How I’m being shaped by Guatemala

For two years, Betty and I and a group of people connected to Harbor Church have been developing a deep set of relationships with friends in Villa Nueva, Guatemala - Steve Osborne and Jorge and Anny Cerritos (pictured at right) and their missional community, Cuidad de Refugio. We travel there twice a year for several days at a time. We share in their mission of serving the needs of their local community, and the social media today makes it possible for us to be much more connected in an ongoing way.

This experience is highly valuable. Beyond the value of the friendship, one of the highest values to me personally is that I’m more alert than ever before that living in the American consumer culture is a powerful spiritual formation force in my life.

For much of my life, I had no linguistic category for the idea of spiritual formation. In seminary in my mid-twenties I learned about spiritual disciplines and was exposed to the idea that the practice of prayer, fasting, confession, etc. could shape my spiritual life.

At that point in time, I lived with a compartmentalized view of that world that contained (1) things spiritual or sacred and (2) things non-spiritual or secular. Then one day the writings of Dallas Willard opened my eyes to two revolutionary ideas.

The first idea is that all of life is sacred. I only have one life. When I compartmentalize it into sacred and secular, I rob all of it of the vitality that God intends. Work is not more sacred than play. Ministry is not more sacred than welding. Cleaning out my closet is not more sacred than going on a trip to Guatemala. I have one life, and I am most fully alive when I embrace that reality.

The second idea is that spiritual formation takes place in everything I do. When I was first introduced to Richard Foster’s writings in the mid-70s, it made sense to me that my inner life needed to be nurtured in the same ways that the health of my body needed to be nurtured. At that point I thought that the only way to nurture my inner life was to engage what are called “the spiritual disciplines.”

It took a while to recognize that my inner life is shaped by every experience that I have. Books that I read and conversations - movies that I see and hopes that I hold - encounters with enemies and strangers and with family and friends - risks that I take and pleasures that I indulge - my inner life is shaped by everything.

For me this was a revolutionary idea. There is no compartment for spiritual formation. It is a continuous, dynamic process that is sometimes intentional but often invisible – unless I notice that I’m formed by every experience.

When I am in Guatemala, I see the world through a different lens and I am being formed. I’m not sure all of the impact this experience is having, but two things are clear.

First, I see my wealth through different eyes. On this trip, Jorge made me aware of six students needing $500 scholarship to continue their education in high school. My initial response was, “I don’t have enough money to help.” Then I realized, I buy a latte almost every day. At about $4 a pop, I could scholarship all six of these kids if I was simply willing to give up the latte. But, I feel so entitled – really. I do. And even as I write that I’m aware that Jorge will read it, and that impacts me.

Second, I read the Bible through different eyes. This has been emerging for me slowly but was accelerated significantly on this trip. Just before departing this time for Guatemala, Joel Van Dyke, a partner to our friends in Guatemala, asked me to read and write an endorsement for his soon to be published book, “The Geography of Grace.” I agreed and was reading the book each night of the trip.

Joel and his co-author, Kris Rocke, have written a book I will be recommending to every North American Christian I know. Reading “The Geography of Grace” is opening up a whole world of things I didn’t know that I didn’t know. It’s so clear that I’ve been taught to value the Bible and that my teachers assumed that their view of the Bible is the “right” view. Joel and Kris are scholars. Their book is well documented from an academic perspective. And, they read the Bible very differently than I’ve been taught to read it. I’m not sure I would ever have ever been exposed to their view if I was not in Guatemala, and I’m certain that it would not have impacted like it has if these guys were not friends with my friends.

Where is all of this going? I’m not sure. I am sure that every time I’m in Guatemala my view of God is enlarged. My view of myself is challenged. My sense of the power of culture to form me spiritually is clearer. The compartmentalization that characterized my life for so long is challenged, and I am becoming more the person that God designed me to be. For those reasons that I see and others that I’m sure I don’t see, I’ll keep returning. Our next trip is set for July 16, 2012.

The Healthy Congregation Learning Initiative

You are invited to an information meeting concerning The Healthy Congregation Learning Community

Let's be honest! The truth is that there is a lot of resignation and cynicism in the church world today. More than 80% of existing congregations are in decline numerically, and numerous social indicators strongly suggest that our collective capacity to influence our communities and the broader culture is drastically diminished. Furthermore, our best efforts to turn the declining attendance and influence around have not been successfully sustained over time. Occasionally some guru succeeds in producing a congregational turn-around and then writes a book that holds up a "model" for you to follow. The problem is that your context, your personality, nor your leadership skills or your style is like that of the guru - so generally using that "model" gets you nowhere. . . and another layer of resignation and cynicism is added.

What if there was a group of congregations who had together taken on learning the challenging work of congregational revitalization? What if they were congregations of different sizes in different context with pastors of different ages and differing levels of experience? What if what they identified was not a "model" but a set of personal and congregational skills that with serious effort can be learned over time and applied in any context? And, what if after being on that journey of learning, the most common word they were using to describe their experience is the word - hope?

Did you know that such a group exits? Growing out of the work of the Reformed Church in America through Western Seminary, thirty congregations have been on that journey for nearly five years. On April 16 you are invited to an overview of the work these congregations have been doing. Trisha Taylor and Jim Herrington, two of the architects of this learning journey with Western Seminary, will be with us to share some key learnings regarding congregational revitalization and to explore the possibility of creating a similar learning community for congregational revitalization with a pilot group of Houston area congregations.

Join us on April 16, 2012 at First Christian Church, 1601 Sunset Blvd, Houston, TX 77005, adjacent to the Rice University Campus. We will begin at 10 am and conclude no later than 3 pm. It will be a day of high value learning. At the end of the day you will be given information that will help you and your congregation consider becoming a part of the Healthy Congregational Learning Community that will launch in Houston in the spring of 2013.

The meeting on April 16 is free but a reservation is required in order to prepare for lunch. To make your reservation, contact Jim Herrington @ jim@missionhouston.org or Marcos Leon@ marcos@missionhouston.org.

The Healthy Congregation Learning Community is being offered by Mission Houston.

A Hopeful Contribution

I was asked by the Mission Portland Team to write an article about Faithwalking. It will be published soon to their GospelMovements website. Here's what I wrote.

As those of us in Houston have participated in Movement Day, it has become clearer that the movement in Houston is similar in many ways to the movement in other cities. One thing that stands out as a unique contribution in the Houston movement is the in-depth and practical work we have done regarding disciple making. More than a decade ago, several of us heard author Dallas Willard declare these words: Somewhere along the way, we quit asking the question, “How do you make followers of Jesus?” and we started asking the question, “How do you make good Church members?”

That was a watershed moment for us. We became convinced that good Church members now dominate the Church in western culture. We describe them as consumer Christians who look to local congregations as purveyors of religious goods and services. These consumer Christians want their needs met; they shop around for the best deal; and they expect that the goods will be delivered in an entertaining Sunday service and a small group.

Some readers will find that description harsh, and in some ways, we are overstating the case to make the point – but in some large measure it is an accurate description of our current reality.

The point is that, by-and-large, the Church in the U.S. has lost the capacity to consistently develop people who can love their neighbor and their enemy. By and large the Church in the U.S. has lost the capacity to produce followers of Jesus who are able to confront the systemic powers that keep people in bondage to poverty and injustice. By and large the Church in the U.S. has lost the capacity to produce missional people who live as salt and light, seeking the peace of the city, in their neighborhoods and workplaces – where they spend most of their time.

These convictions led to a decade long conversation and a series of experiments that were framed in this question: “What is a disciple of Jesus and how do you make one?” Framed another way, we started holding ourselves accountable to listening to God and to others around the world in order to establish a spiritual formation process that actually resulted in missional living by those who completed the process. Today we call that process Faithwalking.

God is giving us growing success.

From 2007 – 2010 we conducted a series of pilot projects that resulted in approximately 300 people completing the Faithwalking experience (notice that I don’t call it a program or a curriculum) and this resulted in more than 40 missional communities being initiated. These communities are located in neighborhoods, publicly traded and privately owned businesses, prisons and public schools.

We are continuing to refine the experience, but we are so certain that God has given us one of the important keys to a gospel movement that we are now scaling Faithwalking to accelerate its impact. We are convinced that personal transformation will precede community transformation, and we believe that God will use the Faithwalking experience to give birth to at least 500 missional communities in Houston by the year 2020.

You can read about the details of the Faithwalking experience in Reggie McNeal’s newest book, Missional Communities: The Rise of the Post Congregational Church. For the purposes of this article, I want to describe three things that make the disciple-making experience found in Faithwalking highly effective.

First, Faithwalking confronts the deeply held belief that information transforms.

Think about how most congregations and ministries go about the discipleship journey. Usually it is a series of classes to attend where participants learn lessons, memorize scripture, learn about prayer and fasting, and perhaps have a set of questions that someone asks in order to hold the participant accountable. The point is that most of this is information that rarely requires the practice of obedience in the arena of our relationships – with God or with others.

In John 14:15 Jesus says, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” You can no more learn obedience through getting information than you can learn to ride a bike by reading a book.

In the Faithwalking experience, participants are held accountable for engaging their relationships in a way that results in missional living. They get a trained coach and have homework that requires them to actually get into action engaging others around missional living. Frequently, their early attempts result in failure. Often those failures are first experienced in their own homes. We work hard to create a no-shame zone in the coaching experience. There is no shame in the failure – only increased learning toward obedience. The coach helps the participant see what stopped him or her and then helps them get back into action. Over time and with practice, obedience is learned.

What would have to change in order for you to be living missionally where you spend most of your day? It is likely that you are stopped by that change and beneath being stopped there is a habit of disobedience to the clear teachings of Jesus. This is where the coaching and the practice will begin and why there is so much impact.

Second, Faithwalking confronts the practice of compartmentalizing work and ministry.

Most American Christians live a compartmentalized life with work in one category and ministry in another. At work we attempt to be moral and ethical, and if an opportunity arises to share our faith with a co-worker, we do. If someone responds to that sharing, we take him or her to our local congregation. That is not a bad thing, but it reinforces the compartmentalization.

In the Faithwalking experience we call participants to the practice of seeing the place where they spend most of their day each week as their mission field. That requires a re-thinking of work.

Many of us go to work asking the question, “How do I do my job well?” When we see our work as mission (or for those who are at home all day, when we see our neighborhood as mission), we ask, “How do I get into action to help the Kingdom of God come in this neighborhood, in this business, or in this school, or in this prison as it is in heaven. It shifts my thinking from just doing my part to seeing how my part connects to and influences the whole. To see stories from Faithwalking participants who have established missional communities in neighborhoods and workplaces, visit our website.

Third, it confronts the deeply held practice of attempting to live missionally alone.

The rugged individualism that has run amok in American culture permeates the Church. In the Faithwalking experience we assert that the Church is present anywhere that believers are gathered. Virtually every neighborhood and workplace in the U.S. has followers of Jesus. They are not, however, connected to one another as the functioning Body of Christ in that place. We suggest in the Faithwalking experience that every believer should be a catalyst for mobilizing the Body of Christ for missional impact in the place that they spend most of their day. We refer to these as missional communities.

Often missional communities will have individuals who participate in local congregations from a variety of places across the city. What they have in common is that they are followers of Jesus and they share most of their day in a place where Jesus wants the shalom of God to come.

These missional communities often support one another through prayer and bible study groups before work or during lunch. They often do the work of ministering to hurting people in their neighborhood or work place. And then they go one more step. They ask, “How would God have us use our collective influence to serve this place or the people in this place to experience the presence and purpose of God? What will this neighborhood look like if it is whole and complete in the way that God intends a neighborhood to be? What will this company be like if it is fulfilling God’s purposes for the company?

Obviously these are long term commitments that require prayerful, collaborative and collective action by the gathered and functioning Body of Christ.

Faithwalking is a spiritual formation process that actually results in people living missionally in the place where they spend most of their day. We have some initial evidence that is convincing enough to us that we are investing the largest portion of our time and organizational resources in scaling it. It provides experience where participants practice obedience and get shame-free coaching when they fail. It confronts the compartmentalization of work and ministry, and it confronts the individualism that characterizes so much of the American Christianity, replacing it with a deep commitment to being on mission with other believers.

This is one of the most productive and hopeful things that is happening through the work of Mission Houston today.

We moved our money today!

Earlier today I posted that Betty and I were at Smart Financial Credit Union where we were transferring all of our money from Wells Fargo Bank to SFCU. My friend, Michele Caldwell, asked me "Why?" and I promised to post the answer.

After a lot of thinking, reading, studying and praying, we have come to the conclusion that the four major banks in the country who control the vast majority of the country's wealth are among the most culpable for our nation's recent financial meltdown. Of course there are many factors, but the four banks - Wells Fargo, Chase, Citibank and Bank of America - played one of the major roles in the melt down. What appears to be their callous disregard for the common good of all the citizens of our nation is disgusting to us. That set of factors was a part of our decision.

As second part of our decision was what we view as the utter brokenness of our nation's political system. The influence of lobbyist (and particularly lobbyist that represent the four big banks) has turned our political system into a sham. There was a time when we would have turned to and trusted that system to pass laws to punish the banks for their behavior and to prevent their behavior from occurring again. There was a time where we trusted the honest dialogue between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans, who believe (mostly) in a free market system and the Democrats who believe (mostly) that the greed and avarice of the free market system must be regulated, in days gone by, could be trusted to bring a balanced and reasoned solution that included both of those credible and important views. Today, in our view, there is greed and corruption that is so rampant in both parties that there will be no political solution - at least not in the current environment. The problem will simply go on and be made worse by the partisan politics that are driven by money.

In the face of all that I often feel powerless to do anything. The problem is so large and I am just one voice. Several months ago I learned of a growing movement to speak to the banks at the place that it could have impact if we acted collectively. By moving money from the banks to Credit Unions which are not-for-profit and locally owned entities, we could hit the banks at the only place where there is any vulnerability.

So, after thinking, reading praying, and studying, we ultimately decided to act. Today we opened an account at Smart Financial Credit Union. In the next two weeks we will close our account at Wells Fargo and be done with them. I'll be writing a letter to the local Branch Manager telling her of the reasons for our decision. It may seem like a small thing - we don't have a lot of money - but it has integrity with our beliefs and values, and it is something.

I'll be voting in the 2012 Presidential election, but I have the sense that I cast a more important vote today.

If you are interested in knowing more about the role that these four largest banks have had in our current economic mess, I recommend that you see Inside Job. Inside Job is a 2010 documentary film about the late 2000s financial crisis. It is directed by Charles Ferguson and won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary in 2010. The film is described by Ferguson as being about “the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption. The film explores how changes in policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis."

A tradition that is rooted in love

Long before I understood why it is important, Betty realized the value of traditions that would shape our family’s metanarrative – one that we both wanted focused on loving God and loving people. It was in that metanarrative that we wanted our children to discover themselves and find their place in life.

Nowhere does the importance of our traditions get put on display like it does at Christmas. Though the tradition has evolved over the years, it began four years into our marriage. We informed our parents that we would move heaven and earth to travel to their homes for Thanksgiving but that going forward we would be spending Christmas at our own home. We hoped they would join us there (and almost every year until they died, they did).

With that boundary established, Betty began designing a tradition that helped ground our children in a context of love. I wish I could take some credit, but mostly my part was to cheer her own and to be fully present and participating as the tradition unfolded.

It goes like this.

On Christmas Eve we gather for a family dinner. Almost always some extended family is there plus one or more friends of our children’s or someone from our church who doesn’t have family to be with. After the meal we gather in the family room. We turn on the Christmas tree lights, light the numerous candles in the room (one year we had a small fire – but I digress), and turn all the house lights off.

The oldest family member and the youngest reader share in the reading of the Christmas story. We never make a big deal of “Jesus is the reason for the season” or anything like that. We just rehearse this story as the story from which we learn of God’s love and consequently seek to live lives where we love God and love others.

When that reading is finished, each person in the room takes a turn and is allowed to share his or her favorite Christmas story. We started this because we wanted our kids to hear stories of their grand parents’ lives and because we wanted them to know our stories from our childhood. Over time, favorite stories got repeated. Then new ones were added as our children had their own stories to tell.

I knew something special was happening a few years ago when a few days before Christmas our middle grand daughter said, “Who’s going to tell the story about the Christmas that Pop bought Mom her first clothes dryer.” It’s a fabulous story that captured the extravagant and playful love that my Dad had for my mother. She had heard it several times and it had captured the heart of this little (then) six-year-old girl. The stories remind us of the ways that love has been expressed in our family over the generations.

After a person tells their story, he/she then chooses a Christmas carol and we sing it a cappela. The richness of the music in the room is soothing and heartwarming.

Once every one (including guests) has had an opportunity to share, we light the candles on a birthday cake, and we sign Happy Birthday to Jesus.

Then, we do a gift exchange. Betty, ever vigilant in love, makes sure that even our guests have a gift to open. The evening concludes with conversation, thank you’s, and hugs all around.

As our children have become adults the tradition has evolved some. Gift giving has become less material and more about time spent together gifts created for another. Two components have been added that I think are going to stick.

Our oldest daughter, Emily, came across a terrific letter from St Nick that helps set the gift giving in context – especially for young children. She is the mother of our three grand daughters.

For the past 15 years, there has been an envelope on the tree from St. Nick. After we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus, the envelope is opened and one of the girls reads the letter. St Nick tells the girls that they will be receiving three gifts on Christmas day. Reminding the girls of the gifts the wise men brought to Jesus, St Nick tell them that they will have a gift that represents how valuable they are (gold), one that will help them connect to God in the coming year (frankincense) and one that is for their body (myrrh). The girls find these gifts under their tree the next day. That letter has become a part of our tradition.

Two years ago, Betty suggested that we go as a family to the Salvation Army Family Center on December 23 and provide a party for the kids there. Several kids who live there also are in her class at school. So, the night before we gather to make our preparations. Then the next day we decorate the dining room at the Center with festive colors, provide a crafts activity, tell the Christmas story, sing Christmas carols, and give each child a stocking full of small gifts. It’s only been done twice. If we do it again next year, it officially becomes part of the tradition.

Our children are all building their own families now and they are not home for Christmas every year. But the tradition continues and it continues to evolve. This year, for the first Christmas since we started our tradWition, we will do all of this on Christmas Day rather than Christmas Eve.

But our family is not fazed. I think that’s because the tradition is not rooted in the tradition itself. The tradition is rooted in a mother’s desire to ground the celebration of Christmas in the love of God and the love of a family that was and is committed to love in the world around us. We gather to remember that – to remember who we are – to remember that we are loved at the core of our beings – to express our love to God and to one another and to the world around us – and to draw strength from the stories that guide and shape our lives so that we can return to a life of love.

Enlarging a Child's Vision

As Christmas approaches, you may be where I am - endeavoring to celebrate the birth of Christ without being sucked into the rabid consumerism proffered by our culture. I'm writing on this first day of December to give you an opportunity to resist the call to spend money on yourself and your family and instead to do something good for a child.

My friend Holly is a music teacher at the Rice School, a title 1 school in HISD. With budgets tightening all over the educational world, one of the first things schools will often cut is budgets for the arts. While academics are extremely important, music and drama give children a chance to experience themselves and the world through a different and highly important lens. It enlarges that child's vision of him/herself and the world.

The budget cuts mean that Holly has to has to pay accompaniest and sound technicians and anyone else to make the children's production possible.

Anyone who has ever seen the wonder in a child's eyes when he or she participates in creating something that comes from music or drama, you know the importance of this work.

Betty and I know and love Holly. We watch her pour her life out for the children in her school, and so I'm writing today to ask you to consider helping us raise $2,000 as a Christmas present to the children in the arts program at the Rice School where she teaches.

If you'd like to help, you can write your check to Harbor Church and mail it to 308 Bomar, Houston, TX 77006. Write "Rice School Project" in the memo line and we will make sure that the kids get the blessing that your gift represents.

Reading While Living in a Hinge in History

In my last post I asserted that we are living in a hinge of history. As one of only six or seven generations to ever do so, it can be very challenging to find your way forward. In other hinges in history, the Church resisted the deep changes that came from paradigm shifts. We've actually murdered some of those who attempted to give voice to a new paradigm.

In this current hinge, the resistance is still there from many in the institutionalized church but the nature of the information age has made it possible for us all to learn at a much more rapid pace. Often learning in a new paradigm comes from the business world. In this hinge of history that is still true, but in this one it has also come from the educational community, from other world religions, and much more rapidly than before it has come from the Church itself.

Recently, a friend and pastor in the city asked me to send him a bibliography of the books that had impacted me most profoundly as I sought to live faithfully and effectively in this hinge of history. In answering that question, I want to state, what is for me, the obvious. No book has impacted my life like the Bible. What may not be so obvious is that I'm reading the Bible differently as a result of reading some of the text listed below. In addition to the Bible, the following is an annotated list of the top ten books that have influenced my view of the world and what it means for me to live faithfully and effectively in it today. They are listed here - not in the order of their impact but - in the order that I read them. I read the first one in 1991.

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge. He helped me see that in a world of supersonic, ongoing, never ending change, we must create organizations that can identify and retain a core set of values while fostering the disciplined application of five skills sets that empower individuals and organizations to be continuously learning and improving their capacity to get results that they truly desire. These five include - personal mastery, team learning, mental models, generating and sustaining tension, and systems thinking. He asserts that organizations must master these as ongoing practices in order to thrive in the world of rapid change. This was helpful to me in thinking about how to design a disciple making organization in the context of rapid change.

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God by Dallas Willard

This book altered my "listening" to Scripture and set me on a very different path than the one that would have been predictable, given my past. Willard first put me onto the recognition that our disciple-making efforts had devolved to a place where our focus was on making good church members rather than disciples of Jesus. Though there is some over lap between church members and disciples of Jesus, there are, in my mind, some stark, fundamental differences. And in my view, this is the fundamental issue that we must courageously tell the truth about before anything else will change. Willard framed two questions that have driven my life over the last twenty years. What is a disciple? How do you make one? In my estimation, the church is generally really fuzzy in its thinking about both of these questions.

The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America by Darrel Guder, George Hunsberger, Alan Roxburgh, and Craig Van Gelder.

These guys built on the work of missional theologians Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch and applied their work to the North American context. Recently Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile have written a very helpful follow up entitled The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping The Conversation. They examine the impact of The Missional Church since it was first written twelve (12) years ago. All of these writers helped me to rethink my theology. In my seminary training, I was taught that mission is a sub-category in the overall course on systematic theology which results in missions being one part of the local congregational life. From this way of thinking I inherited the view that today we call the attractional model of church. The Missional Church turned that world upside down for me, and I was faced with a life shaping dilemma. Do I try to help local congregations change from the attractional model to a missional model? Mike Bonem, James Furr, and I wrote a book entitledLeading Congregational Change: A Practical Guide for the Transformation Journey that attempts to help congregations with the profound challenges of making this kind of change. I went through a long season where I despaired that local congregations would ever be able to make the deep changes required to embrace missional living. More recently, I have growing hope. For instance, I'm working with Trisha Taylor and 30 congregations from The Reformed Church in American through Western Theological Seminary in an effort called The Ridder Initiative. There is amazing life and vitality in these congregations as they engage the change required to go from an attractional model to a missional model that is making me very, very hopeful. At the heart of the content of their work is the sum total of the learning reflected in this reading list.

To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davidson Hunter.

This author writes convincingly that most people believe that if you can get 51% of the people in any system (community, city, country) to hold the right beliefs, then you can change that system. Writing both philosophically and from a historical perspective, he argues that one's world view isimportant. It is just not enough. He asserts that leaders must understand the nature of systems and be willing to partner with the power elites in a city - even if those individuals don't share your world view - if you are going to see positive change come. In some measure this reading helped me see that if we really wanted a city that was filled with the Shalom of God, there were some significant missing pieces to the work we needed to take on collectively.

Extraordinary Relationship: A New Way of Thinking About Human Interaction by Roberta Gilbert.

She helped me learn to think about emotional maturity as the key to human change. You can know everything in the Bible and if you don't have the emotional maturity to "do" what you know, then nothing really changes. Gilbert is a disciple of Murray Bowen and Bowen Theory. His work is the first work that has been done since Freud that fundamentally rethinks how we view human functioning in living systems. Many don't recognize it, but Freud's view of how human relationships work still dominates the world of counseling including Christian counseling. It sees the individual as the focus and insight/empathy as the pathway to deep change. In Bowen Theory, the family is seen as the basic unit of human relationships and for that system to change, one must deal with the strongest member of the family system rather than the one with the presenting problems. This theory focuses on the role of anxiety in families, congregations, and other living organizations (organisms) and it is is foundational to my thinking. In 2002 Trisha Taylor, Robert Creech and I co-authored The Leaders Journey: Accepting the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation. This book was an attempt to translate Bowen Theory into the context of evangelical pastors and congregations. Robert Creech has an excellent, scholarly article entitled "Jesus and The Differentiation of Self." The differentiation of self is a key component of Bowen Theory.

Post Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World by Stuart Murray.

Asserting that Christendom is dead and that we are simply presiding over its burial, Murray tracks the changes that took place in the church when Constantine moved it from the margins to the center of the Empire in the Edict of Milan (313 AD). He asserts that in Christendom the Church was in many ways co-opted by the state resulting in many practices and in the development of systems and structures that look more like the Empire than like the Kingdom of God. However, rather than mourning the death of Christendom, Murray celebrates it as an opportunity to renew the Church in an era that looks much more like the first century than any time sense then. His work gives historical context to Willard's assertion that we had quit making disciples and started making church members.

The Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin Friedman.

Dr. Friedman takes Bowen Theory and applies it to congregations and synagogues. He suggests that the "social science view of reality" is our fundamental problem. It has led us to what he calls "adaption to weakness." He asserts that as our society evolves, our adaptation as a society is toward weakness rather than strength. He writes brilliantly as he challenges leaders to take a stand in the face of a world that shares the social science view of reality.

To Transform a City: Whole City, Whole Church, Whole Gospel by Eric Swanson and Sam Williams. I believe that the emerging paradigm of the Church is captured here. First articulated by Jack Dennison in City-Reaching: On the Road to Community Transformation, Eric and Sam have captured the learning that has been done by innovators and early adapters in this emerging paradigm over the past fifteen or twenty years. (Mission Houston would be one of those who have and are fostering the emergence of this paradigm.) This new paradigm is gaining momentum as evidenced by Movement Day and by the soon to be released book by Tim Keller of Redeemer Church in New York entitled Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel Centered Ministry in Your Church.

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist Notebook - What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing by Bruce Perry and Maia Svalivitz

Based on research with which I am familiar, approximately 75% of the American population has been traumatized at some point in childhood due to divorce, sexual abuse, the pre-mature death of a parent, the impact of incarceration and/or drug abused by a parent. Add to that the research that demonstrates that trauma in childhood alters one's brain functioning and can result in the plethora of illnesses like bipolor disorder that plague our society today. Drs. Perry and Svalivitz paint a poignant picture of the impact of trauma on children and a hopeful picture of the power of a loving community to be used to heal the brain. This information shapes my understanding of how we create learning environments that must be both safe and challenging.

Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress by James Mezirow.

This is my newest reading. It's dense and I'm plowing through it, but it is already impacting my view of learning. Research in the field of education is beginning to distinguish traditional learning from transformational learning. It grows out of the exploding field of brain research and the awareness that first and foremost, human beings are "meaning makers." We have experience and we give that experience meaning, and the meaning we give it impacts what we will and won't learn, what we will and want pay attention to. This has profound impact for educators who live in a world where change is happening at supersonic speeds and where "how to be a learner" becomes as important, if not more so, than what is learned.