many of you know that i am a Christian. and for the last few years my wife and i have been involved in a church plant, called tower mosaic. it's been a difficult time, and we continue to press on in our attempt to do church in a different way, to live missionally, and to really be a community of faith within our community.
anyway, as i was reading the shaping of things to come the other day in stirred in me some questions that i thought i would throw out here. the questions don't reflect on any one person, or any one situation, but are more general. so, please, if you feel like i'm talking about you, don't. and please don't get upset. also, i don't think these questions just apply to church or my setting, i think they also have a more general application, so feel free to answer if you're coming from a different perspective or place in life.
many people in our generation want something different in life, in the way we work within organizations, and in the church context, the way we do church. we say we want to be different, to be innovative. we say we don't want to be influenced by the consumeristic mentality.
these are good things. they are things i have said, and continue to say. yet, it seems that in time, people all sell out. they settle for something else. or choose something else. they embrace the same old methodology. i notice that this often happens around the issue of children. i'm not blaming children, or people for having children, but this seems to be a common factor.
so why do we do it? we do we settle for the same old? why do we buy into, and teach the next generation to do it the same way? why are the "revolutionary" ideas great, until it really applies to me?
3 comments:
What do you mean when you say you notice this happens around the issue of children?
i mean that when people have kids, they often will go back to, or embody the tendencies that we've griped about. does that explain that any?
some quotes to throw into the hopper:
from shaping of things to come, "for our purposes, a working definition of movement is as follows: a group of people organized for, ideologically motivated by, and committed to a purpose that implements some form of personal or social change; who are actively engaged in the recruitment of others; and whose influence is spreading in opposition to the established order within which it originated."
from saul alinsky's rules for radicals, "these do-nothings profess a commitment to social change for ideals of justice, equality, and opportunity, and then abstain from and discourage all effective action for change."
now, these quotes may seem a bit unrelated, but stay with me. the first quote talks about the nature of movements and organizations, and somewhat how they're all going to work. the second kind of relates to what i see happen in movements, or at least what i'm struggling with. and, i'd change alinsky's quote a little for what i'm saying, because i don't think people, self included are do-nothings or are discouraging change. but, the idea of professing that commitment to change, and then when the rubber meets the road, abstaining from participating.
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