I think I replied that we have had people at church speaking of the equivocal nature of the brand called, “Christianity,” and the need to shore this up. It wasn’t until he elaborated that in the future “think small specialized networked entities producing goods and services jointly with customers.” Therry said he was writing a blog entry on this. You can find his post here, by the way.

And it hit me. Isn’t that how the early church was? Say in the First and Second centuries?

The apostles fanned out starting communities of faith— house groups apparently. They were “staffed” with indigenous leaders, with the apostles serving more as mentors and consultants. These beginnings from the present perspective can be seen as networks. Indeed the apostles cum missionaries teams were the “specialized networked entities” serving the churches in and around Galatia, Colossae, Philippi, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth, Antioch, Alexandria, Tyre, Damascus. It doesn’t appear to me that these guys had organizations as such. It does appear they operated more or less independently of each other. Paul, after all, went to Jerusalem and to the council around James and Peter to let them know what he and Barnabas were doing in establishing Jesus communities. It appears that the Gospels themselves were written for use in specific communities: Matthew, Mark, and John, along with the letters of Paul and of James, Hebrews, and Peter.

That was just speculation on my part. So imagine my surprise finding an an article about this very same thing. You know we’ve been in a massive clean-up, throw-out effort here at the carriage house. In thumbing thru the November-December 2006 issue of Mission Frontiers I find this article by Dan Sinclair and Dick Scoggins: “Introducing the ApNet: A 21st Century Approach to Apostolic Ministry.”

The world has changed they say. The TMA (”traditional mission agency”) had “tremendous advantages”:

1. Easy recruitment and deployment
2. Solid link between those on the field and those in support ministries back in the “home office”
3. “Name recognition” and the trust that automatically bestows (”Oh, you’re going out with OM? That’s great. Here’s some support…”)
4. Synergy between various departments (e.g., oversight and member care, finance and church relations)
5. The kind of built-in accountability that comes from a hierarchical structure

But “the world has changed” they say. They point out

Working solely within one organization can be confining, limiting gifted ministers to impact only within their organization. Large organizations cannot adapt quickly to rapidly changing circumstances. And they are not equally good at every thing they do, so a member of a given organization must be content with its particular strengths and weaknesses.

They then look at the primary activities or functions carried out by the TMA such as

1. Definition of vision and ethos
2. Recruiting
3. Team formation/personnel deployment
4. Financial administration
5. Oversight and coaching
6. Training and leadership development
7. infrastructure (including hosting conferences for ongoing connectivity)
8. Member care

Sinclair and Scoggins raise the question, “Do these functions have to always be vertical, under one organizational roof?” What if they were placed in “separate, networked, but autonomous entities.” they ask.

There you have it: What Therry was describing as occurring in the commercial world. So maybe the large church as know it as an organization can evolve into nodes of service providers working with small churches/house groups who get together from time to time for large corporate worship and ministry. Kind of like in the days of the Early Church!

Sinclair and Scoggins go on to describe the “ApNet” for “apostolic network” which link together the nodes of “apostolic service providers,” i.e., the separate entities. They list advantages of such ApNets and examples of how they would operate.

The complete article can be found on Dick Scoggins’ web site, by the way: http://www.dickscoggins.com/

I found that Anderson had died last year and his colleagues and former students filled the Internet with stories, remembrances, and how Anderson had affected them.

One such memory came from the Faith and Theology blog entry, “Ray S. Anderson (1925-2009) by Christian D. Kettler, Friends University.” It was a comment by Denise Hess and I print it in full:

Ray spoke quite a bit about death—probably more often than most of us who hang out in pulpits do. This is why he was one of the first people I e-mailed when I found out I had cancer. I knew that he was one of the few who would not send back platitudes but would engage with me in the difficult questions, fears and struggles that lay ahead—that was just the kind of person, theologian, teacher, mentor and friend he was. Re-reading his e-mail response to me (which included directions to that Sunday’s service at Harbor Fellowship) I was reminded of the sermon he preached that Sunday—because I knew that it was God speaking through Ray giving me the words of life I would need to make it through the next days, weeks and years.

Ray also had unmatched theological imagination. Whether critiquing Calvin on predestination, musing on Judas’ fate or reflecting on the current denominational struggles over ordination standards, Ray had a way of approaching theological problem areas with biblically grounded creativity.

A little over a year ago, Ray was preaching at Grace Lutheran Church and used an illustration where his comfort with speaking of death and theological imagination intersected in a powerful way. In his characteristic style, he asked the congregation if we had ever wondered what it was like for Jesus to go home to the Father after his ascension. Reflecting on Jesus’ words in John 14 about going to prepare a place for his followers, Ray wondered out loud about that moment of reunion between the Father and Jesus. Who spoke first? The Father, Jesus? What was said?

In this imaginary conversation, Ray mused, maybe Jesus said to the Father, “Father, I’m home!” and the Father replied, “It’s good you’re here, but Son you look different, what’s that you’re wearing?” Jesus replied, “Humanity Father, I’m clothed in humanity—oh, there are some others waiting outside, can I bring them in?” “Of course,” the Father replied and in came Adam and Eve and all those who had long awaited their welcome into the presence of the Father through the Son.

And one day, Ray then said, Jesus will say to the Father, I have someone else here waiting outside to come in to meet you. One day Jesus will say to the Father, “Father, Ray’s outside, he’s here, can I bring him in—can I bring him home?”

Ray’s day of reunion has come. If I had my way, that day would have been years and years from now. I will miss him.

I thought this guy, J. K. Hart, was just a writer… maybe an educator… writing on folk schools. But when I Googled him, I found a whole worth of material. Joseph Kinmont Hart studied with George Herbert Meade at the University of Chicago and a proponent of John Dewey and what has come to be called the progressive reform movement in education. He was also outspoken advocate of reform and a favorite of students wherever he taught. That is if the students were willing to think or go “against the grain.” He taught at the University of Washington wherte he got involved with local issues of equality, inclusiveness and labor rights. He quickly became known for leading radical crusades. This in the second decade of the 20th Century. He was dismissed in 1916. He then went to Reed College and was dismissed in 1920. In the interims between university teaching, Hart wrote books and edited magazines.

This background on Hart comes from a paper by Deron Boyles entitled, “Joseph Kinmont Hart and Vanderbilt University: The Rise and Fall of a Department of Education, 1930-1934.” The link is here [Boyles, Deron R., "Joseph Kinmont Hart and Vanderbilt University: The Rise and Fall of a Department of Education, 1930-1934" (2003). Faculty Publications. Paper 10.
http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/eps_facpub/10]

In his short stay at Vanderbilt one of his students was Myles Horton. He made a pilgrimage to Denmark as well and visited its folk highschools. He came back, of course, and started Highlander with two friends. The rest history.

TheBoyles paper is an interesting read and is a case of academic freedom. I found it interesting, also, that even as early as the 1920s Vanderbilt had designs on acquiring Peabody.

This is particularly potent when the organization is a church, a Christian church. Uncertainty is the modus operandi of God. Think of Abram. God told him to leave his home and people and take off “To the land which I will show you.” God told Moses to return to Pharaoh “so you may bring my people out of Egypt.” Other heroes are given similar commands. God doesn’t always give us blueprints. Instead He has given us the Holy Spirit to lead, guide and direct our steps.

You can imagine the conflicts this gives leaders of churches. They combat uncertainty, yet must remain open to intuiting the spontaneous movements of the Holy Spirit.

Today’s edition is a case in point. The front page has an article on the analysis of what went wrong with the blowout prevention on the Deepwater Horizon. It’s a two-column story above the fold and is continued on two full pages and a half of another inside. I mean it is an in-depth, long story with colored graphics of the five-story blowout preventer and graphics and diagrams of the mechanisms designed to trigger the blind shear ram. I would find it near impossible to get the same comprehension of this story if I read it only on-line. And as I thumbed through the rest of the front page section I came across a story of the Cap d’Or, a 110 year-old tavern in Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria a city built by Alexander the Great and with a multinational citizenry… once.

What is our citizenry going to look like, I wonder, if all we read are short simplistic articles and are isolated… cocooned… from the unfamiliar?

As best i can describe it, The Baffler is contrarian with style, wit and aplomb with a certain artisan steeliness. Good writing; good writers; good editors; good art. It cost $12, though.

I grew to enjoy the magazine flying around the upper Midwest for PRC in the 90s. I looked forward to reading it on the plane particularly returning home to Indianapolis.

Take a look at one if you can. In this day and time of instant Internet and cable commentaries, you may appreciate something well-thought out, rational and printed. Here’s their somewhat whimsical pitch with tongue-in-check, as printed among the last pages of the current issue (Volume 2, Number 1, by the way).

Supremacy
It resides in the written word, printed in neat columns on the papery page. You can tweet all you want. Twenty years from now nobody will give a damn.

But the authorial majesty of this Baffler, like all other Bafflers, will still be intact then. Whatever we choose to splatter over the page today, will still be as true then as what’s written in the Federalist Papers, only a little more fun to read.

Yes, the medium is the message, my friend, and the message of this particular medium is SUPREMACY: ink+paper+careful typesetting=eternal rightness.

In fact, the only weak point is you. Will you actually subscribe to this magazine, feeding our delusions of grandeur in the style to which they are accustomed, or will you sit there before your computer screen, whining that you will only read what comes your way for free?

We think we know the answer: It has to do with something called SUPREMACY. So get off your ass, you file-sharing, bit-torrenting, freeloading liberal. Make with the personal check, enclosed in a physical envelope, dispatched (with postage stamp) to the address below.

The Baffler
P.O. Box 812090 Chicago IL 60681
312.240.9902 thebaffler.com

I thought “Isn’t that a metaphor for our schools, today?” Federal, state and local ed agencies are aiming their rewards and sanctions at schools and teachers who produce children with high test scores, yet what kids really know and can do is neglected. Who they are, their academic strengths and weaknesses, their “street smarts” are not measured or recorded or accumulated for county and state reports. They cannot be easily measured with standardized and multiple-choice test items easily machine scored and counted.

Here’s Fried and Hannson’s take on Planning is guessing (pp 19-20):

Unless you’re a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.

Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Start referring to your business plans as guesses, and your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much. They just aren’t worth the stress.

When you turn guesses into plans, you enter a danger zone. Plans let the past drive the future. They put blinders on you. “This is where we’re going because, we, that’s where we said we were going.” And that’s the problem: Plans are inconsistent with improvisation.

And you have to be able to improvise. You have to be able to pick up opportunities that come along. Sometimes you need to say, “We’re going in a new direction because that’s what makes sense today.”

The timing of long-range plans is screwed up too. You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you’ve done it. Yet when do you write a plan? Usually it’s before you’ve even begun. That’s the worst time to make a big decision.

Now this isn’t to say you shouldn’t think about the future or contemplate how you might attack upcoming obstacles. That’s a worthwhile exercise. Just don’t feel you need to write it down or obsess about it. If you write a big plan, you’ll most likely never look at it anyway. Plans more than a few pages long just wind up as fossils in your filing cabinet.

Give up on the guesswork. Decide what you’re going to do this week, not this year. Figure out the next most important thing and do that. Make decisions right before you do something, not far in advance.

It’s OK to wing it. Just get on the plane and go. You can pick up a nicer shirt, shaving cream, and a toothbrush once you get there.

Working without a plan may seem scary. But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier.

This by David Dalla Venezia. One of his pictures is used as the cover for Ray Pawson book, Evidence-based Policy: A Realist Perspective (London: SAGE, 2006). I picked it up today to reread some passages. Pawson included some links to Venezia’s work and I saw this. It captures what others have described and what I’ve now come to see myself. I am slimming down my books and papers! Honest.
Venezia’s website is here.
A website for the book is here.