Summer '74

I. Focus on the Congregation

1) The first four years of the experimentation phase of the Local Church Project have been completed, bringing to fruition the Actualizing and the Development stages. The first two year saw the actualizing of the Tactical System developed in the Summer of 1970 through the strategic selection of participating congregations. The initial actualizing of the back­up machinery formed a means of continued research and continental commonality. During the second two years, the development stage of the project saw the refinement and classification of the tactical methods and the expansion of congregational participation across North America.

2) Thus far, the project has focused on the congregational Dynamic of the Local Church. Tactics were actualized to expand the congregation's vision and move it toward equipping leadership dynamic for responsibility for the Parish. This leadership or auxiliary, has rediscovered the power of corporate discipline in mission, developed prowess in tactical thinking and method, and released a profound motivity in acting out a renewed vision of the crucial role of the Church in history and community.

3) Now some 172 churches are participating in the project in 54 Galaxies with approximately 1100 members of the laity and clergy assuming responsibility for the global and local recovery of the church. The number of congregations in the experiment is presently ahead of the six­year projection set forth in 1970. At that time it was that 48 Galaxies and 128 churches would actualize tactics by 1974. This means that there are 44 churches and six Galaxies more than projected. Reflection and evaluation are required as we turn to the future.

II. The Fruit of Four Years.

4) Let us look at the fruit of the experiment from several vantage points ­­ in relationship to the established Christian denominations, in relationship to the Spirit Movement, and in relationship to the congregations themselves. In 1970 when the project was initiated, the denominations were coming to the end of a period of various forms of experimentation in the fields of service., liturgy, education, specialized ministries, etc. All were attempts, though limited, to re-articulate the mission of the church in times of change. By the seventies, the motivity for and authenticity of these experiments were severely undercut by both their own interior inadequacy and by the shift in our times when economic and political forces were driving home the point that such projects were not an adequate response to the demand o. the age. For example, globality was called pluralism. Consciously or unconsciously the church was frightened by these historic changes and its own inability to cope. The Local Church Project sought to be a sign of adequate renewal by holding the tension of the global and local, spirit vitality and social responsibility, and individual creativity and corporate commonality.

5) Our of its fear and guilt, the historic church was at first offended by the birth of the Local Church Project. Through working with and within the structures of the denominations and congregations, the Project evoked a radical vocational question for both the church and churchmen. Further, the church deeply doubted that its own life could be renewed. It expected that the Local Church Project, like all other exper1.enta it had known in the past ten years, would quickly pass awe'. However, as the four years have progressed, and as the denominations have seen that the Project is about the tasks of providing tools, being a sign, and equipping leadership, the historical church now stands in a different relationship to the experiment and therefore to the Spirit Movement as a whole. Particularly in the past two years, the hierarchy of the church has increasingly sought out and requested seminars, consults, and methods sharing with their churches and particularly with their clerical leadership.

6) The main thrust of the experiment has been focused on the congregation. The tactical methods of the project were not intended to­create new programs or new structures in a congregation, but rather breathe new spirit, to elicit missional vision, and to provide practical tools. All aspects of the congregation program were exposed to these intentions in relationship to yearly objectives. The six to eight members of the leadership auxiliary from each congregation saw their role as implementing systematic tactics rather than planning the program of their congregation. Perhaps the most overt result of the past four years has been their development of a core of leadership in each participating church. In a number of the congregations, a corporate clergy has developed including both the ordained and the laity. It has produced a corps of highly trained, theologically awakened and spiritually effective local people who see anew the role of the congregation and are willing to expend themselves for its renewal. In many cases, the ordained clergy family has made a renewed vocational decision. Men and women who have become spirit giants were ready to abandon the local congregation as a viable focus of mission because of the state of the church, the times, and their own practical and spiritual unpreparedness.

7) Across the continent, congregational life itself has been affected by the experiment. The Primary impact of the experiment on the congregation has been the re­calling of the congregation to its responsibility for its community or parish. Obviously this was done through many indirect tactics and tools, and is the preparation for the next stage of the experiment. This awareness is beginning to turn the congregation outside itself toward the world. Furthermore, the fruit of the experiment in the congregations has also been the re­engagement of a~ life­phases or generations into the missional life of the church. Across the Project, one sees the creative participation of eiders and youth. Elders who image themselves as no longer useful and youth who image themselves as vocationally dormant see themselves with vital roles to play in their community and congregation. Also, relevant forms of spirit life for the post modern world coupled with a turn to social responsibility account for the return of the male dynamic to the life of the congregation. Men have seen a means of significant engagement consistent with the world in which they live their daily lives. They have assumed new leadership roles in most of the churches in the experiment and see that congregational life, vocation and occupation are a single thrust. All of these Fruits have created the spirit climate for congregations to pick up social responsibility for the parish.

8) In relationship to the movement, the Local Church Experiment provided the major focus of the movemental thrust in North America during the past four years. Through four years of training auxiliaries in regular weekly meetings, it has raised up a body of movemental troops that have theological clarity, global awareness and a grasp of radical corporateness. These 1100 troops are the backbone of regional pedagogues and metro leadership. Many have become key leadership 'n the Symbolic Order. They have instituted about one third of the participation in the research assemblies over the past four years. They have embodied increasingly the local­global style as the ones responsible not merely for their local situation, but for the whole globe. They have become dynamical tactical thinkers and actors. In the fifteen replication galaxies, the priorship has come from trained Galaxy leadership rather than the Symbolic Order.

III. Methodological Development

9) During this four year period, the Project has been an experiment in relationship to methods development. Undergirded by a universal Tactical System, the participating congregations brought their own experience to move toward tactical refinement and methodological sophistication. For example, at the initiation of the Project, the participating churches devised with the means by which one actualizes indirect tactics in such a way that they release vision and creativity while doing the job of shifting the imagination of the congregation. Using this continent wide experience, the auxiliaries came­together in 1971 to write the first Tactical Actualization Manual. Through the four years, increasing understanding of dynamical thinking, social process, and trend analysis have enabled the galaxies to relate tactics more effectively to the strategic objectives. In a period when teleological thinking dominated, the Tactical System avoided this static type of planning through the means of Tertiary Time­Design which forced the auxiliaries to act tangentially and indirectly rather than programatically.

10) Contradiction analysis is key to the system. Such analysis has allowed congregations to build tactics not as a means of ending a problem, but as means of resolving and using the contradictions which were barriers to those trends which were shaping the future. Particularly in the last year, the movement has gained new methodological insight into this arena. While the tactical system has used a rather direct one­to­one relationship between contradiction, objective and tactic; refinement of contradiction analysis has pointed out that there is a gap between the paramount contradictions and the tactical means of resolution. As the Project moves into the next stage, recognizing this gap will undergird its methods and move it forward.

11) One aspect of this methodological development would involve the means of moving tactic building to the local level. In the earlier stages of the Project, when the necessary demand was building corporateness and methods skills, such a move would have been a disaster for the global renewal of the church. It would be dangerous now, save for a common, universal vision of the renewed church, held in the theoretical Tactical Model which forms the common basis of the practical tactics of each and every galaxy in the Project. Thin model must always form the common memory of awakened churchmen.

IV. Context of Church­World Today

12) The third stage of the Experimentation Phase of the Local Church Project we must take account of the state of church renewal across the globe and the state of the globe in which the experiment is called to be a sign. Both have made significant shifts since 1970. Briefly stated, the church is in a crisis period. Even in the midst of increased awareness of responsibility for the World, the church sees her sociological forms are incapable of freighting this vision. This is not a moral or psychological flaw, but a facet of the times which call for radically altered social structures to both imaginally and practically carry the mission. Various forms of denominational and ecumenical restructuring have gone on, but have not really dealt with the Fundamental questions raised. There is an increasing drive toward significant missional engagement on the one hand, and new spiritual rootage on the other. They usually appear as two separate thrusts. The former yearns for comprehensive, realistic expenditure for the globe, yet has not thought this through e Consequently, its adherents often burn out. The latter yearns for depth, authentic self­hood before the mystery, yet falls victim to images and mythologies that result in spiritual drowning. Only as these two dominant thrusts are realized as one in our post­modern, radically secular context will the new sociological form of the Church become a reality.

13) The world also made significant shifts in the past four years. The commonality of crisis has at the same time revealed the commonality of possibility. The collapse of political forms of globality, has pushed to a new sense of the ­ responsibility of local man. A sense of a common global destiny is now abroad, along with a desire for practical engagement in the recreation of community. Today individuals and groups are interested in training and education related to the vocational question, rather than abstract data­gathering. This yearning calls the church to raise a demonstration sign to show haw local man can, in fact, reformulate his community in a way that has significance not merely for the local, but for the re­creation of the globe. The Local Church Project must now turn to this global recreation of the local community.

V. Turn to the Parish

14) From the Project's Inception, the parish has been its intended thrus t. The congregation had to be prepared first to cars for its parish. Although the parish phase is coming later than we first expected, the imaginal shift necessary for the congregation required more time.

15) Work in the parish dynamic has already been going on. In fact, the initiation of the 5th City Project in Chicago, a parish oriented experiment, pioneered in the initial research and experimentation into the means of reformation and the primary methods for the tactical system of the Local Church Experiment. The pilot project in guild formation in Uptown, Chicago, performed the research and experimentation for the Guild Launching Experiment around 51 Religious Houses in North America in 1973. By working on the Parish through the Religious Houses it was possible to research the necessary tactics with an adequate trained back­up group while keeping the congregational aspect of the experiment going through the Local Church Experiment. The Guild Launching Experiment developed the Tactics for Launching the Guild (26­Week Time­Line) and the tactics for developing and sustaining the Guild (the 52­Week Time­Line). Through the Global Research Assembly of 1974 both sets of tactics have been refined and will form the basis for the Parish Tactical System of the Primal Community Experiment, (originally the Local Church Experiment).

16) The sensitive and responsive body who up until now have been actualizing tactics to bring renewal to the congregational life for the sake of the Parish, will now also actualize tactics toward the creation and sustaining of the Guild within the Parish. In the coming year, one Parish within each configuration of the Galaxies will be chosen for this actualization with all of the congregational C:; auxiliaries becoming the trained back­up forges working corporately in that parish area. In 50 doing, they will also be refining the tactics and gaining further training for the replicating phase in their own pariah at a later tine.

17) The past four years have brought us not only to the point of turning to the parish, but also, the Experiment can now be employed in each area and region where the movement has penetrated across the globe. The experiment is now adequately refined and tested and the movement across the globe is ready for this tactical system. The global Church and the world require it.

18) Such global expansion is a forceful move toward the articulation of the New Sociological form of the Church. The next two or three years will require careful work in the theological and theoretical dynamics of the Church, its function and role. It will require further work in he theology of Love and Transparentized Christianity. We can no longer assume that the experiment will be demonstrated in situations where the Historical Christian Church is the dominant articulation of the People of God. We must do the necessary homework in articulating the applicability in all settings and in experiencing the reality of the Church in every culture which is in and through, and yet beyond, any given present social manifestation.

19) The times are right for this step forward. We enter it with both fear and fascination ­­ fascination with the known, yet unknown, possibility built on what we have already seen and fear, with the unknown, yet known, future form which the Church will be called to take for her global task of responsibility for the world before the Mystery.