The Sustainist

Story Changers

Like so many in the United States and perhaps around the world, I was shocked and horrified by the tragic shooting last week at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, NC.  When the news reported that Dylann Roof, the shooting suspect, was arrested and will be brought to trial, a narrative of how this story will play out ran through my head.  Something about hate crime, who is responsible for feeding him all this hate, emotional testimonies, vengeful thinking, and the death penalty.  I was uncomfortable with these narratives and was aware of where they came from—how many revenge movies and TV shows have I seen?  How many legal dramas have I watched that tried to find the person to blame and punish for their crime?  Then the frantic media fueled these narratives with the debates of whether he should be tried for a hate crime or terrorism, and whether the Confederate flag should be displayed or sold. 

 

But on the day of the hearing when the family members of the shooting victims testified, they changed the story for me.  This narrative is something that should have been familiar to me as a Christian and I thank them for reminding me of it.   They infused love and forgiveness in the story!

“You took something very precious away from me,” said Nadine Collier, daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance. “I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.”

While the world is watching an unfortunately familiar story unfold, they surprised us and changed the narrative with their unshakable faith in God.  They believe in the God of grace who forgives and loves us unconditionally and that this love will save us from continuing the cycle of destruction and move us toward living the cycle of blessings.

They follow the footsteps of previous story changers like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, "Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it."  Dr. King changed the narrative of the story of African Americans in the United States.

How are you being story changers today?  

Upcoming Opportunities to Study with The Sustainist and learn more about Holy Conferencing: July 20-25, 2015 Los Angeles, CA Gracious Leadership Training Holy Currencies: Creating Sustainable Missional Ministries KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training August 6-11, 2015 Seattle, WA Gracious Leadership Training Intercultural Competency KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training November 1-5, 2015 Memphis, TN Holy Currencies: Creating Sustainable Missional Ministries KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training www.kscopeinstitute.org

Reflection Questions for Proper 8 (Year B) 2 Samuel 1:1. 17-27    What did you learn from David about enemy, victory and war?   Psalm 130    What does it mean for your soul to wait for the Lord? 2 Corinthians 8:7-15   How do you apply “The one who had much did not have too much and the one who had little did not have too little” in your life and your community? Mark 5:21-43   What did you learn from this story about God’s grace and healing power?

Eric H. F. Law
Kaleidoscope Institute
For competent leadership in a diverse changing world
www.kscopeinstitute.org

Care for Our Common Home

Pope Francis issued on June 18, 2015 a 184-page encyclical, titled "Laudato Si" with the subtitle “On Care for Our Common Home.” Here is a sample of quotes from it:

“We are not God.  The earth was here before us and it has been given to us.”

"The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”

 “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?”

“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods.  It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

"We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental."

 

"We need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals."

"Those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms.”

"The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of nonrenewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programs of sustainable development.

“We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it.”

 “Touch the hearts of those who look only for gain at the expense of the poor and the earth.”

“There is a nobility in the duty to care for creation through little daily actions, and it is wonderful how education can bring about real changes in lifestyle.”

“[Environmental responsibility can] significantly affect the world around us, such as avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed . . . planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights.”

Pope Francis said he wanted to “enter a dialogue with all people about our common home.”  I invite my readers to create local opportunities for people in your communities to have this dialogue.  Start with some of the quotes here.  Invite people to listen to them.  Invite them to share their reactions.  Invite them to share resources that they bring to the dialogue.  Then, invite them to decide what they are called to do as a result of the dialogue.

Upcoming Opportunities to Study with The Sustainist and learn more about Holy Conferencing: July 20-25, 2015 Los Angeles, CA Gracious Leadership Training Holy Currencies: Creating Sustainable Missional Ministries KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training August 6-11, 2015 Seattle, WA Gracious Leadership Training Intercultural Competency KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training November 1-5, 2015 Memphis, TN Holy Currencies: Creating Sustainable Missional Ministries KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training www.kscopeinstitute.org

Reflection Questions for Proper 7 (Year B) 1 Samuel 17:1-49    What did you learn from this story about leadership?   Psalm 9:9-20    How does God help you in time of trouble? 2 Corinthians 6:1-13   How does it mean to open your heart? Mark 4:35-41   What does it mean to have faith?

Eric H. F. Law
Kaleidoscope Institute
For competent leadership in a diverse changing world
www.kscopeinstitute.org

Transformative Stories

As I continued to read Daniel Taylor’s Tell Me a Story—the Life-shaping Power of Our Stories, I came across this critique of the environmental movement:

. . . I think Smokey the Bear was more effective in getting a generation of Americans to worry about forest fires than are a labful of scientists in making us worry about global warming.  Environmentalists need to find a story to give life to their message.  Smokey the Bear derived from the story of a real bear cub found clinging in fright to a charred tree after a forest fire.  Children could understand emotionally and intellectually the consequences of carelessness with fire in the forest. . . .  Contrast this with the reaction of many to environmentalists today.  Environmentalists are bursting with facts, passion, and dire warnings.  They may be more right than Smokey the Bear (contemporary theory being that forests are often best left to burn).  But they have no story.  They appeal to our intellects.  They try, now and then, to shame and frighten us.  Shame and fear are powerful but unsustainable emotions, and environmentalists have yet to touch the broader range of our emotions and thereby have failed to convince many to change their behavior.  No matter how much our heads know, if our hearts are not persuaded, we are not truly convinced, certainly not enough to act. 

Taylor said that a story is more powerful then abstract reasoning because “it appeals to all of what we are as human beings, not just part of us.  It recognizes that we are thinking, feeling, spiritual beings, with bodies that refuse to be ignored.  Story understands that if we do not know something emotionally we do not know it completely.”

In the last 20 years, statistics of declining churches across the U.S. have often been used to attempt to move churches to change from maintenance to missional thinking and actions but with limited success.   Most often people who responded positively to the scary statistics were people who had already made the paradigm shift toward missional thinking.  Perhaps we need to discover, develop and tell missional and sustainable stories that appeal to the whole person especially the emotional part of our beings.  Where are the transformational stories that help us understand our past and take us on an exciting journey, with suspense, twists and turns and surprises toward a sustainable future? 

In Holy Currencies training, I always weave transformative stories that appeal to the emotion, into the presentations of each currency.  Further more, I also empower the participants to tell their stories moving toward an imaginative sustainable future that they can realize; many of these stories are included in the previous blog posts.   So, if you have such a transformative story, share it with us.   

Upcoming Opportunities to Study with The Sustainist and learn more about Holy Conferencing: July 20-25, 2015 Los Angeles, CA Gracious Leadership Training Holy Currencies: Creating Sustainable Missional Ministries KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training August 6-11, 2015 Seattle, WA Gracious Leadership Training Intercultural Competency KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training November 1-5, 2015 Memphis, TN Holy Currencies: Creating Sustainable Missional Ministries KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training www.kscopeinstitute.org

Reflection Questions for Proper 6 (Year B) 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13    What did you learn from this story about raising up leaders?    Psalm 20    What does it mean for you to call upon the Name of the God? 2 Corinthians 5:1-17   How can you be part of the new creation? Mark 4:26-34   What are the qualities of the realm of God?

Eric H. F. Law
Kaleidoscope Institute
For competent leadership in a diverse changing world
www.kscopeinstitute.org

Let Me Tell You A Story

Last weekend, I was facilitating a Holy Currencies workshop in Lansing, MI for three local church teams.  This was the second of three full-day training over a period of nine months.  In between sessions, the teams were expected to meet to do homework which involved reading, discussion and specially designed activities.   Because of a death in my family, I was not able to be at the first training session; so I had a lot to catch up in learning the stories of these churches. 

I begin my part of the workshop by inviting questions that the teams might have.  One of the questions was, “How dothe readings and discussions and bible sharing help address the issues of our church?”  As I listened for more information, I discovered that this team had been doing only the first part of the homework, which included the Kaleidoscope Bible Study and discussion on reading from the book, Holy Currencies.  “We ran out of time,” she said, “and didn’t get to do the activities.” 

In response, I found myself telling stories of how various church teams, just like them, had read the book AND did the activities, which changed the life-course of their church.  I told them about how the team members of St. Mary’s church, when doing the activity in this curriculum, re-imagined their funeral ministries from task-driven events to opportunities for building relationships with their guests.  As a result, the church grew from 100 to 400 members in 2 years.  I told them about how the team members of St. Peter’s church decided to get to the know one of the renters of their not-so-pretty parish hall.  Through an intricate sequence of relationships and actions, the church now has a brand new floor of the parish hall, which holds many wonderful ministries fostering wellness for the community all through the week. 

Storytelling has a way of capturing people’s attention but more importantly, it has the power to connect with the listeners’ stories and to cultivate potential change.  “A story is the telling of the significant actions of characters over time.”  (p.15) This is how Daniel Taylor defined a story in his book, Tell Me a Story—the Life-shaping Power of Our Stories. I tell stories with characters like the people in my workshop, who, over time, make choices resulting in significant actions that change the course of community lives.  Imbedded in the story is the narrative of how the characters were invited to make a mental choice to imagine a new course of action that could result in faithful change.  My hope is that the story will stay with the listeners providing alternative patterns of actions that inspire them to imagine new significant actions for their own stories.

Daniel Taylor wrote, “A genuine story will not leave us alone.  It insists, sometimes in the most impolite terms, on changing us” (p.17) and “[because] stories unfold over time they contain the possibility for . . .  change within the lives of the characters and change within the lives of the listeners.” (p. 19)

Back to the training session last week, after I told the stories, I invite the church teams to go back to the previous sessions of the curriculum and do the activities for each of the currencies covered so far because the activities ensure that they make a direct connection between Holy Currencies/Cycle of Blessings with their church’s stories.  These activities will engage them to tell their stories in the past and imagine how their story will continue over time with a conscious decision to make a change in the way they think about the church, resulting in significant actions that will actually help them achieve their missional goals.  I demonstrated how this worked by inviting the teams to take an existing ministry and reimagine it as if it was infused with spiritual, physical, economical, ecological and/or social wellness.  This activity enabled the church team to discover an alternative narrative to their stories and the excitement and hope created was palpable.

The Holy Currencies Training is not a book study, in which participants read and have an intellectual discussion.  We insist on offering the training over time so that participants, through various carefully designed activities, can tell their stories and then continue their stories with conscious choices in thinking and actions resulting in transformational changes that foster missional ministries and sustainable communities.

Upcoming Opportunities to Study with The Sustainist and learn more about Holy Conferencing: July 20-25, 2015 Los Angeles, CA Gracious Leadership Training Holy Currencies: Creating Sustainable Missional Ministries KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training August 6-11, 2015 Seattle, WA Gracious Leadership Training Intercultural Competency KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training November 1-5, 2015 Memphis, TN Holy Currencies: Creating Sustainable Missional Ministries KI Catalyst (Facilitator) Training www.kscopeinstitute.org

Reflection Questions for Proper 5 (Year B) 1 Samuel 8:4-20    What did you learn from this story about leadership?    Psalm 138    What does this psalm teach you about power? 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1   What is eternal and what is temporary for you? Mark 3:20-35   What is the relationship between your call to ministry and your family?

Eric H. F. Law
Kaleidoscope Institute
For competent leadership in a diverse changing world
www.kscopeinstitute.org