Building Community

After nearly a decade of work, Mike Riddell's book, The Insatiable Moon, is finally being filmed in Ponsonby.
It's been a long journey which Mike has written about in various places, including the earlier parts of the blog relating to the film's coming to birth.
Being a person myself who is often involved in stage productions, whether musical or theatrical, and knowing how communities are formed during the rehearsal and performance times, it was interesting to read the following in the post dated November 19th.

At the core of the process is the willingness for all involved to trust each other's abilities. It's a great exercise in temporary community building. Author Scott Peck wrote about communities that they require the relinquishment of the temptation to control others. Ironically, in the highly structured chain of command of filmmaking, this is as true as anywhere else.

Every person brings something special and unique to the process, without which the entire enterprise would fail. The secret is a deep trusting and respect of those around us as we work in highly pressured situations. It allows the love to flow, and the wonder to be captured.

How applicable is this to mission?

Seth Godin on Selling Ideas

On his blog today, Godin talks in terms of selling ideas to companies (book companies in particular), but what he has to say is interestingly applicable to the job of enabling mission.

Two points he notes:

1. They have to be in the business of buying ideas. Thus a Trust that has money may be interested in ‘buying’ the idea of a particular kind of mission, and then funding it.

2. They have to trust you. Some businesses that appear to be interested in buying ideas won’t necessarily trust you to be the person to present an idea. Entrepreneurial people who will see the big picture, who can grasp the vision, are more likely to be in tune with you.

Godin notes: A company that likes buying ideas has a process. They make it relatively straightforward and they have no upside in stealing from you. A company that isn't in that business puts up barriers. They troll around trade shows looking for ideas to take (and there's nothing legally or morally wrong with that, imho).

And:

if you have an idea for a company that doesn't know how to buy it, move on. And if you want to be in the business of selling ideas, find an industry that has experience buying those ideas.

Substitute your own mission funder, or your Presbytery, or even your congregation for 'business' and 'company', and see how Godin's points apply. The full blog post is here.

Lost to UnLost

In Don Everts and Doug Schaupp's, I Once Was Lost, the authors identify "five thresholds" by which most young converts come to Christ. Using the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:28–29 to frame the process, Everts and Schaupp outline five distinct "seasons":

• from distrust of Christians to trust;
  
• from spiritual complacency to curiosity;
  
• from being closed to Christianity to being open;
  
• from meandering to seeking;
  
• entrance over the "threshold of the kingdom.

Evert and Schaupp's book departs from a modern, rationalistic model for doing evangelism. It doesn't offer a manual. It is fresh, real, and based on the authors' direct experience. The label postmodern is held loosely, meant simply to describe "how things are right now," rather than to conform to a technical definition.

From a review entitled, The Five Steps of Getting Un-Lost, by Chap Clark.