Recently this year, my wife had started to study about the necessity to eat
. It’s good to marry a smart person as you can reap their added knowledge. Obviously you can live off of non-organic food, but there are many unanswered questions in regards to what non-organic foods would and could do to the human body.
As Chris Rock eloquently put, he wasn’t worried about eating “red eat”, it was the “green meat” that seemed problematic.
After reading and learning, I too agree that organic food is a safer and healthier way to go, as it lends to a more natural digestion for our bodies. It’s good for us, it feels right (something inside us wants natural organic things), and we believe it will help our lives down the road.
Along these lines, I have heard much about the Organic Church, or how a church must be organic to grow healthy, etc. So to compare organic food and organic church, you have to look at what is truly organic. I mean organic labeled food is still planted in a very systematic way, the end result being a consumable product. Truly organic food probably looks more like a random apple tree growing in the wilderness in the Adirondacks; I stumble upon it as I am trailblazing, pick and eat. You can pick and eat this apple because there aren’t pesticides or wax all over it, but there may be a worm lurking inside.
So an organic church may be systematically placed, or planted using books, such as
Neil Cole’s Organic Church or
Frank Viola’s Finding Organic Church, or by using a home or house church model. These books have good insight and information but by reading them and using techniques and tools to create an organic church, you may in fact be creating an organic labeled church. It still may be healthy, very good for you but in fact not truly organic. It may become less relevant in time, and as you peel away the layers, it might just be less organic than the label led you to believe.
Organic seems to be the church lemming at this point, I believing the Emerging/ Emergent lemming has jumped already. The House Church Lemming may be lumped in with the Organic, but it may have jumped as well. Church marketing plays heavily on what is in vogue with our community and culture, and therefore the hot button topic, word or phrase becomes the next lemming which many begin to follow, not knowing that ultimately it is headed for the same cliff as the others before.
The church needs to stop. Stop trying to be cool, relevant, be-all-end-all fix for everyone’s needs for love, acceptance, forgiveness, and brokenness. This is Christ’s job. The church is people, spanning over time and space, we are linked through this one belief that we love God and that we love everyone else too. We join together in saying the Lord’s Prayer and singing our redemption songs with all believers past and present, and when we sing and pray together, God hears us as one united voice, undivided by names, places, theological or liturgical differences. He hears the body working as one organic body.
My advice is to not seek out organic food or churches without doing your research. Understand what you may be getting yourself into, and realize that you may be disappointed with the taste. I recently created a beautiful salad with organic lettuce, only to realize that there were tons of small bugs in the depths of the romaine. It wasn’t bad or rotten; in fact it was truly organic as there were no pesticides to keep these little bugs away from my pure lettuce. When we go organic, maybe we have to be open to the bugs and flavors that we are not used to, and to beware of the lemmings that run through our gardens on the way to the cliff.
Recently this year, my wife had started to study about the necessity to eat organic foods. It’s good to marry a smart person as you can reap their added knowledge. Obviously you can live off of non-organic food, but there are many unanswered questions in regards to what non-organic foods would and could do to the human body.
As Chris Rock eloquently put, he wasn’t worried about eating “red eat”, it was the “green meat” that seemed problematic.
After reading and learning, I too agree that organic food is a safer and healthier way to go, as it lends to a more natural digestion for our bodies, and as we have eaten this way I do feel healthier and have lost some weight. It’s good for us, it feels right (something inside us wants natural organic things), and we believe it will help our lives down the road.
Along these lines, I have heard much about the Organic Church, or how a church must be organic to grow healthy, etc. So to compare organic food and organic church, you have to look at what is truly organic. I mean organic labeled food is still planted in a very systematic way, the end result being a consumable product. Truly organic food probably looks more like a random apple tree growing in the wilderness in the Adirondacks; I stumble upon it as I am trailblazing, pick and eat. You can pick and eat this apple because there aren’t pesticides or wax all over it, but there may be a worm lurking inside.
So an organic church may be systematically placed, or planted using books, such as Neil Cole’s Organic Church or Frank Viola’s Finding Organic Church, or by using a home or house church model. These books have good insight and information but by reading them and using techniques and tools to create an organic church, you may in fact be creating an organic labeled church. It still may be healthy, very good for you but in fact not truly organic. It may become less relevant in time, and as you peel away the layers, it might just be less organic than the label led you to believe.
Organic seems to be the church lemming at this point, I believing the Emerging/ Emergent lemming has jumped already. The House Church Lemming may be lumped in with the Organic, but it may have jumped as well. Church marketing plays heavily on what is in vogue with our community and culture, and therefore the hot button topic, word or phrase becomes the next lemming which many begin to follow, not knowing that ultimately it is headed for the same cliff as the others before.
The church needs to stop. Stop trying to be cool, relevant, be-all-end-all fix for everyone’s needs for love, acceptance, forgiveness, and brokenness. This is Christ’s job. The church is people, spanning over time and space, we are linked through this one belief that we love God and that we love everyone else too. We join together in saying the Lord’s Prayer and singing our redemption songs with all believers past and present, and when we sing and pray together, God hears us as one united voice, undivided by names, places, theological or liturgical differences. He hears the body working as one organic body.
My advice is to not seek out organic food or churches without doing your research. Understand what you may be getting yourself into, and realize that you may be disappointed with the taste. I recently created a beautiful salad with organic lettuce, only to realize that there were tons of small bugs in the depths of the romaine. It wasn’t bad or rotten; in fact it was truly organic as there were no pesticides to keep these little bugs away from my pure lettuce. When we go organic, maybe we have to be open to the bugs and flavors that we are not used to, and to beware of the lemmings that run through our gardens on the way to the cliff.
Disclaimer: Disney made up a big lie documentary and pushed lemmings of the cliff, I guess they don’t commit suicide, thanks Walt you inhumane liar.
-Dan
September 17, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Interesting. It’s true that once you begin rallying around creating something organic you end up making it inorganic by the very nature of your attempt. It’s hard though, to have a desire for something organic and to be faced with that quandry. When I was a kid I walked into a field, picked corn off a stalk, and ate it. It was the best corn I’ve ever had. I think this is how organic church is: it’s something you just come upon, you aren’t even seeking it, and it’s amazing when you find it. Churchitopia. Sorry, thar was corny.
September 17, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Yea Joshua, I know what you mean. I think the danger is when someone or a group of like minded someone’s find something organic, happen upon it, and then word spreads. Then the consumers try to re-create or capitalize on something that happened, cookie cutting whatever tangible events that may have taken place to create that church experience. That corn does sound good though!
September 22, 2009 at 9:23 am
@ Dan,
Good points in your post about being aware of blemishes in both organic food and church. It is vital to understand there will always be blemishes visible in anything truly organic. And if our food church looks way too polished then something artificial and potentially unhealthly is being used.
@ Dan and Josh,
I think this is why Jesus used the parable of the mustard seed when talking about his followers. Generally, wild mustard spreads like wildefire and is hard to get rid of because of its extensive root system. If it gets into an organized garden, it can create havoc. Those listening to Jesus speak at the time understood this. Today, I’m not so sure.
I think this is where Rob Bell could have gone a step further in Velvet Elvis. His argument that once the leader of a people dies the movement freezes in time trying to maintain that leader’s particular vision should go back to Jesus as well. Even Jesus said that his followers would do greater things than him.
The church today is trying to maintain particular aspects of Jesus and the disciples instead of allowing them to grow and be organic. This includes almost all of us, Shane Claiborne, Martin Luther, John Hagee, Rob Bell, Pat Robertson, etc.
The problem is everyone tries to cultivate the church according to their own ideas of what they think it shold look like. Much like we have hybrid fruits and veggies.
So is cultivating bad? Since so many of our veggies, even heirloom veggies, have been cultivated are they no longer organic? Is the same true of church? I mean look at how any cultural and pagan pratices have been absorbed by the church over the centuries. Our entire belief system is a hybrid. So can it ever be organic?
Should we, like the early Catholic church, try to breed out those traits we deem undesireable?
The only trait that I see as being undesireable is that of virulent, kudzu-like evangelism. It tries to crowd out every other system of religion on the planet instead of trying to be part of the larger religious ‘eco-system.’
-mike