So much I am thanking my friend for loaning me this one book!  I forgot how much I am liking Tintin. 

Well, after a couple of months break from the book, I picked up Earl Creps' Off-Road Disciplines again today and read Chapter 5 on Witness: The Discipline of Spiritual Friendship.  I think Earl "gets it" in that people seeking God (or God seeking people) is often played out in the real world in the context of living relationship with other people.  I like his construct of God as "The Seeker" and those He seeks as "The Sought."  He talks about having spiritual conversations with hitchhikers and workers in coffee houses, musing over relational ways to reach "The Sought" with the message of God's love and care.  What amazed me, though, is this chapter contains so examples of someone actually receiving God, which sort of begs the question on the models he's using.  The most disappointing part of the chapter is when in an airport reading a book he overhears the grief of a father who has lost a child, talks about the impact it had on him (Earl) personally, and yet made no effort to engage in a relational conversation with the man.  As if the man's grief was only an instrument of transformation in Earl, and Earl's presence was a potential conduit of God's love and care, and yet out of that conduit flowed nothing.  Although he didn't exactly point this out in the text, that's what struck me.  How often do we "pass on the other side" to avoid people in pain?  We should each make a greater effort to be conduits of God's love and care.

Creps uses POV to stand for Point Of View.  However, the chapter might be more aptly named, "The Discipline of Points of View," as that is what it actually discusses here.  His point is the various points of view exist in the world and in the religious movements.  A "Blueprint POV" consists of a point of view where a mission is either designed (blueprinted) and then made or simply borrowed from another successful model (using someone elses blueprint).  A "Reverse Engineering POV" in a mission consists of disassembling a culture (such as Postmodernism) and developing a strategy to reach people coming from a particular cultural point of view.  Many attempts to disassemble Postmodernism simply boil down to "its a new a different trend from Modernism."  Hence, it has no name of its own but is simply described as "Post-Modernism" or "that which comes after Modernism, whatever that is, but we don't know what to call it yet."  Creps attempts to describe Postmodernism using a "black hole" metaphor.  (The very description smacks of his own Modernist assumptions--whatever. :) )  At the center of the black hole is the belief that nothing is truly knowable.  How far you are sucked into Postmodernist belief depends on how close you are to the center of this philosophical black hole.  As Creps puts it, "So the philosophy affects those under its influence according to their closeness to the ultimate no," (p. 30) or the center of the black hole where people believe that nothing is knowable.  (Written like a true Modernist. :) )  However, the statement I thought which mosts reflects the Postmodern college students that I work with is, "Most people hold a hybrid view that is picked up from various sources along the way without much critical reflection," (p. 31) or as he calls it later in the chapter, "Folk Religion POV."  I prefer to think of it as "buffet-style spirituality" where people pick a little of whatever they wish to sample, then go back for bigger helpings of the things they like.  I agree with Creps that real faith knows how to thrive in a climate of folk religion by relying less on the tools of leadership skills and ministry methods and relying more on the powerful spiritual tools of faith, prayer, and love.  You go Earl-baby!