Barnabas File

Churches spend a lot of time on visioning processes and strategy planning.   Of course, sometimes these are a waste of time and effort.   The work is done and put on the shelf, leadership changes, or the ministry context changes due to unforeseen circumstances (economics, demographics, etc.).   This does not mean that we should not think about the future and the opportunities that God will provide in coming days, months, and years.   There are always open doors for those who look for them. In his e-book The Knight and the Gardener , futurist Cassidy Dale writes: The future cannot be “won” for any one party, group, nation, or religion.  Instead, the longer term we think, the more we realize we can only enable good futures to emerge by building robust capacities for people to solve problems we cannot yet foresee. Dale suggests that rather than pursuing a simple “problem-solving” approach, we should seek to discover a “meme”—a contagious idea—or a “m...

Futurist Cassidy Dale is leading an online class for the Wayne E. Oates Institute on “How Theological Worldviews Shape Our Ministry.” One of the resources for the class is an e-book written by Dale entitled “The Knight and the Gardener:  Worldviews Make Worlds.”   In this book, he points to two extremes on a spectrum.   At one end are the Knights who are always looking for a battle.   They are ready to go off on a crusade and see every issue in black and white.   They are defenders of the cause.   At the other end are the Gardeners who are always looking for something to fix or nurture.   They put all their time into bringing divergent constituencies together to accomplish some goal.   Gardeners want to creative lasting alternatives. At different points in a person’s life, he or she may be either a Knight or a Gardener, but each person tends to favor one style (or worldview) over another.      Abraham Lincoln might be seen a...