Presentation Slides

Editor's Notes

• #2: Note to whom I understand myself to be speaking--EMU identity and shared values: EMU embodies the enduring values of the Anabaptist tradition: Christian discipleship, community, service, and peacebuilding.Together we worship God, seek truth, and care for God's creation.
• #3: The point here is to link this talk to institutional strategic planning--to point out the limits of the places we do not often go. Even though we engage in SWOT analysis of contextual factors it is rare to look at the spiritual context in which we find ourselves. I would like us to push out a bit to think about the implications of focusing more specifically on this reality.
• #4: There are two related issues concerning means and ends. The first, on this slide concerns the problem of misunderstanding “ends”--not critiquing how our controlling narrative conditions us to think about ends that may not be God’s. The problem here is confusion over where “this” is all going and our ability to use that understanding to determine the way we live. Our inability to have a reasoned discussion about what we believe is related to the abuses of eschatology in our modern American context. Dispensationalism so dominates American understanding of the “ends” that we should really refer to our preferred national narrative as some form of ambient dispensationalism--everyone (right, left and center) has their preferred apocalypse. Pre-millenial and pre-tribulational dispensationalim seems to be accepted even by a large number of Mennonites in NA today (ergo-many of the students that show up in your classes). A late-arriving theological innovation that found root in the fertile soil of American exceptionalism, pre-millenial dispensationalism’s rootedness in our collective narrative seems to make all of us squeamish about talking about ends at all. But what are WE hoping for? Should that matter to how we design courses, teach and prepare students? I want to return to these questions in the second half but recognize that our unwillingness to really focus on “the big ends” keeps us from challenging students to look beyond their preparation here as merely something that will launch them into successful careers, with some vague sense of the American dream or good lives of service.
• #5: The second area of confusion--related to the first--is a lack of consideration of “ends” at all. This and the following slides point out some of this challenge and it is related to an uncritical acceptance of what Ellul calls “technique”--the focus on progress or an inattention to the reality of how even good means can lead to disastrous ends. Perhaps we see the struggle of this failure most in how we have come to discuss the need for economic growth.
• #7: This slide brings us back around to consider our true controlling narrative as we walk the Emmaus Road of our time. “We were hoping that with the appropriate incentives, tax structures, in the face of growing scarcities of one resources, human ingenuity WOULD provide an escape from… (global warming, terrorism, economic collapse, the end of oil… or whatever). We are, as Jacques Ellul warned over 40 years ago a “technique-focused” society. His first book on the subject was entitled in French: The Technique or The Stake of the Century… (as in “what is at stake here).
• #8: Quote from Ellul about technique and then a story about astonishing means (astonishing connectedness) and the reality of means-dominated technique--My last trip home… The key point here is that an inattention to ends means that we become part of monstrous systems without acknowledging or even being aware of our connection to the fallen systems all around us. We remain uncritical about means because we are not focused on ends. This should not paralyze us but remind us that without an attention to the ends to which we are applying ourselves we can and do participate in monstrous acts. Perhaps bring in an example from PHC--the magic bullet means to reduce child mortality--an inattention to ends leads to a great deal of research money and time being put into the technology (the technique) for saving lives but very little into the systems required to make changes last. Technique-focused solutions without delivery mechanisms certainly enrich the holders of patents and inventors but they do not necessarily meet the needs of the poorest most needy populations.
• #10: The key here is to bring eschatology into the classroom--a praxis-focused eschatology that we articulate through a collective discernment process
• #11: Should these images become integral to our controlling narrative? How do we make them that?
• #12: Note what the university says about ends in its mission and vision statements (most of what is written is about the proximate ends--not the ultimate ends). Mission EMU educates students to serve and lead in a global context. Our Christian community challenges students to pursue their life calling through scholarly inquiry, artistic creation, guided practice, and life-changing cross-cultural encounter. We invite each person to follow Christ's call to bear witness to faith, serve with compassion, and walk boldly in the way of nonviolence and peace. Vision EMU envisions a learning community marked by academic excellence, creative process, professional competence, and passionate Christian faith, offering healing and hope in our diverse world. To this end, we commit ourselves to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Note also that I recognize that not all students share the Christian faith--however, you make clear your identity and I believe that this identity must guide praxis of the university.
• #13: A second significant element that we do not perhaps delve into at the depth with which we should concerns the context in which we live, work and engage in acts of reconcilation--the end that we have already explored…
• #14: This slide should show book covers from Politics of Jesus, Barth’s Church and State, Marva Dawn, Walter Wink, Stringfellow, “Transforming the Powers”, and Ellul’s money and power and note the “heavy lifting” that has been done to establish the theological underpinnings to more deeply understand the reality of the powers of which Jesus, Paul and other NT writers speak. Note also that we live in perhaps the first generation in which the full development, recapturing of a more complete sense of the reality of these entities has come about. And yet I wonder to what extent we are bringing this analysis into the classroom in a way that engages students in a critical analysis of the institutions and ideologies with which they will come into contact every day of their lives. Further, I wonder to what extent we critically challenge our own participation in these fallen powers--the extent to which we view institutions--even Christian institutions--even institutions like EMU as fallen powers and address that fallenness in concrete ways. In the end there are two critical issues here: how do we prepare students to internalize this critical understanding of the context--the world in which they work AND, how does an institution like EMU acknowledge and deal with its own fallenness--its penchant for acting as a fallen power. I should note here that there remains much debate about the exact nature of the principalities and powers but there seems to be in these and other writings a clear consensus that whatever else they might be they ARE embodied in the ideologies and political and social structures (read, institutions) of our world. Further, there seems to be agreement that the powers are created for good, are, however, fallen and will be “redeemed”. It is the fallenness of the powers that creates the greatest challenge for us for it is in their fallenness that they engage in destructive and dehumanizing acts. My purpose in raising this issue is to ask to what extent these understandings find their way into our daily work, course designs, teaching and preparation for students. I raise it because I have been struck again and again by how little we acknowledge the reality of these powers and yet how all pervasive their effect is--not only “out there” in the world but in the falleness of our own institutions which are themselves powers that engage in dehumanizing practices.
• #15: Obviously a topic as large as this one (the Gingerich/Grimsrud volume comes from a conference held here in 2001 that was fully devoted to the theme and the bibliographical information it and the other volumes shown previously provide demonstrate the huge literature. I want therefore merely to summarize a few points in order to return to the two critical questions raised above: how do we prepare students to work in a world with such a “domination system”, which is how Wink refers to the powers in their entirety AND, equally as important, how do we as an institution of the church deal with the reality that we work within a fallen power--EMU. Perhaps the latter question is the most challenging… I would like to briefly summarize some points that I have found most helpful along three lines…
• #16: Yoder developed this concept in relation to a key power--the state--in acknowledging that the state has an ordering function within society.
• #17: In his Chapter on “Christ and Power” Yoder develops a similar notion and provides a useful summary of what the powers “are” (Wink does much more on this but Yoder’s is a useful summary)
• #18: This a quote from Willard Swartley and his analysis of evil and how power structures act… Notice here how the issue of “ends” resurfaces--powers seek to become ends in themselves rather than enabling humanity and the world to achieve the ends for which God created them… This may be a key to why we focus so little on the “big” ends--we become (as Wink states) enthralled with the powers.
• #19: Speaking about mammon as a power, Jacques Ellul says…
• #20: Time does not permit a full analysis of Stringfellow’s characteristics of fallen powers but it is amazing to me that his descriptions--written in 1973 and reflecting personal confrontations he faced during the Viet Nam war with the US government, I find his descriptions amazing and fully relevant to our day. I must add that while in their extreme these do not seem to be the problem of mission focused agencies, I have seen many of these at play in organizations with which I have worked. Those particularly related to communication and how we talk about ourselves are those I have seen in operation most often.
• #21: As I have looked at my own work in non-profit and academic settings over the past 25 years I see these as common ways of acting. To me, these explain many of the de-humanizing and dysfunctional aspects of various organizations and also demonstrate how our institutions--even faith-based ones--mimic the fallen structures of the world. I am thinking particularly here of the institution, to corporation (see the film “The Corporation--laws that made the corporation have the rights of a human and the amorality of marketing--nagging study). Talk to about where I have seen institutions playing with the truth as part of an allegiance building process Talk about branding. I realize that I may be stepping on toes--but the point is we cannot accept non-critically the techniques of the corporation--be careful about accepting the means without asking how it directs our ends. The point here is that all of these actions have deeper implications for how we act in terms of truth telling, raising money, planning, recruiting
• #22: Most critically with an acknowledgement of their reality and what they can and cannot do given the death and resurrection of Christ (Christus Victor).
• #24: This is a call to be the alternate community of blessing that we are placed in this time/place to be… There is no passivity here (important as we examine the implications of the foregoing for EMU)
• #26: So… where do these considerations leave us in a step beyond “strategic planning”? I return to my title because I believe that they key to the focus we need--a focus on ends (a praxis oriented eschatology) and a focus on the reality of the powers that surround us--lies in living a truly alternative lifestyle as an institution.
• #27: So... what does this all mean? I am suggeting that embracing a theology of weakness holds the promise to provide us with wisdom and clarity as we discern our way forward--ends clearly in mind--in the context of powers that seek to divert and co-opt our efforts at each turn. The choice of the theme of weakness may irk you given all the challenges you have faced in recent years as you struggle together to define the future of this institution. You might reasonably argue “Robb, we understand weakness. Whether we have wanted to or not we have been forced to walk that path. Where is your uplifting challenge as we launch into what promises to be a challenging--weakness filled--year?” Yes you might reasonably argue this and I thought long and hard about going this direction. In the end I realized that I can only challenge you to walk a path that I myself am committed to walk. I can only speak with integrity if I share with you what I have come to understand is my only chance of liberation from the co-opting and enthralling siren song of the powers. Weakness as liberation? Yeah right. Friends, one thing I learned as I entered the Anabaptist family is this: Jesus meant what he said… and he said it to us. This, I have been told is the key to everything. Indeed, not only did Jesus mean what he said but his life also speaks of a way of being--both representing a normative social ethic for the way we should be. We have accepted this in relation to our commitment to the way of peace in a world of hyperviolence. A world in which the myth of redemptive violence (as Wink calls it) is THE dominant paradigm. We believe in a “canon within a canon”--the Gospels as providing the essence of what our faith is about. We articulate it often in terms of “the upside down kingdom”. Given all of this we cannot NOT accept--indeed embrace--the concept of weakness not merely as a guiding principle but as an essential way of being in the world. One cannot confront the life of Jesus--from his stable birth, to his forty day fast and testing, to his homelessness, to his public ridicule by the powers of his day, to his garden plight, to his humiliation before Pilate, to his death--without concluding that the way of weakness is our modus operandi in this world. I commend to you, on this theme, Marva Dawn’s book referred to earlier. Dawn provides a remarkable and compelling argument that a central theme of all scripture (one lost to most of us) is that God accomplishes God’s plan in the world through our weakness. Just two quotes from Dawn and then a closing thought or two on what this might look like for us at EMU. My suggestions are preliminary and go only as far as my own path has taken me. I hope that they offer a starting point for discussing a way of being as an institution that will provide you with wisdom to learn together, teach together, live together and engage and prepare others to engage the powers as we walk together into our collective future. An important note: weakness in no way implies passivity or some false or self-effacing humility. At the same time we must be honest with ourselves that the very idea of embracing weakness not only feels alien to us but also, at the limit, absurd and offensive BECAUSE it offends our sense of privilege and our own sense of entitlement as citizens of the most powerful empire the world has ever known. We must be honest that to embrace weakness is to be deeply disloyal to our own controlling narrative.
• #28: Dawn, focusing on Paul’s passage on the role of weakness in his life suggests the following translation of a well-known passage.
• #29: This brings us back to a connection to the powers…and to the “big ends” of what God wants to accomplish in the world. So… what might this look like for EMU? What does it mean for an institution to embrace weakness? Let me suggest three elements and one overarching “organizing principle” and then we can discuss specifics of their application in the q/a and next session…
• #30: To me these represent a “whole” and build upon each other. All require a way of walking--not a program or special “focus” but a way of thinking about how we walk day to day. I would value more time to explore these with you in more detail and perhaps there will be space created for that at some point. Not prayer as talisman but prayer as alignment--prayer as articulation of need--prayer as the ultimate sign of weakness--prayer as confession. Recall what Ellul said about our participation in collective structural sin and recall that EMU IS a fallen institution. Prayer permits us to routinize our recognition of this reality even as we discern ways to overcome it. We know it intuitively but when we challenge the givens of our world we become subject to great pressure to conform. I know it is controversial to say this but I am increasingly convinced that we cannot do these things without abandoning engagement in partisan politics. We need to be able to step outside those battles in order to begin to model and talk about alternatives. Recent economic crash illustrates this--stimulus for what? Lower taxes… For what? This challenges the way we think about governance--are we church, are we business. To these I could add things like facing global challenges by focusing on the local and viewing this valley as boty a learning laboratory and the place to which this institution will commit itself to bring the healing and reconciliation you aspire to, moving against specialization (academic or otherwise) to develop truly interdisciplinary ways of facing the many challenges of globalization, examining anew the way of the radical reformers, getting comfortable with the language of spiritual warfare. Too much theology? Not just for the Bible department after all… True--I go back to identity, not merely an identity with which I connect in a cultural, historical way. Personally, I can’t do that since I don’t HAVE that history. I have always tried to listen to Mennonites and Anabaptists to learn the deeper commitments and understandings of the world that have motivated (historically) a culture-critiquing way of being. These are my learnings from you… I am merely trying to encourage you to think about how they might make you think differently about EMU. Personally, I believe that EMU is a critical institution for this time/place. I also believe that in this time we face so much uncertainty that we may have a chance to experiment with different ways of being, to open a conversation about how EMU might evolve in wholly new ways. We can move through doubt to liberation. I offer what I have said as a framework for thinking about that future