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Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks (mersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

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When I first ordered a copy of Dwight J. Friesen's THY KINGDOM CONNECTED, I mistakenly thought it was a "how to" guide for using social media (Facebook and Twitter, for example) in my ministry. After all, the subtitle suggests that we are going to find out "What the Church Can learn from Facebook, the Internet, and other Networks." Was I wrong about the goal of this book! This modest subtitle is truly unfortunate because Freisen has actually written one of the most creative accounts of the missional nature of Christian faith to be published in the last ten years. That's saying a lot because it's only 189 pages long!

But in less than 200 pages, Friesen covers a lot of ground, showing how recent findings in science, philosophy, theology, and Network theory can illuminate the implications of Christ's teaching on community, faith, leadership, and the nature of God for a post-modern generation. The comprehensive nature of his arguments, especially his treatment of science, will make this book a compelling read for many.

Friesen argues that networks are God's way of organizing the universe, and so network theory sheds light on the Christian understandings of the human condition, leadership, the church, and God.

Friesen shows how seeing all of life in terms of networks potentially changes how you see the Christian life, including how we understand what faith, leadership, the church community, and spiritual formation are. You see, if life is actually not about living in isolation, individual choices, and living within protective boundaries , then we need to foster deep connections with the people we find surrounding us.

This book is a part of the Emergent Village resources for communities of faith series published by Baker Books, so the findings will echo the themes found in other emerging and missional authors (the shift to a post-Christondom, post-modern society, the need for churches to be actively missional, etc.). The science component of the argument, though, allows the book to make a unique contribution to the series.

This book is highly recommended for those looking to understanding how the Christian faith can be lived in the 21st Century and in light of recent developments in science and philosophy. The chapters are short, but the ideas are challenging. But your investment in the book will be worth your time and effort.

Great quotes by scientists and illustrations of natural phenomena also help the reader absorb the radical nature of Friesen's arguments.

In Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks Dwight J. Friesen explores the power of networks and the lessons the church can learn from observing and understanding how we are bound together through common relationships.

This book did possess some strengths, among them a treatment of Trinitarian theology, an invitation to dialogue and an openness to critique, and the important recognition that the Kingdom of God possesses an environmental component that supports an "ecological" approach to leadership. On this last point, Friesen's chapter on "Network Ecology" was quite good. Likening the church to a natural ecosystem, Friesen explores how the openness of such systems, the need for diversity, and the necessity of death in such systems lead to overall flourishing. One of the most powerful metaphors I've found for "Kingdom" among emerging leaders has been this very example. Once a leader sees oneself as an ecologist or an environmentalist, it changes how one relates and navigates various relationships, casts vision, and clears ground for growth. Of all the contributions in this book, I think this chapter is the most valuable.

Most of the reviewers I have read have been positive, and because of this I'll offer a couple of words of critique. Here are two of my points of contention.

First, is Friesen's account of networks and their applicability to the church based on a gospel dynamic? Within the first few sentences in his introduction, Friesen states "Many are wondering why so many churches and denominations are in decline when they are proclaiming the gospel," a statement which, prima facie is easily debatable and, indeed, on this very topic much ink has been spilled (with the rise of computing, when will this idiom change?). After making such a bold assertion at the outset, I was hoping to hear more about what this gospel might be that is failing to gain a hearing despite its proclamation. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Friesen's articulation of the gospel is undergirded by the claim that in Jesus the fullness of life is found, and that the same fullness that is seen in Jesus can be realized in us. Friesen states, "This is God's mission: that human beings like you and me would live as fully alive, fully networked human beings."

That sounds nice. But it needs more fullness. More robustness. And, it needs to be accompanied by the avenue through which such a life can re realized. In other words, I need to know how to get plugged in to the with-God life. I need a theology of cross and resurrection, a more detailed account of justification and sanctification. I need something beyond a definition of life as "the relationship between chaos and order," something like "shalom," an ultimate vision of what a life of peace and reconciliation between human beings and between God might look like at the end of the ages.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, I would think that Friesen's presentation presupposes that the reconciliation found in Christ brings about the creation of a community wherein humanity can flourish through connection. As we come to know one another, love one another, serve one another, submit to one another, and live according to a collective vision of what constitutes new creation, the "good news" is imaged forth. While I find such imagery compelling, as I've already stated, I find presentations like Friesen's as insufficient. I appreciate that Friesen's "connected community" represents an embodied realization of the gospel. But I think any such community which embodies the gospel must undergird those claims with a discourse, or a language, that goes beyond practices. Proclamation and practice go hand in hand. In that sense, I am "And'ing" two concepts that have often been featured as part of the division between traditional and emerging leaders. At this point, I suspect Friesen would agree with my sentiment that proclamation or discourse is important, but I think I've made clear that I found his presentation leaning more in the other direction, and if his argument is to be strengthened a clearer and more robust articulation of the gospel is required.

Secondly, I found that the overall idea--that networks define our life and are pivotal for the realization of the Kingdom--was not supported by consistently strong biblical and anecdotal support. Concerning the former, like many emerging leaders Friesen relies on narratives from the Bible to illuminate his argument. Most of these examples seemed supplemental, however, and not foundational for Friesen's account, and this is the root of my concern. Concerning the latter, Friesen does relay a number of stories about his family, about his experiences as a church planter, and his experiences as a professor at a seminary, and his stories do relate to his central thesis, but do not add much to his argument.

Friesen's work here is interesting, though I wouldn't enthusiastically recommend it to friends and fellow church leaders. I picked up a few tidbits here and there (to cite one example, I enjoyed his insights from Martin Buber's I And Thou), but finished unsatisfied for the reasons given above. I would've liked to see more theological robustness, a clearer articulation of the gospel, and more practical and concrete examples of how his theory has been embodied by church leaders. Philosophically, the account was fine, engaging, and compelling. But to really draw me in, I need to see the theological import and warrant, and how these ideas move beyond our current reality to the transcendent. I think Friesen's goal is to help us see the Kingdom as an eschatological community of connectedness, but he has to take us from here to there, and in order to do so his account must evidence more from the story of Scripture and historical theology.

The good news, of course, is that Friesen can do so. And if he doesn't take up the task, perhaps someone else will. If so, in the end the church will be better off for it, maybe even more connected.

Dwight Friesen makes a strong case that one of our greatest needs is the ability to "see relationally". Using powerful stories, metaphor, and examples from nature and science as well as from the emerging social networks on the internet, Dwight pulls back a veil and demonstrates a new way of viewing all of life. In a day and time when the phrase "paradigm shift" is becoming a cliché, this book fearlessly and compellingly shifts the reader's line of sight until new way of thinking does emerge (at least with this reader).
I have been studying and learning about The King and His Kingdom for more than twenty years. It is a life pursuit, yet I think I have missed much of the relational nature of the emergence of His Kingdom in this world. Thanks to this book, I'm re-imagining a few things.
I've been challenged to look at my role as a ministry leader in new ways. The chapter on leading connectively particularly helped me. In that chapter, Dwight says that it is critical that leaders learn to "reorient our Kingdom imagination through a networked lens". That is to see the God given potential in every relational encounter. That is an exciting way to live!
Dwight's explanation of church as Christ Commons (Body) and Christ Cluster (Soul) was probably the best explanation of church, as it exists in the 21st century that I've ever heard. It is at the same time biblical, pragmatic, and yet provides a way forward as we evaluate the impact of the institutions of Christianity as a force for good in this world.
The final chapter on spiritual formation was really the first effort I've seen to place spiritual formation into a networked context. While I felt that there could be some danger of minimizing the importance of individual commitment and effort in spiritual growth, the fact is that there are thousands of books that help with that and none (that I've read anyway) that demonstrate that spiritual formation is "weaving a tapestry of life enhancing connections".
So, my recommendation: buy this book! If you don't have the money, sell something and then buy it.

In the context of the global, systemic, holistic, connected vision which appears in the new changing culture, from ecology to the social networks, the book of Dwight Friesen: "Thy kindom connected", opens a new look at the church of Christ as the weaving of a spiritual tapestry. In his book: "something there", David Hay defines spirituality as a "relational consciousness". At the time of internet, Dwigt Friesen gives us to see the church as a relational community. This book opens our view and is welcome in various countries since it has been analysed on the internet site of a French christian interdenominational association: Témoins: [...]
Jean Hassenforder

Thy Kingdom Connected by Dwight J. Friesen is an exploration into the networking that exists all around us as individuals in the world that God created and how we are a part of it. It starts out with a well placed concern and question: Is the way we're doing church really the best way to do church? I think it's the wrong question. Maybe not the wrong question, but it could be rephrased to say is the way we're doing church allowing us to be the church?

Dwight believes that the best way to be the church is by accessing our connections through our network. He likens this to social networking media. Through a few clicks, a few degrees of separation we can connect with "friends: from around the globe.

The paragraph that best sums up the idea is found in chapter 9:

Ecology is a focused study of learning how living systems work, so it holds tremendous insights for caring for our families, churches, and even out personal lives. Throughout They Kingdom Connected, we have seen that everything and everyone is interconnected fro the vantage point of interconnectedness, we understand live to be an eco system, meaning that what happens to one or to a cluster has ripple-like effects for all. Giving God's networked ecokingdom, the question before us is: How do we steward our lives and our communities such that abundant life flourishes not just for you and me but for everyone and everything? Our hope should be to build and steward sustainable communities in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the same for future generations.

They Kingdom Connected challenges the way we think and view church and drives us to act on those challenges to move toward a better version of being the Church for ourselves and fo future generations.

Dwight J. Friesen (DMin, George Fox University) is assistant professor of practical theology at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle. He was the founding pastor of Quest: A Christ-Commons in Bellevue, Washington, and lives in Seattle, Washington, with his family.

Follow Dwight J. Friesen on Twitter

One of the assumptions of Friesen's book is that social networking and the internet can offer some metaphorical resources for how we talk about the Trinity and our participation in Trinitarian relationality. Leonard Sweet in his forward to the book highlights this assumption by riffing on hyperlinks as that which makes light (the light of creation and the light of Christ) possible, for light itself is constituted by interlinked frequencies and the relationship between different kinds of particles and frequencies.[1]
This is one of the best reasons to read this book, because any book that brings innovation in science, technology, or the arts, into conversation with how we talk about God and the universe can, if approached with creativity and faith, yield tremendous new insights. If there is a danger in such an approach, it is only that sometimes an experiment in this kind of theology can overstate its case, standing in awe at a wonder that is actually only mundane or pedestrian. But faithful readers can parse this distinction.
Friesen recognizes the tensions inherent in his experiment, and describes it early in the book, "We might be fools to simply jump on everything early adopters to their hands to [avant-church and social networking], but we most certainly will be fools if we choose not to humbly listen to the hearts, motives, and explorations of these early adopters, for they are daring to live as risk takers as they take new terrain seriously."[2] Which is to say that Friesen is worth reading not only because together with him readers may discover some interesting new ways of thinking about the church, and God, but they may also be emboldened to be explorers in new terrains.
Friesen's "hope is that this book can serve as a practical relational hermeneutic."[3] It is important to listen to how Friesen phrases this, because it gives a clearer description of what the book is accomplishing than the title (a title probably suggested by the publisher or editor). The book is exploring relationality and networks as a hermeneutic for talking about God as trinity and the church's participation in the divine life of the Trinity.
Central to this thesis is his recognition that social networks like Facebook or MySpace are scale-free non-hierarchical, enabling us to reimagine the kingdom of God in such terms.[4] Perhaps the most radical insight arising out of this thesis is that networks are often more yeasty than we give them credit for. We prefer to think of networks as direct, so we try to leverage them to impact directly the people or groups we are directly in contact with. However, networks often have their greatest power and impact as they pattern out through indirect and secondary connections. Friesen offers one simple example of this, that most people get a new job through a friend of a friend, not directly through a best friend or acquaintance themselves.
This has tremendous implications for how we think of the ministry of our churches. When we are organizing in networks of faithful ministry (for example, in a small group bible study) it may not even be the direct network of the group itself that has the most powerful transformative or redemptive impact, but what flows out in the synergistic nodes of relationality in which each of the small group participants is situated.
Friesen believes and trusts that this emphasis on relationality in Christian ministry does simply come out of sociological patterns, but out of the God who exists in relationality, in communion. "The Christian understanding of a linking God is surely one of the most unique claims of any religion or system of thought in the world."[5] By analogy, since humans are created in the image of God, their being is also in communion and relationality. Friesen's radical insight is that each of us is a networked person.
The reason this is a rich theological insight is because in much of the social networking universe, we tend to focus on ourselves, the node that we are, and then think that the connections between each node, the network, are simply a secondary resource to connect the nodes. But what if the reverse were true, and it were the network itself that were more constitutive of you are rather than you as the node itself? Or even if you as a node in the network or only a node because there is a network?
Finally, I celebrate Friesen's vision in this book because it is hopeful and lifegiving. Rather than approach social networking and technology from the perspective of a post-singularity scenario, Friesen simply grounds, practically and realistically, social networking in the sociality of God. "This biblical vision of a relationally connective kingdom holds the key to a profound sense of hope and possibility for you and me and the communities in which we live; for it reorients our vision of life, relationship, and ministry from the perspective of the Triune God who creates us in God's own relational image... it sparks one's imagination for incarnationally presencing oneself in the places of disruption within one's own network."[6]
The resources for the kind of theology expressed here have already been present in the writings of an array of gifted systematic theologians, such as Jürgen Moltmann, Colin Gunton, John Zizioulas, etc. And I do recommend reading these theologians in conversation with Friesen, for a greater sense of the Trinitarian theology backside of Friesen's proposal. But what I love about Friesen's book is his bold attempt to bring the tremendous insights of these Trinitarian theologians into creative interplay (might I say networked with or linked?) with modern technological advances and new forms of human sociality. That he has done so is simply one more illustration of his goal of participating in God's mission, which, "if you choose to live into it, is to boldly link where no one has linked before; this is the Christ conjunction."[7] It is the creative work of the church and its leadership to steward space where this can happen.[8]

[1] 11.
[2] 26.
[3] 29.
[4] 31.
[5] 56.
[6] 88, emphasis added.
[7] 135.
[8] 113.

This is the first really solid, really 21st century Christology/Ecclesiology that I've seen. The best of the late 20th is still serving us well, but this book and others like it will be the ones to carry us through in the next couple decades. I'm very excited to share this material with others.

Review Cross-posted from [...]

I think I have a new favorite Emergent writer, or at least someone to join Scot McKnight at the top of my list. Although I have some concerns with some moves that this book makes (which is nothing new for my reviews, no?), I came away from this book with some new ideas to contemplate, some mental tools to try out on the relationships that constitute human existence, and a sense that I'd found someone who is asking the same sorts of questions that I'm asking but who has turned to different intellectual traditions to start forming answers.

Networks and the Basics of the Book

Friesen takes his vocabularies of networks, nodes, connections, and clusters from network theory, that hybrid of computer science and sociology that begins to some extent with existentialist philosophy and picks up serious steam as computer networks become one of the primary media and in some cases the main medium through which human beings in the developed world relate to one another. The main features of network thinking that set it apart from some of its rivals and predecessors are a focus on connection rather than being-in-itself, an insistence that any thing's or person's being is nothing less than the sum of her or his or its connections to other entities in the world; and a more focused attention on the ways in which human relationships within those networks differ from one another, this casual acquaintance neither flattened out to be equal with that intimate friendship nor one set in hierarchical preference over another, except in the thick description of this or that "cluster" moment. (I'll write a bit more about clusters, one of my favorite parts of the book, later.)

The bad news here is that Friesen falls to the temptation so common to these sorts of books, namely to divide the course of Western history into three segments called pre-modern, modern, and postmodern, and as with most such attempts to chop history into chunks defined by the current power structures, it lacks nuance. The good news is that he does provide a selection of excerpts from thinkers as diverse as George Bernard Shaw, John Muir, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama, and the Dalai Lama, each of which highlights the interconnectedness of reality and the sense in which no thing in itself means anything exclusively in itself. (As someone who studies and teaches 17th-century literature I was quite disappointed that John Donne's "Meditation XVII" did not feature in the list, but I don't expect seminary professors outside of the church history department to pay too much mind to folks before Hegel.) Moreover, he provides a nice argument against reductionist anti-Institutionalism, comparing it to Gnosticism's nay-saying to embodied community (106).

Beyond those good things, Friesen also holds his own importance lightly, making fun of himself and his neologisims at one point and throughout the book insisting that whatever importance he holds is because of, yes, the good people with whom he's connected over his years. He relates this conception of his place in the world as he explicates what he calls "the parable of Google" (83), a vision of authority within the Church that is "revealed, not held" (115), a conception that makes me worry, but I'll get to that later.

Christ-Commons and Christ-Cluster

By far the most interesting set of ideas in the book (they're interconnected, dig?) are what Friesen calls Christ-Commons and Christ-Cluster, and I do think that this constellation of relationships is as fine a way as I've seen to cut some of the Gordian knots that arise when folks like me (a Deacon in a relatively conservative Christian Churches congregation) and folks like many of my friends (who are parts of various Emergent cohorts, house churches, and other "EC" aggregations) run into when we talk ecclesiolgy. Rather than imagining such things as opposing entities of similar kind, Friesen locates them relative to each other as parts of a larger body of experience.

Christ-Commons refers to sustained traditions in Friesen's picture of things. A venerable institution like the Catholic Church, an intellectual movement like Realism (in the medieval sense) or Calvinism, an Emergent cohort, and an evangelical megachurch's small group all stand as Christ-Commons, relatively stable groups of connections that exist to serve a larger end but nonetheless exert some energy to sustain themselves. Friesen points to the genuine human goods like stability, responsibility, and patience that come from belonging to such while noting that they're not the sum total of human experience, much less the Christian experience.

Christ-Clusters, on the other hand, are momentary happenings, things like the ad hoc outpourings of support that happen in the face of disaster and the seemingly spontaneous collaborations that often arise when online acquaintances put their heads together and launch into grand conversations about this or that topic. Friesen notes that much of what Paul writes about the movement of the Spirit in the letters to the Corinthians fits this pattern better than it does the more fixed organizations that he calls Christ-Commons, and he notes that Christ-Commons are helpful to facilitating Christ-Clusters precisely insofar as they encourage strong, intimate connections and less involved acquaintance among people with a common cause. The ad hoc character of a cluster, in other words, can derive great strength from prior and intentional communities that arise from the commons.

What causes frustration and sometimes even enmity, Friesen suggests, is that when some folks try to perpetuate those momentary and Spirit-initiated Christ-Cluster moments, they either remain blind to or become resentful of the fact that any network node that persists is going to become a Commons, losing the character of the Cluster when the moment that calls the Cluster into being has passed. In the case of blindness, the frustration comes from an anti-institutionalism simultaneous with the inevitable solidification of institution, and in the case of resentment, it's likely to result in posts decrying "the death of Emergent" every three months or so.

Perhaps this relationship was more than obvious to everyone except for me, but since I took this book on, I've been thinking differently about relationships between the decline of mainline Protestantism, the rise and self-doubt that I've seen in Emergent, the pains that I've seen firsthand as evangelical congregations don't keep up with the megachurch Joneses, and an array of other phenomena.

Friesen Exacerbates My Hangups with Trinity and Church

I honestly don't know whether to attribute my first worry to my own theological timidity or to genuine problems with the book, but I'm almost certain that the second problem follows from the first.

As I noted in a post last week about the way that I do theology as someone who does more preaching than theological-book-publishing, I tend to make divine revelation the starting point for theological reflection, and more often than not, the form and content of that revelation is enough to fill the time generally designated for a homily, so I generally don't go much farther. I certainly confess the Trinity, but I've studied just enough Church history that I suspect that any possible articulation of the nature of the Trinity beyond "Trinity? Yep." is at least somewhat likely to fall into some council's or theologian's catalogue of heresies. Please understand that I don't begrudge anyone else's attempts to articulate the real nature of the ontological Trinity; I'd just prefer to stay safely on the economic side.

With that disposition in place, readers can certainly understand my unease when Friesen, establishing good reasons for using network theory in theology, refers to the Spirit as "the perichoretic relationship of the Father and the Son" (57, italics original). The implication with which Friesen wants to run is that "We is not simply a statement of relationship but actually suggests our relationships themselves are living beings reflective of the Triune God" (57-58). Friesen is duly careful not to elevate the status of human relationships to ontological equality with a Person of the Trinity, but the move still troubles me for a couple reasons. For one, there's the third-man question that plagues Plato: if the Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son, then what or whom is Jesus promising to send exactly in the gospel of John, and what would be the name for the relationship between the Son and the relationship-between-the-Father-and-the-Son? And once we named that, would there be another name for the relationship between the Son and the relationship-between-the-Son-and-the-relationship-between-the-Father-and-the-Son? Certainly I don't need to go farther than that: even if the assertion is compelling aesthetically, it makes no sense philosophically. My second hangup is that I've had people who actually do Trinitarian theology insist that the diminution of any Person of the Trinity from full Personhood is a bad thing, and although I'm not exactly sure what Personhood is, this move seems to diminish it.

All that said, remember that this criticism is from the cowardly lion who runs from his own tail when faced with the task of talking intelligently about the Trinity.

The implications of this picture of Trinity, of course, have directly to do with ecclesiology. If the Person of the Trinity is a relationship between prior personalities, it only makes sense for the authority granted by that Person to arise not from that person's mysterious choosing of this person to heal and that one to speak in the tongues of angels and a third to exercise the office of teaching; on the contrary, as I noted before, in Friesen's vision of the life of the Church, "Authority is revealed, not held" (115). I recognize that such a vision of the work of the Spirit is not prima facie incompatible with the text of Paul, but it would, I imagine, make certain sustained activities like oversight (what episkopoi do) or shepherding (what presbyteroi do) or teaching (what didaskoloi do) rather difficult. In Friesen's vision, like others I've seen, the relatively chaotic gifting of the gospel of John and the letters to the Corinthians seem to take pride of place from the more orderly systems of the letters to Timothy and Titus. I'm not saying that I've ever seen an ecclesiology that balances those two in a way that compels everybody, but it is a concern that concerns me.

One more bit of philosophical trouble I had with the book has to do with its use of the words order and chaos. Friesen admits that he borrows his usage not from philosophical but from corporate-managerial vocabularies, but it still troubles me that he wrote a sentence (fragment) like "A time for chaos and a time for order" (96). If there is a time proper to one thing and a time proper to another thing, then it's not chaos. I realize that this is a quibble, that a simple change from "order and chaos" to "conservation and innovation" or even "tradition and the individual talent" would easily enough make his point read more valid, but I figured I should note this and say as a larger point that part of Friesen's charm, that he shifts so effortlessly from one vocabulary to another, is also a source of some fuzziness. For readers alright with a bit of fuzziness, that should not be too much of a problem.

Worth a Look

Overall, although at the end of the day I'm still uncomfortable with its vision of the Trinity and the resulting ecclesiology that flows from it, I think that Thy Kingdom Connected stands as a worthwhile book for contemplating in new terms some of the questions that have really troubled the Church in my own generation, and as with most books, I think that someone doing a different sort of Trinitarian theology (in other words, someone skirting another set of heresies) could easily enough adapt that understanding to Friesen's philosophical and sociological insights. This is a book worth a look for a goodly range of readers, and I'm glad that Mike Morell sent it my way.

A theological train wreck. Tired old liberal protestantism in hip new techno-jargon packaging. In short, the essense of the Emergent Church which has no legs and will not bear any lasting fruit. I'm sorry I purchased and wasted my time. This will not in any way build up the holiness that will enable one to stand before God Heb 12:14. This will make a fine addition to the bookstore collection at the Episcopal General Seminary's bookstore . . . that's about it.