An emerging bump!

Arminius

I've just ordered a copy.

Now I've got two books to get into before Bible study starts next Tuesday.

Russ

It''s so important for congregations to go through a solid discernment process (that isn't rushed) to arrive at a mission/vision/set of core values. Why do we exist? For whom? What is our purpose?
Then it's important to articulate the mission/vision/values in a clear, self-defined way AND use it as a working document to make all decisions.

LoveJoy: Amen to that!

We have some New Agers interested in joining our congregation. They are mildly contemptous of Christianity, though. They don't know the United Church at all, and they don't know how grassroots- and congregation-based we are. A clear statement of core values, purpose, mission and vision will help to make clear to them what they are getting into.

______________________________

Russ: I'm glad you'll be joining us soon. When you get the book, please feel free to comment on anything we've covered so far.

Arminius, why do you think they want to join your congregation, if they don't know much about it, and are not professing Christians?

weeze: Because, like most of us UCers, most New Agers want to make a difference--they want to create a better world. As solitary individuals, they are not very effective, so they want to throw their support behind an effective mainstream spiritual organization.

The United Church is reputed to be the most liberal, progressive and inclusive of the Christian mainstream denominations. The New Agers I am talking about are mildly interested in the UC, but also leery and slightly contemptuous of Christianity in general, regarding all of Christianity as authoritarin and hierachial without knowing how gassroots based the United Church really is.

Making clear to them how congregation-based, from-the-grassrots-up, the United Church governs itself, and showing them a clear statement of the core values, vision and mission of our congregation, will help them make a choice.

Hi again Folks:

Well Lovejoy put it pretty much in the basket. The ORDER in which these steps are taken, however, is not clearly addressedin the book. I have always believed that BEFORE you move to Mission or Vision statements, a group must struggle with its core values. Appendix 1 in Bruce Sanguin's books is a good example of one gathering's attempt to do this. Then a set of Goals and Objectives for ACTION can be made (and only then). During this whole process of struggling with action targets, a Mission statement is in formation. Some people think this should precede the goals and objectives. I think it is brewing in the struggle for action targets and eventually willbbe determined. The Vision statement is quite different for me. It is a "dream" - what would things look like in the BEST of worlds, even if it impossible to achieve.

As Lovejoy implies, this is a discernment process, where we reach deep down within our "souls" to dip into the waters of Spirit and try to estabish our IDENTITY as a unique gathering/congregation. It should/would not be the same for every group. We would not exclude the input of the more fundamentalist members, but compromise. THIS is the hard part.We MUST work as a whole body, and not ruled by the "chosen few" (as Bruce Sanguin seems to want) that has established "non-negotiables". Our congregation must find its identity in the Christian way, not by the democratic process of "majority rules", but by going through a process of working towards CONSENSUS. It might take a year. It should not be rushed. There are very specific models to work with consensus. What we end up with will inevitably disappoint those New Agers that Arminius is determined to get into our little church. If we are to be true to our IDENTITY, we may aim for a lofty Vision, but our Mission may be compromised by those who are in "earlier stages of development" in the emerging process. Consensus is a difficult task for those New Agers who embrace individualism.

This is the joy of it all (and the cause of some conflict, perhaps). I personally find Bruce's examples of Mission and Vision (p.71) not very meaningful. I see Mission as giving direction for action. "We proclaim and enact God's kin-dom" is direction, but weighed down by subsequent values, giving no idea on just how this happens (compassionate caring? Personal growth in faith? Joyful worship?) and his Vision statement of "embodying the kin-dom..." is better, but simply bursts into song and metaphor. It can be interpreted differently by different individuals. There is, in other words, no sense of providing a guide for some kind of "cohesion" through these complex statements. But this is in relationship to our little Church. I hope we would do this together, without the guidance or manipulation of "The Select/elect" group or those "non-negotiables (indeed we have).

Arminius and I do not really lock horns that much. He exaggerates! But I am not convinced that his New Agers would/should flock to our church. Yes, we all want a better world" and the UC is the most liberal of the Christian religious institutions. But these people (like Arminius before) are "solitary individuals". Who are we to assume that they WANT a spirituality that demands that they relate to a group? Is this not why they have failed to be effective in the first place? Until they individually realize that their "God" cannot function without both the relationship of the inidividual to the Source and BETWEEN individuals, they will not move. This may be more of a psychological hang-up than any spiritual lack. Their own tie to each other is likely competitive and ego-driven (my assumption). Of course they are welcome to our Church, but not by being herded by Arminius, but through their own thirst for 'community'. Arminius might talk a bit about how he came to thirst for more....

I hope that our wondercafe.live! Program for our little community of 1700 people might draw some of these people in to a conversation that is less based on debate and more based on listening and real discernment. This is about discerning, not about 'winning our way'. We must emerge as a group to form a group Identiy that gives us a unified direction: Who are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going? Why are we going? How are we going to go? These are action questions that are spoken by a gathering that has achieved a unified Identity, not an individual. They express core values, goals and objectives that are concrete, a Mission statement that guides all action and a Vision Statement that allows us to dream of another emergence once this one has been realized. MOST important to each of our Churches, is that it is NOT about forcing CHANGE on people, but enabling them to understand the necessity for us to evolve, to emerge and to reach out to embrace a larger Stewardship than what we can touch.

I have read the next stage and am into "spiraling". That will be an interesting discussion. It makes me dizzy.

Dave (LumbyLad)

Well spoken, LumbyLad, you actually make sense (for a change :-)

My "thirst for community" was just that. I got fed up with being a solitary seeker, and wanted to join a community of seekers, and be active and creative from within a community, as a community: from the smaller congregational faith community, to our secular village community, to the larger UC community, to the community of all people of faith and of all humankind, to the community of planetary beings, and finally to the cosmic community, which is God. Community, of course, means being in communion, and acting communally, as whole: lesser wholes within greater wholes within the greatest whole which is God.

I assume that some of my New Age friends share my thirst for community and follow me into the UC fold. Whether or not they do remains to be seen.

I don't think anyone is going to flock to the UCC.

While we are liberal, down to earth, open, etc., etc., I don't think we have any direction. I sense we are blown by whatever wind happens to be blowing that day.

Until "we" can figure out exactly what we stand for, the Mission statement for the whole shebang, we will continue to do so.

Last night was the first meeting of the Communications Committee and I decided to hold it at the local Starbucks (No local Bridgehead or Second Cup). Of course I was paying so they all showed up.

Half way through I hoped on my little soapbox, didn't really mean to, and off I went on my singularity rant.

These were probably someof the most open people in the place, and I got everything from "huh" to what almost looked like shear terror.

I don't think any new agers are going to come to this place until:

- we change to accomodate them, or, and the more likely scenario,
- we recognize that we are open in talk, but closed in walk

So like Arminius said, I will enjoy the company and be quietly subversive, a role I am starting to really ENJOY.

All YOUR fault, guy.

IT

Russ

Well, Russ, I'll gladly take the blame. :-)

I think Christianity is still too stuck in its 1st century interpretations.

We've been sleeping for two thousand years.

Wake up, folks, this is the 21st century, not the 1st!

We need 21st century interpretations of faith, not 1st century ones!

The 1st century interpretations are important only as far as the history of our faith is concerned. To make our faith come alive we need 21st century interpretations.

"Sleepers, wake!" the watch are calling,
Their notes from Zion's watchtower falling,
"Awake, awake, Jerusalem!"

-VU #711, a beautiful and powerfully evocative hymn. One of my favourites. I often sing it to and all by myself.

Actually, Arminius, I think that hymn is calling the Jehovah's Witnesses to cloister and defeat us. "We are One" might be a better hymn to hum.

The secret of helping people to change from the inside-out is in our style of communication. In setting up wondercafe.live! we do not allow the "listeners" to debate what is presented. They can ask for CLARIFICATION only ("What do YOU mean by..."). After all of the clarification questions are asked, the Presenter sits down. Only then do those who want to argue get up for their 2 minutes to present their arguments, but NOT to the Presenter. Then they are asked only clarification questions, etc. This trains people to be listeners rather than debaters. I love a good debate, but we usually have a response on our tongues before the question is fully asked.

So, Russ, the space between the Talk and the Walk is Listening. We liberal thinkers tend not to listen to other liberal thinkers for fear that they might have a perspective that dashes our 'rants' to pieces. When we remove this threat, we may find that through the process of JUST listening, we emerge as a group. The purpose of the group becomes discussion and not debate. Presenters are protected and cherished. So try this in your group. It may help.

I really don't know what a "New Ager" is. Do they always look ahead at another Age? What happens when THAT Age comes? Do they then skip to the next? This seems a rather foolish way to try to communicate with anyone, including oneself!

Just testing to see if my picture comes up without browsing for one.

....further Armenius, what is this about notes falling from the watchtower in Jerusalem. Are you a New Age, Christian Zionist? Reveal yourself!

LumbyLad: You forgot indigenous, Buddhist, Sufi, and Taoist: I'm an indigenous New Age Zionist Sufi Buddhist Taoist Christian :-)

Seriously, as my profile says, I belong to all religions, or none. I am Christian only because I am partial to the beloved religion of my culture, childhood and youth, not because Christianity is any better than other religions. In fact, I know some that may be better than Christianity. I won't say which, and I won't adhere to them, in the typical New Age fashion of spiritual shopping. I'd rather stick with what we've got, and do my best to make Christianity the best it can be.

Speaking of New Age, and answering your other question, I think it was William Blake who coined the term "New Age," and Walt Whitman repeated it. But if my memory serves me right (it doesn't serve me as well as it used to :-) Shakespeare also spoke of a new age.

I think every new age likes to see itself as THE new age, the pinnacle of human consciousness. There is an elitism inherent in that, a certain spiritual and intellectual conceit. As history tells us, every new age has been surpassed by a yet more advanced and "newer" age, so that the term becomes meaningless. If intellectual and spiritual evolution is an ongoing process--as I believe it to be--then our present highest stage is just a step up to a yet higher stage, or another crank up the evolutionary spiral.

If I would tell the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, this poet lies,
Such heavenly touches never touched earthly faces.
But were a child of yours alive that time,
You would live twice, in it, and in my rhyme.

-William Shakespeare

I just thought of a good one. If we were the United Liberal Church, we could be ULCers.
Arminius, we have never spoken of our mutual love for poetry. I must, some day, share some of mine. Most of mine, of course, are of epic proportion. One I love, was called The Taoist Trilogy (1993). It is interesting to see the roots of my present spirituality starting to form in earlier writing, which always seemed to be about Paradox, The Shadow and The Stranger, 3 mythological parts of mystery that I travelled with, which later became known as the Spirit, the Mind and the Body. It was actually 3 poems which I put together about a man in a simple village who "took a walk" up into the mountains and never returned. For whatever reason, the village people (who were rigid fundamentalist), at the insistence of a child, followed his pathway and also never returned.

Once I joined a poetry group where people were "posing" silly poems, and I found I could not relate to the artistic pretence of the group. One of the women said to me, "What things do YOU hold to be true", so I wrote a poem called, AN ANSWER: BLACK ON WHITE (1993) Although it was formatted to form diamond shapes, I will produce some of it below. You can see the role of paradox forming into the only way to express a truth:

What things, yo ask, do I hold to be sure an true;
what frames my world, takes chaos by the tail
and shakes out order; makes the glue
which holds me, sometimes kicking,
to the earth
and you?

Birthing
a newborn child
into a dying world;
buddings, in gardens of neglect;
both restlessly burst forth and then unfold
the bright-side of my body's shadow-lined aspect.
These wonderous natural miracles hold me in my place:
that life can flow from desperate kicks and screams,
and blooms enlighten darkened space;
that sullen shadows flow from
sunlight's glowing
face.

Paradox:
the ebb and flow,
the push and pull -
twin forces on my mind confused;
dual-strikings on my thinking, feuling
progress, forward movement, hitherto refused.
Confusion reigns when I perceive that perfect love
makes no demands, thus may proceed to hate;
or when, in haste, refusing glove
I pick the bloodied rose;
when nudge becomes
a shove.
.........................................................................

Come join mySelf, with Paradox, to fact the light,
cast two black shadows, just behind our sight.
The other longer shadow there, I do contend
(for Paradox is eternal to the end)
may just be
white.

I look back at some of my earlier stuff and I am amazed at the much deeper insights I had and was able to express in such simple ways. Now I am into the whole damned cosmos! I suppose this is appropriate for my age (63).

Well, LumbyLad, at your age, you better be into the Cosmos, 'cause you're gonna merge with IT soon!

I saw this oscillating poem in your bathroom. Framed and on the wall, of course. But is this the appropriate place to display your poetry?

What drivel! Appropriate? I didn't know you even used this word in transforming language. Just pushing my buttons.

Well at least I did not quote (or sing daily) the source of the Jehovah Witness' two popular handout magazines. AWAKE! At least I do not wear bib overalls to Church every Sunday, indeed every day of my life! So don't talk about appropriate to me,eh?

As for reaching the final transforming END, you are so old, you are developing a stoop and more likely to beat me to them gates of St. Peter. I know Peter knows the meaning of the word "heritic".

So, at the end of this spiral, I await Chapter 5 from whomever is doing it. Enough of this nonsense.

Well, LumbyLad, we have effectively derailed this thread. (I shouldn't be doing this with my own thread.)

I'll be busy for the rest of this week, but will post the all important CHAPTER FIVE with its Spiral Dynamics early next week. It'll be too interesting to stray off topic.

By the way, I'll be wearing a real SUIT, not a monkey suit, when conducting the service this Sunday. Be prepared for a pleasant shock.

No more monkey business in our church!

But I will die in my overalls, and St. Peter will let me in. He himself wore sackcloth clothing, and he was a little bit of a heretic, having been trained by that great heretical master.

Forever in Overalls,

Arminius