Transforming Reality

Christmas...A time for transforming reality

What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about Christmas?  Gifts?  Family and Friends?  Food? Snow?  Santa Claus?  A break from school? Jesus?  Baby Jesus?

Christmas is a special time of year.  All the lights and decorations and colors and evergreen trees and joys and memories make the Christmas season unique.  In fact, there is no other time of year that creates as much excitement as Christmas.

Every year when I was a child, I would write a long list of things that I wanted for Christmas.  It would include all the popular toys and gadgets that I could think of.  Then, I would give it to my parents and wait with excitement and anticipation till Christmas morning.  I wouldn't trade those memories for the world.  As I got older, it became harder for me to think of a list of things that I wanted for Christmas.  After thinking about it for a while, I discovered that I could only come up with 2 or 3 things: A new hat, a sweater, and a Starbucks gift card.

The last couple of years, I have found it increasingly difficult to get excited about Christmas gifts.  It was challenging for me to recieve gifts and to give them to other people.  Its not that I don't want to be generous, but I have a hard time buying gifts for people who have so much in comparison to the rest of the world.  The statistics are astounding:

• 22,000 Children dye each day from starvation
• Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day
• Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.
• Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen

So I began thinking about alternatives.  I haven't spent much time compiling this list, but I do have a few ideas:

1. Make homemade Christmas gifts that require more thought and creativity than spending a few bucks
2. Write a letter to those you love letting them know how much you appreciate them and why.
3. Buy fair trade Christmas gifts that help women in underpriveledge nations make a living.  Globalgirlfriend.com is a great site that I used last year.  
4. Give a goat or some chickens to a family through an organization like Heifer International
5. Somalia could really use your financial support and your prayers.  You can give through organizations like UNICEF and CARE .

I began this post by asking, "What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about Christmas?"  Now, I want to pose a different question.  Image a starving little girl who is about 10 years old.  You can see her ribs because the famine in her country is so severe. What do you think is the first thing that comes to her mind when she thinks about Christmas?  Don't think your gift won't make a diffeence because it will.  Reality is transformed when just one person chooses to stand up and do something about the suffering that is plauguing large parts of the world.      

Earning the Right to be Heard

The Hand and the Road: The Life and Times of John A. Mackay is biography that needs to be read by church leaders. It is a well written and detailed biography on the life of John Mackay. In this biography, John Metzger, the son of Bruce Metzger and grandson of John Mackay chronicles the events of Mackay's life.  Because Mackay kept detailed journals, Metzger is able to articulate not only Mackay's actions, but also the thoughts and feeling that motivated his actions.  The book give a true view into the life of an inspiring and accomplished leader in the church.   

In the book Metzger begins to put the pieces of Mackay's life together beginning with his childhood in Scotland. He does this so meticulously that the reader is clearly able to see the hand of God at work in Mackay's life.  Mackay was born for a purpose. There was a clear path (or "road") that God had paved for him to travel. The road led him to Aberdeen University to study philosophy, to Princeton Seminary to study theology, to Peru as a missionary, and back to Princeton to be the President of the seminary during a very challenging time in the seminary's history (and of course there were many other stops along the road as well).   

One of the central ideas that shaped Mackay's life was the principle: "Earn the right to be heard." When Mackay went to Peru as a missionary not only did he started a school, teach at the university, and served the locals through the YMCA, but he became a Puruvian. He became a part of the indigenous culture. Mackay wasn't just some Scot telling the heathen in Peru about Jesus, he work hard to rid himself of his "Scottishness" in order to earned the right to be heard. 

As followers of Christ today in an increasingly pluralistic and secular world we must earn the right to be heard. The luxuries that Christendom afforded the church (prominence and popularity) are waning.  We are living in a post-Christendom world where cultural Christianity is no longer a reality in many places. These changing dynamics in American culture bring to forefront the importance of John Mackay's life.  He was one amongst many other missionaries who understood what it meant to live missionaly before missional was a buzz word in the church. John Mackay teach us that true missional living is about "earning the right to be heard."     

Leading Through Change

Several years ago I did some work with a church that was forced to deal with reality: Change or die. This was an extremely complex and emotionally taxing situation for this church. The parishioners were stressed by the mere suggestion of change. They couldn't fathom the idea of letting go of their cherish traditions and long held norms. However, they were fully aware that if they continued to ignore reality their demise was imminent. They DIDN'T want to change!!! They DIDN'T want to die. They wanted to continue doing what they had been doing only to get different results.

During my time at this church I did some work with the elders about leading through "adaptive challenges." I drew heavily from Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky. This is an extreme practical book published by Harvard Business School Press. While it is publish by a business school it is intended to help people see the many ways that they can be leaders "at work, at home, in our local communities, and in the global village." In chapter 1 Heifer and Linsky lay a foundation for leaders wanting to lead through adaptive challenges. They write things like:

"We call these adaptive challenges because they require experiments, new discoveries, and adjustments from numerous places in the organization or community.  Without learning new ways - changing attitudes, values, and behaviors - people cannot make the adaptive leap necessary to thrive in the new environment."  

"If Leadership were about giving people good news, the job would be easy."

"People don't resist change per se. They resist loss."  

"You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime."

"But, adaptive work creates risk, conflict, and instability because addressing the issues underlying adaptive problems may involve upending deep and entrenched norms. Thus leadership requires disturbing people - but at a rate they can absorb"

"Adaptive change stimulates resistance because it challenges people's habits, beliefs, and values."

These quotes accentuate the reasons why leading in churches or organization or families in transition is so challenging and dangerous. You are literally disturbing people's equilibrium and this may cause them to react in mean and hurtful ways.   

As I presented the material form Leadership on the Line to the leaders of this particular church in transition, it was like a light bulb came on. They got it!!!! Now it was time to move forward.  

Last week in my Toward a Theology of Church Leadership class we were assigned to read sections of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership which builds on many of the same principles found in Leadership on the Line. After class several students pointed out the irony of using a business school leadership book as the foundation of a leadership course at a seminary. After thinking about their/our concern a little, I came to the conclusion that it is essential for the church to be interdisciplinary aware and open to learning from other fields of study. After all, it only makes sense for leadership principles to have multi-disciplinary relevance because whether in the church or in a corporate setting or in our neighborhoods or in our homes we are leading people. It would be foolish for us to neglect these resources and not benefit from their wisdom. I believe, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership is a must read for every pastor, teacher, administrator, community activist, spouse, parent, and leader in any capacity because we are daily faced with adaptive challenges.   

Why a new Blog?

Why am I starting another blog.  Well...after several unsucessful attempts at starting a blog I decided to try again because I believe that blogs are incredible useful and powerfuls tools.  Blogs allow authors the opportunity of sharing raw and helpful thoughts, reactions, and infomations with the world. They also foster community and allow conversation partners to come together and brainstorm and learn from the experiences of one another. Essentially blogs strengthen community.

I chose to start this blog today because this is my first day in the Th.M. programs at Princeton Theological Seminary. I am excited about re-entering the classroom and being a part of a community centered around Jesus. I hope to be able to extend the influence of the classroom by sharing my experiences, learnings, and thoughts with you. I am particularly interested in the area of church leadership, missional theology, ecumenics, Christian ethics, and emerging forms of church life.

The name for this blog is taken from something David Bosch, a popular missiologist, said in Transforming Mission:

“This idea of mission that transforms reality is deeply rooted in God’s mission. God is not just about doing good in the world — some may question where God is in the face of all that is not good in the world — but rather, God is about recreation, of making all things new, of reconciling humanity to one another and to God. Mission is not about coercion and enculturization into a Western perspective, but it is about recreating humanity and recreating the world. As we develop eyes to see what God is doing in the world and give ourselves to participate with God’s action in the world, we are in mission — mission that transforms reality around it.”  

Bosch, Transforming Mission, p. xv.

Since reading this section of Bosch's book my idea of mission has been evolving. So...I decided to name this blog "Transforming Reality" because I hope that many of the thoughts shared here will center around themes related to God's mission in this world.   

Peace+Hope