Are you an edgling?

Stowe Boyd is a computing/internet/techie guru. He's the kind of guy who tweets from conference sessions every few seconds and he's almost always worth following. He has his ear firmly on society's sounding board, and he picks up and comments on the most subtle of vibrations.

Back in 2006 he wrote a blog post highlighting the way that influence in modern society is moving from 'centroids' to 'edglings'. You might like to consider which term best describes you.

What he wrote about industry, government, and society is equally true for the church. It's uncanny. We think 'house church' is unrelated to developments in society generally, but it's just part of a much wider trend. House church folks are 'edglings' par excellence.

Stowe Boyd - Stowe is what Wolfgang Simson would rightly call a prophet. He may or may not be a believer, but he is a man who sees core issues. He recognises the difference between the day-to-day view of the majority and unborn megatrends that are bubbling beneath the surface. He knows they will burst out soon and surprise everybody. How does a prophet know these things? Prophets don't know in some mysterious way, they are sensitive to tiny vibrations that others miss, subtleties of heart, mind, spirit. When they speak of these things they often go unheard, they are commonly rejected as fools, interfering busybodies, or enemies of the state.

Here are some quotes from Stowe's 2006 post, see how they mesh with the recent growth of house churches worldwide.

Personally, I favor the term Edgling because I want to move away from media metaphors, and use economic or sociological ones. This is not about who is "producing content" and who is "consuming" it: which is the basic paradigm of media thinking. Instead, it is about control moving from the central, large, mass-market organizations -- which includes media companies, but also other large organizations, like government, religious organizations, and so on -- out to the individuals -- we, the people -- at the edge.

As power moves from the center to the edge the "Centroids" -- those that hold with the centralized power of an industrial era -- will scream about all the negatives that they perceive in the out-of-control future that threatens the basis of their worldview. But the Edglings will find it liberating to get out of the stranglehold on information, communication, and the marketplace that centralized organizations attempt to impose.

Centroid or edgling? - Does that ring any bells? Take a look at Stowe's list of characteristics...

	Centroids	Edglings
Work and Politics	Top-down, authoritarian	Bottom-up, egalitarian
Point-of-View	Objective, Impartial	Subjective, Partial
Belonging	Hierarchies	Networks
Family	Nuclear	Post-nuclear networks
Political scope	Nationalism	Regionalism
Media	Mainstream	Participative
Culture	Monocultural	Multicultural
Environment	Exploitative, Unsustainable	Restorative, Sustainable
Spirituality	Centralized, Dogmatic, Outside of Nature	Decentralized, Enigmatic, Nature based

George Barna - You might like to compare this with George Barna's comments in his book 'Revolution'. Here's an extract from p 13-14...

I want to show you what our research has uncovered regarding a growing sub-nation of people, already well over 20 million strong, who are what we call Revolutionaries ... They have no use for churches that play religious games ... worship services that drone on without the presence of God ... ministries that compromise ... people in ministry ... who seek popularity ... man-made monuments ... accredited degrees.

There's a fresh wind blowing through the church as also through society. People sense that it's time to move on, to change the rules, to move from organisations with centralised authority to organic groups at the periphery, where the edglings are living and meeting in a fresh, new way.

It's no longer about organisations, it's about an organism that is alive and can reproduce in a natural way.

Eaton Ford (day) - Flowers in the branches

We watched the DVD about 'The Church at Table Number Two', we all enjoyed it, and Roger in particular felt it was relevant and helpful in his situation in the Offords. A group had been meeting at home and trying to plant churches - but it wasn't happening. Father had another plan and opened it up for them, step by step.

Chris described a vision of an ugly tree, it had dead-looking branches and was not attractive in itself. But a beautiful clematis was growing through its branches and flowering profusely. And we realised that Yahshua is the clematis! It him who gives us colour and fragrance and beauty, though we have none in our own right.

Paul also shared a vision, in this case a picture of darkness and light. And he knew that we have to get people out of the dark into the place where there is glorious light. As we go along through life we need to notice the doors that Jesus is opening, we need to spot them and use them.

Little Paxton - Eating the scroll

Sean wasn't able to join us this week, so Jim and I sat in the garden and chatted. We enjoyed the view and the balmy evening. Jim's back garden overlooks a footpath, and beyond this a large stretch of the Paxton Pits Nature Reserve; what a beautiful, peaceful place.

We talked broadly about the terrible state of Britain today - young people who are more and more doing whatever they want, not respecting other people, uncaring, and often selfish - parents who have largely been responsible for this behaviour by not raising their families properly, broken homes, single parents struggling to cope, living on benefits, having no self respect - the economy in a dire state, mostly due to a borrow and spend mentality encouraged by the banks and a consumer-driven society.

We hold all these things before the Lord in prayer. He is the only place we can turn! We don't want to see people suffer, we want to help wherever we can, but the problems are too big and are way out of control.

Jim read out Ezekiel 1 which had greatly impressed him when he started the book on his own earlier in the day. It is an amazing display of Yahweh's power and glory. It seems strange, almost unintelligible, yet it speaks volumes about the Almighty.

Chris remarked on the parallels between Ezekiel and Revelation. There is the scroll with words of lamenting and woe, it tasted sweet like honey but turned the stomach sour (Ez 2:8-3:4, Rev 10:8-11). And there is mention of shepherds and sheep in Ezekiel and the Lamb on the Throne in Revelation (Ez 34, Rev 5:1-14, 14:1-5). There's the fallen Jerusalem in Ezekiel and the new Jerusalem in Revelation. Then there is the water flowing out from the Temple gate, the River of Life, and the trees on the riverbanks for the healing of the nations (Ez 47:1-12, Rev 22:1-5).

And we also considered that amazing passage about the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14), and how the vision is being played out today in the coming together and remaking of the church. The end result will be a mighty host of the newly alive, ready to function and serve. Now that is indeed something to look forward to!

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is about to hit the streets (or at any rate, a computer screen near you). Created by Stephen Wolfram and his company, Wolfram Research, it will look superficially like a search engine but is fundamentally different in nature.

Like a search engine it comes with a text entry box where you can type in a query, like a search engine it goes away and thinks and then spits out results on a webpage. But what goes on behind the scenes and the nature of the returned webpage couldn't be more different.

Wolfram Alpha depends on two earlier developments from the same stable. Mathematica is software that enables mathematical manipulations to be entered, processed, and displayed on a computer, while NKS (which stands for 'A New Kind of Science') is an alternative to the normal tools used by scientists to model the way the universe works.

Using both of these innovative tools, Wolfram Alpha takes a free text query, decides what the user wants to know, looks up the relevant information in its enormous collection, processes the information to create an answer to the original query, and builds a webpage on the fly to display the response. The webpage may include text, images, graphs and charts etc. The end result is a tailored report that might have been written by an expert. Indeed, in many ways Wolfram Alpha is an expert!

Steven Wolfram is an extraordinary person. He is, frankly, a genius - one of a handful of truly great minds in our own time. He looks at things in new ways and comes up with fresh insights, testing them, proving them, and then publishing them. Here, in his own words, is how he's spent his life so far.

Major periods in my work have been:

• 1974-1980: particle physics and cosmology

• 1979-1981: developing SMP computer algebra system

• 1981-1986: cellular automata etc.

• 1986-1991: intensive Mathematica development

• 1991-2001: writing the book, 'A New Kind of Science'

(Wolfram Research, Inc. was founded in 1987; Mathematica 1.0 was released June 23, 1988; the company and successive versions of Mathematica continue to be major parts of my life.)

You can see right away that he is not a man in a hurry. He is not afraid to spend five years or more on a single project. Learn more about his background and work from Wikipedia.

Not everyone agrees with Wolfram's work on NKS, a range of reactions are included in the Wikipedia article on the book.

In the end, 'wait and see' may be the best advice for both Wolfram Alpha and NKS. As far as Alpha is concerned, we'll all get a chance to try it and draw our own conclusions when it's released. Hopefully that will be next month (May 2009).

Meanwhile you can watch video of Stephen Wolfram demonstrating the new technology at Harvard on 28th April.

For news about the new tool, take a look at the Wolfram Alpha Blog which will be updated regularly with further announcements and background information.

Great Doddington - Unexpected life

This was another great meeting, full of rich thoughts and the touch of the Spirit. What a privilege to be present!

At first we drank tea or coffee and shared news of family and friends. As we talked and prayed, several Bible texts were mentioned, in particular Psalm 31 ('let your face shine on me' - verse 16), Numbers 6 ('the Lord make his face shine upon you' - verse 25), and Psalm 37 ('he will make your righteousness shine like the dawn' - verse 6).

Sherrelea prophesied, 'Do you not know? Have you not heard? You will soar on wings like eagles, you will walk and not be faint.'

Chris had a picture of a tree and shared it. So many trees lose their leaves in the autumn and are bare all through the winter period, then in the spring they produce fresh, new leaves. But the tree in the vision remained bare after all the other trees had come into leaf. It looked dead. But then beautiful flowers burst out of the dead wood and the branches were smothered in pink blossom. And only then did the new leaves begin to grow. Sometimes when nothing seems to be happening the Lord can touch us just like the barren tree and a new season starts unexpectedly in our lives.

Rachael saw an old water mill though it wasn't turning because the water had been blocked off. It was flowing along the river, but not to the wheel. Father said that the wheel on its own is nothing and produces nothing, and the same is true of the water. But he said, 'When my water of life reaches people, my power reaches them and fills them'.

Barbara read Mark 11:22-26 and then prayed for salvation for one of the people we have had in mind. We must ask and believe, and have hearts filled with forgiveness.

Jody had seen a TV program about Nepalese tribespeople collecting honey from wild bee colonies on the sheer face of a forest cliff. These bee colonies were enormous. The method used was to lower someone on a rope to get them close to the nest, and then they would use a knife on a long pole to cut out part of the honeycomb. The idea was to catch the falling honeycomb in a basket suspended from a second rope.

The people know to take no more honey than the bees can cope with so that the bees will be able to survive the winter and collect honey again the following year. In the same way God has given us all we need in our current position. Father reminded us, 'Don't worry about the supply, don't worry about tomorrow'.

Glenn expanded on this idea, the bees coming back are like the next stage in our life. We have no children, later we have children, and eventually grandchildren. Glenn read Lam 2:11,19, and he thought that whatever we go through we have to defeat it because of our children. Our attitude should be, 'How dare the enemy attack my children?'

Chris saw treasure lying on a path, and Father said, 'Some people trip on the treasure and curse it, some step over it without even noticing that it's there, and yet others see it but think that it's worthless. They think if it was real treasure it wouldn't be lying there on the path. But you, my people, have seen the treasure, recognised its worth, and have made it your own. You have found the treasure.'

Eaton Ford (day) - the hills

We shared news and thoughts about the various friends and family members we regularly pray for.

Once we had done this we spent some time in prayer before moving on to more general thoughts.

Jules read Psalm 121 which is quite short, but really very encouraging. The first two verses read...

I lift up my eyes to the hills -
Where does my help come from?

My help comes from the LORD,
The Maker of heaven and earth.

We though about our own situations too. Roger explained that he'd attended the PCC meeting in Offord d'Arcy, and told us how he had felt about it. We shared some thoughts on meetings at home, and particularly hoped that Roger and Ruth might have an opportunity to host such meetings themselves.