5ive Questions into the new year

I noticed that I hadn't got back to those 5ive Questions

5. What's vision?
This is one of those things where there is a lot of conventional answerabilia (I think that's a word I just made up -like it?) to reckon with. Can I add anything to all that stuff which basically seems to be saying that it is the ability to see beyond the merely present state of affairs to a different and possible future in such a way as to motivate change. Not sure I can.

I suppose that I want to make sure that there is some degree of connecting that up with God's agenda and inspiration. I would also want to add that the ability to communicate a vision compellingly is important. It is also important that it is timely. I personally find that the most challenging aspect of vision in leadership: as an ENTP I tend to find a future orientation easy and interesting in a way that lots of people, I realise, don't. What this seems to mean is that I get excited in things way ahead and by the time my 'vision' becomes relevant have already been written off because it was just too far ahead and not really comprehensible or seen to be desirable. In fact a lot of people seem to have a fundamental orientation to the future as threat rather than opportunity. The other thing is that with that set of responses I have got used to being dismissed and also quite often have become rather bored with the ideas by the time their time has come.

I think I need to assess how to do futuring, perhaps.

4. What's your favorite/least favorite part of ministry?
The favourite is probably about leading groups through processes that stimulate or contribute to spiritual growth. Sometimes that can be a cell-group kind of thing, sometimes an 'alt.worshippy' sort of event, sometimes a workshop. You get the picture.

The unfavourites ... probably are to do with being abused either verbally [mercifully rarely physically] or in terms of my position being leveraged in machiavellian ways which usually means guilt tripping yours truly.

3. What does it mean to be missional?
I think that it's a value added form of being missionary. The added value is the idea of structuring a normal church life round enculturated mission. So it's more than being evangelistic, it's a recognition that the medium is the message and the message shapes the medium. The medium is a gospel community.

2. What role should the arts play in church?
That's an interesting question because there are a whole lot of pre-understandings that we may or may not hold in common. For example, it seems like the presupposition of the question is that the arts don't play much of a role at present. I think that may betray a narrow view of art on both sides. On the one side, let's call it the trad Evo, arts are employed but not labelled as such or thought about really in those terms. But preaching, architecture, song, flower arrangement and even movement are arts, however pragmatically conceived. On the other side those things are not considered art in the same way as graphic, plastic or video work is.

The point I'm making behind that problematisation is that art is necessarily implicated in what we do. I'm more interested in the issue of what we do use and how and why and whether we are able to be sufficiently self-critical about it and are consistent in our critiques and acceptances. It's not 'should' but 'do' and how we evaluate our usages.

1. What's your view of postmodernism?
In short, I think that it is a rejection or at least a questioning of the central tenets of modernism. As such I don't think that it has the imaginitive power or the positive foundation to be the next moment in cultural history in a way similar to classical or modernist cultures. I think that it is a transitional 'ploughing up of the field'. What's being planted? That's the really interesting question [see, that ENTP future orientation is peeking through again]. My bets are on integralist/wholistic worldviews which will look to the new physics, chaos, complexity, emergence and ecology for their inspiration.

I'm doing some thinking and a little writing at the mo on remixing Christian faith for an integralist age...

Now, what are your answers to those questions? Comment me your blog's answers ...