{"id":952,"date":"2013-02-22T03:41:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T03:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/man-or-machine\/"},"modified":"2013-02-22T03:41:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T03:41:00","slug":"man-or-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/man-or-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Man or Machine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath tells a story about Harvard President Neil Rudenstine oversleeping one morning in November of 1994.\u00a0 For this zealous perfectionist, in the midst of a million-dollar-a-day fund raising campaign, it was cause for alarm.\u00a0 After years of intensive, nonstop toil and struggle in an atmosphere that rewarded frantic busyness and overwork, and having been assaulted by a hail of never-finished tasks, President Rudenstine collapsed.\u00a0 \u201cMy sense was that I was exhausted,\u201d Rudenstine told reporters.\u00a0 His doctor agreed.\u00a0 Only after a three month sabbatical, during which he read Lewis Thomas, listened to Ravel, and walked with his wife on a Caribbean beach, was Rudenstine able to return to his post.\u00a0 That week, his picture was on the cover of Newsweek magazine beside the one word banner headline: \u201cExhausted!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can man operate like a machine?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember my grandfather telling a story about his employer Milton S. Hershey.\u00a0 Hershey was the founder and leader of the Hershey Chocolate Factory around the turn of the century.\u00a0 During that time Hershey also built a school for orphaned children, a park, rose gardens, ballroom, community center and a golf course for any employee from his chocolate factory to use free of charge.\u00a0 The idea was to have a balanced life.\u00a0 Work hard, enjoy your family and rest well.\u00a0 For Hershey,\u00a0 stability didn’t come through sucking more profit out of his people but rather providing balance.\u00a0 During the 1930’s at the height of the great depression, Hershey decided to build the world renown Hershey Hotel.\u00a0 His purpose was solely to provide jobs, not make more money.\u00a0 My grandfather was pulled from the chocolate factory due to work being slow to help build the Hotel.\u00a0 One day while constructing the new hotel, the sight manager had a new machine brought to the job site.\u00a0 It was a steam shovel.\u00a0 While the steam shovel began to to dig the manager proclaimed that this new machine could do the work of 100 men.\u00a0 About mid day, Milton S. Hershey arrived at the construction site to oversee the progress which had been made.\u00a0 Not long after arriving the site manager showed Milton the steam shovel and proclaimed it could do the work of 100 men.\u00a0 Milton stopped the manager in his tracks and said, “Then get rid of the steam shovel and hire 100 more men.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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What is the value of a human being?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This past week while reading Consuming Religion by Vincent J. Miller I was struck by the concept of how hyper consumerism societies cause an unstoppable commodification of culture. Subtly, we begin to look at all which has been created as commodities.\u00a0 In its extreme, the value and worth of fellow humans is diminished. In so doing we begin to treat people as commodities or as simple machines.\u00a0 Empty, soulless, hollow commodities for our own purposes.\u00a0 In the commodification of people we subtly begin to treat them like machines.\u00a0 However, humans are not machines.\u00a0 We are limited, not infinite.\u00a0 Milton Hershey understood the value, worth of person. Hire more, work them less, give them rest, provide a living and care for their entire being.\u00a0 They are not expendable.<\/p>\n

What Commodification Exists in our Churches?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our Language…<\/strong> What type of language do we use in the church?\u00a0 Invest and Invite!\u00a0 Multiply! Exponential! To often our language models a commodification understanding of church and humanity.\u00a0 We talk about people as dehumanized objects in which play roles in our great game.\u00a0 Financial, capitalistic and self gain language is often used at the expense of the very person you were called to help form their soul.\u00a0 In commodification language the forming of one’s soul is foreign and even seems ridiculous, due to the lack of capitalistic gain.<\/p>\n

Our Leaders…\u00a0<\/strong> Do we see leaders as commodities or souls which have been entrusted to you by God to care for.\u00a0 Why do we spend time with our leaders?\u00a0 Simply to gain a return or because we love them the way God loves them?\u00a0 Leaders are gifts entrusted to you by God, not another tool to treat like a machine in accomplishing your great vision.\u00a0 Do you know your leaders?\u00a0 Do you sit and simply be present with them?\u00a0 Do you hurt with them, or have you devalued them as commodities?\u00a0 Remember, a commodity is simply used, when finished we get another.<\/p>\n

Our Discipleship…<\/strong> Critically evaluating discipleship evaluates health based off the question,\u00a0 “Is a disciple displaying the character and priorities of Jesus?”\u00a0 How is it that we have commodified discipleship to a point where\u00a0 we evaluate health based on production?\u00a0 A disciple must be active!\u00a0 In a loss of rhythms and pace of life, we have forgot about the first portion of Mark 12, simply being present with God.\u00a0 Do we provide room in our church programing for people to be present?\u00a0 Do we care for their souls in the mess?\u00a0 Do we trust God enough with our finances to not force a production model to grow our church numerically.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Our we treating our people like human beings or machines?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have we commodified them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are they exhausted?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are you a man or a machine?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Human beings enjoy the simplicity of life.\u00a0 Work as well as rest.\u00a0 We were not made to operate like machines.\u00a0 Machines, operate like technology.\u00a0 Never turning off, meeting every need, never taking a break.<\/p>\n

Which will you be?\u00a0 How will you lead?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath tells a story about Harvard President Neil Rudenstine oversleeping one morning in November of 1994.\u00a0 For this zealous perfectionist, in the midst of a million-dollar-a-day fund raising campaign, it was cause for alarm.\u00a0 After years of intensive, nonstop toil and struggle in an atmosphere that rewarded frantic busyness and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"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":[2,255],"class_list":["post-952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-miller","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}