Take the church back - be a Glocal Leader!

So I was emailing a fellow glocal trekker by the name of Bob Roberts and I was asking him if he knew any Kenyan pastors in Nairobi that we could connect with as we prepare for another trek over to see our guys in the Huruma slum – daily heroes. Bob comes back to me telling me that this very Sunday a Nairobi pastor was at his church – Oscar Muriu. And then he tagged on words to his email “he’s the real deal – are you?”
So I emailed him back telling him that Oscar pastors’ Nairobi Chapel which has its roots in the Plymouth Brethren and those were my roots and therefore both Oscar and I were THE real deal – but what about Bob? [If you haven’t read Bob’s book Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World ….hello!!]
Roots are so important. Roots hold us. Roots take us down deep. Roots determine our strength and endurance.
That got me thinking about my roots. The Plymouth Brethren were a group of guys who in the early 19th century quit the Anglican Church and started a new movement – trying to do church the way the early church did it. Now I greatly admire them, but if you read the New Testament the early church was pretty messy – hence Paul’s multiple letters trying to fix things. I mean – who’d like to return to being like the Church in Corinth …aaargh!
But, one thing these ‘Brethren’ got very right was their missionary spirit. (They got other things right as well – I owe much to the hours and hours of bible teaching they poured into me.) But they got right their missionary adventure. Go to most of the reached nations in the globe and you’ll find people there who can trace their roots to the Brethren movement. Here’s an aside - the Catholic Church acted with genius when during the Reformation while the Protestants began to argue with them and amongst themselves they sent out the Jesuits to Latin America and evangelized that entire continent - the results live on today! So too the Brethren movement instead of joining in the debates about the established church they began to send all over the globe missionaries. But – they never forgot the local ….. read their history – orphanages in the UK, inner city hostels, and small churches built in the poorer housing estates with their doors open to help and serve. In some sense the Brethren were Glocal Christians …and that’s the roots that Bob, Oscar and myself are trying to put down within our local churches for this generation and coming generations.

So church leaders – how glocal are you?? Glocal leaders are the real deal. Glocal leaders are missional but missional beyond the way the emergent church guys or the way Robert Webber talked about missional (there’s another book really worth reading Ancient Future Faith @ Robert Webber – a theologian the Church deeply misses). Missional that is fully both-and. Both local and global. Both engaging with the sins of individuals and the sins of society. The key word is connect. This is not sending money to some mission’s organization to do the global while you do the local (or vice-versa) – this is people within the local church being connected both locally and globally, individually and communally to other people. Within the church there is a great movement for community living churches within urban ghettos. I love this movement and many of the people involved in it - they stir and inspire me. But with a flat world we get to be part of generation of leaders that don't only lead towards new forms of local churches in urban ghettos - wherever the ghetto might be - Cincinnati, Philadelphia, or Nairobi, or Paris, or Phnom Penh. Glocal Leaders are both-and leaders.

The early Plymouth Brethren guys wanted to take the church back to the New Testament time. Glocal Leaders are doing the same – taking the church back to seeing the world in all its size as on their doorstep. Reread how global and local the early church was - fascinating.

Be a Glocal Leader - and take the church back. Back is the new forwards. Think about it. The best new movements don't invent new things ....they rediscover what got lost. In the history of the church there was a point and time when we did glocal well, when we did holistic well, when we did missional well, when we did multicultural well. All today's new words and new movements the church in history at some time and place did - the best leaders take us back to go forward. I think that's what my Brethren upbringing is newly teaching me ..... but of course that's not new.

Maybe its all a matter of language.

So I've just spent a day with some church leaders - all engaging with the topic of leadership. Good fun and good conversation. But its got me thinking, or rethinking - again. My friend Tim Brown from Clovis was speaking about the transition in his own thinking driven by both the reality of what he was hearing from people in his church and the new thoughts Simple Church @ Thom Rainer was stirring in him. A new way of looking at spiritual formation and ensuring that we guide people from searching for faith, to finding faith to being formed in their faith. Its a topic close to my heart and to our church. But here's my concern. I admire the thinking behind Simple Church. In fact I admire much of the thinking of many of the 'bright lights' of the modern church - the Andy Stanley's, the Rick Warren's, the Bill Hybel's the Ed Young's. Names that anyone passionate about lost people and the church being centrally missional will know and will listen to - wisely. But as I listen I feel a tension. I hear their thoughts/ strategies for both growth and discipleship but it sounds (may I say it) - formulaic. Their strategies are based around propositional solutions. Their pathways still sniff of linear western thinking. And it makes me question it. Because, at the same time as listening to these leaders I listen in to other guys that I equally respect - Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Mark Driscoll and their pathways seem so different - at least how they talk about them seems different. Their wording is more dynamic, more organic. Its morphing, its movement, its rhythm. One leaves me cold, one leaves me invigorated. This leaves me puzzled. Which one do I choose, which do I give greater attention to. And that gets me thinking even more. One sounds Western, the other sounds more Eastern. One sounds static the other sounds dynamic. One sounds linear the other sounds holistic. They sound different .....but this is what I'm wondering - they sound different but maybe their not. Maybe its all a matter of language. Maybe their same exactly the same, but differently.

As Tim and I talked maybe what the church has to do is pay more attention to our language than we do. Maybe at the start of the 21st century we have to pay closer attention to our wording.

Sometimes people think I'm heretical. At first listen sometimes they wonder ..... "where does this guy stand on this or that?" ... and they email me or rush to set up an appointment to make sure I'm "sound". But, when they dig deeper, listen closer, they see that I'm completely Orthodox - all I'm doing is choosing my words carefully to cause you to hear the same old truth in a new way. If I can make you hear it differently it becomes fresh, dynamic, alive....and maybe then you'll re-think it to then re-live it. So many people know it linearly - but they don't know it dynamically.
Maybe leadership at this juncture where cultures, generations even philosophies are birthing while some are dying - maybe leadership needs to pay closer attention to the choice of language.

I guess beyond strategies and vision and organizing and planning - a huge part of what leaders do and how we do it is speaking words - and what I'm suggesting is that maybe today our words have to change. I grew up in a generation that talked about having a 'new song' and a new movement of worship was being birthed. Today we need 'new words'.

I'm urging leaders to not only have a strong ecclesiology, a strong missiology, a strong theology ...but at this time and place we need to have a strong "wordology" - words shape, words form, words guide, words birth. Maybe today we need new words for people to hear it.
Friends - choose your words carefully.