The New Conspirators is an invitation. There are no blue prints or models to follow, but stories that invite you to creative imagination and to bold experimentation. Tom’s research and analysis is excellent. In the midst of our present reality Tom calls us back to the future, to the hope of the homecoming of God’s Kingdom. -Jon Hallewell
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Tom Sine is the emerging church’s answer to Thomas Friedman, realistic yet hopeful for the future of the world and God’s people.The New Conspirators unhesitatingly portrays how globalization threatens the integrity of ancient cultures, the economic well-being of the most vulnerable, the ecological balance of the world, and the values of Biblical faith. Yet, in the midst of challenging times, Sine brings a word of encouragement: in Christ, God’s Kingdom has already come. Christians have reason to rejoice, as they show others what it means to be part of “the new world that is already here.”The second and fourth sections of the book are excellent, and are what make Sine’s book an effective response to Friedman’s works, such as The World is Flat. In these, Sine deftly characterizes our consumer culture, contrasts its values with those of the early church, and shows how changing global realities threaten to make our lifestyle unsustainable.Between these two sections, Sine takes a step back to imagine an alternative culture, one guided more by the desires of God than the desires catered to by the “global mall.” He stresses the concreteness of the new creation - that it will be a real place, in which not only our own personal pain is healed but in which the oppressed receive justice.Christians hope for, and are promised, a Kingdom of universal peace and justice. The Christian calling is to make this Kingdom visible now, even if only with faith as small as a mustard seed. In the final section of The New Conspirators, Sine describes the efforts of many who are living out this call.If the last section, “Taking our Imaginations Seriously,” were all the book had to offer, it would still be worth reading. As it is, Sine’s book is both a reality check on the challenges of the 21st century and a refreshing glimpse of how God has planned to deal with those challenges. It is an invaluable resource for developing Kingdom imagination.-Evan Donovan
The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard See at a Time, by Tom Sine and published by InterVarsity Press is a great read. It is an important read for those in the church and perhaps outside the church trying to get a grasp on not only the world we live in today, but the one which is being created now and into the future! Tom does an excellent job bringing together the four major streams of new activity in the church. Streams which will chart the course ahead for faithfulness to Jesus Christ. These four streams are: Monastic, Mosaic, Missional Church, and Emerging Church. The most defining reality found in each of these movements, Sine notes, is there move away from an inward or an attractional “come-to-us” approach. Instead it is noted that all these streams have recovered a robust Gospel understanding that recognizes the cosmic proportions of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. This theological recovery/shift has seen droves of younger Christians shift from a individualistic boomer focus of personal achievement and advancement to discerning the missional activity of God in the world and then joining God in that activity to bring about healing and wholeness in the world, God’s world. Because of its thorough and wide ranging analysis, of the many wonderful books written on this subject, this is the one-stop book I recommend for church study groups and leaders.-Sam Andress
It’s not often that I finish a book and write in the back of it: “Every high school and college student should read this - don’t underestimate what can happen!” This was the case as I completed Tom Sine’s latest book, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time.In case you are not familiar with Tom, he is a speaker, author, theologian, and futurist who helps us look at the relationships between the shifting broader culture and the changing church. He has a prophetic gift and uses it to suggest best ways to respond to the future, identifying creative and cutting edge expressions of Christian faithfulness. This summer I reread some material that he wrote over 20 years ago and I was amazed by how “spot on” he was in his predictions, and how many things that he anticipated had come true.This is a book that should be read by students and their teachers. With helpful and thought-provoking starter questions at the end of each chapter, this would also be a great book for adult study groups to read and discuss.-Dan Beerens
Sine provides an excellent overview of the emergent, missional, monastic and mosaic movements. Mr. Sine helps the reader to understand the particulars of each stream and how they impact the church in the west.He is able to simplify, but not oversimplify how the global context we now and will live in impacts the role of the church. I thought his description and understanding of this post 9/11 world profound and I believe this is one of the few Christian books which helps disinterested, “over family-focused” evangelicals to clearly see the implications that our current global context will have on the rich, middle and low income groups across the globe.-Rukshan Fernando, Professor of Social Work, Taylor University, India
Tom Sine has provided us with a field manual for being the hands and feet of Jesus in our specific communities and situations today. With extensive sources and examples, Sine explains the difficulties of living in a post-9/11 world, a culture of “cool,” and a society of debt - consumer and student, alike. He outlines in detail the challenges which face people of high, middle, and low income living in a global economy. While The New Conspirators addresses situations across the globe, Sine’s expertise in explaining the Western world is just as strong as Philip Jenkins’ diagram of the Global South in his book The Next Christendom. Because its examples and references are time-sensitive, it’s important to read Sine’s book now, rather than “getting around to it.”This book’s strength is the way it connects you to what God is doing at this very minute. But when you’re done with The New Conspirators, go ahead and keep it on your bookshelf. Pick it up every now and then in future years, and be ready to find out that Sine told you so.-Paul Glavic
Tom Sine’s latest book, The New Conspirators, celebrates the increasing diversity in the church. Sine’s book continues the theme of his classic book, The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, published in 1981. Sine was a ‘red-letter Christian’ before the official group existed, and in this hopeful volume he gives us examples across the spectrum of the 21st century church.
Divided into five “conversations” Sine takes his readers on a tour of real places where real people are living out the gospel as they understand it in communities and congregations around the world. In Conversation One, Sine introduces the unfamiliar to the four streams of the postmodern church — emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic. Sine celebrates the gifts each brings to the body of Christ, giving an even-handed, generous perspective on each.
In Conversation Two, we are reminded of our global culture from massive consumerism to militant terrorism. This is the world in which we all live, and Sine reminds us that there are those who covet our American materialism, and those who despise it. But, despite the negatives of globalization, Sine sees positive things in our shrinking planet, such as the connection young people around the world are making with each other, transcending local cultures.
In Conversation Three, we are encouraged to take the future of God seriously. Sine isn’t talking about “going to heaven when you die” either. After several illustrations of kingdom thinking and acting, Sine weaves a lyrical scene, his take on Isaiah 25 and Revelation 21, where “God’s presence is palpable and we sense his generous welcome.”
Conversation Four reminds readers to take “turbulent times seriously.” Sine pulls takes us below decks in his version of humanity’s “Ship of Fools” examining the stark contrasts between the fabulously rich, the increasingly shrinking middle-class, and the world’s abject poor.
In Conversation Five, we are encouraged to “take our imaginations seriously.” Sine paints new pictures of “whole-life” stewardship, community, and mission celebrating those on the entrepreneurial edge. He states, “we need musicians, poets and artists to create new forms of worship, in which we celebrate coming home as a great resurrected community to a world where the broken are made whole, justice comes for the poor and shalom to the nations.”
If you want a tour of where church is headed in the 21st century, read ‘The New Conspirators.’ If you despair of the future of the church, let Tom Sine fill you with the same joy he shares over the growth of these mustard seeds of the kingdom. If you’re looking for something to give fresh direction to your own life, and form it in new ways, grab a copy of Sine’s book and join ‘The New Conspirators’ yourself. As Shane Claiborne says, “This book is a gift to the church, and to the world.”
Andrew Jones top five American books on the emerging church:1. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs. Top leaders interviewed, well informed conclusions, a few points of disagreement (doctrine REALLY IS important to us) but its by far the best book. See my review and some others2. The New Conspirators, Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, by Tom Sine. Great book by a well known leader who probably has more perspective on this movement than anyone. Tom’s book is crammed with examples and will widen and deepen your understanding of the EC.
3. The Emerging Church, by Dan Kimball. Widely received and appreciated. My comments here with links to Dan’s history of the words “emergent” and “emerging”
4. The Church on the Other Side, by Brian McLaren, was for many of us, the first book that said what we wanted to say or at least what we were thinking. Brian can be a controversial figure in Church circles and I don’t know anyone who would agree with everything he says but he has consistently verbalized emerging church issues for the last decade with astonishingly clarity.5. A list on a number of possible books for the 5th spot.
(**Note this is not a review but, rather, the first in a series of personal engagements with The New Conspirators by Tom Sine. My observations may not cover all points of interest along the journey but I hope you’ll share your experiences nonetheless). I’ve been absent from blogging lately. The summer has been busy and, honestly, even since I began blogging here, I’ve been a little disenchanted with what Sine calls the “emerging edge” of the church throughout the world. I bought this book (or was it given to me, I don’t remember) months ago and, unfortunately, it ended up sitting on my shelf collecting dust.So far, I’m thankful I decided to dust off my copy. What I’ve discovered in Tom Sine (a person previously unknown to me) is a fresh and humble voice that is able to cut through the fog of conflict and antagonism that often accompanies conversations about what is needed for the church to truly be the church in the 21st century.The first chapter is a highly charitable yet clear-headed overview of the various “streams” of the emerging edge in contemporary Christianity: the emerging, the missional, the mosaic and the monastic. While I’ve been mildly familiar with most of these streams, I must say that Sine’s engagement is able to provide the necessary overview thereof without much fluff (an approach that I can appreciate).
Although I was mildly familiar with the various streams, I must say that it was the Mosaic stream as characterized by Sine that was the least familiar and most challenging. Having grown up primarily in Rural North Carolina, I can say that I have lived a pretty sheltered life when it comes to substantive and authentic engagement with people of different ethnic and/or cultural backgrounds.
Let’s just be honest here, I’ve not had very many friends in my life who weren’t white, middle class protestants. My awareness of and desire to engage with people who might look, think and view the world differently than I do has, fortunately, expanded in recent years with my growing passion for the study of Christianity and the American civil rights movement. Authors of the movement such as James Baldwin and Howard Thurman have been incredibly challenging and formative with regard to the way I view both my own personhood as well as the ways that both I and “my people” relate to and engage with people who, for better or worse, have been “the other” for me. Other diverse thinkers such as John Hope Franklin, Tim Tyson (a teacher and friend), and Charles Marsh (among others) continue to force me to re-evaluate my complicity in racial and cultural discrimination and marginalization.
It is for these reasons that the Mosaic stream has been both encouraging and challenging. I currently live in a small rural community with a population of a little under 4,000 people. A large percentage of those who live around me are Hispanic and Latino. I am a minister in a predominately white church which is part of a predominately white denomination. Because I live in the south, I can say that racism and ethnocentrism are alive and well. In short, a large percentage of the people who live, work and spend their lives in the community in which I live are viewed by my brothers and sisters as less than human.
And while I’ve long been sheltered with regard to sharing life with those from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, I’ve also always possessed a deep sense that the monolithic whiteness of Sunday mornings was not what God intended for the church. And the hard part is that - at least from my vantage point - this is what church has looked like for my entire life. Reading The New Conspirators has lighted a fire in me to work for racial & cultural reconciliation in my own community. I’m not sure whether it’s lack of creativity, lack of desire or simply lack of faith that has kept the church separated in the South. I do know (and so does Sine) that the wretched legacy of slavery and racial oppression is one large factor but I also know that the God that I worship is bigger than my ancestors’ sins. In The New Conspirators, I recognize the call for a multicultural church as the call to all people but especially the call to those of us who have the legacy of racial hatred and oppression running in our veins. And this is an urgent call. Sine writes,
By 2060 the United States will become the first non-European Western nation - a nation of Latinos, African Americans and Asians. Those of us from European roots will just be another group. Our churches need to help people prepare not only to live in this future, but to receive and celebrate the gifts from other cultures. (The New Conspirators, 45).
While this book isn’t only about the Mosaic stream of the emerging edge of the church, I clearly needed to hear God speak through Sine regarding the work that’s going on to build God’s multi-cultural, multi-gifted kingdom, not on some far-off future but in the here and now. In the lives of ordinary people living out humility and faithfulness by receiving and rejoicing in the gifts that God has given our neighbors.
The posture of reception and celebration of the gifts of our neighbors must, if we take Sine seriously, include also a posture of humility with regard to our use of language to communicate with one another. As an American of European descent, I can say that I’ve not given much thought to why my Asian, African & Hispanic/Latino brothers and sisters in Seminary are required to learn English. For now, at least, practical concerns regarding the transmission of information are likely at the forefront of those who develop curriculum guidelines for the Association of Theological Schools. HOWEVER, if what Sine tells us is true, Seminaries and Churches need to take seriously the possibility that English may not always be the “official” language of the Western Church.
In other words, Western (and particularly American) Christians need to learn to receive the gifts of others with a humility that is willing to learn how to hear them in their indigenous language. This, of course, becomes uncomfortable for some because it hits close to home with regard to the immigration debates that rage constantly in the South. And all of this makes the work of the church more difficult because of the ridiculous entanglements in which we find ourselves with regard to patriotism and discipleship. Should white American Christians pledge allegiance to the flag of (white) America or do we give our full allegiance to the kingdom of God without borders? These are hard questions and I don’t have the answers but I am thankful for Tom Sine and for The New Conspirators for forcing me to deal prayerfully with them and I look forward to the rest of the journey (This is, after all, only the first chapter). Please share your thoughts and your life in this space. Converse, create and imagine with me what God’s kingdom can be…
Futurist Tom Sine writes what we’re all feeling and have scratched our heads over for the last decade or two … namely, we’re a small craft tossed and turned by “turbulent times.” He’s talking about the church. He’s talking about what it means to be Christian. He’s talking about people of faith who have moved out from the shadow of a sympathetic culture that has come to ignore those of us who move and have our being in what is known as the traditional church. We first heard from Tom Sine, a Seattle-based thinker and researcher in the 1980’s when he published The Mustard Seed Conspiracy (1981). It’s not that Sine was paranoid and saw a conspiratorial anti-Christian culture developing like so many fundamentalists who think the world is cocked against them. It’s that Sine recognized what his eyes and ears and analytical brain was telling him: The days of Christianity as the dominant driving force in the world have ended.So Sine did what many would not have done … he went small. He recognized that God’s movement in the world was what Robert Capon described as God’s love of those who are least, lost, last and little. God is often most active in the small and not as the brassy power of the dominant world. Sine understood that God is not into signs of power as in the thunder and the lightning but instead often sensed best falling on us in the form of a gentle rain, often unnoticed and unrecognized by us. God is in the tiniest mustard seed working quietly -seeding the ground with those things that will eventually bless the world.
So Sine wrote an epistle to the church encouraging us to be at work in the world doing just as much in our little ways. Being faithful. Laboring quietly like the farmer, dropping seeds into the ground that God waters with grace blessing the world around us knowing that God will produce a crop in another season.
Likewise, we’re to pay attention to the little acts of kindness. We’re to faithfully attend to the little habits of being. We’re to be as we’re called, “little Christs” in the world doing what Christ did as demonstrated by the humility of his sacrificial death.
Sine’s newest book is titled The New Conspirators and falls into the form of his earliest theme of mustard seeds and God’s affinity with small but significant faith. In his introduction titled, “Traveling Into Turbulent Times,” he draws a quote from Alan Roxburgh: “We are all in the early stages of a massive transition … We cannot return to the past like some nostalgic That 70’s Show, nor can we jump over to the present to go bravely where none have gone before, like some kind of Star Trek series. We are more like the strange, motley crew of creatures struggling to make sense of their situation on board the space station Babylon Five.”
His big idea is that God is doing what God has always done by finding in each generation those who are welcoming of the work of the Spirit - faithfully tending to the kingdom of God in their own creative “little” ways. He contends that while we can bemoan what’s happening to the form of the traditional church and can translate those losses as the failure of the young to pick up the habits of the old, we cannot ignore that God is still quietly stirring in this younger generation by igniting a flame of passion we who are of the older generation have yet to demonstrate or experience.
I’m overwhelmingly impressed with the spirit of our sub-30’s. They want it real. They want their faith stripped of pretension. They want a sense of adventure. They want to be alive in God’s Spirit without the judgment of the older generations who see the world through generational eyes. Sine’s new book is a blessing on those he calls the “new conspirators” as they bring their passion and fire to the work of God in our time. He calls them conspirators not because they are conspiring with the culture for the demise of the church, but that they are conspiring with God to find the new wineskins of faith by which God’s Spirit will welcome the future.
God bless our New Conspirators! May they invade our thoughts and our tired habits of faith bringing the new wine of what God wants to unleash in our time, in our hearts, and in our community.
The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard See at a Time, by Tom Sine and published by InterVarsity Press is a great read. It is an important read for those in the church and perhaps outside the church trying to get a grasp on not only the world we live in today, but the one which is being created now and into the future! Tom does an excellent job bringing together the four major streams of new activity in the church. Streams which will chart the course ahead for faithfulness to Jesus Christ. These four streams are: Monastic, Mosaic, Missional Church, and Emerging Church. The most defining reality found in each of these movements, Sine notes, is there move away from an inward or an attractional “come-to-us” approach. Instead it is noted that all these streams have recovered a robust Gospel understanding that recognizes the cosmic proportions of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. This theological recovery/shift has seen droves of younger Christians shift from a individualistic boomer focus of personal achievement and advancement to discerning the missional activity of God in the world and then joining God in that activity to bring about healing and wholeness in the world, God’s world. Because of its thorough and wide ranging analysis, of the many wonderful books written on this subject, this is the one-stop book I recommend for church study groups and leaders.
just finished reading The New Conspirators by Tom Sine (author of The Mustard Seed Conspiracy) this morning. The book discusses 4 trends within the church today; the missional, mosaic, monastic, and emerging. Sine does a great job of summarizing each of the 4 movements and giving examples of how God is moving in each one.
He also lays out some of the challenges and opportunities that will be facing the church over the coming decade. And one of the things I really like that he does is that often time the challenges and opportunities are two sides of the same coin. So for example he talks about the rising cost of housing being a challenge that Christians need to prepare themselves for, but that it also provides us the opportunity to explore what it might look like to live in community together.
I was really impressed with The New Conspirators and thinks Tom Sine does an excellent job of giving an overview of those 4 movements as well as providing an inspiring view of what the church and Christians could be like.
The book is in many ways a follow on from MSvMW (Mustard Seed vs. McWorld). It accounts for the changes in the world and for the changes in the way many people are being and doing church. The New Conspirators is an invitation. There are no blue prints or models to follow, but stories that invite you to creative imagination and to bold experimentation. These are seasoned with some simple suggestions to help you begin or continue your journey.
Tom’s research and analysis is excellent. His findings are disturbing however, especially when examining the challenges we are facing now, challenges which will only increase whilst the world continues on it current trajectory. Whilst surprising and sometimes alarming, we will all recognise the economic and environmental picture of the world that Tom paints.
In the midst of our present reality Tom calls us back to the future, to the hope of the homecoming of God’s Kingdom. In one very personal and moving section Tom refashions and paraphrases ancient biblical images of the coming of God’s kingdom. Tom reminds us and calls followers of Jesus back to the mission of planting the seeds from which this Kingdom will come to fruition. Whilst we need to be able to critique the world in which we live, we are called to be a living prophetic demonstration of the alternative way of life, a community that inspires hope.
Eternal life is not merely about living forever, but about cultivating that future reality here and now. Tom calls us to a creative faith that fills every aspect of our being, flowing out from our every activity: be it family life, or decisions about our spending, housing, vocation, giving or our use of time. I wonder, how many of us really meant it when we sang: “I surrender all” on a Sunday morning? This book subtly asks that question.
The remainder of the book is full of plentiful practical ideas of how we live this way of life. These are not theoretical sound bites, but true and living examples that are grounded in the pioneering practices of those who are already taking up the mustard seed challenge. These examples give me hope and fill me with excitement for the future.
Whilst this book is titled: the new conspirators, it is an advertisement for co-conspirators. For Lyn and I, as we hopefully head for New Brunswick in the fall, co-conspirators are exactly what we are on the lookout for.
The first section is a superb overview of what is happening – mainly in the United States and the United Kingdom, but also including some interesting stuff in other commonwealth countries, from inner city churches, social action projects to new forms of community. The stories are inspiring and really practical – a refreshing change from what you often see (heavy on theory, lacking on how to actually do it!).The next three sections are all analysis of where we actually are as western culture – from religion through to commerce and society. The sections on the global village, the global mall (a phrase I first heard in the wonderful Colossians Remixed) and the imbalanced lifestyle of the west are helpful and provoking. After this, when discussing global poverty it starts to get a bit bogged down in detail and loses some of the inspirational impact.The final section, Taking our Imaginations seriously, is far better, and much more engaging. It allowed me to feel the breadth of opportunity and possibility that exists when the messages of our culture are no longer limiting the way we might live and the impact we can have.
Overall a great book that is a useful addition to the whole discussion of where the church is going and what it can do.
Tom is well acquainted with the increasingly progressive stream within the (post?) evangelical world and his sympathies are clearly with our emergent friends. A few of the chapters in his book are actually a tremendous intro to that movement. Still, I wonder how much more helpful it may be to offer some critique or concern about the foibles of that movement? Certainly there are those who don’t think that movement will offer much of substance for the long haul… And does the shift from “post-modern to post-colonial” that Brian McLaren so powerfully discusses in The Emerging Manifesto of Hope indicate a trend? It is one that Tom is perfectly positioned to not only document but to guide. Lastly, I might have wished for more direct discussion of the fate of the mainline churches. Are they sidelined? Are they still viable? Can our historic liberal denominations live into the new practices that they are themselves writing about, being shaped by deeper worship, teaching contemplative, going missional, and more faithfully guided by their best doctrinal traditions? The New Conspirators is not at all irrelevant to mainline churches, even if many of the stories are not of your typical Lutheran or Presbyterian or Methodist parishes. Many of his illustrations are, in fact, from mainline settings (including his good knowledge of Anglican ministry in the U. K.) if admittedly from some of the more innovative and experimental congregations. Again, this is a part of his own heart, and he and Christine speak often for traditional mainline denominations, so I would have wished for just a small bit more about that as a context for forming new conspirators and how that might be encouraged.These are just minor quibbles though, and I invite you to consider getting this, for all of the good reasons named above. The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time is perhaps Tom Sine’s crowning work, or, as Alan Hirsch puts it, “vintage Tom Sine.” He does his social analysis, does social visionary thing, he tells tons of inspiring stories, he documents new trends and invites us to be aware of the (perhaps) strategic influences of several new streams within the broader Body of Christ, even as we live out the implications of these in fresh ways contextualized to the contemporary world and its ways and needs. He has tons of interesting foonotes and a great sample of on-line resources. Sine invites you and me, readers, to become friends, well-aware and awake, networked and involved, in spiritual renewal of the sort that is, indeed, “whole life discipleship”—living it up, finding our purpose, taking discipleship seriously, living in a world “between Mustard Seed and McWorld.” Yes, through his whole body of work, and now in this new masterpiece, he invites us to “imagine the future that is already here.”
I’ve just finished reading Tom Sine’s newest book, “The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine). It’s one that I’ve meant to read for a few months. However, having now finished it, I highly recommend it and want to do a relatively thorough summary of the book here. It’s fantastic.You may or may not know Tom’s name. Tom and Christine Sine are Seattle area folks who direct the Mustard Seed Associates, an organization devoted to engaging the church in emerging culture. What I love about the Sines - not having met them, but growing a friendship with their associate and housemate, Eliacin Rosario Cruz, is that they’re speaking from decades of experience about a spirituality that I think is important and can truly be lived, not just discussed. Their way has whiffs of emerging church, new monasticism, creation care and Celtic spirituality, but it’s got larger aromas of God’s Kingdom among the poor and at the future edge of social change.The book is organized broadly into five “conversations” (which functionally are chapter clusters). Broadly speaking, Tom begins and ends with discussion of the forms of churches which are emerging in contemporary culture, and in the middle of those markers he discusses emerging culture with a global perspective.
The first conversation labels four new streams of church that are arriving in recent days: emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic. Emerging churches are those intentionally seeking to serve the postmodern context and are described similarly to those in “Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures” (Eddie Gibbs, Ryan K. Bolger). Missional churches are birthed out of missional theology in the vein of Lesslie Newbigin and their leaders are more often seminary trained and focused on multiculturalism than those in the emerging churches. Mosaic churches are intentionally focused on multiculturalism, are often urban, and often are not focused on the postmodern context. Monastic communities are often not focused on church planting and typically are comprised of people older than those in the other streams. Monastic communities are more focused on living among the poor and living a community based spirituality 24×7.
The second conversation is about taking the culture seriously. It examines the post-9/11 world, the development of a global youth culture and economy. It continues by challenging the reader to look at consumerism and the messages we get of what ‘the good life’ is, and how that differs from the reality of God’s Kingdom.
The third conversation is about taking the future of God seriously. It looks at Biblical and cultural imagery of homecoming and the in breaking Kingdom of God into today’s world, which we can live into now.
The fourth conversation is taking turbulent times seriously. Contemporary churches must plan for a changing future, not the continuation of the present. We have to anticipate change, even if we’re incorrect about were we think that change will end up. We have to live a different future with respect to care of creation and bridging the gap between global rich and global poor. We must give those in the middle ways to deal with soaring housing, healthcare costs and encourage them to aim for serviced, not for wealth. Globally, including in the West, the poor are getting poorer, squeezed by housing and healthcare costs, and wages which are no longer livable. We can equip individuals and communities to lift the poor out of poverty. And the community of nations can and must help the global poor out of their poverty. The Christian church can re-imagine its role in culture and make deep impact in these turbulent times.
The fifth conversation is taking our imaginations seriously. We can imagine a different church making a different impact on a different culture. Beginning by examining the Scriptures for God’s description of ‘the good life’, we create ways to shape God’s good life in our lives and world. We purposely, prayerfully live abundant lives. We re-imagine economic stewardship as not serving institutions, but serving the needy. We re-imagine Christian community as a whole-life, holistic family system which intentionally spends time and energy together and in whole-hearted mission. We shape our lives and our church communities for mission. And we ask God to ignite our creativity and imagination.
I read this book at the right time in my life. For several months, I’m feeling a deep call to live simply and authentically. I am more globally aware and related than I ever have been, and it is this connection that gives me perspective on my own life and mission. I am deeply impacted by the way that Tom describes our challenges and the hope that God brings as we break out of old patterns and allow Him to blow through us for the sake of His creation - nature and humanity. I highlighted the daylights out of pages for the fifth conversation, and in the stories that Tom tells of Christians and churches who are creatively doing the work of the Kingdom I find deep joy, life and hope.
My quibbles with the book are few. While I like Tom’s taxonomy of the four streams of churches, I’m not sure that ‘missional’ is really distinct from the other three - in fact, I think emerging churches are really just missional to postmodern peoples; mosaic churches are missional in a multiethnic way, and monastic are missional in community and especially among the poor. I suppose that there are simply missional-missional churches (if you get what I mean by that), but mission shapes the other three forms deeply.
I also found myself going into statistical overload in the well-detailed middle section of the book. The future arriving before our eyes is deeply different than our present, and the difference between global rich and global poor is astounding - but my eyes began to glaze over at the reality of what we’re facing in coming days.
But those minor details aside, I highly recommend this book for anybody who’s feeling unsettled with the way things are today, and looking for a different future in partnership with God. Beware, though - it’s impossible to read this book and not totally re-examine your own place in the world and in the family of God.
I’ve been reading Tom Sine’s new book, The New Conspirators and it has been a great companion these last two weeks. He does a great job of deconstructing with solid data and statistics how our way of life just does not work for 95% of the world. Sure, it works great for the rich and the really rich, but it doesn’t work too well for the vulnerable middle class and the poor. He also presents in scary fashion how much we in the West buy into the world’s view of “the good life.” He argues that we need a new (Kingdom) way forward and he does a great job of pulling the wool off our eyes to show the real world that we life in.On page 201 he writes,“The only way poverty will become history is for those of us whom God has entrusted with God’s generous resources to critically evaluate our own lives and priorities. It is estimated that today over 200 million Christians live in dire poverty. Isn’t there something terribly wrong, in the international body of Christ, when some of us live palatially and other Christians can’t keep their kids fed? Isn’t it past time to recognize that we live in an interconnected global village in which there is no longer such a thing as a ‘private’ lifestyle choice?”
He also writes on page 227:
“Bruce Bradshaw in his book Change Across Cultures suggests that the Scripture calls us to a much greater conversion - much more than the forgiveness of sins and receiving God into our lives. It also involves the very radical step of inviting the Spirit of God to “transform the narratives that govern our lives,” so that we are empowered to “live a very different story.”
Preach it Tom. You can check out Tom’s ministry at The Mustard Seed Associates.
I am reading a new book called THE NEW CONSPIRATORS by Tom Sine. Sine is a northwest guy who has been questioning whether the American church has been activity involved in the Kingdom of God in the present day, here and now. I just started it and it has some cool stuff that our churches should be discussing on a regular basis. He mentions a speech he gave to a group of Arab Christians in Lebanon in 2001. In that speech, Sine emphasized that our world is now like a huge global neighborhood. He predicted that our economy would have a direct effect on the rest of the world like no other period in history. This global economy is not stable. Sounds much like what we are experiencing in our world economy today. He also mentioned how the modern mindset of Christian parents has caused them to raise their kids to pursue values that are purely financial and individualistic. According to studies conducted by Sine on college campuses, the number one thing that keeps Christian students from getting into mission work is their parents. Hum?
Sine makes an interesting theory in blaming Ben Franklin (a proclaimed Deist), for the modern embrace of the prosperity gospel in many churches today. Franklin criticized the Puritan mindset of virtue as the end goal of life. Franklin, according to Sine, taught in his classic POOR RICHARDS ALMANAC that virtue is good as long as it leads to blessings in material wealth and status. While blaming any number of the founding fathers who embraced Deism as their chosen religion, I believe the prosperity gospel goes way back to a Christian emperor named Constantine and his philosophy that religion should be front and center in an empire. Any thoughts?
I’m taking a break from reading for my Doctor of Ministry - following what I believe is the inspiration of the Trinity - and reading “The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time” (Tom Sine). I’ve read several good summaries or reviews of the book, for example this one from Johnny Baker, or this one that Tom wrote to the Anabaptists - I started reading mine a couple of nights ago, and it’s definitely Tom’s best one yet.When I’m done I’ll summarize the book too, but for now I wanted to throw up a quote or two.
In a chapter Tom wrote entitled “Coming Home to the Good LIfe of the Global Mall” about the church’s entanglement in global consumerism as its great hope, he says this:
Why don’t we discuss the influences of the dominant culture at church? Why don’t we discuss the stories so many of us buy into and their influence on us and our kids? Why don’t we explore the major role these stories play in defining our notions of the good life to which we aspire to come home?
I think part of the answer is that the Western church has historically taken a limited view of conversion. In most churches we are taught that following Christ involves transforming our spiritual lives and our moral values and helping us with our relationships. We rarely hear that God might want to transform our cultural values too.
(p.77)
Here’s Tom’s point: Christians are too easily embracing of the dominant culture’s belief system, as much as we say that we’re countercultural. But we still want comfort, safety, a nice home, good education for our kids, cars that don’t break down, a fulfilling job. We wrap these hopes in the banner of ‘relevance’ if we’re analytical, or worse, ‘God wants us to have the good life’ if we’re just buying in uncritically.
But, what if we took seriously a challenge to rediscover what ‘the good life’ and ‘God’s preferred future’ really meant?
How then would we live?
I’ve been looking forward to reading Tom Sine’s new book, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, for a while now. I have a couple of reasons for this. First, the Cover is amazing. I know, I know.. I was taught by Mr Rogers and Elmo and company not to judge a book by its cover just like you were, but gosh..iIt looks like a leftist field manual from the sixties or something like that. The image of.. well I don’t know who these guys are on the cover but they look like people I’d like to hang out with! For some reason it conjures images of the Beats. It could be Jack, Allen and William sitting around drinking too much wine, smoking marijuana cigarettes discussing the deep things of the world. Seriously. I saw the cover and I just had to read the book! Second.. The New Conspirators ! ! ! I want to be a conspirator! Seriously.. what a great freaking title! It just rolls off the tongue. Subversion was always cool. (was anyone else around here an anarchist? Did you dream of throwing over the U.S. Government.. and Capitalism for that matter? I know I did!) Woo!Needless to say I had really high expectations for the book. I was going to be pissed if Tom Sine was toying with me with this ever so tasty cover.
Well. I’m not pissed. In fact, I have to say that this is a pretty darned good book. As a new conspirator (pun so intended) it was really great to be introduced to my comrades in the Mission, Mosaic, Emerging and Monastic streams. Sine breaks down the conspiracy into nice manageable chunks, but is sure to note that there is a lot of overlap between all of these groups. He then accurately diagnoses the sickness in our culture and addition to what he calls the global mall: the ideals of extreme coolness and high affluence that drive our society to place all of our faith and hope in economic systems instead of God.
It’s kind of hard to classify what this book actually does, because it covers so much ground. It introduces one to New Christianity, deconstructs western and modern Christian ideas as well was popular culture and various idolotries that exist there. It speaks of the plight of the poor and the hopeless, speaks of actions that have been taken, but probably most importantly it encourages and espouses the power of imagination. The New Conspirators says that we do not have live life by the script the has been placed before us, and our options are much greater than simply exchanging one set of dos and don’t for another. We can use our creative muscles to find ways of dealing with our current problems and forge a new path and a new way of life. Read the new conspirators!