Bubbles and not Boxes.
Communication is no longer a matter of boxing up truth for others to unpack. Eternal truth cannot be locked up in a box of 4 laws or 3 points or 5

ADVERTISMENT

principles. Lifting the lid on ancient mysteries requires a holy hesitation and respect, not a flippant cliche or powerpoint template. Post-modern communication is more like a bubble than a box. Our profoundest thoughts emerge from the depths of our being, where we draw our breath. Once it is released, it reflects truth, rather than seeking to contain and preserve it like a box. A bubble is context-bound. It reflects at once the creater and the observer. The creator is seen blurrily and faintly as one standing behind. The observer sees her own reflection on the bubble, not proportioned, but reformatted by the shape of the bubble. Listeners are drawn into the bubble where they find themselves dancing inside the story, interacting with the characters, watching the story unfold around them in a way that acknowledges their presence. It is something unique. Something for the moment. It carries the colors of the immediate context. Try to transport the bubble in its present form and it will burst. It can only be remade on location. Communication happens when bubbles pregnant with truth are released from deep thinking , deep feeling people who are willing to trust the others in the group with their gift. It comes out as story, poetry, art. It is sometimes rough and unfinished but it is never sterile and fully processed away from its humanity or divinity. When Mary was told she would carry the Saviour, she wrote a song. So did Miriam when she saw the Egyptian army was not coming ashore. Jeremiah wrote laments. King David released poetry. Even Jesus told stories (call them 'para-bubbles' if you like) to explain the Kingdom of God in a way that did justice to the mystery and majesty of revealed truth. Songs, laments, poems, stories. All of them bubbles that respond to the revelation of God, rising up with passion within us, and breathed out into our world to be marvelled at by those who care to look.

Couches and not Cubicles.
Remember those funny isolation chambers that libraries used to have? Well some places still have them and even if they dont, the cubicle mentality still lingers around many churches. It says "All good things come to those that escape human existance to prepare their sermons". Of course there will always be a place for the desert in our spiritual lives, that place of remoteness and silence where God speaks and we listen. But the idea of a pastor emerging from the sterile distraction-free laboratory of his office with a message that has been hammered into shape with the modern tools of scientific method is not something that will turn the crank of today's young people. Cubicles are for scientists and never for mystics. Enter the couch. We all have them. Gen-X churches are full of them. The MTV studio would be a barren shell without them. Couches are a primary symbol of how we are doing church in the postmodern era. They symbolize community, hospitality, sharing and collaboration. Couches are the place where important things happen to ordinary people. Evangelism happens on couches, where a group of people hang together and discuss things that really matter. Counselling happens on couches. Not during an appointed time in a professional's office. But on a couch, in the safe nest of a caring community. Study happens on couches. Messages and artforms emerging from the couch are more likely to have the input of many voices, the collaboration of many viewpoints, the wisdom of many counselors. Mission happens on couches. Young people on pilgrimage cannot afford to be locked away in the hotel rooms of strange cities, like the last generation of well-funded globe-trotting evangelists. Rather, they plan their journey around the friends they know have a spare couch to sleep on. I am convinced that a move of God among this globally-connected generation will include a constant circulation of couch-surfing apostles. There was a moment in history when the fate of a people came down to a little orphan girl, sitting on a couch. The two most powerful men in the world, in the most powerful city in the world, stopped doing what they were doing and looked at a Hebrew harem girl to see what life-changing world-impacting decision she would make. She was there, for such a time as this. Little orphan Esther, sitting on a couch. But I dont have time to blow that bubble right now.

Pancakes and not Sausage-Links.
Sausage-links represent the old way of seeing time and space - seperate, horizontally linear and one-dimensional. In the world of theological discussion, people had to take sides according to which of the two sausage links they preferred - either God is in control or humans have free will. It could not possibly be both at the same time. More recently, you had to decide if you were Liberal or Fundamental, Catholic or Protestant, Charasmatic or Non-Charasmatic, Modern or Postmodern. The other option was the Eastern monistic mindset that attempted to cancel out polarities and extremes and make everything the same. Neither option resonated with me but the idea of pancakes, I mean, dimensional layers, helps me to make sense of the world I inhabit. Lots of people see it this way, actually. Many of us born into a postmodern world see reality as existing around us like layers. Try watching "The Matrix" again and count how many space-dimensions and time-continuims are interacting with each other. This pancake view seems to make sense. Our human world is overlapped by God's eternal world. Our time and God's time - layed like pancakes. The layer of human choice and the layer of God's intervention, seperate and yet dancing together. Jesus being fully God and fully Man - at the same time. And of course the possiblity that there are even more layers of reality out there that we have not even thought about. It is in the arena of worship where we see the playing out of these two different ways of seeing reality. Church services in the modern world were organised around one item at a time. A prayer. Then a testimony. Then the announcements. Then a hymn. Then the sermon. All joined together by a phrase that you will hear only on plane flights and in churches: "And now, at this time, we . . ." Getting nauseous? Welcome to Pancake World. A world where reality exists simultaneously on many levels, many dimensions, many spheres, many pancakes, all stacked up vertically and interweaving with each other. Layer upon layer of pancakes. A layer of text projected on the wall. A layer of music. A layer of images. A layer of aroma. A layer of poetry that finds its place within the stack of media that are all expressing the message of God in their own unique way and creating a symphony of random connections that could only happen once. Worship becomes an experience where multi-media connects to multi-tasking minds and God gets more options of how He wants to speak. Excuse me while I quote myself in the article "In search of Postmodern Worship". http://www.wonderings.com/new_page_9.htm.. "We could say that postmodern worship is increasingly vertical rather than horizontal. Rather than being a series of events that are linked together in a chronologically progressive fashion, the elements of worship are curated in a multi-layered collection of moments that embrace all the senses, all at the same time." It is a way of worshipping where we no longer ask how long we can go but rather how deep or high we can go? What media can we use to overlay or underlay the message to enhance what is being communicated? Nothing new under the sun, of course. Ezekiel did a mixed media piece that did not include the spoken word - God's idea, not Ezekiel's. The six sons of Jeduthun (I Chronicles 25:3) were mixing their media also. "Under the direction of their father they proclaimed God's message, accompanied by the music of harps . . ." Hey, that must be the first account of digital storytelling in the Bible. Anyway, bubbles and couches will be used symbolically in this month's Epicenter Worship Installation http://50movements.com/epicenter.htm.. I dont know what to do about the pancakes.

Andrew Jones
The Boaz Project

*This article has been embedded with a MTD (Modernist Tendency Detector). This may cause the reader to see 3 points and, upon noticing that all except one is alliterated, may trigger a uncontrollable urge to reach for a dictionary and find a breakfast food starting with "P".

If you would like to respond to any of the issues raised in this article then go to MESSAGE BOARD: Epicenter