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.
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.
1 comments:
Hey Jim, thanks for this. Most I haven't read. Look forward to adding them to my reading list.
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