Kester answers mine (and priory of zion’s questions)

Kester invited me to ask him questions about his book "The Complex Christ" when he knew I was blogging through it. I posted my questions in the comments on his blog and he answered with a post. http://thecomplexchrist.typepad.com/the_complex_christ/2006/01/graham_doel_ask.html

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Chapter 8 : Conclusion

Summary of the flow of the argument through the book:

1. The church has reached a local maxim and needs to find new ways of being in order to survive.

2. Drawing on Fowler's stages of faith the church needs to move from naïvety into the valleys of unknowing so that it can develop and hold together those at other points in the journey of faith.

3. Interleaved with the discussion about faith stages Kester shows how Jesus and the incarnation is a helpful model for the church as it seeks to become incarnate and model change to others.

4. This journey can be carried out as revolution or evolution. The former hallmarked by speed and violence and the latter by empowerment and distributed knowledge. He further clarifies the principles of evolution by sub-categorising the incarnation of Christ:

   1. In Christ's coming to earth: a change from the top down to the bottom up.

   2. In Christ's advent: stopping and waiting and allowing the old order to die.

   3. In Christ's incarnation: transformative change starts small.

   4. In Christ's emerging: setting out a new model and a new way.

   5. In Christ's approach to the city: a vision for the immersion of the church into city life while remaining distinct.

Christ's life, the life of the city, and the growing science of complexity come together with unique synergy to provide spiritual, social and rational imperatives for the Church to become an emergent system. However we are the body of Christ only because of Christ's death and resurrection. (Page 155)

Kester sets the direction for his conclusion by suggesting that before we can settle on emergence as the way forward we must be convinced that evidence for it exists in the death and resurrection of Christ. He suggests that we have seen it in the following ways:

1. In Christ's death we see him becoming a gift,

2. In Christ's death we see him becoming dirt,

3. In Christ's death we see him playing trickster.

The death of Christ offers:

the final criticism of a world that seeks to control God, co-opt God, put God in a box and relate to God on it's own terms. (Page 156)

A classic example of this is found in Judas Iscarriot. Kester contrasts Judas and Jesus:

Where Christ was happy to give and receive gifts, Judas the accountant worried about wasting money. Where Christ was happy to step over dirt boundaries, Judas the zealot was concerned with reinforcing them. And as Christ approached is death and life from the bottom up, working an evolutionary change from within, Judas approached his death from the top down, trying to spark off a revolution. (Page 157)

It is Kester's view that Judas betrayal was to spur Jesus into confrontation with the authorities. He sees Judas as trying to force Jesus into the revolution that he wanted. This view of Judas helps us meditate on our own characters. We have no problem with seeing something of ourselves in Peter, in Thomas, so why not Judas:

I believe that we exclude Judas and his dirt from our meditations at our peril. We need to acknowledge, as the apostles perhaps did, that there is a part of Judas in each of us. For we are all Judas when we try to co-opt Christ into our own agenda... (Page 161)

Kester develops that thread by showing that the cross is the decentralising act of God that enables Christ to be in many places at once. It seems that he sees the centralised church as being opposed to that dissemination of Christ, particularly in the city. Drawing all his threads together, exhorting the reader see the life of Christ as an archetype for change, challenging the reader to wait, to let go, to rebirth and nurture the church, to resist the temptation to trade and embrace the attitude of gift, he says:

Then the church can truly sing its song of assents. Then the republic and return to its King. (Page 166).

A truly inspiring book, now I must go and do something about it.

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Chapter 7 : Dirt

Having thought about gift giving and opened our predefined boundries to allow gift giving to extend into the whole of creation then the issue of what is acceptable must me addressed.

What is defined as dirty or clean is not as straight forward as we might think. If my shoes are on the dinner table they are dirt. If the same shoes are in the wardrobe they could be clean. Same shoes, different place. (Page 136)

Kesters flow of thought has to move towards the issues of what is acceptable within Christian gatherings. In the old days we might have said that this was about holiness or sin, but Kesters use of "dirt" as an analogy means he can build on the concept without any preconceptions. Kester rightly points out that if you are going to look at the ministry of Jesus you are never far away from dirt. He points out that the Old Testament sets stringent dirt boundries and that Jesus crossed them.

So to see this 'Jesus', who puported to be a prophet and wise leader, stepping over the boundries left right and centre, would have been profoundly shocking. (Page 137).

Jesus does not call the dirty clean but he does not avoid the dirt either:

the means to doing that is not to stand on the other side and exclude them as dirt, but to eat alongside them. (Page 138)

In this chapter Kester shares profound insights into the way Jesus cleansed the temple. He points out that Jesus is not cleansing the temple of dirt, but removing the people who sought to profit from those who came to the temple for cleansing.

He is clearing the way for the dirty, giving them free access to the means of forgiveness without having to purchase special money to buy special sacrifices. (Page 139).

Kester points out three ways in which Jesus forces us to revaluate our approach to dirt:

1. Certain things we all consider dirty, he considers clean.
2. Is something is dirty contact with it doesn't make us dirty.
3. The dirt should be given free access to the cleansing.

For too long the church has been a place that has excluded rather than included.  It has been happy to set rigid dirt boundries, but then it has been slow to re-evaluate the validity of them, but also has often refused either to step over them to show compassin to the dirty, or even to open its doors to them. (Page 142).

It reminds me of the current TV ads for Persil with the line "It's not dirt, its the girl next door" after two boys have just got themselves filthy peering over the fence.  Persil are trying to (for their own ends) get us to re-evaluate our attitude towards dirt.  Kester continues his attempt to help the reader re-evaluate their own dirt by discussing the role of the trickster:

We see an example of this in Acts 10, where God plays trickster with Peter and throws some "dirt" arround him by asking him to enjoy food designated as unclean.  (Page 146).

It is the role of the trickster that enables us to re-evaluate our attitude towards dirt.  For Peter it meant that he was able to accept Gentiles and see them baptised.

I believe that Christ would criticize us for over seriousness, encourage us to lighten up and allow some muddy hands to grasp again our sterilized liturgies... the tricksters must be coaxed out to help us find our dirt and nourish this tree, for our survival depends on them.  (Page 152).

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Chapter 6 : Gift

"Christ is in the urban environment", Kester has declared loudly. "Now what are we going to do about it". The answer seems to be found in the way we see our interaction with God. Kester examines that relationship by thinking about the nature of gift giving. He seeks to identify worship as a gift giving experience.

There was some kind of transaction occouring in Christs ministry, just as there is in the Church's ministry today. Something is given, and something is recieved. It is vital that we, like Christ, get the nature of this exchange right, for we risk ending up as another product to buy or sesation to seek unless we do. (Page 117.)

Kester goes on to point out that gift giving is different to a transaction. A gift is freely given and recieved but a transaction is too exchange something for something. He points out how easily it is for the church to be hoodwinked into seeing worship as a transaction rather than a gift. It is not particularly surprising that Kester places worship firmly in the context of the worshipper offering themselves (talents and abilities) to God. The worshipping community of which he was a part was formed because of the lack of participation and involvement with the churches that they were involved with.

My experience of Church ended up being doubly frustrating: not only was I unable to offer my gifts, but I was forced to offer gifts of worship that were not of myself. (Page 125)

Kester shows how viewing the event of community worship as a transaction where you expect to sit and recieve a "service" falls short of the possibility of genuine interaction with God. However changing our perspective about the purpose of the collective worship should not be seen as a rebranding of the church:

... the essence of what we have cannot be bought or sold. It is not to be consumed, or a lifestyle choice. (Page 127)

The church should be a place for gift exchange. For Kester this goes beyong mere explanation of the Gospel, but the gift exchange should embrace the creativity of humanity:

This is about engaging with the local environment and having open boundries. It is about refusing to see this as infection, but cross fertilization. It is about declaring our interdependence with the locality we find ourselves in. (Page 128).

Referring back to the previous chapter and the temptation of Jesus in the dessert, Kester reminds the reader:

The reason Christ rejected the crude transactionalism of those who would tempt him to seek devotees throug stunts and bread was that he understood his ministry was all about gift. (Page 131). Christ crawled out of the dessert defined by one thing: gift.  He would not trade bread or stunts for devotion, nor would he accept wealth or power in exchange for his devotion to another, for this was the way of the city, and if the city was to become God's dwelling place he needed to model the new economy that it needed to depend upon for its growth. (Page 133).

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Chapter 5 : Christ in the city

Having identified the characteristics of the Emerging Church but not its form or shape kester returns to biblical themes to show God's concern for the city.  Starting in Genesis he shows how the biblical attitude (or God's attitude) towards the city changes from one of distain to one of acceptance.  Using the words of Matthew Fox (though distancing himself from Matthew's other theological perspectives) he describes how to see the urban environment as part of God's creative whole.

In building cities, human hands have taken divine materials and worked them to create new ones.  Thus the very fabric of the city is testament to the cooperation between God and humanity. (Page 101)

Not letting go of Fowlers faith development stages he suggests that the same principles can be found within the city:

• People who find the city new and exciting (aka stage 3).
• People who are having a kind of crisis, perhaps a victim of crime (aka stage 4).
• People who see beyond the mean streets to the deeper issues and possibilities (aka stage 5).

He draws on the struggle that Job has to cope with his own pain is paralleled by God pointing to the "raw power of creation" in order to place his "suffering into a new context" (Page 104).  The image of God in creation is used by Kester to draw people into engagement with their culture, not form removal from it.

... with practice, with a commitment to engaging positively with the city and looking to catch it doing goodrather than always on the lookout to knock it down, we can begin to glimpses of why God is comitted to the city as our future: because the redeemed city is the final expression of humanity and divinity in co-operation.  (Page 107)

The attitude of Jesus to the urban environment is brought into focus by Jesus retreat to the desert.  For Kester the temptation account is not about a test of whits between the tempter and the Christ, but a deep revelation of the frail humanity of Jesus.  Where God wrestles with the temptation to revert to the way he has acted in the past, but as the humanity of Jesus wrestles with the divinity of the Christ the nature of the salvation that is to come is worked out.  Playing on the nature of the first and second temptation he says:

Salvation is not an economic offer, an escape from the rat race.  It is beyond selling or buying and won't be recieved just because a stomach is full.  Offers of something for nothing, bread from stones, riches overnight, £1000 a week tax free for part time work, immediate weight loss while you eat what you like... Christ knows this is no way to bring people to God, they must choose to love and we must resist the temptation to violate that free choice with dressy claims of cheap salvation. (Page 110)

Skipping past most of the ministry of Jesus, Kester draws on the violence in the death of Jesus to suggest that the urban environment attempted to expell Jesus it unwhittingly unleashed the complex Christ:

What they could not see when they split his skin was their weapons simultaneously ripping the curtain in the temple, pulling down the screen that had kept God boxed up, pigeon-holed, controlled and regulated.  What they could not see was that rather than finallyt putting to death this God who had cast them out, they had inadvertantly unleashed the complex Christ (Page 114).

Kesters point is that Jesus reflecting on the power of creation engages with the urban environment rather than removes himself from it.  Jesus lives the urban life inorder to start a work of redemtion.  The pain that is felt in the urban streets started because of the separation of God and Humanity (reffering back to Cain's first city).  That pain is engaged with because of God's incarnation into the city and that redemptive work should be continued by the people of God.

For these reasons we are compelled to carry on the work Christ started, not scared off by those who claim religious power or have vested interests in the dominant modes of being.  The city is the place where our dreamy theologies must get their hands dirty and work themselves out in praxis. (Pages 115-6)

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Chapter 4 : The Character of the Emergent Chruch

With talk of "The Emerging Church" rife in church circles, Kester sets out to identify its purpose and within the hyprbole what exactly is emerging. He uses the rise and fall of Punk music to show how a something that a relatively short life can affect a future generation. Thinking particularly about the "alternative worship" movement that seems to have spawned the emerging church discussion.

In the same way, although the alternative worship sceneand other fresh expressions may be producing innovative ways of being church, I believe their primary function will be to simply clear the ground and give permission to the wider Church to imagine new things. (Page 72)

The discussion moves on to suggest that all emerging systems have developed from a top down hierarchical system. He refers back to Fowler and pleads for the space to allow the chruch to re-imagine its self.

Welcome to the cloud of unknowing. Exciting, isn't it, to feel the spirit of adventure, of risk ... an element of danger and of tension? There is no stangnant air here, just the invogorating funk of new life in the makng, of new ground being broken and fusty trestle tables being turned overin the temples, in the church halls and money lenders offices ... (Page 74)

For poeple like Kester (and me for that matter) It does sound exciting, but immersed in the inherited structures that I am, I can see why people may not like the thought of the cloud of unknowing. I know many people that would find Kester's description far from exciting. Having told us that we can't possibly know what the future will look like, that it can't be cultured and grown in a petri dish, he gives us some hooks to hang it on! Characteristics of emergent systems:

1. Emergent systems are open systems (Page 75-78)
2. Emergent systems are adaptable systems (Page 78-79)
3. Emergent systems are learning systems (Page 79-85)
4. Emergent systems have distributed knowledge (Page 85-90)
5. Emergent systems model servant leadership (Page 90-92)

The comparison between the two extreames of Rigid and Anarchic are compared with the emergent resting neatly in the middle: Given my earlier reservations about the protest nature of the communities that would identify themselves as being part of the emerging church, it would seem that Kester has done his upmost to put the Emerging chruch at the centre of the future, not so much a protest movement but a developement at the heart of the church that will save it from the destruction of anarchy or the stiffling nature of rigidity.

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Chapter 3 : Emergence

Chapter 3: Emergance

Having spoken about Advent and Incarnation Kester moves on to what apprears to be the main thrust of his argument: Emergence Theory.

Becoming incarnate will mean the same for us as it did for Christ. We will have to experience being small and defenceless requiring nurture from our host world just as Christ needed Mary's milk. (Page 52)

Comparing city life to an ant colony he argues that rather than top down organisation, a city exists intuitively as well as with overt top down control. I think he overplays the metaphore to make his point. He comments on the lack of legislation in a city regarding the number of tradespeople: "but we are rarely left for days with broken pipes." A poor illustration since the United Kingdom as a whole does not have enough people in the trades preciely because government has discouraged apprenticeships! His theory of emergance seems to be that balance is required between regularion and allowing the city or organisation to self regulate:

Infact all bottom-up, emergant systems are regulated in some way inorder to protect themselves from anarchy. (page 59).

He uses the example of two poles of anarchy and rigidity:

a spectrum with death at each end, there exists a place where a system begins to live, to self organise, to become more than the sum of its parts, to develop a character, a culture, a soul if you will - as if breath has entered it and commanded it to live.  (Page 60.)

In the midst of his slightly overplayed, but compelling chapter, I wonder if those people who are discussing the emergin ecclesiology that has become known as the "Emerging church" (or conversation if you prefer) have suffered to much top down control and are simply reacting against it.  Is the emerging church just a protest movement.

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Chapter 2 : Incarnation

Kester's approach to incarnational theology continues to draw on Fowler's faith development suggesting that God himself is developing in his approach to humanity. For Kester, God reflects stage 2 in the OT stage 3 in the intertestamental period and stage 4 4 with the introduction of Jesus in the NT.

As we wonder how the Church should change, I am going to suggest that, like God, we must be born again. That we must re-emerge. That there will be no revolution, only evolution. That what will be in the future body of Christ must be what Christ was: the embryonic co-operation of divinity and humanity. (page 47)

For Kester the incarnation happens in the secret place, it is undetected and unseen, but vital for the re-imagining of faith.

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Chapter 1 : Advent

Kester suggest the importance of waiting however frustrating that may be:

We would like to change now with immediate effect. A miracle solution. ... We would like to be there now, no fuss or hassle or journey or responsibility or pain. (Page 23).

Referring to Alvin Toffler's work "Future Shock", Kester observes that it is better to view change as evolution not revolution. The suggestion is that evolution is a slow process involving waiting. He points to the biblical theme of waiting and draws on Walter Brueggemann's observations in his book "Hopeful Imagination" to show the need for pause, for waiting, for exile, for grief, for repentance. He reminds us that God allows waiting and exile.

As the Israelites in exile began to accept their lot as the Babylonian captors fed it to them, Isaiah stepped in and began to exercise their imaginations. His poetry opened the sealed vaults of their minds and forced them to recover their collective memory. By allowing memories of how God had worked through them in the past to be resurrected he simultaneously reinvigorated their imaginations thereby inspiring new thoughts and possibilities. (Page 38)

The Complex Christ, Brewin, Introduction

Kester sets out his intention of the book that the church should allow its self to move on in its faith development. He draws on Fowler's stages of faith development (Fowler, J., Stages of Faith, HarperCollins, 1995), to suggest that the majority of the UK churches are fastened in Fowlers faith stage 3 (synthetic-Conventional).

(this is) ... where people fall into the trap of thinking that further change is unnecessary. At this stage being oart of a tribe or community is significant. (Page 9)

Kester suggests that his book is a first attempt to imagine what the h=journey of faith development is going to look like. I think it should be noted that the majority of faith development studies are male orientated. This has, not supprisingly, been criticised by those of a feminest persuasion. In fainess to Kester, he is using the mose widely available material. He hints that Alan Jamieson also refers to the Fowler material in his "A Churchless Faith". Perhaps their use of this material reflects the white, male domination of emerging church thinkers.