How real can you "virtually" be?

Companions,

Today, Len Sweet posted a link to this article on Twitter and Facebook about companies that are about to market holographic projection technologies to congregations, particularly those who already have multi-site worship settings where the "preacher" is present via video.
  
No doubt, some congregations (probably wealthier ones) will start deploying this technology. Others may be left "drooling" to do so if they could gather the funds. And still others would find the whole thing distasteful. 


Within the article and several of the comments that follow it, one of the "running arguments" for it seems to be that technology itself is generally a good thing, though it can be used for bad ends, and so we should use advances in technology where we can to achieve the best ends we can with it. Others in the article make the point that for those already doing 2D projection of the preacher, adding a third dimension only represents an upgrade, and nothing more.

Missing from that kind of argument to start with, though, is a deliberation on the nature of Christian community-- real life, flesh and blood, faces to faces. 


That's a question that, frankly, has some ramifications for those of us who read and write on this blog, or have connections via Facebook, or in email groups. Our communication here and through other 2D communications channels is facilitated electronically. In what ways are we a community if we don't actually see each other's faces? Or as the title of this post suggests, how "real" of a community can we "virtually" be-- especially if virtual is the only connection we have with each other?

For those of you who have gathered at either or both of the emergingumc events since 2007, and so have become, if only temporarily, a kind of face to face community-- how do those experiences of being face to face compare with or enrich (or even have no bearing on!) the kind of community you experience as readers or writers of this blog? Or in other venues where your primary contacts are "virtual" and possibly asynchronous, as opposed to real time in flesh and blood?


What is gained? What is lost?


Much to ponder-- and to discuss!




Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

A Lenten/Holy Week Examen from Alan and Debra Hirsch's Untamed

Companions,

Lent is drawing near its dramatic close. Holy Week arrives this coming Sunday.

And just at this time, Alan Hirsch has a new book out, this one co-authored with his wife and missional co-conspirator of many years, Debra Hirsch. It's called Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship.

Among its more insightful paragraphs is this one:

We do inhabit a church of what some commentators call "Christianity Lite," and, by all accounts, it is us who have been acculturated-- not the other way around. We have come to believe through hard experience and through lots of reflection that the church has been deeply compromised by aspects of the prevailing culture. Christians now easily reflect the characteristics and the conditions of the wider culture. But what we have gained in relevancy we lose in witness and impact, and "though popular culture holds tremendous potential for good, unfortunately today's trend is towards a diversionary, mindless, celebrity-driven superficiality. Sadly, this reflects our general societal condition, for popular culture can only rise to the spiritual, intellectual and artistic heights of its average citizenry."

and then, a few paragraphs later, this quote from Bill Hybels regarding Willow Creek...

"If you simply want a crowd, the 'seeker sensitive' model produces results. If you want solid, sincere, mature followers of Christ, it's a bust."

There's nothing in either of those two brief pieces all that shocking to most of you reading this, I would imagine. My guess is we'd simply agree for the most part.

But few have put these cases so succinctly lately as Hirsch has done here. This is nothing less than a throwing down of the gauntlet in the face of leadership in many places who seem content with "diversionary, mindless, superficial" Christianity, simply because it turns out to be, as Bill Hybels noted, quite effective at drawing a crowd.

But this sort of critique points both ways. It wouldn't be enough for us simply to side with Alan and Debra Hirsch here and call it good. It actually remains for us to answer the charge with a demonstration that we are committed to producing a form of Christian community and living witness that is crucial (in all its senses) rather than diversionary, mindful rather than mindless, and prepared to go to boundless depths rather than being superficial.

So, reviving the ancient Lenten/Holy Week practice, I put the examen to all of us:

1) How is discipleship to Jesus crucial-- at the crossroads-- of your daily life? What are you doing to help support it being that way for others around you?

2) How is discipleship to Jesus mindful-- challenging you to be fully aware to God and the world around you and to think and question critically? What are you doing or what are others around you doing that help support such "Jesus-mindfulness" or "kingdom-mindfulness" in others?

3) To what depths are you prepared to go-- not might wish to go, maybe, but actually prepared at this moment? Who and what will challenge and support you to go deeper yourself and help others do the same?

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

You Go, Andrew Thompson

Companions,

Andrew Thompson has written an article in UMR Online in response to Bishop Willliam Willimon's recent article in The Christian Century raising critical concerns about "practices" as that term has become widely used in conversation about Christian faith.

You can get there from here.

I've been pondering my own response to the article for a while, now-- but Andrew has said it better than I ever could have.

In fact, I think he said it better than the original article did.

So-- click up and read!



Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

Change the World... and YOUR corner of it

Companions,

Have you heard about the Change the World Event, April 24-25?

Maybe you have. Maybe you haven't.

It's an initiative of the ReThink Church working group at United Methodist Communications to encourage local United Methodist congregations worldwide to do two things that weekend:

1) Get outside their walls on April 24 and do something together or as smaller groups to improve lives in their local community.
2) Act as one in emphasizing World Malaria Day on April 25.

Congregations around the world are signing up for this at the Change the World Event website. As they do, a pushpin indicator shows up on the Google Maps app on that site with information about who they are and what they're planning to do that weekend.

One of the things I'm liking about how this is going is the approach of several Global South congregations and conferences. They're not looking for handouts (as if they ever were!). No. They're looking to be partners where they are doing what they can do to raise awareness and eradicate malaria on the ground. So on April 24 in Mozambique, one of the "community day" actions will be filling up areas on the ground that are known to gather standing water and so breed the mosquitos that spread malaria. It's as basic as it comes-- and it will make a big difference wherever it occurs. If you click around on the map, you'll start to get a sense of how different communities are planning to respond worldwide.

At this point, something over 130 congregations have signed up to do something that weekend.

For it to change the world more than locally, though, EVEN for it to draw more than a few shrugs from the within UMC, we're going to need far more than that. Think thousands rather than hundreds. Think not just "imagine no malaria" but "give malaria a huge kick in the proboscis."

But to do that, word with strong encouragement to participate needs to get out. "Changing the World" and "Imagining No Malaria" and even "getting outside the walls" are "nice ideals" but no more than that if we don't get a strong, even massive, level of participation worldwide. We need not be seen as "religious folk with good intentions." No, this is an opportunity to incarnate "spreading scriptural holiness across the land!"

So, I'm asking you to do two things.

1) Go to http://www.rethinkchurch.org/changetheworld and get as many people in your social networks and faith communities to do the same. There's lots to see there-- and links to a webinar, more information about other churches doing this, a YouTube video, and resources for worship and ministry both that weekend and the previous one leading up to it.

2) Sign up indicating how you and your faith community will be part of the actions that weekend.

3) Keep spreading the world about this far and wide. On Twitter, the hashtag for this event and Mike Slaughter's book of the same name is #changeworld. Drive traffic there-- smash the API limits!

Oh, that's three, THREE things!

Let it not be said, "No one's expecting the Change the World Event!" Let it rather be said, "No one expected just how committed these Christians are to be in mission where they are AND globally to end malaria!"

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

The US Postal Service Goes Missional... Sort of

Companions,

One of the more frequent addresses that shows up in my GBOD inbox is that of the head of GBOD's mailing services department. Alice does a fantastic job telling us what's happening with the mail service in both of the buildings we occupy, as well as keeping us up to date with what's going on in mail services nationally. Sometimes, I admit, it's more information than I think most of us might care to know.

But in yesterday's Mail Services update email, Alice noted that some big news was coming from USPS about changes in postal delivery. She "teased" that USPS might move toward a five-day delivery model, excluding either Tuesdays or Saturdays, though the final decision wasn't made. We'd get the official word today when all the documentation was to be posted on the USPS website after a press conference this morning.

Well, the news was actually bigger than that. And the title of the web page that gives that news, and lots of other resources, is pretty big, too. Especially given that, well, this is the US Postal Service we're talking about. Not exactly the model of flexibility and "getting out on the leading edge" if you know what I mean. But in "Envisioning America's Future Postal Service" they really sort of do.

To get the best overview of what USPS has been up against, where they see future trends in physical mail going, and how they plan to address those trends and eliminate the escalating red ink they portend, I suggest reading their PowerPointTM Presentation. Really. It's pretty enlightening stuff. No kidding!

And when you do, you may be surprised to discover a variety of ways in which USPS is "going missional."

Now, at least etymologically, USPS has ALWAYS been missional. They're all about sending mail out, right? Well, yes-- and that would be your typical "user experience" if you have spent your life in cities or suburban areas of the US for the most part.

But if you've lived out in more rural areas, or if you needed to mail something other than a letter, you've known you had to get out at go TO the post office to get your mail and send whatever you had to send. And there you know what to expect. Lines. Sometimes long ones. In small towns where the Post Office is also a community gathering place, the lines don't feel like as much of a problem. It's good to catch up with neighbors. But in cities and suburbs, forget it.

But it's not just lines. It's also rules. Lots of them. No, you can't put that kind of tape on that side, you have to use this kind. No, we don't sell it here, you'll have to go somewhere else to buy some. No, you've mis-metered your bulk mail stamp by 5 mm, and we changed the bar code restrictions last week, so we can't accept that. You'll have to go back and reprint them all because you can't put a label over this one. Oh, and that staple-- it's got to go. It doesn't matter that tape will ruin the paper or that labels are expensive and you can't recycle the "wax" paper they come on. You have to do it this way or we don't mail it, got it?

Now to be sure, rules aren't a bad thing. Some of them are there so the automated mailing systems can be used more efficiently, which allows more people to get mail more quickly and reliably. And I'm convinced a lot of them are there so they can actually handle the massive customer and mailing piece volume they have to handle every day. Even in a declining volume base (estimated to decline another 15% by 2020!) we're talking nearly half a billion pieces of mail per day.

So it's not really the rules I've minded. It's having to go to a Post Office (especially in cities and suburbs). It's often not open when I CAN get there. And once there in the long line, well, it's the "P.O. attitude." Even that, though, I think I can understand. If I'm on the other side of that counter, and I see that long line, and I see the stuff piling up for delivery behind me-- I think I get how that happens. They're probably doing better than I would under the circumstances. It doesn't make the experience any more pleasant, but I think I get it.

But now a lot of that is going to change. In addition to a variety of other initiatives (including changing the payout of health care benefits to a Pay-as-you-go model and moving to a five-day delivery model, Monday-Friday), the biggest change is going to be a dramatic expansion of the number of places where you can do get basic postal services. There will be way more automated kiosks buildings (we have one near the family's home in Fishers, IN, and it's worlds better than going to the PO in town, and don't get me started about the PO in Nashville, TN where I'm a resident!). And there will be way more access through "corner stores" such as pharmacies, grocery stores, and convenience stores.

Here's the language from the slide in the presentation where they talk about that.

The Postal Service will expand customer access where it is
convenient for them, online and where they shop.

▪ Post Offices are often less convenient for customers in terms of
hours of operation and accessibility, and cost two to three times
more than alternative channels

▪ Access can be expanded through new partnerships with retailers
and with other medium such as kiosks. Requires:
– Elimination of the statutory limitation that prevents the closure of
Post Offices solely for economic reasons
– Reduced political interference in the decision making process
– Changes to the regulatory review process

Do you see what they're doing there? They're going to move more access to postal services OUT to where the people being served, their customers, actually are. And, as it turns out, this will save them billions of dollars in higher operational costs and employee costs for post offices and their workers. Better service, lower costs. Everybody wins. And the mission is served better-- not by being attractional (trying more and more gimmicks such as special stamps to lure people IN to the post offices) but by being missional (sending their services out, both through their own kiosks AND through partnerships with others who can deliver them just as effectively but at far lower costs).

This isn't outsourcing. This doesn't take jobs away from Americans and put them in other countries. This is ReThinking Postal Service.

They're not proposing closing all the post offices. They're also not talking eliminating all their employee base and going solely for contracts with outside groups (pharmacies, grocery stores, etc). Reduction in traditional post office locations and increases in partnerships with others who can deliver their services more efficiently to more customers in more places is part of the mix, but it's not the only part.

Some have observed that the structure of the United Methodist Church looks a lot like the structure of US government-- three branches of "top level" governance (General Conference, Council of Bishops/Connectional Table, and Judicial Council), regional governing authorities (conferences) and local governing authorities (districts and congregations). It's a fairly appropriate analogy, except we don't have a bicameral legislature to give us gridlock like the US Congress has experienced for the past decade or two.

Given that history and heritage of "follow the government" for polity, maybe it's time, right now, for the UMC to wake up and follow the Post Office.

Maybe it's time for UM congregations to give up not on congregations per se, but rather give up on the notion that the mission of the church is best served if we get as many people INTO congregations as our goal, and get many more of those folks OUT into the world "offering them Christ" where they normally go-- whether online, or in their neighborhoods, or where they work, shop and play.

Maybe it's time, too, to loosen up our "congregation equals church" approach to things and recognize that other formats of Christian community are "out there" that could help people become disciples of Jesus accountably deployed in mission far more efficiently that congregations can expect to-- and start partnering with them to do just that.

To do that, we have to make some legislative changes, yes-- as does the Post Office to do what it needs to do. But more than that, we have to "loosen up" our thinking, abandon the models that are likely only to continue to produce downward trajectories of performance in this country, and start forming the partnerships that will get us all on a greater number of trajectories far more likely to achieve their targets-- our stated mission: To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Hey, if the Post Office can go missional, why not the United Methodist Church?


Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

The Myth of the Congregational "Life Cycle"?

Companions,

While I was a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the late 1980s, I read Robert Dale's book, To Dream Again, whose fundamental insight was based on describing congregations in terms, more or less, of a life cycle. I later got to meet and talk with Robert Dale when my father in law invited him to Evansville to address the annual pastoral care conference he hosted as chaplain for Welborn Hospital.

It's a very good book, very helpful in many ways. Among other things, I'd suggest that Robert Dale here really sort of scooped the ideas presented the later discussions of adaptive versus technical change. The original version of Dale's book came out in the 1980s. The others are at least a decade or two later. The other titles no doubt made more money-- maybe in part because they were sold to a broader audience than congregational leaders. But Robert Dale really did nail some key concepts, I think, about what sort of changes can produce what sorts of results at various stages of a congregation's or organization's life.

But what I'm coming to question both about Dale's book and a good bit of subsequent literature in congregational and organizational development is the notion of organizational life cycle.

Do organizations have a kind of life? Yes. But is whatever one calls organizational life analogous to a life cycle, and in particular a human life cycle? Here, I'd argue no. The analogy is tempting, sometimes even somewhat illuminating. But from what I can see, it represents a category error.

A "category error" or "category mistake" happens when you try to describe one type of phenomenon in terms of another type to which it does not properly belong. In common parlance, it's describing apples using the properties of oranges, or perhaps rocks. Apples make very strange oranges, indeed. Maybe even stranger rocks (except for the plastic ones, I guess!). I think the history of very long-lived organizations such as the church, in all its diverse forms, is pretty good witness that trying to apply descriptors of life cycle to organizations is misleading at best, and perhaps even rather damaging.

Here's the problem that comes from that category error, especially for congregations and other intentionally institutional forms of Christian community. We can end up creating or reframing our congregations as if they are intended to be short-term organizations with short-term vision and short-term mission if we buy this.

In other words, we get "disposable church." Or "disposable conference." Or "disposable-name-your-organization." And so we do not plan for what we seek to build to outlast us-- and to continue to provide a solid foundation for taking the best of what we can see forward for generations to come.

To be sure, not everything we do as church needs to have that kind of longer range expectation. There is good merit in the short term for all sorts of things--- mission projects, special-purpose small groups for study or practice, some musical groups, and so on. Mortality is not only an enemy but also a gift in some ways. There is plenty good room for things to come and go. Not everything needs to last beyond us.

But some things do. And I would argue (and I invite you to disagree and counter-argue!) that congregations may be among them. We need to build those public institutions to be lasting, in every way, if we intend them to have a lasting influence on those who are affected by them. At least, that is, if we believe that such institutions represent and support values that not only outlive us, but that we are ready to die for.

I can hear a counter-argument. What about all those United Methodist congregations built during the "big boom" of Methodist church starts from the 1880s-1920s out in small towns where nobody lives anymore? Didn't "building to last" turn out to create more of a liability than a benefit?

It's a fair question. I'm not denying at all that congregational facilities may now be poorly located, or that some congregations themselves may be, organizationally speaking, zombies (dead, but still walking around). Things happen. People move. Towns dry up. Jobs move away. And, yes, congregations get too internally focused on survival and move into a sort of "congregational dementia." Those things occur.

What I'm denying is that visioning for what our congregations are should begin by taking those possibilities as inevitabilities. What I'm denying is that the life of a congregation (or organization) is necessarily limited by erstwhile generational trends.

What I fear (because I've seen this done a few too many times!) is that the notion of congregations (or other entities) having a life cycle (rather than a kind of life intended to outlast us) foreshortens our vision, cripples our planning, and, in a perverse way, gives us an excuse NOT to build sufficient organizational capacity when, if we didn't have the idea of the inevitability of organizational mortality in our minds as we began (or even dreamed again!) we really could have planned better and done better in both the shorter and the longer term. For, after all, the most we can ever hope to work for is whatever we imagine the organization's expected life to be-- and we've pegged that, in this model, more or less to a human life cycle.

Neil Cole, I know, would argue vociferously against this. Indeed he has, calling any interest to build what is intended to outlast us a form of blasphemy, heresy and idolatry. He is deeply concerned that building institutions is a sign of a decay in a movement. His argument here is compelling-- about movements and organic groups. Not so much about institutions.

I would argue to the contrary that the founding of institutions could be seen as a sign of maturation of particular aspects of a movement, or that it is actually not necessarily related to movements at all. I would also argue that movements aren't good or helpful (or harmful!) because they're movements, any more than institutions are good or helpful (or deadly!) because they're institutions. Rather, I'd suggest that different forms of human organizational life are best suited for producing different kinds of outcomes. Movements are great for hands-on involvement and personal transformation. Institutions are great, potentially, at providing supportive structures, resources and other kinds of networks that can support those movements-- IF the movement and institution see themselves as each supporting the other and neither sees itself as "the one right way."

So when it comes to organizations such as Christians congregations that are, or at least have been now for 1400 plus years, local public Christian religious institutions, maybe rather than talking about life cycles, a more appropriate kind of language might be "trajectories."

So maybe the question isn't whether a congregation or denomination is "dying."

Maybe the better question is about whether it still has or can recruit momentum enough to stay "in flight" or to increase its angle of velocity to continue to reach its targets, and if so, for how long.

That's not an organic question. Telomeres will win out on all our cells, period. It is better understood (though not solely so!), I think, as a question of forces and capacities. I'm all for biology! And I'm all for organic forms of Christian community. We need more of them!

But when it comes to organizational longevity, physics may be the more relevant source for describing what makes for effective institutions, including congregations, for the longer run.

I still find To Dream Again insightful and useful. I just don't find the life cycle analogies to fit what congregations (or other institutional forms of Christian community) are or have been designed to be for quite some time.

What do you think?

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards