Collaborate from Recycle Your Faith

Bangalore is The Silicon Valley of India

I have known these two for over ten years. They are the real deal.

Sarita has the opportunity to buy and own her own Hair Salon business for just $2500.

I want to support them and invite you to do so as well.

I promised $250 toward their goal, let a few other people know and within an hour a few other friends comitted another $900.

They have ten days to raise the money.

We’re almost half way there

If you have the capacity please join the giving party

Donate (using One Time Donation category)HERE

or send a check to:
Off The Map (memo line INDIA)
PO Box 75094
Seattle, WA 98175

PS – email and let me know you gave so I can tell Sarita that “the check is in the mail” jimAToffthemapDOTcom

Mathematics is a performance, a living act, a way of interpreting the world. Imagine music lessons in which students worked through hundreds of hours of sheet music, adjusting the notes on the page, receiving checks and crosses from the teachers, but never playing the music. Students would not continue the subject because they would never experience what music is. Yet this is the situation that continues, seemingly unabated, in mathematics classes. – Jo Boaler, author of What’s Math Got To Do With It?

Being a math teacher and working with a musician in this blog, I resonate with the quote above. All of us have learned to drive by driving, not by reading about it or observing others doing it. I think Jesus told us to know and do or do and know if you please. The good news was performance art for him, not as a person on a stage as much as a way of living. What if we dispensed with the checks and crosses and just let people play the music? What could happen then?

When the poor are converted into consumers, they get more than access to products and services. They acquire the dignity of attention [my emphasis] and choices from the private sector that were previously reserved for the middle-class and rich. – C.K. Prahalad

Loaded Question
One of the most interesting questions I get asked is “What is the future of the church?” This is a loaded question, especially when asked by pastors who see a future devoid of them, but I think C.K. Prahalad gives us some clues in his seminal book Selling to the Bottom of the Pyramid. In his book he outlines 12 principles that companies must understand in order to effectively sell products/services to the world’s bottom 3 billion customers.

Dignity of Attention = A Shift We Have to Make
But first we have to make the mental shift that he speaks about in the quote above. We have to grant them the dignity of attention. We have to care. We have to acknowledge that they can be players (in the BOP case – economically and in our faith communities – spiritually).

My plan for today’s blog
I will lay out each of Prahalad’s points (from my notes) and then give a short take on how I think it applies to faith communities in the future. All in the hope of answering the loaded question of the future of churches.

1. Focus on price-performance of products and services. Serving BOP markets is not just about lower price. It is about creating a price-performance envelope. Quantum jumps in price-performance are required to cater to BOP markets.

If/when we (as leaders) begin to seek answers to the question of

“What inherent value are we, the faith community, adding to peoples’ lives?”

we will begin to get the sort of focus on price-performance that Prahalad is speaking of here. If the BOP markets show us anything about value-consciousness it’s this – that because cash for them is even more erratic (and thus precious) than for the Top of the Pyramid, they place even more emphasis on this price-performance envelope.

2. Innovation requires hybrid solutions. (Have to provide uninterruptible power supplies if you’re going to provide computers, for example.)

The faith communities of my daughters (and their children) will be hybrid (from my perspective). They have to be. This has always been the case. The extent – to which we (as leaders) are willing and intentional about fostering this innovation – is the extent to which we’ll help the next iteration of the kingdom of God instead of resisting it.

3. Solutions must be scalable and transportable across countries, cultures and language. (What works in India won’t work without modifications in say Burundi.)

What works in one place won’t necessarily work in another. Duh, we know this, but we don’t practice it. In an uber-connected world where lies and inconsistencies will be sunlighted way faster than ever before in history, we have to look to the qualities behind a solution instead of the particulars. This will require more voices, eyes and ears than just one person or an oligarchical leadership group.

4. Can’t live in resource-waste environments (like TOP environments) and conservation will be key in future BOP key.

Most Sundays (here in the U.S.) are very capital-intensive for faith communities. They spend most of their budget on those 2 hours. We need to have the courage (as leaders) to ask why we think that’s a good use of God-given resources, and we need (as customers) to ask ourselves if we should continue to participate in (and thus fund) those Sundays. These are hard and deep questions, but we must consider them and the resources-waste environments they can (potentially) be.

5. Product development must start from a deep understanding of functionality, not just form. (BOP infrastructure demands such a functional re-thinking).

Most of the people that I know that don’t see church as worth the time (both church-alumni and those who have never gone) say that they don’t see a functional reason for it. Like the students in my math classes, they are asking a very good question – “When am I ever going to use this?” While we never will answer this sufficiently for everyone, as leaders, we had better be answer this functional question for ourselves. If we can’t answer the “what good is it?” critique (if only for our own sanity), that’s scary.

6. Process innovations are just as critical (in BOP) as product innovations.

How do we navigate this spiritual journey is as critical as what the spiritual journey is. My experience is that we focus on the what instead of the how. I think the how is messier and tougher to present in a 25-minute teaching gig (especially if that teaching is monological), but people are very interested in the how. Perhaps more interested in fact. Practice is obviously in the how category and only nominally in the what category.

7. De-skilling is critical. If the BOP customer can’t “use” your product or service with a minimum of skill, you’re cooked.

One of the geniuses of apprenticing with and for Jesus is that it’s doable. “Whosoever will, may come.” Through our weakness, he shines. The shift from professional “Jesus-follower” toward doability and ordinary attempts is already on. The more we embody and provide doability structures in our faith communities, the more like Jesus we’ll be (and the more effective in seeing his will here on earth as it already is in heaven).

8. Education of customers is crucial. Most BOP consumers can’t read, for example, so complicated instructions are a market killer.

The people that I know who do go to church want to be better human beings who can practice Jesus in that humanity. They care little for the Greek root of a word. They desperately want access to this ongoing story of creation and regeneration and many often (not always thank God) feel as if the bar is too high. The humility with which we live in this story must be educative and give access to this Jesus-story.

9. Products must work in hostile environments. (Inconsistent electrical supplies for example.)

Hostile, in BOP terms, means tough. Computer access for example, must take into account inconsistent electrical supplies. If you want to play in this arena, that’s reality. In faith communities, our practice is often in just such variable and tough environments. Teachers and pastors who want to do justice to this are going to have to let others (native to those hostile environments) give voice to their unique practice in those environments. If I live in Philadelphia in the 1870’s, I can read about Deadwood in the Dakota territories, but I don’t live there. In order to really get a read on Deadwood, I need to listen to someone who settled there.

10. Research on interfaces is critical. BOP customer bases are heterogeneous NOT homogeneous.

How does this teaching land in this faith community? This is a crucial question. I tell teachers all the time – it’s not what you say, it’s what the student hears. The customer is in charge, they always have been. If/when we begin to focus on the interface between what we’re teaching and what they are hearing/doing, only then will we be getting close to a common language of practice and doctrine.

11. Innovations must reach the customer.

If I want to know something, I have to do it. Whatever it is we’re hoping for our faith communities to do, that spiritual innovation/imagination must reach them. If we haven’t done everything for that to happen, then we still have work (sacred and hard work) to do. Jesus traveled through Samaria not around it.

12. Feature and function-evolution in BOP markets can be very rapid. (Must focus on the broad architecture of the system – the platform – so that new features can be easily incorporated.)

Growth can be measured in many ways. Numerical is almost always our default, but there are many others. To use a sports example, I know of NO current NFL team that runs a ‘classic’ West-Coast offense (that Bill Walsh made famous when I was kid), but every NFL team now uses some variation of Walsh’s West-Coast offense in their scheme. How your faith community’s features and functions evolve in the next year, decade or several decades will probably say more about that faith-community and its relationship to Jesus than anything else.

It was Duke University on the line,

After being waitlisted at Duke in May, I’ve repeatedly called and wrote to them trying to get in. Well persistence pays off.

I learned this strategy after been waitlisted at Seattle University as a high school senior. I wrote SU a letter a week until they let me in. (it took 10 weeks)

Now I’m moving on to learn with Stanley Hauerwas, Richard Hays, and Ellen Davis.

So I leave the northwest and head to the south in 2 1/2 weeks. Goodbye WA, hello NC.

I’ve also begun to study how awful University of North Carolina is in order to fit in. “Go to hell, Carolina, Go to hell”

Is it just me, or are there just too many “–ologies” out there? Theology, ecclesiology, eschatology—oh, and there are other multi-syllabic terminologies, too, like orthodoxy, orthopraxy, hermeneutics, rhamazeutics, and salmonellics. (If you can’t tell where I stopped using actual words and started poking fun—I just proved my point.)

It’s all a bit much for me. I never went to seminary—mainly because I never actually intended to be a pastor. I learned to study the Scriptures by paying attention in church, and my degree is in music—which means I can sing you the four spiritual laws, the nine gifts of the Spirit, the seven motive gifts, Psalm 23, and “Jesus wept.” (I could also probably list all 66 books of the Bible in order, if only I could remember how the song goes.)

That said, and taking my tongue out of my cheek—I guess I have always been geared toward a practical understanding of Scripture, and the practical application of it, both in myself and in others. I am academic by nature, so I think I’d do well enough in seminary; but at the same time, I have always believed that God intended the Scriptures for all of us, and I am very skeptical of scholarly types who make others feel like they are unable to “get” the Bible without their special assistance. (I guess that’s why I tend to dislike too many “-ology” words, because they tend to place knowledge out of reach.)

Truth is, I’m not as impressed by how much someone knows about the Bible as I am whether someone is living out what they know. I’ve known too many people who can spout platitudes and dissect Scripture, but can’t love their kids. And so I’m a pragmatist in these matters—I’m interested in a working knowledge of the Scriptures, and I’m always looking for what works.

Actually, it’s this practical approach that has ultimately drawn me down this path, away from the institutional forms of faith. My concerns with institutional Christianity are far more about practical issues than doctrinal ones. I have enough history with the institution to see that for the most part, it isn’t really working—and where it may have gotten us by in days past, it’s rapidly losing its traction in the world. And I have enough understanding of the Bible to know that much of how the institution operates really isn’t even in the Bible. So if it’s not working, and it isn’t mandated by Scripture—why in the world are we holding on to it? There’s got to be a simpler, more practical way. This is what fuels my current journey.

I guess what I’m saying by this is that most of my foundational beliefs in God and the Bible (i.e., my theology) have not been changed all that much by my leaving old forms behind. This may actually be part of why I so often feel I don’t belong in any “subset” or “club” right now where Christianity is concerned. Evangelicals tend to treat me as a backslider because of my out-of-the-box approach (not because they actually examine my theology). And I have to admit that I still feel like an oddball in the more emergent camps because I still lean conservative, both in my doctrine and in my politics.

What has changed, though, is the way I live out these beliefs—how I frame them in my life. Here are some of the changes that have happened with me:

1. My beliefs do not define me anymore. My theology parallels common charismatic evangelical doctrine, but I don’t label myself as an “evangelical.” I am a Christian, and this means I am in fellowship with other Christians. It’s as simple as that. And my faith is not as much about what I believe, but Whom I believe.
2. I hold my theological beliefs loosely, and can entertain other views without being threatened by them. I have learned a great deal by interacting with people who don’t see the world the same way I do. I can articulate my beliefs and why I believe them, but I embrace the mystery of God, knowing I don’t have this all figured out. I trust the Holy Spirit to guide me into all truth—not the National Association of Evangelicals.
3. I am more interested in people than I am in theology or orthodoxy. It’s more important to me that I form honest, life-giving relationships with people for whom Christ died, than it is that I use relationships as a bait-and-switch to get people to believe what I believe. I have completely abandoned sales-pitch evangelism. (By the way—I think God is more interested in people than theology as well.

So if there’s an “-ology” I’d coin to describe all this…I’d want it to be “practicology”—the study of putting our faith into practice. A faith that works itself out in life. I’m already bent that way, but this journey has only intensified that conviction in my life.

Jeff’s article was originally posted here.

Those who have power never think about it and those who don’t have it think about it all the time. – Thomas Friedman

A friend and I have been pondering this double question and I’m putting it out to you –

What is power? and

How do you recognize it?

Fire away.