futuristguy@missionaltribe

Over a month ago, I received a formal invitation to participate in the upcoming 2nd Global Roundtable of Emerging Underground Ministries, to be held July 8-11, 2009, in Poland. Here’s what the event - otherwise known as Kalejdoskop - is about:

Kalejdoskop (Kaleidoscope) means “to look at a beautiful shape.” So, our hope for this Roundtable is to gather leaders from many nations and allow us to look at the shape of the body of Christ - to see its current beauty and how it is taking shape and pointing to a beautiful future.

All of us will benefit from our networking together and creating new streams of friendships and resources and that this will be a forum and meeting point of change agents for His Kingdom in our world. We want this to be a platform for personal inspiration, motivation and discovering new expressions and ideas of church, community and ministry to meet the needs in our ever-changing world. We also hope that our time of sharing and collaboration together, with like-minded people, would result in training workbooks and online media for many areas of ministry where there is very little written.

It was unexpected to be invited, but an honour. I’m excited about the opportunity, and suspect there will end up being quite a story in how God provides to get me there! I’ve long been interested in issues of cultures, subcultures, and various kinds of underground movements. So, I’ve been considering what I might do beforehand that could contribute to some kind of lasting online resources. I sensed that I should produce a blog series on basic questions about the Kingdom and culture, in part to give a framework to ministry contextualization and being “Kingdom countercultural” in all kinds of cultural settings, and in part to prepare for eventual discussions on the missional futures of cultures and subcultures.

I ran the idea past my Missional Tribe friends, and they gave some great feedback that I used to adjust the plan. So, here’s what it looks like: In early April, I’ll start addressing a series of basic questions that deal with core concepts and practices on culture. My responses will give general frameworks for thinking about the interrelationships of local cultures, Christian organizational cultures (churches, ministries), and the ideal of “Kingdom Culture.” There might even be some do-it-yourself exercises for those who want to work on their own responses and applying the frameworks to local settings. And I wrote a lot about subcultures in the 1990s, but the global situation has changed dramatically since then. So, I’m very much looking forward to the last posts in the series, on what I see as roles of alternative cultures/subcultures in possible versus preferable futures of the Kingdom.

I’ll keep posts relatively short - 1200 to 1500 words each - and use non-technical language as much as I can. (That will be a challenge, given that we don’t have a lot of shared vocabulary on these topics anyway.) The series will run from April through July, with about one post per week. I’ll plan to spend at least a couple hours per week responding to comments. Then, I’ll post Roundtable reports as frequently as I can while at Kalejdoskop, and who knows what else … maybe some interviews, too … and likely a wrap-up analysis after I’m back from Poland.

I’ll have this series posted only to my Missional Tribe futuristguy blog, in the Basic Questions on Cultures and Kingdom category. And here are the questions I plan to address, sometimes with more than one post per question:

• What is culture?
• What is “cultural capital” that is possessed by a cultural group and then passed on to their next generations?
• How does cultural capital differ from a paradigm?
• What types of cultures are there - what frameworks can we use to understand the range of cultures?
• How do sets of cultures relate with each other?
• What is the ideal “Kingdom Culture”?
• If all gatherings of disciples are moving in that direction, are we supposed to end up looking the same? If not, what areas is it legitimate in which to differ?
• How do Christian cultures relate with local cultures?
• How SHOULD (and shouldn’t) Christian Cultures Relate with Local Cultures?
• How do cultures tend to move or change over time, whether due to unintentional change or intentional transition?
• What makes the difference between mere change and intentional transformation?
• What are key types of trajectories, in local cultures and Christian cultures moving toward Kingdom Culture?
• How do subcultures/alternative cultures form? How do virtual cultures form?
• How has your thinking about cultural formation changed since you first started writing on the subject in the 1990s?
• How could cultures relate with one another in the Kingdom?
• How SHOULD Christian cultures relate in Kingdom Culture?
• What are potential issues in the “Futures of Cultures”?

Okay then, onward and upward! Or, better yet, “Further up and further in!” See you at this series soon, and looking forward to hearing your half of the conversation… Meanwhile, I’d greatly appreciate your prayers for all the details of my going to Poland in July.

~ Brad Sargent, aka “futuristguy”