Jay: We have white-hot faith, commitment to a cause, contagious relationships and rapid mobilization. Your fifth one was adaptive methods; speak to that one a little bit.

Steve: The heart of the Christian faith never changes and movements are very rigorous in that conservative side of the faith of saying there are some things that will always be true about the Christian faith.

Dynamic movements, while they are very conservative when it comes to the cause, they’re radical in their methods. In other words, they won’t change the message or the heart of the message, but different contexts in different situations, they adapt how that message is communicated or what the structure and the form of the church or the mission agency looks like or how we do evangelism.

They are willing to change everything about themselves to get the job done, except the heart and core of the message. They say, If the internet is going to make an impact we’ll do that; if it’s the printing press puts the scriptures in everyone’s hands, we’ll use it.

Movements pick up on what’s working and are continually changing their methods, but never changing their message.

Jay: Are there some of these characteristics that tend to resonate or do all five tend to just have the same sort of impact?

Steve: My personal bias is white-hot faith. But if I took a step back from how I’m wired, I’d say it’s important to hold the five in creative tension. If your bias is white-hot faith you may need to be a bit more intentional about some of the others. Like baking a cake, you’ve got to have the ingredients in the right balance in order to pull it off.

Two observations on the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss:

1. Semmelweis was passionately engaged and humble enough to learn.

He wanted to save lives. He did not accept current reality. He was a driven man. He knew what his mission was—save lives. And he did something about it. He did not come with preconceived notions of how it was to be done. He learned by doing and reflecting not by theorizing.

Clear, and passionately committed to the cause, but teachable and flexible in how to get the job done. In contrast his colleagues were indifferent to the suffering of the women and rigid in their methods.

2. Semmelweiss faced relentless opposition.

The medical establishment did not want to know about his breathtaking achievements in saving lives. They opposed and ridiculed his methods despite his clear, consistent and repeated successes. It was not until the weight of evidence was overwhelming that the medical profession accepted Semmelweis’ methods.

Thomas Kuhn, studied the history of science to see how a new scientific paradigm triumphed over an existing one. The new paradigm does not prevail by convincing its opponents, it triumphs because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that embraces the change. The first to pursue and accept the new paradigm were typically young or new to the field; they did not have much invested in the existing way of seeing things. As we have already noted, breakthroughs in any sphere of human endeavor occur on the fringe, not at the center.

What should we do with this?

Get passionate and keep learning. Make sure you are clear about the cause and desperate to adapt to make it a reality. Expect opposition. Keep asking yourself, What does success look like? How will I recognize it when I see it? How can I multiply what’s working?

What’s my cause? Godly leaders, multiplying churches that make disciples. Everywhere. That’s what I look for, and when I find it I ask, “Why?” and then I ask, “How can we get more of this?”

This year I’m praying and working for 10-15 multiplication hubs around Australia—church plants that reach lost people and multiply, no matter what their size. The lessons we learn from these will be invaluable for the wave of church plants.

Next time you go into a hospital and come out alive this is the gentleman you should thank: Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), a nineteenth century Hungarian doctor.  

He discovered there was one cause to the unusually high rates of women dying from “childbed fever” or blood poisoning following childbirth—dirty hands.

At the Vienna hospital in which he worked, one maternity clinic had a 10% fatality rate following childbrith, another was less than 4%. Semmelweis wondered why.

Then a close friend was accidently cut by a student’s scalpel while performing a postmortem examination and died. A postmortem revealed the death was caused by a similar condition to the one that was killing mothers in the maternity ward.

Semmelweis saw the connection and concluded that it was contact with corpses that somehow was fatal to these women and to his friend. This was confirmed when he discovered that the ward with a 10% fatality was attended by medical students who had performed postmortems, while the ward with a 4% mortality was not.

Semmelweis began requiring hospital staff to wash their hands in chlorinated lime between autopsy work and examination of patients. The immediate result was a ten-fold drop in fatalities.

The response of the medical establishment was opposition to Semmelweis’ conclusions and recommendations. Their was no scientific theory to back up Semmelweis’ findings. The germ theory of disease was decades away from discovery.

When his term expired Semmelweis was not reappointed by the hospital. He left Vienna for Budapest humiliated and took up a relatively insignificant, unpaid position at a small hospital. Childbed fever was rampant there, under his supervision the hospital introduced hand washing and the disease was virtually eliminated.

His dramatic successes continued to be ridiculed and rejected by the medical establishment in Vienna and Budapest.

From 1861, he suffered from severe depression and became obsessed with the topic of childbed fever in every conversation. In 1865 his family lured him to a mental institution. When he tried to leave he was severely beaten by guards, put in a straightjacket, and locked in a dark cell. He died two weeks later from extensive internal injuries. The autopsy revealed blood poisoning—the same condition he had attempted to eliminate in maternity wards.

Semmelweis’ methods finally gained acceptance years after his death, when Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease which provided the explanation for Semmelweis’ findings.

I wonder how many people are alive today because of his pioneering work?

The next post will have some reflections on what we can learn from Ignaz Semmelweis.

Apple didn’t invent the idea of the iPod. A British furniture salesman named Kane Kramer did thirty years ago. He was 22 at the time.

The point?

Breakthroughs in fashion, technology, science, art, warfare, sport “in every sphere of life” and most especially in the renewal and expansion of the Christian faith. . . . breakthroughs ALWAYS occur on the fringe. NEVER at the centre.

So where do you like to hang out?

So what should the churches do? Why not go to Adriatic coast where the people are and bring a 30 metre inflatable church?

You may think this is a joke, but there is a serious side as the BBC report reveals.

The best methods are adaptive, flexible, reproducible, functional and simple enough to be contagious.

Here’s an example from my email traffic.

Hi Brian

How’s it going?

I have an Aussie mate living and working in Europe. He’s reaching out to the other single young adults “internationals” at work and around the city.

It might be the beginning of a church plant. He’s a really good connector.

Been talking to him re taking the next step of running some discovery groups/bible studies.

Back in the dark recesses of my mind was our discussion years ago about your simple model of bible studies. It was so simple I forgot the details! But that’s usual for me.

Would you mind giving me a few bullet points describing what you do and I’ll shoot it to him and if he’s keen maybe he could call/skype you.

What do you think?

Steve

Hi Steve,

Yes it is very simple and yet seems to be effective for both Seminary graduates and non-Christians…

Each week we read at least a book before we get together… Genesis week one, Exodus week two… (Joshua, Judges, Ruth week 6)

When we come together for coffee we share the three things we loved about it.

[note: we want people to love the bible and when people share what they loved, they are really sharing the things that jumped out at them… the things God is most likely speaking to them about.}

Primary goal is to focus on what they Loved.
Secondary goal is to teach them to Listen to what God is saying to them through his word.
Lastly, over time the bible is Learned.

Life-long Christians have the hardest time with this… they either try to make it a “Bible answer man” time… which we do not allow (if there is a question or two we may talk about it at the end.) or they try and make it a “look how deep and smart I am.”

We had a seminary student who was sharing from commentaries and I had to call him on it… I want to hear what God is doing in your hearts quit trying to impress people with your head.

My group meets in Starbucks (it is a value to us to not do this in homes but in public places) we pray, then we go in a circle three times around sharing our three things, after someone shares it is not uncommon for others to say how and or why they might have loved that same verse or passage… after three times around we pray and end.

Simple. The job of the leader is to have passion for the bible and cultivate it in the people of the group.

Very brief… hope this helps.

Brian.

Brian is a church planter in Glasgow, Scotland. You can read his excellent blog here.

Here’s what Chip and Dan Heath have to say about making ideas stick.

1. Simplicity. To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission–sound bites are not the ideal. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound.

2. Unexpectedness. We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. We can use surprise–an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus–to grab people’s attention. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity.

3. Concreteness. We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: ‘A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.’

4. Credibility. Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves. Ronald Reagan asked, “Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago.”

5. Emotions. How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness.

6. Stories. How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.

Have a read of the Gospels with these six points in mind. I’d give Jesus six out six for making ideas stick.

Thanks to David May for another great summary. Why not get on his mailing list?

“Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” (Chip Heath, Dan Heath)

Wayne Pickford believes, “Wrestling is the opera of the working class.”

Wrestling is an important part of his strategy for reaching working class people in the steel mill town of Berkley, NSW.

That’s Wayne on the right just about to drive the other guy’s head into the canvas.

You can read about that part of his story in: Wrestling against flesh and blood

I caught up with Wayne last week in Sydney and interviewed him for next1000. Here’s the full interview: Wrestling against flesh and blood II.

I just want to reflect on two innovative insights I gained from talking to Wayne about his church plant.

1. Recruit evangelists to your church planting team

In every church there are frustrated evangelists just waiting to be recruited to a church planting team. Others in the church think they are weird. That’s because they are not meant to be hanging around Christians.

Wayne is one of those weirdos. He recognized his own kind and turned them into a church planting team that is reaching the working poor in Berkley.

2. Wrap the Gospel in love

Wayne had to teach his team how to love people and share the Gospel. He adapted Matthew Barnett’s Adopt A Block strategy. The team goes out weekly in pairs and adopts 30-50 households to visit and care for. As they develop a relationship they share Christ and people come to faith.

So here’s Wayne’s innovative insight: the Gospel, wrapped in love will change lives.

And I thought his secret of success was wrestling. . .

When I first went to India almost 20 years ago, a very wise worker said to me, “You can’t change Indian culture; you have to fit into it.” In the beginning I thought this was about my culture stress related to learning new language and culture. Now, I know it was about much more than how I talk, eat, or go to the bathroom.

The structure of church required to self-replicate in India is determined by Indian cultural and community structures, not by the structure of church with which I am comfortable. As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible for me to determine the structure that will work. My strategy, therefore, must be flexible and determined by what the local people require in order to continue functioning within their community structures.

It is the structure of the community that determines the kind of church to be planted and the strategies to be used to reach the community. If you believe in only one kind of church, or if you understand only a few styles of church and allow these tool structures to determine your strategies, then you will fail more often than succeed in church planting. Success will be found in creative and intentional diversity of strategies and churches.

David L Watson

David and Jan Watson feature in David Garrison’s Church Planting Movements. When Watson reported to his mission agency that they were seeing hundreds of new churches planted and thousands of new believers, the mission was skeptical. So he told them, “Come and see.” They did and the rest is history.

Here’s the full article: Structures and Strategy. Check out David’s website for articles, podcasts and video casts, all for free, on church planting movements.

Still thinking about adaptive methods and church planting movements. You’re probably sill wondering what they are and why we should be bothered with them.

Here’s a few more examples to add to the five we already have.

Alcoholics Anonymous is an adaptive method. So is lectio divina, a simple pattern for reflecting on the Scriptures.

John Wesley’s bands, classes, societies, circuit-riders were an interlocking system of adaptive methods. Paul Gupta and Chris Marantika turned their theological colleges into adaptive methods and are planting thousands of churches as a result.

Natural Church Development qualifies as an adaptive method.

Christain Swartz calls them “functional structures”. Bob Logan talks about “reproducible systems”. I thought about the term “organic means”. But it sounded too much like a fertilizer, so I settled on “adaptive methods”.

What are they?

1. Adpative methods are invisible
Adaptive methods are the rules of the game. They’re not the game itself. Adaptive methods get out of the way and let kingdom life and ministry happen.

2. Adpative methods are simple
The simpler the more likely they’ll spread. But doing the Ignatian Spiritual expercises is not “easy”. Simple, but not easy.

Lectio divina works because after a while the pattern of reflection on the Scripture becomes second nature and you encounter God. God is the game.

3. Adpative methods are viral
Nobody is organizing the phenominal growth of the internet. It’s a virus. Sure, Apple “controls” the iPod phenomena, but does it? iPods are a virus. The Alpha course is a virus. Someone is responsible for Alpha. But they’re not in control.

You can water it. You can fertilize it. You can weed it. You can watch it grow and multiply. But you’re not in control of an adaptive method.

4. Adpative methods upset the bozos
Someone once asked Neil Cole, “Aren’t you concerned to have all these people meeting without supervision? What happens if they get out of control?”

Neil’s response: “They’re reading 30 chapters of Scripture a week. They’re confessing their sins to one another and praying for each other. I hope they get out of control!”

Don’t expect the bozos to enjoy adaptive methods.

5. Adpative methods are discovered by fools
You can’t engineer success with an adaptive method. You can try a lot of stuff and see what works. Even better, hang around the people who are trying a lot of stuff and steal what works.

But you won’t learn a thing from them unless you’re stupid. You have to be stupid and know it. Smart people already know the answers. They don’t have anything to learn.

How important are adaptive methods?

They appear again and again as a one of the five characteristics of dynamic church planting movements. Only a bozo would ignore them.