Friday, May 16, 2008

Liminality

a Biblical thought...
Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can't go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.(Romans 13:10)

a Book thought...
Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven! (p67 Wright)
a Dave thought... from Alan Hirsch
The church in the West is facing a massive adaptive challenge: positively in the form of compelling opportunity and negatively in the form of rapid, discontinuous change. These twin challenges comprise a considerable threat to Christianity locked as it is into the prevailing form of church with all its associated institutional rigidity. We are in a situation of what Roxburgh calls ‘liminality’. Liminality in his view is the transition from one fundamental form of the church to another necessitating the apostolic role. Environments of discontinuous change require adaptive organizations and leadership. As the apostolic role is responsible and gifted for the extension of Christianity, so too the missionary situation requires a pioneering and innovative mode of leadership to help the church negotiate the new territory in which it finds itself.

It will be really interesting where we will be as a Salvation Army in the next 10 to 20 years. Most current leaders at the moment won’t be in positions of authority then so maybe don’t consider the long term future as much as some of us younger officers. However unless we have adaptive, creative, but focused leadership we will always struggle to transition.

Just a thought.

2 comments:

salvotim said...

Dave, as usual you're spot on! I'm looking forward to seeing where God will take his Army in Oz in coming years & decades... This is such an exciting time to be a Salvo! I went to a Salvation Meeting at a neighbouring corps tonight - Launceston. I was so inspired to see & hear how they are going all out to save the lost! Praise God for these innovative & mission-focused officers (& other leaders like them around our territory)! Father, Your kingdom come!!!

Anonymous said...

I think we have had many apostles try and break into the system in the past but they have been forced to either conform or leave and most have not been able to conform as it is just not within them so they have chosen to leave and are using their gifts elsewhere thankfully most of them are still winning the world for God.

The difficulty TSA has is that in the past officers have been promoted into ranks of leadership due to their ability to be good administrators - get their stats in on time etc etc and we all know Apostles and entrepeneaus are not administrators we need both however but when we have all of one kind in leadership it means the status quo is held as this is what administrators do best maintain.