{"id":20028,"date":"2018-11-08T15:01:31","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T23:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=20028"},"modified":"2018-11-08T15:01:31","modified_gmt":"2018-11-08T23:01:31","slug":"i-can-see-clearly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-can-see-clearly\/","title":{"rendered":"I Can See Clearly…"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I started reading\u00a0A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/em> by Edwin Friedman I said to myself, even if you do not like this book you have to find something about it you can connect with, after all Dr. Clark really likes this book. That being said I had no problems finding something I like in this book. In fact, I know it is impossible to read all of the book for a post this one is definitely going to my side desk so I can reread it in its entirety.<\/p>\n

There is so much to like in this book. I am a fan of history. I know there are many who find it monotonous but I love history. So when Friedman begins with the beginnings of the Renaissance having its roots in the voyage of Columbus I was hooked. As I read further I began to understand this book was not a history book at all but I was intrigued at Friedman’s assertion that the main reason for Europe to have come out of the Medieval time was the voyage of Columbus, and yet not even him but his predecessors who burst through the imaginary line of the equator in searching out the world. I found it fascinating when he revealed someone born in 1492 would have witnessed “the flowering of artistic imagination, the Reformation, the invention of the watch, observations of space and experimentation with lenses and the publication of the first newspaper” [1]\u00a0 You find the same type of leap forward for someone born in the 1930’s, the car, the jet plane, computers, cell phones etc. Friedman also compares the two ages in saying the time we live in now mirrors the Dark Ages for several reasons. He calls this an “imaginative gridlock” He argues, and I believe rightly so, that American culture is gridlocked the same way European culture was before the Renaissance. He the stuck nature of our culture resembles that of Europe at that time in that we have our own “equators” that we are afraid of going over. Just like the sailors before Columbus were afraid they would fall off the Earth, we too have irrational fears that keep us from leaping forward.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I loved his characteristics of a gridlocked system, “an unending treadmill of trying harder, looking for answers rather than reframing questions and either\/or thinking that creates false dichotomies. [2] It was within this discussion that I completely bought into this book. I read about the issues of a culture\/family and I see the same issues at the heart of the church today. I see it within my self, if I just work harder I can turn around what is happening in my church. If I look for new answers to the age old question, “Why do churches seem so inner focussed?” so I can fix the problem. I have thought I had the problem solved many times only to find I was completely wrong. So when I am reading through the foundations of this book I can see the church. It is not hard to find book after book and article after article on church growth, or breaking through certain barriers. Whether they are attendance barriers or attracting a certain group or changing the outreach of the church you will never lack in finding someone to give you the “secret” to doing it. I have come to the conclusion that there is no catchall answer, (I know that is probably obvious). What Friedman’s book argues is that it is not about getting more information or data but to reframe the question that is being asked. He states, “The willingness to encounter the unexpected that Columbus and these other explorers manifested not only can free minds from their sets’ it also enables us to imagine the unimaginable. And no society can continue to evolve as long as it makes cloistered virtues supreme.”[3] So what I start to see is that a church is a society which is cloistered around what they want in church, not what is best for reaching out. How does a church begin to change its outlook? It begins at the beginning. No, I do not mean planting a new church in an already choked community. I mean, as churches we need to start back at the beginning of our time with Jesus. There are so many in churches who think they are mature Christians and yet they sit back and are unable to see past their own equators. By that I mean this, they cannot imagine doing things in a different way because they have seen it come and seen it go and the one thing that remains the same is them. If churches were full of mature Christians, fully discipled Christians, then we would not have a inner focus problem. A fully mature Christian realizes it is not about my wants and needs, it is all about being obedient to Christ and reaching a lost world as we are called to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I hear so many Christian leaders disparage the herd mentality of this world. The problem is though, we in church have that same mentality. We are not part of the herd of self need and self wants, we are sheep in the Great Shepherds flock and we are to listen to His voice above all. That is where change needs to happen in the church, we need to do a better job of discipleship and that will, in turn create a focus on the world and its need for a savior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0Friedman, Edwin H., Margaret M. Treadwell, and Edward W. Beal.\u00a0A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/i>. New York: Church Publishing, 2017.14.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[2] Ibid. 38<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[3]\u00a0Ibid. 52.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I started reading\u00a0A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin Friedman I said to myself, even if you do not like this book you have to find something about it you can connect with, after all Dr. Clark really likes this book. That being said I had no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"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":[],"class_list":["post-20028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028","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\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20028"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20053,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028\/revisions\/20053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}