Video: Lisa Randall and the Large Hadron Collider

Video: Lisa Randall and Kyle Cranmer,
watch it here..............
and note her next book is to be called "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"

Wolfgang Simson: a wedding a week and megachurches of 21

(funny story of photo)

From "Houses That Change the World," p. 26-27:


The invisible line: from organic to organizational:

As any family get-together will teach us, we can accomplish the goal of fellowship without the need to be heavily structured. Families can get along quite well without a master of ceremony, a word of introduction, a special song, a sermon by father and a vote of thanks by mother. These things happen at weddings and other festivals, but not in everyday life. Church, however, is not an artificial performance, it is for everyday life, because it is a way of life.

There is, in each culture, a very important numerical line we can cross: from the organic to the organized, from the informal to the formal, from spontaneous to liturgical. I call this most important line the 20-barrier, because in many cultures 20 is a maximum number where people still feel ”family”, organic and informal, without the need to get formal or organized. Organisms are structured, too, and I am not advocating a total absence of order and structure. But, different to an organized series of meetings which are typically structured from outside, organisms are usually structured from within.

The nature of a meeting defines and therefore limits the size of a meeting. If we cross the ”20-barrier”, the group stops to be organic, and starts to become formal, and even feel the need to follow a set agenda. Effectiveness in relationship and mutual communication goes down, and the need for someone to coach and lead the meeting goes up. As a result, the housechurch looses it’s main original attractions, changes it’s values, and starts to develop totally different dynamics. It often simply stops functioning by itself, spontaneous and lively, lead invisibly and unobtrusively through the inbuilt family mechanisms of fathering and mothering, and needs to be literally ”run”, organized, and visibly lead into a new and organized life form - if there is such a thing.

The original organism is then a thing of the past, still alive, but trapped into a formal structure that chokes it, conditions it, and ultimately could prevent relational and spontaneous fellowship in the name of organized fellowship. Biblical koinonia means fellowship or sharing, giving generously and participating and sharing something with someone. One of the fatal aspects of this line-crossing is that the original organic form of fellowship usually looses it’s internal reproduction potential, and can only be cloned and copied or even literally manufactured and finally mass produced with huge effort from outside that greatly ignores and overrules it’s own inbuilt explosive growth potential. It is a fact of church history that it has always been a swift step from organized religion to institutionalism and fossilization.

Person number 21:
One of the most important decisions in terms of the structure and future of a church anyone can possibly make, therefore, is what you do when person number 21 walks through the door. Structurally, that brings the church into the red phase. You either continue growing upwards and become organized and loose your housechurch-dynamics, and may ultimately hit the 200-barrier, or you divide the housechurch into two or three units and multiply it, thus growing sidewards. You may not even notice a 200-barrier this way.

A wedding a week?

Life in any culture has two aspects, the private and the public, everyday-life and the special events, celebrations of weddings, function and festivals, funerals and traditional happenings. Both aspects of life have their own and valid ways of expression. Everyday life is usually expressed in the family, the basic cell unit of every society and culture. Families are usually very organic, informal, relational and consist of whatever it takes to share lives. Weddings and other functions are extraordinary events, for which everyone duly prepare; they are usually formal, need heavy organization and are often highly structured.

Imagine you would have to attend a wedding each week. It follows the same basic pattern, has even the same bridegroom and bride, and maybe even the food is the same. After some weeks the excitement would considerably wear down. You would know what to expect, and you know what’s going to happen next. It still would remain a nice thing, a beautiful tradition, but it would feel odd to have the same type of festival each week.

We need to be careful not to do this with church. Jesus has shown us a way to live, not only a way to celebrate. Both aspects are necessary, both are good. But everyday life is not like a wedding, as any married couple can tell us. If we allow church to take on only ”celebration structures”, we will start celebrating ”a wedding a week”, and our behavior will soon be far removed from real life and cease to make sense to ordinary people. It would become an artificial weekly event and performance. If church is a God-given way of community life, and if life takes place in the basic unit of a family living in a home, there is nothing more appropriate for the church to be a housechurch, to be the church based in simple, ordinary, everyday homes. Housechurches are not only a way for us humans to express community, they are one of God's means to achieve community.

Small churches may already be far too big:
Creation itself teaches us that nothing healthy grows endlessly, but stops growing at a point and starts multiplying. Bigger is not necessarily better or more beautiful. Could it be that in this perspective - to grow a church bigger - everything is right - expect the direction in which we look? Could it be that the problem is not so much to break the 200-barrier on the way up, but the 20-barrier on the way down? If real church growth spells m-u-l-t-i-p-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n, then growth may not be upwards at all, but sidewards. Has all that talk about ”big is beautiful” tricked our thinking? If yes, maybe we will have to cut out a Zero in our mindset: an average church would then be just 8, 10 or 12 people; a large church has 15, and a megachurch sports 21.
-Wolfgang Simson

ReImagining Denominations like Jews in Hyperspace

Gustavo:
...Since the Protestant Reformation there have been lots of protestant denominations. What course could the denominations take in Latin America?

Anyul: Phylis Tickle has an interesting theory, she says that the denominations that do not engage with the emerging conversation are condemned to the decrease of its membership and later extinction, but I don’t believe this concept applies across the board… not even in North America. What I see is that there is a certain tendency in the denominations to strengthen their structures and to centralize even more. The “apostolic movements” are a recent example of that, which in my understanding are simply another effort to centralize the protestant church even more.
- Interview, Latin-American Emergence

Having witnessed examples of the indigenous Latin American denominations (which most North Americans have no idea they even exist) fall into "parallel universe" versions of the same traps as our North American denominations (especially shoring up and entrenching Protestantism and defining it against Catholicism...which as the very name of the Protestant movement betrays, was largely the point)....one realizes that even "apostolic networks"/new wineskins become new whineskins by default.

Is may be best to refuse to categorize ourselves as "Protestant" (even for legal purposes),
or does that inevitably lead to us starting yet another stream/denomination.
The "statements of faith" of most denominations/networks betray us .

We are afraid of being interpreted as a cult.
Which of course the early church was branded.
Until pastors have been offered drugs (see Seay) a but more, we may not even be pastors;
or even post-denominational....

.............................or even Christian yet.

What the heck are we pastors doing leading churches anyway?

Until 0ur "enlightened" and "emerging" churches morph into a whole new way of being and defining (beyond even good and helpful labels) ourselves, we may not be found fully faithful.

It's high time for each group/network/denomination to find it's redemptive place in the grand "fidelity of betrayal" that God is birthing..

It's past time to not just get out of the box to rethink, reimagine, redream (and be temporarily "closed for reprayers" as the shift happens)... but maybe out of our own dimension (:


Sane madman Cliff Pickover is a huge help for our times in this matter, a multiplex genius.
One of his creative and novel novels relates here-- see interview below.
In redreaming, it's time to pull out all the stops, orbit the giant hairball of our systems..
and reprogram ourselves to think creatively like..uh, Jews in hyperspace:

Finally, can you tell me a little more about your book, Jews in Hyperspace? What is it about, and can readers without any background in science or Judaism understand it?

Jews in Hyperspace is one of my favorites, and I published it directly to the Kindle. I give a free excerpt here -- a website at which I also tell your readers how the book came to be written.

Readers need no special background in science or Judaism to enjoy the wondrous adventure. In the book, I mix higher dimensions and religion, miracles and modern technology, and politics and physics to produce a gripping tale set in a future Jerusalem. It’s a strange blend of scientific thriller and a quest for religious harmony.

April, here’s the premise. Orthodox Jews are disappearing from Jerusalem. One moment they are praying at the Western Wall, and in the blink of an eye, they seem to evaporate, occasionally leaving behind only their fur hats—their shtreimels—that sit like small, soft flying saucers, perched on stone pavement in the dwindling light. In order to build the Third Temple while being respectful of the Islamic structures on the Temple Mount, the Jews have discovered a way to access a fourth spatial dimension. They will build the Third Temple invisibly "above" the Temple Mount and "above" the Mosque in the direction of the fourth dimension. I discuss everything from the future of Israel and Jerusalem to Parallel Universes, the building of Third Temple in Jerusalem, Nephilim, angels, and the fourth dimension.

Without indie publication, this novel would be difficult to publish. Jewish publishers are not accustomed to publishing science fiction. Thus, it would surely be difficult to find a route to publication through Jewish publishers.
Interview

Of course the obvious irony here..though we need a temple tantrum... the invisible building of the New Temple in a new dimension, when translated too directly into doing church ("The 40 Days of Purpose-Driven Building a Temple in Hyperspace...and Beating the Heretics to Heaven") can easily wind up being just another way of topping the other denominations/ common 'enemy') system. We upend, and end up bankrupt..

..and pro-Protest-ant again.

I mean a general seeing things from a fresh perspective...

Bono was right: every decade or so (and especially every 500 years or so), we have got to "go away and dream it all up again,"

At our "church," we even let
people...even, gasp!...women like this (see pic)..

even (mercy!) Hispanic (full circle here) women like Alma here,
read books like this...during the "service."

But that still doesn't necessarily make us post-Protestant.
(i mean, we still have a website and a statement of faith...and a "service")..
Help...I need a 40 day retreat in Hyperspace..

Lisa Randall to Colbert: "There are other dimensions that have never even heard of you"

"Lisa Randall tells Stephen Colbert that there are other dimensions that have never even heard of him":

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lisa Randall
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Brian Greene TED Talk on string theory

Wolfgang Simson Audio: 5 Steps of Apostolic Migration

Wolfgang Simson on "The 5
Steps of Apostolic Migration..."

Audio here:
Part 1 and Part 2

Summary posted at


THE PAROUSIA NETWORK of House and Cell Churches: link

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to the Church,

Carlo Caretto, Love Letter to the Church, from Roleheiser's Forgotten Among the Lilies – Learning To Love Beyond Our Fears:

How much I must criticize you, my church and yet how much I love you!
You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more that I owe anyone.
I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.
You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.
Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.
Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!
No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go?
To build another church?
But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects.
And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church.
No, I am old enough. I know better!
-Carlo Caretto,