Movements

I first want to take a moment to recommend that you visit the Order of Saint Stephen blog. Not only do I recommend the practices they are talking about and valuing, but I recommend the idea of an "order" all together. These are some great people who are "doing it" and have been.

There has been something popping up in their comments though that I want to touch on in this post. When there was not an immediate update on the site to some of what they were planning people got pessimistic... and fast. Pessimism is certainly not new or suprising. Pessimism on the web is even less suprising. But what I want to address is this idea of movements.

In the past (yes, I'll leave it as the ambigious all of history) there has been this sense that the only thing worth starting is something that's will somehow live on forever. The "success" of something was dependent on its "formality" in organization, control and measurable features. If an organization or movement was successful it was growing in measurable ways. If it wasn't growing, then it was failing and the worse failure is the disappearance of the measurable and controlable things.

In this postmodern world, movements are embraced, not because of the ways they can be measured or controlled, but because of what they begin (both seen and unseen). This may seem a bit of language manipulation, but let me use an example from real life.

There was a church community, let's call it "the Fish-house", that was started as a ministry to young families in an urban environment. As it began, it attracted some young couples who came together, some came to proclaim faith in Christ, some grew in their faith and their community grew in numbers and in intimacy. Then, almost as quickly as it had begun, the momentum of new families attending ceased. There seemed to be a ceiling on the size of the community. In the midst of this stunted growth in one area, there was growth in another. The community of young couples and families grew closer and closer together and in faith. It was only a matter of two years before almost every one of the families felt called to ministry... but in other cities. The Fish-house was birthed, grew and died in just over two years.

It was considered a failure by those who aimed to fund it. It didn't make it. It never realized its potential. "It had such promise," they sadly muttered.

Here is where I would challenge this idea that movements must last forever [or at least as long as I'm interested :-)]. The reality of the Fish-house is that it may not have lasted as an organization in a formal sense, but the movement of that community continues to this day. The families that were a part of that community are now all over the globe doing and leading ministry. It was not to be a physical institution that would last, but it has proven to be a movement of the Spirit.

All of those words and that true story, to say this... movements are beautiful because of what they begin in us. They open doors in seen and unseen ways to those places that might have been a mystery to us before... or perhaps to re-discover something that has been tucked away in the shadows of our experience. The point of great movements, like great questions, is that they would open doors in our minds, hearts and experiences that we may never have opened ourselves.

Perhaps the greatest form of hospitality is the opening of doors for one another and the courage to walk through the doors opened for us.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German author said it well, "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."