5.08.2004
Rules for Revolutionaries
I followed up on the urban legend quoted in Guy Kawasaki's book, Rules for Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services on the QWERTY keyboard being designed to slow people down. I checked this 1998 book out at the library for historical interest and discovered this little gem in the Conclusion. This is a list of rules for "Kicking But" such as "You have a good idea, but…" or "I would love to help, but…" and other maladies of "But-headed" thinking as he calls it. I thought these two were particularly pertinent to Pomoxianity:
Increase the level of truth
In her book Women's Reality - An Emerging Female System in a White Male Society, Ann Wilson Schaef explains the concept of "levels of truth." It means that people have attained different levels of understanding along a continuum, and whatever level they are at is their "truth." The challenge is that each successive level is usually at odds with the previous level. If you look at naysayers this way, your goal is to get them to the level where they understand the viability of your revolutions.
Rp: This assumes that we want to accomplish a revolution. I'm wondering if we want to do that. I have a buddy involved in Reformation of the church. Why bother? Why not start fresh from where we are in our generation and create our revolution from outsiders. We aren't competing with the Institutional Church, we're replacing it. We aren't reforming it, we are re-inventing it. We aren't restoring it as our CoC brethren wish us to, we are re-creating it from the un-evangelized. Aren't we? Otherwise we are applying band-aids. Sure we may want to enlighten the naysayers in the established denominations, but why?
Judge your results and other people's intentions.
This prevents you from judging people harshly because they "don't get it." Most people judge their own intentions and other people's results - which usually mans they accept their own failings (because they had good intentions) but not the failings of others (because the results were lousy).
Rp: If this doesn't summarize the Emerging conversation, I don't know any quote that does. Emergents are quick to criticize the Moderns and vice versa. This never-ending cycle of blame-casting and vituperation and even "humble breast-beating of chastened PoMoXian converts" who admit to having done it "wrong" all these years and are just now seeing the light isn't very productive. "They" have a role to play in God's economy just as "we" do. Let's judge the intentions of Moderns in the best light rather than judging their failings. Why? Because the day will come when the post-Emergent generation will say, "What happened to you guys? You started off well but you ended up failing miserably in your attempt to save Christianity from the Christians."
I followed up on the urban legend quoted in Guy Kawasaki's book, Rules for Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services on the QWERTY keyboard being designed to slow people down. I checked this 1998 book out at the library for historical interest and discovered this little gem in the Conclusion. This is a list of rules for "Kicking But" such as "You have a good idea, but…" or "I would love to help, but…" and other maladies of "But-headed" thinking as he calls it. I thought these two were particularly pertinent to Pomoxianity:
Increase the level of truth
In her book Women's Reality - An Emerging Female System in a White Male Society, Ann Wilson Schaef explains the concept of "levels of truth." It means that people have attained different levels of understanding along a continuum, and whatever level they are at is their "truth." The challenge is that each successive level is usually at odds with the previous level. If you look at naysayers this way, your goal is to get them to the level where they understand the viability of your revolutions.
Rp: This assumes that we want to accomplish a revolution. I'm wondering if we want to do that. I have a buddy involved in Reformation of the church. Why bother? Why not start fresh from where we are in our generation and create our revolution from outsiders. We aren't competing with the Institutional Church, we're replacing it. We aren't reforming it, we are re-inventing it. We aren't restoring it as our CoC brethren wish us to, we are re-creating it from the un-evangelized. Aren't we? Otherwise we are applying band-aids. Sure we may want to enlighten the naysayers in the established denominations, but why?
Judge your results and other people's intentions.
This prevents you from judging people harshly because they "don't get it." Most people judge their own intentions and other people's results - which usually mans they accept their own failings (because they had good intentions) but not the failings of others (because the results were lousy).
Rp: If this doesn't summarize the Emerging conversation, I don't know any quote that does. Emergents are quick to criticize the Moderns and vice versa. This never-ending cycle of blame-casting and vituperation and even "humble breast-beating of chastened PoMoXian converts" who admit to having done it "wrong" all these years and are just now seeing the light isn't very productive. "They" have a role to play in God's economy just as "we" do. Let's judge the intentions of Moderns in the best light rather than judging their failings. Why? Because the day will come when the post-Emergent generation will say, "What happened to you guys? You started off well but you ended up failing miserably in your attempt to save Christianity from the Christians."
