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thoughts on missional communities

For lack of anything better to say - I present to you these nuggets from Len (et al)

The evidence is in favor of leadership as an organic and communal enterprise. In a recent paper, Richard Ascough notes that Paul avoided hierarchical, externally imposed models of leadership in favor of promoting self-organizing, self-governing, adaptive groups. He comments that, “Paul’s leadership style could thus be characterized as involving what modern scientists call ‘chaos theory.’” Chaos theory is a biological model that sees an organization as a living, self-organizing web of relationships.

be sure to read the rest - he quotes Fitch and Pagitt and shares his own thoughts.

I listen to a podcast called WNYC Radio Lab - It’s really wonderful and I highly recommend it. One of the segments they did was discussing the way nature organizes/leads itself. The whole of the world is looking deeper into swarm theory and emergence and other such things and we as the Body would be wise to sit up and take notice….not because we should follow the rest of society blindly in areas of leadership and community (because that’s what we did when we created the business model of church) but because I believe God is present in areas of discovery, exploration, experimentation and I believe we can find Him in this and when applied properly with measured care, we can create something beautiful. If you’re interested, you can find the radio lab production on Emergence here. *link fixed*

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2 Comments

  1. Jamie Arpin-Ricci — February 1, 2008 #

    Hey Mak,

    I couldn’t get the podcast to work. Is there a link to download it?

    Peace,
    Jamie

  2. Mak — February 1, 2008 #

    I changed the link, you should be able to scroll down to emergence

    if you subscribe to the podcast in itunes, it should be on there still as well.

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