How an unlikely community in Winnipeg’s core is changing lives.

Jeff ran downstairs to open the door. It was cold. A woman, Jennifer, was standing in the dark; she had blood on her face.

“Are you okay?”

“I just want to come in,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

She took her arm away from her abdomen and showed him the wound.

“My guts are coming out.”

“Yes they are! Come in, lie down.”

I live at Flatlander’s Inn, a light of hope for the transgendered woman who dragged herself across our gravel parking lot that night looking for help. Run by Winnipeg Centre Vineyard and launched in 2007 as a transitional community living arrangement, we are a presence in Winnipeg’s core, north of the tracks. We live here not because we’re licensed for alcohol or packed with video lottery machines, but because we’re foolish enough to believe that an inn, run by volunteers and ruled by the Spirit, can help people who are at risk of homelessness.

Two Flatlanders visited Jennifer in the hospital the next day. As she sat recovering from a near-death injury, she said she missed her makeup from home and could we get it for her? The ways people cope with stress constantly amaze me. Daily habits like applying makeup and looking presentable are all part of coping. The unhealthy ways of escaping its grasp are as numerous as the needles in the parking lot.

Flatlanders. We’re not flat because we’re in the prairies. We’re flat in the sense of radical equality. We’ve chosen to live in a neighbourhood abused by authority, jails, police, residential schools, and welfare. We eat together, clean together, plant and harvest together at a farm outside the city, and pray together every morning.

One of my roommates describes herself as a binocular convert. Lisa would watch us from across the street as we watched movies, played games, and enjoyed life together. Why would this group of people, including a young woman who owned an expensive Prius car, sit and play rummy with Mike – a sniffer? Soon she found out, and Mike was beating her at rummy too.

Lisa was baptized a month ago, and she’s been dubbed “the nun of the west” by her old friends. She’s struggling to find her identity. Relocated by the government in the sixties and raised in an incredibly restrictive white Anglo-Saxon Protestant home, she wound up on the streets of Winnipeg at 30 years old, looking for her biological family and addicted to crack. Now she’s found friends at Flatlanders. Along with three women, she made her first meal for us: Indian Tacos – better known as bannock with all the fixings. It was a huge success. I gave her $20 to grab some groceries and she came back with a receipt and change. On her way to get tomatoes, she had to pass the crack dealer’s place.

Everyone at Flatlanders has a goal to reach. At first, Mike’s was to stay alive. He’d been sniffing since 10, and his landlord found him in a coma on his couch with a failed liver and close to death. Now, a year later, Flatlanders gave him the opportunity to discover the joy of physical labour. We picked bags and bags of apples in the fall, and Mike sat for a whole day throwing them in the food processor. Ten hours later he was finished, got up stiffly, opened the freezer, and smiled at all 28 bags. That day he found value that went beyond just surviving. He still smells of lacquer from time to time, but the power in his punch lines is back, and the source of his contagious smile comes from a clear mind.

Conviviality – a new way of feasting, drinking, and enjoying each other is present at our Wednesday potlucks. Not only do we share in abundance, but we remember its source. With an open invitation to those who want to learn how we live, mealtimes are always interesting. George likes to be 15 minutes early. The victim of mistaken identity, his skull was struck from behind with a large metal pole, was in a coma for a week and emerged as a very different person. He brings dessert and enjoys serving it. He loves watching the kid’s expressions as they grab an Oreo from his cigarette-stained fingers. George would never use the word conviviality but that’s the reason he comes back. God is present when we eat and laugh together – and George knows it.

[All names in this story have been changed to protect confidentiality]

By Gerard Kelly

“The Word became flesh, said St. John, and the church has turned the flesh back into words.” _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ __ (Tom Wright, The Crown and the Fire)

In 1993, advertising executive Jim Carroll was involved in testing reactions to youth-oriented magazines amongst a select group of young people. He threw about 20 examples on the floor and asked them to pick out any they might be interested in. Having allowed them to browse for a few minutes, he quizzed one woman as to the basis for selecting a particular title. She flicked through and pointed out that it had a good feel; she remarked on the interesting type, the unconventional camera angles, the creative art direction. She really seemed to have bought into the magazine. Until something else on the page caught her eye, and she said, “Oh no. Actually I wouldn’t buy it. It’s all about Indie music and I don’t like that kind of stuff.” As Carroll later explained, “This young consumer had gone a long way down the road to reaching a verdict on the title before she even considered the nature of its verbal content.”

At the heart of this incident is an encounter with the generation Douglas Rushkoff has called screenagers – those raised so exclusively on visual advertising, TV, movies, the Internet, and video games, that the place of words in their lives has changed. Beginning in Generation X and gaining ground in Generation Y, or the Millennials, the shifting status of text is a key factor in the wave of social change currently transforming western culture. Whatever else the emerging generations will be, they will be post-literate. The Church, with its emphasis on text-as-truth, propositional teaching and word-only sermons, has hardly begun to explore this new ground. But explore it we must – it is the landscape into which we are moving. If we are living on the last page of literacy, what waits for us beyond the end of the book?

The Gutenberg Galaxy

The literate age began in 1438, when Johannes Gutenberg created ‘movable type’ printing to mass-produce Bibles. “By 1500,” Michio Kaku writes, “Europe was flooded with more than nine million books, stimulating the intellectual ferment which paved the way for the renaissance.” Printing opened the door to the Reformation, the Age of Science, popular education, and ultimately the industrial revolution, taking us into what Marshall McCluhan called “the Gutenberg Galaxy.”

Print technology, Canadian theologian David Lochhead writes, was “the catalyst that allowed the emerging mechanistic, linear, individualistic tendencies of the modern period to become the integrated, dominant pattern of our time.” Like the skeletal framework of some huge pachyderm, literacy and the authority of text lie deep beneath the surface of our culture as the structure that holds us together. Lochhead is one of the many commentators to claim that this print age is now ending. The electronic era is something new – a culture dominated not by the printed word but by multi-media, interactive, free-flowing information. The communications revolution, which began with telephone and radio, gathered momentum with television and found a running mate in satellite and cable capabilities, will hit break-neck pace when cyber meets fiber on the information superhighway. We are leaving the Gutenberg Galaxy at warp speed. Can we even begin to imagine what new corner of the universe we will arrive in?

Spot the Difference

Post-literacy is not forcing the book out of our culture (book sales are hitting record levels, not least thanks to on-line ordering via the Internet) but it is displacing printed text as the dominant means of communication and final arbiter of authority. This is not the result of any one technological change, but of several, including:

- The shift from word to image, transmitted by photography, TV, video and the computer screen and now empowered by digital technology’s image-manipulation capacity and bit-stream delivery. – The transition from text to hypertext brought by the computer’s capacity to both write and read in non-linear forms. – The power of digital technology to combine word, image and sound as multi-media information – The inter-connectedness and interactivity of Cyberspace – The relative ease with which a PC, CD-Rom drive, and modem puts all this into the hands of the individual

These changes will combine to give birth to a new age of post-literate communications, marked out by:

1. Capacity and scope Post-literate technology offers access to an unprecedented store of information, and to unimagined communications opportunities – as far beyond print as the Atlantic is beyond a garden pond. What place will traditional faith-commitments have in this new ocean?

2. Speed and Transience “Print was designed to convey fact – solid, stable fact,” David Lochhead has written, “Print could hold a proposition, freeze it so that it could be studied, dissected, verified. The electronic media were designed to convey news, information that moved so quickly that by the time it could be confirmed or denied, it was no longer news.” How might the rising generations, skilled in dealing with information which is fluid and transient, deal with questions of universal or long-term meaning?

3. Multiplicity and Diversity Neville Brody, the art director behind the revolutionary Face magazine, explains, “The way we absorb information changes: with digital technology and interactive cable our behaviour is totally different from the past in the way we read text and images, the way we experience visual language.” According to U.S. sociologist George Barna, young people are fast becoming “mosaic thinkers,” able to “integrate disparate information into new perspectives on reality.” Presented with a range of simultaneous sources – image, text, voice, sound, movement – they will take threads from each and weave them into meanings, often in patterns that don’t exist in any one of the source “tracks”. They are able “to put information together in new patterns, often arriving at unusual, novel, or surprising conclusions.” How can the transmission of Christian truth adapt to this multi-media, high-image, low-text environment?

4. Interaction and Response In print the power to set meanings belongs only to the sender. Electronic and image-based communications, by contrast, invite the receiver to share in the creation of the message. Mike Large of Real World studios, gives an excellent definition of interactive communication in describing Peter Gabriel’s project Eve, explaining that Gabriel “has always wanted his audience to experience his work from the inside, rather than being passive observers or listeners. The disc will enable the users to transform and create their own versions of the images and music as they explore the world that has been created.” As young people grow increasingly accustomed to this invitation, will they become resistant to messages in which they have no such co-creative role?

As these four characteristics shape the post-literate environment, they will have wide-ranging impact on the culture literacy has spawned. They will de-mystify the authority of text; change the ways in which we read and write; define a new, less authoritarian social role for the book; re-shape entirely the way we educate our children and ourselves. Post-literacy is set to revolutionize communication and learning, in the greatest change in the technology of human interaction since the invention of the alphabet.

So Long Scriptura?

One immediate and powerful impact of this shift will be on the way we view and handle the Bible. The necessity of printing Bibles was mother to Gutenberg’s invention, and the Bible has remained the most-reproduced and best-selling book for 561 years. It is the book of all books. How will screenagers, newly exiled from the Gutenberg Galaxy, treat this ‘Book of God’ that has been so much a part of print culture? Does the end of the age of print signal the end of the Bible’s authority? These are real and pertinent questions, which mark the boundaries of a debate raging amongst the Church’s own younger generations.

Scholarship and Pragmatism

Within this debate there are two distinct questions which need to be dealt with in different ways. The first is theological; “How will the shift to post-literacy change what we believe about the Bible?” It is to this question that systematic theologians are turning – and their task is extraordinarily complex and delicate. The second question, though, is more practical and invites us all to join the debate: “how will the shift to post-literacy change the way we engage with the Bible?” If screenagers struggle with text, will this stop them from accessing truth? In relating a faith deep in tradition and history to the post-literate generations, we will need to re-discover the power of God’s word beyond and apart from the power of text.

The following four suggestions offer places we might start – doorways into the exploration of faith for post-literate young people:

- recovering the power of story. The Bible is, Mike Riddell says, “the repository of stories… from generations of people who have tried to follow God. It is also the bearer of ‘the story of all stories:’ the life and teaching of Jesus. The Bible keeps alive for us ‘the dangerous memory of Jesus’.” By retaining ambiguity, flexibility and nuance, story delivers us from at least some of the ‘cognitive captivity’ of text – and at the same time resonates with the newfound agility and interaction of hypertext. Significantly, story – embodied in character, plot and pace – is fast becoming the common thread running through the media of our age. Video games are weak on text but strong on story; advertising sells the product by telling the story; TV, film and video are built on narrative above all else; even journalists “tell the story” where they used to “print the facts.” In a silent revolution, narrative is replacing print as the unifying element of our culture. Are we so fixed on the need to communicate the text of the Bible that we have lost our capacity to communicate its story?

- recovering the vocabulary of image and symbol. In John Drane’s now famous encounter with the teenagers of Dunblane, sixteen candles were images of hope; a knife laid down was a symbol of repentance. A culture starved of image and symbol – robbed of the sensual in the realm of faith – is rediscovering their power. David Bosch explains: “Metaphor, symbol, ritual, sign and myth, long maligned by those interested only in ‘exact’ expressions of rationality, are today being rehabilitated; they not only touch the mind and its conceptions, and evoke action with a purpose, but compel the heart.” From the physical presence of objects, through the symbolic enactment of aspects of faith to the evident power of video and film, screenagers have a vocabulary of worship that takes in far more than words. The mammoth multi-media performances of bands like U2 have proved an inspiration to a wave of “alternative” worshippers, who agree with record-producer T Bone Burnett’s assessment: “A U2 concert is what church should be.” Banked TV sets, video and slide projection, computer graphics and graffiti walls are overtaking the pulpit as the places in which ideas about God are explored. For pioneers in this field, the act of leading worship is expressed through the creation of a worship environment – a three-dimensional, multi-sensory sacred space. In temples made neither of stone nor of words but of sound and vision, screenagers navigate the many signals of a print-lite world and weave truth from its many threads. Are we ready to help young people to communicate with God and each other not in words but in images, pictures and symbols?

- recovering the language of community Leslie Newbiggin reminds us that the church “lives in the midst of history as a sign, instrument and foretaste of the reign of God.” Is there a language of community that can speak to young people resistant to the language of text? “Truth is not a product, to be processed and packaged and dispensed,” says Mike Riddell. “It is an encounter which takes place when people share their stories in a place of safety and dignity.” In a world of dysfunctional relationships, screenagers will be drawn to these “places of safety and dignity, where a glimpse of true community speaks more than volumes of static prose.” David Hillborn sees this as nothing less than God’s own method of communicating: “Just as the divine Word was embodied in Jesus, so godly words are meant to be embodied – within relationships and communities of faith.” Are we seeking to build young people into communities that speak in a broken world – or asking them to assent to disembodied truth?

- recovering the silence of contemplation Canadian theologian Ronald Rolheiser talks of “the eclipse of contemplation” in literate culture. “Today we, the children of Western Culture, struggle with practical atheism,” he says. “Our churches are slowly emptying and, more and more, the sense of God is slipping from our ordinary lives.” The answer, he claims, is not connected to more words, nor to a better grasp of textual truth. “The road back to a lively faith,” he writes, “is not a question of finding the right answers, but of living in a certain way, contemplatively. The existence of God, like the air we breathe, need not be proven. It is more a question of developing good lungs to meet it.”

Contemplation taps into two sources of the richness of God – the power of silence to move us beyond words and the power of ordinary experience to enlighten us. In both, it is possible to hear God speak without text. This is the God who is, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “the ‘beyond’ in the midst of our life.” Are we ready to explore a non-verbal spirituality in which a generation disillusioned with text and jaded with too many words, might find fresh faith?

Post-literacy presents the church with both challenge and opportunity. The challenge: to extricate our faith from an over-dependence on text – without killing the patient in the process. The opportunity: to re-access, re-examine, re-imagine and re-explore “the story” in new forms. Are we preparing our young to be pioneers in a world beyond words – or equipping them for a print age that for them no longer exists? Old text or new context – the choice is ours.

Gerard Kelly chairs the Youth and Rage programs at Spring Harvest, and is a Director of Cafe.net, promoting effective mission for the Christian future of Europe.

By Leonard Sweet

“This is an experience economy. The primary cultural currency is out there is basically images and experiences. When you have those two put together, the primary arena for accessing reality and truth is the arts.”

David Trotter and Spencer Burke interview Leonard Sweet.

Have you heard the one about the missionaries that go to China? They get off the plane and start off by saying, “Look at yourself, you dress funny. And, by the way, you sure do eat weird food. Besides that, we hate your music. And, you sure do have a language that is so hard to understand. But… let us tell you about Jesus and how much He loves you.” You’re laughing, right? We were too. Actually, we were laughing at ourselves. In a most pious fashion, one might say, “How ridiculous? Who would do such an insensitive thing?” Well, Leonard Sweet has a wonderful way of turning the mirror directly in the face of the Church. With a cultural shift that has been underway since the 1960′s, the Church is slowly coming to the realization that its language, dress, food, and music play a big role in the process of carrying out its mission. More than that, the Church’s attitude toward other people’s language, dress, food, and music is even more important. One of the main places in which our culture’s language can be seen is in the realm of arts. The arts in all their forms have become the prominent cultural language of our day. The question is, “Can the Church speak that language?” And, “Are there those among us who already speak that language?” Listen in as we hear about this new language…

TROTTER AND BURKE: Leonard, what transitions have you been seeing in terms of worship and the arts with the Church?

SWEET: The challenge of claiming the arts and liturgy is that you are not so much doing outside the box thing as outside the boat thinking. By the boat, I mean the Church. The modern Church, at least, did not allow the arts in – or only allowed a little leash for the arts. One has to almost go outside the boat or the Church in order to bring in the arts. That is a challenge. Some see it as a threat.

TROTTER AND BURKE: Along those lines, why would a church be willing to do that?

SWEET: Because that is where God is working. Well, for two reasons. One is that “for God so loved the world,” why can’t the Church? The second reason is that we may just be living in a time where God is more active in the world than in the Church. I think there is a double reason for doing it. The whole history of the Scripture and tradition is that God is going to be in this future. If God’s chosen vessels – the Israelites or a certain tribe or a church – are going to have a different mission than God’s mission, God raises up whomever God wills. God uses whomever God wills. I see God raising up and using people in the wider culture even more than I see God – in some cases – using God’s chosen instrument. Primarily, that is because the church has chosen to have a different mission than God’s mission. The mission has been self-preservation and self-service. Its own version of self-esteem. It hasn’t embraced God’s mission in the world.

TROTTER AND BURKE: Although generational language isn’t all that helpful, there seems to be an attraction in the postmodern world – or even 18-35 year olds – there is an attraction to the arts and worship as an experience rather than just knowledge.

SWEET: One of the languages that I am trying to use – I find that it is especially helpful for getting some people to think in a new way. I say this first, and then I backtrack from it. I am just going to make a generalization here. If you are over 30, you are an immigrant. If you are under 30, you are a native. I just say that I am over 30, and I am having Ellis Island experiences all the time. I have to learn new languages, and I have to learn new customs. My brain is needing to be re-wired. It is being re-wired all the time. I am an immigrant to a whole new world. I need to understand – as any immigrant does – that the people you learn the most from are the natives – for whom this new world is their first language. Then I immediately backtrack and let them know that I use the same language you do. This not a demographic thing – it is a psychographic thing. It is a mindset and a headset. I know some people who are 90 and are more native than some people who are 20.

TROTTER AND BURKE: Then, do you see arts and worship as their first language?

SWEET: Oh yes. This is their first language. It is how they experience the world. We are talking about multi-sensory, multi-media. A long time ago when I wrote FaithQuakes – in the early 90′s – I predicted that there would be one classical musical form with a future. Its best days would be in the future. And, that was opera. It is proving to be true. This last year there was a 64% increase in opera attendance. A lot of the increase was the natives. It is multi-media. It appeals to all the senses. In fact, the Portland Opera Company has even introduced scratch and sniff cards so that you can smell your way through the various arias and movements of the operas. Not just hear or see. This is an experience economy. The primary cultural currency is out there is basically images and experiences. When you have those two put together, the primary arena for accessing reality and truth is the arts. Jars of Clay expressed that powerfully in their song, “Art in Me.” That was in their first album where they basically invite God to make each one of us a masterful work of art. In this way, the postmodern world is much more medieval. The church was a major patron of the arts. We forget this – there was a time up until the 19th century that some of your major art dealers and traders were clergy. Then, something happened. Right now is a major renaissance for the arts in the church as we make worship multi-sensory and experiential. The closest that I come to a formula is EPIC. I call it an EPIC methodology for worship. It is an acronym. I chose EPIC, because it really means timeless. What is timeless worship? E stands for Experiential. P stands for Participatory. I stands for Image-based. C stands for Connected. In my upcoming book, Postmodern Pilgrims, I devote a chapter to each one of these. When you talk about experience and participation and image and connectivity, you are really talking about an art form. The modern world was so much more into the sciences. It even tried to make leadership into a science. I’m realizing more and more that everything out there in terms of leadership is much more an art form. We, as leaders, need to see ourselves as artists of the Spirit.

TROTTER AND BURKE: As you are talking about this renaissance, it seems as though our culture will be multi-lingual – not even bi-lingual – but multi-lingual.

SWEET: You are exactly right. But we are not in a place yet where artists can feel at home. Artists prize originality. The Church prizes cloning. Artists prize difference and differentiation. We prize uniformity. Artists prize freedom of expression. The Church prizes not that “for freedom Christ has set you free” – it is “for fear Christ has caused you to live.” (laughter) We are so bound and restricted and afraid. Artists take risks all the time. The Church is the ultimate safety first, risk free zone. People will come to church. They will get into their cars and barrel down the highway 50 to 60 miles an hour.

TROTTER AND BURKE: Where do you live? It is 70 to 80 here! (laughter)

SWEET: 70 to 80! They are two to three feet from other cars. They are two to three feet from strangers, trusting them not to bang into them. They are ten feet away from cars that are coming straight into them. We take huge life and death risks trusting strangers to get there. When we get to church, we immediately freeze up and play it safe. We trust strangers more to get to church than we do the Holy Spirit once we get there. It is appalling how the church has frozen itself in hugging harbors. People are looking for a harbor from the seas rather than being launched out onto the seas where people are drowning and dying.

TROTTER AND BURKE: In keeping with the language metaphor, there is power in language. There is control in words, commerce, and ideas. Is wrestling with fear, power, and control part of learning that native language? Are there some non-postmodern people – I’ll just use that term – being willing to learn a new language?

SWEET: Well, we have a Golden Rule mentality. Jesus came to repudiate the Golden Rule. We have Golden Rule churches that think, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is exactly the opposite of what Jesus came to proclaim. The irony is that the business world has moved away from the Golden Rule to what they call the Platinum Rule. “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.” I think even Golden Rule admit that Jesus repudiated the Silver Rule – “Do unto others as they have done unto you” or even the Iron Rule, “Do unto others before they do unto you.” But the highest standard of all is in John 13, as Jesus explains the Platinum Rule, “You do unto others as I have done unto you.” We have a whole group of immigrants that say the Golden Rule is good enough. If this is good enough for me, it is good enough for you. No, I’m sorry. Jesus made it very clear in his farewell discourse. How did Christ do unto us? He laid down. The question is, “What are willing to lay down?” I think this is the very heart of what it means to be in mission to a new culture.

TROTTER AND BURKE: It seems as though Boomers really wanted their parents to lay aside the hymns and organs for more contemporary worship styles. But, now, some Boomers are more resistant to laying aside things for their children. So, it’s interesting that some of our most avid readers are those who are a little older and from more traditional churches. It is almost as though some traditional churches skipped the Boomers and know that this is their last chance in some ways.

SWEET: I think there is a certain entrenchment that takes place at a certain time in one’s life when one is absolutely over one’s head in everything. You are over your head in your job. You are over your head in raising kids and you are in debt. You have very little time to be creative. You have very little time to think outside the categories.

TROTTER AND BURKE: Almost survival…

SWEET: Yeah. I think there is a certain stubbornness in some Boomers who are resistance to change. I think that they are just stressed out and maxed out. 60, 70, and 80 year olds are fresher in their souls. They are more open to making transitions and thinking in new ways than those who are 35-55. You have to be a little tolerant and understanding from a pastoral standpoint. They just want what led them to Jesus to be replicated to their kids. It is a major problem.

TROTTER AND BURKE: What are some of those things that help people think through this transition?

SWEET: I think you have to root them in the Scriptures. I get real specific. I get real blunt. I can say this, because I am gone the next day. If you cannot look at your programs and ministries and point me to something you don’t get or don’t like, then you have a church that just exists for you and the church itself. You have a Golden Rule church. If you are not laying down money, time, treasure, and talents to support ministries that you don’t understand nor would you ever go to, then your days are numbered. I think that is one way. Just root them in the Scriptures. Do unto others as Christ has done to you. Peter says that he would lay down his life, but right after that he denied Jesus. He would lay down his life, but the little things tripped him up. He wouldn’t lay down his reputation to a little servant girl. But, he would lay down his life. We have people who would lay down their lives for the grandchildren, but they won’t lay down their music – the little things.

TROTTER AND BURKE: You may give that same message at different churches with various levels of acceptance. What are some commonalties among churches that are more accepting?

SWEET: That is a really good question. I have never thought of it like that before. Let me look back. One is that there is a sense that they are there because of what their ancestors did for them. Are they going to do for their day what was done for their ancestors? Almost every church that I have been to has had at least four moves. At least four different buildings. They are there on that site, because their ancestors took risks, made sacrifices, and took on challenges. If churches will begin to see that they are living off the blood, sweat, and tears of their ancestors, the leadership will ask if the current church will do the same for the future. I really think that a historical perspective and understanding that they live in a community of faith and seeing themselves as part of the stream of God’s work through time make a huge affect. I think the other thing is a sense of mission. If a church does not have a sense that they have a mission, it is almost hopeless. If they are just there to meet each other’s needs, then it is doomed. Jesus says that if you want to find your life, you must lose it. You live by dying. We have a lot of First Presbyterian and Last Methodist churches, but not too many Last churches. I’m finishing a book on Servis Shackleton, the explorer who wanted to be the first to cross the South Pole on foot. The greatest survival story in maritime history. Some call him the greatest leader who has ever lived. The book that tells his story is called “Endurance” by Carolyn Alexander. He is famous because he never lost a man. The Antarctic crushed his boat. These 28 men lived outside at the South Pole for 3 years (1914-1917). It is an unbelievable story. He was a great leader, but only when he was on a mission. When he was on a mission, he was totally focused. He couldn’t make a wrong decision. But, when he was not on a mission, his life fell apart. He couldn’t make a right decision. He was a disaster. God made every church for a mission. When we are on the mission and on course, God is going to be there. When we are off course and off that mission, we are on our own. We are then subject to all the drifts and winds of the world. So, a key component is that the church is on a mission by God. There is a psychological test called the MMPI. I hate these tests, but there is always one question that I never know how to answer. “Do you believe you are a special agent of the Lord?” You know that if you put yes, all the bells and whistles are going to go off. Delusions of grandeur and a Napoleonic complex. But what Christian should not put yes? What church should not put yes? We are called to be God’s hands and feet to the world. God has given each one of us a mission.

TROTTER AND BURKE: Even with that mission, you were talking about being in debt and over-worked. With those things, that mission just becomes really difficult to fit in.

SWEET: Well, I think families and marriages need a mission. If you can’t turn your job into a mission of service, then you better find another job. That is the native mentality. I want a vocation that can be a mission.

TROTTER AND BURKE: I wonder if churches get into that same mentality almost like a middle-aged family. In debt, in building programs, and the mission gets lost.

SWEET: That is a really good point. I had not really thought of it like that.

TROTTER AND BURKE: You know, those over 40 might think about mission in more of a traditional sense – going somewhere else geographically. I wonder if postmoderns are looking for someone to be willing to give up language, food, custom, or location?

SWEET: I was with a staff member from Mosaic recently, and he had a wonderful analogy. If you went to China and started off by saying, “I think you dress funny. You sure do eat funny food. I hate your music. You sure do have a language that is so hard to understand. But, let me tell you about Jesus and how much He loves you.” (laughter) Hello? That is exactly what immigrant do to natives all the time. “What is all this tattoo and piercing stuff? You just really look ugly. The color of your hair is just monstrous. Your music is really insulting and degrading. But, let me tell you about Jesus.” No, no, no. Part of it is being willing to love people on their own terms in their own language. It sounds so arrogant. But, the great French philosopher Voltaire said, “If you would speak with me, you must learn my language.” That is primarily what the Church has said, “If you want to speak with us, you must first learn our language.” No, we need to learn to speak the language in which God has placed us. That is what incarnational evangelism is all about. The language of the new emerging culture is the language of the arts and Spirit. The Church has sold out to a world where what was important was what you can see – not what was unseen. Now, we are living in a world where there is more than what meets the eye. The Matrix is the best commentary out there on 2 Corinthians 4:18. The real world is the unseen, spiritual world. The Church sold out to the visible, seen world. It is by might, it is by power – more than God’s Spirit.

TROTTER AND BURKE: Most great works of art that I connect with seem to tell this amazing story deep within it. As you walk up to it, you just scream, “What is it? What is it?”

SWEET: John Drury is an art critic and historian. He has this new book out where he takes great classics of Christian art and unpacks them. I am using it as devotional reading just to help me see the unseen. I have seen these great works, but I have never seen them before. I need to sit at someone’s feet that can mentor me in seeing the unseen. That is what the arts do – they help us see the unseen. They teach us that there is so much more than what meets the eye. They help us experience life with all of our senses. That is what natives want to do. They want to have total-experience worship. Our worship is so one-dimensional. The arts are the only way that we can restore the multi-dimensional and multi-sensory. Super String Theory says to forget about four dimensions. This theory says that there are 10 to 11 dimensions to reality. There are so many dimensions to reality that we don’t even know exist. The arts are the way in which we become more open to experiencing new dimensions.

TROTTER AND BURKE: There is a sense that music has been given the right to touch our soul or heart. Instead of just a cognitive teaching, there is a sense that music and art touch the emotions.

SWEET: To reach natives, if you don’t reach their stereo, you don’t reach their soul. But there is also a reason for that. This is again complexity theory and super string physics. If you ask the physicist at the Center for Non-Linear Studies in Santa Fe, “What is matter basically comprised of?” Let me tell you, when artists hear this, they get it. When we hear it, we are clueless. This is what the basic building blocks of the universe are. This is their phrase – vibrating membranes of energy. They are telling us a couple of things. First of all, that matter is even spirit. Einstein agreed with that. Einstein was called the most important person in the 20th century. He has been important in every field but the church. The church has not even entered the Einstein world yet, and we are already post-Einstein. When you hear that matter is basically vibrating loops, they are saying that anything that vibrates gives out frequencies. Anything that gives off frequencies creates sound. What they are really saying is that matter – this is really Biblical theology from Genesis to Revelation – we are at root an unrepeatable, irreplaceable song. The Bible begins with, “And God said, let there be light!” Sound creates sight. The modern world has been so focused on vision, we have forgotten about vibration. Vibration comes before vision. Over and over again in Scripture, it is sound that creates sight. At Pentecost, what was the first manifestation of the Holy Spirit? The rushing mighty wind and then sight through the flames of fire. So, when you are dealing with music, you are working with the basic building blocks of the universe. You build the body of Christ from the sound up. It is not that we make music, music makes us. When Lucifer fell, he fell into the choir loft and has been at work ever since. Because where God is most at work, the devil is most at work too. The devil knows that music is where God is most at work, because that is basically the building blocks of the universe.

TROTTER AND BURKE: Isn’t it interesting that the twist on John – “in the beginning was the Word” – somehow we made it a statement connected to Gutenberg with the printing press.

SWEET: Hello? If you look ‘logos’ and it also means sound. It would be better to say, “in the beginning was the sound.” The sound became sight. Words become flesh. That is why in the Hebrew tradition, you always chant the torah. You never say the torah, you chant it. Whenever Leonard Bernstein conducted his mass, he would turn around to the audience and say, “We get this wrong. God did not say, let there be light. The real Hebrew meaning is God sang, let there be light.” Then, he would give them a little sample of God’s song. Dun, dun, dun, duuu…as only Bernstein could do

By Billy Kennedy

A.W. Tozer, a famous devotional writer of the ’40s and ’50s once wrote that the “missing jewel of the evangelical church was worship.” I wonder what Arthur, or was it Andy, or Angus, anyway A.W. would have thought today. I think we’ve gone a long way to recover the missing jewel. Just look around at the conferences, seminars, CDs, books all devoted to worship. Add to that the new songs, new worship leaders, and new styles and it makes me think that here was a prophet who spoke something he saw which is now being addressed.

So what would he have seen today? Probably lots, I hear you cry. If I was to hazard a guess at the missing jewel today, and I will because I’m writing this article, I would say it is something so simple, so fundamental, so practical that I feel a bit awkward even saying it. Even the word sounds so “normal.” It’s friendship! There I said it!

So why friendship? All you have to do is look around the church. Churches splitting, pastors leaving, lonely people, nomadic Christians looking for anything that is bigger and better. You pick up any Christian magazine and find ministries competing for funds, conferences vying for centre stage and personalities promoting their latest revelation.

I think we’ve lost the art of true friendship in pursuit of our dreams, our individual dreams, our self-centred dreams. We’ve forgotten what it is to serve, to consider others before ourselves, and lay down our lives for our brothers. We don’t grieve when others fall but rejoice. We never have the privilege to rejoice when others rejoice because we feel threatened by their success. We jealously guard our latest revelation with copyright regulation for fear of being ripped off. In our desire for truth we have forsaken the greatest truth of all – to love God and love our neighbours.

So, my friend, what can we do? Quite simply, we need Jesus to help us! He was God, yet laid it all down to wear a flesh suit. He became like us because he liked us (sometimes “loved us” loses its power because we’ve heard it so often). He became our friend. He was described as a ‘friend of sinners.’ He didn’t just put up with these people. He really was their friend. He hung out with them, ate with them, looked out for them, believed in them, was protective of them, he was their friend. One time he demonstrated his love for them by fulfilling a very menial task for them, he washed their feet. Today, we have relegated this to a religious act when we’re feeling warm and fuzzy about each other. But Jesus probably wiped dog shit from between his disciples’ toes! He got alongside them, he got involved with them, he served them by thinking more about them and himself, he shared all he had with them and, ultimately, he laid down his life for them – and us.

So what would this look like today? Maybe people whose aim in life wasn’t simply the pursuit of an individual dream but concerned that others fulfilled their potential. Maybe people who recognized that the greatest things in life are often the unseen things not those performed on platforms or in the media spotlight. Maybe people who felt the pain when a friend was unable to hold it together any longer. Maybe people who were prepared to give away what they had and were less concerned with protecting it. Maybe people who truly could rejoice when others won. Now that would be an awesome place to live – the church, the friendliest place on the planet! It is not an impossible dream; it is basic Christian living or more accurately radical (meaning ‘back to the roots’) Christian living.

copyright © 2000 billy kennedy