As I have written before, I see a lot of parallels between the emerging church and the phenomenon called Web 2.0. Here’s another example. I read this wonderful article called ‘Builders & Doers and Whiners and Trolls’. It’s about two different type of people in the web industry.
On the one hand there are the builders and doers. They can be identified by certain behaviors and characteristics:
1. Constantly looking for opportunities
2. Confident but humble
3. Hard working
4. Willing to take risks
On the other hand you have the whiners and trolls (and I might add talkers). They also have certain characteristics:
1. Focus on problems
2. Talk a lot, but act very little
3. Insecure about their abilities
4. Trolls (makes negative comments) on blogs
5. Afraid of taking risks
Wow, this looks strangely familiar when I look at what is going on in this so called emerging church thing. I’m lacking a good overview of the percentages in Web 2.0 but for the emerging church I would guess that 98% of the audible voices belong to the talkers and only 2% I would call doers. And by doing I don’t mean writing a book.
There seem to be an awful lot of middle aged white guys out there who travel around the world, speak at conferences and never leave their small group of worldwide peers. They write books, engage in endless blog comments discussions and enjoy being the poster boys of the latest hype in church.
On the other hand you have people like Ken whom I met in London. He runs this little coffeehouse church in Houston that sounds wonderful familiar and strikingly similar to Kubik. The best part about it is that I have never heard of it before. It seems that they are too busy running their local community to promote their fancy church to the global emerging church subculture. They have no time to talk because they are so occupied in doing.
This was one of the reason why it took me some time to engage in the London meeting because I wanted to be at home in Karlsruhe working and living with my community.
We have done the conference/discussions/teaching-part and we’re pretty tired of it because it takes energy away from the actual work. The minute you start teaching about what you do in your community, you slow down engaging with it. And if you have done the traveling, writing and whatever part for some time there is nothing left to talk about. This is what I have seen with so many church models. It seems like success is the biggest temptation for a church. Because if a model has success at once everybody is jumping on it. The pastor becomes more involved in writing books and speaking around the world then in leading his church. The whole merchandise starts, worship-cds, a bigger building etc. Take the Brownsville, Pensecola revival for example. At the end of the 90s it was the role model for a modern revival. I know tons of people who travelled there, bought the books and cds and so on. All that is left of this revival is a church with 400 members and a couple millions of debt.
We felt that we had to decide between to choices. The first one was to promote Kubik and the model, speak at conferences, travel around, write books, create fancy websites etc. And to be honest, this option is very tempting for me. The other option was to stop all these activities and become completely engaged in our community again. Have our focus on our families, friends and our city again. Live the life not just the church.
I have decided to take the second option although I can’t help writing these rants so don’t take it too seriously.
Interesting post Johannes,
I agree on the most part of what you are writing. But there is one thing which makes me think: you said that teaching what you are doing will stop the doing itself. For me it has to do with what kinda person you are. We are not all teachers and it is definately right that it is choice of time and energy. But for me it seems important to teach and talk about what we are doing. This has to be linked to doing it, yeah – but not in the either/or way…
July 3rd, 2006, at 9:29 am #Definitly. In reality this is not as black and white as I wrote it. I actually think that teaching could be helpful to recapitulate what you’re doing. The problem here is that I see too many people only teaching and not doing anymore.
July 3rd, 2006, at 9:45 am #I totally agree to this – only teaching, is not what it is about…
July 3rd, 2006, at 4:37 pm #Well said brother!
That was right on target. Keep up the good work! I have been reading your blog every once in a while and found some interesting tidbits and thoughts in there.
Cheers!
July 3rd, 2006, at 8:07 pm #Ben
[…] Update: Als ich diesen Beitrag für mein englisches Blog geschrieben habe ist es etwas mehr geworden. Da der Post aber leider auch sehr gut ins deutsche Umfeld passt hier der Link. […]
July 5th, 2006, at 10:44 am #Yeah, I know the feeling. Well said, thanks for saying it and thank you even more for living it.
July 7th, 2006, at 8:59 am #I agree with a lot of what you’ve said. There is definately a tension between doing and talking. But I also think depone has a god point in the first column - it depends on who you are and how you’re built. Some are primarily activists, getting stuck in on the community level and building pioneering communitie, for them conversation and teaching about their church wil be a sacrifice.
Others are called to be teachers and talkers, so that the lessons learnt and the ground taken in one mission context can be shared. And ultimately that the body of christ can be built.
I wonder if one of the reason the “emergent” conversation is so strong is that some of the main voices started building their new forms of church and found that few people in their local church communities got it - so they went elsewhere and forged some of the networks.
Having said all that I admire your decision to focus primarily on your local mission and church.
July 8th, 2006, at 9:02 am #My main problem whit all the talkers is that they just don’t know what they are talking about. The whole emerging church scene is mainly a big blah. All the discussions are so abstract. I definitly see people who are called as teachers like my man Depone but the difference with him is that he is deeply rooted in our local community. He is actually living what he is teaching to the most parts and that is very rare.
July 8th, 2006, at 10:49 am #Johannes, I do like the way you think and share your struggle with how to help The Church while being church. I’ve spent most of my life teaching and have to admit that little transformation has resulted in all that travel and “good advice.” And yet, I still believe that we are most what God intended when we assist one another along the path. What you guys have at Kubik is something worth sharing. But taking time away to do the sharing is an incredible sacrifice. I wonder if there is a “karen” around there who God has shaped specifically to tell the story. I really don’t have any other function in the Kingdom but connecting and telling now and I’m thrilled I’ve found my place. Just wondering if there isn’t someone there who could be doing the same for you.
July 11th, 2006, at 5:19 pm #hey Johannes,
July 18th, 2006, at 7:47 pm #what I feel is that people in general are not doing to little. They do the wrong things. So this is a matter of concepts and theories. There are severeal “front lines” and people like Brian McLaren are working forward to dig up the soil in order to enable change.
So why polarize? What I long for is to see reconciliation between denominations happen.
To see people not doing their own thing but accepting one another on their different front lines. Wheter they work in the accademic community or doing the stuff on the ground level in cafes and bars .
I think we need to pay attention not to create another elite. We had enough of that kind of behaviour. We need communities that are able to do both: to work boldly for innovations and experiment and who are still able to cooperate in a humble way with other communities who are doing the more conventional stuff…