I have long argued that there is a very important distinction to be made between being self-centered and being centered in one’s self. The former is evidence of personal dysfunction and the latter is evidence of healthy functioning.  

This is true for us personally but it is also true for the church.  We are so afraid of being self-centered that we lose sight of the importance of paying attention to our own interiors; by which I mean the relationships we form with each other, and the ways we make decisions together.

As we begin to pay more and more attention to how we are with each other, how we treat each other in general, but especially how we treat each other when there is a decision to be made, we discover that we are in the habit of deferring to dominance hierarchies.  We tend to assume that the decision should be made by whomever is in charge. And even when we all get a say in what we are going to do, it is “the majority” who will prevail. Those in the minority, those at the margins, even if they are the ones who will ultimately implement the decision, their input may not even be sought, but it will certainly not prevail.

This is not the way God makes decisions.  This is not how God participates in and is expressed by creation. This is not the way to justice.

In the conversation We Should Talk about the future of the church we consider, among other things, the question of how we make decisions together.  We look at how God creates and imagine what it might be like if we were to model our process on how God arises.  We choose holism over dualism; holarchy over hierarchy; inclusion and diversity and complexity, over exclusion and uniformity and simplicity.