The Hsu’s Views

We had a wonderful meeting today reflecting on the significance of the prophetic function within the church and it’s impact on our lives as disciples of Jesus. The role of the prophets were to remind the people of God of their role in the world as representatives of his reign. Often, the prophets were those annoying folks that called God’s people from static institutionalized patterns that had slowly drifted from God’s design.

In many ways, I believe the next generation of church here in N. America is taking on a bit of this prophetic hue. They seem to understand Jesus and his mission in fresh perspectives. Looking to existing expressions or paradigms of church, there is a frustration because they do not seem to effectively further Christ’s Kingdom cause as they understand it. This fosters a hope and a longing for new contextualized expressions of being the church.

Many of these frustrations are centered around issues of inequality. Some have more resources than others, more access to clean drinking water, or better treatment because of skin color. The tragedy is that there are many ways in which the church is unwittingly contributing to the problem because of our confusion of the mission among other things.

Walk around any high school in the country today and you will find posters that seeking to draw attention to any number of causes that kids today believe are human tragedies that desire our intervention. From the crisis in Darfur, to the HIV/AIDS crises in Africa, you name it, someone cares about it… except seemingly, many of the churches in our fine land. Does that make sense?

We need to listen to the prophetic voice of the U40 crowd because it is calling us to repent and reorient our thinking, our systems, and our forms such that the church once again is in lockstep with Jesus on his Kingdom mission.

“It is not possible for the same group of men in one context—when facing the non-Christian world—to assert that the death of Christ is the one sufficient event by which all men may be made one family under God, and, at the same time, in another context—when dealing with one another—to assert that the event is not sufficient to enable those who believe in it to live as one family.”~ Lesslie Newbigin, “The Quest for Unity Through Religion,” 1955, p. 29

I’m working on a sermon for Sunday. During my research I ran across a quote in Bosch’s book that I heavily marked the first time I went through it. In commenting on the early church, Bosch argues that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. Those who followed Him were not given a name to distinguish them from other groups, no creed of their own, no rite which distinguised them. Nontheless, “Their survival as a separate religious group, rather than their commitment to the reign of God, began to preoccupy them.”

“Jesus foretold the kingdom and it was the Church that came.” Alfred Loisy (p. 50)

The second failure, according to Bosch, is that the early church ceased to be a movement and turned into an institution.

“There are essential difference between an institution and a movement, says H. R. Niebuhr (following Bergson): The one is conservative, the other progressive; the one is more or less passive, yielding to influences from outside, the other is active, influencing rather than being (more…)

I was reading an article in Newsweek magazine (May 21, 2007) about a company called Y Combinator. It is a group that gives seed money to fledgling start-ups and sends the generally young geeks to Silicon Valley for three months of intensive entrepreneuring. They get access to the best venture capitalists to pitch their wares and get connected with the start-up culture/ethic.

The part I thought was interesting was an observation by tech investor Mike Maples:

It’s several weeks into the program, and Maples is in a Palo Alto, Calif., coffeehouse for a meeting… He sees a lot of people barely out of their teens. The old wisdom for investors in start-ups said you needed an experienced hand as a CEO. The Valley’s new wisdom: don’t fund anyone over 30. The average age of a Y Combinator founder is 25.

This quote jumped out at me since it illustrates a similar element as our U40 group. Maples and the Y combinators recognize that the world, and hence the rules have shifted substantially. It is a tacit acknowledgment that, at least in technology start-ups, you don’t go with the “normal” formula.

I don’t think the Christian faith has had rules change radically over the last two thousand years, but the environment/culture/times we are in is radically different. Our mission to this new environment/culture/time requires us to become conversant with the language of today. This may require new ministry start-ups with under 30 year olds at the helm.

Things are shaping up for our “Under 40″ meeting next week. We will have a couple of guest speakers. The idea was to bring a few civic leaders from San Diego to visit so we might interview and learn from and about them.

Scott Peters is the San Diego City Council President. He represents District One which include La Jolla and a swath of North Inland. We’re asking him about his hopes for the city, what is going well, and what are the impossible problems. I’m also interested in his thoughts on how the Church might be a blessing to the city.

We’ll also have a couple of presentations from amongst ourselves. Mishe Harvey is the Mentoring Director for the Miles Ahead Mentoring Alliance (MAMA). She will be accompanied by Superior Court Judge Francis Devaney, who joined Miles McPherson to begin this effort to recruit mentors from the faith community to come alongside the neediest youth in our city. Leslie Devaney, former Deputy City Attorney will also be joining us for the presentation.

The other group we will hear from is Floresta. Sarah Check will help us understand how their group addresses environmental degradation and the accompaning poverty in many parts of the world. Their organization presents a very holistic approach and includes micro-credit, community development and discipleship.

Our topic of discussion will be “Kingdom.” We’ll try to flesh out our understanding of how multifaceted the gospel is, and how it can transform lives, communities and our beloved San Diego.

In, “Surfing the Edge of Chaos,” the authors Pascale, Millemann, and Gioja discuss the forces that move and shape large and massively complicated organizations (otherwise known as Complex Adaptive Systems.) The forces, known as attractors, are three (or four depending on who you read.) They are:

1. Point attractors – found mostly in the inanimate world, this lures systems to a stable place of rest, or death. This attractor is like the pendulum where each successive swing leads to a final rest at the lowest spot. In the business world, a monopoly is a point attractor. Once a company controls the market, whether telephones (AT&T) or photographic film (Kodak) stillness, lack of vitality, or even death might well describe its orientation toward innovation and change.
2. Cycle attractors – move systems into loops of predictable but dynamic patterns. The attendance at sporting events is dependent on the success of the team. When they are winning, attendance and ticket sales are up and vice versa.
3. Strange attractors – of most interest to complexity theorists. They are called strange because there is a hard to describe nature about what they are, how they work and most importantly, they bring systems to the edge of chaos where organizations are more likely able to adapt and innovate.

As applied to spiritual movements, point attractors may be the tendency of large entities to move toward death, or worse institutionalization, which is simply a living death. Cycle attractors might be seen in the cycles of revival and awakening that the church has experienced over two millennia.

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I just began an online course designed to help sharpen my thinking and to help plan my dissertation writing. It is being run on an online, open-source, PHP, platform called Moodle. If you ever wanted to create an online presence for a brick and mortar school, this is a great inexpensive solution.

Among our first assignments was a 30-40 word description of a general direction that I’m planning on writing about. I include it here for kicks.

I would like my dissertation to be a reflection of the practical project that I’m engaging in today. It is the development of a network of younger, emerging leaders of the Christian community here in San Diego. I would like this group to meet for the purpose of developing relationships of trust; to learn together; think about where the church needs to be in 15 years; and see what collaborations, partnerships, alliances form.

Fundamentally, I’d like to create an environment that will spark apostolic innovation amongst the people God has placed here in San Diego, and see what uniquely contextualized Kingdom expressions might arise.

One of the things I’ve been wrestling with recently is how do you go about forming partnership, coalitions and other working collaborations? What are the principles and rules that people and organizations need to pay attention to? “Well Connected” by Phill Butler was recommended to me and I thought I’d troll through it again. It’s subtitled,”Releasing Power, Restoring Hope Through Kingdom Partnerships.”

I thought I’d include the following excerpts dealing with the glue that hold Kingdom partnerships together — Vision.

Key Partnership Principle:

Partnerships are durable, effective, and usually strategic when they are driven by a great vision — a vision that is clearly marked by the following characteristics:

• Greater Than anything that can be accomplished by a single individual or ministry.
• One all participants agree is a “God idea,” a high priority, and not someone’s private agenda.
• On that , in the early stages, can be broken down into high-value, achievable elements that will give participants experience working together, growing confidence, and a sense of achievement.
• Made up of objectives all participants see as highly relevant to their own ministry vision and mission.

The second item met a specific concern of mine…

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Common Kingdom Value

One of the things that strikes me about the U40 group is how people share the common value of the Kingdom. “Under 40″ is the working name (that I no longer like) for a group of friends that are thinking about how we might take the many diverse focii of the church in San Diego, and work together in functional unity to make a greater difference on our city with the Jesus’ gospel.

“Kingdom” is why people are in the room. When I invited people to the concept, the response was almost intuitive, “Sure, we need to do that.” I continue to believe that a healthy understanding of a “already” part of Kingdom can drive a movement of the church that would be a blessing to the city. There is a common value that each person, and the ministry they represent, wants to join in a larger movement of the church in Kingdom work.

A True Common Understanding will Take Work

The one thing I’m not sure about is whether any of us know just what is involved in working together under that Kingdom umbrella. We haven’t defined it together yet… and that is a little anxiety producing. Our group is quite diverse, spanning the gamut from church planting to working with at-risk youth. We have lawyers and environmentalists, campus workers and marketplace missionaries.

I suspect that one person’s understanding of the Kingdom means we must work to uphold the immigration laws, while another person’s view focuses on scriptural commands to care for the alien amongst us? Some might take the position that Christ and the church must transform culture, while others might say Christ and the church must be against culture. (There are even more categories that Niehbur uses to describe the relationship of the church to culture.)

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