Next-Wave Ezine > church & culture

From Mirrors to Maps
By Jim Henderson

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Since 2000 Off The Map has been helping Christians see themselves through the eyes of Outsiders. We’ve been holding up a mirror for Christians and asking them if like what they see. Other insultants like Christine Wicker, David Kinnaman, Rick Richardson and Dan Kimball have also contributed to the growing body of evidence that Christianity needs more than a face lift – it needs heart surgery.

We all have mirrors but most of us spend as little time as possible in front of them. Mirrors aren't friendly. Mirrors are reality checks. Generally we don’t put them up in the living room, instead we position them in private places and use them only as needed.

In A Prophetic Imagination Walter Bruggerman says something about prophetic people needing to both criticize and energize. A heartfelt follower of Jesus (the free-est person who ever lived) needs to practice both. When we try one without the other we create messed up people and we become messed up ourselves, meaning we stop living as free people.

We chose the name Off The Map because we want to do two things

Explore – travel, see new things, and experience difference
Explain – help the church grow and change

As Off The Map enters a new season we're going to focus less on mirrors and more on maps, less on critiquing the church and more on energizing the church.

Unlike mirrors, maps are hopeful, informational and motivating.

Mapmakers make the invisible visible and the dangerous doable.

It was only a little over 500 years ago that the most popular maps showed an earth that ended at the Equator. The Equator was a boundary no one crossed and lived to tell about. We know that isn’t true now and wasn’t true then but it felt true to them.

Here’s the lesson: Maps make people feel (imagine) so if we want people to change we need to give them alternate feelings – a new map. Only then will they walk out the door and see that the world is much bigger, more interesting and more receptive than they had come to believe.

The Practicing Church is a new map of the church - not a new church.

When Columbus set sail in 1492 he was looking for India and Japan. Even after he bumped into North America he and those who followed in his footsteps spent the next 300 years thinking it was something they had to get through in order to get to the much sought after spices of Asia.

Christians have come to believe their world is much smaller than it actually is. Our beliefs based maps show us a world with so many equators we’ve lost count. Consequently we’ve stopped exploring and become what my new friend Charlie Peacock calls a “bored and clichéd people.”

We mistakenly got into the beliefs business and have come to see serving and otherlyness as something we do because of correct beliefs, when a simple reading of Matthew 25 illustrates that just the opposite is true. Heartfelt practices often lead to right beliefs.

The Practicing Church has been around from the beginning, we just haven't noticed it. As William Gibson says “The future has already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet.” The Practicing Church will help Christians see the church for what it could be rather than what they’ve come to think it should be.

Jim Henderson is the content guy behind Off The Map, the sponsor of The Practicing Church blog. The ideas and concepts for OTM come from Jim’s life experiences as a human, a pastor, a husband, a father and someone who just has the knack for seeing things through other people’s eyes. He spends a large amount of his time investing in people and helping them to realize their potential.

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