I’m aiming for a short post today. In the buildup to Parachute 2010 and coming out of my season at NYWC, my history with Eastercamp and other events in the spectrum – I’m thinking more and more about gatherings.
The Tipping Point I loved encouraging, resourcing and inspiring youth workers with my work through Eastercamp – examining different expressions of community participation in experiential worship and story. But a one-off experience isn’t enough to sustain long-term or ongoing change. My tipping point, especially with the rest of the team was the shift we were making in core values. For a long time, the core value was fulfilling the role of resourcing and serving youthworkers. There was a point at which another focus, on numbers and getting bigger and bigger took over. It was based out of a genuine motive – we wanted to be as impacting as possible. But as a leadership team there were two very different ideas as to how to get there.
We had been experiencing consistent growth for about 9 years at this point – every year increasing 7 – 23% of our overall numbers. One idea was to throw everything at strategies that would attract other large denominational numbers and independent churches to join us.
I came to the realization that the best possible strategy long term, was to become a movement of youthworkers and communities, rather than a one-off event. Even though we were denominational in roots and history, we had expanded beyond the sense of connection our denominational ties allowed for, and limited/confused as to how to incorporate other values/practices/flavours into our event. However, a movement has a unique ability to draw diversity into unity, based around common purpose.
We could have greater long term relationship and support with youthworkers if we continued to find ways of expressing, sharing and developing our values (community, gospel, fun, locally connected, financially accessible) throughout 365 days of the year.
(Sidebar: It’s actually incredibly easy for events with the right staff to begin to do this nowadays, because of the influence and emergence of social media tools as methodology for creating personality and energy within a set of ideals, even if that ‘community’ only connects annually, bi-monthly etc.)
Follow some of my semi-chronological thoughts…
1. If you want to gather people together – you need more than a reason. You need a common value, a common love, a common cause. You need something that engages both an intellectual, emotional and spiritual reaction.
2. In order to gather people together again and again – you need more than a cause, you need a movement.
3. The best movements are chapters in the story of a Tribe, a community of people connected in some way that share commonality of values and/or expression of those values and within the history of a Tribe there may be several movements. Similarly there may be movements shared by multiple Tribes..
4. One-off events make history & “do you remember when” stories in the history of Tribes. They are great moments that inspire the future but in of themselves, they are not the future. They are turning point gatherings, or reconciliation gatherings, or healing gatherings..
5. The future is carried forward by life-giving movements that gather for the sake of gathering, because when they are together, the story continues. Movements are embodied by a set of values or principles.
6. The most sustainable business model for those communities that wish to be Gatherers, is to build movements, rather than events. Creating a movement is about shaping leaders, people, listening to the ongoing expressions and finding ways of broadcasting that to the rest of the Tribe, sharing it with the rest of the movement. One-off events connect people to a place and time, but a movement invites people into an ongoing story – in essence, a shift between “I heard x & y at z?” to “I am talking with x & y. Simplified but it works.
7. Movements find their health in other places than numbers. They still need to make their budgets, but often values of a movement overtake the values of an individual or justification. Multiple not-for-profits demonstrate this, when a commitment to getting dollars to the field, overtakes the desire for clever and aesthetically pleasing marketing materials.
8. Of course, if the movements are shaped by leaders, voices, prophets, etc – then the most interesting question becomes.. how do you build a Tribe? A tribe has to be sustaining.. in other words, there must be space in the natural order for the young to be constantly arriving and growing. This is an incredible challenge withing our culture.
The shift from being an event to a movement changes loyalty, ownership and expectation on the part of the organization as well as the customer/client. However, the long term benefits outweigh the bumps in the road. Movements can exist equally well in micro and macro climates – because they can operate by different rules than one time events. Similarly, you can’t simply duplicate a one time event model and think you’ve created a movement. The rules of Movement are clear – commonality in purpose/values/cause and connectedness.
History and hindsight do amazing things for our sense of place in the world. In the context of current economic strife – I wonder many things. Certainly, we have been in similar places throughout our human storybook. But in different ways, this is a new time.
I wonder that if we had not embraced the slow, and accepted a suitable pace for achieving much, then for the sake of speed, progress and efficiency – we would have lost much less and learned better habits for our humanity along the way.
We have a collection of old National Geographic magazines in the office. The new editions arrive every month – but I love the storytelling of old, stories that took months to collect, photographs that had to be developed before they knew whether they’d got the shot. Before the seabeds of Chesapeake Bay were desolated with the smell of grease and smoke in the air.
As with so many things I post on this blog, I’m happy to throw a few puzzle pieces out there, and let you come up with what you will. But this essay moves me, in this time of regret and fear.
The Sailing Oystermen of Chesapeake Bay – by Luis Marden, Nat. Geographic, Dec. 1967 (excerpts)
‘Dawn-etched phantoms from a bygone era, skipjacks dredge for oysters. Until last year, Maryland law decreed that only sailing vessels might take the shellfish from deepwater beds. Bit the coming of power may toll a knell for these proud survivors of working sail – and for a way of life.’
‘”The way I figure it,” said the captain, “most men live in hope and die in despair.” He eased the wheel off two spokes. “The trouble with drudgin’ with sail, you either got it flat calm or it’s too much wind. You go to bed at night wonderin’ where the wind’s gonna be, and you don’t know where you gonna make your day’s work. “Days like this, when it’s pretty, we can’t work – ain’t neither breath in the world. When it’s blowin’ not fit for a dog to be on the water, you have to go.” Yep, there’s hardship in the oyster [he pronounced it ‘auster’] business. “But,” said Capt. Eldon Willing, squinting at the red disc of the setting sun, “me, I’m like everyone else. I live in hope. I don’t think it’s ever been so bad as I couldn’t make it.”
‘”There’s no comparison between sail and power,” he said. “Take this boat, put an engine in her, sit on a box sniffin’ that old grease and push her into the Bay; turn one way, let go, heave and wind in. The same thing, day after day, whether it’s blowin’ or calm. I wouldn’t like it. This way, standin’ at the wheel with a breeze on your face and the sails flappin’…. It’s somethin’ that gets into you, you can’t get it out of your bones overnight.
“No sir, if it comes to drudgin’ with power, I’ll go home and get on relief. For sixty years now I’ve been drove hard and put away wet, and if it comes to that I’ll just set there and do neither thing in the world with the rest of ’em.” But I doubt that he would.
“Ever’ year there’s one or two taken up the creek to die,” lament watermen of proud old craft such as this skipjack [pictured] abandoned in Man Gut, a Dal Island backwater. Before mooring her for the last time, the owner salvaged all gear; tides and winds finish the hulk off. She epitomizes the fate awaiting the Nation’s last commercial sailing fleet.”
Photograph by Luis Marden.
On Distance – Je t’aime
“Dubious questioning is a much better evidence than that senseless deadness which most take for believing. People that know nothing… have no doubts. Never be afraid to doubt, if only you have the disposition to believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing the truth.” -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Richard ‘Cheesy’ Cotman has been in my close circle since we were at high school. Born to fascinating parents and the perfect nuclear family, he’s intelligent, creative, a words+music fiend, who loves many of the same things I do – great stories, interesting characters, experiences, travel, places, adventure. He lives an unusual life, somewhat nomadic crossing plenty of borders.
I always was a little bit surprised at how cemented a place in my heart Cheesy has – and he’ll read this, so I can be both gushy and silly, overly sentimental in my memory – because I am a girl, and allowed. I admired him, a year above us at the boy’s grammar school up the road, us music students who played together and found ourselves as part of each other’s lives.
The first time Cheesy went to overseas to live seems so long ago now. In those days, there were letters with tickets, lolly wrappers and photographs actually printed on paper(!). I still have them all collected in a box. In that time, one occupies a space in the mind and heart.
On his return – our time & space in the corporeal so easily becomes more trivial, less precious.
On the next trip – a longer stint to Oxford, the advent of the blog had done much for closing the distance, but they were still letters of a sort. There was still an inevitable wait, space, breath between the event and the reporting. Many personal emails gave way mostly, to blogging…
Now, in Montpelier, speaking, thinking and even writing in French (je t’aime!), the distance is closing – thanks to Twitter. Montepelier time means that I am closing my eyes to sleep, somewhere around the beginning of his day and I am waking to some aspects of daily life. And while this moment by moment existence loses some of it’s intimacy .. it closes the distance. And I appreciate that so much.. because it means that those who are most proxim do not have the chance to dominate the spaces of my heart and mind, already claimed by others.
And that is why, [as my mother asks], I tell the world what I am doing in my Twitter/Facebook status. I’m not telling the world, but the world may listen, while I tell you.
On Space – The Beauty Of Lent
Song Of The Moment : Everything is Yours by Audrey Assad and Steve Wilson
when all the world is blossoming when everything around is bursting into life and I don’t have to strain to hear the beat of Your heart oh, oh…
when all the world is under fire when the skies are threatening to thunder and rain and I am overcome by fears that I can’t see oh, oh…
if everything is Yours, everything is Yours if everything is Yours, I can’t let it go; it was never mine to hold.
who could command the stars to sing or hold the raging seas from breaking through the doors and tend the fragile roses with the very same hands? oh, oh…
I can’t let it go–I can’t let it go Cause everything is Yours, everything is Yours.
You can’t take Lent away from Easter. Previous years, the countdown to that precious celebration has been my Lent. 40 days of disciplines, prayers and preparation in every aspect of my being. But, when the Passion of Easter is no longer mine, I must t
hen, reframe Lent.
pas·sion n. 1. A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger. 2. a. Ardent love. b. Strong sexual desire; lust. c. The object of such love or desire. 3. a. Boundless enthusiasm: b. The object of such enthusiasm: 4. An abandoned display of emotion, especially of anger: 5. Passion a. The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper & Crucifixion. b. A narrative, musical setting, or pictorial representation of Jesus’s sufferings. 6. Archaic Martyrdom.
So, this year, I choose to not fast, but to discipline. For each day of Lent, I am meditating on a single psalm (1 – 40), writing them by hand in a journal, drawing, commenting, letting ideas springboard.. noticing, observing. Then on Sundays, I feast and compile all those thoughts/ideas/cross references onto their own page.
This practice of reflection, noticing but then holding on to my conclusions has been a wonderful slowing of my devotions. It’s creating Space for truth to coagulate, unfold, take root.
However – halfway through my psalms and I cannot help but say.. how much is the presence of God for all people, found in the love and servitude of the poor. To love and love well, with grace and mercy is to worship.
As I read these psalms, reflecting on my own hands as I write (a slipping artform..) words, ancient and uttered on the page.. I find that I have been writing and singing psalms for a long time. For when you dive into these songs, you find again, the echo of the human voice so strong, you cannot help but come face to face with your creator and creation all at once.
Never Mine To Hold – The Wonderment That Comes From Time+Space+Distance I said at the time of the Easter chapter closing, that the task was never mine to hold, that it was always held in God’s hands and he simply allowed my hands to slip inside his for a time.. I find that still to be true as I pray and encourage those who are attending/serving/working on Eastercamp this year. So thank you, Audrey Assad. Can I encourage you to click play.. and soak.
Love is deep. The Love is the deepest refuge and safe recluse I know. My home is in the river.
to you my love my heart goes swimming on the deep oceans life in the compassionate way discontent in your solitude; observing silences and tragedies small delicacies and sweet words – they fall into the ears of young lovers and my heart swims out to yours, on the tide with the ebb and the flow of the rise and fall of your love. the grandness of a philosophy of beauty and trust but my wise old heart lives under the clouds and weather of suspicious truth with clarity in a goblet overflowing, pouring with wine. i breathe and sigh and wait knowing the blindness and straight arrow of desire wondering what river i will live and die in for the sake of this for you, my Love
“When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai rent his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry” (Esther 4:1 RSV)
Tungia te ururua, kia tupu whakaritorito te tupu o te harakeke. Burn away the overgrowth & let the flax shoots grow through.
The Meaning Of The Ash Historically ash has been a symbol of repentance, confession, of death – because we all are returned to dust in the end, and this is the penalty of sinfulness.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lent festival – 40 days leading to Easter (Sundays are not counted in the Lent calendar). Whilst there have been many orthodox traditions including fasting rules and reflection habits – the season is particular upheld within Christian streams as a method of reflection and focus. Historically a period of preparation leading up to baptism on Easter Sunday, the connection between this time of reflection, repentance, response, self-denial and the celebration of Easter cannot be over-emphasized.
For Lent this year, my choice of reflection is to study and reflect on psalms 1 – 40 for each of the 40 days. Any particular morsels.. I’ll share with you.
Closing Prayer God of Tenderness and Mercy, we are reminded today that we are dust! You are our Father, full of mercy and love. Forgive our sins.
Ko tou manawa, ko taku manawa. Kia homai tou manawa mate moku. Kia hoatu taku manawa ora mou. Whiti ora! Maranga mai ki runga! ( Your heart, my heart. You give me your dying heart. Let me give you my living heart. Cross over to life! Rise up above!)
Create in us a new heart put a new spirit into our lives. We ask this in the name, of Your Servant and our brother, now and always.
The Inspiration of Spiritual Initiative. “Arise from the dead.” Ephesians 5:14
All initiative is not inspired. A man may say to you – “Buck up, take your disinclintion by the throat, throw it overboard and walk out into the thing!” That is ordinary human initiative. But when the Spirit of God comes in and says, in effect, “Buck up,” we find that the initiative is inspired.
We all have any number of visions and ideals when we are young, but sooner or later we find that we have no power to make them real. We cannot do the things we long to do, and we are apt to settle down to teh visions and ideals as dead, and God has to come and say – “Arise from the dead.” When the inspiration of God does come, it comes with such miraculous power that we are able to to arise from the dead and do the impossible thing. The remarkable thing about spiritual initiative is that the life comes after we do the “bucking up.” God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome. When the inspiration of God comes, and He says – “Arise from the dead,” we have to get up; God does not lift us up. Our Lord said to teh man with the withered hand – “Stretch forth thy hand,” and as soon as the man did so, his hand was healed, but he had to take the initiative. If we will do the overcoming, we shall find we are inspired of God because he gives life immediately.
verse There’s a darkness in me There’s a shadow A fear that sometimes takes hold It leads me right out to the desert Where I face the winds alone But you always lead me home Despite the storms that roar You love me well In darkness I am held By hands that hold the world You never let me go
chorus You are light The glorious light
verse 2 You take everything broken Redeem it My imperfect heart make whole Everything beautiful reveal it And all by your glorious light And you always lead me home Despite the storms that roar You love me well In darkness I am held By hands that hold the world You never let me go
chorus You are light The glorious light You are light in the darkness You are radiant glorious light
Oh my soul, fly to that resting place Where peace is found before my Father’s grace Be still and know, that He is God No darkness can quench His light
Tash McGill is a broadcaster, writer and strategist who works with people and organisations to solve problems and create transformation. She believes people are the most important thing and that stories are powerful ways of changing the world. You can find out more at tashmcgill.com or by visiting her LinkedIn profile.
