Learning from life

This blog is bi-lingual; it has a twin in Spanish. Most of the time I write in English and translate to Spanish (Yes Google is a part of it *blush*) But this time I did the other way around because I wanted to describe a tool we’re using in our work. It’s called the Circle, and is a part of the Lifeshapes developed in an Anglican church in England and now spread over the world. More info on www.weare3d.com.

There are excellent summaries of the Circle on-line so I’ll be brief. It’s basically a learning circle, like Kolb’s, which has been cross-pollinated with the notion of discipleship in the teaching of Jesus. A disciple was of course a learner, and the Circle is a tool to keep us learning from the things that happens in our life.

The process has two sides; I often use the parable of the two houses in Matt 7 to illustrate them. One person hears the message of Jesus and acts on it, and gets a stable life; another hears but does not act and have fragile life, basically. One side is called Repentance, because it’s most often about changing direction or thinking. The basic question on this side is “What is God saying to me thru this?” 

The first side has three steps: Observe, which basically means realizing that something special happened; Reflect where we ask what this means for me, pray, think and listen; and the third, Discuss, where we check what others can contribute with.

When we feel like we sense what’s the message we can move over to the left side where the first step is Plan. We need something concrete to do as a response. Easy and preferably just one thing. Because we so easily fool ourselves we need to make ourselves accountable to someone that can ask us the question “How’s it going?” And finally, the cruncher, Act. To do what we planned.

If we go through the whole Circle our lives will change a little according to will of God. If we do it regularly it will change a lot :-)

We realize that to keep the dynamic part of our relationship to God we need to keep on learning, changing and listening. The Circle helps us with that. Nothing new really, just an easy form. It actually coincides with the first chapters in the material we already use for new Christians.

Together before going out

I am blessed with a wonderful wife, who very often see things that I don't. We were praying the other day and I was thinking about how to relate more to the people around us in the town. So far we have been working mostly with the people in the church, some that used to be in the church and their friends. I don't want to get stuck there, and it's easy to do that. Especially I'm interested in the Catholicism here and how to relate to it. No doubt subject for another post.

As we were talking however my wife cautioned me saying that "we need somewhere to bring people to". That somewhere doesn't have to be a building or meetings, but more like an environment, relationships, a community. Being married for over 20 years I recognized the wisdom.

Today I bumped into this blogpost where Ben Sternke argues for "centralization-before-decentralization". He writes: "Discipleship is the “intense centralization” process that happens before the “decentralization” of mission. Discipleship is where the core values are hammered out, where people are socialized into a new way of life before being “turned loose” to join Jesus in the renewal of all things."
 
That is probably where we're at. We have to build more internal first, disciple as it were. Especially here where the system hasn't really been geared for mission and growth, more for attendance.

The challenge is that often we teach and preach about these things, we give information, but that rarely changes peoples lives. I'm doing a course with 3DM and the have a illustration of this:

The point is that information must be followed by imitation, practice with someone, before we get a life that reaches other lives. And that's the challenge folks, living a life worth imitating and sharing that.

Who to lead?

At the moment we are meeting with people in Benjamin who has been part of this church or another. As we are getting to know them the issue of ministry, leadership, doing something in the church comes up. And a lot of times about leading worship. It seems like the outlet of the energy for young people has been leading worship, or being part of the worship band.

Who to lead is one of the most important issues we face when planting or restarting a church. A good leader can be a real blessing but a bad one can seriously hinder growth and development.  So what to look for? Well here are three things I’m thinking about at the moment:

1. Character. Always more important than gifting. But gifting is more apparent and attractive. But without character and good attitude it can be a real pain. Choosing the person who is a little less talented but with a good character always pays off in the long run.
2. In process. With this I mean that the person is aware of their own weaknesses and sins and that they are a person in a process of change, sanctification. Brokeness over ones own sins almost automatically gives an merciful attitude to others. The opposite, a person who feels ready with themselves and would like to change others gives of a perfectionistic atmosphere which is very unattractive.
3. Relationship. It’s important in church to first connect on the level of being brothers and sisters in Christ, like it’s important in life to connect to anyone firstly as a human being created by God. Being brothers and sisters doesn’t involve work, so that kind of meeting, call it meeting between pilgrims, has a different flavor to it. After that comes the task. Without the relationship foundation the work is too vulnerable to conflict, as there are no base for communication and resolution.

I’m sure theres more, but these are my thoughts today J Never rush into these things, people deserve good leaders, children even more. Resist the temptation to “fill the gaps to make the machinery work”, they’re worth it!

Wanted: Nice words

We all know the nice feeling when we receive a compliment. Someone says something nice about our clothes, joke or gift, and we feel good, loved, and we can do more, dare the next challenge. And to make things better: nice words are free. They cost nothing. Free. And anyone can practice them: we do not need education or diploma and or be smart. Sounds easy, right?

Unfortunately it seems that many people live with many ugly words. They pull down. It seems more normal to say the negative. Or mix. In many conversations this happens: Someone says something positive, "yes, she is very good, does many nice things" and then comes the "but", "but she can not manage your money" or something. It's like you feel you need to balance things out.

The worst is that this is common with Christians as well. The sins and weaknesses of others comes very quickly in any conversation. A lack of generosity.

Do I seem tired? Maybe a little. I think that a life with more generosity and nice words would be easier to live.

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

Information and inslulated systems

I'm reading The Unshackled Organization, by Jeff Goldstein, a 1994 book on how to apply the science of self organizing systems and non-linearity found in nature, to organizations and groups. It has the inviting subtitle: Facing the Challenge of Unpredictability Through Spontaneous Reorganization.

So far, what I get of it, he argues that contrary to popular opinion, groups and organizations want to change, or it's in their nature to change. It's part of their "non-linearity". Goldstein claims: "What is radically new about the self-organization perspective is that a work group or organization as a natural system will spontaneously know how to reorganize in the face of a challenge, if the obstacles hindering its capacity to self-organize are removed." 

On of the things that keeps the group in "equilibrium", standing still, is "the refusal to admit new information into the system". The group, whether an organisation, company or a smaller unit like a family, is insulated from receiving new information, therefore whatever happens will be interpreted according to the old ways of thinking, what Goldstein calls "self fulfilling prophesies". 

We must not think by this he means that the group lives on a deserted island cut off from everything, he means that information and "data" are different things. Data is fact and figures, "I am tired", without relationship to the other members of the group. Information would be "I am tired because my boss sent me to do this job". Goldstein defines it like this: "Information...refers to the knowledge that is available to a system of its own functioning, of the arrangements of it's parts, where each element is and what is doing". It's basically the members being able to reflect upon themselves and how they are working, as a group.

Standing still systems tend to diminish or defend themselves from this kind of information, the reflective kind. But in order to see change we need to let new information in, understanding about the group in the context of it's environment. This triggers the self reorganization, that would be a major point in the book.

Enough of the book. What triggered me with this passage was the experience of it, how groups, families and churches can't get out of their self-image and develop, they're stuck with the same problem definitions almost forever. They're closed as a system, and other people, a members or outsiders, that offer a different view, are excluded or censored in different ways. The reflection: "Isn't this a little weird" is of course very threatening for a leader that is just trying to deal with a situation.  This seems to be especially difficult in a culture like the Latin American cultures which are very hierarchical, free flow of reflections are really very rare. So far.

A positive example of this principle was a project that my convention, Interact, did together wit the Paraguayan convention we're working with. It was funded by the Swedish government (!) (My tax money at work) and was aimed at organizational development. It resulted in a lot of paper and goals and so forth, but it seems to me that what really made a difference afterwards was that the process gave the organization tools and time to self-reflect, to let new information into the system. And this the results of that are still emerging.

What to learn? 

• Always welcome other peoples reflections, even if they seem weird or from the "wrong" people", sift later
• If you lead a group, allow time and help them to reflect about how they work as a group and how they relate to their environment.
• Information, in this sense, will release change by itself.

The dream connection

It happened again! During the days we worked on renovating the house, see earlier post, I chatted with one of the guys I've never met before. Not assuming he was a Christian I asked him a bit about how he viewed life. It turned out he didn't belong to any church, unusual in Paraguay, and didn't seem to want to. Fine with me, we were just talking. And then it came: he started to tell me about a dream he had a few weeks ago, which connected to another dream he's had three times in his life, the same one! And suddenly we were talking about fulfilling our life's destinies.

This is not the first time that the subject of dreams has been the bridge into talking about faith. In fact, I have come to believe that most people have one or more significant dream in their life that their looking for the answer to. And many people dream regularly dreams that they know are more than just the processing of their daily experiences. It's often enough to show yourself open to the dream world and interested in listening, the rest comes by itself.

Sadly this dimension of the Christian life seems to have been lost somewhere. That God speaks through dreams is obvious in the Bible, to all kinds of people. it has been and still is a vital part of the spiritual life of many believers and churches. But especially in the West, and the continents we have "blessed" with our theology the interest in dreams really have been lost. Usually you have several hindrances to go through:
- Pastors are sometimes afraid that people will put their experiences over the Word, and are therefore reluctant to speak about dreams.
- Many of them have bad experiences with dreams and misinterpretations. Most ministers have met what someone called "the flaky fringe", often immature people that use spirituality to avoid dealing with issues in their life.
- Most of us pastors doesn't have any training in how to deal with dreams. We simply don't know what to do with dreams.
- The people who DO teach on dreams often come from the "wrong" part of the church. They tend to be either charismatics or catholics/high church or Jungian psychologists. Or a mix of these.

For these and many other reasons we are not really equipped to deal with dreams, neither do we have routines in our churches for them. So we are quite deaf in this area. Which is sad, because it seems to me that God is using this way of speaking to people a lot these days.

Ironically, I personally hardly remember any of my dreams and usually don't listen to God in that way. Go figure.

The unavoidability of buildings

Tomorrow I'm going to do something I didn't think I would do, ever really. I will welcome a work crew and together we will renovate the church buildings, primarily the "casa pastoral", the pastors house. Two days intensive work they think, I honestly don't have a clue.

My ministry background is city, we've always been in ministry situations that focused on relationships, buildings were always rented and functional. Building houses, spending money and energy maintain church buildings has never been on the agenda. It's not really a cool thing to do, doesn't show up on the seminar list of the church planting conference really. In fact, one might argue that some new movements get their energy from being critical of these things, it's their point of reference in a negative way. A bit of an allergy really. That's where I come from.

And now, through an unplanned series of events I'm pastoring in a rural town setting with a classic church building. Ironic and probably God.

As we are discovering this building, and through that what went on before we came, I was reminded about an experience several years ago. Our family visited a monastery ruin in the south of Sweden. Nice as ruins go and even more interesting history wise. The monastery was built in the wilderness, and was meant to spread both the gospel and civilisation. Modern farming techniques, education, trade etc. They had had land and after a while influence in many spheres of society.

As I was walking there the thought came to me: spiritual movements seem to leave physical remnants that remain long after their spiritual strength has waned. Like these ruins. Or schools. Hospitals. Orphanages. Church buildings. In fact in the western world it's hard to think about a significant spiritual movement that has not left a mark in this way. They seem to need infrastructure to channel all that energy and enthusiasm.

Then of course we know the next steps: the energy goes, the maintenance mode kicks in and taking care of the structures becomes a high priority. In our case: the church was just about to shut down, hardly any activity left, but it was still being cleaned every week, with pride. It's easy to be critical at that stage, and wanting to cut out all organisation and structures to avoid getting there. But that doesn't seem to be possible.
The house church movement in England in the 80's soon got organised as the need for training and structure emerged. Revival movements in the past spawn denominations that soon build buildings.The cycle seem to be unavoidable and perhaps natural. So no need for allergy :-)

I doubt I will be pondering that tomorrow as we change the roof in 35 degrees heat, but in Gods ever-changing education of us there always seem to be new perspectives to be learnt.