Refuge Retreat: Grace to CREATE

To become a creative minority is not easy because it involves maintaining strong links with the outside world while staying true to your faith, seeking not merely to keep the sacred flame burning but also to transform the larger society of which you are a part. This is a demanding and risk-laden choice.[2] Jonathan Sacks, “On Creative Minorities” the 2013 Erasmus Lecture, First Things, January 2014.

Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 61). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 12). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

A Creative Minority is a Christian community in a web of stubbornly loyal relationships, knotted together in a living network of persons who are committed to practicing the way of Jesus together for the renewal of the world.[Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 12). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 12). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

This is a vision of being what we’re for rather than what we’re against… focusing on beauty, rather than focusing on death…

Karl Barth articulated the essence of a Creative Minority in the following way, “The church exists to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to the world’s own manner and which contradicts it in a way that is full of promise.”Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 16). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Covenant: “Authentic community over loose relationships”

Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 16). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

john

John 13:34–35 ESV

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

sermon on the mount is anti-individualistic

Having a covenantal community means we choose accountable unity over loose networks. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 20). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Our influence will actually be determined by the level of our self-sacrificing commitment to our neighbors and our willingness to see things through even when things get hard. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (pp. 24-25). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Our influence will actually be determined by the level of our self-sacrificing commitment to our neighbors and our willingness to see things through even when things get hard. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (pp. 24-25). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Narrative: “A compelling alternative story”

“Narrative is our culture’s currency; he who tells the best story wins.” -- Bobette Buster [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 26). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

J.R.R Tolkien said, “This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality’. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.”

Ethics: “a distinct moral vision”

1 Peter 3:15 ESV

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

We are not only called to believe the gospel in our hearts, but also to make the gospel visible through the quality of our lives. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 32). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

In his book, Renewal as a Way of Life, Richard Lovelace posits that the world distorts “created goods and legitimate values,” and that “evil is the privation of good—that is, it is the twisting of some good toward an evil end or an improper place in the plan of God.”[19] We are witnessing the distortion of God’s creation, the bending out of order of what the world was called to be. It is our job, out of a deep commitment to one another and an alternative story, to begin to use those “created goods” in their proper order so people see an alternative way of flourishing. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 33). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Tim Keller aptly describes two ways that the early church employed counter-cultural ethics: The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way - the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (pp. 33-34). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

The focus of a Creative Minority is not on economic systems, legislation, sexual morality or maintaining positions of cultural power. Rather, the tangible focus is on creating disciples of Jesus in radical community who are financially promiscuous, remarkably faithful and humbly in the service of those around them. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 36). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

“We must live in the kingdom of God in such a way that it provokes questions for which the Gospel is the answer.” -- Lesslie Newbegin [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 36). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Practices: “counter-formative action”

The gospel in many ways is about helping us identify this cultural formation. How are competing values shaping us and how have they crafted our unspoken “cultural liturgies,” as James K. A. Smith calls them?[21] We have to be aware of the small daily habits that recruit our affections and become idols such that we end up serving other gods. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 39). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Richard Lovelace writes that, “Inordinate affection - loving ourselves or others or things more than God - always bends us out of shape.”[ Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 39). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

A Creative Minority does not accept the status quo - through tangible actions it steps into the brokenness of the world and begins to release a prophetic imagination about what life can be like. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (pp. 42-43). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (pp. 42-43). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Authority: “a humble alternative allegiance”

Oxford Dictionaries denoted “post-truth” as the 2016 word of the year.  The dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”  The “post-” prefix does not mean “after” – it implies an atmosphere in which the idea is simply irrelevant.

A Creative Minority has a deep trust in the sovereignty of God, the goodness of God and the power of God - that regardless of what situation you are in, God will be with you if you are submitted to His Lordship. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 49). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Participation

Participation: “exerting redemptive influence”

Participation

The word “influence” is derived from a Latin root meaning “to flow.”  This “flowing” does not connote power, coercion or control, it suggests effortlessness. We want to influence people by being ourselves, where such creativity comes out of our community that people are drawn to it. Redemptive participation means that we do not hate the world, we are not protesting it, we are participating in it with a vision of the way of Jesus. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (pp. 50-51). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

One of the challenges for every Christian is that of misinformation: we know everything about that which we can do little about and we know little about everything we can do everything about. Rather than aiming to influence people far and wide, perhaps we should turn our attention to the seemingly mundane around us where we can actually have impact. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (pp. 56-57). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

A Creative Minority makes a contribution to the world in which it lives, influencing culture through redemptive participation. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 57). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

A Creative Minority makes a contribution to the world in which it lives, influencing culture through redemptive participation. [Tyson, Jon. A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation (p. 57). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.