There are several pieces that I appreciate about Williams’ approach. The overarching piece is how the title itself is oriented by more generously and sensitively working two domains, an organization’s leadership (notice not singular “leader”), and an identification of the world as it is, fractured. Keeping these two domains in mutual relationship is key, particularly when we start imagining local churches for whom, at least many institutionally speaking, see the world as our target, either for charity or butts in a pew, rather than partners for the sake of the common good, or for the very way God is inviting us to learn a new future relating seriously to difference.
Regarding some key appreciative pieces: The first is that he takes seriously the organizational reality of tribalism. If the local church, as an organization for the sake of the communities we live among, are going to move forward WITH those communities of faith we will have to take seriously the embedded tribalism that has shaped us. Second, he identifies a key to working through these tribal tendencies as one that is generated by global thinking, locally engaged. The third piece Williams explores is how organizations deal responsibly with their power to dominate and domesticate others. This is, of course, intimately tied in with tribalism, but offers both insight through examples and descriptions for how to combat this tendency. Finally, the term fractured itself marks, perhaps, a helpful way of thinking about our world. Christians will speak of sin, and unfortunately too much baggage comes with it. I’m not suggesting deleting it from the vocabulary, by any means, but by expanding the particular ways we understand what it means by use of additional words. Fractured is one such word that gives honest and open identification of our world, and not just the world “out there”, but even the world “in here”, inside us.
Adaptive leadership includes the ways we design our environments for learning how we engage, are being confronted and how we’re being moved forward in light of the fractured nature we find ourselves in.
Welcome to my blog. I've been reflecting on much of what I explore here for many years, and centrally from the perspective of a Christian growing up in a world that doesn't understand or care what that means, as a pastor among people who don't always appreciate the complexities of the work, and as a scholar of the church alongside folks who don't share the necessity for critical thinking, if at all. I live out of an ambiguous space and welcome reflections of ambivalence, ambiguity and plurality. I have found a narrative in the Christian faith that offers promise for a way forward for me that is intellectually rigorous, and practically robust.
I'm an ordained ELCA pastor since 1997. I have served a variety of congregations: suburban, campus ministry, interim, and emerging. Much of the twelve years I served as pastor brought with it many significant relationships among those who really didn't give a shit about this church thing. In fact, the emerging church I was curating years ago called the Flagstaff Abbey included involvement from a few of these companions. It was, as I was pitching it, a church for people who hate church.
These important relationships that have formed me so deeply in how I live and understand the world that I no longer felt I could live the life of faith as only a private, compartmentalized venture in my life. I knew there was an intersection to this conversation among friends that I hadn't been able to account for. I knew that I needed greater clarity to articulate the various identities that were being blurred in my life: identities never so clearly articulated as God-Church-world.
This led me to a PhD program at Luther Seminary in Congregational Mission and Leadership. I was immersed in an interdisciplinary program that invited deep thinking philosophically (hermeneutics, phenomenology), theologically (trinitarian, pneumatological christology, ecclesiology, missiology) , organizationally (leadership, adaptive organizataional change) all the while integrating and embedding it (ethnographically) in context among congregational life.
My blog's name sake has a long journey. It is one that has been cooking in me for a long time. The word acoustic references the greek word to hear. It's companion reference, theology, seeks an understanding that not only are humans called to listen, but that our listening is given shape in who God is, and how God also listens to the world. For the Christian, and for my engagement as a Christian, I must keep this in tension constantly, and without the temptation to fall into simplistic answers.
There's a lot written these days related to listening, and I consider myself one of the many voices in this effort. But my effort and interest centrally lies in attempting to make connections theologically in this work. That is, some talk about listening to God, one another as church, and neighbors. But my questions ask: how do you know you're actually hearing God and not some other voice? How do you adjudicate the voices? How do you listen well without collapsing one of the voices into the other? What does listening get form in communal life? What are the distinct differentiated boundaries between these voices? How are they related?
As a reflective practicioner on this Christian journey, I am blessed to have work that allows me continued space to share in this with others. I serve half time as the Living Local coordinator of the Northwest Washington Synod. I accompany congregations, and clergy through a Spirit-led discernment process for sharing in and experimenting with their respective vocational callings among neighbors and neighborhoods. I have been graciously invited to consult with The Missional Network, in implementing the similar discernment journey that we are undergoing here in the Seattle area, NW WA Synod. Additionally, I'm an adjunct at Wartburg Theological Seminary, and at Luther Seminary teaching the Missional Church course in the DMin program, and The Evangelism MDiv/MA course.
All this to say, that my reflections in this blog emerging as integrative intersections between academy, culture/society, and church. My reflections are always embedded in practical instances even as they may appear, from time to time, more analytically examined, and seemingly void of any embodied reality. Deep thinking in context with other, and how we learn to articulate this reality is what I long to stand under, and ponder.
My blog is dedicated, then, to seeking to clarify these matters myself. It is also, as the subtitle for the blog suggests, a matter of understanding gospel in an age of truthiness. What I mean by this is how the above questions live between an understanding for who God is as embodied good news, and among a Western worldview where relativism predominates the imagination. Stephen Colbert's truthiness neologism extended relativism as a political reference, and I believe it just highlights the larger societal-cultural imagination we swim in uncritically. How we listen as Christians is informed by this polarity.
Once again, welcome. I hope you can share with me in this journey for grappling with language in light of the messy embodied life. For thinking and acting are two sides of the same coin, and necessary for keeping together in tension.
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