Marc's Messages 3.0

Adam's Return: male spirituality

In the left margin of my blog you find links to some of the books I read recently. One I'd like to point out specifically is 'Adam's Return. The five promises of male initiation' by Franciscan author Richard Rohr. He touches on several issues related to shift/reformation that I raised on my blog before, like the need to 'rediscover' a male spirituality, and the role of liminality in our spiritual formation. You might want to check out Rohr's website and this excerpt of an interview with him for an Australian radio station. Some spicy quotes:

Watching the innovators

There are several business innovators and trendwatchers that I keep an eye on, because they're often ahead of the rest of us and offer keen insight in how to play on the ball in fast changing times. To name a few: Michael Katz (e-communication), Phil Cooke (faith and media), Seth Godin (marketing and ideas), Guy Kawasaki (business and innovation) and Tom Peters (leadership and strategy). And of course I should also mention Wolfgang Simson here, but some people are so forward-thinking that they don't bother to make a proper website here and now. ;-) Btw, I just found this quote from George Bernard Shaw in Lammert Vrieling's newsletter that describes this type of people quite well:

"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.
Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.
All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

Doing or singing love songs?

Steve Hill, a simple church planter who - if he's not 'out there' - lives in the Netherlands, loves to provoke. Today he mailed me: "What if John 15 read like this - 'Jesus looked at the disciples, sighed deeply and said, 'I can hardly wait for my marriage supper when we will be united as bride and groom! I can hardly wait to behold you in your beautiful wedding dress and call you my beloved! From now on I am not calling you servants but 'My Bride' because my Father is uniting us in marriage.''

Floyd on simple church

Floyc McClung, who pioneered YWAM in Amsterdam, and currently trains simple church planters in Cape Town, South Africa, returned to the Netherlands for a seminar on 'the future of the church'. He did a pretty good job in pointing out the paradigm shifts we need to become a truly missional Kingdom movement. He quoted a lot from Hirsch and Frost's 'The Shaping of Things to Come', illustrated with stories from his own experience.

Painting the big picture

When pursuing a 'shift' or 'reformation' in the church and society, there are various levels at which we need a renewal of thinking. One level is that of our overall worldview, the relationship between God and men, His foundational purposes with this world. My philosopher friend Evert-Jan Ouweneel, who's part of the Shift and GIDS networks (check out this interesting radio interview with him in Dutch), has the gift of painting a large, holistic perspective of God's restoration plan. At university he's walking his students through world history in just ten hours, which is quite admirable. We talked about how to communicate some of his quite abstract theological-philosophical-reformational megaperspectives to a wider non-academic audience.

The church in transition

Today I taught at a prophetic training in Gorinchem, hosted by Jefferie Lammers, on the topic 'Five marks of the Church in transition'. These are:

1. A revival of prayer, seeking God, abiding in His presence.
2. Getting detached/delivered from 'organized religion', and growing up to maturity.
3. We can be the Church/the Body of Christ anywhere, and as a result we see a myriad of so-called 'new expressions'.
4. A Spirit-led, apostolic lifestyle of breaking open new ground for the Gospel, similar to what we see in the book of Acts; and to move in this dimension God is taking us out of our comfort-zones.
5. A new reformation is taking place, God is challenging us in foundational areas; we need a revival of the heart, a renewal of thinking and a reformation of structures (one cannot do without the other).

Jesus has left the building

In Greece I read Paul Vieira's challenging book 'Jesus Has Left the Building'. Paul relates his own journey out of organized religion, and gives some excellent examples of biblical precendents where God is challenging and even destroying the organized religion of Israel (like the times of the exile). Overall it's a highly prophetic book that speaks to the heart of an emerging generation to really be the church where it matters most: right in society.

Paul Donders on leadership

Today Paul Donders of xpand provided pastors in Utrecht with some handles on leadership in a city-reaching context. I found his holistic and strategic approach highly refreshing after the past few "let's fellowship for the fellowship" sessions. Paul has his roots in the Jesus movement, moved to Germany after his studies to start a community, but didn't want to live in two worlds: the Christian subculture and society. So he started a company that aims to empower leaders in church, business and society with Kingdom leadership principles. Here are some of my notes:

Life outside the church box

The Lord of the Church seems to be leading more and more of His followers out of the church box. As my friend Andreas describes in his post 'A prophet's dilemma', this transition phase from Church As We Know It to Church As God Wants It (Simson terminology) can be challenging. Steve Hill describes the same dillema in his latest newsletter from a more apostolic point of view. He states that our church system has become an idol and is turning more and more young people in East Europe away from Christ. Often we preach a gospel of the church instead of a gospel of the Kingdom that is truly good news to the poor. Pete Greig also gives words to this in 'The Vision', a moving prayer that speaks to the heart of a whole generation. C'mon!

Three revelation milestones

Where is the organic-reformational movement, or in my geeky friend Andreas' words 'church 2.0', heading? On his weblog he draws together three 'revelation milestones': Wolfgang Simson's (to be released) 'Apostolic Architecture', Alan Hirsch's 'The Forgotten Ways' and Simon Mason's 'The Net'. Having interacted with all three guys over a beer, I agree with Andi that these macro, meso and micro approaches make a revolutionary mix of the Kingdom.

Shift! webzine launched

This week I'm launching a new publication in Dutch called Shift! webzine, a weblog and newsletter focused on helping young people and (potential) innovators and pioneers to dream and act out-of-the-box, and start a Jesus-centered grassroots movement of prayer, community, missions and justice. There's a growing momentum in the Netherlands for organic church and reformation, and I believe an information/inspiration hub where Dutch writers contribute can help catalyze that process and create indigenous ownership.

Shift day in Rhenen

Today we had a first get-together of the various Shift groups in Rhenen. Shift is an informal relational network of people who carry a vision for reformation. More pictures here.

The Orton files

Over the past week I spent some time with Ozzies David Orton and John Clements from Melbourne, and Richard & Anna Holloway from Tasmania. They're in the Netherlands to build connections, as God has been impressing on them that the Netherlands, together with Switzerland, will fulfil a forerunner role in the coming reformation. I made some notes of their inputs:

The mixed bag of 'church'

A week ago I taught a whole day for Soul Impact, the one-year leadership development track of Soul Survivor Netherlands. I asked them: what is your first association with the word 'church'? It's always interesting to hear what young people come up with.

Why I aim for a reformation

Over the past few weeks I've been interacting with a number of friends and fellow pioneers in the Netherlands about this question: should we take the structural reality of church as it is for granted and (within or out of that context) aim for maximum renewal and innovative missional experiments, or should we aim for a reformation that will shake the foundations of today's church, and re-defines and re-imagines church based on a deeper revelation of Christ and how He intended his Body to function?

Let me start to point out that I believe we need both, and both are valid aims to pursue. I believe it's unfruitful to polarize these two approaches. Innovators and reformers should stand side-by-side when it comes to pulling the church out of her comatic state of unfruitfulness. However, I decided (already a number of years ago) to bless the various expressions of much needed renewal, but aim for a deeper reformation of church. Yesterday, when sharing a meal with Matthijs and Martijn, I drew a picture to visualize the process we are in (click to enlarge).

A liberating gospel

Yesterday we watched the Israeli movie 'Kadosh', the tragic story of two sisters raised and married in the orthodox quarter of Jerusalem. Every day the orthodox men pray: "Thank God I wasn't born a gentile, thank God I wasn't born a slave, thank God I wasn't born a woman." The women are predestined to have children (if possible every year), cook and clean, and earn money, so their husbands can study the Torah and Talmud. But what if you can't have kids? What if your husband rapes you because he's a fanatic and - apparently - never read the Song of Songs?

Often religion turns into an oppressive system that breeds pride in a few, and enslaves many. I can sympathize with Marx in this respect. How liberating that a Jewish man stood up to set the captives of legalistic religion free. In Him men and women, masters and slaves, Jews and gentiles are equal. What a revolutionary message, what a liberating gospel!

Holy cows in the polder

Today I had a conversation with Jefferie Lammers, who publishes a prophetic e-zine in Dutch called 'David's Tabernacle'. Realizing that Jesus is calling his people out of religion to really be his Body (his acting side) on this earth, we agreed that what is crucial in this time of change or transition is prophetic discernment, and the willingness to kill our holy cows.