It IS what you say AND the way that you say it - because it's not neat being a NEET

The word semantics can be both a blessing and a curse for those seeking to implement change – when Housing Associations started to refer to their tenants as customers, a whole different culture of excellent services began to grow, because of the change from one symbolic word to another.  On the whole, employees of those same associations that sneered at the change, held attitudes towards people seeking social housing that were no longer acceptable or helpful; this is an example of how a change in language can usher in real change in people’s attitudes and actions.

So when we see the church responding positively towards the challenge of ‘Hungry Britain’ it is really important that we accurately reflect our compassion for those we are looking to show grace towards with the use of appropriate language.

The reason ‘semantics’ can be a problem here is that we don’t always give enough thought to what words (especially those that lump groups together) symbolise – we find ourselves being quite cynical at times – oh, that’s just semantics!  This is code for our disapproval of those (usually politicians) who would appear to be dancing on the head of a pin in their use of language to disguise their real intent or their lack of sincerity.

Semantics is...’the study of how meaning in language is created by the use and interrelationship of words, phrases and sentences’.

‘Poor’ is a highly complex word with lots of baggage – on its own, it can conger up all sorts of pictures in our minds, symbolising all sorts of people and situations, conferring little in the way of status and eliciting all sorts of responses; if today a word could be put up for the prize for being the most complex in its meaning, then this would surely be a strong contender.

Jesus understood poverty because he came to be poor – he was alive to the issues and so should we be. We should also be thoughtful in our use of the language we own, when describing our relationship with, and actions toward our neighbours.

On reflection, talking about ‘the poor’ may well be alienating the very people to whom we wish to show God’s love. Perhaps a working definition could be something like ‘neighbours going through a tough time’ – this was just off the top of my head, but I feel I can own it for now, as it refers to people just like us, experiencing what we all go through every now and then, and holding the hope of an end in sight.

Tiny Terrified Rightness

Using the Enneagram personality model I (and this will come as no surprise to some) was initially thought to be a Type 1 - I can't imagine why!

With each type come a set of behaviours that are 'grown' attributes and 'regressive' attributes - For a Type 1 the most 'grown' or 'mature' level if you like, is Level 1 - Ones at their best become extraordinarily wise and discerning. By accepting what is, they become transcendentally realistic, knowing the best action to take in each moment. Humane, inspiring, and hopeful: the truth will be heard.

Level 7 (however): Can be highly dogmatic, self-righteous, intolerant, and inflexible. Begin dealing in absolutes: they alone know "The Truth." Everyone else is wrong: very severe in judgements, while rationalising own actions.

Alarmingly there is a Level 9...you can only imagine!!

The point is, that for anybody who finds themselves viewing how they think the world is, and espousing this sure and certain point of view to the exclusion of all or any other possibilities, stepping outside of the cosy 'I'm right' place and in to the less certain place of 'wow, do you know, I'm not so sure' can be a defining and utterly freeing moment that leaves them unshackled and unabashed in their ability to experience awe once again

This one is for all those 'certainites' out there - it's a big red warning flag waved in a really humble way - Kathryn Schulz is just on the money

http://embed.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html

Enjoy the liberating possibility that you might only be seeing part of the picture

Gareth

To proselytise or not to proselytise - is that the question?

How do you spell proselytising?

Answer: A_N_A_T_H_E_M_A

It is at this point I should give a ‘RANT’ warning!

I should also prologue (is that a verb?) by saying that whilst my faith journey continues to challenge me, I believe it is worth doing and worth sharing, but above all demonstrating – the demonstrating thing is often quite a raw affair and sometimes even an open wound, but we confess the bad we have done and the good we have left undone, holding tight to grace and the spirit knowing we would otherwise sink without trace. There is still so much angst out there about the Christian’s raison d’être – much of it tied up in our interpretation of scripture. Among those who I journey alongside there is a spectrum of ideas about what it means to be church / to be a Christian even; is the question (and the context) not just the same for us as it is and has been for every human that ever lived? – HOW SHALL I LIVE!

Wikipedia has its detractors and no doubt faults, but I was delighted to read its definition and derivation for the concept of anathema; ‘something lifted up as an offering to the Gods’...later evolving to mean ‘set apart / banished / exiled / denounced / accursed’ Oh and how we have offered up our faithful attempts to persuade and argue people in to the Kingdom – attempts that I would love to see banished and denounced in order that we might be ‘free to live and breathe and have our being’ and that those around us might be free to respond to a God who is far able to represent himself in whatever way he sees fit. It is only in our blinkered estimation, that he has been somehow held captive by our meta-narrative, when in fact he has always operated far beyond our grasp – and although I say it myself...AMEN to that!

In Faith We Are Held

How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins continues to challenge me in its investigation of the theory and praxis of the contemporary expression of faith that is the IKON community.

The following is a paraphrase of the introduction to Part 1 of his book. It manages to open our eyes to one of our biggest blind spots - that of thinking we have God all worked out and that therefore we can assuredly lead others in to our right understanding of him as well.

Christian faith, it could be said, is born in the aftermath of God. Our fragile faith is fanned in to life in the wake of what we believe to have been the incoming of a life giving encounter in which we feel connected with, and transformed by, the source of everything that is.

This belief may result from an immediate and psychologically penetrating experience or may arise more gently over time, but regardless of the means, such faith cannot be reduced to the mere affirmation of religious dogma, a regular visit to some religious institution or the reciting of mechanical prayers.

For Christians testify to having been caught up in and engulfed by that which utterly transcends them. In short, the experience that gives birth to faith, at its most luminous, is analogous to the experience of an infant feeling the embrace and tender kiss of its mother.

On the other hand, theology could be provisionally described as that which attempts to come to grips with this life-giving experience, to describe the source from which everything is suspended and from which our faith is born.

In faith God is experienced as the absolute subject who grasps us, while in theology, we set about reflecting on this subject. Here the source of our desire is rendered in to an (intellectual) object that we may reflect upon. In faith we are held, in theology we hold.

Faith and theology in this reading seem inextricably intertwined, as there can be no experience of faith divorced from an interpretation of it. Indeed, Christianity without theology could never really be ‘Christian’, for the term presupposes that one interprets the encounter with God in relation to the Judeo-Christian scriptures. According to this logic, theology in its modern form has been concerned with upholding and defending the notion of orthodoxy as that which articulates a correct understanding of God.

Yet the idea that we may understand the source of faith in this way has been roundly attacked both by those outside the church and by those within it. The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God, but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God, is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.

Instead of following the Greek influenced idea of orthodoxy as right belief, we must try to rediscover the more Hebraic and mystical notion of the orthodox Christian as one who believes in the right way – that is, believing in a loving, sacrificial and Christ-like manner.

The reversal from right belief to ‘believing in the right way’ is in no way some move to a binary opposite of the first (for the opposite of right belief is simply wrong belief); rather, it is a way of transcending the binary altogether. Thus orthodoxy is no longer (mis)understood as the opposite of heresy, but rather is understood as a term that signals a way of being in the world rather than a means of believing things about the world.

This approach opens up a Christian thinking that profoundly challenges some of the most basic ideas found in the contemporary church. It is an approach that emphasises the imperative of love; not as something that stands opposed to knowledge of God, or even simply more important that knowledge of God, but, more radically still, as knowledge of God.

To love is to know God precisely because God is love. Love must be the first word on our lips and also the last and we must seek to incarnate that sacred word in the world. Orthodoxy as right belief will cost us little; in deed it will allow us to sit back with our Pharisaic doctrines, guarding the ‘truth’ with the purity of our interpretations. But orthodoxy as ‘believing in the right way’, as bringing love to the world around us and within us….that will cost us everything. For to live by that sword, as we all know, is to die by it.

I want to be a real boy

The modern age has reduced so much to transaction and measurable outcome that it is no wonder we struggle with the concept of grace and mercy.

I am wondering that whilst we know and can quote all the relevant biblical texts unpacking the idea of God’s unconditional love, we are so conditioned that we still believe somehow we did something deserving of salvation.

This conditioning has also lead many to become confused about the nature of passages that appear to be transactional in nature, such as the famous ‘seek first the kingdom and all these things shall be added to you’ - a passage that has sadly been so misused to support the health and wealth movement.

More subtly, we have allowed this ‘transactional’ approach to cast a shadow over the very way we interact with our fellow human beings.

Exhausted, I am dragging myself away from the well-meaning but (I now believe), misguided evangelistic notions of friendship evangelism and the more recent, intentional living.

I feel that we totally misjudge the very root, the very nature, the very essence of God’s grace and mercy if every time we act in love towards our neighbour we are looking for requitement by proxy.

When will we understand that it is God who transforms us and for most of us that has taken and is taking a lifetime; God so loves the world, not for instant gratification, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy and in the heart of every human being is a yearning to respond to a creator God with no strings attached – God’s not going to make them dance, so why should we!

Altogether now:

I’ve got no strings to hold me down
To make me fret, to make me frown
I had strings, but now I’m free
There are no strings on me

Is God a stakeholder in our grand strategy?

One of the interesting things (and sometimes acutely cringy) about writing a blog over a number of months and years is re-reading earlier posts and evaluating them in the light of your current thinking.

Back in February 2009 I wrote about the polarisation between the ‘wordies’ and the ‘activists’ – looking back to this post I realise that I have continued to travel a journey that for me, now places the argument in a completely different context.

It has dawned on me gradually, that the ‘word and deed’ thing is a complete hoax, a distraction from tackling a deeper, more foundational issues;

What being a Christian (and therefore by association, church) is for
What the Gospel is all about; and
Who are the inheritors of the Kingdom of God

Many reading this will inherently bristle with indignation, because they have, like me, grown up holding to the key verses, that like sound bites are wheeled out in defence of our meta-narrative – a story in which we have turned our limited understanding of the nature of God in to our ‘Total God’ concept. This understanding of the story that starts with a most egalitarian statement, that…

‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes on Him will not perish but have everlasting life’

…but more often than not is played out through a familiar pattern of human judgements leading to a ‘misconceived’ rescue strategy; a strategy of which I often wonder if God is a stakeholder at all.

I have become utterly weary of the idea that identifying myself as a Christian means, that in order to be considered ‘orthodox’ I must buy in to the majority view of what church is for, despite most of the notions and mantras involved being supported by a very particular (and close up) reading of mainly Pauline scriptures.

Is it possible that Paul and others within the early church movement were a bit like you and me, or does the ‘inerrancy of scripture’ demand that, without due attention to the story line context, we bestow a magical power on the words of those early travellers?

I turn to a brief section from one of my other posts from early 2009:

‘The research [in to Neuroeconomics] is showing that the context within which decisions are arrived is key; for example a state of uncertainty or fear. Herd behaviour appears to be fuelled by the fact that our brains are highly social and look for external input to aid the decision making process in relation to such extenuating contexts’. I wondered about this in relation to my faith and my relationships with those around me. The spirit as my common currency with others on the journey, but my individual ‘neuro-fingerprint’ (the collection of teaching, experience, values etc) giving me a unique take on the challenges for Christians in the Twenty First Century. I wondered about the ‘herd instinct’ of certain groups of Christians and their perception of a ‘special relationship’ with God, and how that ‘God’s on my side’ attitude can lead to an isolationist approach that doesn’t recognise input from ‘people of peace’ out there in the ‘real’ world. I wonder whether the current context of uncertainty and fear will 'find out' the local church, or will we be being stoned with the migrant worker, rather than standing by holding coats?

I am recognising the folly of ‘people as projects’ which is rarely expressed that way, because it sounds so arrogant. Nonetheless, it is the logical conclusion if we talk about living intentionally, with our main goal being to get people across a finish line.

Once we identify ourselves as those in the ‘saved’ camp, it is incredibly difficult to only see those outside as different / less fortunate / wrong or rebellious. How quickly we forget the amazing truth ‘…that God so loved the world that he gave his only son…’. Whilst we still had our backs firmly turned towards God, Jesus died to demonstrate the dawning of a new kingdom.

Let me ask you two related questions I am asking myself at the moment:

1.) Why is it so easy to go along with idea of the ‘Gospel’ being about selling a new way, a new identification, a new allegiance, through some strategy of world domination, that requires me to see out and in, to judge orthodox and heretic, to pronounce worthy and worthless, and at the same time…

2.) Why am I less keen to align myself to a faith that demands openness, a giving of myself, a love for the world (that God clearly expresses by coming in to the world to be poor) that means sacrifices from which I, more often than not, recoil.

I think the answer to the first lies in a desire for self importance, but also a deep seated lack of confidence in a God who clearly needs a hand with saving the world – we layer our own political bigotries and world view on top of God’s saving grace, instead of allowing Gods grace to drive us to stand against ideologically driven injustices.

The answer to the second is to do with a restrictive and occasionally infantile understanding of how God views his creation, leading to a completely inadequate response to what we see happening in our communities and further afield.
We too often settle for the perspective of the children in ‘Honey I shrunk the kids’ where a simple blade of grass holds dangers untold, rather than the view from eagle’s wings. We simply fail to underestimate the power of the Spirit of God to hold us.

I for one am on a quest, that will most certainly take the rest of my life, to respond to Gods saving grace through learning and practicing what it is to be, a new creation. It’s also a quest that I hope others can accept as ‘legitimate’ and one which will enrich rather than reduce our understanding of a mysterious God.

This is a quest to bend my will to that of Gods, to communicate through my very life the love God has for each and every one of my neighbours in this interconnected world of ours. When I recall that Jesus appealed to Saul, a man zealously stamping out the early church, I remain hopeful that he can use me in some small way to reveal the kingdom of God.

Let us lay down our inglorious past of judgement, delineation, coercion and small mindedness, to take up the challenge of ‘Loving our neighbour as ourselves’

Let us put aside our grand evangelistic strategies that seek to tip the balance and supplant the other, holding our every opinion about what God does and doesn’t do or intend to do as sacrosanct. Instead let’s join the meek of this world in a place of submission and service to one another – for surely then we will inherit the Kingdom of God.

Not what I'd been planning!

I haven't posted much this year and I tell myself this is because there is a time to reflect and a time to get on and do...

But then suddenly the urge to re-engage with the thinking comes barging back in - this time in the form of a radio broadcast caught on the way in to work today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00jsw51/Twin_Sisters_Two_Faiths

I think this program expresses brilliantly the complex set of 'issues' that, for people of faith, create inordinate amounts of anxiety and self-doubt.

As this post is 'an initial reaction' rather than a considered commentary I only feel able to recommend it to you as a thought prevokiong listen.

If one of many 'throw away' comments stood out for me, it was inevitably one that showed again the fault line within the current cultural expression of Christianity; the sister's mother said...

'...I felt that Christianity would be a phase they would just go thorugh, and indeed Elizabeth did just go thorugh it - she became quite a radical teenager, both socially and poitically, and gave up the church...'

If studying Jesus leads us to any conclusion about the founder of the Christian faith at all, it's surely that he intended those who identified themslves as his followers, to be socially and politically radical - or at the very least engaged!

If our local expression of 'Christian' faith is leaving young people or any people cold, we need to take a long, hard look at what Jesus said and did with regards to the cultural, political and social set-up within which he found himself. Then, in the best way we can, start to rediscover what our faith has to say about our relations with each other, our neighbours and the communal constructs around us.

I shall brave returning to the 'two faiths' element at a later date - happy listening!!

Bones – we’d fall down without them?

George Fox the founder of Quakerism told 17th century England the church was not a building but the people in whose hearts Christ dwelt by faith, and that no piece of ground was any more sacred than the other. Jesus prayed for his followers to be in the world but not of the world. It seems to me we have done just the opposite and set up sacred space apart from the world where only the so called holy dare enter. I see the emerging church breaking through those walls and barriers built by centuries of tradition and theology, and once again becoming a force in the world rather than a fortress. And in that frame of mind, church happens – where two or three are gathered together, or when we feed the hungry or clothe the naked or shelter the homeless, or take care of the hurting, or in any other way bring the kingdom values to bear on this world. Then church isn’t a place we go, it’s a thing we do 24/7 so that God’s kingdom does come and his will is done “on earth as in heaven.”

It’s not that the phrase ‘the church is made up of the people and not the buildings in which we meet’ is not fully understood and oft referred to, it’s just that actions either support or cut the ground from under the words we speak or the concepts we espouse.

So here’s the crunch – nearly every ‘church’ has a fabric committee of some sort (which incidentally over the life cycle of the church lays claim to the lion’s share of the budget), but how many have a ‘living stones’ committee.

I have been wondering why many longer term Christians go all misty eyed when they talk about the energy and innovation with which newer disciples seem to approach pretty much everything.

Whilst it is a mistake to compare the church to a business (although many seem to be run like one – and one that probably deserves to go in to administration at that), a key part in these reflections are well described in a coming book by Steve Denning where he observes…

Total Attorneys is a rapidly growing Chicago-based company that provides services and software to small law firms. Like many successful companies, when it began as a start-up in 2002, Total Attorneys was highly energized: work was done on the fly, new products were developed, new markets opened and new customers were identified.

But as the firm grew, departments were formed, processes and structures were put in place, work slowed down and staff morale deteriorated. In some cases, Total Attorneys moved so slowly that by the time its software was completed, the client wanted something different. By 2008, with around 160 employees, Total Attorneys had gone from being an exciting place to work to just another bureaucracy.


In ‘Six Charlies in search of an Arthur’, the Goon’s Ned declared that ‘I haven’t got any bones’, Grytpype-Thynne, another of the Goon’s best loved characters responded – ‘Nonsense, nonsense, you'd fall down without them - you'd fall DOWN without them’.

The question for us is, by freeing ourselves from the structure’s (strictures?) of which we have become so familiar and comfortable, will we fall down without them?

I’ve heard some people talk about the affect of becoming embroiled in the church machine and the ongoing impact it appears to have on so many, in terms of the ‘loss of a first love’ – but I know many people who have certainly moved in to a long-lasting faithfulness to a ministry that expounds a deep loving commitment to Jesus.

But if people do lose their first love only to replace it with a set of comfortable parameters, practices and rotas, then we should not sit by and let the current crop of newbies receive the church as we have created it – rather we should join with them in living out the kingdom of God as Jesus demonstrated it….
…then church isn’t a place we go, it’s a thing we do 24/7 so that God’s kingdom does come and his will is done “on earth as in heaven.”

There has to be another way!

I’m so glad I joined ‘The Church of the Priesthood of ALL Believers’, the leadership team is really committed – they’re always busy generating ideas & doing stuff, they always make time to be available if you’ve got a problem; they’ve been on courses and they go to lots of meetings.

The worship and teaching is really great and they really keep us informed of what's going on – you know links with other churches and stuff.

I think it’s great to be a part of something where you are loved unconditionally – there’s no expectations to be or do anything – for me that’s great ‘cause I’ve got a busy family life and I work full-time; and then there’s the gym and squash twice a week – I just want to come to church and soak it up.

I must remember to tell one of the leaders to get a new sign painted though – none of them seem to have noticed that the word ‘ALL’ was accidentally put in capitols – well no-ones perfect!

Zero Gravity Thinking

This is an article by Paul Scanlon, one of the Senior Pastors at Abundant Life Ministries in Bradford; one of the UK’s largest and fastest growing churches.

Genesis 1:1 records that, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’. He then went on to create people in his ‘image and likeness’, passing on to them something of his creative nature (1). How then is it, that the God of all creation has ended up with a church which is, by and large, non-creative? Sadly, much of the church today could actually be described as being anti-creative rather than creative; it is resolutely resistant to new ideas and change.

To remain relevant we must remain creative. Without creativity our churches will look, sound, feel and be the same ten years from now. And standing still in our twenty-first century world will show up much quicker than at any previous time in history. We live in a fast moving, technological world that makes anything which is not moving appear obsolete overnight.

Creativity is not a gift just given to certain ‘arty’ types of people. Neither is it a personality type, a particular kind of event or a notable work of art. Creativity is our God given nature; the creator of the universe has downloaded himself into people. Creativity is within our special DNA code; we are all creative by divine nature. We may not all be expressing it, but we already have it. Often, the unsaved are far more expressive of their innate sense of creativity than the church. But when we were born again, our fallen nature was redeemed, and with it our creativity, which was restored back to usefulness for God.

The Church must hear this and accept her responsibility to build creative, innovative, relevant churches that connect with their communities. Innovation is vital to the success of our churches, businesses and ministries. New ideas are our future. Our problem, however, seems to be that the burden of what we know is so huge, it limits what we can imagine. Our greatest challenge isn’t what we don’t know, but what we do know, and that stifles our ability to receive new ideas. We form unhealthy emotional attachments to methods, customs, traditions and styles and see ourselves as custodians of these sacred things. We get confused between form and essence and go to war with each other over hymn books, pews, choir robes, the King James Version and the removal of the church organ. And just in case we in ‘newer’ churches are thanking God that this is not true of us, we also go to war over our newer equivalents of these things. When we confuse form with essence we fight for things God doesn’t even care about. Thousands of churches have split over disagreements about form while completely missing the essence of reaching lost people.

The Two Roadblocks To Innovation

Innovation is the application of a new idea that results in a valuable improvement. This definition protects us from people thinking that innovation is just lots of useless ideas. If it can’t be used to improve what we do, it’s not truly innovative.

There are two massive roadblocks to innovative thinking. They are so huge that most people, and even fewer churches, ever get past them. They are group-think and expert-think.

• Group-think is the power of what most people around us think. It’s the crowd or herd mentality. It was group-think that had Jesus figured as being either Elijah, an Old Testament prophet, or John the Baptist (2).

• Expert-think is what the experts around us think. It is group-think on steroids!
These two innovation killers pin us down under the huge weight of what’s already known, thereby disabling us from thinking beyond what everyone already knows but which is not working. Democratically run churches can be paralysed by the power of group-think, as can policy run businesses that have forgotten that they exist to serve people rather than their policies. Certain airlines come to mind, but I won’t go there!

Group Think - our group can be many things: our nationality, age group, home group, church denomination, interest group, economic group etc. The point is that the weight of evidence suggests that we are all hardwired to conform, fit in and be accepted by the group; to maintain the status quo. And even more so if our jobs, salaries, opportunities and friendships depend on us fitting in with the group. In these cases we are even more likely to keep quiet when progress demands that someone speaks up.

In the Star Trek movies they once encountered the nearest life-form to the church you could ever meet. They were called the Borg; a mindless, group-think, collective consciousness. There was no individuality, no personal identity and no independent thought; ‘all must assimilate to the Borg’ was their mantra. Again, certain airline staff co me to mind here, but I must move on!

Following the collapse of the American company Enron in 2001, it was stated in the enquiry report that everyone became mindless conformists once inside the Enron boardroom. What’s really shocking about this is that Enron’s board consisted of highly successful business leaders, professors and former senior politicians. If people of that calibre could surrender to the power of clearly faulty group-think, we are all vulnerable. Group-think doesn’t just affect weak-minded, easily intimidated people. I think I’m a pretty strong-minded independent thinker, but group-think affected my life for years.

Expert Think - expert-think is seen in our overwhelming inclination to align ourselves with the boss or the expert or the best known way of doing things. It’s like group-think but on steroids, because experts don’t even need to be present to shut down new ideas. Someone we respect just quoting what the so-called experts say can immediately stifle creativity.

I’m not against expertise. I’d rather have an expert operating on me than a novice surgeon, and rather an expert lawyer than one fresh out of law school. The problem is that all experts approach life with certain fixed mindsets. The advantage of this is that they know how to react, almost without thinking, in complex situations. The disadvantage is that a fixed mindset is resistant to questioning, especially from non experts. I recently read a shocking statement that said the biggest killer currently in America is doctors. The point of the article being that doctors are experts and people don’t think to question either their diagnosis or the prescriptions they are given to take.

Zero Gravity Thinking

A zero gravity thinker is a person who has broken free from the weight and huge downward pull of group-think and expert-think. These innovative thinkers defy gravity by escaping from underneath the burden of what we already know. Zero gravity thinkers help us to reset the gravity levels in our team, church or business by helping us to attain a degree of weightlessness in our thinking. Whilst we welcome gravity in the physical world, we should not welcome it in our mental world. Gravity’s job is to keep everything and everyone down, but what if the idea you need is up?

‘Fix your mind on things above, not on earthly things’ exhorted the apostle Paul (3). Because God wants to do ‘immeasurably more’ than we can imagine (4). Isaiah tells us that ‘God’s thoughts are not our thoughts’ but far higher (5). But the more stuff we accumulate mentally, the bigger the weight of gravity anchoring it down.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Do you remember the story of the Emperor’s new clothes? Everyone was told that only the most loyal subjects would be able to see the king’s new clothes. As the king paraded through the streets everyone shouted how fine and grand he looked, until he passed a small boy. This little boy shouted out what everyone knew but dare not say: ‘The king is in the all together; he’s naked!’ The story goes that the king fled indoors because he also knew the truth, but had allowed the two ‘expert’ tailors, who were really swindlers, to deceive him.

This story carries a powerful insight about the nature of zero gravity thinkers. They are people with some psychological distance and mental separation from what everyone else is too close to. The boy in the story was outside of the social pressure to appear loyal to the king. He didn’t care what others thought and wasn’t part of any group he didn’t want to upset.

It’s very difficult to keep mental distance from things that we do everyday and it becomes more difficult the longer we do them. When Jesus said to the crowds in his sermon on the mount, ‘You have heard it said… but I say to you’ (6), he was resetting the gravity levels established generations ago on thinking about murder, adultery, divorce, keeping your word, treatment of your enemies, etc. Jesus spent most of his public life challenging old group-think and expert-think strongholds in order to make way for both his new wine and his new wineskin, the church.

The Jethro Factor

Jethro was Moses’ father-in-law and his visit to Moses, when camped at Sinai in the wilderness, is recorded in Exodus. We read, ‘The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for all the people and they stood around him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law Jethro saw all that Moses was doing for the people he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?”’ (7).

Apparently no one had ever asked the great Moses why he did it that way? Moses’ answer was a classic expert-think answer when he basically said, ‘I’m Moses; this is what I do. When people don’t know God’s will or have a dispute they come to me and I give them the answer’. Jethro basically said, ‘That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, this is gonna kill you and the people!’ Then he proceeded to give Moses a zero gravity thinking solution to his problem. Jethro had psychological separation from Moses’ world. He wasn’t a Hebrew, he wasn’t a leader under Moses and best of all, he wasn’t staying. We desperately need people like this in our world, people who can look at what we do and see with ease how it could be done better or smarter. These zero gravity thinkers are the key to keeping our churches, businesses and ministries innovative and relevant.

I thank God for every Jethro who has visited my church and had the confidence and gravity-free perspective to ask me ‘why?’ about various things in our ministry. Sadly, many pastors are too threatened and insecure to welcome a Jethro and so, like Moses, continue to wear both themselves and the people out.

Do you want your church, business and ministry to still be useful to God ten years from now? If so, you must commit to growing a creative life, and to sustain a creative life you must become a zero gravity thinker.

1 Genesis 1:26
2 Matthew 16:13-14
3 Colossians 3:2
4 Ephesians 3:20
5 Isaiah 55:9
6 Matthew 5:21-22
7 Exodus 18:13-14