Community vs. Collaboration
Recently finishing a book entitled, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.
I recommend it if you are interested.
One little gem in this book speaks of communities an collectives. Here is the section I find interesting (emphasis added):
A collective is very different from an ordinary community. Whereas communities can be passive (though no all of them are by any means) collectives cannot. In communities, people learn in order to belong. In a collective, people belong in order to learn. Communities derive their strength from creating a sense of belonging, while collectives derive theirs from participation.
This little distinction seems to capture the tension between what I can best describe as modern and post-modern leadership in the Church. Bot a community and a collective have their place, but it seems to me that more and more of my peers and those younger than me (post-moderns) long for collectives.
We live in a Facebook time in which we have a sense of "belonging" (even if it is superficial at times). I have belonging, but I do not have collective.
Each small group that I have been a part of that contains a critical mass of post-moderns builds itself as a community. This is what they have been taught, this is what their parents and their grand parents set up small groups communities. They are groups of people who come together in order to belong to one another. So social activities take precedence over spiritual formation or missional outreach.
And each small group with a critical mass of post-moderns eventually folds under lack of interest.
Could it be that the models of creating community are no longer effective in creating and building a Church?
Could it be that the models of creating collectives are more effective?
Could it be why wikipedia is so popular? It is a collective in which people belong in order to learn. Could it be that Churches who expect people to learn how to belong are building communities which no longer meet the need or address the world?
Could it be that Churches could lead the way in collective building?
It seems to me that Jesus had a collective of 12 and was rejected by his community.
Maybe Jesus was onto something.
I recommend it if you are interested.
One little gem in this book speaks of communities an collectives. Here is the section I find interesting (emphasis added):
A collective is very different from an ordinary community. Whereas communities can be passive (though no all of them are by any means) collectives cannot. In communities, people learn in order to belong. In a collective, people belong in order to learn. Communities derive their strength from creating a sense of belonging, while collectives derive theirs from participation.
We live in a Facebook time in which we have a sense of "belonging" (even if it is superficial at times). I have belonging, but I do not have collective.
Each small group that I have been a part of that contains a critical mass of post-moderns builds itself as a community. This is what they have been taught, this is what their parents and their grand parents set up small groups communities. They are groups of people who come together in order to belong to one another. So social activities take precedence over spiritual formation or missional outreach.
Could it be that the models of creating community are no longer effective in creating and building a Church?
Could it be that the models of creating collectives are more effective?
Could it be why wikipedia is so popular? It is a collective in which people belong in order to learn. Could it be that Churches who expect people to learn how to belong are building communities which no longer meet the need or address the world?
Could it be that Churches could lead the way in collective building?
It seems to me that Jesus had a collective of 12 and was rejected by his community.
Maybe Jesus was onto something.
Parable of forgiveness - Matthew 18
Matthew 18:21-35 is a parable of Jesus only found in the Gospel of Matthew in which there is an servant who after just being forgiven of a great debt, is unforgiving toward a servant of his own for a minor debt. I have encountered this parable as a proof of God sending people to hell, as per the final verses in which it says,
Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’
Perhaps this is indeed a story of God punishing those who are unforgiving. It seems weird to me that God would not forgive but punish those who do not forgive. Does that mean that God should be punished until God forgives the unforgiving people?
It is for these reasons that we need to remember this is a parable. As such there is great symbolism in these stories and to quickly literalness them blinds us to potential deeper meanings.
So in an effort to help open imagination of parabolic reading, I would offer this idea.
When I live my life and am not forgiving my neighbor, then I find that I am tormented by the grudges I am holding toward those who I am called to forgive.
Could it be that God allows us to be handed over to the one responsible for punishing prisoners when we do not forgive not because God is punishing us, but because we are punishing ourselves? In my life I find that I am my own worst critic and hardest on myself. When I hold grudges and refuse forgiveness when I know I should not, I feel terrible. I feel tormented.
And I will continue to feel this way until my debt is paid off. That is to say that I will be tormented by my lack of forgiving until I forgive.
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.