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It’s free to listen to on Radio 4, or download from BBC web site. The History of Ideas, the big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds in the world. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life.Todays programme titled “politeness” was filled with history of 18th century coffee house, discussion groups development, public and private space growth as places to belong, and how “culture” as something to talk about and be immersed in was developed. Absolutely amazing, and reminded me that if we think reading books and discussions in cafe houses with ambient music is new, we need to go back 200 years and learn a thing or two.
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I just finished this book. There is a web site and resources at http://www.presence.net/resources.html.And from the learning model they suggest I overlaid it on emerging church learning.
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1. Suspending: seeing our beliefs, standing back from them
2. Redirecting: plugging into the whole, listening to other voices
3. Letting Go: what do we need to leave behind to move forward, what do we hold onto
4. Presencing: at this stage we are letting go and trusting God as we move out of comfort zones, and anticipate his future
5. Letting Come: hope of what we can do next, seeing things emerge
6. Crystalizing: Envision what needs to emerge further, developing confidence of what need to come next, and is arriving already
7. Prototyping: Enacting, and relaizing, action and doing, mission not just talk
8. Institutionalizing: Allowing the new to become the established and helpful, and old
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My friend Winn Griffin, also reading this book with me has posted this for fun in response
See continuation…
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Gordon Brown gave a speech earlier this week (Our governments Chancellor), that quoted a poem. After some internet searching, and a few phones that got me to Gordon’s communication officer, I got the name of the author, and then via radio 4 (click listen again and go to 22 minutes on time line with real player) managed to hear the full text of the poem unedited.“For each of us lives in and through an immense movement of the hands of other people,
The hands of other people lift us from the womb,
The hands of other people grow the food we eat,
Weave the clothes we wear and build the shelters we inhabit,
The hands of other people give pleasure to our bodies in moments of passion,
And aid and comfort in times of affliction and dsitress,
It is in and through the hands of other people
that the commonweatlh of nature is appropriated and accomodated to the needs and pleasures of our seperate individual lives,
and at the end it is the hands of other people that lower us into the earth.”Dr James B Stockinger
Prof of Sociology at University of California at Berkley
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Some thoughts I posted today to my doctoral cohort from my reading of “Prescence” below.page 8-9 talk about how we get the same result by doing the same. The habit of being right and having people reinforce our rightness.
So why do we get in speakers to tell us we are right, our denomination is the best, our church is the best, our new form of church is the best and live in ivory towers of self reference. Why don’t we as;
1. Anabaptist: invite NT wright to tell us why he loves being an anglican
2. Cell/Micro/Emerging/Missional Church: get mega church speakers to speak to us
3. Mega church: get Cell/Micro/Emerging/Missional Church to share with us.We must choose dialgue partner who are different to us, see the world and church different to us, but will be friends with us. We either converse with people who tell us what we already know, or fight with those we disagree with.
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Blast now I will have to be post-emergent-uk ;-) Andrew is someone who manages to say what your are thinking but can’t say very well, and says it better.
See continuation below
[TallSkinnyKiwi]
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Back in January (I know an eternity in blog world), I posted some samples from Sivin Kit’s blog.
If you’ve missed it, he’s got some great thoughts and most recently with his development of Emergent in malaysia.. Sivin’s blog is one I read regulary, and when he writes I always read his reflections. I love his use of “The Growing Room” for his conversation group :-)
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Still not to late to book for this. Most of all I’ve enjoyed collaborating with Simon Kirby from new wine on hosting the london day.
Simon and I were at seminary/college together, he was better looking and smarter, and he has a great blog. One of the things I love about Simon is that if you ask “so what”? he can show you something he has been doing out of his theology and thinking. Visit his blog for some great insights.
The Shaping of Things to Come
(buy in USA)We have some more info on our partnered event with Alan Hirsch. You can download a flyer and registration info here.
The Shaping of Things To Come – Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost 3 day tour
Dates:
Oct 4 London
Oct 7 Birmingham
Oct 8 Sheffield
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See my last post, here is quote and thought from “Prescence”
Page 71. “…how important stories are in helping people make sense of a complex reality…using scenarios to think about alternative stories of the future is only one of the ways that organisations can become more aware of the assumptions that lie behind their strategyies. But without some discipline or practice like this, we tend to get stuck in a single story that we accept without thinking. And that seems to that’s exactly our larger predicament in the world today: we’re stuck in a story of who we are as human beings, and something in us wants to break free of it.”…”it’s a as if the perceveid seperation of humans from one another, and from other forms of life, is the glue that holds our story together. We’ve got to find out what it will take to break free of this tragic story…we have no idea the cost we pay for living this story of seperation. I’m beginning to see that a cornerstone of our work has been simply creating ways to help people connect more deeply with one another, and with their common concerns and sense of purpose”.
What an amazing insight. The glue that holds us together is the story of our seperation. I see that all the time in emerging church, stories of seperation, decentering, and degathering, and dispersal. We see it in the modern church a gospel message of separation from God, and the world.
We see it in the world, the desire for connection, yet a story/script/narrative of needing no-one and being commitment phobic…maybe collaboration is a better word than committment to our culture.
And do we use eschatology to bring people together, to cause connection, or seperation (a la Tim la haye, or beware going to hell). W e have the most amazing story to tell and retell, and explore, bringing us together.
In our church we read the parable of the sower (mark4) and did it communally, reading, interactions, exploring what does this mean for us and our world…and we barely scratched the surface of what this story meant for us and our futures, and connection, but left not confused but connected. A small story, parable, retold, was so complex, deep and layered it was bigger than the consufing stories we lived in.
So we didn’t get all the answers and explain the parable, it is bigger than us, but is gave connection and direction to our mini narratives…
Make sense?
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Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future
by Peter M. Senge (Other Contributor), Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers
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This my reading with my doctoral cohort this week. I have never read the Vth Discipline (by Peter Senge, I have just bouigh it though), but had heard of it. Seems from an internet search that it ia standard text for MBA’s around the world.Did you know that in Japan they get managers to read books, and discuss them together by posting to intranets.
So my early impressions of this book are it was expensive, I love the covnersation style, of one man and his 3 friends talking. It’s been interesting to see that style in other place including some emerging church events, and books. Narrative, conversation, to communicate and include, and have some participation by listening in.
Their level of optimism for humanity is compelling. Not in a way that’s manifest destiny sort of thing, but just imagine if people tapped into their potential. Isn’t the gospel the book of human potential, what we can do, be, become.
Made me wonder that when our message is go to heaven when you die, and not let’s eradicate poverty, cure cancer, travel to the stars…when is our Gospel message going to have a message of potential and not all about how bad and depraved we are.
So what’s the link to previous books…reality being expressed in conversation between people…narrative hermenuetics and epistomology? We are truth. And what about the Gospel’s don’t we get to see Jesus talking with some people and friends of his (and enemies).
We would be daft to read this book red lettering P Senge’s words, and the do hsitorical cricitcism on, to mine the foundational principles from it…yet we do the same with scripture.
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Tom Sine sent me these articles he recently wrote. Download as word documents here and here. Text is also in continuation section.
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