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.

One of the dangers for a world that is centred around organisations and organisational structure is that we can end up fitting people into a box rather than seeing our job as helping them become who they were created to be. When we take it to extremes, a management paradigm of control can be the antithesis of the Kingdom of God. Eugene Peterson, in Christ plays in Ten Thousand places goes one step further: “Sin reduces the people around us to roles or objects so that we can use them or manipulate them or condescendingly help them. They are depersonalized so that we don’t have to be relational with them. And, of course, the moment that happens, there is no love – there cannot be any love, for love is a relationship or it is nothing.”

So how do we organise ourselves in a way that gives people a platform and not a straight-jacket?
Most militaries are organized on the standard organizational structure model, with each corporate layer clearly marked by emblems of rank. The problem is, the standard organizational structure is terrible for making good decisions. The person at the top of the pyramid is usually so far from the action in the field that they simply cannot understand all the factors necessary to make decisions well.

I have a paper written by Capt M.M. O’Leary on the state of the Canadian Army . His point is that the Canadian military is in trouble, because it has developed a culture of what he calls “hierachism”. His believes that the army need to discover the German concept of “Auftragstaktik.” It is a fairly obscure German word, but it means that each German officer and NCO would:

“do without question or doubt whatever the situation required, as he personally saw it. Omission and inactivity were considered worse than a wrong choice of expedient. Even disobedience of orders was not inconsistent with this philosophy.”

I was fascinated as Captain O’Leary quoted from Gabriel and Savage’s (11) attributes of a good combat officer , that two of them were,

“Look carefully at a man who gets low marks on “tact” and who “deviates from accepted doctrine.” He may be creative.”

And

“An officer who gets low marks on loyalty is especially valuable, for he is unwilling to acquiesce to his superior’s policies without debate. He is likely to have an independent mind.”

O’Leary finishes his paper with the quote:

“Only he can command who has the courage and initiative to disobey.”

Auftragstaktik is essentially about empowerment. It places the ability to make decisions in the hands of people who are on the front line. I love that it evokes the picture of the band of brothers (and sisters) who are shoulder to shoulder and responding to the challenges that come to them, as they come.

Auftragstaktik can only work in small groups and requires that those teams trust each other and trust that they have the freedom to make decisions. Empowering organisations are ones that don’t try to control from the top down, but encouraged initiative and creativity by delegating authority as well as responsibility to the lowest functional point in the organisational structure.

Margaret Wheatley writes, in her book Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World , that we need to learn to look for order rather than control in our organisations. She says,

“I want to trust in this universe so much that I give up playing God. I want to stop struggling to hold things together. I want to experience such security that the concept of “allowing”—trusting that the appropriate forms will emerge—ceases to be scary. I want to surrender my fear of the universe and join with everyone I know in an organization that opens willingly to its environment, participating gracefully in the unfolding dance of order.”

The quest to bring order rather than control is a biblical principle. The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, literally means for everything and everyone to be in their right place, “to be whole”. Wheatley is effectively arguing for faith as the basis of organisational management, trusting that there will be order, however she doesn’t have a framework to explain why or how that order will be created. The science simply tells her it’s there. We, on the other hand, believe there is someone to trust when we let go. Proverbs 3:5-6 says

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

For the Hebrew people the heart was actually the centre of the will, not the centre of feelings. You made decisions with your heart, this verse is calling for the kind of trust that Margaret Wheatley says we need, but trust and decisions based on the fact of a God who brings order, not just the hope that order will somehow mysteriously appear.

So the best organisations seek order rather than control, which requires a high level of trust either in the universe or in God, either way the outcome is that they create platforms for people to fulfil their God given potential.

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.

Fr. Kolbe had made a name for himself in the prison, quietly serving and comforting wherever he could. As a result he was singled out for special punishment and after one incident that nearly killed him, his response to his persecutors had such a profound affect on the German Doctor that he later testified “I can say with certainty that during my four years in Auschwitz, I never saw such a sublime example of the love of God and one’s neighbor.”

In July 1941, as punishment for the escape of a prisoner, ten men were randomly selected to be locked up without food and water until they died. One of them cried out that his wife and children needed him. Fr. Kolbe stepped forward and said “I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.” Maximilian Kolbe was the last of the ten prisoners to die, his life ended by a lethal injection because he survived for so long without food or water.

The escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a latrine, he hadn’t even escaped.

In the moment, the commandant looked like the one with power, but it was the  brave polish priest that continues to have impact today.

Jesus showed up, even in the hell of the most evil place on earth.

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.

It was fun taking the kids to another place that marked a turning point in both of our lives. Sophie took the photo as we stood on the very spot.

At my 40th birthday, Leeanne recounted what was going through her head as she walked up the aisle. She looked at me and apparently thought, “O.K. God, I’m up for the ride, wherever it takes us.”

It took me a while to get used to the idea I was married. A look of concern would cross my new wife’s face every time I would look at her with surprise and say, “Hey, we are married!”

I remember the moment it started to sink in. I was waking up on Easter Sunday Morning in 1996 (two years after our wedding and with a baby in the other bedroom), and I looked at my wife and realised that even if the Easter event I had been organising was a complete failure, even if Fusion, who I was working with, disappeared overnight, even if all the things that helped me feel ok about myself disappeared, Leeanne would still be my wife and Maddi would still be my baby daughter. It sounds so obvious, but it was a revelation for me.

I have heard a number of people say, “A wedding takes a day, but a marriage takes a lifetime”, and thats certainly true in my experience. It took me a long time to even realised I was married, and longer to start to understand just how profoundly different my wife was from me, and to let that be o.k.

We still see the world very differently. As I was driving through McDonalds drive through to get the obligatory coffee yesterday Leeanne said to me, “I like those stick figures people have on their cars, I think what you wrote in your blog about that was stupid.”

I tried to rationally explain my bigger point about marketing moving to find a false sense of individuality in the midst of conformity. She replied “you think too deeply, I like them and your blog was dumb.”

I love my wife and I am very proud of her. She is both my strongest advocate and harshest critic. I need both.

The ride, over the last 18 years, has been long and complicated. I don’t think I understood what it meant for her to be caring for four children under five years old with a husband who was off trying to save the world.

I don’t think I understood what it meant for her to live for five years in a housing service for homeless teenagers with our four energetic kids who were completely oblivious to any potential dangers.

I don’t think I understood what it meant for her to move back to Poatina and for us to step into a very complex environment as we did our best to help Fusion move through a very confusing and messy phase of it’s life.

To be honest I still don’t think I understand, I’m not sure I ever will, but I am grateful how much more I understand now than I did 18 years ago.

Throughout the journey, Leeanne and I have grown closer but also gradually more ourselves too. She is just so completely different to me, and I am grateful for that.

Leeanne and I often comment on people that get married two or three times that they are far braver than us. Our marriage is so much better now than it was, but the growth has come at a price of mistakes and hurt and misunderstanding. I would hate to start at square one again!

As I look back at old photos and realise how young we were, I am grateful for the ride but am very pleased to be at this point on the journey!

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.

I have often recounted the moment. I had just finished Fusion’s six month intensive mission training course and was doing a six month placement in Hobart, Tasmania.

Fusion’s work in Tasmania had been through a challenging patch of time after the main leader had left to work in another state two years previously. I came fresh out of the training with lots of good ideas and not much else. I was terribly lonely, disillusioned and wondering whether God was actually there. All the things I thought seemed so easy in a classroom now seemed so complicated in real life. I kept looking for someone to tell me what to do, but no one seemed to know.

Our little team went to the home of an older friend and former Fusion staff worker’s house for Sunday lunch and the conversation turned to Fusion in Tasmania. I remember clearly his words, “People have been coming and going from the team here in Hobart for too long, what it really needs is someone to dig in and commit.”

I remember the sick feeling in my stomach as I knew in my heart God was saying “Matt, that’s you.”

I wrestled for a week but eventually gave in. I drove to the top of Mt. Wellington, which towers over the small city, and prayed, “Ok God, you’ve got me, I’m willing to accept the challenge of this city.”

That moment of commitment changed how I viewed my time in Hobart. I continued to make mistakes, lots of them, but they became points of learning as I continued to grow. I found myself more able to be creative, because I was now working towards a vision I carried rather than looking to others for direction.

By the time I eventually left Australia’s southernmost State eight years ago, I hadn’t started a national movement, abolished slavery or become a national hero, but I had made a difference, a real difference.

It was interesting to be back at the place where I committed myself to ministry with Fusion. Twenty years on I was back up the mountain with three of my kids and my wife, all of which who I had no idea about when I made the choice in 1992.

American author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman said:

“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society — more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.”

For me, Mount Wellington was the moment where I found my real job, and for 20 years I have continued along that path.

This visit felt significant because I find myself again at a point of transition.

As I looked over the beautiful vista of Southern Tasmania, I had a sense that the commitment in 1992 and all of the mistakes, highs and lows that came from it has prepared me for whatever the next chapter will be.

N.T. Wright points out,

“One of the great triumphs of the movie the Lord of the Rings is that it takes precisely the opposite line, urging us to find our true selves by following and staying loyal to the vocation that we wouldn’t have chosen, that comes to us from outside.”

It feels a bit like I’m in the process of discovering the exact details of the next chapter of the journey, but some of the themes are emerging.

Since stepping down from organizational leadership of Fusion, I have been is exploring how to more effectively support and empower churches who want to engage in mission.

More and more I believe that this is a critical time of transition for the world generally and as a result the Christian church is needing to think in new ways if it is going to be relevant.

I look forward to seeing how its all going to work out. I might take my grandchildren up the mountain in 2032.

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.

N.T. Wright puts it well in his book The Challenge of Jesus:

“If we are to be Kingdom-announcers, modeling the new way of being human, we are also to be crossbearers. This is a strange and dark theme that is also our birthright as followers of Jesus. Shaping our world is never for a Christian a matter of going out arrogantly thinking we can just get on with the job, reorganizing the world according to some model that we have in mind. It is a matter of sharing and bearing the pain and puzzlement of the world so that the crucified love of God in Christ may be brought to bear healingly upon the world at exactly that point. Because Jesus bore the cross uniquely for us, we do not have to purchase forgiveness again; it’s been done. But because, as he himself said, following him involves taking up the cross, we should expect, as the New Testament tells us repeatedly, that to build on his foundation will be to find the cross etched into the pattern of our life and work over and over again.”

Death produces life.

Everything in me wants to protest that there must be another way, an easier way, a way that doesn’t involve as much suffering.

This, however, is the life to which we are called.

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.

I came across a business book that takes scientific principles and applies them to Student Affairs Practice. One chapter deals with paradigms.

A paradigm is a system of assumptions about the nature of reality that is integrated, pervasive, holistic, and internally consistent. A paradigm establishes the ground rules for explaining on the broadest level the nature of the world and the place of human beings. It is the filter through which all human beings interpret the world around them. It is from within a paradigm that human beings understand what is real, what is false, what is possible, and to what they should pay attention. Because one’s thinking is so embedded in a paradigm, it is difficult to step outside of it and grasp its outlines.
Paradigms are seen most easily when examining other times or other civilizations. One becomes aware of different ways of viewing the world when, for example, one is immersed in cultures of the Eastern world, which see the world in very different ways. Paradigms also become more visible when the paradigm of one’s own civilization is changing. The beginning of the twenty-first century is a time of such paradigm change, or what Kuhn (1970) named “paradigm shift.”

I actually don’t think we need to be scared of paradigm shifts. Paradigm shifts like the reformation and even the place of small groups have helped the church become more of what we were meant to be. The church has often been at the forefront of leading paradigm shift in the world, whether it be about education, slavery, democracy or ending communism. The word of God seems to speak in revolutionary ways to successive generations.

Paradigm shift though, confronts our institutions.

The book says:

“Each of us lives and works in organizations designed from Newtonian images of the universe. We manage by separating things into parts, we believe that influence occurs as a direct result of force exerted from one person to another, we engage in complex planning for a world we keep expecting to be predictable, and we search continuously for better methods of objectively measuring and perceiving the world”

As I read this statement about organizational structure, it didn’t take much imagination to also imagine a similar kind of phrase written about the Christian Church.

We don’t need to become better at doing what we are doing, we need to be ready to play a whole new game.

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.

Karl Barth wrote for the first World Council of Churches Assembly in 1948 that “The Church is neither the invisible fellowship, nor the visible community of all those who believe in Christ; nor is it a monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic form of the latter. The Church is the ‘event’ in which two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus Christ, i.e. in the power of his calling and commission. Church order is concerned exclusively with this event, with the living congregation itself.”

“The primary, normal and visible form of this event is the local congregation, meeting in a ‘parish’ or ‘district’ with clearly defined boundaries. Such a local congregation is constituted by the possibility and the actuality of regular public worship, i.e. common worship at which the Atonement made by Jesus is proclaimed, as the ground of our hope. The Church lives (she is) in this visible, concrete transaction (prayer, confession of faith, Baptism, Lord’s Supper, the proclamation and reception of the Gospel) and in its presuppositions (theology, training of the young) and its consequences (brotherly discipline, pastoral care and other oversight). The Church lives (she actually is) in the form of a local congregation, which is the basis of all other forms of her life.”[5]

I am not advocating for a new kind of congregation, but a rediscovery of the fact that the body of Christ has different forms of life, as Barth points out, of which the local congregation is a fundamental and foundational part but not the only form.

I would like to suggest that throughout the history of the church, God has used another structure as Christians engaged with the world, what Ralph Winter called the sodality.

In 1973, Missiologist Ralph Winter proposed the thesis that there have been two redemptive structures that God has used in every human society throughout history.

The first structure, Winter calls modalities. He uses this label to describe the gathering of the Body of Christ, what we would traditionally call church. Winter says the defining characteristic of this structure is that it includes old and young, male and female. Everyone is welcome.

He then points out that “Paul’s missionary band can be considered a prototype of all subsequent missionary endeavours organized out of committed, experienced workers who affiliated themselves as a second decision beyond membership in the first structure.”^[6] He calls this structure sodalities.

Winter’s thesis was accepted fairly broadly by both mission organisations and academics.^[7] It helped to explain the ongoing dialogue and tension between what some people call church and para-church and it helped to explain the way religious orders exist alongside local congregations in some of the older traditions.

The danger with what Winter is saying though is that it can lead the reader to believe that some people are called to make what he calls “a second level choice – an additional specific commitment,”^[8] and others aren’t. It could be understood to mean that some people are called to mission and others aren’t. If we accept that “mission” means as Bosch asserts, “the good news of God’s love incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of the world.”[9], then it must be taken as given that we all have a call to mission.

N.T. Wright asserts that the Christian Vocation is to be “in prayer, in the spirit, at the place where the world is in pain, ………. with arms outstretched, holding on simultaneously to the pain of the world and the love of God.”^[10] This is the vocation for all, not just for some.

What this means in practise is that the businessman, the mother, the artist, the grandparent, the pastor, the high school student, the plumber and the homeless person are all charged with the same assignment: to look for, in their context, the place of pain and work with Jesus to bring God’s redemptive love.

One of the weaknesses in current ecclesiology has been the significant focus on the place and form of congregation to the detriment of other forms of the Body of Christ and particularly an understanding of the form that enables believers to express their specific vocation outside the context of congregation.

Where Winter’s thesis is particularly useful is that it suggests another form for believers to express their vocation and as we look at the sweep of church history, we do indeed see that God seems to have used, and continues to use, small groups of Christ Followers, working together in fellowship, outside the context of congregation, to bring about significant change in the world.

Instead of the technical term, sodalities and the meaning that Winter has imbued that term, I am calling these groups “Kingdom Cells”. Kingdom Cells can exist in any sphere and are focussed on the redemptive work of God in that sphere. What defines a Kingdom Cell, as opposed to fellowship group, is this shared mission.

This is a different structure to the local congregation. It is a grouping of people with similar specific vocation, not merely for fellowship, but for action. This common purpose results in a level of inter-personal connection that is usually deeper than would be experienced in a local congregation.

Allan Hirsch quotes author Victor Turner in his book The Forgotten Ways to explain this deeper kind of connection. He says “Communitas in (Turner’s) view happens in situations where individuals are driven to find each other through a common experience of ordeal, humbling, transition, and marginalization. It involves intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging brought about by having to rely on each other in order to survive.”^[11]

Hirsch says “communitas can be at work in less hazardous situations, like sports teams, where a group of otherwise individualistic people band together to achieve a common task. They become a team around a common challenge.”^[12]

Two historical examples of “Kingdom Cells” are The Inklings and the Clapham Sect.

Two of the most influential authors of the twentieth century were good friends. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were both professors at Oxford University and formed a group that met twice a week called the “Inklings.”

The members believed in the power of the written word and the purpose of the group was for members to receive often robust criticism from others about their unfinished work. Tolkien and Lewis particularly both understood the importance of myth in shaping identity (Tolkien wrote a famous essay on it), and both undertook to write books that would serve that purpose. The Narnia series and Lord of the Rings were the result.

The inklings were not working on a shared task, Tolkien alone wrote the Lord of the Rings, but as people who had a similar vocation, a similar mission, they were able to encourage, challenge and inspire one another. This kind of Kingdom Cell is most appropriate when a person’s vocation is clearly an individual one, but where others have similar vocations. The creative arts, parenting and senior leadership in business are examples of vocations where this sort of Kingdom Cell might be the most appropriate.

The Clapham Sect is another example of a Kingdom Cell; however they were a group of people that worked collectively towards shared goals because of shared values. Historian Stephen Tomkins describes them as “a network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce as its centre of gravity, who were powerfully bound together by their shared moral and spiritual values, by their religious mission and social activism, by their love for each other, and by marriage.”^[13]

Historian, Dr. Marjorie Bloy, says of the Clapham Sect, “It is doubtful whether a single small congregation has in the history of Christendom exercised such a far-flung influence. They fostered evangelical Christianity; encouraged the Church Missionary Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society; encouraged the good administration of India;  encouraged education and backed the Sunday School movement (Robert Raikes); founded Sierra Leone, and Zachary Macaulay put it on its feet; attacked blood sports, duelling and gambling; set higher standards of morality in public life; set higher standards of active concern in politics and abolished the slave trade. “^[14]

This form of Kingdom Cell, with a significant shared external goal  is the most effective way  for Christians to work towards societal change, respond to need or effectively proclaim the gospel.

Not every Kingdom Cell will have such profound and far reaching impact, but every Kingdom Cell will change the world as its members discover their vocation and pursue it.

Kingdom Cells don’t have to be highly structured. Some mothers groups, where mums have the chance to find fellowship in their mission of nurturing their children bear all the hallmarks of Kingdom Cells.

Some fellowships of business people, where people are afforded the chance simply to share each others lives and wrestle together with what the Redemptive Life of Christ looks like in their particular business can be Kingdom Cells.

I recently spoke to the lead singer from a previously fairly popular Australian rock band who describe the clear mission of the band and how it exhibited all the elements of a Kingdom Cell.

At Poatina, where I live, we have an Arts colony where musicians, painters, glass artists and dancers share the journey of living their faith through their art.

Many mission groups are Kingdom Cells when they are at their best. In Australia organisations like Cornerstone, YWAM, Christian Surfers, Fusion, Mustard and many others all actively create Kingdom Cells as a central part of their approach to mission.

N.T. Wright says “”The evidence points, I suggest, towards Jesus intending to establish, and indeed succeeding in establishing, what might be called cells of followers, mostly continuing to live in their towns and villages, who by their adoption of his praxis, his way of being Israel, would be distinctive within their local communities.”[15]

Kingdom Cells though, still need to be part of the life of a local congregation. Because the members of a Kingdom Cell are focussed on a particular mission they will tend to mix with people who think and act like them. One of the (often valid) criticisms of mission organisations is that they tend to draw people away from commitment to the local church congregation. The local congregation is, and must be, central to God’s Kingdom on earth.

The local congregation of old and young, rich and poor, educated and uneducated is the fundamental building block of the Kingdom of God. It is in this setting of broad fellowship in the context of worship, the word and sacraments that we are reminded that we, and our mission, are not the centre of the universe.

As we come together with fellow believers who who don’t look, think, act, sound or smell like us, we are forced out of our normal self absorption and  we are reminded that the rightful centre of the Universe is actually Jesus.

In his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand places, Eugene Peterson argues that there is a real danger in our vocation becoming our identity and our identity replacing God without the rhythm Sabbath: “If there is no Sabbath – no regular and commanded not-working, not-talking – we soon become totally absorbed in what we are doing and saying, and God’s work is either forgotten or marginalised. When we work we are most god-like, which means that it is in our work that it is easiest to develop god-pretensions. Un-sabbathed, our work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives. We lose the capacity to sing “This is my Father’s world” and end up chirping little self-centred ditties about what we are doing and feeling.”[16]

Kingdom Cells are the support infrastructure by which believers most effectively live out their vocation, and when healthy they bring life and energy to the local congregation.

One model of Kingdom Cells that initially sparked my interest was the story of Basil the Great who lived in 300 A.D. He, and the order of monks he established, were distinctive because they served the local community at it’s point of need and as a result transformed whole economies.

Pope Benedict says of Basil of Cappadocia, “In reality, St. Basil created a special kind of monasticism, not closed off from the local Church, but open to it. His monks were part of the local Church, they were its animating nucleus. Preceding others of the faithful in following Christ and not merely in having faith, they showed firm devotion to him — love for him — above all in works of charity. These monks, who established schools and hospitals, were at the service of the poor and showed Christian life in its fullness.”^[17](emphasis mine)

Kingdom cells become the animating nucleus for the congregations of which they are part, however they are a separate structure to those congregations. Kingdom Cells are often made up of members from different congregations and are usually not directly accountable to a congregation.

While both members of the Inklings and members of the Clapham Sect were members of local congregations, they were not accountable to the local congregation for their vocation. It would have been absurd for the rector to attempt to tell Lewis how to write the Narnia Chronicles or Wilberforce how to manage his political agenda.

Healthy Kingdom Cells have five core characteristics:

1. The motivation of the members of a Kingdom Cell is their love for, and obedience to Christ:

Alan Hirsch in his book “Forgotten Ways” says: “I have become absolutely convinced that it is Christology, and in particular the primitive, unencumbered Christology of the NT church, that lies at the heart of the renewal of the church at all times and in every age.”  ^[18]

Steve Addison researched different phases of the Christian movement and came up with five common ingredients amongst all of them, the first being a “White Hot Faith.” He says “All the great movement pioneers learned to both surrender to God in crisis and to seek his grace through the practice of spiritual disciplines. Their secret is the joy they experience as they discover that Christ is sufficient.”^[19]

Os Guinness wrote “Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him. First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia).”^[20]

There is a very real danger that we can end up as activists, focused on what we do. Jesus isn’t a program, an idea or even a feeling. Jesus is a person. Only a living, open, free relationship with him, and submission to his will, produces the kind of life that fuels a Kingdom Cell.

In biological terms, Jesus would be the D.N.A. of a Kingdom Cell. He is the pattern of life. In fact he makes that clear when he says in John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

2. There is a commitment to a mission that calls the members of a Kingdom Cell beyond themselves:

American author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman said, “The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society — more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.”^[21]

The Bible won’t clearly show you what your individual job is, and the truth is that many people never do the work to even ask the question.

Before Paul introduces our call to the ministry (which literally means service), and the message (the logos or word of God) of reconciliation, he takes time to communicate how it works.           2 Corinthians 5:17 says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:The old has gone, the new is here!”

The Greek word for new creation is Ktisis. That word more literally means a blueprint, and not a finished product.

What Paul is actually saying is something like, “If you have invited Jesus to come in as Lord of your life, you have commenced a project with him to build your life. He has the plans, so make sure you stay in touch with the architect!”

Ephesians 2:10 says “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Each one of us is on a lifelong journey to be us, through living out God’s call on our lives. There is a heresy that has emerged amongst many Christians that our vocation comes from us, and that we detect it by listening to our feelings.

N.T. Wright points out, “One of the great triumphs of the movie the Lord of the Rings is that it takes precisely the opposite line, urging us to find our true selves by following and staying loyal to the vocation that we wouldn’t have chosen, that comes to us from outside.”^[22]

3. There is a real fellowship that emerges amongst them:

I have already described how the shared mission produces a special kind of fellowship described as communitas.

Over the last 20 or 30 years, churches have discovered the significance of small groups that come together through the week for fellowship and Bible study.  This mode is now widely accepted as a fundamental of most church structures. In his book, New Wineskins, Howard A. Snyder says “A small group of eight to twelve people meeting together informally in homes is the most effective structure for the communication of the gospel in modern seculurban society.”^[23]

Church small groups, however, are generally not Kingdom Cells. Church small groups do not usually have a strong external mission, and so as a result, while they might enjoy a high level of fellowship, they will not generally experience the kind of communitas that Hirsch references.

Kingdom Cells, though, are generally small groups. A small number of people enables a Kingdom Cell to function effectively as a work team and experience a deep level of interpersonal connection.

Robin Dunbar, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford, hypothesizes that the maximum number of intimate relationships people have is between five and seven.^[24]

Another author, Antony Jay, in his book The Corporation Man, says  “The basic unit is [a group] which varies from three to twelve or fifteen in number, and perhaps optimizes somewhere around ten; that this group is bound together by a common objective, and that the bond of trust and loyalty thus formed can become an extremely powerful uniting force; that the group needs to decide on (or at least take part in deciding on) its own objective, and to work out for itself how that objective shall be achieved…”^[25]

As a Kingdom Cell starts to grow beyond a core group of 8 to 10, it becomes harder and harder to maintain the level of intimacy that is necessary for real fellowship and effective collective action.

4. They are generally hospitable and welcoming the honest engagement of others:

One of the features of Kingdom Cells is that their mission is usually derived from their service to others. Whether they are artists, business people or members of the Clapham Sect, it is the openness to the world of the other that enables them to be effective in their vocation.

In his book, Reaching Out, Henri Nouwen defines hospitality as “primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.”^[26]

He goes on to say that “The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the life style of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.”^[27]

Hospitality requires a fundamental willingness to be open to different ways of seeing the world. It requires openness to people with different value systems and different life experiences. Hospitality is deeply confronting.

To truly see transformation we need to be ready to step outside of the neat and tidy world we have created for ourselves.

Nouwen says “Really honest receptivity means inviting the stranger into our world on his or her terms, not on ours. When we say, ‘You can be my guest if you believe what I believe, think the way I think and behave as I do, we offer love under a condition or for a price. This leads easily to exploitation, making hospitality into a business.”^[28]

Later Nouwen says “But receptivity is only one side of hospitality. The other side, equally important, is confrontation. To be receptive to the stranger in no way implies that we have to become neutral ‘nobodies’. Real receptivity asks for confrontation because space can only be a welcoming space when there are clear boundaries, and boundaries are limits between which we define our own position. Flexible limits, but limits none the less. Confrontation results from the articulate presence, the presence within boundaries, of the host to the guest by which he offers himself as a point of orientation and a frame of reference.”^[29]

A normal approach to ministry or social work is to look for people with a problem that you can help them solve. Even if that problem is the absence of a relationship with Jesus Christ, this approach inherently comes from a point of view, “I’m ok but you’re not ok and if you listen to me I will make you ok.”

Kingdom Cells are different. Instead of seeing people as clients, outsiders are invited inside.

When a Kingdom Cell is alive, discovering Jesus and his Kingdom happens as people encounter each other.

A Kingdom Cell becomes what Nouwen calls a “point of orientation or a frame of reference”^[30]; to let our lives do the communicating rather than our technique.

5. They seek to empower rather than build a structure around themselves:

Power, according to Max Weber^[31], is to have the coercive force to make others yield to your wishes, even against their will. He contrasts that to Authority which he says is established when someone is able to elicit compliance because others want to obey.

Authority is bestowed by followers who are therefore empowered. Power is taken from subjects who are therefore disempowered. Jesus had a great deal of Authority but rejected power.

At one point, two of the disciples had their mother ask Jesus if they could have special privileges, extra power in his kingdom.

Jesus used the moment to illustrate the difference between how the world works and how his kingdom works. He said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”^[32]

Tony Campolo in his discussion of the nature of power highlights the work of American Sociologist Willard Waller.  Waller contended that there was an inverse relationship between love and power. He called this insight the “principle of least interest.” Waller contended that in any relationship, the person who has the most power exercises the least amount of love, the person who loves the most has the least power.”^[33]

A person who loves, opens themselves to pain, but a person who loves is most likely to be loved in return. Authority grows through love, and not through power.

Love isn’t an easy thing though, as Eugene Peterson points out: “Love is the most context-specific act in the entire spectrum of human behaviour. There is no other single human act more dependent on and immersed in immediate context. A dictionary is nearly worthless in understanding and practising love. Acts of love cannot be canned and then used off the shelf. Every act of love requires creative and personal giving, responding and serving appropriate to – context specific to – both the person doing the loving and the person being loved.”^[34]

Real love creates freedom and enables people to grow. The test of love is failure. In Growing Leaders, James Lawrence makes the assertion, “Love is the defining mark of Christian community (John 13:34-35), forgiveness is the natural result of love. If forgiveness is not part of our culture, we will restrict growth in leadership and discipleship. Leaders grow when they know they can make mistakes and not be thrown out. The defining moment for a church or organization is not when things are going well, but when their leaders let them down or make a mistake. How will we respond at that moment?”^[35]

Where a Kingdom Cell is present, ordinary people are attracted and people with an investment in maintaining the status quo are repelled, because the Kingdom cannot be controlled by power.

Kingdom Cells have been so effective over the last 2000 years because, instead of seeking power and control, they have loved, which has meant they gain authority and influence.

I would like to suggest that it is time for us to move beyond the conversation about how we make the local congregation more culturally relevant, and focus again on what it means to adopt the praxis of Jesus so we can be distinctive in our own communities.

The most effective way we can do that is by empowering those who are already in the world to discover that they are in the business of bringing God’s redemptive love to the world and that the most effective way they can do that is as part of a Kingdom Cell with five commitments:

1. 1.      A primary commitment to Christ
2. 2.      A commitment to a mission
3. 3.      A commitment to fellowship
4. 4.      A commitment to hospitality
5. 5.      A commitment to empowerment

Wherever you see Christians effectively engaging with the world, you will find most, if not all of the elements of the Kingdom Cell right at the heart of it.

Have you noticed the number of cars around at the moment with white stick figure decals that are meant to represent the occupants of the car? I am also interested that Coke decided to put peoples names on it’s bottles and cans. I think that marketers are picking up that identity is important at the moment. It’s a kind of safe identity that people are reaching for that brings to mind a Monty Python crowd all saying simultaneously “Yes we are all individuals”.

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.

Deep in our hearts, we all want to find and fulfill a purpose bigger than ourselves. Only such a larger purpose can inspire us to heights we know we could never reach on our own. For each of us the real purpose is personal and passionate: to know what we are here to do, and why.

The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.”  

“We detect rather than invent our missions in life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life, therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him. First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia). Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere, and in everything should think, speak, live and act entirely for him. We can therefore properly say as a matter of secondary calling that we are called to homemaking or to the practise of law or to art history. But these and other things are always the secondary, never the primary calling. They are “callings” rather than the “calling.”  They are our personal answer to God’s address, our response to God’s summons. Secondary callings matter, but only because the primary calling matters most.

The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because he made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be……. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

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.

Many different books have been published about how to “do church” in a bigger, healthier or more missional way, and many models from successful churches have been studied and copied. So far this conversation has been largely focused on the shape and form of the local congregation. I would like to humbly suggest that in focusing on the form and structure of church we have been asking the wrong questions.

If the first reformation was the rediscovery of the priesthood of all believers, and the second was the rediscovery of intimacy with God and that each of us can have gifts of the spirit, I believe the third reformation is about the rediscovery that each one of us has a ministry.

For many years we in the church have been seeing mission primarily as about conversion to the Christian faith and getting them into the Sunday service. This was a natural result of the dominant modernist paradigm of the 20^th century.

As we find ourselves in a post modern world, I want to suggest that this vision of mission is too small and holds the majority of people back from discovering their true vocation. Rather than simply converting people to Christianity, our Mission is the extension of the  Kingdom of God, a task that is much broader and more complex, and calls for the full engagement of all of Jesus’s followers.

When Jesus commanded us to “Seek first the Kingdom of God”, he was setting a radical new agenda. Theologian Stanly Grenz wrote that the Kingdom of God “consists in doing the will of God (Matt 6:10; 7:21-23), and it demands a radical decision (13:44-46).” As Grenz emphasises, the Kingdom of God is not about intellectual assent or attendance at a Sunday service, it requires the radical life decision to actually pursue the agenda of Jesus Christ with your whole life.

At the heart of the Christian faith is an understanding that this world was created by God, and was good, but something happened. We too were created by God, but in a special way the human spirit was created in His image.  The tear of self interest, of sin, entered the story and  cut at the heart of a world that was once right but is now right no longer.

We are now, each one of us, in the business of repairing the tear. We see this call to redemptive mission as Jesus appears before his disciples in the upper room in John 20:21 and says “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

We are called to go to the world in the same way Jesus went to the world. Jesus actually uses the language of us taking up our cross five times in the gospels: Twice in Matthew, once in Mark and twice in Luke.

N.T. Wright says that

“The Christian vocation is to be in prayer, in the spirit, at the place where the world is in pain, and as we embrace that vocation, we discover it to be the way of following Christ, shaped according to his messianic vocation to the cross, with arms outstretched, holding on simultaneously to the pain of the world and the love of God.”

Whether you are an artist, a business person, parent, a factory worker or a scientist, our vocation is to be involved in the great project of redemption at the point of pain that God has you.

Wright points out,

“The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview that will mount a historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the post-postmodern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgement and true wisdom. I believe we face the question: If not now, then when? And if we are grasped by this vision, we may also hear the question: If not us, then who?”

A Kingdom focus calls us out of our churches and into the world. We are called to bring our faith back into the messy, dirty, confusing, tragic, hopeless, lost, scary places.

John Stott wrote

“The followers of Jesus are to be different. Different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships -  all of which are the total opposite of the non-Christian world. The Sermon presents life in the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.”

Archbishop of San Salvador and martyr, Oscar Romero said

“I’m going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who, together with his people, has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it; the church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The church follows Jesus, who lived, worked, struggled, and died in the midst of a city, in the polis.”

Our faith does not separate us from the world but places us at the very heart of the deepest pain. It is in this context that we find the purpose of our lives.

Wright says

“You are called prayerfully to discern where in your discipline the human project is showing signs of exile and humbly and boldly, act symbolically in ways that declare the powers have been defeated, the Kingdom has come in Jesus the Jewish Messiah, the new way of being human has been unveiled; and to be prepared to tell the story that explains what these symbols are all about.”

It is this understanding of the Christian Vocation that has been missing from our ecclesiology. We have been so busy wrestling with how to do church that we forgot that our job was to bring the redemption of Jesus Christ and his Kingdom to a hurting world.