to protect everyone, would be common-grace gifts. P. 103

Remember Lewis Mumford’s definition of the city, one of many to be sure, but instructive for its brevity: the unique office of the city is to increase the variety, velocity, extent, and continuity of human intercourse. P. 106

A generation ago, missions were geographical. They were out there. They were foreign. Today missions are no longer for distant, geographical spots on the world map; instead they are culturally distant and within American borders. As we have said before, the nations live within the shadows of the spires of our churches. P 118-119

What have supermarkets learned that the church hasn’t? Diversity. A generation ago you shopped in small markets, which sometimes were simple moms and pop shops. They served up fruit, vegetables, meat, sugar (especially after WWII), flour, brad, and all the main staples. Today the supermarket carries a diversity of foods. Why? Because the folks making their food purchases today are divers. Supermarkets stay open 24/7. Why? Because folks work different shifts during the day. Where you used to get one or two kinds of rice (white and brown), you now choose from a large variety of rice in your local supermarket. Often I take students into a supermarket, ask them to look around, and then we get together and talk about what they saw. After a tour of the supermarket we drop by a local church to find it posted meeting time for Sunday morning on its marquee. What’s the message? You get religion on our terms You get it when, where, and how we want to deliver it to you. So be here at 11:00AM Sunday morning and we will share it with you. P. 119

Transforming Power by Robert Linthecum

Linthecum, Robert. Transforming Power: Biblical Strategies for making a Difference in Your Community. Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2003.

One of the youth who began to actively participate in our Bible studies was a new Christian named Eva. She was an exceptionally beautiful teenager, physically mature for her age. Evan became even more radiant when she received Christ as her Lord and Savior. I began discipling her, building her up in the ‘nurture and admonition’ of the Lord.

My academic year was drawing to a close, and I was looking forward to returning home for summer vacation. Just before I was to leave my teenage ‘parish,’ however, Eva came to me greatly troubled. ‘Bob,’ she said, ‘I am under terrible pressure and I don’t know what to do about it. There is a very powerful gang of men in this project that recruits girls to be prostitutes. They are trying to force me to join them. I know it’s wrong, but what should I do about it?’

I didn’t know what to say to Eva. Nothing in my experience had prepared me to deal with something like this. After all, I was only a nineteen-year-old, middle-class white boy! The only thing I could think to do was to share with her what I had learned in Sunday school and in the Christian college I attended—to ‘resist evil and it will flee from you,’ to ‘commit your way unto the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.’ I urged her to stick with her Bible study group and not to give in to the gang’s demands.

And then I left for my summer vacation

Three months later, I returned to college and to that ministry. Eva had stopped attending the Bible study. When I asked about her, the other youth told me she had stopped coming about a month after I had left. I feared the worst! I went to Eva’s apartment in one of the project buildings to talk with her. When she answered the door and saw that it was me, she burst into tears. ‘They got to me, Bob,’ she said. ‘I’m one of their whores!’

‘Eva, how could you give in?’ I unsympathetically responded. ‘Why didn’t you resist?’

“I did resist!’ she replied. ‘I didn’t give in’ I was forced in.’ then she told me a story of sheer intimidation and terror. ‘First, they told me they would beat my father if I didn’t become one of their whores. I refused—and they beat him bad. Then they said my brother was next. I still refused, and he ended up in the hospital with both legs broken. Then they told me that if I didn’t yield, they would gang rape my mother. I knew they meant it, and I couldn’t allow that. So I gave in.’

‘But Eva,’ I said, ‘why did you let them intimidate you that way? Why didn’t you get some protection? Why didn’t you go to the police?’

‘Bob, you honkey,’ Eva responded in disgust, ‘who do you think the gang is?’
Suddenly it hit me. This gang of ‘very powerful men” Eva was describing was the police.

Action learning in Action by Michael J. Marquardt

Marquardt, Michael J., Action Learning in Action: Transforming Problems and People for World-Class Organizational Learning. Mountain View, California: Davies-Black Publications, 1999.

Action learning is a powerful problem-solving process as well as a program that has an amazing capacity to simultaneously effect powerful individual and organizational change. P. 1

Learning and acting must become concurrent, since too many demands and too little time prohibit an exclusive focus on one or the other. P. 3

What is Action Learning?
Simply described, action learning is both a process and a powerful program that involves a small group of people solving real problems while at the same time focusing on what they are learning and how their learning can benefit each group member and the organization as a whole. P. 4

Perhaps action learning’s greatest value is its capacity for equipping individuals, teams, and organizations to more effectively respond to change. Learning is what makes action learning strategic rather than tactical. Fresh thinking and new learning are needed if we are to avoid responding to today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions while tomorrow’s challenges engulf us (Dilworth, 1998). P. 4

Action learning is built around a problem (project, challenge, issue, or task), the resolution of which is of high importance to an individual, team, and/or organization. The problem should be significant, be within the responsibility of the team, and provide opportunity for learning. Selection of the problem is fundamental to action learning because we learn best when undertaking some action, which can then be reflected upon. P. 5

For action learning advocates, there is no real learning unless action is taken, for one is never sure the idea or plan will be effective until it has been implemented. P. 7

“When you read and are taught, you gain knowledge; when you take action, you gain experience; when you reflect, you gain an understanding of both.”
--Anonymous p. 7

[A]ction learning programs are built around six distinct interactive components:
A problem
The group
The questioning and reflection process
The commitment to taking action
The commitment to learning
The facilitator
Action learning, when all its essential elements are incorporated, has tremendous, far-reaching power and strength. The key to attaining the inherent potency of action learning is to fully and properly include all six of these components, each of which complements and leverages the other five. P. 23
Moreover, the project should be a problem and not a puzzle. A puzzle can be defined as a perplexing question to which an answer or solution already exists but has not beeen found. A problem, on the other hand, has no existing solution. Different people will come up with different ideas and suggestions as to ho to solve it. In other words, there may be a number of possible solutions that might be satisfactory. P. 25

Experience and research have shown that action learning programs tend to be most effective when the group members exhibit the following attributes:
· Commitment to solving the problem
· Ability to listen, to question self and others
· Willingness to be open and to learn from other group members
· Valuing of others and respect for them
· Commitment to taking action and achieving success
· Awareness of own and others’ ability to learn and develop
p.29

At the heart of action learning is the process of reflection, which is designed to develop questioning insight, or, as (Reg) Revans notes, ‘the capacity to ask fresh questions in conditions of ignorance, risk, and confusion, when nobody know what to do next. P. 33

In action learning, members should be open to trying out new ways of doing things, experimenting, reflecting on experiences, considering the results or effects of the experience, and repeating the cycle by trying out newly gained knowledge in different situations. P.33

“We had the experience but missed the meaning.”
--T.S. Eliot p. 33

Merely producing reports and recommendations for someone else to implement results in diminished commitment, effectiveness, and learning on the part of the members. Being required to implement, however, prevents the group from resembling a think tank or debating group, which may be intellectually stimulating and emotionally releasing but may have no real-world impact. P. 33

The job of the facilitator is not to teach but to create an ‘atmosphere wherein the [members] can learn for and from themselves, to develop confidence in themselves, to reflect and develop new ideas (Lawlor, 1991, p. 256). P. 38

Transformational Leadership by Earnest T. Bass

Bass, Bernard M. Transformational Leadership: Industrial, Military, and Educational Impact. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, 1998.

“Evidence has accumulated that transformational leadership can move followers to exceed expected performance.” P. 2

“Since the early 1980s, civilian studies in business firms, government agencies, and other civilian organizations along with military research have supported the greater effectiveness of transformational leadership in contrast to transactional leadership in generating subordinate extra effort, commitment, satisfaction, and contribution to military readiness.” P. 3

“The model portrays transactional leadership as contingent reinforcement. Reinforcement is in the form of a leader’s promises and rewards or threats and disciplinary actions; reinforcing behavior is contingent on the follower’s performance. The transformational leader moves the follower beyond self-interests and is charismatic, inspirational, intellectually stimulating, and/or individually considerate.” P. 3

“For as Levinson (1980) suggested, if you limit leadership of a follower to rewards with carrots for compliance or punishment with a stick for failure to comply with agreed-upon work to be done by the follower, the follower will continue to feel like a jackass. Leadership must also address the follower’s sense of self-worth in order to engage the follower in true commitment and involvement in the effort at hand. This is what transformational leadership adds to the transactional exchange. Shamir (1991) developed a theory to explain this effect
Transformational leaders motivate others to do more than they originally intended and often even more than they thought possible. They set more challenging expectations and typically achieve higher performances.
Transformational leadership is an expansion of transactional leadership. Transactional leadership emphasizes the transaction or exchange that takes place among leaders, colleagues, and followers. This exchange is based on the leader discussing with others what is required and specifying the conditions and rewards these others will receive if they fulfill those requirements.” P. 4

Transformational leaders do more with colleagues and followers than set up simple exchanges or agreements. They behave in ways to achieve superior results by employing one or more of the four components of transformational leadership….[T]he components of transformational leadership. Leadership is charismatic such that the follower seeks to identify with leaders and emulate them. The leadership inspires the follower with challenge and persuasion providing a meaning and understanding. The leadership is intellectually stimulating, expanding the follower’s use of their abilities. Finally, the leadership is individually considerate, providing the follower with support, mentoring and coaching. Each of these components can be measured with the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (See p. 5 for further definition) P. 5

When peers of VMI military cadet leaders were asked what characterized the important traits of a good leader, they tended to describe traits of inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration such as: self-confidence, persuasiveness, concern for the well being of others, the ability to articulate one’s ideas and thoughts, providing models to be emulated by others, holding high expectations for themselves and others, keeping others well-informed, maintaining high motivation in themselves….Invariably, for well over 2,000 trainees, the characteristics of the ideal leader included the components of transformational leadership and contingent reward. P. 14

The three factors of transformational leadership embrace individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, and charismatic inspiration. Likewise, three factors are included in transactional leadership: contingent reward, active management-by-exception. A seventh factor is non-leading laissez-faire. The newer paradigm of transformational and transactional leadership does not replace the older paradigm that leadership can be directive or participative, for transformational and transactional leadership can be either directive or participative. Evidence has been amassed that transformational leadership is more effective than contingent reward, and contingent reward is more effective than management-by exception. Least effective is laissez-faire leadership. Such evidence has been found for commitment, involvement, loyalty, and performance. P. 17

By articulating a vision or a mission, the transformational leader increases the intrinsic value of goal accomplishment. Going Beyond a transactional leader’s specifying and clarifying the goals, the transformational leader presents the values in the goals. Accomplishment of the goals becomes more meaningful and consistent with the self-concepts of the followers. Emphasized also by the transformational leader is the importance of the goal as a basis for group identity, further connecting self-identity with group identity. P. 23

…transformational leaders both enhance follower commitment, and at the same time, serve to reduce employees’ feelings of stress. Indeed,…transactional leadership increases feelings of stress, whereas transformational leadership decreases such feelings. P. 27

Mechanistic versus organic organizations. Burns and Stalker (1966) originated the now well-accepted distinction between the mechanistic and the organic organizations. Mechanistic organizations feature bureaucracy—elaborate control systems and strong hierarchies. Organic organizations feature decentralized decision making and adaptive learning. We expect that managing-by-exception would be easier to pursue in mechanistic organizations, and transformational leadership and contingent rewarding will emerge more frequently in organic organizations. Mechanistic organizations discourage change and inhibit individual differences, motives, and attitudes (House, 1992), making managing-by-exception easier to accomplish.
Organic organizations are open to more variation and experimentation with attendant greater risk-taking, fitting better the prescription for transformational leadership. Mechanistic organizations work better in stable, predictable environments. Organic organizations work better in unstable, uncertain, turbulent environments. P. 56

Thus, we are likely to see adaptive firms led by transformational leaders who endorse assumptions such as: people are trustworthy and purposeful; complex problems can be delegated to the lowest level possible; mistakes can be the basis of how to do a better job rather than a source for recriminations. The transformational leaders articulate a sense of vision and purpose to followers. They align the followers around the vision and empower followers to take responsibility for achieving portions o the vision. When necessary, the leaders become teachers; personal responsibility is accepted by the leaders for the development of their followers to the followers’ full potential. P. 64

The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1997),

“Christian values of love and charity had, from the beginning, been translated into norms of social service and community solidarity. When disasters struck, the Christians were better able to cope, and this resulted in substantially higher rates of survival. This meant that in the aftermath of each epidemic, Christians made up a larger percentage of the population even without new converts. Moreover, their noticeably better survival rate would have seemed a “miracle” to Christians and pagans alike, and this ought to have influenced conversion. P. 75

I am most persuaded by McNeill’s (1976) estimate that from a quarter to a third of the population perished during this epidemic. Such high mortality is consistant with modern knowledge of epidemiology. P. 76

Almost a century later a second terrible epidemic struck the Roman world. At its height, five thousand people a day were reported to have died in the city of Rome alone (McNeill 1976). P. 77

Calculations based on Dionysius’s account suggest that two-thirds of Alexandria’s population may have perished (Boak 1947). P.77

Pagan and Christian writers are unanimous not only that Christian Scripture stressed love and charity as the central duties of faith, but that these were sustained in everyday behavior. P.86

McNeill pointed out: ‘When all normal services break down, quite elementary nursing will greatly reduce mortality. Simple provision of food and water, for instance, will allow persons who are temporarily too weak to cope for themselves to recover instead of perishing miserably” (1976:108). P. 88

Modern medical experts believe that conscientious nursing without any medications could cut the mortality rate by two-thirds or even more. P. 89

Transforming Leadership by James MacGregor Burns

Burns, James MacGregor. Transforming Leadership: a New Pursuit of Happiness. New York, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003.

“Summoned forth by human wants, the task of leadership is to accomplish some change in the world that reponds to those wants. Its actions and achievements are measured by the supreme public values that themselves are the profoundest expressions of human wants: liberty and equality, justice and opportunity, the pursuit of happiness. P. 2

“Hence I would call for the protection and nourishing of happiness, for extending the opportunity to pursue happiness to all people, as the core agenda of transforming leadership. P. 3

“Every human change begins with someone having an intention, taking the initiative.” P. 17

“We must distinguish here between the verbs ‘change’ and ‘transform,’ using exacting definitions. To change is to substitute one thing for another, to give and take, to exchange places, to pass from one place to another. These are the kinds of changes I attribute to transactional leadership. But to transform something cuts much more profoundly. It is to cause a metamorphosis in form or structure, a change in the very condition or nature of a thing, a change into another substance a radical change in outward form or inner character, as when a frog is transformed into a prince or a carriage maker into an auto factory. It is change of this breadth end depth that is fostered by transforming leadership.” P. 24

“Historians of ideas have long noted the element of simultaneity in the advent of theories and concepts. Thinkers taking different paths converge at almost the same moment on a problem and even on its solution.” P. 24

“Leaders take the initiative in mobilizing people for participation in the processes of change, encouraging a sense of collective identity and collective efficacy, which in turn brings stronger feelings of self-worth and self-efficacy…. By pursuing transformational change, people can transform themselves.” P. 25

“Instead of exercising power over people, transforming leaders champion and inspire followers. Tension can develop in this process. As leaders encourage followers to rise above narrow interests and work together for transcending goals, leaders can come into conflict with followers’ rising sense of efficacy and purpose. Followers might outstrip leaders. They might become leaders themselves. That is what makes transforming leadership participatory and democratic.” P. 26

“Transforming values lie at the heart of transforming leadership, determining whether leadership indeed can be transforming.” P. 29

“Where does leadership begin? Where change begins. Where does change begin? In my view, with the burgeoning in humans of powerful physical and psychological wants. Leadership is so intertwined with fundamental change, and change with the dynamics of ants and needs, as to make rather arbitrary any locating of origins in what is really a seamless web.” P. 140

“At its simplest, creative leadership begins when a person imagines a state of affairs not presently existing.” P. 153

Interaction begins when the innovator rallies support to carry out the change he intends. Innovators have a triple burden: they must break with the inheritors among whom they may have been numbered; they must mobilize followers by appealing to their wants and hopes and other motivations; they must adapt their intentions to those of would-be followers without sacrificing their essential goal.” P.221

“Thus individual efficacy both strengthens and draws strength from collective efficacy, in a virtuous circle.
Collective efficacy benefits from another virtuous circle, according to Albert Bandura. The higher the efficacy, the greater the participation; the greater the participation, the larger the potential for success; and the larger the potential for success, the higher the efficacy. Mutual aid and obligations, comradeship, shared values and goals—all enhance and are enhanced by collective efficacy.” P. 224

Building collective efficacy from the grass roots up—as people convert self-interests into common purposes, as activists learn to challenge the power structures around them, as leaders give heart to followers by showing how obstacles are surmountable, as community leadership links up with collective action at broader, even national and global levels—is crucial to achieving leadership, for far-reaching social change, and the promise of happiness. P. 225