In 1943 Winston Churchill said:

“First we shape our buildings, then they shape us.”

Churchill could just as well have said, first we shape our organisations, then they shape us.It’s all very well to talk about empowerment one –on – one, but most of us find ourselves within some sort of organisational framework.

What does empowerment look like in that context?

The assumption built into a normal organisation structure is that order comes through control, and that everybody is accountable to someone and the chain of command goes right up to the top of the pyramid where, ultimately the power to make decisions is vested in one person. While it is true that in most healthy organisations that one person is accountable to a board or some other structure, the fact remains that in day to day operations, the buck stops with one person. One person is the most powerful.

Good organizational leadership establishes objectives and then works to have a plan that is deliverable. An organisation develops resource through its activity and hires the people it needs to expand its operation. Organisations need a vision but often the people who work within an organisation would not see a lot of connection between what they do day to day and the organisational vision.

When it comes to people joining an organisation, the question is not “how do we help this person find their vocation?”, but “does this person fit our organization?” This way of seeing things runs the danger of reducing people to being replaceable parts of a big machine. Even the language of “Human Resource Management” is essentially dehumanising. People are not resources to be used. Read the rest of this entry »

Once we have chosen our mission, we need to act. N.T. Wright, in the Challenge of Jesus, says “Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human.”

When I first read Wright’s statement, I wanted to protest. Symbolic action sounded a lot like futile action. I wanted my action to be significant. I acknowledge that I have often fallen into the trap of thinking my job was done when everything was right with the world. I had to fix all the world’s problems. Eventually the penny dropped. This world is broken and it is not my job to fix it, my job is to harmonise with God and work with my brother and sisters in Christ to give a glimpse of a different, not so broken, way of doing life. Like Isaiah, we are called to be signs and symbols in the face of a world that is based on self interest and greed.

Symbolic action is significant, not for what it is but for what it represents. Our actions have meaning, and for us to be agents of the kingdom we need to make choices about behaviour that represents the values of the kingdom. As we live like this, in a way that is so different to what is “normal” in a self interested, sinful world, people then to want to understand the meaning behind our actions. Wright suggests that was exactly how Jesus approached his mission. He would act symbolically, through healing, or speaking to someone others wouldn’t, or eating with someone who was not politically correct, and then he would explain his actions through parables.

Major change happens when people start acting symbolically rather than fighting for control. William Wilberforce organised boycotts of children’s sweets, had special jewellery made and organised a petition as part of his campaign to abolish slavery. One of Ghandi’s most powerful actions was leading a march of hundreds of people to the sea in order to produce salt instead of buying it from the oppressive British regime. Martin Luther-King knew the power of symbolic action, and led several important marches but it was a brave African-American woman, Rosa Parks, whose symbolic action of not giving up a seat for a white passenger, that became a symbol of the whole civil rights movement. One of the great gifts of the movie Invictus is the way it shows how clearly Nelson Mandela understood the importance of symbolic action, using sport to unite a nation. The truth and reconciliation commission was an important symbolic action by both Mandela and particularly Bishop Desmond Tutu, that enabled at least the potential for some of South Africa’s wounds to begin to be healed.

Most of us won’t need to be acting symbolically to address issues that affect a whole nation, but that doesn’t mean it will be any less powerful. Acting symbolically can happen in big and little ways. A mother who offers to help at her understaffed children’s school is acting symbolically. A teenager who chooses to stand up for the victim of bullying is acting symbolically. A business that leaves its customers feeling valued is acting symbolically.

I was interested to see Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, issue a call for Christians to start wearing crosses in a “simple and discreet way as a symbol of their beliefs.” He issued the call after a nurse and a flight attendant lost their jobs because they chose to wear the cross. In a politically charged environment, something as simple as wearing a cross can communicate more loudly than hundreds of words. I was interested in the way my youngest son responded to the news. He promptly purchased a cross and now both he and I wear them every day. It is a small action, but it is a symbolic action.

A friend of mine, Philemon is working to bring hope in Greece. Watch this video. It shows better than any of my words the profound power of symbolic action…

Something Solid” Streetlights

Last year I travelled with my daughter to Poland where, after having an encouraging time with some very special believers who want to change their nation, we visited what is probably the site of the greatest evil this world has ever seen.

I don’t know how to describe the experience of Auschwitz. For the first time I could understand why people would want to deny the holocaust. As I looked at the mountain of gas canisters, the roll of material made from human hair and saw the site where experiments were carried out on children, a big part of me wanted to find a way not to face the reality of how disturbingly evil we can be to one another. It is hard for me to reconcile the idea that something like this could happen.

A moment at Auschwitz will stay with me for the rest of my life. It was a moment that sharply focussed the difference between a political Kingdom and the Kingdom of God. We were taken down into a dark, cold and musty smelling basement that served as the cells of prisoners waiting for execution. Inside one of them was a big candle, which seemed incongruous in such a horrible place. Our tour guide told us about Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who died as prisoner 16770. Read the rest of this entry »

We arrived home from Hobart last night. Even when I have been away for a holiday, it is always nice to come home.

I’ve been in a bit of a reflective mood lately, which may be to do with the amount of chocolate I have consumed in the last week, or perhaps could be related to being forty and in a time of transition.

I shared with you how we took the kids up to Mount Wellington and I recounted the significance of that place in my personal journey.

While I was recounting the story of a turning point in my life, Leeanne, who was obviously not listening at all, exclaimed as I was reaching my oratorial peak, “hey look you can see Port Arthur!”  The kids cracked up laughing and took delight in telling Nanny and Pappa about the moment last night.

My wife helps me stay grounded.

After visiting Mount Wellington, I decided to take the family to the park where Leeanne and I had our first kiss. I knew exactly where it was, or at least I thought I did. After ten minutes driving round in circles, I finally gave in and listened to Leeannes advice about where the park actually was. Turns out I was in the wrong suburb. Read the rest of this entry »

We have had a great week!

We have missed Maddi who has been at the Uluru basecamp, but we have enjoyed staying in Sandy Bay and taking the kids to some of the places that were important to both Leeanne and I.

Yesterday we made the trek up to the top of Mount Wellington. It was a significant moment for me as I stood in the place where I had committed to stay in Tasmania 20 years earlier.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today is Good Friday.

It is the day we are reminded that the Christian faith stands in direct opposition to what the world counts as success. Our faith calls us to a life that is produced by death.

This morning our little church went on the twelve step journey of the stations of the cross. It was a sobering path that confronted me again with the sheer violence of the event that is at the heart of all we are about.

When Jesus invites us to take up our crosses, he is inviting us to a confronting, counter-cultural life. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m really enjoying this oasis of time in my life. It really feels like a moment to be able to step back, process the last 20 years and prepare for the next 20.

One of the things I have been thinking about is just how normal it is to think your assumptions about life are true.

One of my favourite quotes is by Albert Einstein:

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Einstein introduces the idea that it’s not what you are thinking about that is the problem, it is the level you are able to think about it.

He also said:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

One of the sadnesses for me, is often how dysfunctional and out of touch we Christians seem to be when we engage with the world. It can sometimes look a little bit like we are stuck in an outdated way of seeing the world. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a longer post than I would normally post, but I wanted you to have the chance to read an article I have written about Kingdom Cells.

Sit back with a cuppa and enjoy the read!

Kingdom Cells: The other structure of the body of Christ

Mark Greene, the executive director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, wrote an essay called The Great Divide in which he argues that the church is failing in its mission.

He says “It is because of SSD (Sacred Secular Divide) that the vast majority of Christians feel that they do not get any significant support for their daily work from the teaching, preaching, prayer, worship, pastoral, group aspects of local church life. No support for how they spend 50 percent of their waking lives. As one teacher put it ‘I spend an hour a week teaching Sunday School and they haul me up in front of the church to pray for me. The rest of the week I’m a full time teacher and the church has never prayed for me. That says it all’.”^[1]

Greene points out “Globally, 98% of Christians are neither envisioned nor equipped for mission in 95% of their waking lives. But just imagine if they were….”^[2]

In 1975, the founder of Youth With A Mission, Loren Cunningham, believed God showed him a different view of mission.^[3] A day or so later he met Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade and found that God had been saying the exact same thing to him. A few weeks later he discovered that author and founder of the L’Abri community, Francis Schaeffer, was talking about the same vision on national television.

The realization was that mission was more than geographic. All three men believed God had shown them that the church needed to see the different spheres (taken from 2 Cor 10:13) of the world and to ensure that they each were being influenced by mission.

Loren outlined what he believed were the seven spheres in which the church needed to discover its ministry:

1. The Home
2. The Church
3. Education
4. Government and Politics
5. The Media
6. The Arts, Entertainment and Sports
7. The Economy including business and science

Theologian David Bosch says mission is “the good news of God’s love incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of the world.”[4] If we accept both Greene’s summary of the dilemma and Bosch’s definition of mission, then it is time to re-look a the communities we are expecting to incarnate the good news of God’s love into the different spheres that Cunningham, Bright and Schaeffer identified. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things that I have enjoyed about doing the Arrow Leadership program are the number of ideas that bubble around in the back of my head in the weeks and months following one of the week long residential conferences.

Last week Senior Pastor from Barrabool Hills Baptist church, Graham Clarke, made the assertion, that we are on the edge of a second reformation.

This kind of talk is not new. In the late nineties a German church-growth researcher, Christian Schwarz, put forward the idea that we are in the era of a third reformation. He asserted that the first reformation took place in the 16th century when Martin Luther fought for the rediscovery of salvation by faith, the centrality of grace and of Scripture. He said the second reformation was around the 18th century when personal intimacy with God was rediscovered. In his view the third reformation is a reformation of structure, or how we actually do church.

I believe Schwarz got it wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sitting in the Virgin Australia lounge at Melbourne airport watching planes come in and out and waiting for my turn to board one of them.

I have seen again today how important it is to step out of your normal world and engage with others.

Missiologist Ralph Winter identified two structures within the body of Christ, the mission group and the local church. Mission groups come in all shapes and sizes. In many ways a mums group is a mission group, and so is a business breakfast and so is an artists colony and so is an organisation like Fusion.

Most of us find our way into a mission group of some sort or other and the fellowship in them is great, and so is the sense that we are doing something important. They have a drawback though: people think like us. Read the rest of this entry »

I was thinking this morning just how important Arrow has been for me. That doesn’t mean it has been comfortable. I find my paradigm regularly challenged and somehow at the same time I find myself encouraged.

You might remember I wrote a short reflection a couple of weeks ago on strategic planning and quoted Will Mancini who said:

Have you ever put the wrong document in the paper shredder? There’s no way to get it back. You just can’t put the strips back together, not amount of time or tape will fix it. A similar thing happens to vision when you develop a strategic plan. The assumption is that more information will produce clearer direction, but just the opposite is true. I call this the “fallacy of complexity”. Too much information shreds the big picture into so many small pieces that the vision is hopelessly lost. More information equals less clarity.

Last night and today we had Graham Clarke take us for three sessions on Strategic Planning.

My experiences of strategic planning have not always been positive… in fact the very combination of those two words brings up feelings of nausea. I was deeply encouraged though, by Graham’s approach. Read the rest of this entry »

We have the afternoon off at the Arrow residential conference so I thought I would take the chance to catch up on a bit of email and record a couple of reflections about what I have been learning so far.

Arrow (http://www.arrowaustralia.com.au/) is a program for mentoring and encouraging emerging leaders in the Australian Christian church. I am now into my second year and have found it extremely helpful. The arrow process consists of four 5 day conferences over two years, as well as a list of books to read and a weekly journal to use as the basis of reflection.

The speakers at the conference are some of the best in the country and the material is very useful, but one of the other aspects of the program that is possibly just as important is getting the chance to engage with a group of people who are all in leadership positions in churches or Christian organisations and yet come from very different backgrounds.

I really enjoyed, for instance, trying to understand the heart of the approach taken by Sydney Anglicans through catching up with a couple of the guys here. I  come from a very different background and have different understandings, but it is great to be able to seek to understand people who are in a very different ministry context to me.

Karl Faase took us for Change Management today, and one of the most helpful parts of it for me was the first session where Karl pointed out that before we look to change an organisation we need to be ready to look at ourselves and face the things in us that might need to change.

He quoted Robert Quinn from the book Deep Change who wrote:

The problem is that to grow we must confront our own immaturity, selfishness and lack of courage. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got a little bit of time here at Melbourne airport while I wait for my fellow Arrow participants to arrive.

I’ve been looking forward to this week. I have found real encouragement and challenging stimulation through the Arrow leadership program.

At the start of the Arrow program they warn participants that normally around 40% of us will be in a different role by the time we are finished. That warning has certainly been true for me, and I come to this week in transition and still working out what exactly I am transitioning to.

I’ve been enjoying the process of finishing off the Kingdom Cells book and getting it ready for publication.

One of the things I have found particularly valuable are the number of church and Christian leaders who have volunteered really useful feedback and seen the book as important.

I have been chewing over feedback I had from Peter Corney a few months ago where he pointed out that the link between God’s Spirit and the Kingdom of God needed to be clearer in the manuscript.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well here we are at the end of the week.

It has been an important week for Leeanne and I as we have been wrestling with what God is asking of us at the moment.

For the first time for ages I have chosen to fast from breakfast and lunch each day and just eat the evening meal with the family. I decided not to fast coffee because last time I tried that I ended up with the only migraine I have ever had, despite that concession it has been an interesting wrestle.

Fasting means not letting your body determine your actions

In the book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster talks about fasting and how it can help us focus. He says

Fasting helps us keep the balance in lie. How easily we begin to allow nonessentials to take precedence in our lives. How quickly we crave things we do not need until we are enslaved by them. Read the rest of this entry »