A Considerable Speck

“The linchpin is able to invent a future, fall in love with it, live in it—and then abandon it on a moment’s notice.”

Every once in a while a book comes along that challenges you to stop and look at the world around you and to reflect on the way you engage with and interact with the world. That book, for me, is Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? ,the latest book by Seth Godin. So what is the book about? Quite simply Linchpin is a concise book about what it takes to become indispensable. It’s about how business and our world has rapidly changed and how treating employees like factory workers (or doing your job like one) doesn’t work any longer. We must make choices and take action to “chart our own paths” and add value that others do not. We cannot wait for a boss or a job description to tell us what to do, rather we must just take the initiative ourselves. Only then can we become indispensable “linchpins,” rather than replaceable “cogs.”

This is a personal manifesto, a plea from me to you. Right now, I’m not focused on the external, on the tactics organizations use to make great products or spread important ideas. This book is different. It’s about a choice, and it’s about your life. This choice doesn’t require you to quit your job, though it challenges you to rethink how you do your job… You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must. I’m hoping you’ll stand up and choose to make a difference.

The book is well worth a read if for no other reason than to provide a few “B-A-M” moments (those little moments when you can feel your brain explode a little). Godin’s style is very easy to read mainly because he is able to condense much of what he is trying to convey into short chapters with some great quotes that one can take away. Here are some of my favourites:

• The ability to see the world as it is begins with an understanding that perhaps it’s not your job to change what can’t be changed. Particularly if the act of working on that change harms you and your goals in the process.
• Leaders don’t get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin. … There is no map. No map to be a leader, no map to be an artist. I’ve read hundreds of books about art (in all its forms) and how to do it, and not one has a clue about the map, because there isn’t one.
• “I don’t know what to do”—this one is certainly true. The question is, why does that bother you? No one actually knows what to do. Sometimes we have a hunch, or a good idea, but we’re never sure. The art of challenging the resistance is doing something when you’re not certain it’s going to work.
• The linchpin is coming from a posture of generosity; she’s there to give a gift [no-strings support of your efforts to succeed]. If that’s your intent, the words almost don’t matter. What we’ll perceive are your wishes, not the script.
• Virtually all of us make our living engaging directly with other people. When the interactions are genuine and transparent, they usually work. When they are artificial or manipulative, they fail.
• Art is unique, new and challenging to the status quo. It’s not decoration. It’s something that causes change. Art cannot be merely commerce. It must also be a gift.
• Real change rarely comes from the front of the line. It happens from the middle or even the back. Real change happens when someone who cares steps up and takes what feels like a risk. People follow because they want to, not because you can order them to.
• What does it take to lead? The key distinction is the ability to forge your own path, to discover a route from one place to another that hasn’t been paved, measured, and quantified. So many times we want someone to tell us exactly what to do, and so many times that’s exactly the wrong approach.

Some other books by Godin that are worth reading…

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I’ve just finished reading The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church by Dave Gibbons. It has been such a refreshing and challenging book to read on so many different levels.

The title refers to an eastern parable about of a  well-meaning monkey who sees a fish struggling in the water after a typhoon. Having a kind heart, the monkey with considerable risk to itself reaches down precariously from a limb of a tree to save the fish snatching him up from the water. The monkey lies the fish on dry land. For a few minutes the fish showed excitement and activity but soon it settles into a deep and peaceful sleep. According to Gibbons this is an apt metaphor for the church in the 21st century- doing the wrong things but with good intentions.

Gibbons, who is part Caucasian and part Korean, is the founding pastor of Newsong, a multi-site megachurch with campuses in the US, Mexico City, Bangkok, London and India. In the book, Dave Gibbons shares the story of how he was building his megachurch and was struck with the thought of building a big box that would not be used most of the week to entertain people who for the most part would not change the world. He was a well-meaning monkey thinking he was saving a fish. This realization challenged him to go on a journey that eventually led him to embrace the realization that the world is changing to a third-culture were we need to be willing to cross lines to reach people where they are.

Gibbons argues that the Christian message is timeless and unchanging – Christians are called to love our neighbor (which is defined as someone not like us – of a different race, with different beliefs and values). We are called to love, to act, to serve – to be and live like Christ rather than just talk about Christ.

What we really need to change are our forms. Gibbons challenges the church to be more liquid, i.e. when you pour water into a container it takes the shape of that container. Water can flow. Water is liquid. The church needs to be more liquid. Open to changing its shape and its form to share the message of God’s love. We need to be adaptive. We need to be open to change. We need to be open to the cultures around us to better share the love and the hope of the Gospel.

So, in closing, here are some quotes and points that spoke to me and challenged me:

“More than ever, our churches and ministries need to stand for something bigger than the prospects of our organizations and focus on summoning our people to live for something beyond themselves.” p.98

“I’m discovering that most people can’t relate to our achievements or success. However, most people can relate to our pain and our losses, our disappointments and our suffering.” p.116

“In ministry, I’ve seen how easy it is for us to focus on what we lack: money, the right staff, encouraging supporters, mentors, education, buildings, healthy family history, the right experience, communication skills, knowledge. The list could go on ad infinitum. I’ve learned that our focus too often drifts toward what we don’t have, and we overlook what is already in our hand.” p.121 – 122

Gibbons also identifies and talks about “key third culture principles” (p.197 – 198):

1. Listen more than we speak. Americans, in particular, are known for our loudness and inability to listen respectfully and well.

2. Believe that the locals know more than we do and be eager to learn from them. They live there. We’re visitors.

3. Understand that Jesus is already there. We’re not bringing Jesus to them.

4. Be open to redeeming or giving new meaning to cultural practices or customs that we may not understand or even be comfortable with.

5. Respect the forms and practices of a given culture. Just as we are sensitive to learn the language of a foreign culture, so we must learn the non-verbal language of the culture.

6. Recognize that what is offensive to much of the world is Christianity, especially cultural Christianity, and not Jesus himself. Jesus is pretty irresistible to most people around the world and, I almost every case, is intriguing in the most positive way.

And in case you were wondering, Dave Gibbons defines “Third Culture” as….

“… the fusion of multiple cultures, the art of adaptation, dialogue rather than dictation, diplomacy over strong arm tactics, and the embrace of discomfort as part of the journey to real community. Third culture is the mindset and will to love, learn and serve in any culture even in the midst of pain and discomfort. In short, 3rdCulture is PAINFUL ADAPTATION.” (from davegibbons.tv)

Third Culture Video – Short from Newsong Church on Vimeo.

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WWW: Wake is the first book in a new trilogy by Canadian SF author, Robert Sawyer. He wrote such books as Calculating God, Flashforward and Hominids. WWW:Wake, like most of Sawyer’s books, is a thought-provoking and entertaining read.

Before going on here is a brief summary of the book:

Fifteen year old Caitlin has been blind from birth thanks to  a very rare medical condition that affects the link between her eyes and the part of her brain that interprets visual signals. Her condition has been untreatable until now.  A Japanese doctor contacts her with a proposal for an experimental treatment which involves an implant that will restore the connection between her brain and eyes electronically and hopefully give her the gift of sight . It seems like the procedure is a failure but before too long  Caitlin notices some very  interesting side effects. She is able to visualize the World Wide Web – each and every link and connection within the web.

In the mean time some seemingly unrelated events take place around the world. In China an outbreak of the bird flu is handled by the Chinese government by shutting the country off from the outside word completely and taking some very rigorous containment measures. In a research facility in southern California a Bonobo/Chimpanzee hybrid, Hobo, which is taught to communicate with it’s caretakers  using American Sign Language, produces representational art.

All of these events are witnessed at some level, by a newborn, growing intelligence/consciousness on the world wide web and Caitlin becomes its eyes and ears and its teacher.

The central theme of the novel is the development of self-awareness and consciousness and more specifically the World Wide Web developing and gaining self-awareness and consciousness. Since it is the first in a series, it does seem a little disjointed in places. The narrative contains a series of subplots which aren’t necessarily woven together at this early stage of the story. At times, Sawyer does get a little bogged down in detail  he goes into some of the theory behind internet protocols and mathematics and the like.  But that is classic Sawyer and it does help with understanding the plot a little better. As usual, Sawyer begins to raise some interesting questions about whether consciousness is a cultural construct (a la the theories of Julian Jaynes).

Overall, WWW:Wake is well worth the read and I am looking forward to the rest of the series.

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