The Cybernetic Church?

Systems are taking over my life.  For a long time I've been infatuated with complex adaptive systems theory (cast) and it's impact on practical theology.  As I'm reviewing stuff for my Family Ministry course next semester I'm struck more and more how deeply this kind of thinking can impact the structure of a church.

I'm reading through The Family, which is Dr. Knight's text for Family Systems.  There is an excellent section concerning the difference between simple feedback (leaving a heater on to heat a room) and cybernetic control (a thermostat is set to monitor and implement systemic changes in a loop).  

I'm a cybernetic thinker, so I like this discussion a lot.  I'm also a practical theologian, so I'm always wondering "so what?"  

I'm wondering how I might go about being more intentional about cybernetics in church settings.  How can we function more as thermostats than direct providers of feedback?  What might I do in this upcoming course to talk about this?

Book Devouring

I'm about to begin my twice-yearly book devouring.  I've got a bunch of texts to go over to prep for next semester.  I'm going to try to use this blog as a sounding board for ideas (and since I often talk when I type, it's as fun to watch as it is to read) and such.


It's a self-discipline thing, really.  If I have to keep this up do date, I'm much less likely to cram all my reading into one week. 


First text:  Perspectives on Family Ministry.  More (hopefully) to follow soon.

Punk apologetics

I just finished the book Is Belief in God Good, Bad, or Irrelevant? edited by Preston Jones.  A couple of thoughts have been tumbling in the dryer in the back of my skull since I've finished it.  

Preston Jones is a history professor at a Christian college.  He's also a fan of the punk band Bad Religion.  BA's lead singer, Greg Graffin, happens to have a PhD in zoology, and his dissertation discusses evolution, atheism and naturalism.  Jones sent Graffin an email that sparked a long discussion ranging over a lot of topics but centering on their two faiths:  Christianity and naturalism.

The book is a good read, although there's more relationship building than apologetics.  Jones in his introduction warns those who have studied apologetics that this will likely frustrate them.  It did.  That aside it was really good to see a Christian treat a skeptic with real respect.  Graffin deserves some real respect, too.  He's asking really good questions from a very solid standpoint (I think he overestimates the results of his research, but that's what dissertations are all about, isn't it?).

If you're in the mood for quirky approach to apologetics, check it out.  If you like BA's music, check it out.  If you want bullet points about apologetics or evidential discussions, skip this.

You are your ministry

My graduating seniors have to write and defend a practical theology.  It's a pretty big deal.  I'm doing this with the resonance from the National Youthworker's Conference in my head.  One of the constant themes of NYWC is that you are your ministry.  What makes up your spiritual DNA naturally (and appropriately) spins off into your ministry.

That means these practical theologies I'm working on are either worthless or invaluable.  Each of us has a practical theology, and the work we do in ministry is the largest evaluation of that theology.  What we do is our practical theology.  

These are worthless unless they really represent who these students are incarnate among their communities in ministry, and invaluable when they do just that.

Schedule, shmedule

I just finished the schedule for the YFM retreat tomorrow.  It got me thinking about the power of a schedule.  Once it's on the paper, it look so solid.

The thing is that I've done so many retreats and camps that I know this outline for our time together isn't going to survive.  It won't be on track for the first few hours, much less the whole retreat.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of scheduling.  It certainly helps meet objectives (one of our objectives is hang out together, and we had to schedule a retreat to do that!) and keeps us focused on our goal.

I guess I'm just struck as I look at it on paper by how powerful that little outline can be, and how fragile.

The power of retreat

Students from the Youth & Family program are headed for a retreat this weekend, and it's got me thinking about the power of the Get Away.

It is always surprising to me that some of the same things we experience on a daily basis can become deeply powerful when done away.  The power of perception, perhaps (alliteration, anyone?).  I think, however, that it is more than that.

God often uses sacred space and sacred time to intersect with our lives and remind us of our constant connection with Him.

More on this after we return this weekend.

Summer = shifting gears

That loud grinding noise you here is my life shifting gears without a clutch!  Summer is such a weird time for me...the biker outreach heats up, but the school schedule slooooows down.  This summer is particularly weird, in that I'm out of the loop in terms of biker stuff, and have a lot of school projects on the fire.

So...riding, internship re-working, and some new classes to design.  Yeah...that's summer!

Community and Spiritual Disciplines

The Y&F emphasis is starting down the path to becoming a more intentional community.  A small group sat down together a week ago and hammered out some very small steps toward a very large dream.

Here’s some stuff we agreed on, in a nutshell:

•  We love the idea of more community, and deeper community at that
•  We hate the idea of lots of meetings or creating another “club” or “org”
•   We love the idea of building tradition and legacy into the Y&F culture on campus
•  We hate the idea of doing stuff just to do it
•  We love the idea of starting small and building on little steps until we have a better culture within our emphasis and, perhaps, on our campus at large.

A real point of resonance came when we discussed three concepts:  legacy, tradition, and spiritual discipline.  What stuck with me for the past week has been the hunger for spiritual disciplines done together and done on purpose.


For now we're going to start fasting on Wednesdays.  It's going to be a traditional Jewish 24 hour fast from solid food (dinner sundown-ish on Tuesday until dinner sundown-ish on Wednesday).  We'll have one or overarching focual points for the semester and a couple of specific focal points for each week.


It's a small step, but a very solid one I think.  More to come...

Meanwhile...

Although I've been kind of preoccupied with creativity and innovation, I thought I'd share about another preoccupation I've had since my arrival here at KCU.

The campus ministry in Murray spent a lot of time developing an intentional community, a culture comprised of an integration of healing, learning, welcoming, preparing, and sending. That is, we wanted our campus house community to be an ethnos on campus known for accepting those who entered, helping them discover who God wanted them to be and develop ways to grow in that relationship, teaching them what they needed to know to do that, and sending them out onto campus and (eventually) into the wider church (and world) to reproduce the process.

Here at KCU it is kind of assumed that this process occurs, especially with students in the same ministry program. I'm not so sure. I think we've missed some opportunities here, and I think we're going to see if we can be more on-purpose about it.

The concept that's been preoccupying my mind about all this is legacy. I'm meeting with a large percentage of the students in my emphasis on Monday, and we're going to talk about these very things. We're going to ask a few questions, such as:

• what would it look like if seniors were intentionally mentoring underclassmen (underclasspeople?) in our emphasis?
• how do we make sure we're living out some key community verses?
• are we a community? Do we need to be?
• what if we committed to some key goals for all those in our emphasis?
  

These aren't all, but they're some of the ones brewing in the back of my head. You'll see some more about this on this blog, if you're interested.

Creativity vs. Innovation: Part Deux

Here are a few more thoughts on creativity as compared to innovation. As we're discussing this in my creative teaching course we're coming to see some of the processes and structures that seem to produce both creativity and innovation. What is of interest to me is the tension this places on the educator.

On the one hand creativity and innovation are very powerful tools for the educator, and the Christian educator especially. The very same processes and structures associated with creative cognition seem to be developmentally activated during moral development. If I'm right, creative cognition inherently stimulates brain function likely to encourage moral growth.

On the other hand, creativity and innovation take time, a commodity in short supply for many educators. With all the things on the radar of an educator in ministry, how can one justify spending the time to find a creative or innovative way to teach a lesson? Especially when the lesson plan is already pretty good!

Further complicating the issue, the elements of creative cognition the prove most effective are often those that hinder efficiency. That means that building creative components to education may well mean taking even more time and seemingly accomplishing very little.

However, those same elements and processes often increase the learning of those participating in them.

I am convinced that the answer lies in the body language of the Church. That is, truly creative methodologies and innovative techniques might be best developed within teams and groups. Encouraging the efficient and the freewheeling to work together, enabling abstract and concrete minds to draw the best from each other is a great step toward finding a balance.

The good news for us is that Christian educators don't have to do it all ourselves. The bad news is that to incorporate more people into the process is often to lengthen the time even more!

If you have to have problems, though, isn't too many involved better than inefficient?

Creativity vs. Innovation

I've been pondering this for a while: is there a practical difference between creativity and innovation? I believe there is.

The study of creativity as a process is fairly young, and hard to pin down. The use of the term creativity to describe so many phenomena muddies the water. If by creative one means artistic, the scope is limited somewhat. However, if the term means bring something to be, the field is opened quite a bit.

Likewise the term innovation often covers everything from recombination to introduction of the new into an environment.

For the purpose of my Creative Bible Teaching course, I'm using creative to mean make something new, and innovation to mean introduce something new. This, I think, gives me a good range of flexibility with the concepts, while keeping them practical and applicable.

When we use a game in a sermon, we innovate. When we write a script for a drama, we create.

What I'm pondering next (other than how to rule the world) is whether these two concepts derive from the same processes.

Work as worship

A short post today, as I'm finishing up my prep-work for classes starting next week. I'm pretty excited about the material this semester. I have found that the process of daily turning my work into acts of worship does some pretty cool things to the work itself.

The obvious fallout from this kind of spiritual discipline (more intimacy with God, a deeper understanding of what I'm doing as part of what He's doing, thanksgiving for getting to be able to do this for a living) aside, I find that the process refines what I'm preparing for my students. As a hater of busywork this is cool.

The end result so far is more focus in the work and more excitement about what I teach. This material is stuff I get to set in front of Christ knowing that He's as excited about it as I am.

I guess the true test is passing this excitement on to the students.