Not The Religious Type

How Does Blue Ocean Differ from, Say, Willow Creek?

Peter Benedict asked a question in the comments section of the previous post that, after I gave a brief reply to it, struck me as something others of you might be interested in weighing in on, so I'll highlight it here.  This is completely a technical question--"Blue Ocean," "Willow Creek"--terms that mean something to a few folks here, but are incomprehensible to others of you.  But, if this question grabs you, I'd love your thoughts.  As I said, I responded to Peter with a brief conversation-opener.

Peter Benedict said...

I was having a conversation with a friend today about Blue Ocean faith (he's involved in the planning of the MN conference in January). We were talking about the overlap (or not) of Blue Ocean with Willow Creek-style seeker sensitive church.

Is there a theological difference in approach between the Blue Ocean strategy (go after the people the church isn't reaching!) and the Willow Creek strategy (go after the people the church isn't reaching!)? If so, what are the similarities and differences, both in belief and in practice?

This post potentially points to a place of potential difference: The measure of success, during Willow Creek's efforts, was growth in the number of non-Christians floating around. It was results oriented. And in the end, it was a failed strategy.

I'd like to take part in, or listen in on, some discussion around this question. I am whole-heartedly interested in loving people; I am not interested in doing what people want so that they'll think I'm cool and magically follow Jesus as a result. I'm not around the people directing the Blue Ocean movement very often, so I don't know if I understand what's driving it... is it the desire to attract non-Christians (in which case, how is that different from Willow Creek?), or is it something more/else/also?

Dave Schmelzer said...

I was just in a conversation today with some folks here about a related question, so I'm sure they'll have good things to say. But my kickoff thought might be: My read on Willow Creek is that they are an evangelical church with a great evangelistic strategy, a tactic. Blue Ocean doesn't strike me as a tactic, but as an approach to faith and life that, perhaps, might have helpful things to offer in a secularizing world. But it's not a bounded set (we have a clever means if convincing "you" to join "us"--in Blue Ocean, there is only "us").

The Starting-Point Blue Ocean Success Strategy?

I've been in lots of conversations about success recently.  (One of the recent posts here touched on that.)  The economy remains so horrible.  Occupy Wall Street raises all sorts of issues that provoke either sympathy or hostility on success lines.  (Either "the system is broken and corrupt and only offers the hope of success to a small minority" or "Steve Jobs started from nowhere!  Why can't you lazy whiners get moving and do the same?")  And it's come up again and again that Blue Ocean thinking/centered-set thinking doesn't press towards success techniques.  What does that mean?  Is this perspective on things uninterested in craven "success?" 

Of course, being a committed Blue-Oceaner, my response could only be "beats me."  But I wonder if the starting point in answering this question would start with a few premises. 

First, while of course we'd all be advised to learn as much as we can and do whatever's in our power to fulfill whatever we think God has for us in our lives, we also keep in mind that outcomes are beyond us.  "You can't make even one of your hairs white or black," Jesus says.  After our diligent efforts, outcomes are reserved for God.

So, second, what is within our power?  It seems as though our heart response to God is something we're encouraged to give some attention to.  "Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks at all times, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." 

So I wonder if the beginning of all centered-set success is in our own thriving in God, our own praise and trust in good times and hard times.  If we thrive in God, it seems to me that (a) well, at least we've thrived in God, whatever else can be said about our success or lack thereof and (b) God often seems encouraged to bring surprising possibilities our way.  (Or not, in many cases, in which case we return to (a).) 

So my proposal: The starting-point Blue Ocean success strategy is "rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks at all times."  What do you think?

The Meaning of Life and "The Death of Ivan Illyich"

First off, just to note that I'm mildly disappointed not to have been raptured as a part of Friday's I'm-not-kidding-this-time-and-I'm-absolutely-sure-about-this-one end of the world as prophesied by the inimitable Harold Camping. 

But, in that spirit, I've recently been thinking, as I'm sure you have, about Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Not--don't get me wrong--to the point of actually reading War and Peace or Anna Karenina or finding some local production of "The Cherry Orchard."  I'm not made of available time.  But I'm flipping through (or scrolling through--my Kindle broke, so I'm guessing I'm now one of three people worldwide reading Tolstoy on my iPhone) their short stories, starting with perhaps Tolstoy's most famous novella, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (sometimes rendered "Ivan Il'ich" or--God love the Russians--eliminating the final vowel as "Ivan Ilych").  I'm told for those not reading it on three-inch screens that it clocks in at about 100 pages.  (It's in the public domain so, for instance, you can read it for free here.)

Tolstoy is regarded in literary circles as perhaps the greatest novelist on spiritual themes.  He'd compete with Tolkien (and maybe Lewis, though Lewis would lose that fight) from the 20th Century and with his contemporary Dostoevsky in the 19th.  Hugo might pop his head up and ask why he's not getting any love.  But lately it's been seeming to me that my dream of living centered-set in a secular world would only be enhanced by seeing what Tolstoy would say about it.

And "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" turns out to be one profound place to start.  It sneaks up on you.  It's got all those Russian names, for starters, all those Peter Ivanoviches fading into the Fyodor Ivankoviches (as it were).  It has almost no dialogue.  It's got endless domestic observations.  You wonder where exactly it's heading.  And then, once you finally see where it's heading, it's got an "oh my God" wrapup that more than delivers the goods.  Amazon's reviews (4 1/2 stars, if memory serves) include more than a few "this brought me to God" testimonials.

How Big Should Centered-Set Churches Be?

This may fit the category of "only pastors would possibly care about this."  But maybe not.

This weekend I talked with one of our blog-participants about whether centered-set churches should have the same assumptions as most evangelical pastors about how big their churches should be.  I don't think I know a pastor (including the one in the mirror) who doesn't guage his or her self-image on the growth of his or her church.  This gets reinforced by a certain church orthodoxy--there's a world to save, so continual church growth is just love and/or faithfulness to Jesus's parting instructions.

And yet megachurchdom strikes me as pretty strongly intertwined with what here we might call bounded-set (or maybe stage-2) modernism.  Again, realize that I'd happily take megachurchdom if offered it, so I mean no moral statement in any of these reflections.  But, stereotypically at least, the larger the church, the more a few things have to be in place.  Competence, for instance, is clearly a big value.  A broadly agreeable central message.  A thoughtful means of managing peoples' needs.  Obviously these are good things, but I wonder if they push for a kind of inevitable broad-based shallowness.  I also wonder if really large churches have to be modernist--they have to be kind of a machine.

(Again, did I mention that these are broad-based generalizations?  They're broad-based generalizations.)

Faith that Speaks to the Human Condition, rather than the Christian Condition/ Vince Brackett

There’s a sad story in the music industry.  It goes like this:  (1) An unknown commoner making straight-from-the-heart music in his/her spare time gets noticed.  (2) He/she is thrust into the spotlight and immediately beloved for music and lyrics that resonate with the common person because, of course, they were indeed written by a common person.  (3) The formerly unknown but now famous artist eventually begins working on a second wave of music.  However, the place from which he/she is writing songs is very different:  anonymity is replaced with fame, a part-time salary is replaced with a million-dollar recording deal, the mundane of working just to get by is replaced with touring and concerts.  (4) As a result, the artist’s music and lyrics are suddenly not so relatable – we’re living in a different world and struggling with different problems; this artist doesn’t (and maybe can’t?) speak to us anymore.  (5) Labels like “sold out” are thrown about amongst former fans and the artist begins to develop, ironically, a victimized mentality:  “My fans have turned on me!  Woe is me!”

To me, Blue Ocean faith is an alternative to something like this happening with the church and the secular world.  The church, when in touch with what every common person goes through, when in touch with the human condition, has an incredible power to resonate in people’s lives.  However, there is always the temptation to interpret finding faith as “hitting it big.”  And, unfortunately, the end results of that interpretation are distance from those who used to trust you and a victimized mentality.  This victimized mentality then becomes the topic of every message in churches that fall into this cycle.  They no longer speak to the human condition; they speak to the Christian condition:  “We have to protect ourselves from all this persecution!  We’re trying to help these people, but they don’t understand us because they don’t know what it’s like to have 'hit it big.'”

The Blue Ocean alternative of never interpreting finding faith as “hitting it big” seems a much more attractive, in-touch-with-reality, and enjoyable option.  How do you, in your spheres of influence, help people to interpret their faith with humility and to identify themselves alongside the rest of the world rather than as distanced from or victimized by the rest of the world?

Why Steve Jobs?

For the first 24 hours after Steve Jobs' death, I'd estimate two out of every three status updates from my Facebook friends was a response, a heartfelt "thank you Steve!" of some kind.  A number of friends changed their picture to his.  And I can relate!  When I heard about his death I too felt an "ohmigod" moment.  Several weeks back I'd already preordered the upcoming Walter Isaacson bio on him, scheduled to come out mid-November but now evidently being rushed to print.

But I'm not sure I understand my own reaction, much less the collective grief.  It seems to me this is as big a response to a celebrity death as I've experienced in the Facebook era.  No death of a Hollywood star (Paul Newman, say) or of a Christian luminary (...I don't know, John Stott?) has provoked remotely this reaction.  I wonder if Nelson Mandela's death will rival it.  One friend just compared the reaction to Princess Di's death.

The man indeed invented or stewarded the invention of some cool stuff.  I type this on a MacBook and I learned about his death on my iPhone.  But, geez, they're just trinkets.  Yes, I like Pixar movies as much as the next person, but he didn't actually write or direct or animate any of them.  Yes, he's amazing but...this?

Is it that we all crave inspiration and he's about as good an inspirational figure as we'll find?  Amazing early success that was game-changing, forced out of his company at 30, stewarded the creation of Pixar while biding his time in exile, back in charge of Apple in his early 40s, spun out the iPod and iPhone and iPad just to show off, worth (we're told) $8.3 billion, pancreatic cancer in the prime of life, beat it for a full two years longer (living seven years post-diagnosis) than almost anyone else has...it's quite a story.  But...he's not (on the surface?) a spiritual leader.  And Bill Gates also did some amazing stuff involving computers, but I can't imagine his death having the same impact.

So what do you think it is?  Please explain my own reaction to me.

[Note from Dan: I wonder if Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech will shed some light on this.]

I Like the Wall Street Protests

I met a young man at our church this past Sunday who has been participating in Boston's version of the Wall Street protests, sleeping on the streets, etc.  He's a college student who's finding time to do this and still go to class.

I said to him, "Yes, of course I've heard about the protests.  I've been a little unclear about the objectives.  Can you fill me in?"  He said, "Well, actually they're kind of hard to pin down."  And then he did his best to circle them a bit as best he could.

For all their ambiguity, I'm on board.  It was only perhaps two months ago that I said to Grace, "Where are all the young people protesting the loss of their future?  The thievery in the financial sector, the insane escalation of college costs, the galloping gap between rich and poor, the unwillingness of the government to govern--it seems to me there are a whole lot of things happening that will make it a heck of a lot harder for the average college student to graduate into a reasonably hopeful future.  Oh for the 60s when kids would have taken to the streets.  In the absence of that, it seems to me that things will only keep escalating."

I have no particular scriptural backing for my sentiment, no particular appeal to Blue Ocean principles, so perhaps this blog is the wrong forum for this thought.  And clearly my views are not widespread--my Facebook page has been peppered with "Get a job!" sentiments towards the protesters.  To which my internal response is: Well, indeed; that, I think, is the point of the protests. 

And the parallels between these protests and the Tea Party movement (which has not found its way into my sympathies) have been noted.  So maybe I value actions like this for causes that make sense to me and deplore them for causes that don't.  (Hang on; isn't everyone that way?)

So do you believe in civil disobedience of this sort?  Does it have anything to do with your take on Jesus' gospel?  Or is it just a means of fighting for one's own interests?  Or perhaps you just want the protesters to get a job...

How Important is the Life of the Mind?/ Brent

Dave’s most recent post in favor of ‘thoughtful atheism’ (as opposed to the less thoughtful atheism of the Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens types) came at an interesting time since I’m in a reading group with other faculty and students that is wrapping up discussion of Mark Noll’s new book ‘Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind.’ Noll, of course, is famous for his 15-year-old indictment ‘The Scandel of the Evangelical Mind’ in which he pointed out all of the ways evangelical Christian thinking lacks substance and, well, thought. A big part of this deficit, as Noll and many others have pointed out, is a sort of buy-in to the modernist notion of single causality, the idea that once something has been explained one way, all other explanations must fall by the wayside. Thus, because the Bible is God’s word and the Bible describes creation in a supernatural way, any purely natural explanation must be disproven or disregarded. Or because God is preeminent, nothing else can really be important. Of course, this way of thinking isn’t unique to evangelicals. We see the same thinking in our shallow atheists – when a natural explanation is possible, God cannot possibly be a consideration.  So there is weak thinking all around. One worrying result of this I sometimes see is that more thoughtful people of faith sometimes adopt the opinion that developing the life of the mind simply isn’t very important – that discerning reading, careful consideration, and thought development simply don’t really matter. The cultural impact of post-modern relativistic thought (so helpful in so many other ways) hasn’t helped much in this regard.

Are You Intuitive? Does That Explain Why You Connect with God?

Thanks to Connie Chung for passing on this link from the Harvard Gazette that makes the case that intuitive people are more likely to find God than strictly rational people.

God is related to decision-making style, with those who rely more heavily on intuition reporting higher rates of belief, while those who are more reflective tilt toward atheism.

By linking religious belief to intuition, the study supports the idea that there is something in the cognitive makeup of humans that promotes belief in a higher power. For example, the natural tendency that people have to see a purpose behind random events, or the need to reduce uncertainty in their lives — as well as the anxiety it causes — may promote a belief in God.

The work, conducted by researchers in Harvard’s Psychology Department, found that cognitive style was an important indicator of religious belief. They found that this was true even when accounting for factors such as intelligence, education, income, and political orientation. They also found that more intuitive people reported an increase in religious faith over the course of their lives, a rise independent of religious upbringing.

“We know that family environment explains a lot of why some people believe more than others, but it doesn’t explain everything,” said Amitai Shenhav, a doctoral student in Harvard’s Psychology Department. “When researchers think about cognitive factors that might also play a role, they often bring up pure thinking ability. Our research suggests a more nuanced answer.”