The speaker went on to explain that the innovator is the guy who eats the poisonous mushroom and dies.
The early adopter is the guy right next to him, who doesn’t have to eat it. He can learn from the innovator’s misfortune.
The early adopter is the guy right next to him, who doesn’t have to eat it. He can learn from the innovator’s misfortune.
***
I understand the risks.
Perhaps more than ever before, the implications are clear — any day now might be my last supper.
I read those words above in The Barbarian Way by Erwin McManus. I know I’m a few years behind on this one, but there are quite a few nuggets in the book that are still relevant, like the one I just shared.
There are strong contingincies of the Body that are doing things differently. Shane Claiborne and his friends at The Simple Way set up shop in one of the poorest areas of Philadelphia a few years ago and they are starting to see traction with what contemporaries might call an unconventional picture of church.
One of the current challenges as I see it for our organization is to find a way to translate the transformative experience Racers find in the field to a daily transformative experience in “real life” back home. The World Race ate the mushroom of 11 countries in 11 months and lived to grow the program. We’ve got a community of people ready to seek the Lord’s will with passion and zeal. I for one am ready to take a few more chances to try to catapult the life Racers have found in the field into a new picture of Christian community in America.
I understand the risks.
Perhaps more than ever before, the implications are clear — any day now might be my last supper.
But without risking the poisonous mushroom, we never would have discovered the joys of portobellos.
I read those words above in The Barbarian Way by Erwin McManus. I know I’m a few years behind on this one, but there are quite a few nuggets in the book that are still relevant, like the one I just shared.
There are a lot of different directions I could take the Musroom-Eater thing, but for the sake of brevity in this post I want to focus on what AIM and The World Race are doing and why I want to continue to work with them.
A lot of people in the greater, global, Christian community are starting to say that the Church needs to be doing some things differently if we want to see Holy Spirit transformation in society. I would tend to agree. In fact, I saw a real smart guy named Alan Hirsch give a pretty compelling talk recently. (If you have 18 spare minutes, you should watch the video) He estimates that even our best efforts, forged within the current church model, will only reach forty percent of the population in America. This means that if we take our most successful current church model, the mega-church, and do it PERFECTLY, we’re still only going to reach 40% of the population.
Translation: WE HAVE GOT TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
We have to blow the walls off of our understanding of what it means to reach people for Christ.
There are strong contingincies of the Body that are doing things differently. Shane Claiborne and his friends at The Simple Way set up shop in one of the poorest areas of Philadelphia a few years ago and they are starting to see traction with what contemporaries might call an unconventional picture of church. I think we need more mushroom eaters. There is a time for caution. There is a time to focus on proven strategies and to build infrastructure. Now is not that time. As a Body, we need to find the models of Christianity that are going to reach the other 60% (the group that is not even reached by our current models at their best).
I think the World Race is eating a few mushrooms and seeing what works. The World Race is a community of people who are always evaluating their effort to see how it can be done differently. There is a constant focus on discipleship that is honed and refined. We’re hearing people who want to go on the Race say “I’m not sure how this is going to work, but I have to do something different!” When they come back, they’ve experienced a kind of edifying community so strong they struggle against hardship to find it again at home.
One of the current challenges as I see it for our organization is to find a way to translate the transformative experience Racers find in the field to a daily transformative experience in “real life” back home. The World Race ate the mushroom of 11 countries in 11 months and lived to grow the program. We’ve got a community of people ready to seek the Lord’s will with passion and zeal. I for one am ready to take a few more chances to try to catapult the life Racers have found in the field into a new picture of Christian community in America.The danger for our little band of folks would be to create amazing Kingdom leaders on the field who come home only to cloister themselves together in a closed community. What we need to do instead is send these leaders back to their homes, connected to our community, to experiment with what it means to bring transformation back to America.
I want to be a mushroom eater. I want to be a part of a community that takes the chances necessary to have a “Eureka!” moment.
I’m sticking with the World Race for now because there is a definite move of the Holy Spirit in this program and in this community. God is calling us to continue to step out in faith and this community has shown that they do not back away from a challenge from the Lord.
Worst case scenario: we eat a poisonous mushroom, fall flat on our face in failure. Best case scenario, we stumple onto a portobello, a new vision of Christian community is fostered and planted all over America and revival is born. I’ll take that chance.
