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Creating the Future, One Mustard Seed at a Time (The New Conspirators)

PatJuly 13, 2008

“The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine)

I’ve just finished reading Tom Sine’s newest book, “The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine). It’s one that I’ve meant to read for a few months. However, having now finished it, I highly recommend it and want to do a relatively thorough summary of the book here. It’s fantastic.

You may or may not know Tom’s name. Tom and Christine Sine are Seattle area folks who direct the Mustard Seed Associates, an organization devoted to engaging the church in emerging culture. What I love about the Sines - not having met them, but growing a friendship with their associate and housemate, Eliacin Rosario Cruz, is that they’re speaking from decades of experience about a spirituality that I think is important and can truly be lived, not just discussed. Their way has whiffs of emerging church, new monasticism, creation care and Celtic spirituality, but it’s got larger aromas of God’s Kingdom among the poor and at the future edge of social change.

The book is organized broadly into five “conversations” (which functionally are chapter clusters). Broadly speaking, Tom begins and ends with discussion of the forms of churches which are emerging in contemporary culture, and in the middle of those markers he discusses emerging culture with a global perspective.

The first conversation labels four new streams of church that are arriving in recent days: emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic. Emerging churches are those intentionally seeking to serve the postmodern context and are described similarly to those in “Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures” (Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger). Missional churches are birthed out of missional theology in the vein of Lesslie Newbigin and their leaders are more often seminary trained and focused on multiculturalism than those in the emerging churches. Mosaic churches are intentionally focused on multiculturalism, are often urban, and often are not focused on the postmodern context. Monastic communities are often not focused on church planting and typically are comprised of people older than those in the other streams. Monastic communities are more focused on living among the poor and living a community based spirituality 24×7.

The second conversation is about taking the culture seriously. It examines the post-9/11 world, the development of a global youth culture and economy. It continues by challenging the reader to look at consumerism and the messages we get of what ‘the good life’ is, and how that differs from the reality of God’s Kingdom.

The third conversation is about taking the future of God seriously. It looks at Biblical and cultural imagery of homecoming and the in breaking Kingdom of God into today’s world, which we can live into now.

The fourth conversation is taking turbulent times seriously. Contemporary churches must plan for a changing future, not the continuation of the present. We have to anticipate change, even if we’re incorrect about were we think that change will end up. We have to live a different future with respect to care of creation and bridging the gap between global rich and global poor. We must give those in the middle ways to deal with soaring housing, healthcare costs and encourage them to aim for serviced, not for wealth. Globally, including in the West, the poor are getting poorer, squeezed by housing and healthcare costs, and wages which are no longer livable. We can equip individuals and communities to lift the poor out of poverty. And the community of nations can and must help the global poor out of their poverty. The Christian church can re-imagine its role in culture and make deep impact in these turbulent times.

The fifth conversation is taking our imaginations seriously. We can imagine a different church making a different impact on a different culture. Beginning by examining the Scriptures for God’s description of ‘the good life’, we create ways to shape God’s good life in our lives and world. We purposely, prayerfully live abundant lives. We re-imagine economic stewardship as not serving institutions, but serving the needy. We re-imagine Christian community as a whole-life, holistic family system which intentionally spends time and energy together and in whole-hearted mission. We shape our lives and our church communities for mission. And we ask God to ignite our creativity and imagination.

I read this book at the right time in my life. For several months, I’m feeling a deep call to live simply and authentically. I am more globally aware and related than I ever have been, and it is this connection that gives me perspective on my own life and mission. I am deeply impacted by the way that Tom describes our challenges and the hope that God brings as we break out of old patterns and allow Him to blow through us for the sake of His creation - nature and humanity. I highlighted the daylights out of pages for the fifth conversation, and in the stories that Tom tells of Christians and churches who are creatively doing the work of the Kingdom I find deep joy, life and hope.

My quibbles with the book are few. While I like Tom’s taxonomy of the four streams of churches, I’m not sure that ‘missional’ is really distinct from the other three - in fact, I think emerging churches are really just missional to postmodern peoples; mosaic churches are missional in a multiethnic way, and monastic are missional in community and especially among the poor. I suppose that there are simply missional-missional churches (if you get what I mean by that), but mission shapes the other three forms deeply.

I also found myself going into statistical overload in the well-detailed middle section of the book. The future arriving before our eyes is deeply different than our present, and the difference between global rich and global poor is astounding - but my eyes began to glaze over at the reality of what we’re facing in coming days.

But those minor details aside, I highly recommend this book for anybody who’s feeling unsettled with the way things are today, and looking for a different future in partnership with God. Beware, though - it’s impossible to read this book and not totally re-examine your own place in the world and in the family of God.

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Posted in Celtic, Family |
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The Ooze’s Next Batch

PatJuly 8, 2008

I got another batch of books from Mike at The Ooze today! There’s four in here, and all look fantastic. In the coming weeks you’ll find summaries of

“Oh Shit ! It’s Jesus” (Steve Hughes) ,

“The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine),

“The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community (J-B Leadership Network)

and

“Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture” (Daniel Radosh)

I’m really excited about this batch. All four look interesting, and frankly I’ma bout 20 pages from finishing my own copy of New Conspirators, which I’ve beaten the living daylights out of, so a fresh clean copy is a special gift. We’ll talk soon, eh?

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Posted in Faith |
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Six Ways to Read a Book

PatJune 11, 2008

How do you read books? Does it vary from book to book? Do you find yourself feeling guilty for not finishing a book, or not understanding it in depth?

Today in my Doctor of Ministry class, Grace Barnes presented a continuum of reading concepts from “Reading on the Run, Continuum Reading Concepts” (J. Robert Clinton).

Consider this continuum:

Scan. Flip pages and get a broad overview of the contents. Work quickly.
Ransack. Pick and choose what you want to take. Use the book for its quick utility to you. Look for new ideas and specific ideas. Pull quotes.
Browse. Do some in-depth contextual analysis.
Pre-read. Determine thematic intent and structural intent.
In-depth read. Analyze thematic intent; evaluation analysis.
Study. Do repeated work in the book. Do comparative analysis.

I find that helpful. I need to ransack and to pre-read more.

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Posted in Grad School |
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The Multiracial Congregation - a few thoughts

PatMay 11, 2008

My current read is “United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race” . In the introduction, the authors establish their thesis: “Christian congregations, when possible, should be multiracial.“

The definition of a multiracial church - and the rarity of such a thing - is remarkable:

If we define a racially mixed congregation as one in which no one racial group is 80 percent or more of the congregation, just 7.5 percent of the over 300,000 religious congregations in the United States is racially mixed. For Christian congregations, which form over 90 percent of congregations in the United States, the percentage that are racially mixed drops to five and a half. Of this small percentage, approximately half of the congregations are mixed only temporarily, during the time they are in transition from one group to another. (p.2)

It’s been said that Sunday mornings are the most segregated moments in America - clearly the research bears this out.

The book takes a theological and historical approach to the issue of race in the congregation, including look ing at rationales for racially homogenous churches, responding to those rationales, and hen proposing practical advice on having multiracial congregations.

Looks like it’s going to be a very good read.

This issue is one that I’m passionate about. My story - briefly - is that I grew up in western Montana after being born in Los Angeles. My dad early in life was very much a racist. He was a lineman whose service area was Watts, post-riot. Montana for him was a haven (although the native Americans there did give him a target). He was converted to faith - and friendship with those same Natives - in a radical experience. But still, I can remember being on my high school basketball team, and there was exactly one black player on all the teams we played through the entire year. Montana wasn’t then a hotbed of racial diversity. It’s a bit more so now, but times changes slowly.

And yet, I grew up - in that same area - a passionate jazz fan. Researching jazz musicians gives a Montana kid an eye opening. I learned about social justice in college, reading all of Martin Luther King’s writing after “discovering” him in a sociology class. I visited New Orleans and then parts of Alabama just after graduating from college, and when I was in Selma, Alabama reading the sign on the bridge at the edge of town about the voting rights marches, a truck full of white guys threw glass bottles at me. I realized that what I was experiencing was racism, but only a sliver of what others experience.

Yet, I’ve always lived on Seattle’s east side, which is fairly homogenous, and for the last 10 years in North Bend, which when we moved here was very much so (this is thankfully changing). In our church plant, we aggressively pursued a multiracial mix, but found it very hard to achieve.

When our church closed, we visited several, but were very comfortable with Ohana Project (as I’ve written here many times before). One of the many reasons that we love OP is the racial and ethnical diversity there because this diversity teaches me in ways I can’t otherwise learn as easily. I hear stories I don’t normally hear.

And when we lead a church again (hah, I just said ‘when’, not ‘if’, didn’t I?.. Huh, interesting) - when, I want to make sure that my white guy voice isn’t the only one heard, and that my story isn’t the normative one. Theology is best done in community (a mantra for me), and this must include diverse cultural perspectives as well.

I firmly believe that the Kingdom of God is diverse, and our churches should be too.

I’m looking forward to this book. More to come.

(Here’s an article to a 2007 story in the Seattle Times about intentionally racially diverse congregations.)

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