October 11th, 2007 about via

via Vision: To cultivate a culture of transformative engagement and invitational hospitality through networking, movement and communication in a postmodern and interconnected world

How to promote engagement and connectivity?

Move
We’re already moving, traveling for study, leisure and business. What if we moved intentionally? What if we moved strategically? The world is moving. People groups are moving. The Spirit is moving. We’re in the midst of unprecedented change and movement. Historically, those who followed in the Way moved out of fear, with intentional purpose or because of commerce. Via is about being intentional and moving as if we are unafraid.

Connect
We’re using the web, using our cell phones, using facebook. But connection is about more than virtual, its real. It’s a sensual experience—tasting, smelling, feeling, hearing, seeing, having our eyes well up with tears, our lungs full with new air. And it’s finding ways that we’re both similar and different. It’s embracing otherness and discovering our own differences and uniquenesses. It’s a posture of straining and stretching and in the midst of it finding exhilaration and transformation.

Engage
The world is wide. The world is small. The world is hostile. The world is embracing. Engagement supposes that there’s something to offer and something to learn. Engagement is about humility, humility that is hospitable. It’s taking historic commitments to peace and as Thich Nhat Hanh told the Vietnamese monks and nuns, to leave behind their convents and monasteries and take peace with them into new contexts, to let peace be every step.

A tradition with a perspective:

Rooted in the movements of the Radical Christian Reformation of the 1500’s, via is set to provide a way toward global engagement assuming only these three things

• Questioning the practice of systems of power is the posture of Jesus
  • The Gospels are full of stories that suggest questioning the religious practice, the economic and political systems of the day
• A commitment to community is voluntary, never coerced
  • Community is defined both by its commitment and by its hospitality. How are “others” embraced? In what ways does community affirm creativity and altruism?
• The way of Jesus is worth following
  • The traditions and contemporary expressions of Christianity are both full of hope and full of peril. However, the story of Jesus remains as a prophetic possibility for healing and hope.

Experiments in Global Connectivity

Ok, so the practical reality is to attempt to mobilize and connect persons across the world, to experiment with those connections, to move people, questions and ideas toward innovation and revelation. It’s opening communities and connections to “flatten” the earth and facilitate not only conversation, but real in the flesh learning and transformation. It’s about using web-based communication and aggregation to put people in touch with each other and to open networks that might lead to both personal and communal transformation.

This isn’t about mission—though there is a clear sense of mission. It’s not about taking the good news to someone in particular, but about being the Good News in ways that are specific. It’s not message driven or market driven, but it is an attempt to open access in a just way to opportunities and stories. (though it could be said that the use of the internet itself is an unjust pathway and that’s probably a legitimate assertion). Via is a bit self-directed and requires a level of commitment and seeking to find a meaningful way.

Via relies in many ways on networking, social networking patterns. It’s not a new thing, migrating and moving persons have always relied on these same things. However, now in a hyperconnected age, via offers a way to make those networks visible and to open them to a broader array of people. It opens new possibilities for economics and social dynamics, as well as new paths for knowing, caring and acting.

Read Promoting an Anabaptist culture of engagement: Experiments in post-colonial and postmodern global connectivity by Stephen Kriss