Leonard Sweet

Last May I blogged on a talk by Leonard Sweet on two ways to do more ... better and different. Since that time it's become a standard piece I use when talking about why I approach ministry the way I do, be it downtown, online, or in my writing. While most of Christianity is still caught up in the "better" game, be it a better band, a better choir, better theatrical effects, better liturgy, better marketing, or better whatever else it is that we have done throughout Christendom, I'm grabbing onto the idea of a "different" yet still Biblical ecclesiology (the study the Church itself as a community or organic entity).

So, what does this have to do with Mac? Well, yesterday was the annual keynote address from Steve Jobs at MacWorld and, like any other Apple freak, I was watching the highlights of the address on a live updating site and chatting about the new products with a slew of mostly Mac users from across the country.

I say mostly because, for some reason, a Windows guy decided to drop in on the conversation and repeatedly tell us how great Vista is ... never mind that Bill Gates himself admitted that, even though it was incredibly late on its release, it was still released too early because not all of the bugs had been fixed. Anyway, after the introduction of the Mac Book Air, this guy had to go off on Mac being all about novelty and not really caring about usefulness. According to him, the Air is all style and no substance.

Now, if we're working on a "more as better" model of computing, then he's exactly right. After all, the Air is, in no way, shape, or form designed to be the latest and greatest portable desktop ... after all, it doesn't have an optical drive or firewire port, it's 80 gig hard drive (60 if you go flash) isn't all that impressive, it's not as fast as other computers, and it only has one USB port.

However, if we think of the Air in the "more as different" category, we can begin to see how it's the beginning of a new genre of portable computing, one that I'm already moving towards on my almost 3 year old iBook.

So, what's this genre? The laptop computer as terminal. Now, having a terminal isn't anything new, you can find them in my corporate environments and in places like libraries. What is new however is that the terminal will hook onto the Internet which is where all of your documents and other files will be stored.

For example, I rarely use a word processor on my desktop anymore. Rather, I use Google Docs (I tried Zoho which has more functionality, but I continuously had issues entering text and moving around the page which makes a word processor worthless no matter how many bells and whistles it has). So, if you send me a document in Microsoft Word, since all of my e-mails run through a Google account, I won't download it, I'll just click a button and it will open up in Google Docs (although, using a Greasemokey Script and a Firefox extension, I do download back up copies fairly regularly, but, ultimately, this will happen on a desktop and not my portable). As a result, I don't need a ton of room on my portable's hard-drive, I just need it to have the processor power to interact with the Internet seamlessly. As a result, I have my docs, email, and pretty much anything else I need accessible to me anywhere I go (or on any computer that can get online).

So, why an Air? When you're on the road, in a small space, or regularly on the move, to have a full sized screen and keyboard (which is where an iPhone falls short) that weighs three pounds and takes up less than an inch of depth is a beautiful thing. Now we just need to get universal free wi-fi across the globe and in the air.

Thanks to Mac for thinking "more as different" ... again.

By the way, if you haven't seen it yet, you can see the Mac Book Air ad here.

I've mentioned it here before, but one of the early questions I had to ask myself when thinking about Genesis was, "What makes something Church?" Over the past couple of days I've run into a couple of different ideas on how this question should be answered.

The first of these actually came via Leonard Sweet's "Napkin Scribbles" podcast (click here to subscribe with iTunes) and centered on an invitation he received to join The Beatitudes Society which, as the name would suggest, challenges people to live out the beatitudes of Matthew 5. According to this model, Church is defined by some kind of a moral code, in this case the beatitudes.

The fundamental problem with this approach, be it The Beatitudes Society, Red Letter Christians, or the old school saying, "Don't smoke, drink or chew, or go with those who do." is that it makes Jesus' primary purpose one of teaching ... he becomes the example we are to follow. However, if we look to Matthew 16:13-19, Jesus identifies the Church's foundation in him being the Christ, that is the anointed one of God who came into the world to inaugurate the Kingdom of God through the cross and empty tomb.

This of course doesn't mean that Christians shouldn't hold to a certain set of moral standards, it just means that adhering to a certain morality doesn't make something Church.

Now of course, Matthew 16 is a rather controversial place to go because in it, Roman Catholics find one of their proof-texts for the papacy (16:18). Of course, I chose that passage specifically because it provides a nice transition into another view on what makes something Church.

Today I ran across this article on CNN.com that covers an announcement made by the Vatican which states that "it is nevertheless difficult to see how the title of 'Church' could possibly be attributed to [Protestant churches]". According to the same document, the various Orthodox traditions are better off than Protestant traditions, but are still wounded because of they do not recognize the primacy of the Pope.

While I haven't been able to find the 16-page document online, given the rankings of the various bodies, it appears that Protestants are worse off than the Orthodox bodies because they lack the ecclesiastical structure that is shared by Roman Catholics and the Orthodox. In this situation, something is made Church based upon its organizational structure and a hierarchy of those in pastoral office with, in the case of Roman Catholics, the Pope at the top of the ladder.

So, how do I respond to the proof-text of Matthew 16:18? The verse reads in part, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." The question we need to answer is, "What does 'this rock' mean?" Roman Catholics argue that because the words "Peter" and "rock" are very similar in Greek (and identical in Aramaic) that Peter himself is the rock and at this moment Jesus is establishing the papacy. Others will point to the rock being Peter's confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." in verse 16.

Personally, I think the pronouns make the correct interpretation rather obvious because "you" and "this" have different references so "this rock" cannot be Peter unless we have Jesus looking at Simon and telling him that he's Peter and then looking at the rest of the disciples and saying, "And on this rock I will build my church." Furthermore, the rest of Scripture (for example Galatians 2 and 1 Corinthians 1:10-17) affirms that it's the teaching that is central and not a single man or position.

Now, this doesn't mean that you can't have a some kind of hierarchy among pastors, it's just means that it's something that should be done for the sake of good order and by human arrangement and is not what makes something Church.

Rather, as Scripture teaches and the old hymn sings:

The Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord; she is his new creation by water and the Word. From heav'n he came and sought her to be his holy bride; with his own blood he bought her and for her life he died.

In other words, what makes something Church? It's people who have hear the voice of Jesus and gather around the means of grace through which Jesus called them to himself.

Leonard Sweet brought up an interesting point on leadership at the Day of Homiletical Reflection a couple weeks ago (download the audio files here).

Sweet began with the basic definition of the title that defines us as Christians ... we are disciples and therefore we are followers. So, if we are, by definition, followers, why do so many Christians seek to develop their leadership skills? I know at a pastoral level there are hundreds of conferences each year on leading your church, thousands of books are published, and I had a required seminary class called, "Pastoral Leadership". Then of course you have the LCMS's Pastoral Leadership Institute.

Having attended some these conferences, read many of these books, and faithfully attended my seminary course I know that, essentially, all of these resources seek to take skills from business, the military, and government and bring them into the church. Now, fundamentally, I don't have an issue with this, assuming that what's being brought in isn't diametrically opposed to our calling in Christ. This is where the problem comes in ... we're bringing in leadership when Christ is calling us to followership and we're turning our shepherds (aka pastors) into CEO's.

I know that I for one am trying to buck this trend with Genesis. I don't want to direct, I want to nurture. I don't want to build, I want to cultivate. I don't want to oversee, I want to be in the midst of people's everyday experiences and encourage them in their faith and life. In the end you could say that I don't want to lead, I want to pastor.

Anybody know of any great books on followership?