Seriously, the “business model” of the church runs the risk of having us lead our churches like we lead our corporations. An MBA is better than an M.Div.

We can be Spirit-led yet do things “decently and in order”. God is a planner, and we are made in that image.

It is said that the truly major differences between man and animals are that (1) man can plan for the future - we do not merely act out of instinct - and (2) man has opposable thumbs. Without (1) and (2), flipcharts could not be used and our entire economic system would collapse.

Pray and Plan. The two are not mutually exclusive.

One short comment about Strtgc Plnng gennerally as it applies to us:

In reviewing our cities plans I found myself having to interpret each plan, matching what they were saying with what I knew our goals and metrics to be. What a headache that became. We concluded that it was an error to leave the format, with the boxes and arrorws, as open ended as it is presented.

Instead, we will now include guidelines for each section, stating the values and metrics that should be addressed in each. For instance, the situational analysis section should require each city director to analyze his city against certain criteria - the known lagging and leading indicators - rather than by whatever comes to mind at that time.

Thanks for the link to my post on Bible reading over at Cerulean Sanctum. I pray it blesses you and your readers.

For the record, it seems wrong to me to identify Christianity (in any form) with Americanism, or to put too much stock in Christianity’s influence throughout American history. I see this much: that Christianity has had a much stronger influence on America than on any other country in history; that even the deist and freethinking founders were profoundly influenced by a biblically-permeated worldview; that America has been blessed and has prospered partly as a result of this. I believe that any nation that follows a predominantly biblical approach to the world is likely to experience some blessing as a result. To that extent I agree with this group. I get nervous, though, when some commentators attempt to take it much farther than that.

But the real point of this post was not to sort all that out. (That would have been a fine purpose, if it had been mine, but I had a different one this time.) It was to encourage the kind of mutual listening and conversation that you have exemplified. Thanks again.

We don’t like to consider the possibility that they are not newcomers to power but returnees, that the revivals that have been sweeping America with generational regularity since its inception are not flare-ups but the natural temperature of the nation. We can’t conceive of the possibility that the dupes, the saps, the fools—the believers—have been with us from the very beginning, that their story about what America once was and should be seems to some great portion of the population more compelling, more just, and more beautiful than the perfunctory processes of secular democracy. Thus we are at a loss to account for this recurring American mood.

If that doesn’t complicate it for you, I don’t know what will. Maybe the end — the deliberate third repetition of that ironic phrase, which follows what I hope is a solid debunking of SECULAR mythology:

The dupes, the saps, and the fools—the believers—prefer their re-enchanted past, alive to the dark magic with which all histories are constructed.

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Don’t get me wrong — I’m not trying to tell you that I’m in favor of providential history, only that what you read as a snide dismissal of your faith was intended as — and taken as by most readers — a snide dismissal of the secular liberal assumption that Christians, and particularly fundamentalist Christians, are fools. The bulk of the article is dedicated that rather than being a community of know-nothings, fundamentalists are engaged in a vast and impressive intellectual project, one that is more narratively compelling than that created by secularism.

Politically, I find both fundamentalist and secular mythology horrifying. “Providence” and “manifest destiny” are the twin self-deceptions we Americans have used for the expansion of empire. For a whole lot of people — Iraqis, Iranians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Congolese, Somalians, Vietnamese, Laotians, East Timorese, etc., etc., etc., etc. — that story, whether told by Rushdoony or John Foster Dulles or Bush or Clinton — is just a nightmare.