8. Passion!

Catherine Booth poses contemplatively in this photo. Can you feel the passion in her gaze? I can!

Evil, chaos, Genesis…
Evil, chaos, Jesus…
Evil, chaos, Luther…
Evil, chaos…

The Salvation Army
...in its epochal Genesis years, dared courageously and with great conviction to sing and dance in the chaos beyond the culture that spawned its early pioneers.

In those years Great Britain was undergoing profound industrial change, chaotic in every respect. Mark Twain, while visiting London in 1897 for an event honoring the Queen, observed: "British history is two thousand years old and yet in a good many ways the world has moved farther ahead since the Queen was born than it moved in all the rest of the two thousand put together."

The Industrial Revolution
Twain’s observation captures the sense of dizzying change characterizing this Victorian period, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns, where ever-growing urban slums awaited them. Someone wrote, “The rhythm of the seasons was replaced by the rhythm of the water wheel and the steam engine.” Women, youths and children comprised almost two-thirds of the manufacturing workforce.

Traditional ideas were being challenged, including the role of women in that society. Advances in the printing press during this period made information and knowledge more accessible to the masses, resulting in a more informed reading public, leading to controversy and debate on political and social issues.

And what about organized religion during this time? Findley Dunachie notes in his historical writings, “The church quiescent supports the status quo. In neither country was the established Church a force for change…”

Quiescent: Inactive or at rest. Dormant. Inert. (Encarta) Devoid of passion (Noland)

Passion: Fervor. Zeal. Enthusiasm. Commitment.

William Booth’s passion for these displaced souls disturbed the quiescence of New Connexion Methodism greatly, so much so, that at their 1861 annual conference in Liverpool a decision was made to minimize the magnitude of Booth’s ministry. This action disquieted the soul of his wife, Catherine, so much so, that from the gallery she spontaneously stood forth and cried out...

Never!
When Catherine said, “Never!” she was saying “Yes!” to Genesis and “No!” to status quno. This is one of those rare instances where the word, “No!” is appropriate because, in this case, a “yes” would have been a “no” to Genesis. In the same breath she said “No!” to culture and “Yes!” to need.

Souls crying out in dizzying confusion
  Two of them spiritually aware
 
Products of unwieldy, chaotic diffusion
  Yielded together in prayer
 
Desperately seeking a healing infusion
  Asking, “Who’s out there to care?”
 
Viewed by some an unwanted intrusion.
   Thus igniting her passion with flare!
 
NEVER!

This one word, felt passionately and delivered spontaneously ignited a Genesis movement, unstoppable. Chaos is the incubator for creativity and inyesvation; Passion is its fuel and energy (The singing and dancing part, so much so that...).

Passion: Spontaneous spiritual combustion (Noland).

Cyberspace Link: In this video clip listen to William Booth say in his own words, “No! Ten thousand times no!” Listen closely and you will hear in that no, a resounding yes: “No!” to status quno and “Yes!” to need. As you listen begin to feel the passion. Soak it in! Let it percolate. Start tasting it. This passion soaking process is critical and foundational to the makings of a Genesis person.

Ready? Get set. Ignite!

6. Free!

Illumination! Freedom! Salvation!

Evil, chaos, Genesis…
Evil, chaos, Genesis…
Evil, chaos…

Jesus
In his introduction to the Gospel of John (The Message), Eugene Peterson writes, “For somewhere along the line things went wrong (Genesis tells that story too) and in desperate need of fixing.” God’s fix: “In deliberate parallel to the opening words of Genesis, John presents God as speaking salvation into existence. This time God’s word takes on human form and enters history in the person of Jesus. Jesus speaks the word and it happens: forgiveness and judgment, healing and illumination, mercy and grace, joy and love, freedom and resurrection. Everything broken and fallen, sinful and diseased, called into salvation by God’s spoken word.”

Chaos: Everything broken and fallen, sinful and diseased.

Salvation: Forgiveness and judgment, healing and illumination, mercy and grace, joy and love, freedom and resurrection.

Culture and Creation Collide
When Jesus came, culture and Creation collided. This was another of those quintessential Genesis moments. Jesus invaded “the chaos beyond culture” with “antidotes for the stagnation of status quo.” Read the Gospels and you will find that He penetrated the chaos with an exclamatory “No!” to status quno, and a resounding “Yes!” to need:

You don’t have to read far before His clash with the religious culture of the day becomes proactively evident. John gets right to the heart of it quickly: “Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” – Chief Priests profiting by “filthy lucre,” broken and fallen, sinful and diseased (John 2:12-22). Jesus is challenging the status quo almost immediately

Salvation is Free
In this temple purging, Genesis moment He affirms, “Salvation is free!”

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed”
(John 8:36)

Creation on a collision course,
Religious leaders decrying its source

Chaos, money changers coming hither,
Selling God to the highest bidder.

Midst this infamous, historical heist,
Introducing Jesus Christ! - Genesis.

Cyberspace Link: Stand-up comedian and host of The Steve Harvey Morning Show…

Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus Christ

Healing on the Sabbath, touching a leper, speaking to a Samaritan woman, feeding five thousand with minimal resources, uttering a new “love” commandment (John 13:34) – all need-based. It doesn’t get more inyesvative than that.

Status quo, designed to impede,
Genesis thinkers, “FREE INDEED!”

3. Need!

This image was created by Lindsay Cox, a Salvationist cartoonist and Territorial archivist for the Australian Southern Territory. Those stand-up collars, bonnets and even that tambourine nestled between the two horrified lady salvos engender a culturally-felt nostalgia don’t they? – Especially for Salvationists. Paradoxically, wasn’t it, “need,” that originally provoked this inyesvative expression of evangelical militancy?

Question: Genesis occurs:

A. When we say “no” to need and “yes” to status quo.
-or-
B. When we say “yes” to need and “no” to status quo.

Those Were the Days
Nostalgia’s warm embrace grips me every time I hear this 1969 hit, sung by Mary Hopkins, written by Gene Raskin, putting English lyrics to a Russian song:

Those were the days my friend,
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
La la la la…

I remember it well, 1969: Beatles, Bell Bottom Jeans, tie-die shirts, electric typewriters, pay phones, 35 cent gas, average salary - $4723, counter-culture, LSD, flower power, Haight Ashbury, free love, Woodstock, Easy Rider, Iron Curtain, communism, Coretta Scott King speaking from the pulpit of St. Paul's Cathedral in London (the first woman to do so), Nixon, Viet Nam, chemical warfare, race riots, student antiwar movement, Weather Underground, Operation Chaos. Ah yes, “Those were the days my friend…”

Chaos: “A state of utter confusion (Merriam-Webster).

Chaos is the incubator for creativity and innovation. Genesis occurs when we say “No!” to status quo (things as they were/are) and “Yes!” to need (things as they will be). Another word for status quo is, “culture.”

Cultures collide.
Chaos ensues.
Cravings arise.

Crave: “to have a strong desire for something” (Encarta).

Need-Based Response
Genesis is the creative response to our need-based cravings. John Stott said, “Vision begins with a holy discontent with the way things are.” Allow me to substitute the word, “vision,” with the word, Genesis, in this context.

Need: “Necessary, Essential.

Necessity: “The mother of invention” (Plato).

This idea is best illustrated in one of Aesop’s Fables, “The Crow and the Pitcher.”

A crow perishing with thirst saw a pitcher, and hoping to find water, flew to it with delight. When he reached it, he discovered to his grief that it contained so little water that he could not possibly get at it. He tried everything he could think of to reach the water, but all his efforts were in vain. At last he collected as many stones as he could carry and dropped them one by one with his beak into the pitcher, until he brought the water within his reach and thus saved his life.

This truth of this fable is illustrated historically and visually at the following website:

Schoolhouse Rock – Mother Necessity

“They need me, they need you, they need…” Genesis people creatively respond to a need and fill it!

1. NEW!

My twin grandsons above, Parker and Hayden, nine months after their Genesis moment. A new book is in the process of creation and I’m led to unfold it in cyberspace as “a work in progress.” Its working title is, “Inyesvation,” each chapter to feature a visual illustration similar to this photograph, along with an appropriate internet link designed to further illustrate the concepts presented. It is a book about innovation, the first chapter titled simply, “New.”

Introductory Page

Some see things as they were.
Others see things as they are.
A few see things as they will be.

1
Something New!

Innovate: Introducing, inventing something new or original.

Genesis: The origin, source, creation, or coming into being of something.

“When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors” (Genesis 1:1-2 TLB).

Created: baaraa': "create, give being to something new" (Barnes’ Notes).

“…obsessing over the history represented by…statistics…being culturally appropriate…but functionally inappropriate…and creating something new is genesis, which comes before history.”

“To be functionally inappropriate is to be dysfunctional.”

"Genesis is 'finding in the chaos beyond culture antidotes for the stagnation of status quo.'” (Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie)

Status Quo: Stagnation.

Antidote: Remedy or Cure.

“The Enthroned continued,
‘Look! I’m making everything new.’”
(Rev. 21:5, The Message)

“Every time we say, ‘Let there be!’ in any form, something happens – Stella Terrill Mann.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now! – Van Goethe.

“Creativity is a drug I cannot live without” – Cecil B. DeMille.

“The creative process is my drug of choice” – Joe Noland.

Creativeness: …simply the act of making something new (Wikipedia).

I never use the term, “out-of-the-box thinking” because with God boxes don’t exist, nary a one to “think out of.”

Out-of-the-box thinking is nonsensical,
It’s absurd, boring, silly and whimsical
Would God be accused of thinking such?
Alas, He wouldn’t have created much.

Boxes non-existent with the all-seeing,
Boundary free when ‘bringing into being.
No old boxes when creating you:
“Behold! I’m making everything new.”

God Boxes: Oxymoron.

There is nothing more exciting, stimulating and emboldening than creating something new – “genius, power and magic in it.”

LET THERE BE!

GodTube: Creation Calls.

JN