Tussen-in

Florerende Gemeentes

Dis weer die tyd van die jaar om mekaar seen en voorspoed toe te wens.  Ek wonder dikwels wat seen en voorspoed ten diepste vir mense beteken?  Hoe lyk die lewe wanneer mense dink hulle floreer?  Ek wonder dit veral ook oor gemeentes wanneer ek dikwels hoor hoe gemeenteleiers en gemeentelede praat as hulle terug kyk op die afgelope jaar en hulle wense uitspreek vir die komende jaar.  Wat is die kriteria vir florerende gemeentes?  Was dit ‘n goeie jaar omdat ons erediensgetalle gegroei het?  Is ons tevrede met 2009 omdat mense se bydraes darem ten minste konstant gebly het ten spyte van moeilike ekonomiese toestande?  Is ons tevrede weens die beduidende energie vir ‘n hele aantal kern gemeentebedieninge?  Wat is die onderliggende aannames van ons wense en gebede vir ons gemeente in 2010?

Miroslav Volf het so amper twee maande gelede ‘n inspirerende praatjie gelewer by ‘n jaarlikse missional church konferensie van Luther Seminary wat ek hier in St. Paul (Minnesota) bygewoon het.  Sy titel was God, Hope, and Human Flourishing. Eers begin hy in sy praatjie met Jurgen Moltmann se onderskeiding tussen optimisme en hoop. Moltmann se futurum (optimisme) is wanneer “we survey the past and the present, extrapolate about what is likely to happen in the future, and, if the prospects are good, become optimistic.”  Maar, “hope, on the other hand, has to do with good things in the future that come to us from outside, from God; the future associated with hope – Moltmann calls it adventus – is a gift of something new.  Hoop is die fokus op God wat belowe om nuwe dinge vanuit die toekoms in ons midde te doen.

Volf gaan dan voort om ‘n baie insiggewende beskrywing te gee van die hedendaagse Westernse verstaan van human flourishing.  Hy toon veral aan hoedat hierdie verstaan sover gekom het om florering te definieer as satisfaksie of bevrediging:  ”that a flourishing human life is an experientially satisfying human life.”  Dit beteken, “No satisfaction, no flourishing. Sources of satisfaction may vary, ranging from appreciation of classical music to the use of drugs, from the delights of haute cuisine to the pleasures of sadomasochistic sex, from sports to religion. What matters is not the source of satisfaction but the fact of it. What justifies an activity or a given life-style or activity is the satisfaction it generates. And when they experience satisfaction, people feel that they flourish.”

Hierdie hedendaagse verstaan van florering as satisfaksie het heeltemal ‘n ander fokus in vergelyking met twee ander verstaansparadigmas van floreringin die geskiedenis van die Westerse tradisie.  Die een tradisie, met Augustinus as invloedryke figuur, sien “human beings flourish and are truly happy when they center their lives on God, the source of everything that is true, good, and beautiful.”  In sy Cities of God het Augustinus dit gedefinieer as “completely harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God, and each other in God.”  Die ander tradisie, wat veral sedert die 18de eeu prominensie begin kry het, word deur Volf ‘n antroposentriese skuif genoem.  Dit is die tradisie van ‘n nuwe humanisme wat die gebod om God lief te he vervang met ‘n morele verpligting om die naaste lief te he.  Volf haal Charles Taylor aan om dit te beskryf:  ”This new humanism was different ‘from most ancient ethics of human nature,’ writes Charles Taylor in A Secular Age, in that its notion of human flourishing ‘makes no reference to something higher which humans should reverence or love or acknowledge.’”

Die verskil tussen hierdie twee tradisies en die hedendaagse tendens om florering as satisfaksie te beskou word dan deur Volf soos volg opgesom:  ”Having lost earlier the reference to “something higher which humans should reverence or love,” it now lost reference to universal solidarity, as well. What remained was concern for the self and the desire for the experience of satisfaction. It is not, of course, that individuals today simply seek pleasure on their own, isolated from society. Others are very much involved. But they matter only to the degree that they serve an individual’s experience of satisfaction. That applies to God as well as to human beings. Desire—the outer shell of love—has remained, but love itself, by being directed exclusively to the self, is lost.”  Uiteindelik kom dit neer op ‘n geskiedenis van wat Volf noem ‘n “diminution of the object of love: from the vast expanse of the infinite God it first tapered to the boundaries of the universal human community, and then radically contracted to the narrowness of a single self—one’s own self.”  Saam hiermee kom natuurlik die redusering van hoop tot blote selfbelang.  Die gevaar is dan dat ook God ingepas moet word by ‘n skema van hoop wat selfbelang gedrewe is.

Volf keer later in sy praatjie terug na vier oortuigings van Augustinus om hierdie gereduseerde verstaan van hoop te rehabiliteer, en om die fokus terug te plaas op God:  ”First, he (Augustinus) believed that God is not an impersonal Reason dispersed throughout the world, but a ‘person’ who loves and can be loved in return. Second, to be human is to love; we can chose what to love but not whether to love. Third, we live well when we love both God and neighbor, aligning ourselves with the God who loves. Fourth, we will flourish and be truly happy when we discover joy in loving the infinite God and our neighbors in God.”  Volf meen die grootste uitdaging vir gemeentes is om werklike te glo “that the presence and activity of the God of love, who can make us love our neighbors as ourselves, is our hope and the hope of the world—that that God is the secret of our flourishing as persons, cultures, and interdependent inhabitants of a single globe.”

Dalk kan ons almal weer ‘n slag krities kyk na die veronderstellings van florering onderliggend aan ons wense en gebede vir onsself en ons gemeentes in 2010.  Mag 2010 ‘n jaar wees van gestuurde gemeentes en hoopvolle christene wat floreer in hul deelname aan waarmee God besig is in hul buurte, gemeenskappe, en die wereld!

Die Luisterende Simfonie van Gestuurde Advent Gemeentes

Advent breek weer ons gejaagde lewens in.  Skielik, onverwags, elke jaar hierdie tyd, uit die toekoms.  Soos die bruidegom in die nag.

Dan is dit tyd om die simfonieorkes tot bedaring te bring.  Die gewone uitvoerings van die jaar te stop.  Die musiek te verdoof.

‘n Tyd vir die uitvoering van John Cage se 4′33.  Wanneer ons gretigheid om ‘n simfonie uitvoerings van God se musiek te maak net stilte word.

Maar stilte met ‘n verskil.  Want wanneer die simfonieorkes tot bedaring kom word ons verras deur die klanke van stilte.

Vir christelike geloofsgemeenskappe is dit nie ‘n Zen Buddistiese stilte nie, maar ‘n stilte van nuwe, vars luister na ander.  In plaas van ‘n fokus op die musiekstukke wat ons moet kan bemeester, word ons opnuut bewus van die gehoor se wereld.  ’n Wereld waar God leef.  ’n Doodgewone, alledaagse wereld… die stadsverkeer… die hoes van ‘n kind… stille klanke van wanhoop in geweld, armoede, vigs, werkloosheid….

As gestuurde gemeentes word ons nie net gestuur om altyd iets te doen nie, maar om soms met aandag te luister na die wereld waar God leef.  Sodat ons weer kan fokus op die Een van wie ons weet Hy het ‘n eerste keer op verrassende manier tussen ons opgedaag… en Hy kom weer uit die toekoms as die lewende hoop tussen ons.

Gemeentes te midde van Armoede en Materialisme

Een van my Amerikaanse kollegas hier in Minnesota wou my graag voorstel aan ‘n vriendin van hom wat oorweldig is deur die armoede wat sy in Khayelitsha en Langa ervaar het toe sy onlangs vir twee weke in die Kaap gaan kuier het.  Hy het my vooraf na haar blog verwys waar sy haar foto’s geplaas en refleksies gedeel het terwyl sy daar was (kyk gerus daarna op http://owlrainfeathers.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html – van 20 Februarie en verder terug op haar blog).  Ons nooi hulle toe oor vir ete een aand verlede naweek, want ons laat ook nooit ‘n geleentheid verby gaan om bobotie (met regte Kaapse blatjang!), geelrys-met-rosyntjies, en melktert vir poeding (wat nie van Nestle produkte gemaak is nie!) voor te sit aan mense wat dit nie ken nie (al is dit ‘n gesukkel om die speserye hier te vind soos wat ons dit in die Oriental Plaza in Johannesburg kon koop, of om die kerrie te laat smaak soos dit in die Bo-Kaap smaak!).

Die gesprek was diep, fasinerend, en uiteindelik ‘n teologiese besinning oor wat dit vir Christene beteken om vanuit bevoorregte omstandighede en te midde van ‘n materialistiese kultuur in verhouding te leef met diegene wat minder bevoorreg is en in armoede leef.  Die worsteling in ons gesprek word goed opgesom in ‘n preek wat my vriend se vriendin (haar naam is Tamie) gelewer het kort nadat sy teruggekom het uit Suid-Afrika.  Ek deel dit graag hier (al beteken dit ‘n langer blog bydrae as gewoonlik), want dit help my om weer te dink oor wat ons in gemeentes doen in die verband.  Ek is veral getref deur die impak wat die mense van Khayelitsha en Langa op hierdie Amerikaanse vrou gemaak het met hulle gasvryheid, en veral die oenskynlike geluk wat hulle vind in ‘n eenvoudige lewenstyl.  Ek het maar net weer besef dat om veel meer gaan as om bloot aan arm mense te dink as die objekte van ons welsynsprojekte, en hoe ons dikwels ons hulp aan ander as ‘n verskoning gebruik om nie verhoudings te bou waarin ons ook ‘n kans het om te verander nie.  Kan ons dalk stories deel van gewoontes en praktyke wat gemeentes in die verband kweek?

Hier is Tamie se preek:

On March 15, I preached this sermon on poverty. I took Mark 10:17-27 as my text.

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Africa. I was in Cape Town for eight days, visiting family, and in the middle of that time I spent five days in Zambia at a lodge in the town of Livingstone, named after David Livingstone, a town right on the Zambian/Zimbabwean border. Zambia is in southern Africa, right beneath the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not too far from the equator.

The lodge where I stayed was right on the Zambezi River, a few kilometers above Victoria Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world. It was a little collection of buildings that were part thatch hut/part chalet, if you can imagine such a combination, and while I was there chilling with the little silver monkeys, staring into the crocodile and hippo laden waters, I met a Zambian woman my age named Kumoyo. Kumoyo is an accountant who lives 500 kilometers from Livingstone, and was in Livingstone to do an audit on the property. She and I ended up befriending each other and we ate most of our meals together. As we sat eating yogurt and beef stew and nshima and chocolate cake, we spoke of our two countries, our two cultures.

One afternoon I said to her, “You know, Kumoyo, in the United States, a town with the population of Livingstone would take up much more land than this town. It is a town of 150,000 but it is very small in the space it takes up!”

She said, “Yes? Why would it be bigger? What do you have in your towns?”

“Well,” I said, “for one thing, our houses are very big. And many houses have lots of grass around them. Much fewer people live in each house, so there have to be many more houses than in this town where so many family members live together. Also, we have many stores, and around the stores there are big parking lots for cars because every person in America has their own car.”

“What?!” she exclaimed. “A car for each person?”

“Yes,” I said. “Almost every adult has their own car.”

“This is too much,” she said. “It is too much. Each person has their own car? And anyway, why do you have so many stores? What is in the stores?”

“Well,” I said, “We sell many many things in our stores. Clothes and so many kinds of food. There are many different brands of each food. And the stores sell cars and things for building houses and electronics and so many other things. Blackberrys, forty different kinds of toilet paper, salad shooters, leather seat covers, candy. We have big stores filled with so many many things.”

“This is too much,” she said. “Why do you have so many things?”

I suddenly experienced that clarity that comes of speaking to someone who does not speak my language well, or whose culture is radically different from mine, and I have to strip off every explanatory extra and just simply tell the naked truth. I had gotten myself into a very honest conversation about America’s wealth—my wealth—with a member of a country where the average life expectancy is 37 years, and 25% of the population are infected with HIV. Yes, indeed. Why do we have so many things? Why do we have so many things?

We continued talking.

“Many times there are just one or two people living in the big houses,” I said. “Families do not necessarily live together, like here in Africa.”

“Yes?” she asked. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“In Africa this would not be possible,” she said. “In Africa we are poor because we all share our money. If you get some money and you have a cousin who is sick, or an auntie who needs some money, you will give your money to those people. That is why we can never save money.”

I laughed. “Ah,” I said, “so this is the real reason for poverty!” We laughed together.

We began talking about wages and prices. She asked me how much rent I paid. I told her. Her eyes got big as silver dollars and she said, “You must live in a very big house!”

“No,” I said, “I live in a small apartment. Really, I promise!”

“How many rooms are in your apartment?” she asked. I told her that I had two bedrooms in my apartment, one for me, one for my roommate, and also a kitchen, dining area, bathroom, and living room. Even as I said it, I realized how rich and clueless I sounded.

“Ah yes,” she answered, knowingly. Clearly I did live in a big place. Two bedrooms! One for each person! What was this extravagant luxury! And I thought my apartment was small. Clearly, her attitude betrayed, this American woman was not to be taken exactly at her word. Kumoyo told me that she considered herself a member of the upper class in Zambia, a college-educated accountant after all, and she speaks seven languages. She shared a one-bedroom apartment with her brother, cousin, and son.

**

I am just going to be honest and admit that while I was in Africa, I lived in great luxury, and luxury sure can feel good. My father treated me to business class on all my flights—and business class on British Air means beds and gourmet meals and personalized service. My father also paid for my side trip to Zambia, where I had high tea right on the edge of the Victoria Falls, and in Cape Town I had spa treatments and an absolutely gorgeous, private room in a five-star hotel where the entire staff greeted me by name every day. I sincerely enjoyed it all.

Meanwhile, I was encountering some of the most extreme poverty I have personally ever witnessed.

When I returned from Zambia, one of Africa’s poorest countries, to South Africa, one of Africa’s wealthiest countries, I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I walked into the airport in Johannesburg, because here again were all the familiar trappings of first-world luxury, and I felt existentially safe once more. I say this as someone who prides herself on living a simple and not-very-materialistic life. But oh, after the deprivation of Zambia, with its desperate and dying merchants, its smell-able, palpable, profoundly human reminders that we live in an utterly unfair world and that I am one of the few who benefits from this inequality…oh, what a relief to enter the Johannesburg airport full of stores bursting with things! Brightly colored tourist things, almost all of them superfluous to subsistence, all of them easily purchased with a Visa or Mastercard, those little American-made plastic rectangles that allow us to consume and consume and consume.

How protected from suffering I felt, once again! How relieved to be back in a context where I could buy happiness, or at least distraction, where I could escape my own neediness, live out of sight of others’ neediness. And I did buy stuff. That’s exactly what I did. And this is why it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into that elusive Kingdom of God that Jesus talks about, that place where we would actually live with our whole lives the truth that every person on earth is equally precious, equally worthwhile, equally human and divine.

Back in Zambia I had said to Kumoyo, feeling like I was giving away the Great Secret of the Global North. “Here’s the thing. Americans aren’t happy. At least, it’s not like just because we are rich it automatically means we are any happier or living more meaningful lives than people here in Zambia. We are rich but not joyful. We are lonely. So many Americans take drugs because they are sad or depressed or they cannot stand their lives. They are lonely in their big houses. They buy more and more things in the stores because they want to feel happy but buying things does not solve what is wrong with their hearts. We are rich, but so what?”

And then I backpedaled, because what right do I have to dismiss with the wave of a hand all my wealth and lifelong privilege? What right do I have to tell someone who has always lived in poverty that money does not matter, that it makes no difference?

Jesus says that the poor will be able to enter the Kingom of Heaven, and the rich will have a very tough time of it. Reflecting on this has got me pondering up a ponderation storm. We middle-class Americans, and especially, I think, we progressive middle-class Americans, seem to assume that poverty is the problem. In Africa I got the sinking feeling that the desire of so many wealthy westerners is to make poor people into middle-class consumers, solve their problems with our solutions. Which leads me to wonder: what exactly have our solutions solved? And at what price? And, if the goal isn’t to make the poor into us, then what exactly is the goal? If the goal is a richly meaningful and loving life, as I might suggest, then where exactly does wealth fit in? Who among us is completely satisfied with what we have? Who among us doesn’t think we’d be happier if we just had a little bit more?

Why do we assume that poverty is a problem to be solved? Is it partly because we need to justify our own wealth? Why did so many of the great spiritual teachers live in abject poverty? Jesus was homeless; Mother Theresa lived in the same poverty as did those poorest of the poor to whom she ministered; Gandhi chose extreme simplicity though he came from a wealthy family. Why are we so quick to assume that they didn’t mean their teachings on wealth and poverty literally? They must have meant them spiritually! We think: Surely they wouldn’t want us to actually sell all that we have and give our money to the poor! Can’t you live a comfortable American life and be a realized spiritual person?

Dudes. I am not so sure.

There have been so many misunderstandings of what Jesus meant when he spoke about salvation and the Kingdom of God. Many of us have been the victims of lame and even destructive interpretations when it comes to Jesus and Christianity. So it is instructive to revisit what Jesus might have meant, when he spoke to the rich young man and to his disciples about the kingdom of heaven and salvation.

Many of us have been taught that the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, is a distant, post-death reality with streets of gold, and that “getting saved” is what you have to do to get the key to the gate to this Kingdom. Frankly, this interpretation of Jesus arose from the need to distort his teachings beyond recognition in order to maintain the status quo that he sought to absolutely undermine and overthrow.

Salvation is not about getting into heaven, and the Kingdom of God is not some afterlife reality, though sometimes I think it is a reality even more elusive than the afterlife. Here is what Jesus taught, as concise as I know how to say it: Everyone is loved equally by God. Live accordingly. Everyone is loved. Everyone is loved equally. We are all God’s children, all holy creatures, none of us more worthwhile or less worthwhile, more or less in need of mercy. Therefore, we are obligated to do away with every hierarchy, every system of violence and oppression and domination. We must do away with war, patriarchy, racism, and yes, we must do away with economic inequalities.

Jesus is not just saying that we must part with our dependence on all our possessions in order to enter this new transforming reality that he calls the Kingdom of God. He is saying that we have to altogether stop participating in the violent system that depends on the domination and oppression of others. He is not glorifying poverty; he is saying: so long as there is a system in which some are poor and some are rich–some are rich because others are poor–as long as there is such a system, none of us will be free and we will not be living fully the Kingdom of God.

In our context, I tremble to admit, this is more complicated than getting rid of everything that you own. I tremble to admit that because most of us just want to hear that we don’t have to part with our possessions, which only proves just how much of an obstacle they are to us spiritually. But actually, getting rid of all your possessions might be the easy way out. The hard thing is having the wisdom and tenacity to figure out how not to participate in the system of oppression and domination in which we are all unwittingly participating, not because we are bad people but because we don’t know what else to do. Theologian Tereza Calvacanti says, “The option for the poor means opting for the causes of the poor. Not that I become materially poor like the poor are, but that I put all my resources at the cause of the poor and assist in the struggle of the poor.”

As long as we think of poor people as unfortunate souls needing to be saved by rich victors; as long as our goal in making money is to make sure that we get to be the ones who reap the benefits of this unjust system; as long as we secretly believe that wealth will protect us, then we are missing the point. And the point, as a young Zambian man told me as we were talking politics while looking around for giraffes, is that the system needs to change. Our hearts need to change. The point is that we can be the ones to say we will no longer tolerate the way things are. And we don’t need money to say that. We can say it with our bodies, with the way we treat each other, with our lives. People in prison can say it, as Nelson Mandela did. Powerless and oppressed people can say it, as the black people did in the south, as the suffragettes did before women had the right to vote. We can say it with our prayers, we can say it by inviting over for dinner people with whom we are uncomfortable, we can say it by volunteering, we can say it by speaking up. We can say it by getting rid not just of what we do not want, but of what we do not need. By getting rid of everything that is holding us back from love.

Two days before I left Africa, I went on a tour of the townships in Cape Town. The townships are gigantic spreads of shacks where most of the black and mixed-race people in Cape Town live. During apartheid, which was the Nazi-inspired system of racial segregation that only ended in 1994, black and mixed-race folks were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in the townships. Over the years, the townships have grown and grown. Millions of people live in these townships now. Passing by them on the highway, all you can see is massive jumbles of sheet metal and scrap wood.

Wanting to understand better what was up with the townships, I decided to take a tour. At first I was uncomfortable with the idea of taking a tour of poverty, but I was encouraged by several seemingly trustworthy locals in Cape Town to do so, so I went. And how thankful I was that I went! My day in the townships was my best day in Africa.

Let me just say this. With the eyes of the wealthy, and from the outside, the townships look like places of deprivation and squalor and violence. And surely they are! But from the outside, the mansions of the wealthy look like places of security and luxury and fun. And surely they are. But we all know neither is the whole truth. There can be deprivation in the mansions, and I assure you that the townships are bursting with life! Sometimes I think we in the west think that the poor, brown people of the world are just lying around hoping we’ll come save them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There were thousands of little businesses open everywhere in the townships, the vast majority of them not registered and technically illegal. We met a woman named Beauty whose husband had slept around, contracted HIV, and then passed the virus on to her. She became very depressed and angry, but then with the encouragement of her neighbors who recognized her gifts, she opened her own sewing business and was giving sewing lessons to the young women in the community so that they too could sustain themselves. Our guide had befriended Beauty and had helped her access anti-retroviral drugs and encouraged her to eat well and she was now in good health. She had purchased several sewing machines with money donated by tourists who come on these township tours.

We met another woman named Vicky who had opened a bed and breakfast—in a township!—where young adventurous westerners like myself could come and really get a feel for township life. With her profits from the bed and breakfast, she’d opened a childcare so that working parents would have a safe place to leave their children. There is a common myth in Africa that if you are an HIV-positive male, you can get rid of the virus by having sex with a virgin. In order to know for sure that they are actually getting virgins, men are raping young girls. This is a very big problem in the townships. But this woman, Vicky, had opened this childcare so that little girls could be safe.

I bring you this report about Vicky and Beauty and the townships because it does not make the news. Also, I want you to understand that it isn’t all up to you. As we take steps toward loving others, as we try to let go of all that stands between us and the equal treatment of every person on earth, many others are taking steps—toward us! And let me tell you, it is your great good fortune to be stuck in this soup with the poor. It is probably more our good fortune to be stuck in this with them than it is their good fortune to be stuck in this with us.

In the reading today from Gustavo Gutierrez he says, “If there is no friendship with the poor, and no sharing of life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only between equals….But how is it possible to tell the poor, who are forced to live in conditions that embody a denial of love, that God loves them? It is not enough that we be liberated from oppressive socioeconomic structures: also needed is a personal transformation by which we live with profound inner freedom in the face of every kind of servitude.”

The title of my sermon is, “Is Poverty a Problem?” and I would say this: being able to let go of money and possessions is not only not a problem, it has been given by many spiritual teachers as an absolutely crucial part of the path to becoming fully human and fully integrated into an ethical and holy life. However, the kind of poverty that is a problem is the kind that arises from the socioeconomic system in which people in the world—so many people in the world—are forced to live in conditions that embody a denial of love. That kind of poverty, the kind that implies exploitation and violence, is the kind of poverty to which we all contribute and from which we all suffer. Who among us does not coexist with conditions, somewhere in his or her life, which embody a denial of love? Because we each participate in it, because we each suffer from it, we also each have the ability to participate less, to pour our wealth—our spiritual wealth, our relational wealth, our artistic wealth, our hope and our joy and our sincerity and our pain and our money and our stories—into creating a world that embodies an affirmation of love.

You are loved. Every one of you. You are loved beyond reason, beyond measure. So is everyone else. Live accordingly.

Amen?

Hoop se Absurde en Omgekeerde Logika

Herwin Hoop in die Batebouer

Vanjaar se Verantwoordelike Vernuwing konferensie se herwin hoop tema, en die prominensie van bate metafore in sommige van die aanbiedings en refleksies, het my laat wonder hoe ons kan seker maak dat gemeentes hul “bates” en hul eie vermoens om “batebouers” te wees in ‘n teologiese perspektief op hoop kan verstaan.  Aan die een kant bring die bates-metafore ‘n welkome fokus op die positiewe wat God aan gemeentes gee, en help dit met ‘n hoopvolle eerder as probleemstellende teologiese uitgangspunt.  Aan die ander kant sou die gevaar kon bestaan dat valse hoop geskep word in die bates self, eerder as om die fokus te hou op God as die eintlike Batebouer in verhouding tot ons rentmeesterskap van God se bates.  In die metafoor van ‘n ou Halleluja liedjie, hoe kan ons ons seeninge tel en terselfdertyd nooit die God wat die seeninge gee vervang met die seeninge self nie?

Ek het aan die volgende aanhaling van Douglas John Hall, in sy The Cross in Our Context (p.195), gedink:  “A theology that confesses hope, not finality or consummation, will certainly have a mission in the midst of a despairing world, but it will be a mission that recognizes an expansiveness of divine grace that far exceeds its own grasp and representation of this mission.  For in the first place it will be hope in God, not in its own always-limited appropriation of God’s redemptive work.  Christian mission is a particular, ongoing attempt faithfully to comprehend and participate in the missio Dei…  Christians are those who have glimpsed in faith something of the reality and depth of this divine labor and who strive to involve themselves in it.  But they know that it is nottheir work, and they know that its end eludes them and in its advent may utterly surprise them.  Therefore they do not, may not, present themselves as a community for which all is finished – a body uniquely knowledgeable of the divine economy, in possession of secret truth concerning God’s closure of history, etc. (they are not Gnostics!).”

Hall se woorde spreek van hoop in beweging eerder as ‘n statiese hoop.  Dit mag ons dalk help om nie bates te sien as iets wat ons opbou en opgaar nie, maar iets wat eintlik nooit ons s’n is op ons geloofsreis nie.  Gemeentes as geloofsgemeenskappe van hoop is dus altyd ‘n communio viatorum, ‘n gemeenskap op reis, eerder as ‘n gearriveerde gemeenskap.  En wanneer jy op reis is kan jy nie altyd so baie bates saamvat of dit regtig opbou nie.  Maar jy kan wel die bates wat jy saam met jou op pad neem opnuut waardeer vir die waarde wat dit vir die doeleindes van die reis self het, en dit maksimaal aanwend in verhouding met diegene wat jy op reis ontmoet.  Dit maak van hoop ‘n hoop in aksie.  Toe 7 prominente teoloe in 2000 in Atlanta (onder voorsitterskap van die Ou Testamentikus, Walter Brueggemann) besin het oor die vraag, “What is the mission of the church in the 21st century?”, het hulle na maande se besinning tot die volgende antwoord gekom:  “The mission of the Christian Movement in the 21st century is to confess hope in action.” Hoop is altyd aan die beweeg in die rigting van diegene wat God se geregtigheid, heling, en vrede die meeste nodig het.  ’n Gemeenskap van hoop wat altyd aan die beweeg is kan nooit bates opgaar vir die doeleindes van die bates self nie, maar kan wel die Batebouer vertrou dat Hy altyd op pad sal voorsien wat nodig is om saam te bou aan die Koninkrykswerk waarmee die Batebouer alreeds besig is in die wereld.

Die Blinde Kol

Gegewe my huidige navorsing in gemeentes, doen ek heelwat leeswerk rondom eskatologie in die teologie en fenomenologie in die filosofie.  Ek kom toe so ‘n paar weke terug af op Otto Scharmer, besigheidskonsultant en stigter van die Presencing Institute, se nuwe boek, Theory U (Berrett-Koehler, 2009).  Dit is veral die subtitel wat my nuuskierig gemaak het, nl. Leading from the Future as It Emerges.  Scharmer worstel met organisatoriese leierskap te midde van sosiale verandering en hoe dit die transformasie van organisasies raak.  Hy fokus veral op wat hy die social fields van ‘n organisasie noem:  “Social fields… designates the totality and type of connections through which the participants of a given system relate, converse, think, and act.” En hy begin sy meer as 500 bladsye boek met ‘n beeld van die blinde kol.

“The blind spot is the place within or around us where our attention and intention originates.  It’s the place from where we operate when we do something.  The reason it’s blind, is that it is an invisible dimension of our social field, of our everyday experience in social interactions.  This invisible dimension of the social field concerns the sources from which a given social field arises and manifests.” Hy gaan dan voort om dit te illustreer aan die hand van die werk van ‘n kunstenaar:  “we can look at the work of art after it has been created (the thing), during its creation (the process), or before creation begins (the blank canvas or source dimension).” Volgens Scharmer kan dieselfde analogie vir leierskap gebruik word, en kan ons na leierskap vanuit drie verskillende oogpunte kyk:  (1) wat leiers doen (taak); (2) hoe leiers dit doen (proses); (3) vanuit watter bronne leiers funksioneer (onsigbare en onderliggende dimensie wat die aard van leierskap bepaal).  Oor eersgenoemde is daar al tonne leierskapboeke geskryf, terwyl die tweede kategorie waardevolle navorsing opgelewer het oor die laaste 15-20 jaar.  Oor laasgenoemde is daar egter nog bitter min sistematiese navorsing en skryfwerk gedoen.

Scharmer gebruik dan talle voorbeeld vanuit die praktyk van intervensies in besigheid om aan te toon hoe bepalend hierdie blinde kol in leierskap is.  Hy som dit op:  “The blind spot at issue here is a fundamental factor in leadership and in social sciences.  It also affects our everyday social experience.  In the process of conducting our daily business and social lives, we are usually well aware of what we do and what others do; we also have some understanding of how we do things, the processes we and others use when we act.  Yet if we were to ask the question ‘From what source does our action come?’ most of us would be unable to provide an answer.  We cant see the source from which we operate; we arent aware of the place from which our attention and intention originate.”

Ek wil graag in ‘n volgende blogbydrae nadink oor Scharmer se denke ten opsigte van die toekoms as ‘n alternatiewe bron vir leierskap, maar ek wonder net op hierdie stadium hoe sy insigte oor die blinde kol ons kan help in gesprekke oor leierskap in gemeentes.  Ek sien baie boeke oor gemeentelike transformasie en leierskap wat fokus op die wat en die hoe, maar baie min wat erns maak na die vraag oor watter unieke bronne gemeentes beskik wat allesbepalend is vir hoe transformasie gebeur en leierskap beoefen word.  Selfs die van ons wat nog altyd krities was oor resepmatige benaderings tot gemeentelike transformasie en leierskap, en meer op prosesse begin fokus het, het dalk nie altyd genoeg “die blinde kol” vraag gevra nie.  Die uitdaging vanuit die oogpunt van gemeentelike kultivering is juis om te fokus op die “fertile topsoil” (soos Scharmer dit noem) waar die onsigbare en die oppervlak dimensies bymekaar kom.  Vanuit kulturele oogpunt is dit dalk ‘n krities belangrike vraag oor hoe ons toegang kry tot hierdie onsigbare dimensie van wat alles op ‘n fundamentele vlak gemeentelike leierskap vorm, en vanuit teologiese ooppunt hoe ons die rykdom van uniek christelike bronne waaroor gemeentes deur die eeue heen beskik kan ontgin as die bepalende “stof” van die “social fields” in gemeentelike leierskap en transformasie.  Om meer intensioneel hieroor te besin kan ons dalk dan ook help om nuwe maniere te vind wat die valse teenoorstelling van tradisie (bronne wat oor die eeue heen aan die kerk gegee is) en vernuwing (kreatiewe intervensies in gemeentes) oorkom.

Om saam te sit rondom ‘n bier of ‘n pakkie chips

Calvyn (geb. 10 Julie 1509) en Gestuurde Gemeentes (Post-Christendom)

Gemeentelike Geloofsvorming: Om te Weet of Om te Leer?

Emerging Churches: Waardering en Vrae