John T. Stough :: Friends blog

Spent the weekend and Monday fiiming for Shapevine Learning Podules (more on those coming) with Ori Brafman in San Francisco and Neil Cole in Venice. Spencer Burk (www.theooze.com) and I were with Ori in his cool row house digs in SF. Ori is one of the most gracious guys you'll ever meet; not to speak of his great brain. You will want to be sure and order his latest book, SWAY. 

Monday was on the beach with Neil Cole as we filmed for an upoming Podule based on his latest book, Search & Rescue. Again...get Neil's book. Great stuff on Discipling from 2 Timothy. This is the big need in the church and Neil is classic discipler.

 

If you liked The Starfish & The Spider, by Ori Brafman, then you will want to order SWAY. Ori has been a great friend to Shapevine from the beginning. I will be with him this weekend in San Fran to film content for an upcoming Shapevine Learning Podule.

You can preorder SWAY HERE

 

Below is the review by Kirkus Reviews:

Economist Ori Brafman and his psychologist brother Rom explain why "the more
there is on the line, the easier it is to get swept into an irrational
decision." The authors offer an accidental motto that ought to be engraved over every
casino in the world, to say nothing of every stock exchange. Adding a page
to the small but growing literature of behavioral economics, they examine
these irrationalities. It makes sense that egg sales, for example, would be
up around Easter and at the beginning of the month, when paychecks had been
freshly deposited. It makes less sense that when egg prices drop a little,
people buy more of them than they perhaps can eat, but when they rise by the
same amount, people cut back on their consumption by two and a half times.
"This feeling of dread over a price increase," write the authors, "is
disproportionate to the satisfaction you feel when you get a good deal." In
other words, we seem programmed to expect disappointment and to fight harder
to avoid losing a buck than to earn one in the first place, messy matters
that carry the reader into the deeper, more complicated recesses of the
mind. Also, "we often ignore all evidence that contradicts what we want to
believe." Eureka! The Brafmans' book probes less deeply into economic
behavior than does Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational (2008), but it is
richer psychologically, a worthy companion to Malcolm Gladwell at his best.
One of those rare books that explains the obvious in ways that are not
obvious at all.

If you are familiar with the concept of Victor Turner's Communitas (or not) you should check out the way this plays out through The Biggest Loser. I love this show (I lost 30 pounds over a 4 month period in '06 by learning how to eat and getting back to consistent work outs), got hooked on it a couple of years ago. Anyway, the concept of Communitas is sooo different than community. Most churches just experience, at best, community--fellowship. But communitas is different; it happens when a group of people go through a collective crisis. Turner called it Liminality. It is when the group faces an adaptive challenge...they must "adapt or die". When we truly journey on mission we face these challenges and communitas happens. Turner's stuff is essential reading.

Like many of you, my day-to-day world has a lot to do with church planting. The irony is that I am looking for a new word to use for church planting because the real facts are that God doesn’t call us to plant churches. One of the primary problems in the church is that we think He did. And we act like it; to the exclusion of the thing Jesus did tell us to do—make disciples. The honest fact is that most church planters don’t plant churches…they plant worship services.  Face it. Its true.

I hear the stories (and can tell them)—Joe Cool came into town, started Bling Bling Community Church and they had 300 people at their first service. These are the guys who write and are written about in most books and articles, and speak at the conferences. When is the last time you attended a church planting event where the main speaker shared how he labored for three and a half years and was only left with 11 guys?

I am well aware that plenty of deconstruction has taken place in our conversations over the last ten years and we don’t want a lot more of it. The systemic issue as I see it though is that we still do not view discipling as the primary focus and needed activity within the life of our faith communities. Jesus said “I”—hear that—“I will build MY church…”  Funny huh? God told David the same thing, “I don’t need you to build a house for me…I’ll take care of that.”

Discipling takes a different type of commitment and yields slower growth. But wow, what fruit it yields once it’s taken root.  Discipling happens primarily away from the pulpit. It doesn’t happen simply by transferring knowledge from one head to another. It happens by apprenticing others to the ways and means of Jesus. My buddy Alan Hirsch says it constantly, “We don’t think our way into a new way of acting. We must act our way into a new way of thinking.” If we have to wear a WWJD bracelet to remind us what Jesus would do in a situation then we’re toast. If when Payton Manning drops back, with four 320 pound dudes pressing in on him, looking at a Zone 2 coverage scheme, and he has to look at a note card to know what to do…he’s toast. This is why he studies (head knowledge) and this is why he practices constantly facing those situations, so that he will not have to think on game day. He will simply react because his coaches (disciplers) have prepared him.