In a June 2008 issue of The Mennonite Magazine, author Tom Sine provides a glimpse inside the cover of his latest book release, The New Conspirators. Sine is convinced that God is doing something new through the next generation of leaders who are creating new ways to make a difference in both the world and the church. In The New Conspirators, he points out that these young activists and innovators can be best understood and articulated in at least four streams: Emerging, Missional, Mosaic and Monastic.Even though I do not endorse all of the viewpoints embraced by Tom Sine or of the Mennonite Church USA, I had to make you aware of an article that makes great strides towards defining the various movements of God around the world among the next generation of church leaders. The fact that there is no hidden agenda or bias on the truth about the movements, alone, makes this article worth reading (Click Here to Read).After reading the article give me your thoughts on this particular section:“…many of these young activists have turned away from the influences of the religious right to embrace a more biblically progressive agenda for social transformation. They are consistently much more committed to working for social justice, racial reconciliation and caring for God’s good creation than many of the churches from which they come.”
I’ve been reading a book called the new conspirators by tom sine. a very well-researched book that definitely stands out to me as one i’ll want to revisit often.
Jeff Lam, Seattle USA
Andrew Jones named The New Conspirators his #2 book on the emerging church for U.S.-based journalists: ”[Tom Sine] 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.”
To put it simply, Tom Sine’s The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time is an encyclopedia of the new movement in the Evangelical church in Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States.I received a review copy of The New Conspirators: just before leaving for Vietnam a month and a half ago. I carried the book with me through 3 long train journeys, fully intending to read it on each one. Then, quite unexpectedly I found myself with a large amount of time in a clinic room while my traveling companion recovered from a collapse due to altitude sickness.We were in the mountain village of Sapa (see photos). A fog hung over the region the whole day, broken occasionally by rain. Indigenous people were the main clients of the medical facility and their colorful woven clothing gave the place a distinctly exotic feel. I found the setting infused my reading of The New Conpirators with a certain immediacy. His chapter on “Coming Home” stood out to me in particular.As an introduction to the emerging, missional and mosaic (multicultural) church and New Monasticism the book covers a huge amount of ground. Each church, initiative or organization is described in two to three paragraphs, with an occasional story warranting a few paragraphs more.Sine is very thorough. My recent knowledge in this field is focused in the UK and he covers most of the groups I worked with from the Post-Christendom Series to the SPEAK Network. In other cases he goes into very concrete details such as when describing the church who sold it’s building to buy affordable housing and create a community for mixed income folks in a low income neighborhood.
Sine doesn’t stop with church movements, he also mentions a few government programs such as Bolsa Familia, a program of the Brazilian government that offers stipends to families in exchange for vaccinations for children and regular health check ups.
One of the frustrating aspects of this approach is that it doesn’t leave room for any discussion of failures, mistakes or criticisms of the movement. Describing a few initiatives that failed could be a great way for budding new conspirators to learn from their mistakes.
Beyond the journalism of reporting on all these different initiatives, Sine also provides an overview of the new conspirator’s theology and analysis of our society. He draws a clear connection between a narrow view of church and complicity with globalized consumerism:
I will show in this conversation and the next that many of us have unwittingly embraced a narrow, spiritualized eschatology that is so other worldy that it has almost no influence on shaping our notions of what constitutes the good life and better future in the here and now. As a consequence too many of us have allowed the storytellers of the global mall to define our sense of what is important and of value. (p. 73)
Sine goes on to point out that many churches spend very little time discussing any connection between Christianity and “cultural stuff” of day to day life. He says, “My concern is that the imagery of ‘individual soul escape’ disconnects eschatology from daily life and the urgent challenges that fill God’s world.”
His alternatives to this deficiency will be familiar to those who have read Anabaptist and/or justice oriented Christian writrers:
- The teachings of Jesus are a radical challenge to the “global mall” that is emerging as globalization’s vision for the world.
- Helping the poor is a central part of the gospel and not just a tactic for conversion.
- We should learn from early church practices like radical hospitality.
- Corporations are “colonizing our imaginations”
- The “good life” isn’t everything.
- Helping the poor is mission, not just a “strategic prelude to evangelism”
- Bruce Cockburn’s lyrics are insightful and prophetic.
Again his analysis and theology draw on quite a wide range of Western sources from Canadian Naomi Klein to British theologian N. T. Wright. At least when it comes to Western authors, Sine has read about as widely as he’s traveled, though he could do well to include a few more majority world theologians and writers.
Mennonites should be paying attention. Many of these new conspirators are reading Yoder and inspired by Anabaptism. In some cases they over idealize us. I’ve had the painful task of breaking the news to more than a few of them that the majority of Mennos voted for Bush in 2004. Some of them, like the New Monasticism community of Missio Dei in Minnesota, have gone ahead and joined Mennonite Church USA.
Unfortunately, Sine seems to be part of the school of thought that believes the only path to unity among evangelicals is completely avoiding any mention of sexuality, let alone homosexuality. This seems a bit short-sighted given that sexuality and LGBTQ issues are unlikely to go away, especially among the younger generation.
Overall, I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in a catching up on some of the hopeful trends among young, North American Evangelicals.
Futurist Tom Sine’s book The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time comes highly recommended by a veritable who’s who of Christian writers, thinkers, and theologians, ranging from new monastic proponent Shane Claiborne (who writes the foreword) to Jim Wallis. While I think there are certain truths that can be garnered from this work, my theological sensibilities find some of what is said here worrisome. Overall, The New Conspirators is an interesting and even important read. Readers will have to separate the wheat from the chaff, but the wheat is really palpable stuff. The pros and cons are almost in perfect balance, though. So, tread carefully.
I finally finished my copy of The New Conspirators by Tom Sine last night and I was deeply moved by the book which is a little weird to write as not a lot of books affect me like that. Tom is articulating I am coming to see more and more as my own theology and that is one of the Mustard Seed and also living and working in some of the forgotten parts of the Empire.
It’s an odd space I find myself in. I partner with the Government of Saskatchewan on several fronts working in a shelter that gets a lot of our funding from the government. I am also on a local advisory committee for the Homelessness Partnering Initiative which helps decide where federal government funds are distributed in the city. At both levels of government, I work with some amazing people who care as much or more about poverty, homelessness, and the people who call Saskatoon home as I do. They have totally changed my perception of the people behind the system in a very good way.
At the same time the system can only do so much. As I fear even the United States government will find out, one can only live with a deficit for so long before it all comes falling down on you again. I get several e-mail and letters a week from local groups and people who are calling on the governments for more money to “deal with this crisis” and I agree that the government has a role to play. At the same time I find myself also seeing the important role that “mustard seeds” have to play in changing cities, partly because there are forgotten people and as I found out yesterday (a long story that will never be published here), it is hard to get the funding and permission in many places to do anything else other than start small.
I’ll get into the book more in the next couple of weeks but The New Conspirators tells many stories of Christian communities who are taking a big idea (changing the world) but starting small local expressions of faith as a ways to see it come true. The cool part of the book is that it is working.
Christian parents want what’s best for their kids. No problem there. However, because of the huge influence of modern culture, most parents tend to define “what’s best” primarily in economic terms. As we have worked on college campuses, the number-one barrier students report that restraints them from going into missions, believe it or not, is their Christian parents. The message is, “I did not spend $80 thousand on your education for you to head off to a refugee project in Ethiopia. You get your career under way, buy your home, your car, start investing in retirement accounts, and then after you are established, you can visit mission projects in Africa during your vacation.”- Tom Sine, The New Conspirators
Certainly, this is what I did. But that doesn’t mean that is what you should do. Just don’t bring up my name when you talk to your parents about it.Fast becoming a book that I will start recommending to most SPACE people, The New Conspirators covers concepts such as missional, monastic, mosaic, and emerging communities of faith; the impact of various stratas of economic classes; indigenous, sustainable and holistic ministry; technology; the global poor; global cultures - all wrapped around mission in the future. Sounds good huh?
When the great book of life is opened, some would see it that it’ll be the stellar Christians like Mclaren, Baker, Rollins and Wallis who should get all the plaudits. I wouldn’t want to take anything away from any of them, but quietly, ‘one mustard seed at a time’ Tom has been actually inspiring people to do the stuff. It’s a quiet, background role, perhaps, but I think if you could trace the significance of his words and actions through all the things that have happened because of them, you’d have quite an amazing list. Vaux certainly owes him its existence in many ways.
Tom (Sine) maps the current new things happening with a mapping of four movements whose edges are blurred and overlap - emerging, mosaic, new monastic, and missional and he is enthusiastic about them all (i agreed with shaine clayborne’s hesitation in the foreword that the book runs the risk of making some of us young tykes look too good, better than the reality - but what a refreshing change!) weaving stories he has gleaned into the mix. he does carefully issue a few challenges on the way - for example he loves the creativity in emerging church but wonders why it tends to get focused on worship and church rather than taken outside the walls. he also wonders if those of us who like the postmodern world haven’t got our imaginations too shaped by the consumer dream of cool - these are great challenges and need to be responded to.
He follows the opening section mapping the new conspirators with conversations about culture and what the future challenges might be. woven into this is a view of god’s future that is wonderfully inspiring. in much the same way as i enthused about tom wright’s book a while back, this book also lays out a vision of a future for the earth that is healed when god’s kingdom comes. one of the things i have always found challenging and inspiring about tom and christine is their imagination. in the face of the consumer culture and the busyness and drain on resources so many of us face they suggest communal responses in relation to housing, resources, and neighbourhood. it takes courage to take these on board, but this is precisely the kind of imagining christian communities should engage in. in fact the last section of the book, taking our imaginations seriously, was definitely my favourite - story after story and idea after idea are laid out so that you can’t help feeling that as tom puts it all of life is a design opportunity to be co-creators with god. at the end of it, because the whole approach is inspired by jesus’ story of the mustard seed where something grows from a tiny seed, you think that even i could do something really really small and see what happens…
His (Tom) book is worth reading and discussing and it’s great to have a guy with his breadth giving some credence to this new generation of thinkers envisioning a new reality in our new emerging culture that is both consistent with and yet somewhat different than the previous incarnation of church in an earlier historical culture.
Tom explores taking the culture seriously, taking the future seriously, taking turbulent times seriously and taking our imaginations seriously. A wondrous ride through the alley ways.
From Jesus Creed blog, Scott McKnight
USA
If you cant make the conference, at least buy the book. Its called The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time. Tom sent me the manuscript last year and I was really impressed with it. Tom and Christine Sine are possibly the most connected people I know to the wider emerging church scene AND the historic Jesus movement of the 70’s in which they also had a part. It was the Sines that connected me with key leaders around the world including New Zealanders like Mark Pierson (who is speaking at the conference this weekend) and Emergent Kiwi Steve Taylor. They are always ahead of the game.
From Tall Skinni Kiwi, Andrew Jones
Scotland
The New Conspirators serves as a really terrific primer and conversation starter for people who are new to a post-Christendom thought process, and it represents a good “next step” for those who are already in sync with that.
Steve Lewis, Washington, USA
Tom presents a taxonomy of hope in four small streams that are washing over the roots of a sprawling and ailing church: missional, emerging, monastic and mosaic.
From Next Reformation blog, Len Hjalmarson
Canada
I love his choice of the humble touch, the small, and his consistent choice to apply what he says…
From Reconciliaton Talk, Peter Adams
England
One of the things I immediately like and appreciated is Tom’s engaging style. He is humble in his presentation and is constantly inviting his readers into the conversation without being overbearing.
From Missio Dei blog, Jonathan Brink
USA
Perhaps the real emergence of today’s church, the primary re-structuring that needs to take place, is in our own hearts. That we would be willing to be the unseen, unheralded ambassadors who heroically refuse to walk in the ways of this world for the sake of demonstrating a love that throws money-changers out of temples, embraces sinners, and forgives those who nail us to a cross.
Australia
I already am challenged by, and enjoy, that which I am reading. Tom is not afraid to question. He does not accept the pat answers…
Hawaii, USA
Sine notes that ‘these days God is working through a generation who will not be satisfied with anything less than an authentic faith that makes a real difference in the lives of others and in the care of God’s good creation’. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. There is a rising up which God is clearly at work within, and I for one am excited to see where He will lead us.
From Beyond the Four Walls blog, Lyn Hallewell
United Kingdom
‘The New Conspirators’ is the sort of book that I will find myself returning to in order to facilitate my thinking and stimulate my imagination as I seek, together with family and friends, to live with and for Christ and to express the inaugurated kingdom of God.
From Chisendom blog, Chris Tilling
Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany