BGU Journal - 1/14/09

After spending the day in the lab yesterday (the city), today we had lectures all day from urban ministry leaders.  I had this day mentally circled on the schedule because I knew I would have to put my thinking cap on.  I really did!  It was intense from 8am to 4pm.

First, Randy White talked about conceptualizing the city, and specifically, how this applies to transformational leadership.  He asked us to imagine the city conceptually.  Can we see it?  We need to be able to see, hear, and generally sense what is going on in cities in order to transform them.  He shared his background of urban ministry in Fresno. Also, he presented the apostle Paul as a model of conceptualization.  According to the Bible, when Paul arrived in Athens he took the time to observe the objects of worship in the city.  Second, the city impacted him and he was deeply disturbed.  Finally, he chose to engage in the key sectors of the city (markets, synagogues, and political arenas) in order to communicate the gospel.  A physical exploration of cities (Nehemiah also did this) is crucial in order to formulate strategies.  Urban leaders should seek to understand the trinity of a city.  This includes the Urbs (infrastructure of systems in the city), Anima (shared knowledge of the residents and their unconscious beliefs and assumptions), and Civitas (behaviors, or what the city is known for).  Another type of trinity, which is presented by Robert Linthicum, describes the city as religion, politics, and economics.  Because all cities are products of collective sin, when things go wrong a religion of control, an economics of exploitation, and a politics of oppression results.

H. Spees, the Vice President of Leadership Foundations of America, then lectured about connecting the city, or operationalizing unity.  He first described the great turn around that the city of Fresno experienced between the years of 1992 and 2001.  He gave a great overview of systems in cities, and great transformational leaders seek to understand systems so that they can impact them.  One segment of the city is the community sector, which is comprised of neighborhood and volunteer organizations, local schools, local churches, and families/children and youth.  Also, cities are composed of ten institutions:  Public school, government, and law enforcement (public sector), media, business, labor (private sector), religious groups, non-profits, and churches (social sector), with the community sector in the middle (impacted by all the others).  A healthy community involves all of these institutions working together for the common good.  A major breakdown occurs when these systems don't work together (as is the case in many inner city communities).  However, the church can engage these institutions by understanding that there are "hidden" Christians in each of these institutions.  Christians are located in the community sector, they are located in the church as an institution, the church has individual leaders in each institution, and Christian leaders serve as connectors between institutions.  Since connectors are key, it is a big problem when Christians in these sectors develop an individualized view of the gospel (and neglecting the social aspects of the gospel).  Engaging in the city is complex, and it requires leaders who understand the importance of building relationships.  Churches who seek an easy or simple answer to city issues are setting themselves up for failure in the long run.

David Hillis, the president of Leadership Foundations of America, then lectured about concretizing organizations.  He said that organizations have four biases.  They way you do something is, if not more important, as important as the thing being done. We are are activity rich and relationally poor.  We have a high theology and a low anthropology.  And, culture always trumps the vision, values and theology of an organization unless they transfer the culture.  He then described how organizational leaders fall into three categories.  They can be teleological, which means they view things the way they ought to be and inspiration is the goal of the leader.  They can be deontological, which means the leader values moral obligation and right action based on information.  Or, a leader can be trinitarian, which means they understand that the fundament truth is relational as represented in the triune Godhead, and the leader is incarnational by valuing relationships.  Good leaders understand all of these characteristics, but the best leaders are trinitarian.  Hillis also described desire as an important aspect of this leadership model.  He thinks that the church does not know what to do with desire, and neither do educational institutions.  What are some solutions to this?  Leaders can create meaningful meetings.  Also, they can be more transparent.  They can give power away freely.

Kris Rocke, the executive director of the Center for Transforming Leaders, lectured on contextualizing leadership.  He started with the question, "What did Jesus do in his 30 years before he started his ministry?"  Than answer was, "He listened and reflected."  Rocke then talked about how many of us are conditioned to read scriptures from a position of power.  What happens when we read scriptures from a position of people in need?  He started doing this and it changed the way he understood the Bible.  If you want to preach the good news with and for the powerless, then you need to learn to understand their theology.  Scripture is an invitation to a conversation.  It's not a blueprint.  He described a theology from below.  We need to read scripture so that we invite people to bring their voice to the text.  This is dangerous, but he believes God is big enough to protect the integrity of the scriptures.  He then went on to describe that there are three gateways to transformation:  prayer, praise, and pain.  Pain is the widest gateway to transformation (this is where most of are drawn closer to God).  So why can't we read scripture through the perspective of pain?  Because most of us have set up our lives to avoid pain.  The greatest disability in the church today is the inability to suffer.  We divorce ourselves from painful places.  But, if I can't enter into my own pain, how can I enter in to yours?  At this point, many people who are in ministry like to project their own pain onto other people so they don't have to deal with it.  A scapegoat mentality occurs, and we start saying "them" or "those people."

After lunch Dr. Damian Emetuche, an West African missionary to Seattle, lectured about multicultural interactions and worldviews in light of immigration. He said that the west, including Americans, values time orientation, dichotomistic thinking, crisis orientation, and task orientation.  He said that many other cultures in the world, including Africans, value event orientation, holistic thinking, noncrisis orientation, and person orientation.  In America, it's important for Christians to understand multiculturalism and the worldview of immigrants.  Worldview is a philosophy of life.  For instance, the worldview of African Americans is very different from the worldview of African immigrants living in America due to the issue of slavery and oppression in this country.  There is a gap in their collective understanding, their worldview.  What are the missiological implications of this?  Relationship is vital, language is critical, a holistic ministry approach is necessary, small groups are good strategy, and people of a different culture can be viewed as a potential ministry force.

Skip Li then lectured on incarnational leadership.  Skip is an influential lawyer from Seattle who is Chinese.  He was born in India and raised in many countries all around the world (his father was a Chinese diplomat).  He speaks Chinese, Spanish, and Engish.  He lives in an urban part of Seattle called the university district, and he moved there after living in the affluent suburbs for many years.  He said his move to the university district was the best thing he's ever done for himself and his family.  He defined incarnational leadership as leadership that transforms communities through personal relationships.  Jesus chose to come to earth to be one of us, and he transformed the world by the way he did this.  In this way, Jesus taught us all how to live incarnationally.  Personal relationships are at the core of transformational leadership.  Li said the main principle that he think's it's important to live by is that each of us needs to be constantly active and use our minds in facing the constant moral choices of this world.  This is the key to living a worthwhile life, in that we all need to continue learning and growing.  Our culture is powerful, and it makes us conform this it's way of thinking.  Christians are called to be countercultural.  Often Christians allow the power of culture to do their thinking for them, but we have a moral imperative to break free from culture.  This is a day by day choice that good leaders are able to make.  Because of the predominance of culture, simply proclaiming the gospel by word doesn't work in this culture.  We must seek to proclaim the gospel with our actions.  This is the only thing that resonates with people anymore, although many Christians are still trying to hold on to their privacy and individuality.  Incarnational leadership tears down stereotypes in culture.  People don't know what to do when you start living out your faith in front of them through actions.  He ended his time with us with this quote from John Stott, "Work is a means of grace that God has given to man.  It's the expenditure of time in a task that fulfills ourselves, serves others, and glorifies God."  Wow!

Brad Smith, the president of Bakke Graduate University, then lectured about the body of Christ around the world.  He talked about the concept of convergence (two or more things coming together).  For Doctor of Ministry students, three things come together:  Career, Calling, and Spirituality.  He also said that this is a great time to be a leader in the church because about every 500 years or so something big happens in the church (we're due at about this time).  Our earth is changing, and I could be at the beginning of that time.  How will the church respond?  How will I respond?  What will the church look like 100 years from now?  We need to seek to understand history so that we can be good stewards of the resources God has given us in moving forward.  Studying the history of the church is important, but it also requires discipline. The BGU program is big on understanding the history of the church in order to determine where the church is going.

This was a lot of information to take in today.  I found that I had my internal "truth radar" up because the professors told us that they would be covering material that might challenge my worldview.  I'd say the biggest stretch came for me when Kris Rocke lectured on the topic of pain.  This is a dangerous topic, because most people don't like to talk about their pain.  It's very intimate.  Also, we don't like to talk about how pain might drive a countercultural perspective on sharing the gospel.  As a leader with LAMP, this was a tough subject for me to try to implement.  I don't know if I want to understand the pain that my mentees experience every day.  I don't know what it's like to be fatherless.  I don't know what it's like to live in fear all of the time time that someone might do something bad to me or my family.  I don't really know what it's like to live in poverty all of the time, and how that shapes one's worldview.  Mostly, I feel much more comfortable if I think that I'm always able to lead the kids that I work with out of generational poverty (as if that is going to be some kind of simple process that is not painful and complex).  

I also had my "radar" up when Brad Smith lectured on the geography of the world, and how the world is changing into a global culture.  I seem to like my place in the world (even if I don't admit it), and I'm made to feel uncomfortable when I'm forced to try to understand the global and urban perspectives from around the world that are shaping Christian ministry in this century.

So how does all of this apply to my ministry context?  How does it apply to North Way, or LAMP, or Pittsburgh, or America, or the world?  I was presented with many different viewpoints today, and many different perspectives on the world and the importance of God in it.  It seems to me that all of it is applicable.  Every time I hear a new perspective on the gospel, or how it applies to someone else's context, I gain a new perspective on how it applies to my context.