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

[the telfords]

Hello Marshall
Thanks for your interesting reflections on why we did what we did - would
just like to pick you up on one inaccuracy I spotted:

You said all the sites for the Band of 24 HDP's were near airports!! Well
you obviously have not been to visit Oombulgurri in the Kimberleys in
north-west Australia - about as remote as you could get from any airport
unless you count the fact that you could charter a small plane to fly you
into the dirt landing strip at Oombulgurri after you made a low sweep to
scare all the donkeys away.

Anyway, the discussion about the 'turn to the world' is very interesting -
it certainly was one of the things which maintained my interest in
continuing to be part of the Order as I don't think I would have committed
15 years of my life to 'renewing the church'.

And I am forever thankful for the incredible experiences and opportunities
which opened up as we journeyed with a host of colleagues through the years.

Grace & Peace
John

2011/8/6 W. J. <synergi at yahoo.com>

>  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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>
>
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