{"id":18538,"date":"2018-06-28T22:09:15","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T05:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=18538"},"modified":"2018-06-28T22:09:15","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T05:09:15","slug":"i-try-not-ever-to-be-naked-in-the-land-of-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-try-not-ever-to-be-naked-in-the-land-of-uncertainty\/","title":{"rendered":"I Try Not EVER To Be Naked In The Land Of Uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a book to end DMin year one on! Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within<\/em> by Robert Quinn was a great one to go out on. Our year has been full of TREMENDOUS books, and this one was no sleeper. My title is of course a little off center, but realistically, I try not to be that vulnerable with myself or with others–That is, until this year!<\/p>\n

The necessity of internal reflection and inner understanding has come through loud and clear as part of the LGP8 gaining leadership growth, including very much my own growth. The journey began with with our Personal Leadership Development Plan, and then reading books such as Leadership Pain<\/em>\u00a0(Chand), Overcoming the Dark Side of<\/em> Leadership (Macintosh and Rima), and Bad Religion\u00a0<\/em>(Douthat). Now, DEEP CHANGE\u00a0. Wow, that one packs a punch with both DEEP, and then even more of a challenge, with CHANGE. \u00a0Do those two words even go together? Thank goodness God is all about change, providing everything we need for\u00a0lasting transformation<\/strong> through his Holy Spirit.\u00a0Two steps forward and stay forward, not two steps forward and two steps back.<\/p>\n

I must be honest though, when reading Quinn I was conflicted with what I learned prior from reading\u00a0To Change the World\u00a0<\/em>by Hunter. Basically, hunter said there were many reasons lasting transformation<\/strong> rarely happened. Not with hard work, not with good intentions, or even with revival. No, it only happens with “Faithful Presence Within”. [1] But, then I remembered that Hunter was talking about changing society or the possibility of changing the world, while Quinn was talking about working on changing the individual by discovering the “Leader Within” [2] which would eventually lead to changing the organization, by “Vision, Risk, and the Creation of Excellence”. [3]<\/p>\n

I took Quinn a big step further and wanted to answer a personal question for me: Would DEEP CHANGE work for an entire denomination, such as the Evangelical Church, of which I am a part? Now I know we are a tiny denomination compared to most, and I have only been a Conference Superintendent for 6 whopping months (26 weeks to be exact!).<\/p>\n

But seriously, I feel like The Evangelical Church is in crisis. Like code red crisis. Much of what we have discussed in our Zoom chat sessions has revealed to me that my denomination may be on life support (and we are not alone). Rampant consumerism by our attenders (when they actually come to church), privileged racism (can anyone say extremely caucasian?), sexism (potentially, but not to the point of mysogynism), and of course the good old American spirit of capitalism–These are just a few of our problems. Add these together and then multiply by our main problem of INDIVIDUALISM, which I identified last week in my Blog on\u00a0Boxers and Saints\u00a0<\/em>by Yang, by referencing Rah in\u00a0The Next Evangelicalism<\/em>. We need some CPR (again, we are not alone in America).<\/p>\n

So here we go…<\/p>\n

Quinn hit the nail on the head, I believe our denomination is facing the “Slow Death Dilemma”. [4] Down to only 125 churches, mostly in the Northwest, mainly in rural areas (when population trends lean dramatically towards urbanization), we are drying up. Yes, we have incredible areas of growth, but are not even closely keeping up with the market share of population growth around us. We have GREAT people, but aren’t being realistic because we both fear change and struggle to find vitality denomination wide. We are pretty good at task pursuit, but to the point of treasuring tasks over souls. Fifty percent of our churches nationwide have seen 2 or fewer conversions in the past year (33% of my 30 churches in my own conference have seen less than 2 conversions this year). Ouch!<\/p>\n

So let’s gain a new perspective. I loved the talk in this book about “remythologizing”. [5] Telling our most important historical stories, which gets us back to our roots. Bingo! The word that comes to my mind is orthodoxy. Like returning to our roots, back to the simple basics, traditional, ORTHODOXY.<\/p>\n

Like sports team getting back to the basics, that is what our denomination needs to do. What are our basics? A group of influencers in our denomination recently gathered together in Salem, Oregon to do re-discover just that. What they discovered is that our best stories have always been associated with two main themes–Evangelism and Discipleship. \u00a0We found this is paragraph 951 of our\u00a0Discipline,\u00a0<\/em>and are now calling this the 951 Movement.<\/p>\n

It may sound simplistic to do evangelism and discipleship (duh!), or even perplexing how we could have drifted away from these, especially since the “Evangelical” Church has strayed away from evangelism. But we have! Sorry to say, we have.<\/p>\n

Therefore, this book helped me realize our preferred self-image had digressed from our actual behavior. [6] With integrity, I am calling this out. Our lived behavior requires a deep change! Our situation requires us confronting the undiscussable. [7]<\/p>\n

With the power of one, starting internally with me, I pledge to focus on faithfulness and fruitfulness in my own ministry. Faithfulness to the Gospel, faithfulness to the Great Commission, faithfulness to my calling in Christ Jesus. And fruitfulness of earnestly seeking (and praying) for salvation, sanctification, and\u00a0lasting transformation.<\/strong> Then I pledge to chase the same with my own Conference. Thirty churches, 107 Pastors. Faithfulness and Fruitfulness!<\/p>\n

In closing, I was thrilled to start this book with the basketball illustration of Oscar Robertson! What a great example of DEEP CHANGE for our organizations!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0Hunter, James Davison. To Change the World the Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World<\/i>. Oxford University Press, 2010.<\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0Quinn, Robert E. Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within<\/i>. Jossey-Bass, 1996. Preface<\/p>\n

[3] Ibid., Loc. 1124.<\/p>\n

[4] Ibid., Loc. 218.<\/p>\n

[5] Ibid., Loc. 626.<\/p>\n

[6] Ibid., Loc. 711.<\/p>\n

[7] Ibid., Loc. 1516.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a book to end DMin year one on! Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within by Robert Quinn was a great one to go out on. Our year has been full of TREMENDOUS books, and this one was no sleeper. My title is of course a little off center, but realistically, I try not to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1230],"class_list":["post-18538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-quinn","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18538"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18540,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538\/revisions\/18540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}