[Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Questions about the "Turn to the World"

Sat Aug 6 13:55:18 EDT 2011

I'm roughly with Marshall up to the paragraph that begins "But those folks
quit." 

I am aware of the chaos that happened a few years ago when ICA-USA cut
itself off from the people outside Chicago. I also understand the feeling by
some that in doing so ICA-USA cut itself from its movemental roots. I don't
think Marshall's description of the present state of ICA-USA is accurate.
ICA-USA wants to be a part of the movement. That it has institutional
concerns should not be seen as a weakness, but part of the way life is. 

We are all in this together. How we carry forward the movement is a We
thing.

Herman

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of W. J.
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 10:53 PM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Cc: oe at wedgeblade.net
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Questions about the "Turn to the
World"

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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20110806/0f19eed1/attachment-0001.html>