Decentralization 2

            The most quoted line of poet William Yeats comes from the beginning of his poem “The Second Coming” in which he writes:

            Turning and turning in the widening gyre

            The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

            Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

            There is no center to things any more, everything has cracked open and separated out. At one time, everyone got their news from one straight laced news man, a single source, and that was the reality everyone bought into. At one time, you were likely to live next to a neighbor with a differing political opinion from yours and that was okay. At one time, people regularly bowled in leagues and regularly joined organizations of all sorts. Now, there are news channels that cater to any viewpoint, everything is looked at through a partisan lens and there are literally now “blue” and “red” neighborhoods—a great sorting based on ideology, the same number of people bowl as before, but alone because league attendance has plummeted, and any organization that takes serious commitment has taken a serious hit. In short, we’re feeling the effects of decentralization.

            There is a power to decentralization—a small group of people can do giant things. That should be good news to us, after all we are a small group of people tasked to do nothing short of be God’s hands in the world! 

Decentralization 1

Decentralization—Small groups of people without anyone in charge can now influence the world

The Grid

	Disestablishment	Decentralization	Demographics
Gathering in Community	How do we gather without the explicit approval of our society?	What does gathering look like in a scattered world?	How do we gather in a racially ethnically and economically diverse world?
Confession and Forgiveness	How do we confess and forgive in a disestablishment world?	How do we confess and forgive in this decentralized world?	What especially needs to be confessed and forgiven in these new demographic realities?
Baptism	What parts of our baptismal identity shine through differently in a disestablished church?	How can we be centered in our Child of God-ness in a decentralized world?	As racial and economic identity shifts in our society how do we affirm our baptismal identity—in what ways does it shift or stay the same?
Word of God	What themes in scripture draw attention to themselves when read from outside the cultural mainstream?	How may the Word of God be preached and trusted in a decentralized world?	How do we hear and respond to the Word of God differently when we are ethnically and economically different than we were a generation ago?
Thanksgiving	For what aspects of disestablishment ought we give thanks?	What new ways can we give thanks when everything is decentered?	What methods of thanksgiving are found in non-Eurocentric cultures?
Meal	In what ways have we wed Holy Communion to the powers that be in our society?	Where do we have the holy meal in light of decentralization?	What aspects of Holy Communion can be expressed differently for a wider variety of cultural contexts?
Sending	Who have we neglected to go to in order to impress the powers that be?	Where and how are we sent when we’re already dispersed?	How are we sent differently to the new demographics in which we live?