| A Letter From the President Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site. The dynamics of our Think Tank jointly sponsored with Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (PTS) uncovered and adumbrate a set of patterns present in most Oldline denominations that are also encouraging the development of new local churches. Theologically these patterns might be described as a new awareness of spiritual discernment as a practical mode of attending and deciding on many of the questions facing both the new church starts and the already existing structures of the denomination, including mid-governing, church wide, and seminary structures and personnel. In classical sociological terms the themes repeated the polarities of agency and structure and chaos and order. Time and time again, one person or groups of persons would extol and delight in the chaos of the contemporary Oldline denomination or the process of engaging in forming a new local church. In counter point, another person or groups of persons, would remind the plenum of the virtues of order and predictability. Often, but not always, these two groups perceived each other as the “problem” to be solved. Far from being problems to be solved they represent a classic polarity to be managed in a social system attempting to sustain a belonging, bonding sociology through predictable and dependable structure and create a joining, bridging sociology through constructing trust across more permeable boundaries of local church and culture. The term “manage” as in “manage a polarity” has a number of limits that must (as my esteemed colleage Gary Simpson often has noted) be noted. In the classic business literature the concept of polarity management suffers from the usual presumptions of mid-level organizational theory. The worst of the presumptions is that the world is an organization to be controlled and managed to predictable ends. The literature presumes an organization with clear purposes, identities, and outcomes and products. Further, this literature presumes the “manager” has the “at hand knowledge” to control the poles of the polarity to be managed. Whether such a world exists, even inside the contemporary mid-level management of organization, can wait for another time; however, that such a world no longer exists within the structures of contemporary structures of Oldline denominations seems clear, painfully clear. As a result the language of “managing polarities” needs correcting. We at Church Innovations have long called this business of distinguishing polarities from problems to be solved part of spiritual discernment. We have placed the attending and leading of local congregation or the systems that support them within the category of spiritual discernment and spiritual leadership. As a result, we speak of spiritually discerning the movement of the power of the Spirit within these poles discerned to be present within the local church or system. During the Think Tank our preferred way of framing the spiritual practices around leading in these systems led to the very fruitful question: What does it look like to attend to the leadership of the Holy Spirit in the midst of chaos? Are there practices for attending and depending upon the Holy Spirit? Can they be learned and passed on? Such questions and those that follow from them can lead spiritual leaders into greater spiritual depth and theological reflection and their communities into a more vibrant and faithful future, albeit always caught between chaos and order. Peace, Pat Keifert |
|