I am not real big on daily readers. But a couple years ago did Richard Rohr’s daily and wow was it good. This year I am doing Keatings new work. He is original as all get out and so helpful. The week I spent with Keating remains one of the most important weeks of my journey. This book does nothing be rekindle all those hours or listening to him retelling stories from the Gospels. It just doesn’t get much better.
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I feel like three things are more clear to me after being gone 37 days in South Africa and Namibia. I will unpack these over the next three posts. But here they are briefly.
1. Spirituality will be more relational, creational and communitarian into the 21st century
I have mentioned this before but haven’t much unpacked it. I need to. I am more convinced than ever and I see these yearnings and core longings from the Nassau to Namibia and Stellenbosch to St. Louis. If we can break the textual addiction we have the relegates formation to bible study we are going to be dead in the water in the postmodern world. (and obviously I love the bible my latest book released 8 days ago is about the good Book)
2. The best ways of doing ministry have yet to be found and we are in an “idea” crisis
This was one of the core values we as a staff owned at the DNA level of our being when I was a local church pastor. We need church leaders that continue to think into new frontiers and arenas.
3. People aren’t craving church, or sermons or bible study…the are dying to be in small community where real dialogue and doing life together happens.
Many of us as leaders in the church still don’t seem to get this. We have been so conditioned by the old modern world where obligation and belonging were premium values we don’t seem to heard the wake up call of the information age…. it is ubiquitous therefore our brokering of it is of little value to this world. We will have to broker much more.
More ruminations to follow.
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I continue to be struck by how we live in in between times; in between modern and after-modern worlds, in between Christendom and after-Christendom worlds, in between Gutenberg and after-Gutenberg worlds, these are a few of the in betweens we are navigating.
The church is in between these and other things as well. What kind of leadership is called for in in between times? What kind of spirituality will nourish this new leadership? What kind of user generated content will change the outcome of the experience for those involved in meeting we call “church?” What will the navigation of these in betweens mean to how we architect new meeting spaces for the new ways of gathering as the people of God.
I have been a part of conversations over the last month where we have probed and discussed all of these in depth. In 61 different sessions over nearly 30 days we have bumped up against these questions and more. But I wonder if all of these things will only be answered when a key shift within the church’s self understanding happens…the shift from belonging to transformation.
For a long time we have trumpeted the need for the church to be a place of belonging, and while that is true I am not convinced that is the biggest need, calling or commission we have. The church has people belonging but not being, people being informed but not transformed.
I am willing to admit I might be wrong and maybe I don’t have the best vantage point. But I wonder what might happen if we in the church started shifting the questions we are asking from how people connect, to how they change, from how they belong to how they become.
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Only days away from the book release on March 1st. And I have had a number of people read the galleys and endorse it. You have heard from half a dozen, today from our friend Brian McLaren. I hope you will get the book and read the details of this story but it was actually Brian that had an awful lot to do with the final title of this book as we sat in my living room one late night. Thanks Brian
“Ron Martoia is a deep and elegant thinker and a clear and engaging writer. Not only do I love what he writes, but I have had the chance to see him in action, leading groups and creating space for people to think, learn, discover and grow. Reading this book feels like being in a group facilitated by Ron, so I know it will help people rediscover the Bible and find their place in it’s ongoing, life-transforming, world-changing drama.”
Brian McLaren, author/speaker brianmclaren.net
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Here is the second message that follows last weeks posted audio.
For those having trouble playing this clip click this link!
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“How?” is not a question it is a series of questions that stall us and keep us in active. There are 6 sorry versions of this says Peter Block in his volume The Answer to How is Yes.
“By invoking the ‘how’ question, we define the debate about the changes we have in mind and thereby create a set of boundaries on how we approach the task.”
Here are the 6 variations…
1. How do you do it?
2. How long will it take?
3. How much does it cost?
4. How can we get those people to change?
5. How do we measure it?
6. Who has been successful doing this?
These are nice cul de sacs to get caught in and postpone the much harder questions of sacrifice when we have already decided the thing we are called, compelled, passionate or desire to do is something that MUST be done. How is a nice derailer. His detailed paragraphs on each of these how questions are excellent.
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This is a message done in a really rich church plant in South Africa. The location is right in Cape Town just a few blocks from the new world cup soccer stadium. Next week I will post the second message in this series.
For those having trouble using this embedded player try this link!
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I have plenty of friends that greet me with or sig their email’s with Namaste’ “the Divine in me sees and acknowledges the Divine in you.” My last post I mentioned Avatar and have been tempted to write a longer post making observational comparisons to religious imagery so replete throughout. The descent of the “doves” in the “chosen” narrative, the birth/rebirth scenes, the laying on of hands and committal scenes, the neo tribalism of connection to each other…the list is lengthy.
But I will only make one observation and it will probably be the last made on this blog. At the critical turn in the movie there is a deep, dramatic and meaningful exchange of “I see you,” a healing and reconnective statement that reunites, affirms and “changes everything” from there on out not only in the world of the omaticaya but in their personal worlds as well.
Having been in South Africa, Namibia and now back in South Africa I am predicting that “I see you” will be in the short term the new Namaste’. People who know I have seen the movie have unprompted looked into my eyes and greeted me that way. When I reciprocate that opens the conversation to the ways we were deeply touched by Cameron’s masterpiece.
This past weekend Avatar slipped from the first spot in box office sales. Currently 613 million in sales the US…but get this…2.2 billion sales globally…yes that is billion with a “B.” Yes Avatar isn’t a US phenomenon it is global. And the fact that I am being greeted in South Africa and Namibia with “I see you” is just one example from my little world.
I see you…
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A year ago on the anniversary of the posting of Luther’s 95 Theses I was invited with 8 others from the US and 16 others from the rest of the world, to go to Wittenburg to discuss what the Next Reformations (notice the plural) might look like for us in the 21st century. The title of this blog post was what I talked 
about. I said then, have said it on this site, and have spoken about it at conferences for the last year. Spirituality in the 21st century will be more relational, creational and communitarian. The image you see here was for our year long class called spiritual explorations live.
All that background to say when I arrived a church consult with one of the churches I have been working with for the last 18 months the guy I most closely collaborate with said “we are going to see Avatar today, I think you are going to be surprised.” Well, he was right. Avatar might be the best depiction in movie form of what a spirituality of seeing and awareness might look like in a the postmodern West. Is it technologically spectacular? Yes. Is it the most expensive movie made in history? Yes. Is it a mashup (@dethim for that language application) of stories like Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves? Yes. Is it a great illustration of a spirituality with creational, communitarian and relational sensitivities? Yes! And it is for this last reason I would most press you should see it. This movie is a perfect conversation piece on semiotics…the signs of the times.
Come on gang let’s not bicker about whether or not Cameron’s theology is perfectly biblical or too pantheistic or all the other crazy debates we get into. No one said this was a biblical theological expose’. Let’s acknowledge he has a pulse on the spirituality of our times and is doing it with robust imagination, something that often seems rather domesticated within the church.
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“we define our dialogue and, in a sense, our future through questions we choose to address. Asking the wrong questions puts us in the philosopher’s dilemma: we become the blind man looking in a dark room for a a black cat that is not there.”
So opens part one of Peter Block’s book The Answer to How is Yes.
This opening section Peter hammers away at how “how” is a deflector from acting. In other words it is an ego piece that prevents us, or allows us to hide behind acting. He says “choosing to act on ‘what matters’ is the choice to live a passionate existence, which is anything but controlled and predictable.” (p. 7)
He is interested in exploring how risk and adventure, which we all crave, we actually prefer to crave at a distance… and we keep distance by asking all sorts of questions that keep the pursuit impossibly at arms length. We like Man versus Wild on tv, we secretly hope we could do the same, and we verbalize if given the possibility we would…but really? Don’t we want to keep this stuff at a distance and isn’t that an illustration of how we feel about our deepest passions too?
He suggests the most common question we ask is ‘how?’ We as quickly as possible reduce the questions of purpose and meaning and passion and fire down to the practical considerations which in the grand scheme of things matter little if the passion, meaning and purpose are calling us forward. He gives six versions of the ‘hows’ we ask to keep acting at bay.
Do you ask how questions to stall risk engagment? What kind of how questions?
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