[Dialogue] Questions about the "Turn to the World"

[W. J.]

Randy raises some excellent questions. 

For me the primary one is, "What do we do with the institutional residue of the 
public 'front' (EI/ICA/5th City) that manifested the thrust of a revolutionary 
movement (OE/extended Order/spirit movement) that no longer exists in the 
movemental form that we knew 'back in the day'?"

Writing from Lake Junaluska, I'm mindful that the historical church as we know 
it is the institutional residue of a movement of the spirit two hundred years 
ago starting with Francis Asbury and flowering into the Great Awakening in the 
19th century. (It's interesting that most southern Methodists didn't break away 
from their cultural roots and become abolitionists.)

I'm a total dummy when it comes to football metaphors, but I think the 'end run' 
as we used the phrase was about carrying  the ball around the opposing team that 
was doing its best to block us head to head. So our end run was about 
sidestepping the intransigence of the institutional church and claiming new 
ground to demonstrate transformed community (NSV) at the micro level in a 
secular context. Interestingly, the intent of the band of 24 HDP's was to give 
us credibility at the local level and with the transnational business sector, 
the government/nonprofit social services sector, and the religious (missionary) 
sector. JWM wanted to be able to walk into any of those exalted places with 
something on the ground to be proud of and show off (which is why they were all 
near airports). 

I don't make much of a distinction between working as "structural 
revolutionaries" within the historical church and working with secular 
structures, or between EI and ICA, both of which were simply fronts for the 
OE/extended Order. As 'chamelions' we took on either a  religious or a secular 
coloration as needed, in order to blast through their religious or secular 
reductionisms with a practical vision of primal community that was deeper and 
more comprehensive than anything they had to offer. (And at their best, ICA 
programs offered just as profound a context for addressing one's life as 
anything we did under the EI banner.)

The ICA wasn't 'secular' in the superficial, reductionistic sense of being part 
of the Establishment as just another nonprofit do-gooding institution. It was 
the public, institutional face of a very radical group of "crazy people" who had 
a common memory, a disciplined covenantal life, and an amazingly focused global 
missional thrust. I remember them well.

But those folks quit, retired, or intentionally deconstructed the OE, leaving 
behind the shell of the ICA-USA with a large institutional footprint at 4750 
Sheridan Road, but with little institutional  memory, almost no capacity for 
innovation, a disaffected constituency, and very few "employees." In other 
words, a huge hunk of institutional residue became the very type of 'empty' 
monument we all fled when we deserted the local church for the Order. Somebody 
said they walked around in the Kemper Building and "There's no life there."

The ICA-USA's recent 'perversion' (if I may use that term from our analysis of 
church history) was, I believe, to try to hatch some secularized institutional 
strategic plan that denied its movemental roots, context, history, and surviving 
constituencies (funny that the historical church does that!). Ultimately, the 
'perversion' is the belief that a rigidified, self-perpetuating institutional 
context, culture, and belief system will provide all the answers (again, the 
historical church).

So it became necessary for a few of the surviving "crazy people" to do an 'end 
run' around the ICA-USA. Some recent examples of doing an 'end run' around the 
ICA-USA  BoD/staff are: 1) development of the PJD; 2) development of the ToP 
trainers' network; 3) the Order's focus on the Archives; 4) relocating the JWM 
Archive to Wesley Theological School; 5) the Springboard conferences; 6) the 
Resurgence Publishing Corp. publications; 7) ICAI's 'World of Human Development' 
DVD; and eventually, 8) the ICA-USA BoD/staff 'regime change'.

Now that I'm one of the surviving 'Old Guard' that's still around, I hope that 
we as a group can continue beckoning the ICA-USA to think and strategize outside 
the box of our own historical context, style, and memory. Let's be part of those 
who can imagine doing an 'end run' around that in the OE which has become the 
contradiction: our tendency to do more of the same, whatever that is at the 
moment.

I'd like to invite all of us to look elsewhere in the world and among younger 
generations for strange and surprising signs of new life, creativity, and 
innovation. And for strange new forms of a NRM and a NSV that others are 
creating from the mud and debris of a collapsing and exhausted old order. Maybe 
the BoD could take a clue from some of these thoughts. If the old OE was a 
corporate Elijah, maybe we need to find an Elisha before we are all taken up 
into the whirlwind. 

Grace & Peace,

Marshall

I've been having great fun in NC 'digging up' old colleagues. Last weekend it 
was Don and Lucy Bushman. Tomorrow: the Fishels!



  






________________________________
From: R Williams <rcwmbw at yahoo.com>
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>; Colleague Dialogue 
<dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Thu, August  4, 2011 6:23:49 AM
Subject: [Dialogue] Questions about the "Turn to the World"


Dear Colleagues,
 
In 1972 the Kemper Insurance Co. gave the Ecumenical Institute its 8-story 
office building at 4750 N. Sheridan Rd. in Chicago.  In and around that year the 
Institute of Cultural Affairs was incorporated and EI/ICA moved its headquarters 
from its "seminary campus" on the west side to its "insurance building" on north 
side.  Subsequently we drew a circle around the wedge blade and announced we 
were making a "turn to the world."
 
Here are some questions regarding "the turn:"
	1. What was going on in the world and internally with EI/O:E that precipitated 
the "Turn to the World?"
	2. How did "the turn" affect our story about who we were and what we were 
doing? (For example, what did we understand we were turning to and what were we 
turning from?)
	3. What were the strategic and practical implications at that time?
	4. What are the implications today for ICAs around the world?
The primary reason for asking these questions is, the Board of Directors of 
ICA-USA, when it meets in Chicago each November, dialogues on the issue of 
the long-term strategic direction and approach of the organization.  This piece 
of our history could have relevance for that dialogue this November.
 
Please don't be restricted by the questions.  Any remembrances and insights that 
you are willing to share will be useful and most appreciated.
 
Thank you,
Randy Williams
Acting Chair, ICA-USA Board of Directors
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