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Good afternoon. In the next six minutes and forty seconds, I will describe and model the unique method we are using for this session and in the process introduce our presenters and add my own contribution to the conversation that will follow.
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Each presenter has been asked to bring their best ideas on the subject of the church in relation to the gospel, politics, and the future using twenty images, displayed for exactly twenty seconds each. It is a style known as pecha-kucha that blurs the lines between academic reflection, art, and coffeeshop conversation.
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Pecha-kucha has become popular among artists and architects in urban centers around the world because it encourages a synergistic interaction between ideas, particularly as other people make use of them, rather than a simple transaction between speaker and hearer. We’re here to stimulate your thinking…. So, on to the introductions:
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Al Hsu is an editor for Intervarsity Press and a columnist for Christianity Today who has most recently published, “The Suburban Christian.” Bowie Snodgrass helped found the house church Transmission, is a part of Christian Churches Together and now serves as Christian pastor for Faith House Manhattan
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Claude Nikondeha from Burundi founded Amahoro Africa – a network of African Christian leaders who are doing some great things. Doug Pagitt founded Solomon’s Porch, authored a number of books and is leaving on his Church Basement Roadshow tour with Tony Jones and Mark Scandrette in a few days.
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Randy Woodley, a United Keetoowah Cherokee, founded Eagles Wings Ministry with his wife Edith. His most recent book is “When Going to Church is Sin.” Alise Barrymore helped found the Emmaus Community and serves as Dean and Pastor at North Park University.
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Michael Smitheram from Australia is the International Coordinator for the Micah Challenge – a global organization pressing for the accomplishment of the Millenium Development Goals. Gabriel Salguero directs the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary and pastors a church in New York City.
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Before we hear what they have to say, I’ll get things started with my own attempt to complexify our thinking about the gospel, politics, and the future with three word pairs:
- memes and mimesis
- power and reification
- truth and trajectories
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The term meme provides a vocabulary for talking about phenomenon passed through culture. Memes can be valuable or trivial, simple or complex, ridiculous or deadly. The point is that like successful biological organisms, memes propagate. Every time you speak, you could be infecting others.
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Memes are dangerous when they hide or justify collective violence – which is why I want to connect them with mimesis. The church, in every age, influences and is influenced by culture (as well as its own – what we usually call “tradition”)
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Once a form has been adopted, it is reproduced as a meme about “how church is done” – liturgy, hermeneutics, piety… how to engage society. The desire of Christians to influence culture produces a pattern of imitation
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in which churches seek out successful propagators of memes (political parties for instance) and mimic their methods in an attempt to replace them – usually in a way that hides such imitation behind phrases like “civic duty” or “missional effectiveness”
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These issues really come down to questions of power. Power is necessary for change, so we are willing to sacrifice to achieve it, but we also know it is notoriously corrupting as sacrifices get converted into practices. Our efforts to gain influence should be matched with corresponding efforts to learn to use the resultant power well.
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Whether or not the Tao can be equated with the Logos of John’s gospel, the concept of wu-wei provides an important model of self-restraint concerning power. Sometimes translated as “effortless action,” wu-wei takes water as its primary metaphor. 
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Water conforms to any shape yet never loses its essential property of malleability. Though soft, it cuts through a mountain. For the church, such transforming through yielding means Spirit-led neighbor-love regardless of policy-position and suggests a context-specific response to those who disagree with us.
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Those in power need a different response than those without. Those with reified hard beliefs need a different response than those who will have an open conversation with the possibility of change. If we graph these as axes, memes that come out of the bottom left corner may be misguided, but are of a different category than those in the upper right.
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The church should challenge dangerous memes as prophets, but meet their opposite with pastoral care. Knowing the difference requires serious discernment. All this leads to my main point that in public spaces we need to be more cautious about our truth claims.
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To draw from the language of physics, typically truth claims are understood in scalar terms. Some are more important than others, but they can all be expressed within a true/false binary that is incapable of addressing either context or the influence of memes.
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The alternative I am proposing is a vector-based model that maps truth on a complex plane of movement either towards or away from the reign of God. As with fractals, it is apparent that a small change of context may dramatically alter one’s life story – a robust model of truth should account for such transitions.
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Living out Christian memes as wu-wei means consciousness of the complex dynamics of power and context that conceives of truth as trajectory. By this I mean nothing less than a conception of holiness that transforms public spaces not through separation but infusion.