Had a great few days away, and things seemed to go well at Blah… in Manchester last night. The Nexus space that is getting going there seems excellent.
For anyone who is interested, the (very sketchy) notes I spoke from I’ve uploaded as a PDF here:
I’d actually mentioned something about exoskeletons in the brief I’d given, but forgot to mention it last night, so will post on that shortly.
I’ll also be posting something more on leadership and disturbance – which came up last night – too.
Comments
6 responses to “Blah… Blah Blah”
Hi, thanks for last night, it was great to meet you. You gave me some very interesting things to think about.
Cheers, for your musings last night matey and nice to meet another resigned youth worker! Just throwing a little question into the mixer for you which i’ve raised on my blog and would be interested to hear your thoughts on… how do you think theology fits into this whole conversation? Previously theology has been at the centre of any discussion about church development but increasingly those engaged in the emerging church conversation seem to be listening more to cultural analysists, psychologists, philosophers and sociologists and less to theologians…
Hi Kester … thanks for last night’s Blah session in Manchester. I resonated with a great deal of what you were saying, but also the way you said it – seemed both radical and rooted.
You were making some fascinating conceptual links e.g. between biology, computer science, and theology (having studied each of those at different points, I could see exactly what you meant). Would love to dialogue more about this (about the conceptual world of genetics and software algorithms and emergent behaviour and how this might mirror the emergence of new forms of “church”).
Frank Zappa said that “without deviation, progress is not possible” and you touched on that helpfully too. I wonder about leadership (hence my question last night) – the tension between organic, ground-up emergent leadership and top-down structural imported leadership.
I also would like to see existing church structures being brave enough to set up “think tanks” where ideas and concepts could be kicked about, and where future plans could be genuinely influenced.
“Don’t just ‘think out the box’. Climb out the box, dismantle it, and use the wood to make something else. But think carefully before you burn the box, because you can’t build much out of charcoal.” (anon)
Kester, I have a question that’s been slowly forming since last night about your theory of disturbance.
You said that church needs disturbing to shake it out of the evolutionary blind alleys that it has gone down. I can see that working in some situations but not in others. Some people/organisations, when faced with a challenge or disturbance do respond well and get back on track, others lock down even tighter and become even more intractable than before. Do you think that’s a danger?
Good question Lou. I’d still hold that in order to progress ALL groups need disturbing. But the amount of disturbance that a group can helpfully take will vary according to local circumstance, just as it does within nature.
One might see it as a pendulum… It needs disturbing to get going. But for some that’s going to be a small movement from the centre; for others it will be larger… Again, depending on the make-up of the local system.
Any help? Do get back to me with any thoughts!
Thanks Kester, that’s helpful – it allows for a gentle touch where one is needed. Evolution can be a very brutal instrument – survival of the fittest isn’t a very Christian ethos.
Do you believe there are any groups that are beyond help?