As I leaned over my dust-covered shoes to pick up what stood before me, I lifted an oddly shaped object from the dirt. I had to remove the sunglasses I was wearing and adjust my thick-brimmed hat to see what I now held in my hand: it looked like a stone, but the edges where too cleanly cut on four sides to be another piece of ruble. Turning it over, I noticed a hint of discoloration—“Is it paint?” I wondered—before deciding I would hold onto this tiny treasure. I’d later learn this tiny treasure was a mosaic tile, an otherwise ordinary object that an artist and broader community had used to make meaning in and for their world.
Although what I held was a tiny tile no bigger than my thumb nail, it signified the memories of an artists and a previous community.
I was traveling with a group of fellow seminarians throughout Israel and Jordan. Accompanied by a world-leading scholar of Middle East archeology, our travels included stops at significant archeological and biblical sites. Although the archeological and historical stories of each place were fascinating, I found my curiosity drawn to the mosaics that were left embedded in the ground. These infinitely complex creations combined otherwise mundane objects—mosaic tiles—in order to tell a story for a particular community. Like stained glass in Christian cathedrals and places of worship, the tiles themselves only became meaningful because of the story they signified and the community who beheld them.
Here are a few examples:
A 5th or 6th century mosaic, courtesy of Beyond The Jordan: Baptism, Prophecy, and Pilgrimage East of the Jordan River.
A tile depicting a mosaic from Tabgha, which we now keep in our kitchen.
When combined, these tiny tiles can tell a story about the reality and possibilities of God.
Although the stories of our lives and communities of faith are no longer told through mosaics, the wisdom of these ancient places and practices can still enrich our common life.
I’ve been writing and sharing over the last several months about the upcoming launch of my book, Adaptive Church: Collaboration and Community in a Changing World. This book explores what it takes for communities of faith to respond to uncertainty and shifting organizational environments. Combining stories drawn from local communities and interdisciplinary perspectives, this story makes meaning out of the ordinary substances that surround the life of faith. Muck like a mosaic (hint, dear reader, the cover is a mosaic), it combines tiny treasures in order to offer something back to a broader community of faith.
The metaphor of a mosaic helpfully describes the creative and imaginative aspects of this work, but the full story of this type of creative work does not hold a gloss and simple veneer.
This project started years ago in an attempt to understand the conditions, practices, and practical wisdom that can support communities of faith who are navigating uncertainty. At a conceptual level, it sounded like a fairly straightforward task. Needless to say, I vastly underestimated the complexity and creativity this work would require.
I also did not anticipate how the next several years would provide opportunities to perform the argument that was taking shape. Regular cross-country travel. The hustle to secure research funding. Trusting in other’s generosity to make introductions. The challenge (and creative possibility) of working in interdisciplinary intersections. The pandemic, which hit days before I hit “submit” on an early version of this project. And all the creative recombinations that followed for each of us.
The outcome, Adaptive Church, certainly describes the ecclesial imagination that is required to navigate uncertainty, but it is also about the individual way of life that carries us forward.
So, yet again, this work invites nimbleness and adaptability. I learned last week the launch will be delayed due to supply line disruptions for the high-quality paper the printer needs for several color pages. Initially scheduled for August 16 (today), Adaptive Church should be released before the end of the month. For all those who have pre-ordered a copy and are waiting, thank you for your patience.
Although unexpected, making meaning of this kind of disruptions is part of the wisdom that sustains an adaptive Church. Like the artists, we can only receive the ground on which we work and the materials we have on hand as an invitation to craft something good, and beautiful, and holy. We take the simple substance of our ordinary existence, examined in the light of Christ, as the palette for our practical theological work. When embedded in a broader community, these tiny treasures we carry can become radiant expressions of the reality and possibilities of God.
It isn’t always shiny, but this is the type of good, beautiful, creative, and hopeful work the church needs right now.
Let us not forget, however, that our creations come from the dust and will return to the dust. Like the dust out of which I pulled this tiny tile, our creative work—even in its holist forms—remains a creaturely creation. No matter how much we cut, polish, or brand the stories we tell, they are and will remain only a few steps removed from a simple stone.
And this is good news. As a well-known prayer concludes: “This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.”
For those called to lead and serve in this moment, this is our calling: to work with the dust we have on hand, holding our dusty lives before an ever-creative God, and inviting the Spirit of God to make meaning with and out of us.