Kretzmann & McKnight - Building Communities from the Inside Out

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture 1
May 2007
Building Communities from the Inside Out
By John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight
376 pages

How do we view our community? This is the question posed by Kretzmann and McKnight in their book Building Communities from the Inside Out. There are two ways to view our communities, there is the capacity focused approach and there is the needs-driven approach; Kretzmann and McKnight argued for the first approach. When we view our community from a needs driven lens, we see only deficits, poverty crime disability, risk and massive disorganization looms larger than life; the other lens however paint a picture of resourcefulness, present and obvious redeemable assets; relevant and available local skills; powerful forces of transformation that are waiting to be deployed.

Kretzmann and McKnight argue that organizations have a tendency to present the needs driven approach rather than the capacity focus. This is due to their needs to raise funds for their work, there is a tendency to justify what is being done as necessary by painting a very strong and dark picture. It is also paradoxical that when available assets are described from a distant, they look unreal to observers; they look unbelievable. It is easier to believe the bad news than to accept that God may be present in the midst of what looks like a total mess.

Kretzmann and McKnight did not theorize, they gave the reader a road map into practical engagement with realities on the ground. How do we meet the needs without blaming the victim? They made out survey forms, gave examples, and wrote chapters illustrating methods of communicating with people that are often regarded as being unapproachable. They wrote about harnessing and deploying the power of deploying local associations, working with youth, seniors, people with disabilities, and welfare recipients. They suggested that the empowerment process works better, let the local people do it for themselves only partner and support their activities.

Reading this book is meaningful to me. Two years ago, I wrote a paper on Creating Living Systems. The thesis of my paper seems to dovetail with the essence of the argument of Kretzmann and McKnight. People have resources – no matter how poor they look, do not assume evil in seemingly difficult community, the forces of good are also alive and active; seek giftedness among the people of the land and allow it to flourish develop relationships that strengthen the giftedness. Writing these words does not “deliver” me from the tendency to emphasize powerlessness – however. This is more so when you are dealing with people whose assumption is that “it must be wrong for us to be engaged.” Kretzmann and McKnight seems to suggest that we should not engage because it is wrong, we should engage precisely because there is something right in the systems. I wonder if it is.

I am confronted with a need to mobilize assets and resources. It often seems easier to do so from a need based perspective than from a strength-based perspective. This book however challenges me to reconsider this. God created all men with capacity to be productive, grace assures all men that there is ability to function; I am the needy one, I am the one that is challenged to look beyond myself into the beauty that the peoples life represent. Imago Dei demands the efficiency of the Godhead. Imago Dei is a misnomer if the Lord of the Image does not function in the midst of the Image. There must be a breath of life, a power of the spirit an asset from above a gift; I need to find this.

A focus on deficits transforms nothing, it creates a pity party, it creates a slavery mentality but it transforms nothing. A focus on asset calls out excellence, affirms grace,. Develops capacity, gives permission to the player to say I am able. I need to find a way to do this, I need to implement in a conscious manner what Kretzmann and McKnight recommends. I need to structure future activity around co leadership focused on ideas and capacities of the community in which I am working.

Missional Church - Guder

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture 1
May 2007
Missional Church
Edited by Darrell L. Guder
280 pages

With what tools can the Christian faith interfaith with post modernism? What will that interaction look like? How do you explain the supernatural to a skeptical post enlightenment society? On what basis can we interact with a society that clearly favors empiricism of science over what is presume to be the assumption of the Faith? These are the questions that Bishop Leslie Newbigins has engaged with in the last half of the 20th Century, and this work by Newbigin’s is the basis for a scholarly, researched investigation and discussion by North American Academicians; it is the result of this investigation and discussions that is presented as the book Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America.

Primary to every other question in this book is the question of how to define the role of the American mission activity in the world. American community has changed almost indescribably. There is a shift away from patriarchy, a rebellion against overarching authority and even a rejection of modernist assumption represented by science and humanistic reason. The sum of the conclusion that was reached by the writers of Missional Church is that the platform for engaging with the culture must be clearly Missional. The authority with which we can spread our message is directly related to the commitment to a holistic witness, a witness that engages the community at all layers and seeks to be a leaven leavening the lumps of the culture. There must be a conscious identification that sidesteps assimilation, a collaboration that rejects co-option; a commitment to an active virile vision of communal transformation. This assertion here says essentially that the North American Church has to be re-imagined.

The authors focused especially on the concept of “the autonomous self”. This is a cultural redefinition of the role of reason and relationships. Citizen’s right, consumer freedom, technological dominance, woven into layers of intuitively driven desires, feelings and choices. All of these affect the way the west engages with commercial issues, what is perceived as entertainment and how we even perceive God and make choices about Him.

The effect of modernity on North America is all encompassing. How this effect translate in the two major countries of North America differs – however. United States build’s modernity around mythical and religious perceptions and self describe from that platform. Concepts such as God’s Own Country, the bastion of democracy, the big brother nation and the policeman of the world are examples of this self-description (33). Canada on the other hand is devoid of the mythical in the national perception of the modern self. Canadian patriotism is differently defined in the respect for individuality, autonomy and the diversity of the nation. Diversity however has its cost in that the normating influence in the community is weakened by the distinctive individualism of its components (35).

Post Modernism focuses on the multiplicity of narratives rather than a monolithic meta-narrative. The meaning imbued and inputted to multiplicity of images interacting in rapid-fire order. This rapid experience of change dilutes the sense of one shared experience of the cohort and demands a plural; perspective as the norm. Specificity of information targeted at different demographics in the community accentuate this experience of pluralism. Howe does the American Church represent the gospel oin the face of such multiplicity of influence? How does the church evolve from a structure defined by a place in the society to a web of influence? How do we understand being sent when it is no longer about crossing the ocean to meet the other culture but about crossing the tables at the food court in the mall to meet the other? This is the real challenge faced by the North American church; It is the challenge of the structured church operating as a “paralocal” agency for outreach transforming its own community.

Developing leadership has been core to my ministry, so I find chapter 7, quite intriguing. “Missional Leadership: Equipping God’s People for Mission,” defines for mea context that I have experienced and yet desire to grow in.

1. Training and leading young leaders through the Emerging leaders Conference and the Lagos Leadership Conference has led to a re-investigation about our roles as missional leaders in our society.

2. From the dialogue and proclamation of the conferences and seminars, an hunger has gradually evolved demanding an engagement with more hence investigation of educational; ministry, health ministry and political education of people in Nigeria.

For this two activities the concept of bound set and centered set becomes very critical. Our God commitment to God and knowledge of Him must develop hands and feet and move ourt into the community, into the ordinariness of people’s daily lives. must develop hands We must go out there, an influence for God and Good in a society challenged by difficult paradigmatic realities. Faith must be “out there” rather than “in here.”

Mark Gornik - To Live In Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture 1
May 2007
To Live In Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City
By Mark R. Gornik
261 pages

Stories of life and faith are often many leveled. Mark Gornik’s book To Live in Peace tells the story of Inner City Baltimore and a town named Sandtown. It is a story of hope and the power of faith to transform space, it is secondarily a narrative about God’s glorious power in saving his creation and giving the world a new life from the travails of sin. Sandtown’s stories bring hope to those who longingly hope for God’s transformational power in the midst of conflicts and troubles on our earth.

Gornik’s thesis was simple; it asks a question: “how do we understand the calling of the church in the places like the inner cities of our world? Gornik is unequivocally committed to an understanding that it is as the church “practice peacemaking” at the core of its mission that hope and life will come to these blighted places (126).

Gornik’s treatment of the topic was powerful, he took a high ground and displayed a highly advanced understanding of the issues and the concept at play in urban renewal. He based his understanding on a firm commitment to theological solutions but was able to make the word become flesh as he weaves Sandstown’s stories into a critical thesis of argument, which thread sociology, theology, music poetry and personal ruminations.

Reading such chapters as “Excluded Neighborhoods” and “Out of the Ruins,” Gornik was able to present the extremes of complexity and the seemingly intractable reality of the situation in the inner city. Gornik’s The Inner city, like Dr Martin Luther King’s is not devoid of tension, it is however desirous of real justice. Gornik’s Justice is defined by biblical concept of “shalom.” Biblical shalom is not afraid of diversity, it does not sidestep complexity; it rejoices in the many troubles as well as the many gifts of Jehovah’s people.

Gornik’s statement that “peacemaking…must follow in the steps and the way of the crucified Christ as it confronts and deals with its own power…. ‘Cross bearing’ is the way of social change” (123) confronts my own systems of power in Africa. In my own life and context, ministry and relationships tends to be very hierarchical and patently power driven. Gornik while subscribing to the fact of power challenges the concept of “meek capitulation” of the dis empowered.

Historical co-option of Christianity by colonial and post colonial agents of oppression and the tendency of the African church to affirm the pacifist Christ without affirming the activist Warrior king all brings into a balance the tension that the average Nigerian/African Christian face when confronted with the question of direct engagement with oppressive power. The church in Africa must engage with our past tendency to out-white the white and deal with internalized tendency to succumb to inaction in the face of oppression.

Gornik’s differentiation between “self difference” and “weak difference” (after Miroslav Volf writing on 1Peter)) plunges the church into engagement with a radical witness of the shalom. God’s people must follow Mirolav in fearless engagement with a violent oppressive world. The Jeremiah narrative, which defines 1 Peter, must receive our attention. Power must be held to an accountable standards, the just must be willing to enter an empty well to bring “shalom;” we must model “difference” we must not acquiesces to “weakness.”

Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church By Samuel G. Freedman

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture I
May 2007
Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church
By Samuel G. Freedman
373 pages

What does it mean for a Church to live out the gospel on a day by day basis in Inner city America? How is this day by day lived out experience different from the Television presentation of the African American Church visited by politicians in run up to an election or in the wake of an urban uprising? Upon This Rock, is a story of a living community. The servant of that community embodies the story; Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood and St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York presents us with an incarnational context and a rare glimpse into what really happens in an African American community conscientiously doing church in the urban neighborhood. Rev. Youngblood is a visionary leader, a man who works tirelessly to focus his congregation on Christ and fears – rightly that “he will preside over the funeral of that which he gave birth to” if he does not ensure such a focus.

It is also a story about resurrection. Rev Youngblood took over a dying inner-city church in a community that is giving up hope and turns it into a vibrant place of living victories. It is a story about human triumphs and the strong reality of human failures. How is a preacher to deal with the ghosts of indiscretion from his past? How is a preacher to swim against the tide of benchmarking by occupancy count in the pews rather than communal effectiveness? How do we manage people who are bent on controlling us? From what source does our help comes and where do we draw strength? Rev Youngblood grants us insightful glimpses into how church is done in truth, this makes the book read like an epistle.

Community transformation is the focus of the book. Sam Freedman leads us into the heart of a community that takes its redemptive mandate seriously. This however does not wish away the sorrows, the pains, the confusion, the seeming lack of direction. The community seems to own its frailty and rejoice in its weaknesses. This seems to me a living definition of faith. St Paul sought to give life back to a tarnished community; it sought to reach people who are searching in every dead alley but the Way. St Paul and Rev Youngblood presents a powerful case, Christ is still the hope of the world, a commitment to the truth of the word of God and a focus on contextual application is necessary for reclaiming the land as promised by God.

The book tells stories, and uses stories to define theological propositions. Living stories define sermons, direct songs, the people participate in the process, and there is an unwritten antiphonal response. It sounds almost like the Psalmist; there is a resounding “Praise The Lord!” And the people seem to say “for his mercies endures forever” only now it is in form of a loud resounding amen! Rev Youngblood is Eclectic in his choice of reference, he acknowledges contemporary influence of African American preachers and draws from other sources that help him make his point. Hear Rev Youngblood: “To be a preacher is to be a storyteller, scholar, analyst, entertainer, political theorist, and, most ineffably, the anointed of God." Undoubtedly, his congregation will say Amen!

The reality of the middle African American family plays up brilliantly in this book. The challenge of a fractured identity, the desire to use or misuse sexuality, the pain of the absent father, the sorrow of the fatherless son; the society that is bent on cookie cutting people’s personality and defining them by that which may not necessarily be wholesome. These all are highlighted in the book, it makes a sobering reading.

I am a new African American. Whether I return to Africa or not, my children’s root are here. They will marry these struggling boys or give birth to sons that will have to engage with these communal realities. How do we prepare our daughters to walk with our sons? How do we prepare our sons to win over these negativities? I may not identify fully with all that Upon This Rock represents, a large swatch of the book may be outside my experience, I am driven – however to own its realities. The African American Church is not just a Church; it is the emblem of a culture.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture 1
May 2007
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
By Lesslie Newbigin
252 pages

How do you communicate the gospel in a society where there is no approved or sanctioned pattern of belief or conduct? This is the core thought In The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Lesslie Newbigin writes from a perspective that engages with the overwhelming fact that the structures and compositions of the Western World has been altered forever. How then does a Western Church that has operated from a platform of homogeneity engage with this reality? Newbigin’s acknowledges the tectonic shift in the Western worldview. Modernism has given way to postmodernism, science and the reign of reason has given way to questions and an unending search for truth, an absolute God of an absolute truth as conceived by the Judeo Christian traditions comes a very distant third in the thoughts of the people; Western society has become plural.

How do you engage with truth in an environment of freedom without bounds of thought? How do you define values in communities that are given a-la-carte options of a buffet restaurant of thoughts? How is value to be defined and believes chosen? Newbigins rightly notes that he first victim in the era of shifting boundaries is faith, if faith has been compromised how is one going to re-present missions? If our world is so changed, Michael Polanyi’s insight becomes a challenge because the lens with which our world is viewed becomes too many for certainty, fact becomes tenuous and truth becomes a lamb for sacrifice.

Newbigins truth is rooted in a person, the person of Christ. His story is to to guide our lives and bound our actions his story is to sharpen pour focus and define how we understand our story and his world. It is therefore essential – in Newbigins perspective to have this lens as a tool for focusing our lives and our communities. Newbigins takes his reader back to the issue that challenges the post modernist more than any thing else, the role of the tradition of faith and states that we must rediscover faith in communities bounded by the story.

Newbigins does not dismiss the reality of the society as is, his tool for engaging with it is wise, his deeply philosophical and appropriately nuanced. Faith is about a people called to walk together, individualism cannot be countenanced, the Christian practitioner must be appropriately respectful of the stories that defines the community within which he finds himself. Faith outside the culture is an oxymoron for Newbigins, the life of a true faith is embodied and immersed by a culture much in the same way that the new life of the child is encompassed by her mothers amniotic fluid.

It is however interesting to read Newbigins exposition on “Harijan-s” and what he called the epistemology privilege of the poor. His challenge to “practitioners of hermeneutic suspicion” makes interesting reading, the gospel must not be read with a lens on the poor or the lens of the poor. Newbigins seems to question the interpretation of the scriptures from a domination / oppression praxis, the poor have “no epistemological privilege.” The question this raises immediately is that this point – in my opinion makes incarnation an unnecessary nuisance. The Lord of Sabbaoth cannot agree with this perspective – in my consideration. The desire not to make empowerment normative over revealed truth seem convoluted to me, is it not the goal of truth to set us free? Is it not assumed that the logos is to bring us an abundant life? Does not the absence of freedom and the non-abundance of life suggested as preceding the contact with the gospel normative of the needy? If it is then there is an inferred epistemological privilege. Jesus himself said, “the spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. In that statement is an assumption of a priority, revealed truth, Jesus truth is about liberation; that is the epistemological privilege of the poor.

These thought apart, my experience shows that a faith co-opted by the powerful is a faith that soon become irrelevant. Other readings in this series (Linthicum’s especially) have shown that when power prestige and praise becomes the focus of the purveyor of faith, true grace goes out into the dustbin of opinions, men’s options take over the heart of the agent. We need to be careful not to get on the slippery slope of human preference for the rich.

The Quest for Freedom & DignityVishal Mangalwadi

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture I
May 2007
The Quest for Freedom & DignityVishal Mangalwadi
199 Pages

Mangawaldi’s book is about power and how it has been used over others in the world’s largest democracy. He makes certain strong assertions and sought to support them with reasoned stories from within the community. According to Mangalwadi, India’s cosmology created, affirmed and supported an “invisible civil war.” It is a theological and political hegemony that has spawned matrys across the Ages, 320 Million Hindu gods have not improved the lot of a single Dalit and it is impossible to be Hindustiva and patriotic because , the essence of the Hindu religion drives division. The caste division makes India a society “left almost without a conscience”’ Hinduism creates a culture with no moral absolutes, a society in which pragmatism overrides principles. These are dramatic statements about a culture and a way of life that affects over a billion souls.

Mangalwadi writes about pre-modern justice system and the humanizing influence of Christianity. This influence turned prisons into palaces of thought, it turned dungeons into reformatories. Mangalwadi separated between power and law. Indian culture upholds the rule of power not the rule of law. Mangalwadi asserts that liberty of expression cannot be a gift from the leaders, it must be a right from God.

Mangalwadi interpretes the term Messiah literally, he translates it to mean “liberator and champion of the oppressed.” True spirituality for him is denominated in liberation for the oppressed. True liberation must not assume inequality, it must rather discover its context in the society for which we seek liberation; social engineering must be superceded by social transformation. Agents of Social transformation must be aware that they will disrupt the status quo; that they will fracture the slavery of the mind. Social transformation brings truth of perception; it is enabled by the power of ressurection. Contrary to this is corruption which stifles democracy and retards meritocracy, kills the conscience and brutalise character (35).

Mangalwadi writes about the difference between lacking ability and having permision. Permission arises from belief systems. It is belief systems that make people worship nature rather than regulate them. A belief system that says man is made in the image of God gives man the permission to engage with a process of regulations God’s natural gifts (42). A changed belief system creates the permission to change mental slavery that has been internalised. It gives the permission to start irrigation systems, and build stone houses to control the river rather than worship it. It grants freedom from lies that lie at the root of misery. The transformation of India will come from the contextual application of the truth of the scriptures. There is the truth about idolatry and the need to stop worshiping false gods, there is the need to stop deifying the images that man made religiosity imposes on men to exploit them; there is the need to affirm the fact that man is the image that God has chosen to make (47)

Equal justice is a biblical idea; it is the foundation of the Magna Carta but justice will only be upheld when man learn about God. Human equality is self evident only after the knowledge of a just God is revealed through the Bible and presented as in being harmony with the principles of natural law (49). True equality of man is founded on equality of access to God’s love. Truth has nothing to do with national division or physical hegemony.

Mangalwadi describes faith as a matter of choice. He frames this in Dr Ambdekar’s famous statement: “I was born a Hindu, I had no choice. I will not die a Hindu because I do have a choice.” Mangalwadi shows that the freedom to choose what is right is directly correlated to the worldview to which a person subscribes. Interaction must be on the platform of ideas for there to be life. Interaction on the platform of profit and power only intensifies misery. Mangawaldi infers that coercion is an ineffective tool for social change, true change must come from within. The catalyst for reform are questions that results in debate and pushes the quest for truth, which in turn results in conversion and social transformation.

Freedom must be multidimensional for freedom to be transformational. A free market economy does not provide all the answers, a free thinking people with an internal freedom to question and search is critical to transformation. It is internal property that validates external property; it is when people discover that they are valuable that their future is secure.

What is the root of sorrow and how do we break it? Obviously, it cannot be through Bhudism whose primal assumption is enshrined in the first Noble Truth which states that “All is sorrow” and which sought to counteract this sorrow by Nirvana or nothingness. The root of sorrow is sin and the christian cosmology of personal, communal and national confrontation with sin is necessary to break the root of sorrow on our world.

For a thinker like Mangawaldi, it is interesting to note his assertion that resaon itself is necessary but not sufficient for transformation. To create a civilization, one has to separate between rationalism and rationality. It must be clear that the tool that creates civilization can also be twisted to affirm fascism.

I am impressed by the thoroughness with which Mangalwadi has thought threough issues that affects his community. As an African I am challenged by the fact that we often allow others to present our thoughts and are too caught up with practicalities of existence to engage with the worldview that perpetuate those practicalities. Mangawaldi provides a template for engaging with the realities of my nation. Why is there continuing instability? Why are the leadership generaly insensisitive? Why do the people acquise? Why is the church excluded from the reality of social transformation in Africa? These are questions for another time. They are questions that reading Mangalwadi has spawned.

Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Mission

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture I
May 2007
Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Mission
By Michael Oleksa
252 pages

How can two world views live in harmony and seek to represent one wholesome perspective? This difficult thesis was what Orthodox Alaska asset out to show. It is a story that goes far back into the Pre-Christian past of the Alaskan people but is linked with the development of Orthodox Christianity in Russia; it was formed in the crucible of Valaam Mission which started in 1784 and it shows that how we do theology is critical to how faith spread and is acceptable across eons.
The assumption of the Orthodox Church is that Christianity must be incarnated into the community. The logos must become an acculturated reality and indigenous personality must be sanctified by a global faith. Christ must be all in all and God must be seen at work in every person and situation of the community and in his creation at large.

Orthodox missionaries uniquely valued the “works of God” that preceded their coming to the Aleuts. Cosmic archetypes that govern the daily lives of the people found Christian parallels and mythologies and legends such as that on creation were easily assimilated. The missionary endeavor sought a wholesome faith. It stood with the people in their travails against the encroaching forces of commerce. Orthodox Church was unique in working with the people to fight economic exploitation and eek the preservation of the culture of the people.

Oleksa shows how Orthodox Christianity became truly indigenous and chose to be expressed through local mediums and mores. Oleksa shows how secularism is tearing apart what missionary agents sort to protect. The homogenization of peoples, the loss of local languages and cultures due to misconceived modernizing intents. These intents could be in form of the attempt of the government officials in the nineteenth century to “civilize the native (Christian!) population and destroy native cultures or it could be in form of the twentieth century dependency systems that requires homogenization of a people before they can be given access; all of these has the result of destroying the essence of what the people are and the orthodox Church according to Oleska stood against them.

Oleksa’s missiology and theology was presented through history. Modern Christian history has been very unkind in its interpretation of African Cultural values. The most challenging aspect – however – is the tendency of the Average evangelical leader to accept an uncritical interpretation of African culture as moderated by European missionary/colonialist. Most of sub Saharan Africa did not benefit from a sensitive treatment of their stories and it has carried on till today. Even alluding to the possibility of a “redemptive analogy” in the African Evangelical Christian Church will most probably cause the people to lead me out unto a high cliff like the crowd at the Synagogue in Nazareth did to Jesus.

Yet in the African story are a lot of these analogies. My own Yoruba tradition of South Western Nigeria gives me many of such analogies. We will easily agree with Oleska’s summary of the Orthodox position that “Nature is not God but it reveals Him” and that “matter is not the opposite but the Icon of the spirit” and further that “the cosmos participates in the Prototype without exhausting Him.” These are uniquely pre-Christian Yoruba thoughts but do I dare however to face the church and talk about these realities? Oduduwa the father of the Yoruba people is a redemptive archetype, Moremi, Oluorogbo and the whole Ela story is so similar to the deeds of Christ as to beg strong comparison, our ancient religious poems the Ifa Corpuscles and the stories of the God have such strong redemptive realities embedded in them that one wonders – why didn’t Oleska’s crowd come first to Africa? Why was it Presbyterian and Roman Catholic White fathers? To understand theology from a platform of clear anthropology, to respect a people’s story before judging its content, -to refuse the “label and trash” syndrome that surrounded the Western Mission Agents general tendency to interact with African stories would have been so redemptive in itself. It seems however that we are a hundred and fifty years late.

Book Report - Business as a Calling by Michael Novack

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture I
May 2007
Business as a Calling
By Michael Novak
256 pages

Novack’s Thesis is to show that vocation is not limited to the popular concept of the sacred. He sought to show that business is a sign of God’s great goodness to man and that the great religions of our world affirm the sense of business as a calling from a holy God. Business for Novack is a morally serious “enterprise.”

What is it that ties human race together and transcends geography, racial and gender boundaries? What power is it that touches us all on the face of God’s earth? For Novack, it is commerce. Novack is convinced that the capitalistic expression of commerce fundamental to freedom and liberation for the poor and the oppressed of the earth. Novack traced the history of Commerce in the developed world and sought to show that it has been a force for good everywhere it is given a free reign. The most evident sign of our common humanness is trading Business is necessary for order in societies. A good business climate is required before there can be an effective governance of people in nations. It is commerce that makes equality most accessible, and provides ladders out of obscurity into a common global economic family

Novack cites those that opposes his proposition, he goes to great length to show how the Christian community opposed people like Andrew Carnegie and other famous "robber barons." He goes to a great length and even quoted writers like Hugh Price Hughes, a Christian minister who called Carnegie “an anti-Christian phenomenon, a social monstrosity, and a grave political peril” (58). These critics focus on how these capitalists have perpetuated social inequalities while throwing crumbs down to the people in the name of philanthropy. They showed how Carnegie prevented workers from organizing while all the time assuming an air of paternalism. They were particularly critical of the riots in one of Carnegie’s factories that led to many deaths and concerning which Carnegie feigned ignorance even though he was in constant daily contact with those who brutally crushed the protest and who ostensibly acted on his instruction.

In this section of the book, Novack almost looked like a hack writer. He goes to a great length to show that in spite of all the charges leveled against Carnegie, he was more instrumental in changing the face of America for the ordinary person. In my opinion, Novack tried too hard to exonerate Carnegie and others like him. Does a saint do no wrong? This fallacy of assumption is the Achilles Heal of Novak’s defense of the Robber Barons. Saint sometimes are wrong, that does not however nullify their contribution. In spite of this flaw however, I agree with the essence of Novack’s thesis. There is a calling for God’s people in the world of commerce, there is a gifting that must be consciously developed and there is a purpose that needs be discovered.

Novack is unique in convincingly challenging the fallacy of dualism. He blurs the line between the secular and the sacred and insist that that which is termed secular is actually a holy ground. For Novack, heaven is at work and angels are on assignment in the stock market as much as they are in the pews of the churches. Novacks brings a sense of comfort to the committed Christian who is in the market place and who are often caught in the tension of thinking that what they are doing is not holy enough. Novack resoundingly clarifies the fact that God is all and in all.

Some of Novack's comparative effort at showing that his “democratic capitalism” is the best option cannot really stand strong scrutiny. The excuse that aberrant practitioners must be allowed their excesses without those excesses being seen as a result of capitalism cannot hold. It is interesting that one of the worst examples of capitalistic excesses in modern times is Novacks example and saint! Ken lay epitomizes the height to which capitalism can rise and the abuse to which it can be subjected. Jesus’ focus on the poor critiques the capitalists exploitation of the same. “The spirit of the Lords is upon me” he says, “for he has anointed me to preach the glad tidings to the poor.” I disagree with Novack’s attempt to make God out into a capitalist and make communism like “the evil.” Our world must present a better critique of systems and delve deeper into the essence of our faith to propose a holistic doctrine of God’s favor on work.

Novack’s wholesale promotion of the Lay’s of this world ignores a large body of work and the tradition of God’s re-distributive systems. We cannot wish away greed, the prophets will not allow us to whitewash the acquisitive tendency of the rich, Zacheaus will always be a witness against those that own too much. While serving as a voice of encouragement to young conflicted entrepreneurs, Novack failed to serve as a voice of warning to those whose heart has been gripped by the acquisitive vice. In fact, he seems to be confirming them in their folly. This is an entirely very dangerous proposition.

I grew up in Nigeria where 500 individuals hold 80% of the wealth and leave the remaining 149.999 Million of us to struggle with the remaining 20 %. While affirming the call to freedom, while accepting the challenge that all which God has given is holy; the Church has a prophetic mandate to say to the rich:

James 5:1- 8

1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.
4 Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
5 You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.
6 You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.
7 Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain.
8 You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

Book Report - Transforming Power By Robert Linthicum

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture 1
May 19, 2007
Transforming Power
By Robert Linthicum
216 pages

Linthicum describes power in a beautiful yet simple to grasp manner. He says power is simply the willingness and/or the ability to act. With this definition, it is not difficult to see that power is present in all human situations. It is also easy to see that power not inconsistent with loving and gentle behavior. From this definitive platform, it is easy to agree with Linthicum that ministry must articulate and act out a theology of power. We must openly acknowledge that power defines and deliver on issues of common importance. Linthicum’s power is the basis for building communities, it is not just dominating and destructive, it can be relational, strengthening and liberating.
It is easy to agree with Linthicum that relational power is the essence of the gospel. Dealing with the systems and structures of evil is critical for effectiveness in transforming lives and engaging with corruption, oppression and exploration of the weak. Ministry must therefore engage with power from the political, economic and religious platforms. We must deal with the world as is and plan for the world as it should be.
Linthicum defines religious system as the power “that fences in.” This system determines the parameter within which people lives. God’s people will either have to “confront the abuse of power or affirm its uses” in religion. Linthicum describes a flat social structure in which everyone has access to leadership. This is the world as it should be. Relationships in religion are both national and personal; politics of justice to be dispensers not affirmers of oppression.
This system is influenced by and based on the Economics of Equality, which is founded on the gift of God (Deuteronomy 6:10-11). The Deuteronomic Systems addresses issues of poverty and seeks to eliminate it using five key tools. The top three of these tools are i. The sabbatical year ii. Loans without interest and iii. Tithes. It is a concept of “compensatory economic justice” (35) which is designed to facilitate the the “shalom community.” In this community, the totality of the society is wholesome; the context of the society is harmonious. Jesus references to the kingdom of God are references to the “shalom community.”
Linthicum contrasts the “shalom community” with Prophet Ezekiel’s “bloody city” (42). The rule of religion in this city is domination, its politics is oppressive and the economic system is exploitative. Linthicum describes the godly society as an “ascending spiral of humanity” and the godless system as a descending spiral (49). The seduction of the prophets (Ezekiel 22:28) seems to be the most critical portion of oppression. This is done with praise, prestige, money or position. The leaders of faith are co-opted by values that promote greed, power and domination (Ezek 22:30). This always results in God’s indignation. Jesus’ inauguration of the Jubilee is a “legislated reversal of fortune” (60). Poverty and systems of domination will be eliminated (67) and Luke’s emphasis is on “now.” The kingdom of God is both in us and in our midst. God has called us to work for His Shalom in whatever community that we find ourselves. We work for our city’s Shalom by becoming God’s presence, by praying for the city, by practicing our faith through our action and by proclaiming the good news.
I agree with the thought that in spite of transience, chaos, instability, fear, intimidation, crime and gang in modern day urban neighborhood, Nehemiah’s strategy is still relevant. Economy, politics and religious capital affects the way people hear God’s word (60). It is a true but challenging proposition that eternal life is not simply by faith, it is also by faith demonstrated through the redistribution of wealth. This thinking challenges the assumption that wealth is a sign of God’s blessing. Bonhoeffer’s dictum that “when Christ call a man, he bids him to come and die” (60) agrees with Linthicum proposition that economic necessity will either stagnate faith or faith will drive an economic agenda (67).
I agree that we are to seek “the Shalom community” not just among God’s people but among people who reject God (74). We must engage with those who wield unilateral power over the people through domination and misapplied constitutionality (81). We must promote relational power and work with the people. We must remember that Yahweh is a relational God.
For Linthicum, a critical step towards solving the challenges within any community is the mobilization of victims to confront the source of their problem: “never do for others for other what they can do for themselves “(82-84). Jesus the emperor of Heaven must be strategically presented as the emperor of the earth (Rome) and Jesus must be seen as Caesar (p.119), but he is Caesar of a ­radically different realm.
Paul dealt with the practice of power. How do we exercise power on the platform of relationships? How do we turn our commitment of time, our affirmation of God’s people, our presence in their situation, our focus on the shape of the community into a lethal force against evil? This is a gift that the church must rediscover in form of biblical accountability, confrontation, civil disobedience, negotiation and agitation.

Book Report - King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture 1
May 2007
King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
By Adam Hochschild
384 pages

Horchild’s book is a story of unimaginable atrocities which were committed in the heart of Africa scarcely a hundred years past. It describes the pain of the rape in Africa in the name of civilization, it is a story that demands attention today when the same motivating forces of greed for commercial dominance holds large sections of Africa in its onerous grip. Horschild effectively described genocide on a scale that makes Hitler’s activities look tame. In the garb of philanthropy, King Leopold II of Belgium and his agents destroyed thousands of villages and hundreds of thousands of homes. They murdered millions of innocent people and built large swatch of modern Belgium on fund from the labors of these victims.
Horschild asked the readers to “try to imagine…,” the only problem is how to imagine the unimaginable? How do you measure the suffering, the terror, the hopelessness and the share cruel servitude of two generations of central Africans – in their own homeland? This is the challenge in reading Horschilds Leopold’s Ghost; it is the challenge of imagining the unimaginable.
Leopold II became king when the stars of Kings were waning all over Europe. Their wings were being clipped and the era of rule of the people was gradually becoming the norm. Leopold’s circumstance was further compounded in that he was king over a nation that he himself derisively described as “petit.” He not only derided the geographic littleness of his nation he derided the mental capacity of the people; he was known for saying “little nation, little people.” As King of Belgium, he reigned from 1865 to 1910 and came from a family filled with sadness. Leopold literally took out his sadness on the African people who lived in the Congo River Basin. He did this while masquerading as a great humanitarian.
Horschild showed how Leopold built a small army of adventurers who co-opted a larger group of Africans to unleash a reign of terror on the Congo. The gradual process of co-opting Africans forms a sad study in human confusion. The question for the co-opted African was simple, “how do I survive my oppressor? Survival for Africans in Leopold’s Congo was either by assimilation or by rebellion. Assimilation was largely the norm, rebellion was furiously and mercilessly crushed.
The Force Publique was the epitome of the assimilationists position. Resistance was not completely absent however. Horschild also detailed extensive and determined effort recorded in diaries of the Europeans; resistance was however visited with massive massacres, the cutting of hands and the severing of heads. The first commissioner in the equatorial region wrote to the government “To gather rubber in the district… one must cut off hands, noses and ears” (165).
One comes off reading Horschild with an immense sense of sadness. As an African, it makes an extremely grievous reading and introduces me to an extremely heavy sense of powerlessness. What is to be done in this situation? How should one react especially when the effects of Leopold’s Congo still embroils these same valleys in massive violence that has not been resolved in three decades. How is power being used today? Who are the financiers of the current impasse? What are their gains from doing so? Diamonds…? Timber? Titanium…? Uranium…?
How does this current impasse tie into the global realities of immigration? In what ways is the massive exploitation of new arrivals in the global north similar to what King Leopold did in Congo? Are immigrants the “new kongo people?” Are immigration agents who are tearing families apart in mid America the new Force Publique? Reading about Leopold’s Congo leaves one with an immense sense of sadness, worse than sadness however is the sense of powerlessness. Must the just always remain powerless in fighting the wicked? These are thoughts that hang over my heart like a cloud after reading this book.

Book Report - A Theology as Big as the City By Ray Bakke

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture 1
June 11, 2007
A Theology as Big as the City
By Ray Bakke
221 pages

One of Ray Bakke’s many distinctions and the one that may be considered foundational to all his other excellent gifts is the gift of access into the mind and lives of urban population globally. Bakke is a missionary to missionaries, a spokesman for others, a griot that puts into words what others know – instinctively – but cannot verbalize. Reading Theology as Big as a City makes a true Urban missionary want to say “Aha, that was what I always thought…!”

The autobiographical strategy interspersed with real world datas and a clear understanding of reflective scriptural options from the perspective of the urbanites makes Theology as Big as a City a seminal work of genius. Bakke attempts a systemization of thought based on his personal journey through different life phases. He uses these journeys as an anchor that he hangs his story and systemic thought. Bakke detailed rural life as a boy in the mountains of Washington; the centrality of the scriptures to the life and purpose of his family shines through brilliantly. The rural boy however labored to show that the focus of the scriptures is on the urban areas and its occupants; Bakke showed that in over a thousand places in the scriptures, the focus was on a city.

Bakke is committed to the concept of the Bible as a letter. He reads the scriptures and retells it almost like “The People Magazine.” There is a brazenly open attempt to enter the world of the people to whom the scriptures is written as is. No dressing up or dumbing down for Bakke, it is all about smelling it, touching it, feeling it style. Bakke does not exercise the care of a “Readers Digest Editor,” he rather seems to relish the challenge of consciously searching for the outer limits like a Tabloid News editor. Whether the law, poetry, or the gospel and the epistles, Bakke’s commitment seems to be making it real to make it meaningful, to make it accessible, to retell it for us.

Bakke’s writing is reflective. His reflective methodology flows out of the Wesleyan tradition that cycles around Bible - history/tradition - urban context – Church - Bible and so on. Bakke weaves a beautiful tapestry that brings into play tensions and outlets for the same. Bakke looks for thesis and highlights same in bold relief with its antithesis. Moses mother is the forerunner of the modern welfare mom, truth is balanced by love, faith is glocal (global and local) mystery is surrounded by certainty; urban life of faith is filled with a holy balanced passion.

Every servant of the gospel needs to tap into Bakke’s gift. Though specifically focused on cities, the interconnectivity of our world has created a global village that confronts the formerly rustic rural communities with realities that goes beyond the limited resources physically available. 2007 has created a situation where the remote location in Africa or Asia can experience – real time – what is going on in New York or Chicago. This situation demands a gift of observation, an ability to analyze and an imagination that is contextual. Faith must be interpreted in byte sizes and re-defined in cyber context. Bakke led the way - almost like a Prophet - in doing this.
The book takes me back to my root in Africa. It challenges the assumption of imagined isolation of the New Generation; it demands a reengagement with what it means to be the Church. Young people will continue to ask question, genrotocratic privileges will continue to be eroded; hierarchical assumption will be challenged more and more; twenty years from this date will present the world with a new Africa, an Africa that my generation may not recognize – not to talk of the generation before me.

The church must engage with what it means to be engaged with a world-wide-net that has a tendency to suck in, redefine and mold in its own image. Those seeking to represent Christ must rethink how they want him to be conceived in Africa of the new millennium. I am convinced that the driving agenda will not be hunger and sickness or need; the driving agenda will be information and the use to which it is put. I tremble as I wonder at the tendencies of my generation of African leaders to assume that things will always be one way. I wonder whether we will not react to the new realities of our globe like Bakke’s contemporaries that fled the cities in the face of the onslaught of the Civil Rights movement. It seems to me that African leaders may need a new model for defining ministry; Bakke’s model seems to be very relevant, very needed, and very contextual.