Just listened to Driscoll’s first talk aimed at mentoring pastors. He was saying that previously big was good – in organisations, churches, politics etc. The BIG would eat the SMALL. Now, he says, it’s the FAST who will eat the SLOW. We need to be adaptable to change. How fast can you respond? How fast can you change?
I’m not sure of the whole paradigm, but I have noticed that the two are connected. The bigger you get, the harder it is to respond to what’s going on around you and change quickly. So denominations can easily get left behind. (The Presbyterian denomination is still fighting battles from 20 years ago.) Big churches can be a little behind. New church plants are most adaptable to change.
Wait another ten minutes and another overarching paradigm will emerge.
This is eerily like watching my spirit-filled friends move from one ‘next big God movement’ to another.
Soon we’ll be learning that the slow will outdistance the fast as the rapidly changing ones find themselves marking time in order to identify essential elements that they junked along with everything the other stuff and reincorporate them into their body life.
Driscoll should know.
Some of the folk he used to make common cause with in the emergent movement have changed so quickly they’re no longer identifyably Christian.