As I tinker with the last edits of my new book MULTI (coming to you this winter), I am beyond the major writing - more into the stage of ruminating. Why did I really write the book - what are the implications? MULTI is about how diverse groups of people forge partnership as church. It is about how we are able to step beyond tribal perspectives and allegiances into God's greater possibilities of community, healing and human thriving.
My season of ruminating overlapped with the recent episode in American life known as the Kavanaugh Confirmation hearings. Toward the end of the process, when Dr Blassey-Ford testified, followed by Kavanaugh on live TV - the whole world was watching. But Americans in particular saw two different stories that day - depending on their worldview. Worldview drives the primary questions and concerns that we apply to such experiences. Though we may see the same thing, we filter what we see though these primary concerns.
People who live in what, in Spiral Dynamics theory, we call the Blue cultural space: they saw a man being accused by a witness without enough corroborating evidence. They saw men and boys everywhere suddenly under threat - they saw a toppling of the power dynamics of society in ways that deeply disturbed them. The women in the street protesting bolstered their fear that America is under siege. Meanwhile, people who live in what Spiral Dynamics would label the Green cultural space, they saw centuries of misogyny on trial in the Senate Judiciary room. WE BELIEVE SURVIVORS they shouted at their screens. People who live somewhere between these two cultural spaces, in what Spiral theory often designates as Orange space, they were generally typically less perturbed by the whole affair. Some were a bit bemused, others frustrated at the nation's political impasse being lived out in this weird proceeding. But then some of their daughters began telling tales to their fathers that Daddy did not know. In many cases, people who cared little about any of it found themselves suddenly passionate because of the experience shared by someone they love deeply.
Most of the nation believed Dr Ford was honest that
day. But many got stuck around some
aspect of the political process, or stuck around the hope that overturning Roe
Vs Wade was so close, or simply grew fearful for themselves or their man. Thus,
the oft-heard refrain: "She must have mistaken the identity of her
attacker!" There was a wonderful
newspaper story about two friends (both women) in western Nebraska (one
Democrat and one Republican). The story
documented their day watching the final hearing,tracking their responses. They
were watching the same thing, and yet could not find a bridge to any common
response.
A permanent loss of common ground will, eventually, usher in the end of the American Experiment.
For all that we disagree about, for all the virtue and all the untold tragedy that has brought us to this place as an American people in 2018, if we cannot find a way to claim at least a little common ground, we are soon to be done, and our life together will begin to deteriorate in ways we may not yet be imagining.
The church of Jesus Christ is the church of Pentecost - it was born in a story of people coming together, empowered by Holy Spirit. In 1 Peter, the words echo: "Once we were not a people (i.e. strangers, disconnected and irrelevant one to the other), but now we are A PEOPLE, the people of God."
The great work of our time in America is helping people discover connection to their neighbors once again, and love for their neighbors - love that crosses the political chasm, and the chasm of race and national origins. This can happen in many venues - beyond the church, but it was the work of the church before any of these other venues even existed! Many churches will continue to contribute to the distrust and the polarization - so some of us have to also be about the work of reconciliation, of sharing from a common font, a common cup and a common experience of grace.
Our nation has never been more diverse than we are today. There are no majorities of anybody anymore. We have to learn a new way to move forward in which we can trust one another. The church gives us resources and experiences to learn how to do that one room at a time, and to teach our children how to do that.
This is the work of Multi ministry.
Yes, there are practical considerations of church survival which propel our work of helping churches to keep functioning in an age of increasing heterogeneity and tribalism that pulls apart from our interest in the common good. But multi-cultural churches are not simply a strategy for church survival in changing times - it is how the church can help civilization survive, and even the planet.
The work of reconciliation.
A year ago I would have said that healing the earth environmentally was perhaps the biggest challenge facing us in this century - but if we keep living in separate hermetically-sealed ideological compartments, we will not be able to come together to respond appropriately to any of the crises that are upon us.
I hope that you will get a hold of MULTI when it comes out, and use it with your team, your pastors, your church members to think about how we can rise to this moment in history!
A permanent loss of common ground will, eventually, usher in the end of the American Experiment.
For all that we disagree about, for all the virtue and all the untold tragedy that has brought us to this place as an American people in 2018, if we cannot find a way to claim at least a little common ground, we are soon to be done, and our life together will begin to deteriorate in ways we may not yet be imagining.
The church of Jesus Christ is the church of Pentecost - it was born in a story of people coming together, empowered by Holy Spirit. In 1 Peter, the words echo: "Once we were not a people (i.e. strangers, disconnected and irrelevant one to the other), but now we are A PEOPLE, the people of God."
The great work of our time in America is helping people discover connection to their neighbors once again, and love for their neighbors - love that crosses the political chasm, and the chasm of race and national origins. This can happen in many venues - beyond the church, but it was the work of the church before any of these other venues even existed! Many churches will continue to contribute to the distrust and the polarization - so some of us have to also be about the work of reconciliation, of sharing from a common font, a common cup and a common experience of grace.
Our nation has never been more diverse than we are today. There are no majorities of anybody anymore. We have to learn a new way to move forward in which we can trust one another. The church gives us resources and experiences to learn how to do that one room at a time, and to teach our children how to do that.
This is the work of Multi ministry.
Yes, there are practical considerations of church survival which propel our work of helping churches to keep functioning in an age of increasing heterogeneity and tribalism that pulls apart from our interest in the common good. But multi-cultural churches are not simply a strategy for church survival in changing times - it is how the church can help civilization survive, and even the planet.
The work of reconciliation.
A year ago I would have said that healing the earth environmentally was perhaps the biggest challenge facing us in this century - but if we keep living in separate hermetically-sealed ideological compartments, we will not be able to come together to respond appropriately to any of the crises that are upon us.
I hope that you will get a hold of MULTI when it comes out, and use it with your team, your pastors, your church members to think about how we can rise to this moment in history!
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