Mike’s Sea2sea Blog

“…there’s a difference between telling people what to do and inciting a movement.”

I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s “Tribes”, and immediately applying it to my dream for Alliance churches:

 ”churches becoming like greenhouses for the next wave of leaders ready to serve and suffer for Christ, where God’s unfolding plan to reconcile the world to himself affects everything we do, and where churches are saying “Yes” to the fresh promptings of the Spirit. Young adults financially outgiving what their grandparents generation gave at their age….corporate prayer that’s strategic, passionate and persevering….new workers sent by churches that love them and their work and share the burden of seeing it accomplished.”

Godin says “The movement happens when people talk to one another, when ideas spread within the community, and most of all, when peer support leads people to do what they always knew was the right thing”.

He suggests that we are all leaders, or at least that we can lead from the grassroots, and that great leaders “create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate.”. He uses the Skype founder to illustrate: ” [he] understood that overthrowing the tyranny of the phone companies was too big a project for a small company, but if he could empower the tribe to do it themselves, to connect to one another and to spread the word, he would be able to incite a movement…..” He borrows from Gladwell, who notes that “… the fall of the Berlin Wall…involved much the same dynamic…..wasn’t the work of one hardworking activist. Instead it was the gradual but inexorable growth of the tribe, a loosely coordinated movement of activists…”

Kind of sounds a bit like God’s unfolding plan with the early church; small groups of people (a real mix) in living rooms spread across the Roman Empire! Honestly, Godin’s remarks don’t seem new, just a bit closer to New Testament history, not to mention an approach that seems more realistic in my world.

I don’t feel like a great leader, yet do feel like I’m made for great things – “on a quest for glory” says the poet/rapper Shad. Here’s where God’s grace meets his original creation! You and I, knowing we were meant for more, redeemed from the dictatorship of sin, filled with new power (that’s the Holy Spirit’s work in us), and grafted into a plan to change the world.

And what happens when people with this experience connect with one another, sharing ideas and specific goals? Una revolucion de Jesus!