EVOLUTION IN THE CHURCH

Just something I thought of sharing. I don't have the book, which is where I took this excerpt from ("11: Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Be Without") but I took this from a not written somewhere.

EVOLUTION IN THE CHURCH

If church members have a responsibility to replicate themselves in the form of new converts, how much more should church leaders replicate themselves in the form of new ministerial candidates?

When the baton is passed, however, we tend to grab the wrong end of the stick. That’s the end our mentor was holding, not our own end. In other words, most Timothy want to be clones, not heirs.

It is natural to want to reproduce in ourselves others’ experience of God. But even nature (the true “natural”) doesn’t copy itself. Reproduction is a process of inaccurate, flawed self-copying, which is the key insight of Charles Darwin: Authentic “nature” is not cloning but evolving.

Cloning isn’t present in the Bible either. Joshua is not a Moses clone. Timothy was not a Paul clone. What you find in the Scriptures is what today we would call a “mash-up”--the putting together of material in fresh ways. Mash-ups remix the same song with a different beat, sometimes in a different key. Almost all creativity is some form of mash-up, whether it’s Starbucks’ mash-up of third place with Internet access, or the “1984” anti-Hillary ad in 2007 that mashed up George Orwell and George Lucas. For mash-ups to take place, what Timothys need most is “sounding boards.”

Superstring physics defines matter very simple. You and I are “vibrating strings of energy.” We are string instruments...sound boards by nature. Life plays those strings, and the notes of life are your thoughts and emotions. That’s the danger of holding things in and keeping the notes to yourself. Those notes have to burst forth in song, and if they don’t burst forth in song, they burst forth and explode in destructive ways.

Neglected strings break when finally played. Some people never get the opportunity to play their song...so we medicate our numbness rather than play the song we’ve been given. The process of being a Timothy is a gradual, irreplaceable song that only you can sing. But Timothys need sounding boards to find their songs.

Remember the Winnie the Pooh story about losing his song? He gets his friends to go on the hunt for his song and then he finds that his song is within him. Too many Timothys are being told to “play the part” of corporate Christendom: Sing all six verses from the hymnal.

Instead, the song of the gospel is a ballad of daring, mold-breaking, lie-rejecting, living-giving dissonance. Holy dissonance.

Excerpt from 11: Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Be Without by Leonard Sweet, 82-83.

Any thoughts?