Utilize the Viral Nature of Lay Renewal

To "seek out the self-organizing";  to need for the Church to seek out the qualities of self-organization,  and to seek to understand it,  is very much akin to the theology of the "lay renewal movement" I experienced as a College Student in the first years of my early discipleship.  This was the mid 70's.  Now,  almost 30 years later,  it seems that we are being taught a lesson by the social realities of the Internet.  It is about who we are in the Church.  It's not about what the heirarchy wants to teach us.  It's about what God is calling us to be,  and this neccessitates the return of focus on the journey,  which the lay renewal movement did very well.   Many Churches of institutional ilk lost people;  grass roots groups;  the "small groups" of the lay renewal movement (ala Serendipity, Keith Miller's "Taste of New Wine") brought a fresh authenticity and invited people to find the power of community by balancing the normal fare of "victorious living" and "strengthening faith" with the reafffirmation of the idea of the "Wounded Healer", which adopted the theme of Henri Nouwen's popular book.

The Cluetrain Themes of "voice" bring back to me the theological impact of those 70's years on me.  They were for me the years that led up to my M.Div. studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  I took a "Church Renewal" Course by one of the earliest "lay renewal" proponents,  Findley Edge.   I had also spent  much of the previous two years exploring and internalizing many of the visions and supporting structures of the Church of the Saviour.  So many of the early renewal authors I read,  Keith Miller, Bruce Larson, Robert Raines had told stories that came direct out of the Church of the Saviour history.  Foremost in the stories of the lay renewal authors was the emphasis The Church of the Saviour  placed upon "accountability to one another" inthe journey.

For the Church to communicate "voice" to the culture,  it need look no further than the tools being used and developed by Websites that encourage and enable people to describe their journey.  The Weblog is the obvious incarnation of this,  and the dramatic growth and spread of the phenomenon is testimony to the passion it elicits among its users;  a passion I believe to reach down into the place in all of us where purpose and the desire to "make a difference" emerge.

The language of the Church seems to need a "do over" every decade or two.  With some we're still waiting.  The "pronouncements" and theological language we use needs some infusion of "everyday".  It's like the "lack of voice" that the Cluetrain authors bemoan.  The Church needs to be better at letting the stories come,  and bending over backward to find every available channel for them to be "out there".  The Web,  especially the weblog,  have opened up " whole can" of passionate reporting,  opinion,  and heartfelt vision.  This stuff is what is needed to make Knowledge Management a Most Valuable Asset for the Church.  The visions,  we need 'em.  The stories,  we need 'em.  The ways of finding them,  we desperately need them.    

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:38:20 PM.