What Need Does Blue Ocean Faith Address?

I had a fun conversation a week or so ago with some of you who are trying to live out and offer what, here, we often call "Blue Ocean" faith (a mash-up of Stage 4 and centered-set--we have video explanations of both of them in the multimedia tab above).  Having tried this for awhile, I asked the gang what need they saw this take on faith addressing.  Was it addressing...misery in secular people?  Meaninglessness?  Maybe focusing on secular people at all in this question was a mistake.  Maybe it addresses fundamental needs in us?  What might those be?

As you'd expect, with a question both so basic and so deep, there was some hemming and hawing for a moment.  But then I heard story after story of actual people who'd been profoundly helped by this--not least those of us on the call ourselves.  But despite my best attempts to reduce the moral of each of the stories to a phrase that would answer the question I'd hazarded, it was quite hard to do.  Many of the people in the stories were religious.  Many were secular.  And yet they were both helped in ways that, hearing their stories, seemed really compelling.

Which led to this thought.  Maybe Blue Ocean Faith is best suited to help people in Stage 3 (again, forgive the jargon... but here is the video explanation below if you want it), whether religious or secular. 

Which would explain why it had proven so helpful to, say, me.  I came into faith from Stage 3--I was an atheist debater.  And this stuff was profoundly helpful and healing.  So I'm a case study of this hypothesis.

What do you think?  What need does Blue Ocean Faith address?

Comments

[Paul]

My personal need (trying to remember) was to find a hopeful life, which I felt I needed in the midst of crisis. Then I heard (and was willing to believe) a message I never believed before. "Live an impossibly great life" was the tagline, but I found what seemed to me very practical ways to engage in a somewhat defined process and encouragement from others further along the journey. Perhaps most important to belief was inexplicable hope (through interactive relationship with a living God).

I find a key benefit of Blue Ocean to be a language and framework for a hopeful life in community that is more than just about me....AND paradoxically discovering more of who I am is critical. It seems to have mined the most hopeful aspects of the ancient ways (pre-modernist/pre-1800's faith). Inviting others to play is fun!

All to say I think I was a broken-down stage-2...discovered it didn't deliver on what it promised (hmm...guess that might be considered stage 3, but without hostility, only bewilderment).

[Bill Hoard]

While I was reading this my first thought was that I was drawn to a stage 4 approach to my faith because it struck me as more true than the semi stage 2 faith I was trying to operate in. It was definitely a gradual transfer for me and I'm not at all sure that it's finished yet. But the point is that I was and still am unwilling to accept anything which I don't actually believe to be true. At bottom it still seems to me that if we aren't stage 4 because we believe stage 4 to be closer to the mind of God than stages 1-3, then we would be sacrificing closeness to God for something else - which strikes me as a bad idea.
I realize that many people are more interested in the practical results of a proposition/system/model than it's "theoretical" or more abstract qualities, and while I appreciate those many advantages to stage 4 faith (the truth certainly ought to be more fundamentally useful than a lie), don't we have to ultimately accept it because it is true and we must have truth at any cost?

[PB]

I think it provides people with a place to ask questions about faith and life that's nonjudgmental. So maybe the need it meets is the curiosity that it addresses.

[Peter Benedict]

Minnesota's a different place than Boston <--understatement.

Out here I think people are tired of rancor and religion that divides, but there's a high degree of belief in Christ. The centered set provides a true, Jesus-focused path to loving one another and loving God, sans the judgment and division that come from the multitude of bounded sets created in most Christian movements. When I talk to people about being drawn together as we focus on Christ, there's palpable interest, and that interest hasn't flagged yet for our community.

I'm not sure which elements of the Blue Ocean are central, which are ancillary, but this centered set business is fantastic. If it's the core of Blue Ocean faith, I'm in.

[Paul]

All this said, it's when the rubber hits the road that so much possibly wishful thinking falls apart. One's Christian walk is judged or discounted if your application to life's questions, especially in the messy day-to-day life details, living out community, or small "p" politics, which is inherently part of community, be it civic or religious, that the wonderment of Kingdom here on earth (even Minnesota) falls apart as quickly as anywhere else. Judgemental, hypocrasy, and regression occurs in so many of Christ's followers....often exposing a failure not as rampant in some other faith walks that aren't so Stage 2 at their core, on a dualistic set of black and white.

[Dan Mitchell]

Most churches I have attended (or I may more rightly say, "attempted to attend") have a clearly-defined list of rules that one must follow in order to gain entrance into Heaven. Questioning those rules earns you a look - either compassionate or stern - and an explanation as to why those rules are correct. People in those churches seem to have taken the mystery out of God and reduced it to a simple formula. That never spoke to me, because the subject matter seemed far too complex to have been broken down so easily. I prefer Blue Ocean faith because it doesn't list out answers, but it provides a format for questioning fruitfully.

[kennyp]

The Blue Ocean / stage 4 approach to faith is the only one that has made sense based on where I've come from. There are natural limitations for where stage 2 can take someone.. with stage 4, it seems, the sky is the limit. & to read Jesus in his context, it seems that the sky was the limit.. the "stage 2" structures of his day couldn't contain all that he offered & experienced.

Long answer for.. I think Blue Ocean conversations address the need for a mystical, hopeful, "sky is the limit" kind of faith that is grounded in good theology & practice. This is something that (from my limited vantage point) is largely missing from discussions about religion out in secular & religious circles.

I get the impression that without using the language of "centered-set", "stages", etc there are LOTS of people of faith who know this deep in their bones. You guys have (in a sense) given terms for engagement with these ideas.

[Ryan NYC]

I vibe a lot with what everyone has said, in that I think Blue Ocean faith helps link anyone to a God that fills the need for "more." More connectedness, love, abundance, forgiveness, access, healing, purpose, meaning...

As everyone's mentioned, in one way or another, this approach sets one up for a lifelong journey of faith, where God is alive and interactive, rather than a bottled-up possession that one can master.