Reflections on the Blue Ocean Midwest Conference (the first)

“My faith has carried me a long way. It's Sheilaism. Just my own little voice." Sheila's faith has some tenets beyond belief in God, though not many. In defining what she calls "my own Sheilaism," she said: "It's just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think God would want us to take care of each other."
-habits of the heart

“I just thought it was funny to write a song that said today is the greatest day of your life because it can't get any worse…” Billy Corgan, smashing pumpkins, about ‘today’

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of attending the Midwest blue Ocean conference at Mercy Vineyard in Minneapolis, MN. If you unfamiliar with the “Blue Ocean Churches” folks you can find out more about them on their blog and website here. Essentially, the idea of blue ocean churches is borrowed from business and marketing concepts. In business, the ‘Red’ ocean is where all the people are fishing- it’s the traditional tried and true markets and products. In contrast, ‘blue ocean’ companies “fish” where no one else is fishing- that is to say, Blue ocean companies create new products, markets, and demand. The classic example of a “blue ocean” company, is, as you can probably guess Apple Computer. Steve J. & co took some pre-existing materials- (the Mp3 file format, and the internet) and created a whole new market. First, they created ITunes which allowed consumers to legally purchase and use copywrited music- unlike Napster. Then, they provided consumers a means, other than the PC or laptop, to take these downloaded music files with them- the IPod. Later came video, the IPhone, the IPad, and so on. Many other retailers and manufacturers have since entered this market in many sectors, (hence created more blood, more red if you will) however, Apple essentially created and exploited this market, and that gave them a huge competitive advantage- it forced Apple’s competitors to compete on Apple’s terms, at least for a while. Classic Blue Ocean Strategy.

In church talk then, “Blue ocean churches” attempt to fish where there’s fish…but few other fisher-people. Think of “traditionally underrepresented” groups that often seem to be outside the normal reach of your typical American evangelical protestant church. In other words, think of peoples and groups that are routinely identified as the enemies Of All That is True and Good and purveyors of filth and debauchery by self-proclaimed representatives of the American Protestant Taliban.

Blue Ocean churches are seeking to bring the kingdom of God to previously un-fished territories, and they are getting pretty good at it. This is at a time when according to researchers such as the Gallop poll and Barna research group, the fastest growing segment in American religious affiliation is “None” – no religious affiliation. In broad terms, BOC refer to this growing category as “the secular” as in “secular culture”, “secular society” etc. It’s important to note that in no way do BOC’s think of these titles “the secular” as being pejorative in any way- it’s a way to helpfully contrast secular culture with say, Southern “Bible belt” culture. It’s a term for classification that seems to be helpful, nothing more, nothing less.

SO in true BO strategy, BO Churches ask questions like: “Who are the un-fished, who are these none’s anyway?” What makes the “none’s” tick? Where do they live? What are they like? What do they see as the summum bonum of life? What do these “none’s” think about religion, faith, God, church, Christianity? What can we, as followers of Jesus, learn from the “none’s”?

As I understand it, Gallop, Barna, sociologists of religion, and others know a fair amount about the none’s. Quite often, none’s are highly edjumacated. (uh-oh..). They tend to be in highly populated urban areas that are culturally diverse. They often are employed in the fields of science, medicine, technology, or higher education. They have traveled a great deal outside of the U.S., and enjoy other cultures, countries, and ethnic expressions. Politically, they tend to vote liberal. “hot button” issues for secular none’s are things like global warming, global poverty, universal human rights, and freedom of expression. In the U.S. culture particularly, these concerns are often played out by an affirmation of things like Gay marriage, and broad rights for GLBT peoples, as an logical extension of the rights movements of the 60’s. A secularist none may be encouraged by the uncoupling of religion from American politics, and she may be somewhat mystified by attempts to inject religion into the scientific or medical fields. In many ways, none’s are a logical progression from the “Sheilaism” that Bellah discovered back in the 80’s. Only for a growing number of Sheila’s it’s become more authentic, more viable, to ditch the god talk altogether- they have discovered that god didn’t play all that big of a role in sheilaism anyway, so why bother with god talk at all? After all, it seems, if god isn’t necessary to build a fulfilled, meaningful life, why bother with a charade? We can do all that “loving yourself” and being excellent to each other without having to lean on a god fabrication to do so. If the cynics are correct, and god is just a projection of ourselves, or a psychological construction to help us deal with the crushing realities of existence, shouldn’t we look to other, less divisive, less “controversial” and more logical alternatives?

Because this group of folks that identify themselves as “none’s” and make up secular culture is growing, they represent a “blue ocean” of sorts. Very few churches or religious groups are having much success making the life and teachings of jesus compelling to this group. IF, that is, faith groups are even trying. Tragically, in many faith groups in America, secular culture is largely seen as the ENEMY of faith and All That is True and Noble, so little attempt has been made to enter into the world of the none’s, to understand secularity, and to find common ground and encourage dialogue.

This is exactly what Blue Ocean Churches are attempting to do.

I will post some more reflections on this in another post. For now, I’ll finish by asking a few questions. What do you think of this “Blue Ocean Faith” deal? Do you have friends, family members, co-workers etc. that identify themselves as “none”? If so, what type of conversations have you had with these folks regarding questions of meaning, hope, faith, significance, etc.?
de

What's a Stand Up Theology??

Why Stand Up theology?

The title has two sources. First, as some of you may know, I have somewhat of a U2 fan for the past three decades or so, since I first heard Gloria!  wayyyy back in high school.  In their latest album the preacher says this:
“I can stand up for hope, faith, love
But while I'm getting over certainty
Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady” 

Which is an interesting observation about our late modern age, (“postmodern”  if you prefer) that has little consensus about what it means to have hope, faith, and love today. In an time when not only the traditional answers about Life’s Big Questions, but the very questions themselves,  are found to be insufficient,  can we learn to welcome and even embrace uncertainty? 

The other source for the title, is the wry observation by several of my graduate school professor’s that perhaps some form of stand up comedy, rather than academics, was my life’s calling.  The joke’s on them, as it were, as I probably wouldn’t have made it in comedy either. 

So in some sense, whilst this blog may tread on serious, weighty, and perhaps difficult topics from time to time, I shall also attempt to keep it entertaining. I think it was Dostoyevsky that observed that theology with irony is empty, or something to that effect. 

So there’s  this deep sense that humor can help us understand our fragility, and help to remind us of Kierkegaard’s “infinite qualitative distinction” between us and the infinite- god if you will.  Christian theology, perhaps, has now and again felt the need to take up the slack, to use a machete to clear the way for the divine. This blog is committed to the idea that the divine is doing just fine, thank you very much, and rather than “helping god across the street like a little old lady”, the voices here are going to let the divine carry it’s own weight.  In his brilliant book, “Denying and Disclosing God: the ambiguous progress of modern Atheism”  Michael Buckley argues that in its attempt to “defend” God, modern Christendom created the very circumstances that allowed Atheism to flourish. It’s a fascinating, and challenging read.

So one of my goals for this blog is to “stand up” for hope, faith, and love, while at the same time letting the divine do the heavy lifting. It makes sense, that if there is such a thing as the divine, that the divine should be able to take care of itself. And, if the divine is characterized by such things as love, while then, that love ought to be able to be experienced by the objects of this love. And if that’s true, then the divine isn’t so much a divine scorekeeper, or taskmaster, or tyrant, but the consummate lover and seducer. 

These are things on which my mind and spirit feed, but since I’m somewhat of a scattered personality, this thing is going to veer off into a number of completely different areas as well. So if you come on looking for some ridiculous, unsubstantiated and borderline heretical theological discussion and find yourself reading topics like “lake superior steelhead fly patterns”, “what the MN Wild needs via trade…NOW”, or “the surprising usefulness of Excel crosstab queries” the internets are not playing tricks on you…it’s just a reflection of my scattered interests. Thanks for joining me on this journey! 

de

we’re puttin’ the blog back together!

January 2012 we’re puttin’ the blog back together! It doesn’t quite have the ring of “we’re putting the band back together!” but nonetheless, with little fanfare I’m attempting to restart this thing. For someone who talks too much, and hasn’t given others much of a choice but to listen, you’d think this would be easier. After, all, what hasn’t been said? A much older blogger once exasperatingly wrote, “of the writing of many blogs there is no end” and boy he had no idea, if there ever was an understatement, that was it. So comes the question, “why bother?” Why am I doing this? Seriously, aren’t there enough blogs already?


Answering this question for myself has been one reason why this project went on hiatus for so long. I just could not see that I had much to contribute to all the conversations going out there. Besides, in my drafts for blogs, I was spending wayyyyyy tooo much time checking references, citing sources, revising, revising, re-thinking- basically treating the exercise as a research paper, which not only took way too much of my time, but became very boring to read- not exactly what a blog is supposed to be.

So this is what changed. First of all, I found myself on lots of other folks blogs, and chiming in a various points, but finding that I really couldn’t ask the kind of questions I wanted to or take the conversation in directions that intrigued me without severely hijacking the thread. And although many of my thoughts and ideas relate to issues of faith, hope, doubt, etc. I have noticed that more and more, my social network friends and the people I know in the non-cyber world have more and more varied views on many issues- faith, God, power, sex, meaning, the superiority of the Minnesota Wild over the Vancouver Cannucks, all the “big issues” that mankind has struggled with over the eons. In many conversations over the last years, many of these people have stunned me with hugely insightful comments that have challenged me, pointed out the blind spots in my thinking and doing, and caused me to re-think many treasured ideas and practices.

And so, my natural curiosity got the best of me. I began thinking, jeez, that would be fantastic if I were able to get person X and person Y together over a beer and have them discuss ideas a,b,c…. etc. And since in our new social web based world, some of these friends live hundreds, even thousands, of miles away from each other, finding a suitable watering hole would be a bit challenging. I think, but I’m not sure, that This Is Why Someone Invented The Blog.

So rather than hijack someone else’s blog, I thought it would be less offensive (pronounced with the Canadian O not “ahh-fence” btw) to hijack my own. I will try to put some thoughts out here on a clear way that invites thinking and responding. My encouragement to you would be to join the conversation. Cause if this is purely self-stimulation…well- we all know how boring that can be.