Paradigm shifting our way into the Kingdom

One of the speakers at this week's Episcopal Village - Mission West [#epvwest in twitterspeak which I just started using because of said conference] was Dwight Friesen a church planter and professor at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle. I actually missed a good bit of his talk but I thought I'd make up for it by picking up his book. I am so glad I did. I'm only into the second cluster of chapters but it is excellent. It is actually starting to give me a practical vision of what emergence can means for the churches. In some ways it seems to be the missing link between new theology/ecclesiology and the interesting new practices/efforts. This is focused right on the nexus between those two to show how shifts in our thinking (and the hows/whys of those shifts) can lead to what he called the "networked kingdom".

The shift that Dwight is focusing on is atomistic to networked. I think we can even broaden that scheme a bit to get a better view (this is not even a little bit of a criticism of his work, just pulling back for a different perspective, plus adding some of my own lenses on shifts and paradigms).

What if "networked church" can be for us the link between "atomistic individuals" and "shalomic kingdom". In many ways this reminds me of the old (semi-gnostic) schema for enlightenment:

Hylic to Psychic to Pneumatic

Letting go of the gnostic element by making this a corporate endeavor:

Atomistic Individuals to
Networked Church to
Shalomic Kingdom

In the book creating links is tied to getting things into the light. Moving from Hylic to Psychic is all about creating connections and shifting from dark to light. I am proposing that third layer so that the framework of the network can be filled in by the spirit this becoming "pneumatic" or soul-filled/God-filled. This is the "I am among you" element of the Kingdom. In some ways it reminds me of superconductivity. When the material is super-cooled it becomes a perfect network through which electricity flows like frictionless fluid.

I am all for the frictionless flow of peace in the kingdom.

Well. Off to Eucharist. Many blessings.