[Dialogue] What happened to RS1?

[molly.shaw at comcast.net]

We have a local pastor who arrived in July to a mostly progressive, liberal UMC congregation with a firm grasp and demonstrated implementation of social justice ministries to the local homeless community (thanks to Jean Poole, Marian and Fred Karpoff as pioneers and other local supporters). What has been lacking is a broader understanding as a congregation of being sustained as "being Servants of the Servants." While there were spiritual gifts from each prior pastor, our new pastor arrived with a compelling story about servanthood ("From the Academy (UW is across the street) to the Alley" (street ministries) and simple tools to give congregants the opportunity to understand journeying individually and together to spirit depths: a noon "Sext" service weekly for an oasis from our busy worldly lives for prayer and meditation, and a 7 week session of studying 5 stages to spiritual enlightenment: conversion, purgation, illumination, dark night of the soul and union. I am excited to be a part of a community where we can recall and track our journey and deepen our understanding of "being" in the midst of "doing." We occasionally have some homeless and other local residents attending services with our "commuting" congregation, and I look forward to the day that "we" become one parish, one guild, bringing God's Kin-dom together. 

Molly Shaw 
Seattle, WA 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Gilles" <icabombay at igc.org> 
To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net> 
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 8:09:49 PM 
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] What happened to RS1? 

Tom, 


I like your thinking regarding the Guild. There are few "churches" that draw primarily from what we would call "The Parish". George Walters, myself and others are working on enabling the Urban Ministry division of Wesley Theological Seminary to be effective. Yet in all these years of urban ministry, most of the city churches have commuting congregations and therefore they're local mission is focused on the use of the building and other ways to support the parish. It is hard not to get caught up in the "band-aid" mission rather than the creation of Primal Community, Stakes, Guilds, etc. that we did in our HDP work. For me, the local congregation is going to be a gathering of "Guildsman (women)" who need to be the Gathered regarding nurture, training, interchange etc. with other vocated people, and the Scattered into the structures of society as revolutionaries for bringing forth humanness and justice. Now how we bring that knowledge, methods, and strategies to consciousness and effectiveness with the pastors of WTS is the challenge we face. I think this is at the heart of what Randy is speaking to when we see ourselves as the Servants of the Servants, or Caring for Those Who Care, or "The Third Campaign that we never put wheels under. 


There is lots more to this, but I'll stop here for now. 


Grace & Peace, 


Jack 


On Oct 19, 2011, at 8:34 PM, Thomas Morrison wrote: 


To add to the stew . . . 
As a LCX person, the shift I found most useful was from cadre-congregation-parish to cadre-congregation-guild. I used the latter throughout my time as a congregational pastor. 
Tom 


On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 12:30 AM, David Walters < walters at alaweb.com > wrote: 

<blockquote>


	
	

During the Summer of the LCX Research Assembly,. I was part of the Congregation that met in Room A. One of the congregational priors was Jim Bishop. Before the 1st week was over, Jim began to insist that the model was all wrong, backwards. It called for 3 beats for the Cadre, 2 beats on the Congregation and 1 beat for the Parish. He made at least pitch a day for the Parish. Nobody was interested. He made fiery pitches every night at the priors meeting in Room E to deaf ears. We all plowed ahead and launched the LCX in the fall. By the next spring it was apparent on the same weekend when the area priors met, the Galaxy priors met, and a huge training weekend went on simultaneously that some thing was wrong. (This weekend include multiple RSIs include a bunch of folks from the church where Hillary Clinton grew up. Was is a Galaxy church?) We went ahead and spent the next summer playing with the social triangles rather than sitting down and fixing the problem. 

By the time Summer 72 arrived, everybody was clear that we were in deep trouble. So we made the big turn to the world. We also repackaged the LCX as the Primal Community Experiment, doing the Parish as secular model. 

A couple year later we repackaged Fifth City and launched the Band of 24. Then we decided to get ready for the Bicentennial and started Town Meeting as a mass awakement strategy. We turned the counties of the US to gold. Of course, at this point we were too busy to teach RSI. 

We then were replicating HDPs all over the globe. We got ourselves so into it that folks were burning them selves out. By '84 we decided somehow or the other that we would stop running RHs and simply call them Chapter houses. Four years later there was a "once in a lifetime order gathering" where someone stood up and called the Order out of being. 

Oh! I forgot - JWM died and we got to watch several people fight over who would be the next Dean of EI and ICA. 

Mean while national ICAs sprang up all over the globe. Them seem to bee all doing well, as is ICAI. 

There was brief period of unpleasantness when ICA-USA found itself in financial difficulty. The BoD hired a consultant whose only experience was with child welfare organization. The woman who knew nothing about us, had never heard of RS1 or taken a TOP course told them to fire everyone except for the receptionist and the buiding custodians. They did. They forgot that when the bank account goes low - light a fire under development. (There was an old Development Centrum veteran on the Bod.) They also failed to to even think of reconfiguring themselves as a Problem Solving Unit And creating plan using the methodologies they were all (except for the clueless board chairman) highly trained in and proficient - some even helped create said methods. 

I learned several things in the Summer of'70 - one was "If you don't have a better model - shut up! Another was that we need to teach RS1 and teach the hell out of it, I can still hear Slicker saying it. Well....we quit teaching RS1 and became part of history. 

But......It is a reductionism to say that we can't do RS1s again. I think the churches would embrace, the world needs it, and history demands it. 

(Marshall can correct me if I got anything wrong) 

-David Walters 

PS Could someone on this list give a short cogent explanation of what really happened at the big meeting in Mexico? 

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</blockquote>


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