Tomorrow is ship day. And most of you are eagerly waiting.
We know that the current religious church systems “works” for about 70% of the people. That is, for that number of people the current answers given to the questions asked, the level of engagement requested and the goods and services offered is satisfactory. Some people are cut out for that system. Some are content with the status quo, have no intention or even reason to rock the boat and have no idea what the big problem is for those experiencing discontent. Though a vast majority of them, by their own admission, have not one time experienced the presence of God in their personal lives or their church in the last 12 months, they remain committed. (see Barna’s Revolution for this stat and others like it)
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“50% of pastors would leave the ministry tomorrow if they could. 70% are fighting depression and 90% can’t cope with the challenge of ministry…..
1,500 pastors walk away from ministry every month because of moral failure, burnout, conflict, discouragement or depression. He was also shocked to find that 80 percent of seminary and Bible school graduates will leave the ministry within their first five years”
Those are the stats Jonathan Falwell, son of the late Jerry Falwell said at their recent ReFuel conference a week ago.
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How would you like to take a journey that promises to be one of
the most potentially transformative experiences of your life? How would you like a deep sense of wholeness and peace that seems unshakable? What about a connection to creation that is fresh and dynamic? How would you like to experience a profound “letting go” at the core of your being so you can live guilt free and forgiveness full? Wouldn’t it be great to live life in the midst of paradox and ambiguity totally at peace because of transformative practices? How would you like to monitor and transform the stories you tell yourself in your head that create a false reality? These are the sort of things this journey is all about.
Are you ready to take the risky step necessary to actually engage transformative practices that will really change the way you see things? Practices that will alter the way you make meaning and sense of everyday life? Information will not change the way you see. Doctrines will not alter the way you make meaning and make sense of life. But awareness can. Awakening can. Having the eyes of your heart enlighten certainly can.
We are one week away from the global release of the manifesto, “The Five Invitations.” People in South Africa, New Zealand, South America, England and 6 other countries will be receiving the manifesto to read and pass on. The Five Invitations culminates with a personal invitation to join a Trek; a journey where you will have 24 hour access anywhere in the world to an environment designed just for those on the trek. This tribe will have access to videos explaining transformative practice and the best material on personal growth. There will be weekly practices to engage and then discuss. There will be a book selected each month that will be read by anyone in the tribe that wants to and then discussed on forums boards. There will be book reviews, audio downloads, articles, conference calls, live webcasts and even local in real life meetings all available for the those on this transformative trek.
Every month new materials of all different media types will uploaded, keeping the environments always stocked with great next steps for the transformative journey.
You really don’t want to miss the opportunity. The countdown has begun, seven days and we go live. If you have not signed up to receive the manifesto in your email box do so now
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Thinking together is a lost art. As a teacher I do hard thinking, then I tell you about all my insights. If you think it is insightful, clever, smart or feels new to you, you register your acceptance of my insights with a nod or a “great message Ron,” and assume those insights will now change your life. But we haven’t thought together. And we certainly haven’t come “to know together.”
Thinking together and coming to know together requires a posture of being that will accommodate new shifts in us. We have discussed the two components of the social field. Now we look at the four ways of being or listening.
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What is the field of interaction or what is technically called the social field? Have you ever stopped by a teammate’s cubicle or office or ran into someone in the hall, and what was going to be a quick hello turned into this magical 45 minute encounter or you both experienced a change in the texture of the space and 90 minutes later an incredible direction and initiative was midwifed?
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A field of interaction, where honest sharing, uncertainty, doubts and hard questions normally off limits is what most of us quietly yearn for.
I think this is one of the challenges we have in our typical church contexts. Belonging systems require a level of conformity to belong. So if you struggle with how other world religions square with the exclusivity of Jesus’ claims there is a pretty clear and prescribed answer you need to buy. If you are wondering about how to handle your gay friends interest in coming to church, but you know the party line response, then in most cases you will probably discourage them and shield them from the inevitable chastisement. If you start asking questions about the size of the gospel, it’s breadth and storyline, and whether or not we have been telling an abbreviated lo-cal version, the typical church context will struggle to have an open conversation.
The list of issue for conforming and belonging is lengthy and the list of churches willing to honestly entertain alternatives to the current positions few…but happily I will say… growing.
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David Bohm the great quantum physicist, said “the tree doesn’t come from the seed. The seed is an aperture that organizes the processes of growth through which the tree finally emerges.”
When people come together whether that is in real time and space or cyberspace, there is an invisible architecture and shape in those relationships. That invisible architecture is called the social field, and it is comprised of visible and external “what we say and do with each” as well as the invisible and internal origins of those actions. How we act and interact, learn and unlearn, see and reveal, grow and transform is determined by how that social field is sourced by our interior life and the content of the conversation. The social field is formed by some aperture that organizes how those interactions occur.
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Can we grow to the place we are comfortable with our knowledge limits and open to what others can teach us? Are we open to the idea we do not have all the answers and much of what we hold is simply wrong, we just aren’t sure which parts?
I am not sure we are. Taking this position would seem to fly in the face of the very system the church has engaged where mythos has collapsed into logos. Where the power of the story and narrative (mythos) is overshadowed by the rules, rationality and certainty (logos). Another word use for this by experts like Karen Armstrong is “fundamentalist system;” rules, doctrines and lifestyle statements to insure as much conformity and uniformity as possible. This is the essence of the socialized mind we have been discussing.
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