Hacking Christianity

God as Eagle Eye

Eagle Eye, with Shia LeBoughertgey (the latter is silent), is a techno-thriller that was a decent movie. What struck me is that the movie portrays two very different ideas of the mastermind Eagle Eye, and they correlate nicely to images of God

To the good guys, they are given tasks by a shadowy puppetmaster. They each function like cogs in a machine ran by a shadowy spider head that is pushing them forward through sheer inertia and threats.
To Eagle Eye, Shia and Michelle Monaghan are called as modern-day minutemen, as ordinary citizens called up to oppose a corrupt government. Each member is recruited and has no knowledge of the greater goals or even of each other until they perform the specific roles and actualize their potential in a distributed terrorist network.

Both of these images of Eagle Eye's activity correlate to popular concepts of God.

God as puppetmaster, as the one who controls all the strings and causes us to dance. Sure, we have free will, but the puppetmaster moves us where God wants us. This has various forms in contemporary bad-boy Calvinism which is called determinism, or where God determines what will happen and predestines events and actions.
God as giving a purpose (or role) to each individual and it is up to them to see how they fit into the distributed network. This is the key concept behind the Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren, that if we find our God-given purpose, we actualize our potential.

I think many of us see God as Eagle Eye, as a force which causes bad things to happen when we do bad things (much like Eagle Eye punishes Shia when he 'disobeys'), but also gives us a purpose that we are eventually pushed towards. Some purposes are mundane (like the TSA agent changing the x-ray machine at the airport), and some are huge (like Michelle delivering 'the package'). Coincidences are God connecting different chess pieces into a greater vision and purpose drawn inexorbitably together.

But what happens to defeat this understanding of "God" in the movie? The turning point occurs when Michelle refuses to eliminate Shia, even though she has complied (to the extreme) in all other areas. Why? Because she has gotten to know Shia and even with Shia's acceptance of this outcome, Michelle won't do it. Michelle's breaking the chain of "commands" allows Shia to become free and eventually stop Eagle Eye. The closer Michelle drew to Shia, the closer they made decisions based on their relationship instead of being unwilling subjects to the all-powerful Eagle Eye.

In the same way, ideas of determinism and Calvinism fall short when we experience and grow closer in our relationship with God. God ceases to be a puppetmaster and becomes a companion on the journey, opening possibilities instead of willing purposes.

Moses' concept of God undergoes a similar transformation on the mountaintop when God's anger burns bright, about to wipe out the idol-worshipping Hebrews, and Moses argues with God. While it is questionable whether God actually changes God's mind, Moses transforms from a willing subject into a companion who feels he can challenge and question God...all formed by Moses working with God for a long time saving the Hebrew people. Moses had a relationship with God, and that relationship allowed Moses to question God.

When we allow relationships to form our reactions, when we allow depth of relationships to trump society's threats to "keep us to the script" then we experience transformation not only of our selves, but of our image of God. When we rebel against society's scripts that say that women should be in the kitchen and black Americans know their place in the fields, then we experience transformation. When we cease to give power to God as Eagle Eye, then we cease following the Law and instead live in the unpredictable currents of the Spirit.

Thoughts?

Quotes for Breakfast

Quote

From Beliefnet:

Christianity ... is always in need of re-simplifying, going back to its origins, ridding itself of the excessive superstructure it has acquired through history.

- José Comblin, Catholic theologian in Brazil

Reflection

In my kitchen there are six LAYERS of wallpaper. When it gets muggy, you can see the walls sag a bit as the weight of all the layers pull at each other. In some parts of the house, you can see the original wallpaper, just scratches here and there. To expose the original wallpaper (or even the paint), we'd have to tear the pieces off slowly and steadily.

In a simple phrase from Fr. Comblin, that encapsulates one mission of this website.

That's what the writings on Wikipedia are all about: removing the layers of bureaucracy to expose Christian opportunities and lay empowerment.
That's what the writings on starfish churches are all about: removing the layers of the hierarchy to expose Christian community
That what Hacking Christianity is all about: peeling back the layers and removing the wallpaper that covers up the truth and life of the Christian faith.

And if we have to tear down the walls to get at the heart of the Christian faith...we will.

Scripture for Breakfast: Samuel's Starfish Church

I love it when I run across a Scripture that I haven't really noticed before. Check out 1 Samuel 8:10-18:

Samuel told all the words of the LORD
to the people who were asking him for a king. He said,

"This is what the king who will reign over you will do:
He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses,
and they will run in front of his chariots.
Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties,
and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest,
and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.
He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves
and give them to his attendants.
He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage
and give it to his officials and attendants.
Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys
he will take for his own use.
He will take a tenth of your flocks,
and you yourselves will become his slaves.

When that day comes, you will cry out
for relief from the king you have chosen,
and the LORD will not answer you."

Leaving aside the violence and the slavery aspects, this passage has a starfish church ring to it. For most of human history, we have insisted on obeying the will of a king, lord, or worldly leader. Likewise, for most of Christian history, we have appealed to a hierarchical church. We have insisted on power-over relationships and consolidated authority. Thus, we cry out to God to change the church, but since we have created the church's structure ourselves, God "will not respond" in the way we expect God to.

It is up to us to listen to the Spirit to find creative ways to live in community. Starfish churches have a lot to go against when you consider the ingrained need for hierarchy and order. But to those who willingly throw their hierarchy and patriarchal privilege off their backs, God will listen to and respond.

From Spider to Starfish Churches [4of4]

This series is focused on The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Brafman and Beckstrom. Come check it out every Wednesday in June!

Part I: To Consolidate or Decentralize?
Part II: Starfish Culture needs Starfish Churches
Part III: Starfish Churches are Leaderless

For our last section on this series, let's apply this directly to the problem of leadership in churches. Jeremy Pryor, at From Eden to Zion, offers this scenario:

Perhaps pastors should imagine that they are going to have three more years in their parish as pastor—and that there will be no replacement for them when they leave.

*blink* whoa. Powerful scenario. In essence, it is asking what if you had to turn a spider church (a hierarchical church) into a starfish church or else it would die. Hmm...what would this mean?

If they acted as if this were going to happen, they would put the highest priority on selecting, motivating, and training lay leaders that could carry on as much as possible of the mission of the parish after they left. The results of three sustained years of such an approach would be quite significant. Even revolutionary.”

Absolutely. This form of ministry focus gels nicely with our Starfish churches discussion on leadership. By empowering the laity and removing hierarchical leadership, a revolution will certainly occur in the church.

Greg Ogden also has the above scenario in his 2003 book Transforming Discipleship. However, he embraces a leadership system that simply refines the spider church.

Better to give one year or so to one or two men [sic] who learn what it means to conquer for Christ than to spend a lifetime with a congregation just keeping the program going.

I'm definitely not with this approach to concentrate knowledge and leadership on a few disciples. I know that's the way JC went, but a mass appeal is stronger for decentralized churches (which is what you'd end up with) rather than replacing the pastor with a few pastors, who would be stuck in the same power-over system.

That said, you do need catalytic leadership, and perhaps that's what Ogden is getting at. You do need a few people who can turn the tables upside down in a structured way, and then let them step aside. Finding that sweet spot of leadership is tricky, but necessary in the Brave New World we are in.

Initiatives like bootstrap networks map out here the steps for catalytic leaders to amass renewal within their organizations.

Your turn: if you had only three years left in your parish, either as pastor or knowing your pastor will be gone, what would you do?

Thanks for considering the question, and welcome to our visitors!

From Spider to Starfish Churches [3of4]

Starfish X-Ray, Category:Starfish Category:X-rays Radiogram

Image via WikipediaThis series is focused on The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Brafman and Beckstrom. Come check it out every Wednesday in June!

Part I: To Consolidate or Decentralize?
Part II: Starfish Culture needs Starfish Churches

We talked the last two weeks about how churches (along with major businesses in society) consolidate their resources when they feel like they are losing ground. This is called a spider response, because it makes them more spider-like as they concentrate more and more power in the head. What is needed instead is a starfish response, where you reach out to more grassroots kinds of ministry.

How can church leaders move their churches to become less spider-like and respond more like a starfish, with decentralized, grassroots efforts?

It's simple. Stop being a leader and start leading.

In The Starfish and the Spider, the authors make the case for a different kind of leadership: catalytic leadership. A catalyst is any element or compound that initiates a reaction without fusing into that equation. For example, nitrogen and hydrogen together will do nothing. But if you add iron and they become ammonia. Great analogy right? Where we are gonna find leaders of that quality to radically change people? Here's the fun part: The iron is unchanged, and ammonia has no iron in it! Just the presence of iron facilitates the chemical changes.

So, catalytic leadership is the type of leadership that changes people's lives, but does not seek to integrate into them, or become a part of them. This is wild territory for churches. Church leaders so often have their churches become dependent on them: it's not a meeting unless the pastor is there, no hymns can be chosen unless the music minister chooses them. Leaders like and abhor events to hinge on their presence, and our denominational systems focus leadership squarely on the pastor.

The easiest way to explain is to compare two movies: Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. In The Sound of Music, Maria joins and stays with the family she is charged with. In Mary Poppins, Mary cares for the family...then leaves on her umbrella. Instead of leading her family forever, she inspires them to change, then moves on.

This fits exactly with what Hugh Hewett of TownHall.com is trying to say when he writes about the Death of the Alpha Leader

This is a world in which documents handed down by well-meaning alpha males result in a stifled yawn. However, this same world moves to the edge of their seat upon realizing that the responsibility to change the world need not be their legacy or burden. On the contrary, the creation of culture is the calling from which history speaks.
...
Servant leaders have the ability to provide a new type of leadership. A collaborative mentoring and releasing of people with varied and mystical gifts in order to create culture. Alpha leaders value control, servant leaders value collaboration. Alpha leaders value individualism, servant leaders value community. Alpha leaders value affluence, servant leaders value influence.

So, what are the characteristics of a catalytic leader? The authors identify several characteristics of this kind of leadership:

Genuine interest in others.
Numerous loose connections, rather than a small number of close connections.
Skill at social mapping.
Desire to help everyone they meet.
The ability to help people help themselves by listening and understanding, rather than giving advice ("Meet people where they are").
Emotional Intelligence.
Trust in others and in the decentralized network.
Inspiration (to others).
Tolerance for ambiguity.
A hands-off approach. Catalysts do not interfere with, or try to control the behavior of the contributing members of the decentralized organization.
Ability to let go. After building up a decentralized organization, catalysts move on, rather than trying to take control.

Think of the ministry possibilities that can come from catalytic leadership!

If orders come from above, then it takes work to motivate the masses. But if the masses get excited about it on their own, then ideas can take off. This is antithetical to spider churches as leaders want to control what is happening. By ceding control, fresh ministry options can come forward.
From the checklist, #5 "Meet people where they are" assumes that when you give advice to someone in a counseling setting, you are creating a power hierarchy. Pastors may want to assume a peer relationship where they inspire change without being prescriptive or coercive.
From the checklist, #1 "Genuine interest in others" can mean that if you don't find disciples around you, you aren't asking the right questions. Everyone is passionate about something; find out what!

The takeaway from this post is this: The most powerful aspect of catalysts is that they are not interested in creating empires...they are interested in sparking movements. To this end, catalysts are better at being agents of change rather than guardians of traditions. You may be playing with dynamite, but find or become a catalytic leader, and people will come for miles to watch you burn.

Thoughts on catalytic leadership? Welcome to our visitors, and comments are welcome!

From Spider to Starfish Churches [2of4]

This series is focused on The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Brafman and Beckstrom. Come check it out every Wednesday in June!

Part I: To Consolidate or Decentralize?

We talked last week about how churches (along with major businesses in society) consolidate their resources when they feel like they are losing ground. This is called a spider response, because it makes them more spider-like as they concentrate more and more power in the head.

However, spider responses do not work versus starfish organizations or culture. Thus, we're going to examine what a starfish response may look like. In other words, instead of centralizing and consolidating authority, what might it look like if we respond from a grassroots level? Read on for more...

Starfish are unaffected by SpidersWe remember from last week the examples of Skype and Craigslist, which took the power away from the spider organizations. The same with the third example: the US Government's pursuit of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. They were attacking it like a spider organization: kill the head (bin Laden) and it will go away. What they slowly learned was it is a leaderless starfish movement: bin Laden doesn't approve each attack; rather, members adopt the ideology and copy what has worked in the past, then strike out on their own. To combat a starfish culture is like fighting a Hydra: too many heads and they grow back!

The Spider church loses against a starfish cultureMoving away from violent metaphors, it is clear that one reason why the church is losing relevance is not some centralized opponent, but from decentralized culture which finds meaning in its own channels. So, how can the church become relevant to that which has no central hub?

There are two responses (okay three*, but the third is untranslatable) that Brafman and Beckstrom outline of how to respond to a decentralized culture. They are to empower and emulate the starfish organization.

Starfish culture often responds to societal shifts.Empower the starfish culture. A stronger starfish culture means that their values will shift from individualism to communal. For example, the best way to combat terrorism is to raise the value of life for those whom terorrists use as expendible fodder. By raising the quality of life, such as using Jamii Bora Trust microloans, you remove the anger and the hopelessness, and people will live in hope rather than give their lives to al-Qaeda. Give people something to hold onto, rather than nothing to lose.

By putting missions at the forefront, the Church can gradually make their community's lives better and defeat the hopelessness that plagues our culture. I've always believed that missions is the best evangelism, but more than that, by improving conditions and livelihood, churches can gradually change a society's ideology. What better way to combat hopelessness AND raise the church's reputation at the same time?

Starfish knowledge resides at the edges of society.Emulate the starfish culture. The best match for a starfish is another starfish. By decentralizing the hierarchy, you can open up avenues of communication and interaction and really learn something. When American Airlines was stumbling and having money issues, they realized that knowledge resided at the edge of the hierarchy. In Tulsa, OK, the American Airlines mechanics had built a "Monster" machine that took dull drill bits (which would normally wear out quickly) and sharpen them. By doing so, they saved their team money, and by emulating that practice at other AA shops, AA was able to reduce costs.

By reducing the hierarchy and allowing for decentralized ministry to emerge, the Church can lower the barriers to ministry. As written about in The Church and Wikipedia, allowing for grassroots ideas of ministry to emerge can come up with more relevant and easy forms of ministry.

Starfish Churches are most relevant to Starfish culture.In short, by becoming a starfish church we can better respond to a starfish culture. Open systems don't necessarily make better decisions; but they can respond more quickly because each member has access to information and can make direct use of it. Brafman & Beckstrom's third principle of open systems (starfish organizations) explains:

An open system doesn't have central intelligence;
the information is spread throughout the system.

Starfish stand between spider churches and starfish culture.Finally, why do we need to do this? Ultimately, the Church is called to be peacemakers. Starfish churches can serve as the bridge point between spider churches and an apathetic community. For example, when internet standards were being adopted, there was a struggle between two platforms to host websites on (one by Microsoft, one by Netscape). As consumer choices degraded to Mac v. PC levels, an open source grassroots project called Apache became well-enough supported that it presented an easy third choice for webhosts. Now, somewhere like 50% of all websites use Apache. Rather than being forced between platforms, the open-source decentralized Apache presented a middle way.

In the same way, between the entrenched churches that cannot change their mindset and an echo-chamber culture, starfish churches can serve as that bridge, that safe place between two parties that can lead to a revival amongst them both.

Between two camps, the middle way is the way of peace.In short, open systems can help ease tensions between entrenched parties: church and culture. And it is that tension between the echo chambers of church and the echo-chambers of culture that starfish churches are most adaptable, relevant, and able to produce forms of ministry which empower all people around the table.

Your turn. What do you think?

What examples of starfish churches have you experience with?
What are examples of ministries that are relevant to decentralized society?

Thanks for commenting, and welcome to our visitors!

* the third option is to Centralize the starfish culture. When the US Government was dealing with the Apaches (the Native Americans, not the web servers!), they were decentralized and fierce warriors whose leadership was constantly changing and thus indestructible. What did the US Government do? They gave the Apaches cattle, and by giving them a limited resource, the entire culture changed to protect and exploit this resource. Then the US Governemnt was able to eradicate and domesticate them. See why I saw it as exploitative?)

From Spider to Starfish Churches [1of4]

This series is focused on The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Brafman and Beckstrom. Come check it out every Wednesday in June!

The church is in crisis. United Methodist attendance is in decline, the Southern Baptists are...not baptizing, and, most importantly...google searches of God, Christian, and Bible are dropping. The sky is falling!

Some would call it a failure of leadership, both on the local and national levels. But in truth, what is happening to the Church is the same thing happening to large businesses and conglomerates: we become spiders when we should become starfish.

What do I mean by that? In The Starfish and the Spider, Brafman and Beckstrom write about the difference between spiders and starfish.

Spiders have a head...chop off the head of a spider, and it will die.
But with a Starfish, there is no head: the central nervous system is spread throughout the body. Indeed, if you cut off a limb, it will regrow. If you chop it in half...both will regrow, and then you'll have two of them!

You see the difference? Spiders have central authorities that call the shots. Starfish have spread out systems without a central authority.

In other words, the difference between spiders and starfish is the difference between centralized and decentralized organizations. And it is by choosing to become spiders that churches are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the world.

Challenging Organizations

Whenever a large organization is challenged, it tends to become more spiderlike: it centralizes authority at the head. Some examples:

Falling advertisements and classified ads leads to mergers between newspapers to scrape together what ad revenue was left into one place.
Increasing competition in the long-distance phone companies, long split apart by decentralization, have now began consolidating again.
The US Government, after 9/11, centralized authority under the Department of Homeland Security. While it helps to make agencies work together, it makes them more bureaucratic as they now have to answer to just one person...and it's not the President, an elected and (sometimes) accountable leader.

When challenged, we tend to centralize power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. But what is the source of the crisis? In every case above, the reason for the increasingly centralized authority was because of a threat from a decentralized group.

Classified ads fell due to the popularity of Craigslist, a free service where anyone can buy or sell anything, based on region. No need for you to pay $25 to put an ad in the paper, you can upload pictures and no-word-limits for free to Craigslist. Anyone can use the service without a central authority editing or filtering submissions.
Long distance phone calls, even though cellular phones are the main culprits, are also being taken over by Skype users: internet-based phone calls that do not use "minutes." No minutes being used by the phone = no revenue for telephone companies.
After 9/11, the US Government went after bin Laden like they would Tony Soprano: take out the mafia don and the rest of the organized crime ring would crumble. But in cell systems like al-Qaeda, bin Laden doesn't call the shots; they operate independently.

Challenging Churches

Now, what about the Church? In what ways are we increasingly centralized to cope with the changing world?

On a Conference level (for UMs), we are shrinking conference numbers and increasing their geographic size. As my friend Becca Clark laments, while there are great administrative advantages to centralization, the strained personal and professional relationships from boundaries and distance to travel. Indeed, given the larger swaths of authority, one of my pastor friends is in a clergy group with other denominations because they are closer together!
On a local level, Churches form united parishes between different denominations to lower building and administration costs and provide a collective place for ministry. The merits of united or federated parishes can be debated, but it is along the same lines of spiderlike thinking: consolidate or perish.

Like the above examples, we are becoming more spiderlike by shrinking authority and consolidating power in fewer and fewer people. Why? Churches are becoming more centralized because they are losing ground to decentralized forms of communication. What kind of communication?

Churches used to be the social outlets and hubs; if you wanted to get to know people, you went to church! Nowadays, they are not so much part of the social fabric in an increasing number of communities. I've seen better opportunities for networking at Singles night at Whole Foods!
Churches used to be the law of the land, the ruling authority. But years of increasingly shrill entries into public life have left even non-shrill churches in the shadows as people lump all of religion together. Communication improvements of "gossip" chains like Twitter, blogs, and web forums make it easier to leave religion at the corner.

I write all of the above section not to lament and want it back...heavy-handed religion and good ol' boys clubs are not my ideas of church! But we are still operating as spider churches and denominations in an increasingly decentralized world. In a sea of starfish, how can spider churches catch anything in their webs?

How to Respond?

Sorry friends, here's the catch: This first post outlines the problem. The next three will outline ideas on how to deal with it.

I figured the analysis alone would generate enough discussion. So to make sure we are on the same page, what do you think? Is the major problem confronting churches that we are increasingly centralizing our experience in a decentralized world? Are we really just doing great work, but people's circles of interaction are so small that they leave the church out?

Finally the ethical dilemma:

Should the church even try to reclaim a centralized space again? (Constantinian church)?
Or is church really better when it is a decentralized movement (ie. the Apostolic church under persecution of the Roman Empire)

Finally, for those of you who do not have the book, Methoblogger Richard Heyduck has three posts on the basics of the book: check it out here.

Thoughts on the above? Thanks for reading.