Experiments in Creative Action

Monday evening, Memorial Day evening, I sat with an older couple whose vitality blurred the marks that times leaves on most people. He’s around 80, I think, and she’s probably a bit younger. He was a pastor for decades. I listened as he voiced a dissatisfaction with the American church, and specifically his local church, that was strikingly similar to what my friends and I have been discussing.

And I listened as he said that, in his decades studying the church from all angles, he had not come across anything much better than what this local church had to offer. He had not found a good model of what faithful community should look like.

80-years-wise and what was this man’s response? Try something new. Start something outside of the box.


Creative Action!

I’ve heard it now from every generation – we are not satisfied with the easy demands of Sunday morning church. We can see that people living the way Jesus taught would create a strikingly different kind of community, and it’s clear that if the story is true at all then it calls us to follow that way with vigor. And the church has taught us to trust the story.

But we haven’t seen what this different way of life or its community looks like, at least not firsthand. We haven’t seen it modeled. We can read about it in Acts, and we can follow different experiments that are emerging around the country and the world. But eventually we come to the edge of what we know, what we have seen, desiring the next step but left without a clear path.

The way forward is creative action: to embed the principles that Jesus taught as deeply as possibly in your paradigm – love for God, love for neighbor, generosity, hope, service, equality, etc. – and to remember the best of what we’ve seen, then create things to do that seem to follow and fulfill those principles and examples.

Do experiments in love; do experiments in generosity; do experiments in hope. Test everything. If it works, repeat it with improvements. If it doesn’t figure out why not and try something new. Test, learn, apply, repeat. Create new ways of loving God and of loving the people around you. Try a new way of serving the poor. Test a new way to apply the idea of equality. Give someone something you’ve never thought to give, or give to someone you’ve never given to. See what happens. Write it down.

And tell me how it goes! I want to know. I’m going to be sharing and discussing different stories of creative action, wherever they happen. Send me stories that you find, or stories that you create. And I’ll share mine as well.


Let’s figure out how to live.

Jason Schwartzman Ponders a Trip to Burma

I've been a little slow on the blogging lately (many (many!) thoughts to come). For now, though, I saw this video with Jason Schwartzman on the US Campaign for Burma website. It's too the point, but funny! Most of the videos from their 30 day campaign have been lackluster, but this I wanted to share:

30 Days, 1 Million Voices

If you're not already watching the 30 Days For 1 Million Voices campaign for Burma, check it out. The US Campaign for Burma is putting out one short video every day for 30 days to rally 1 million people to speak out about the genocide in Burma.

Burma (also known as Myanmar) is a country next to Thailand in Southeast Asia that has been ruled by a military junta for the past 19-years. The ruling party is wiping out many of Burma's ethnic minorities, committing several genocides at once, with international impunity because it is acting within its own borders. There is much that can be done, though, from serving Burmese refugees to pressuring China to stop supporting the military government. Sign up for the US Campaign for Burma and keep a hand ready for action.

Six Words for This Morning

Beeep! Snooze. Beeep! Snooze. Beeep! Snooze.

The Socially Proactive Stamp

I just read Seth Godin's latest post about "green marketing," and how it stands to be misunderstood or abused. That is, until someone can put a number to it. Once you can see the impact of your choices on a scale from 1 to 100 you'll make better choices, and the companies that offer those choices will prosper.

It's like the "fairtrade" stamp. Before that stamp your average consumer had no way to verify whether workers were being paid enough for their work. Now, at least we know that someone is looking into it, even if we don't know all the criteria that the fairtrade stamp represents.

Same with the "organic" stamp. I don't know exactly what it takes to grow organic apples, nor do I know all the ways in which they are better for me and for the world than regular apples. But I know that someone knows, and that they stamped it.

As the practice of social business takes off, in all its various forms, there is going to be a lot of confusion. The mixed motives of profit and compassion make for murky mission statements. I've seen it myself in building Acholi Beads, my first socially proactive business. The models of non-profit and for-profit are so firmly entrenched in consumer mentalities that they will gladly buy from a company that makes no claims as to how it treats its workers, but will thumb their noses at one that promises great things for the poor. Because there is no stamp to prove it.

As with "green" marketing, there is ample opportunity for companies to neglect or abuse the concept of social business in order to make a buck. So if we are going to make this thing as powerful as it can be, we need to start working towards that stamp. People need that stamp, just like I need the organic stamp.

My friends Aaron, Daniel, Derek, Ben, Kevin and Clayton are all experimenting with socially proactive business models, and I know there are many more out there looking to do the same. Together we're going to learn how to do this right.

Try Harder...

My buddy Daniel came by our Acholi Beads locale at a local music festival today. The guy drips web savvy - you can actually follow the trail. Today the trail led back to his new blog "Try Harder to Suck Less." He kindly posted a video of a quick interview we did.

Check it out here.

Six Words for May 1, 2008

Walked where San Diego meets Africa.