Most of us know that we can’t do anything truly visionary on our own. And if we can, our visions are likely too small. The internet (which is only about 4000 days old) has accelerated our capacity to network with one another.
The internet allows grassroots tribes to come out from nowhere, upending established institutions. You’ve seen this with the Obama comapaign, and you can see it in the rise of new church networks and associations as denominations decline.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been sensing a rapid land grab for the church network of the future. “Church networks” brings up over 3 million hits on google. Rick Warren says he wants to create the ‘network of networks’, as with many other visionary leaders.
In techie terms it’s the platform. Microsoft Windows is a computing platform, google is an online platform, you could say facebook is a social networking platform. The biggest and broadest rules them all.
There are many advantages to a common platform or network. The economies of scale, standardized best practices, and phenomenal impact. Imagine if David Yonggi Cho of the 830,000 person Yoido full gospel church in Soul Korea asked every person to pick up one piece of trash each that day?
What’s astounding is that at the very foundation of these massive Christian networks, is just one man.
Sometimes I find it hard to tell if our networks are simply reflecting Christ’s heart for unity… or if they’re pyramid schemes of influence?
Planning this night was like crafting a night of beauty. Unlike a wedding, I didn’t really have a template to work from. Yet, I really feel that many of the elements in what happened that night are things the church needs to be seriously looking into today. Some key factors in making the event an engaging experience…
- I held off on just asking any friend of mine to help out. I figured if the event is going to be diverse, than those leading and contributing need to be diverse as well. I was hoping to have as many circles and networks intersecting as possible.
- Prayer and interdependence. At first I felt like I was making some of my requirements for the evening too lofty, but word eventually caught on to more than we could handle. I was getting demo tracks and myspace links every day with people wanting to be a part of the event, which wil be fantastic for future events!
- Not everyone contributing was necessarily even from a common faith background. I simply challenged every artist to reflect on the theme of Solar Crash – what would it look like if heaven and earth collided? If not heaven, than their own concepts of paradise of a better world. The hope was that this would challenge artists to reflect on a profoundly biblical theme, without being religious in anyway.
- Performers and artists that were of a Christ-following background were told not to be explicit about Christ. Rather than simply declaring the name of Christ, my hope was that people would encounter the person of Christ, through the music, arts, and conversations.
- The Venue – I could have easily acquired a church venue for free, but I painstakingly looked for something different. Some art galleries in the distillery district were asking for 25-30 thousand dollars! I ended up stumbling upon the El Mocambo and getting an awesome deal (that’s a whole other story). Everyone from U2, to Blondie, to the Stones, to K-os, have been on this stage. I loved the grittiness of the nightclub, and it went along with the themes of convergence and redemption.
- I partnered with a causes worthy of our time. Raising the village in conjunction with Living Water International. We committed upfront we would find a way to pull off the event while giving 100% of ticket sales to the cause. We didn’t want people to simply be engaged and have a good time, but that everyone might be informed and involved with making the world a bit better.
- Risking a much smaller turnout, I told Christian’s not to come, at least not alone. Last thing we need is another event for christians anyways. The hope was to create a non-oppressive atmosphere for spiritual engagement.
- We made multiple points of entry. People were invited to a an arts night, a creativity night, a friend’s show, a party, a charity, etc.
- We used online technologies to engage and collaborate ie. wordpress, google docs, picasa web, facebook. (I looked into online ticketing but the 2-3 percent cut was too much for me.)
- I chose not to advertise publically. I realized there was no way for me personally enage hundreds of people in conversation, so the hope was to trust the community itself, and that everyone who was aware of the event, was invited and brought in by an intentional Christ-follower (Of course, plenty of people walking by heard the awesome music and paid to come in as well, which was great)
- Variety. I held out on many to have a wide variety of visual and performance arts. We wanted rock, hip hop, soul, dance, spoken word, paint, photography, sculptures, etc. I almost had a magician even, but things didn’t work out. The hope was that it might spark the god-given creativity within every individual that evening.
- We had collaborative art projects. Everyone was encouraged to make their mark during the night, and not to simply be a passive participant.
- Lots of other details to the preparation, but again, I can’t stress enough the amount of people who helped out behind the scenes!
Over five years ago I adopted this mission statement for my life – To live by faith, to cultivate love, and to be a voice of hope.
I wrapped up my degree in May and gave myself a blank slate to work from going forward (even though I had planned the next thirty years of my life six years ago). I strongly considered returning to the corporate job I loved and just being a regular dude fumbling through becoming the person God created me to be.
Through plenty of silence, reflection, wise counsel and prayer, I kept returning to this theme of faith, love, and hope. And I kept asking myself, what would it look like for me to truly wrap my life around these elements? What would it look like in my own specific context, to invest my god-given skills and passion to living this life of faith, love, and hope?
Here’s what I’ve come up with…
Spiritual Direction – Helping point people towards their Creator and the person they were created to be. Primarily through one on one mentoring, discipleship, speaking, and innovating upon ancient practices.
Community Development – Creating and redeeming spaces for meaningful relationships and interactions, whether locally, globally, or even virtually. These will be environments inside and outside of the church that value diversity and inclusiveness while accepting life as messy, struggle as a reality, but where hope always prevails.
Mobilizing for Mission – Empowering and guiding individuals and communities towards living out their unique dreams through service, and making the world a little bit more beautiful.
Basically, I see myself as a missionary to the city of Toronto. I really can’t think of anything else I’d rather do with my life right now. How this will work out in the long run financially I have no idea, but I guess that’s part of the adventure.
Practically over the next while, I’ll be providing leadership at Mosaic to becoming more missional and incarnational in practice; Creating spiritually engaging environments such as the Solar Crash event coming up; Prototyping what it means for the church to have an influential presence in Toronto’s rapidly growing condominium communities, starting with my own; And networking with other influencers in how we can seek the good of the city together.
I’m totally stoked!
Let me know if this is something that interests you as well, or if you’ve got any questions.
For our date night yesterday we went to see U2 3D. It was great to be able to do nothing else for 80 minutes but appreciate their music (that and watch four sweaty old men prance no stage).
I’m glad they played some of their older stuff, but they’ve just got too many good tunes to really play all in one concert. The most spiritually intriguing part was where Bono chants
To follow up the Mosaic Movement Resources as promised, here’s some articles, audio’s and video’s for you Rob Bell fans. I’ve been downloading all of their sermons since back in 2002, but again, to be on the safe side, all links here are just what’s currently available on the web.
*Note, I only link to resources that are already available on the web and I don’t have a practice of distributing or re-distributing any content.
For those of you who aren’t up to speed on Rob and Mars Hill, I’d say their the Mac of the megachurch world. clean and simple. Rob Bell’s an excellent communicator who does his homework, especially with contextualizing ancient Jewish culture. Their church is legend for exploding by word of mouth as Bell preached through Leviticus the first year.
Nooma video’s have been the latest craze. People thought I was being silly for spending money on them a few years back. You can borrow them from me if you’re in the area.
I’ll try to keep this resource page up to date, let me know if there’s anything worthwhile that I’m missing. Feel free to share this link on your sites/blogs.
Full videos from the Nooma series (I’m surprised it lasted this long, looks like some of the videos have been removed. Feel free to let me know if you find alternative links).
Full Nooma clips on Googlevideo/Youtube currently – Rain, Trees, Flame, Sunday, Noise, Kickball, Luggage, Dust, Bullhorn, Lump, Rhythm, Matthew, You
First 17 full-length Nooma’s also viewable in high quality on Vimeo here
Rob Bell regarding SexGod on CNN Five downloadable clips from Everything is Spiritual on iTunes Rob Bell interview for the Evolving Church conference 2007 Clip from Sex God tour in Michigan Video not of Rob Bell, but one of the “Way of the Master” guys in response to the Bullhorn Nooma. Video by youthwork.co.uk did an excellent video interview with Rob Bell, asking tough questions on how the church really started, emergent labels, and not becoming Ted Haggard. Hosted by premier.tv here.
To follow up the 
