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The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time

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I've been looking forward to reading this book ever since I heard it was coming out. Tom Sine's work has been widely cited for quite some time, and for good reason. He's smart, encouraging, witty, engaging, and kicks your butt, all at the same time.

There are aspects of The New Conspirators that will seem redundant to folks who swim in the emerging church stream. You'll get similar summaries of the emerging movement as you'll find in Robert Webber's "The Younger Evangelicals," Bolger and Gibbs' "Emerging Churches," or Dan Kimball's "The Emerging Church." However, what this book gives you that the others don't is a sense of how the emerging church thing fits in with other kinds of movements, that aren't necessarily "emerging church" in nature.

Sine traces out four streams: emerging church, missional, mosaic, and monastic. Admittedly, some of the differences in categories are a little artificial, as there is significant overlap between several of them. But I think the separations actually helps the book a little in the sense that there are many people who could read this and think, "Oh, you mean, I can be engaged in new kinds of thinking and creative expressions of the way of Jesus, without being affiliated with the emerging church? That's great - because I've heard those emerging folks are a little wacky."

The areas of overlap are primarily concerning the missional, monastic, and emerging thrusts. But I really think that the inclusion of the mosaic element is what makes this book shine. Sine takes the time to discuss the exciting expressions of church that are taking place within the North American multicultural context, but he also highlights the movements taking place in the global South and East. That's the part of this whole "conversation" that's been missing for a long time. We in the West have (predictably) assumed that we've got it all figured out . . . meanwhile the Spirit is alive and moving in places we've barely heard of.

The New Conspirators serves as a really terrific primer and conversation starter for people who are new to a post-Christendom thought process, and it represents a good "next step" for those who are already in sync with that.

When I asked to review The New Conspirators by Tom Sine I thought I was getting a critique of the emergent church and its related expressions. I had just finished a book that was extremely critical of reimagining the church, and I thought that I was getting another that might validate or modify the concerns raised in the first book.

I quickly discovered that Tom Sine is not only sympathetic to a new kind of church life but is a key player. This book is like a primer for the emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic movements. He introduces the dominant thoughts of each group and some of the most influential people. Those already immersed in this worldview may not find a lot that is new, but the material is so comprehensive that it is a valuable resource for those on either side of these issues.

This book is well-written, but it is not formulated as a defense of these movements. It does not delve deeply into doctrinal concerns and does not provide an in-depth Biblical basis for what is taking shape.

The focus is on encouraging people to adopt a lifestyle that is consistent with the manifestation of God's reign here on earth. Sine sees his book as an invitation to a simple but radical lifestyle when he writes, "This book is an invitation to a part of something `really, really small,' a quiet community that is destined to change our lives and God's world. We will particularly focus on what God is doing through the emergent, missional, mosaic and monastic streams of the church. But we are all invited to the join the creative edge by more fully discovering how God might use our mustard seeds to be a part of this conspiracy of compassion and hope."

In many ways this is a challenging read. Anyone reading this with an open mind will have to think hard about the repeated call to examine whether our way of doing church and living the Christian life has been shaped more by our consumer culture than we may have realized. It's ironic that in some areas these new forms of Christian expression seem to be more aware than their critics of how the church and the lives of Christians have been shaped by the world.

There is much here that is praiseworthy. The book is particularly strong in advocating a discipleship that encompasses our entire life rather than just segments of it. The author shows how believers can develop statements of calling to help them live more intentionally. The idea is to live in the reality that God's new order is here now and breaking into our world.

The author frequently touches on issues of global concern, and it's amazing how relevant it all is to our current situation. It's as if he was peeking into the present when he wrote this book. He accurately portrays some of the discouraging challenges that the church and the world face today. It's probably the most sobering part of the book.

Whether you view these new expressions of the church with suspicion or are an enthusiastic participant, this book is worth reading for the ideas and realities that are presented. Christians must grapple with these concepts and decide which way to go.

Hopefully, those leading these movements will be willing to engage their critics rather than just dismiss them. It's understandable that they have no desire to go about doing church as usual. But for the sake of truth, being accountable to other members of the body of Christ, and for the sake of those they lead, they should carefully weigh criticisms and be open to dialogue with their opponents.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake for critics to say these new expressions are all wrong. How many of us, and how many of our churches, are all right or all wrong? We might like to think we are right all or most of the time, but pride deceives us when that is our attitude.

Whether these movements are faithful in doctrine and practice to the standards of Scripture will remain a source of debate. How much better it would be if both sides could respectfully speak the truth in love. It shuts down communication when people resort to derogatory comments.

It might help if we look for what's good and right in each other's words. I wasn't looking to find fault, and I discovered truth worth considering.

We have journeyed a mere eight years into the third millennium, and the church is facing a profound crisis of relevance. Do we have anything to offer a creation that is groaning in travail? Tom Sine speaks to this crisis when he asks the question, "Does the future have a church?" "The New Conspirators" is his hope-filled answer. Tom offers convincing evidence that, yes, the future does indeed have a church. It just doesn't look the same as it used to.

The church of the third millennium is not a church of "bricks and mortar." It is a church of "poets, monks, clowns, prophets and other conspirators" who are sowing seeds of redemptive compassion throughout the world. These "small, small seeds" are sprouting, growing, and bringing new life and new hope to our groaning world.

In these pages, Tom Sine has assembled a compelling collection of stories of people of faith who are living out the good news of the kingdom of God in their lives. Through their stories, he reminds us that God really does love this world, and more importantly, God is fully invested in redeeming it. These new conspirators of hope are the evidence that God is indeed at work in the world, and Tom Sine invites us to become a part of this divine movement.

This book is particularly good news for those whose souls are aching under the weight of the shallow, trivial, and mundane. It is a book for those who are hungering and thirsting for something of substance in the unsatisfying realm of virtual reality. It is a book for those who want to spend their lives on something that will endure the test of time.

Tom Sine
The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time
(Downers Grove: IVP, 2008)

Review by Darren Cronshaw

Tom Sine has been commenting on trends of the future for decades. In The New Conspirators he warns against the dangers of globalisation and consumerism and the gap between rich and poor that those trends are widening. The current global system is not working for the poor nor for the rich. Sine presents a vision for waking up to and working towards a different world - one mustard seed idea at a time.

Like a proud grandfather, he has collected dozens of inspiring snapshots of people who are living a different story. He describes emerging, missional, monastic and mosaic (or multicultural) churches that are experimenting with different responses to a changing world. The book is an appeal for others to exercise their imagination for more authentic ways of following Jesus and working with God for a better world. It is a new reason to get out of bed on Monday and not just something to salute on Sunday.

Sine argues that the inspiration of fresh imagination is God's creative extravagance: `Out of nothing, God created everything. God's inventiveness and imagination are astonishing. ... The first creation is indeed remarkable. The new creation is going to be breathtaking. But we don't have to wait!' (p.220)

Among the questions Sine asks and begins to explore:

* Did Jesus come simply announcing the new empire of God, or did he come inviting us to join him in making it real in the turbulent world where we live?
* Does the future have a church?
* Is it possible our assumptions about stewardship reflect our cultural values more than our biblical values?
* Should we consider inviting God's Spirit to ignite our imaginations to develop art that cultivates hope, worship that engages the world, co-housing that releases time for relationships, and entrepreneurship to help the poor?
* Is church simply a place to go once a week to get our needs met or is it something else?

This is a subversive book that gets under your skin. It is easier to discuss than live out. But it addresses critical issues for the 21st century church and shows how some `new conspirators' are grappling with changing their communities.

Originally reviewd in Witness: The Voice of Victorian Baptists, Vol. 142, No. 7 (August), p.21.

I abolutely love it (and I believe God does as well) when believers who have been around for a while embrace, not criticize, what God is doing through a younger and emerging generation. Tom Sine, by his own admition, an aging author who is more modern than postmodern in style (pg. 28), is learning from a new generation, because he's not convinced that many older evangelical Christians got all the answers right. The questions he asks on pages 27 and 28 are right on - did we get our eschatology wrong? Did we get what it means to be a disciple wrong? Did we get what it means to be a steward wrong? Did we get what it means to be the church wrong? Did we get what it means to do mission wrong? His hope is "to provoke a serious conversation about what it means to follow Jesus in a changing world and a changing church" (pg. 28), and I think he succeeded in doing exactly that. Perhaps a bit redundant in just a few places, this is a well researched book that will make you think long and hard about what it means to be an effective follower of Christ in today's changing world.

Tom Sine captures what many who have focused exclusively on one or another "stream" in the current context of the church have missed: the incredible diversity and creativity of various movements within modern Christianity.

If you want a picture of the best of what the church has to offer the world not only today, but into the future, you should start at the frontier, which is where Tom has taken us. Since Mustard Seed Conspiracy through Mustard Seed Vs. McWorld and now in the New Conspirators Sine has kept his finger on the pulse of that place where church meets and engages culture in new and exciting ways. This is a must read for anyone who cares about the future of the church in a global, post-Christian world.

Ok, we always suspected that there were not easy answers, no one fix for the spiritual angst and restlessness that confronts us as we jostle through our culture listening to bits and pieces from people's stories.
I assume most people, like myself, want to be invited into the conversation, though, and want to find a way to bring God along without the religious baggage. Jesus unencumbered.

Sine's book gives us the handles we need to do just that. It's cool that he doesn't champion one theory or push one particular method, but instead reports what God seems to be doing in spite of us among those who want to get their hands dirty in ministry and those to whom the traditional image of the church has lost appeal.

I was really pumped and challenged to learn in The New Conspirators what God is doing through this new generation of innovators and risk takers that really seems to make a difference in their world. I like the sense of honoring the smaller things, the things that don't get the headlines or get marketed in a 12 disc DVD series. The New Conspirators is the first book I have found that not only focuses broadly on the emerging stream but on the missional, mosaic {multicultural church planters), and the monastic streams as well. I was moved not only by the imaginative new models of community, celebration, and mission these young conspirators are creating but also the meaty questions they are raising for all of us about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, be the church, live responsibly, and do mission. The New Conspirators is a wonderfully balanced book of information and insight. It's both prophetic and practical.

As a pastor in a traditional church that is morphing into a missional community, I read Tom's insights and observations with fear and trembling. If we follow where God seems to be leading, there will be blood. The death of unexamined assumptions has to happen to find the spiritual foundation on which to change the way we think about God's Kingdom and the communities through which it grows.

The New Conspirators address that fear and calms it somewhat by demonstrating that God's works through small mustard seeds to engineer large vision. Cool, Eh? I think so. I'm bringing my copy to all my board meetings!

Stan Thornburg

Tom Sine's book (www.thenewconspirators.com) is driven by a concern shared by many that Christians have unconsciously imbibed (and therefore, live by) secular notions of success and the good life. This is, of course, more and better of everything that we can get our hands on, without recognition of the cost it exacts on our lives and our world, and primarily, our understanding of Christ and his Kingdom. Thankfully though, Sine offers more than a robust and needed critique of the way the church has bought into the culture; he offers concrete, engaging, and stirring examples of how others are engaging the challenges he places before us.

The roads Sine shows us are appealing in both their distinctiveness and their common concern for knowing Jesus and serving the world in which we live, particularly the poorest among us. He does this by introducing his readers to four different movements that are, to over-simplify, doing church differently. He calls these movements the streams - monastic, mosaic, missional, and emergent - and the way he talks about them and the challenges they are confronting will leave you wanting to choose anything but the "global mall" faith that has become the norm for so many of us.

Through this book and a conference he recently held (www.thenewconspirators.wordpress.com) which I attended, Sine has challenged me to address the places in my life (and my paradigms) that have come to look more like the consumer culture than Christ's kingdom. In his role as co-founder of the Mustard Seed Associates (http://www.msainfo.org/) he has spent many years acting as a connector and catalyst for Christians who are seeking to re-imagine culture and faith expressions. In his book, and in the conference that MSA just held by the same name, Sine has utilized his many roles and talents as connector and author to offer us - to borrow Shane Claiborne's words - "a gift to the church," that is challenging, appealing, and ultimately, a must-read for those who are concerned with the ways Christianity has bought into the world's view of what makes for a good, satisfying, and fulfilling life - and particularly If you don't even know why your faith doesn't seem to make sense anymore.

In 1980 Tom Sine challenged western Christians in the "Mustard Seed Conspiracy" to use their wealth in small seemingly insignificant ways to make a real difference in the world. He heightened that call in 1999 in "Mustard Seed versus Mac World" when he explored the dangers of Globalism and the consumer culture and suggested ways in which, via the mustard seed metaphor, Christians/the church could respond in Biblical ways.

"The New Conspirators" maintains the metaphor and the call. Written before the GFC occurred, it nevertheless says much to challenge us .

He starts off by taking us on a journey, exploring how "new conspirators" are being and doing church, in what Michael Frost would call this "Exilic" age. Sine explores 4 models: Emerging, Missional, Mosaic and Monastic. I found this section particularly exciting as it revealed ways in which church can be relevant in an age that (in western cultures) is rapidly turning its back on the Christian faith. This section also shows that there is no one answer and that our God given creativity is a key to how we make ourselves relevant.

In the next section Sine asks to what extent globalisation is shaping our culture (and imagination) . This scenario becomes the basis for his call that Christians have been called to create life transforming alternatives - alternatives that take regard for all sections of society - in particular the vulnerable.

He concludes by giving us five imaginative challenges with regard to the world as it is, stewardship, mission, community and entrepreneurship.

This is a challenging book, but unlike many that can be deflating by revealing a disheartening picture that is too immense, Sine's mustard seed approach, littered with current examples of effective action, is spirit enlivening. If you are challenged by what it means to be a relevant Kingdom worker in this post GFC globalised economy, in which the Kingdom of Christ is being marginalised - take heart and instruction from this book. After all, it only requires a mustard seed.

P.S. This book has handy questions at the end of each chapter that can be used to engender discussion and action.

This book is full of information useful to those who have a feeling they are just going through the motions and want a more genuine way to serve their God.

Initially, I was expecting another lightweight (new-way-to-look-at-things) improvement book, but was suprised to find it an Opus Magnum - heavy on facts, and not a quick read. It is the first book I have seen to try to categorize the various new movements in the church and group them in four groups: Emerging, Missional, Mosaic, and Monastic.

The book covers in great detail what is wrong, what in general needs to be done, a listing and description of the many groups trying to do these things, and some instruction of how to get started. The Mustard Seed Associates (Tom Sine) is promoted as a continuing resource to help those wanting to join or create a movement to break out of the Sunday-Only traditional church experience. Not a book that I could give 5 stars to, but another good contribution, worth reading, for those seriously wanting to "Walk the Walk".