Integrating Missionally

Game on, I say!

Today I begin my writing journey known as the doctoral dissertation. I want to be done as soon as possible. I know that I have need to be working on three things in my life right now: finishing a book on success in ministry, writing my dissertation, and continuing to get physically healthy. In the past couple of weeks I’ve gotten a good bit done on the book, and now starts the dissertation.

I’ve already set up an auto-responder to let people know that I may not respond quickly. I have my writing music in place and my office set up as I need it.

My thesis is Read the rest of this entry »

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I’ve been reading A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin H. Friedman, in preparation for my doctoral dissertation. This book is about how emotional processes are what need to be engaged when thinking about leadership and change within an organization, not logic, reason, or methodology.

Friedman, in the first chapter on “Imaginative Gridlock” deals with the characteristics of a gridlocked system, and there are three:

1. An unending treadmill of trying harder;
2. Looking for answers rather than reframing questions; and
3. either/or thinking that creates false dichotomies.

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I started to title this post, “We are All Semioticians”. We are visual people. We think visually and interpret visually. We also comprehend visually. Pastors spend too much time putting together logical and reasoned arguments in their sermons when they should be incorporating visually and emotionally stimulating images that move people to action. Below is why that is the case.

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I want to move back to a discussion of thinking through a theology of transformational change by integrating theology and emerging science. In my research, I observed through the writings of Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, particularly in his book “The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life that our emotions receive sensory information first and can literally hijack us, what Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman termed the “emotional hijack”. Research into the mind and communication gave me a better understanding of the importance of all of this.

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This week I am in Barcelona Spain. This is a beautiful city and the culture is quite inviting. It reminds me in many ways of New Orleans. I felt home. Now if I could just speak the language.

I’m here interacting with missionaries from Western Europe for the week. I hope to be able to do some podcasts speaking with some of these folks who are reaching those living in a Post-Christendom world. We are seeing the beginnings of that post-Christendom movement in the US. We are dialogging about how Americans are being reached and how we Americans can learn from those in Western Europe. The real dialog begins on Tuesday, though we spent yesterday arriving and walking all over the city. Today, it has been more of enjoying the city and learning what is happening in Western Europe.

I hope to blog some about our dialog, sharing what we can learn.

In the meantime, pick up a copy of an excellent read: POST-CHRISTENDOM: CHURCH AND MISSION IN A STRANGE NEW WORLD.

This book discusses the end of Christendom, where the Christian story was known and the church was central.  The book invites Christians in western culture to embrace marginality and discover fresh ways of being church and engaging in mission. While the transition from modernity to postmodernity has received a huge amount of attention, the shift from Christendom to post-Christendom has not yet been fully explored.

This book is an introduction: a journey into the past, an interpretation of the present and an invitation to ask what following Jesus might mean in the strange new world of post-Christendom.  Drawing on insights from the early Christians, dissident movements and the world church, this book challenges conventional ways of thinking. For those who dare to imagine new ways of following Jesus on the margins, it invites a realistic and hopeful response to challenges and opportunities awaiting us in the twenty-first century.

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