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Can an organisation live forever?

Fascinating article on the BBC News about the longevity of businesses. I wouldn't have put it past the Finns to have a company still operating that began in 1288 - I presume the web site was a later addition (although it is surprising that it was involved in copper mining and not white sock production).

These very long-lived business seem to have survived by having the knack of changing their focus at the right time - moving on as an opportunity arises. who would have thought that Nokia began in pulp and paper? If you live the supply of things that people want then you need to adapt when either people want different things or your raw materials become harder to find.

Not surprisingly I suppose Alan Hirsch would argue the opposite in The Forgotten Ways. In adapting to meet the needs of one era we become compromised and, contrary to the above business logic, lose sight of the purpose of Church. The need, therefore, is not to move on to pastures new, but rather to rediscover the raw stuff of life in Church - reverse evolution.

Can we do that whilst maintaining the structures of organised Church? I think this might be possible. It is easy to start from scratch, but Christian History gives us a story of multiple startings again from scratch, only to end up strikingly similar to what went before. I think organised Church should be able to give us the resources and accountability to rediscover our dna on this. We might discover some other assets in the organised bit of Church which stand us in good stead too.

Bold, crazy, magnificent ideas...or quiet, simple ones.

If the Kingdom of God begins with the tiniest of seeds, then most often the Kingdom of God will begin in our situations with an idea.

I loved this tribute to Steve Jobs given by Jonny Ive...

...and the glorification of the creational moment of the first idea.

I love ideas for that very reason of the spark of new creation that occurs in the challenge to a previously held certainty, or a previously avoided complexity. But ideas, as Jonny says, are so easy to squish by a comment or an offhanded rejection. We need ideas - we need ideas to be received and nurtured, tended and mined, explored and crafted.

As Steve Jobs said elsehwere the process is then to let the best ideas win. Let the truly dopey ideas wither and perish, but let them be recieved and discerned first.

I want to do new things, for such is the Kingdom of God, and so I want to cherish ideas. Here's to the bold, crazy, magnificent ideas...or quiet, simple ones, the ones that suck the air from the room and leave us all speechless.

Whatever happened to Sundays?

I found this post by Andrew Jones utterly compelling.

Nine aspects of a dynamic and clearly growing Church life, and yet nothing in there that is dependent of a typical Sunday-centric regime we in a Western style of Church take as the norm. This is scary stuff indeed, but I find it really strange.

This article also caught my eye as I flicked across the BBC News web site. Seemingly, by the time big institutions have got to the point where they want to mark their success by building an enormous white elephant the markets are already receding.

Now I see our buildings as potentially an enormous asset. There is a brilliant painting in a Chapel we used to use regularly which shows the time there was a bad fire in the town and quite a large number of people decamped to the Chapel complete with washing and livestock. Moreso nowadays is the disappearance of public space, and whilst many think of Church as the most private and respectful of places there is certainly something to be said for opening the doors wide to host the public.

Sadly, though, there are numerous examples of things which seem to be the tail wagging the dog, and the building takes over from the Kingdom as the agenda-topping item.

But I would love to discover that dynamism amidst the people which would then make the buildings come alive for all the right reasons. 

Tribalization

Am finding Alan Hirsch's book…

"The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church" (Alan Hirsch)

…very thought provoking.

We did Church Cafe style this morning - and potentially disconcertingly there was little of what makes a traditional styler of Church feel like Church. I did feel it right to say that there is something holy about the sharing of food, and the conversations buzzed away non-stop. Adults and children did some craft things in the next room and it actually felt more like a relaxed family party than anything else I've been to.

Somebody at the door did describe it as "interesting", which is one of those words that can be a complement or complaint depending of the pitch variation as the word is spoken.

If traditional society is waning and as a result traditional Church is not inherently attractive then where do we get the space to reach out to the tribes in our midst?

January 2012

Rota_01_12.pdf Download this file

8th Jan - Methodist Covenant Service removed (now 15th in morning) 29th Jan - Baptism moved from SW to MF

Winsley duty rota Q1 2012

W_Duty_Rota_2012_Q1.pdf Download this file