Category Archives: Movements

The Radiant Metro

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Today, like most days, I rode the metro. But today was a special day for me because my eyes saw things in a new light.

If you go one direction from Jen and I’s place you would end up in the more ‘middle-class’ French part of town. If you go the other direction you get to experience a whole different world from ‘normal Paris’…These places don’t make their way onto postcards. Not because they are bad, but because they aren’t the typical Paris scene of a fancy monument or some trendy looking person sipping on an espresso in a little cafe window. But I love these off the beatin’ path neighborhoods.

After riding the metro a few stops I noticed something…my pastyish white skin was the minority color compared to the beautiful chocolate, coffee, and creamy colors of skin that covered the souls of my traveling companions…I was looking around at the beautiful faces of the world on my metro and I was hit with a deep sense of being human, of solidarity in the cause of being alive. I won’t describe it well…but I distinctly felt my smallness in the scope of humanity…yet at the same time I realized how each one of us have a history and a story that uniquely matters to God…Africans, Asians, Arabs, Europeans…even the tourists that got on the metro at the Sacré Coeur stop…are unique and each one is looked over with love by our Maker. I distinctly felt the love God has for me, but even bigger, the love he has for the creation that He made in His image…I began to well up with emotion just seeing the beauty of people. I am so grateful to live in a place with such rich diversity.

Sure the metro got packed…and hot…and stinky…but all I could see was the beauty radiating from the faces of the people on the metro. I wish that my eyes could see this all the time in the city.

Community/APEPT Influence Idea

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Over the past six months I’ve been spending a lot of time reading. My two favorite books so far have been The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch and The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom. Both of these books really got me thinking about leadership and how it could be structured to be a greater benefit to the mission and to the whole.

I’m a visual thinker so I opened up my graphics program and started playing with some ideas. As a case study, I chose an organization very near and dear to my heart…Christian Associates. I love thinking about how CAI could continue to make a lasting impact in Europe and I believe that if there is any organization who has the courage to make gutsy changes to be more effective, it would be CAI…therefore…it’s fun to dream about this stuff with our organization in mind!

One of the basic principles of the Starfish and the Spider is that effective organizations in the future will discover the ‘unstoppable power’ of decentralization by giving away as much control as possible to the participants. Through personal participant investment, people will move from passive members to active contributers towards the vision and they will carry a real sense of ownership for the accomplishment of vision. What ends up happening is that the organizing group no longer has to be the perpetuator of culture…the participants in-and-of-themselves become ‘value conductors’. The organization will benefit as they now have every participant investing in, and being passionate about, the accomplishment of the goals. Leadership becomes less of a control and command position and more of a facilitator (think Wikipedia, Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon). There is much more, but for brevity’s sake I’ll stop here. Read the book!

In the Forgotten Ways, Alan makes a great case for the need to revitalize and restore the Church with the missional leadership of the 1st century Church expressed through the activation of a true APEPT model of leadership. APEPT is an acrostic for Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, Teacher…found in Ephesians 4:11. Alan’s idea is the same as the apostle Paul’s in Ephesians…If we want the Church to really grow up and become mature, each of these gifts needs to be actively and equally represented in the guiding of the Church. (Also check out Romans 12:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 13)

I was reading these two books at the same time and I couldn’t help but see how these two ideas go hand in hand. I asked myself this question: How can we adopt an influence structure to become more decentralized so that the voice/influence of the individual can more greatly add value to the whole? Here’s what I came up with when thinking of CAI:

Ca_leadership_structure2

My thinking is that the more we can identify the gifts of people throughout CAI the more we have opportunity to enable people to influence the organization through like-minded (or like-gifted) collaboration, diversity in mentoring, and diversity in teams.

At a fundamental level, networks are created for the sole purpose of facilitating communication. On the network side of things, the goal of this idea is to open up as many lines of communication as possible. Through conferences where like-gifted people can interact, there is a great chance of creating synergy and momentum. This also opens the door for older leaders to mentor younger ones. Imagine if a group of people who are all gifted in prayer and hearing from God (prophecy) got together to pray over a period of days for and about our organization…and then got to have a platform to share that with the rest of the organization? What an encouragement that could be! Or if teachers got together to talk about theology or how to apply the Bible in our contexts? Or if the apostolic people got together to dream about ways to expand Christian Associates and lead it into the future?

On a spiritual level, the main goal of this is to raise awareness of the depth of giftedness across our organization. We could then equip people to use their gifts to serve the other individuals, teams, and in turn live out their own giftedness more. I believe that the more people we have using their giftedness to serve one another, the greater our organization will feel connectivity and the greater overall feeling of unity there will be.

On a practical level, if we increase the number and diversity of people investing in teams then that means that we’ll be able to cover more areas of need and give a greater perspective of how to encourage teams. This would also bring a community aspect to investment as opposed to a one-person oversight idea…this would align with nearly all other levels of leadership within CAI better.

There are so many more thoughts that have been running around in my head about this! This post doesn’t even touch on the details! And I don’t even know how the professional side of an organization is structured. So there are holes…probably big ones. But I’ve partially put this idea out there to see if it peaks any interest, but partly to just get it out of my head! I’d love to hear what you think…

I know that I’m an idealist and that all of this is easier ‘blogged than done’, but I am ever curious as to what we as an organization can do to greater equip each other to influence Europe for the good of the Kingdom…who knows…

Lively Seville

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This past week I had a chance to go to Seville, Spain with a CA research team. (It’s funny that in the past two weeks I’ve been to Prague and Spain, before these trips I had only been out of the center of Paris one time over the past 9 months!) When Jen and I interviewed with CA over three years ago, these teams were something that I wanted to be a part of. The main objectives of these teams are to go to a city, meet w/ leaders, do some cultural observation, and determine what possibilities there are for CA to begin a work there. Starting new churches is what I am passionate about and serving on these teams is a cool opportunity to serve. I learned a lot about asking the right questions and seeing things through a strategic lens.

My friend Rogier did a good job blogging about our trip. Christian Associates (CA) primarily starts English-speaking international churches for the emerging culture in cities across Europe. So the two things we were looking for the most were: 1. Is there a large population of people in the city who would fall into the category of ‘emerging generation’? 2. Is there a population of English-speakers in the city?

I’ll share a few glimpses of my trip that will reveal what we found.

Seville has a great football club (soccer team), and they won the UEFA cup the day before I got there. The championship game was held in Scotland and there was a huge group of fans on my plane returning home from going to the match. Most of the fans were about my age…late or early 20′s. So in line I started to talk with one of the guys about the game…well tried, because he didn’t speak English.

When I landed in Seville I wasn’t quite sure where to catch the bus so I asked another young couple from my flight. But they didn’t speak English and just pointed and made gestures…but were helpful. On the bus into the city I had no clue where to get off the bus and asked a few people if they spoke English, but ended up speaking French with a French woman to get an idea where to go from her tourist book.

When the bus ended I just followed a crowd of people. I asked a few more people if they spoke English and finally found somebody who did. They were German.

The rest of my trip was more of the same. Thankfully I remembered some Spanish from when I lived in California. Understanding French was helpful too as they are similar languages…I could pick up on the main ideas of a conversation when I really paid attention. We had a great team of people who could speak Spanish, so they conducted most of our interviews and did the ordering! So, our mission to find English speaking people was hard. There are a few thousand American students and few more thousand European international students who go to Seville to study. We concluded that the only significant population of English speakers are these students.

Our search to find marks of the emerging culture in Seville could not have been more different! There are 60,000 students at the university and the city as a whole feels really young. Everywhere we would go we see young people…at Starbucks, in the cafés, at the shops, at the pubs, at the university…At night the city was alive with people going out and enjoying the nightlife culture. However, the people that we saw were primarily Spanish and Spanish-speaking.

This revealed to us that there is a huge need for a church with the CAI DNA, but we would have to maek a few adjustments on our normal strategy of entering the city. There is a huge population of Spanish young adults, but it seems that not many of them are connected with Jesus despite their highly religious culture.

I had a chance to go to a church that we were told was a ‘post-modern’ church of 200 people. When we got there they were singing praise songs written in mid 80′s and the demographic of the church was much more weighted towards an older age in comparison to who we saw in the city. I know that a CAI type of church that did ministry in Spanish would be effective here.

My hope is that God would raise up leaders who speak Spanish to lead a movement in this really amazing city.

That concluded my post, but there are some other random Seville facts that I wanted to list!
Seville is the hottest city in Europe according to average temperature and record high. They hit 50 degrees Celsius one time in recent history! That’s 122 Fahrenheit…think: air conditioning is a good think.

Seville was first a Moorish (Muslim) city, then an ancient Roman city, then a Catholic Roman city, and now a modern Spanish city…The main cathedral in the city center reflects how each era has just built over the previous…It’s like historic pluralism!

Seville has a really cool downtown with super small streets. It was awesome to watch cars try and navigate them…even on the ‘bit streets’ I had to lean against the wall and suck-in so that I wouldn’t get hit!

Seville is really inexpensive compared to Paris! The same drink at a Starbucks in Seville (there were like 6 of them!) cost at least a euro less than in Paris.

Ok…that’s enough for now!

A lot on my mind…

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I realized today that I haven’t posted on here in a while…It’s certainly not because there’s not much going on in our lives or because I don’t have anything to say…I’ve probably had too much on my mind and too much to say to put anything worth reading on here.

Here’s what fresh on the top of my mind…

A book was recommended to me called “Leadership and Self-Deception” and at first was like, “I’m not self-decieved…I know my weakness.” This should be proof in-and-of-itself that I needed to read a book with this title.

I have to be honest about this. Within pages I was already learning A LOT about how I am self-decieved…not to mention how I treat others as objects and not people, betray myself, justify my own perceptions, and how all of this leads me to be emotionally distorted in my view of my world.

Over the last few weeks, and even months, I’ve been doing a lot of processing about my life. After reading this book I realized that most of my processing has been based upon the hidden assumptions that the way I see the world is the way that it really is. How I view people is how they really are. How I see ideas as they really are…but all along I was certainly seeing thing more out of focus than I thought was. This is what self-deception does.

I can’t even begin to describe the freedom that learning this has brought. Sadness over how ‘grey’ the created world in my head was and how I began to view people that I love. But now I am free to see things more for how they really are…and grateful for the grace that is given so that I can start over every day.

This realization is helping me answer some of the larger questions that I’ve wondering about for a while. Questions about leadership, influence, personal loneliness, being misunderstood, not being able to communicate the way I used to, and some others. This has been helping see ways where I have even began to see Jesus’ teachings in ways that fit with my views…Which has lead me to being further from the real Jesus, even though I thought that I wasn’t, and His good intentions in my life. This is the type of thing that self-deception can do over time.

There is a radical reorientation going on in my head…it makes me feel dizzy sometimes, but I know that in the end I’ll be planted more firmly on the ground.

If this post has made you think at any time “I should read this book.” Do yourself a favor and listen to yourself!

The (mis)adventures of Home Group

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I really wanted to write on my blog tonight…I don’t want everybody thinking that the only thing on my mind is still the Colts’ Super-Bowl win! This entry is more of a blah-g and may end up just rambling.

So over the past few months we’ve started a new group at our place. The first few weeks were great and then a big change came into our lives…you guessed it…Maisie. A big part of our group is the idea that there isn’t only one leader, but that we all embrace the different giftings that God has given us and lead from those (see Romans 12, Eph 4). My personality naturally has a problem with stepping back…I just don’t do it well…and honestly, never have really tried! So the idea of not being the dominant leader-type is against the grain for me. So, for nearly all of January I just stopped planning stuff when our group would come around. This was mostly because I wanted to see what would happen and who would respond how, but it was also somewhat because I’ve felt pre-occupied with sorting out things in my mind lately. Three or four Sundays ago, a few of the guys came to the group and expressed frustration that things weren’t more organized…I was glad they saw this because Jen and I were also frustrated that group didn’t seem to be forming any direction…it was hard not to be defensive as I realized that their expectations of me were a bit different than I thought…But in the end this was a great learning lesson for me. I now realize that the whole, “Where there is no vision, people perish” thing is in the Bible for a reason…and I realize that God has made me to be me…and I need to use all that I am to serve and not be afraid of being too used…I can be life giving and inclusive of others without having to exclude myself. (processing this is still a work in progress)

Tonight I posed this issue: The reality is that right now most churches in Paris are reaching the same type of people…yet very few are really making an effort to be the Church for the millions of people who would never go to a ‘normal’ church. There continues to be a widening gap between the Church culture and ‘normal’ culture and with every passing generation it only gets bigger. Somebody must be willing to radically rethink the way in which we think about Church and how it functions or we will ‘worship service’ our way into irrelevance. I challenged our group tonight to begin to ask the question: What will it take for us to be the Church and reveal the message of Jesus to the people in our lives who would never attend a traditional style church? It will be a very big challenge as most people here who are not a part of the Jesus traditions really don’t know and don’t care much about it. The gap is already a monstrous one to cross. My hope is that we can be creative, be biblically guided, be bold, and be passionate about this effort.

On a recent trip back to the States one of our teammates was told that maybe they should just ‘shake the dust off of their feet’ as the people here are obviously unresponsive to the Gospel…That makes me want to puke. To think that Church has really done a good job in the past few hundred years of telling the true Gospel would be a far stretch…I believe that we have been trying to put the new wine (meaning the emerging generations of Europe) into old wineskins (non-inclusive and non-accessible models of Church) and they just can’t hold it. We need new wineskins…and I’m privileged to be amongst my friends here discovering what that may be like here.

When a book is loved…

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TheforgottenwaysI got this book in the mail from Amazon.fr two weeks ago and I’ve not been able to stop reading it. Two pages into it I decided to not write in the margins or do the underlining thing because I know that I’ll be reading it again…I wanted to save the graffiti for round two. I am already somewhat anal about books, so I was taking especially good care of this one…Then last week a group of us guys went down to Invalides and played some American football in the rain and mud…this resulted in ruining my quest to keep this book in pristine condition. The rain penetrated my bag and found it’s way to my book. Now the crisp pages of The Forgotten Ways are extra crisp and have a nice wave to them….this book now looks very loved and it’s just the beginning. There are many marks, underlines, drawings of my own (i’ve not seen a book with this many graphs and illustrations in it since my high-school trigonometry book!), and notes to come.

So about the book: I didn’t think that Alan could have much more to say after The Shaping of Things to Come, but he has plenty to say…and plenty that is extraordinarily beneficial to my passion for the Church (and anyone else’s for that matter) and our work in Europe. Have you ever wondered what made the 1st century Church so potent, or are wondering why the underground Church in China is growing and the Western Church declining? Then you should read this. Alan does great Biblical and scholarly study while using his own experience as a narrative. He would claim that this is not a ‘scholarly work’, but this book is text-book-worthy material on how God has called His earthly expression, the Church, into mission and how mission is the identity of the Church. This book doesn’t just talk about how things may work in theory, it gives both historical and current examples of how the Church can regain it’s influence by allowing the mDNA (missional DNA) that lies within each believer to be lived out again.

I can’t recommend this book enough as it has already greatly inspired, encouraged, and challenged me. Thanks Al for your work…a gift to the Kingdom.