Growing Better

Do plants grow better in pots? Would they grow better, spread further with healthier fruits and richer fruits, colours and splendour, if they were not confined to such human vessels? Is there a time - perhaps in starting out, before setting them out into the 'real world' that they need the protection, the direction, the proper containment and focus of energy? Would the risk in wildness be worth the danger of being lost in all the other competing organisms?

Perhaps the answer involves a 'both / and' perspective. Maybe it all depends - on the kind of plant starting, in its purpose, place and with whom you want it to serve or bless or involve.

Maybe some ministries, some churches, need (would be better) healthy focus and containment - both to attract some to them and to release fruit and fragrance to others who long for the plant's life. Maybe those who are 'liminal' in empty pots or those with straggling, struggling plants could experiment in going without pots for awhile. Perhaps the sometimes naive-about-structures emergents could risk planting their new, fledgling organism into a pot - large or small, new or old, knowing that if it be of God the life will continue, the plant will blossom and flourish, the fruit and flower and fragance will bless people - anyway.

Maybe it's like weight-loss program - ie. they all work; the secret is to sticking with the one chosen . . .

Change

That which we would change we must first love.

- ascribed to Martin Luther King Jr.

If the church really sees itself as the people of God, it is obvious that it can never be a static and supra-historical phenomenon, which exists undisturbed by earthly space and historical time. The Church is always and everywhere a living people, gathered together from the peoples of this world and journeying through the midst of time. The Church is essentially on route, on a journey, a pilgrimage. A Church which pitches its tents without looking out constantly for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling. The historical nature of the Church is revealed by the fact that it remains the pilgrim people of God. It renews and continues the history of the ancient people of the covenant and fulfills it in the new covenant. At the same time it journeys through history, through a time of complex imperfection, towards the final perfection, the eschatological kingdom of God, led by God himself. It is essentiallhy an interim Church, a Church in transition, and therefore not a Church of fear but of expectation and hope, a Church which is directed towards the consummation of the world by God.

- From The Church by Hans Kung

Adaptive Leadership

An adaptive leader is the type of leader who develops learning orgnizations and manages to help the organization transition into different forms of expression where agility, responsiveness, innovation, and entrepreneurship are needed. Adaptive leaders are needed in times of significant threat or considerable new opportunity, or both. This has direct relevance to our situation at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

-- Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, Brazos Press

Attractional Church

Essentially, attractional church operates from the assumption that to bring people to Jesus we need to first bring them to church. It also describes the type or mode of engagement that was birthed during the Christendom period of history, when the church was perceived as a central institution of society and therefore expected people to 'come and hear the gospel' rather than taking a 'go-to-them' type of mentality.

-- Aan Hirsch, 'The Forgotten Ways, Brazos Press