OCAP, The Salvation Army, the government and people

I will be honest every tuesday I think about Ivan Illich.

The reason is on Tuesday nights we go on StreetWalks where an outreach worker with the Salvation Army tours us around downtown Toronto explaining social justice issue. One questions that is perpetually on my mind anyway, and even more so on tuesday nights as the youth ask similair questions, is how can non-professionals show love and hospitality to those who have severe addictions or are criminally cultured?

Coming from the perspective of Youth who on the most part, realistically, will never be trained to be professional addictions counselors and are much to young to do anything like activist work this question is potent. I will not go into details but the youth are really impacted by this walk. Yet at the same time no non-institutional way of grapling with the issues is presented which leads them with out really anything to do about the issues.

De-Institutionalizing Ideas

Below, sometime ago, I have written about the institutionalization of hospitality as seen by Ivan Illich. In his book "The Rivers North of the Future" he discusses how it became evident to him that it is off immediate importance to work within the framework of institutions and that culture because of how systematic it was. As I have been reflecting on this top this past weekend I have one very simple piece of advice for those working in institutions:

Make friendships. Real Friendships.

If you are a pastor at a church get to know on a good level some of denominational staff. Not only that but for the people you are serving make sure that some of the relationships go deeper than just a pastor-congregant relationship. It is only in these friendships can change actually occur. Illich went so far as to label these friendships as the new form of prophesy. Do I agree? I am not sure exactly but I know real, lasting friendship is one of the primary means to be human in a beaurocratic techno-societies.

Postmodern Monastaries?

This an older but still relevant and interesting post on Postmodern Monastaries.

What interests me is how this differs from other New Monastic communities in that it is (a) more Monastic in the emphasis on learned skills (b) its emphasis on technology and creativity is not really part of the New Monasticism which is more, well, Amish-y.

Churches as Microcredit lending groups?

Andrew Jones recently posted on his predictions about the church in the next ten years here.

This relates directly to my previous posts on co-operatives and facebanking. It got me to thinking: how can the Church financially aide it's community? How can we back this up theologically or, maybe, missiologically? I know that this is a very similar idea to what the Mennonites are doing, a institution I will be attaching myself to when it opens its membership to non-members of Mennonite churches in May.

I wonder how this look like in Evangelical or mainline churches. I can see Evangelical churches becoming interested out of a desire to reach people and so to fund their member's entreprenuership if it relates to evangelism. I can also see that Mainline churches would fund different types of social justive iniatives, although what kind I am not sure.

Then there are megachurches. Churches with a thousand(s) of people might utilize this, if they do it can be an explosion of creativity. Of course it could also cause the churches to change focus in a negative way and will also force some churches to change their legal organizational structure but it could really make an impact.

Finally there is the question of denominations. These churches who choose the route of ministering through micro-finance have the choice of either doing so with a denomination or doing it at a local level. Both would have their advantages but both would have their disadvantages as well.

What do you think? Good idea, bad idea? How will it play out? What opportunities would this give to the church?

Facebanking??

Occasionally I like to take two concepts and, for a lack of a better word, breed them. Thus this little thought, this small theoretical experiment.

Social networking (Facebook etc) meets finances (banking).

Imagine:

- If you join a cause on facebook, you could also donate to it there and then
- you could, out of the joy of your heart, give all your friends on facebook .50 cents each
- on 'marketplace' type apps you could order things
- you could update your status: need 20$ for concert this saturday... and maybe might lend you or give you money
- perhaps some sort of application where you can also invest in businesses or even friends ideas
- perhaps create between a group of people a 'war chest' type of thing

WHY?

- easy way for charities, grass roots politicians and other causes to raise money
- great way to be a support/ find support from friends
- finances beginning looking more like Village Banking and other microfinancial institutions.. which would be an interesting experience in the west
- finances are based more and more on friends and community then on big banks and credit institutions

OF COURSE it might be difficult to set up but I think if it was it would be a pretty interesting and very experimental as well as fruitful ground for building relationships and practicing generosity and experiencing creativity.

SOCIAL INNOVATION IDEAS

Here are two ideas I came up with today:

THE GIFT ECONOMY - For lack of a better name this idea involves having a regular space and time for a neighborhood to give away things. It's the same idea as a farmers market but instead it is a kind of freecycle. You bring furniture, food, electronics or whatever to give away for FREE. Also you can come and receive for FREE.

VIDEO CO-OP - This probably exists already but what I'm thinking is a co-op where you would pay an initial 200$ membership fee and then be able to take out whatever you want, whenever, for FREE since you are an owner of the store. This can create serious competition for Blockbuster but it would be an interesting experiment.