Earlier this month, I got to spend a few days with Andrew Jones (TallSkinnyKiwi), one of my favorite people. We’ve been friends going on 15 years now, and it’d been a few years since we were last in the same world region at the same time. This time, it was attending The Feast, a conference on social entrepreneurship in New York City, with other missional pioneers involved with Matryoshka Haus. (More of an update on this international network another time. If you’re interested in its roots, see my posts in the category on the Training Trail and Doxology. This is the same network, just a newer name.) (P.S. Andrew probably had more extensive blogging about The Feast than anyone else there. Check out his series of posts from October 1, 2009, for more details on some very informative TED-style presentations.)

While at The Feast, I mentioned a quote on generational changes and paradigm shifts. Andrew deftly whittled it down to a line of a mere 144 characters and Tweeted it. It may have been the most reTweeted item from the event. He also posted this condensed version on his blog: “You measure change, not by behaviors altered in the first generation, but by what the next generation takes as a given.”

Anyway, that paraphrase got a lotta buzz, and the full quote is even better. In case people are interested in the quote I use about generations and change, and the original source, here it is:

In the long run, what counts is how the next generation thinks. How far new ideas permeate culture is not measured just by attitude change during one generation, but by what is taken for granted in the next.

~ Helen Haste, page 149 in The Sexual Metaphor: Men, Women, and the Thinking that Makes the Difference (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-674-80282-9)

Ms. Haste used that statement to begin a chapter on”The Next Generation” (i.e., the “post-feminist” generations), whose members grew up not having to fight the social and political battles of the feminist movement in the 1960s and ’70s especially, but who inherited the results of those who did. Since these younger generations of women and men live in a world that takes feminism as a given, what does that mean?

Whether we approve the worldviews and agendas of feminism or not, if we want to understand the context of the world we now live in, we’ve got to grapple with what is really there and not just with what we believe should ideally be there. If we don’t choose to contextualize for that real world, we shouldn’t really complain when everyday people are repulsed by our presence and/or presentation. We can’t blame their responses totally on their spiritual blindness when we prove ourselves to be culturally blind, can we?

If you are interested in seeing how I used this quote in the context of church transitions, check out my post from June 2008 on Paradigm Transition: Do we have just 25 years to do this? From a futurist / culturologist / research and development perspective, I suggest that non-missional churches may have a remaining shelf-life of less than 25 years … So, how will you seek to shift your organizational culture so that the next generations of disciples in your church/gathering/group will take a missional mindset as a given?

In the darkest of times, just before the dawn, we long for superheroes to appear on our horizon. And as we know from every cosmic epic and comic book episode, every real superhero relies on a sidekick.

So, henceforth and forthwith: I am — wait for it — SuperHero Sidekick!

And, in my SuperHero Sidekick persona, I have just launched a limited edition blog – SuperHero Sidekick – for those who want to go beyond the now-newly-traditional social-entrepreneurial triple bottom line of community, ecology, and economy by integrating them all around spirituality.

Know any organizations that are attempting a “quadruple bypass,” trying to accomplish something good, but without all four of those elements?

Nuh-uh-uh, it’s not full-on good!

Check out the first post in my limited-edition blog on SuperHero Sidekick: Spiritual Entrepreneurship and Adventures in the Quadruple Bottom Line, and let’s see what we can explore on how to work all four goals in the same vein of good …

See you there, and until then, be a superhero sidekick to some you love today: Onward, upward, goodward!

4. Opal Encounters – lab experiences with a seven-level simulation game in cultural fieldwork. Each level synthesizes progressively more complex concepts/skills, and also integrates with the Curriculum and the Immersions and Expeditions.
5. Opal Immersions and Expeditions – installation learnings with concrete and visual media (e.g., games, toys, trading cards), case studies, and community field trips to observe and interpret cultural interactivity.

Besides offering content and skills, all modules in the Opal Connection Zone Curriculum will eventually have several other layers of training sources:

• Film studies, which put concepts into a narrative framework, and that helps learners apply things to realistic situations of real people.
• Simulation game segments, which give learners a safe setting in which to try their hand at applying cultural interpretation and contextualization as individuals and as teams. (Opal Encounters.)
• Immersion learning exercises and community expeditions, which apply framework concepts and fieldwork skills in real-world settings and also train participants in skills of teamwork building through practical experiences. (Opal Immersions and Expeditions.)

Each of these layers may hold more appeal to participants of particular learning styles, but everyone using the full Opal Systems approach needs to learn from them all. Again, from a strength-based approach, we all have areas in which we “shine” because they are easy for us. We also all have areas in which we have to “stretch” because they aren’t so easy for us. If we do not choose to pursue both stretching and shining as individuals, how quickly we could end up creating an organizational culture that reflects only our preferred strengths and has huge gaps where we ourselves as leaders do! Keeping a balance between stretching and shining helps us work toward an intercultural connection zone where we regularly remember our need for the providential differences of others, so we all can cover what others lack and together create an organizational system that corporately shines.

I developed the initial framework for the Opal Encounters simulation game in the very late 1990s and early 2000s. Early editions of an introductory version and of the first of seven levels were run in the early 2000s. There is a significant amount of development work remaining, but that should be far easier once the Opal Connection Zone Curriculum has been completed, because the simulation game needs to reflect the finalized set of concepts and ministry skills found there.

Along the way of developing all these other Opal components, I have brainstormed learning experiences that don’t rely just on words and books. Culture includes so many other elements, that it makes sense to explore them, too, as a way of understanding the complexity and impact of cultural systems. And so, in various stages of completion, are a large number of experience-based learning opportunities. These might include studying a film and all the products that are created from it – press kits, action figures, posters, manga, games, etc. All of these products contain marketing messages, and marketing is, in part, about cultural contextualization. Or it might be a guided fieldtrip to a Holistic Health Fair in order to observe, analyze, and interpret the paradigms and cultures of people who present teachings or run exhibition area booths.

These Opal Immersions and Expeditions are in various stages of development and completion, but they do range across the entire scope of the Opal Connection Zone Curriculum and help give it a much richer learning texture.

This ends the first Opal Systems Research and Development series.

3. Opal Connection Zone Curriculum – training system of 30 core concepts and 15 skills distributed across seven topic categories (humanity, individuality, community, organizationality,culturology, ecology, futurology). All modules use illustrations from films, media, Encounters labwork, and Immersions and Expeditions.

Although that catalyzing church plant experience in the early 2000s initially took me in the direction of studying cultures and how to composite intercultural entities, it took me in another direction later: organizational systems. Two years after exiting that difficult church plant experience, I stumbled across an intriguing quote in a booklet. It summarizes much of what I eventually learned from my reflections on how we organize and who we put in charge.

The organization can never be something the people are not. ~ Price Pritchett in The Ethics of Excellence

As with my earlier passing on a quote from Gossip, this has its own ironies: How often can you give a “Price quote” that has nothing to do with money, but could have a lot to do with costs?

My experiences and this quote helped me take a deeper look at how the ways we organize ourselves can lead to health or toxicity, and how the roles and expectations we give our “leaders” can structure whether others become passive consumer-enablers or active producer-participants. In the late 2000s, I processed a deeper level of that long-ago church plant and other difficult church/ministry experiences. I detailed many of my findings when I blogged 80,000-plus words in 2008 on toxic organizations and leadership styles. (You’ll find most of that material is in my futuristguy blog category on Recovery from Spiritual Abuse.)

Those years of reflection also incorporated my additional training and experiences in strategic foresight (also known as futurology – studies of the future). These insights proved important to considering how particular ways of organizing affect a group’s possibilities for the future. Will an organization’s people be flexible enough to adapt to changing cultural environments, or not? Will they passively just let the future unfold around them? Or will they discern, choose, and pursue what is a more preferable and constructive course?

Meanwhile, I continued to think through my experiences and write on other topics relevant to the overall theme of missional ministry and cultural contextualization. Eventually, I figured out that, since the mid-1990s, I’d written over a million words – not all of them worth reading, of course. But even those excess words helped clarify my thinking. Finally, in 2009, it seemed time to stop writing and begin editing. This two-year editing project (which is being beta-tested by a small cultural studies group) will result in the Opal Connection Zone Curriculum.

This Curriculum brings together four major concept and skill sets needed for healthy ministry contextualization:

• Culturology identifies where a culture currently stands in its values, beliefs, and behaviors.
• Kingdom Culture offers a portrait of what an ideal, transcultural biblical culture looks like. In other words, what all of Christ’s disciples of all races, places, times, and spaces should be and do – as individuals and as gatherings of the Church. (Using the theological principle of theodicy – that God is in the process of declaring Himself righteous and just and loving before the watching universe – we can study issues of evil and their manifestation in the “kingdom counterfeit” that opposes Kingdom Culture.)
• Futurology helps a culture’s people decide their preferred future, in terms of what they want to be, become, and do.
• Organizational systems design helps people tie all these things together and get organized to get there.

The Curriculum also explores seven areas that contribute to building an intercultural Opal Connection Zone. This multicultural-to-intercultural encounter zone moves people toward Kingdom Culture. When we composite cultures and embrace “the social other,” we have the opportunity to facing fill in our spiritual gaps and filing off our toxic topics.

There are three to eight topics in each of these seven areas, along with two or three practical skills that naturally arise from each area:

• Humanity – General aspects of being image-bearers of God, how they shape us both to individuals and cultures. They include gender, sexuality, generations, tribes, race, nations, and civilizations.
• Individuality – Specific aspects of individual being (like learning styles and creativity) and how we grow (spiritual formation, maturity).
• Community – What brings us together as groups and communities, and how do we keep from splitting apart over difficulties and differences.
• Organizationality – Our leadership systems, whether our ways of organizing lead to healthy or toxic impact, and ways to look at the processes of change.
• Culturology – How cultures come together, change, and transfer their legacies to next generations. Ways of looking at cultures, and six kinds of cultural workers in Kingdom enterprises.
• Ecology – Our relationship with the earth. Organic models for a diverse range of Kingdom enterprises that are viable, reproducible, and sustainable. Toxic clean-up when organizations go awry.
• Futurology – Core skills of strategic foresight and keeping on a constructive Kingdom trajectory as individuals, communities, and cultures.

The first release of the Opal Connection Zone Curriculum is slated for early in 2011.

Next post is the last installment in this first Research and Development series. RD1-8 covers additional layers for learning in the Opal Connection Zone Training Curriculum.

2. Opal Profiles – assessment tools on information processing modes, communication styles, teamwork styles and roles in transformation, and cultural fluidity. Results are described as they relate with the Pyramid, so they are integrated with the main theory.

So – I was learning from a situation of apparently unhealthy leadership and ministry breakdown on the way to potentially becoming intercultural. Meanwhile, it occurred to me experiencing unsuccessful teamwork didn’t necessarily help in understanding who could actually best facilitate a healthy and successful intercultural teamwork environment. But since I come from a strongly multicultural background myself (both of my parents exhibited many characteristics of what Jesus called, “people of peace”), I started seeing Scripture in a different light. I concluded that a particular kind of intercultural people, whom I called interpolators, seemed to show up in the middle of drastic cultural change situations – like what we’re undergoing globally these days – and make a positive difference.

In the late 1990s, I’d noticed such a pattern among the many teens and twenty-somethings in the Bible whose historical accounts we have: Esther, Ruth, Mary the mother of Jesus, David, Daniel, Timothy, Titus, and others. Such young men and young women as these were all at least bicultural, and many were living in a crucial time of cultural upheaval. And, intriguingly, each seemed to have an older generation mentor. For instance, Esther was of Jewish descent, though living in exile in a gentile nation, and Mordecai mentors her to use her providential position as queen to help deliver the Jews from genocide. Timothy apparently is bicultural as well, with a Jewish mother and a gentile father. He emerges as a leader in the critical early years of the Church, and his mentor, Paul, is tricultural – a Jew and a Roman citizen, reared in a gentile nation.

So … how do we identify interpolators and other kinds of crosscultural workers in this day and age?

After I completed the Opal Pyramid, the next segment of the Opal Systems to emerge was the Opal Profiles. I did the initial development mostly in 2003-2004. These assessment tools help identify the kinds of roles individuals can best play on a team that attempts to composite multiple cultures into an intercultural Kingdom Culture church, ministry, or other spiritual entrepreneurship endeavor. All emerge from the assumptions of strength-based ministry, that God has created us different in our processing abilities and cultural fluidity, and that these differences mean all can participate and produce, not just consume. Weaknesses and missing abilities cannot always be overcome by more training; we are usually more successful when we just let people work in their providential areas of strength. Thus, each person can play a specific role in helping make a difference for the Kingdom. They also rely heavily on aspects of learning style theories, a fascinating topic which I’ve continued to study since 1997, when I was introduced to them by Dr. Kathy Koch of Celebrate Kids, Inc.

Opal Profiles also rely on an integrated or “fractal” approach: what is true for something at the most simple level of being an organism or in a system, is also true at each more complex/sophisticated level of interaction between that organism or system and any other part within it or anything outside it. So, what people who take the assessment tools find out about themselves as individuals theoretically “in isolation,” also helps them understand better how they function in ways consistent with that when they’re in such communal settings as:

• Their own primary information processing culture, and their main identity subculture(s) within the larger cluster of that particular approach to processing information. This is assessed in the Opal Integration Styles instrument.
• The Opal Discipleship Communication Styles instrument assesses everyday communications with others.
• The Opal Teamwork Styles and Cultural Roles instrument assesses roles in small groups and teams.
• The Opal Cultural Fluidity Potentials instrument assesses settings that could involve cultural conflict (e.g., businesses, social groups, international travel, etc.).

For instance, using this approach, someone who naturally focuses just on analyzing detail and making lists and flowcharts, will generally prefer debate as their dominant communication style. (Debate focuses on comparing and contrasting of details between systems, and assumes people are motivated to make decisions based on having clear and “convincing, logical” information about why their system is wrong and my system is right.) They will also tend to gravitate toward hierarchical authority structures on teams, churches, and political systems – as these likewise embody black-and-white thinking and step-by-step approaches to tasks, processes, and social change.

There are some cultures where this set of detail-debate-hierarchy traits would be viewed as completely positive and necessary, whereas other cultures would consider the exact same set as utterly toxic! If a detail-debate-hierarchy person does not become more “culturally fluid,” he or she will likely find any kind of crosscultural encounters very stressful; his/her primary culture holds such a high value on being clear and accurate and “right,” that there is no mental perception or passionate value on encountering or incorporating “otherness.” And many other individuals and cultures simply will not tolerate that. Thus, everyone in the encounter misses out on some clarity in thinking and in truth that they need, because they have let the perceived (or actual!) negativity in the style of the deliverer put them off from hearing the truths underneath.

In short, the ways we process life as individuals and cultures automatically sets us up for specific relationships of culture clash with those who process life differently from us. They also set us up for culture shock if our typical way of processing life conflict with social changes. However, the main point is that these styles and roles go together and are all “of a piece.” They create a seamless, coherent set that manifests compatible traits at all levels. This set includes: information processing modes, personal and social values, communications, teamwork, authority structures, and potential for crosscultural fluidity. These are the major dimensions assessed and described in the Opal Profile tools.

Next post, RD1-7, is on the training curriculum of Opal Connection Zone.

Five Components of The Opal Systems

As mentioned earlier, Opal Systems consists of five components, all integrated with the same paradigm and purposes:

1. Opal Pyramid
2. Opal Profiles
3. Opal Connection Zone Curriculum
4. Opal Encounters
5. Opal Immersions and Expeditions

Posts RD1-5 through RD1-8 expand on descriptions given earlier, along with a snapshot of how each element developed.

The Opal Pyramid

1. Opal Pyramid – a four-dimensional, four-point pyramid representing the set of all possible cultures, plus the possibility of integrating these four “pure type” points into ideal Kingdom Culture, and modeling how cultural dominances and declines occur over time.

The Opal Pyramid was the earliest formal element I developed in what became The Opal Systems. The Pyramid came directly out of my disappointing experiences of a ministry meltdown during a premature church plant that merged with a declining church. I finished editing my first version of the Opal Pyramid model for cultural interpretation late in 2002. It took me at least six months of processing and writing. That initial dissertation was 250 pages of my own understanding of relevant theology, academic theory on cultures, and implications for ministry practitioners who wanted to contextualize their ministry without succumbing to syncretism.

The Opal Pyramid used an equilateral triangular pyramid to model aspects of cultural identity, distance, change, and culture shock. It used four “pure type” cultures based on information processing styles: Convergent or analytic, Divergent or synthetic, Mergent or symbiotic, and Submergent or analogic. These parallel four immaterial aspects of our humanity: mind (black-and-white thinking), imagination (bringing together vast amounts of information in order to spin out numerous possibilities for the future), emotions (relational warmth and concern for bringing people together in health relationships), and soul (paradoxical reflection on actions and their meanings). (Note: All Shall Be Explained, whenever there is a series detailing the Opal Pyramid.)

These are combined by a fifth processing style: compositing, which parallels the volitional aspect of our immaterial being. We choose to move toward being intercultural because that represents an inclusive and truthful learning community, where we seek to help each other fill in our spiritual gaps and file off our toxic tips. Volition or will represents the centerpoint in the Pyramid. At this intersection is the home base of Kingdom Culture.

This five-element system fits with an intriguing quote from an author and preacher from a previous generation:

A basic trouble is that most Churches limit themselves unnecessarily by addressing their message almost exclusively to those who are open to religious impression through the intellect, whereas … there are at least four other gateways – the emotions, the imagination, the aesthetic feeling, and the will – through which they can be reached. ~ A.J. Gossip (1873-1954)

(Sidenote: How often can we pass on Gossip and it not be a sin?!)

The Opal System allows assessment of a given individual’s or social group’s relative position in a three-dimensional representation of all cultural spaces. And the underlying theory then allows for determining probable issues of cultural bridges and barriers between any two points in that three-dimensional space. This means people who desire to work cross-culturally could identify the “cultural distance” between themselves and their culture of interest, discern accordingly how suited they are/are not for working in that setting, explore the specific issues of culture shock they can expect, and make an informed decision on whether or not they choose to enter that culture.

Since this cultural theory includes the target goal of “Kingdom culture” (what God intends as universal principles for every culture that is transformed by Christ while still maintaining a unique and distinctive cultural fingerprint of where they came from), that means you could “triangulate a trajectory” among an individual who serves in an indigenous or cross-cultural situation, the culture he or she works within, and Kingdom culture. And, when you take this three-dimensional model into a fourth-dimension, you can simulate the effects of global culture change over time as to which underlying pure type cultures are in the ascendancy and which are in decline internationally.

This was not all exactly new to me. I had already been considering cultures for a very long time by the early 2000s. My studies really got rolling in the mid-1990s, when I turned an interest in the creation of subcultures into case studies of emerging “postmodern” ministries in the later 1990s. In 1997, I also did an extended case study on cyberpunks as a “hidden people group.” But it took grieving the loss of a potential intercultural ministry to spur me into doing the deep work needed to create The Opal Pyramid.

Next post, RD1-6, is on the assessment tools of Opal Profiles.

Summary: Using analogies from some of our favorite hot drinks, this post presents a fun way to look at fractals, an aspect of the concept of scales which comes up repeatedly in holistic-paradigm practices.

I’ve mentioned fractals several times already in previous R&D posts. Without getting too technical about this highly mathematical (and cool!) concept, let me just say that at their most basic level, fractals are about how the macro-bits of a substance exhibit the same essence, pattern, or impact as the micro-bits – only on a larger scale.

Meanwhile, if you’re still bewildered or bothered by the concept of fractals, let me try a linguistic approach. The term fractal is a slice-and-splice word made up of the first half of FRAC-tion plus the last half of to-TAL. In a fractal, we see the same substance, principle, or process appearing in any part of the total. A practical and metaphorical way I’ve illustrated this idea is with one of my favoritest (flavoritest?) of all substances – coffee!

Espresso as a Coffee Fractal

If you are a coffee lover, you might know already about some of the versatility of espresso. These concentrated shots of caffeine can be drunk straight up, undiluted with water or any other additive. Or, they can be mixed in with a myriad of elements to make all sorts of delicious beverages.

The thing is, there’s the same amount of caffeine from a shot of espresso, whether it is undiluted in a small container, or put into a large mug and boiling water added, for instance, to create a Café Americano. The overall concentration (or dare I say, “dosage”?) is the same, even if it is spread out in a larger mug for this diluted version. Thus, I think espresso makes an excellent illustration for the concept of a concentrated principle. And so, sooner or later, you’re bound to see me use the expression, “The espresso of the thing” to refer to the essential nature of something which appears in multiple variations. In other words, the “espresso” is whatever element ends up fractalized.

Tea-Tasting and Fractals

Okay, since I now have a number of British friends, I certainly should use a metaphor from the world of tea, since that is a preferred beverage in their homeland. So, here’s a fractal story on tea.

In college, I had a lot of international student friends. One of them was Gerry. He was from Singapore, and his father was a professional tea taster. Gerry gave a fascinating description of what these tea buyers do – and I’m sure I’ve got the number details wrong, but I’m pretty sure I have the essence of the story right.

Anyway, as Gerry shared it, the tea company sent his father into the tea fields to taste samples made from various batches of  leaves that had been harvest and prepared. He’d pour boiling water into a one-serving teapot that held enough tea to brew 10 servings. Then he’d cover the teapot and let the leaves steep for 10 minutes. The resulting tea would turn out so strong that Gerry’s dad usually only had to take one sip to know the quality of that lot of leaves. Were these leaves high quality that could be used by themselves, medium quality to be mixed with other batches for a reasonable blend, used alone or mixed for a low-grade tea, or completely unusable? The answer was in the taste test from espresso of tea, as it were – or perhaps we could call it tea liqueur to remove the homage to coffee. If the macro tasted good – the brewed tea itself – that could only happen if the micro was good – the leaves, and vice versa. So, in fractals, macro and micro are intimately related. It’s just a matter of intensity or scale.

Well, enough on fractals for the moment. We’ll be using them on occasion, so after the opal was as good a time as any to introduce them. And with that, on to RD1-5, which introduces the Opal Pyramid systems for interpreting cultures!

Summary. Opal Systems is an integrated set of original materials and models, developed by organizational systems designer Brad Sargent. He bases Opal elements in a holistic, organic paradigm to train people to observe, analyze, and interpret culture. These are critical skills for team-based missional enterprises that lead to personal transformation toward Christlike character and social transformation toward “Kingdom Culture.”

This is a moderately technical overview. It may seem too advanced for so early on. However, some readers will want this information sooner than later, and I am intentional about accommodating the needs of people with different learning styles. Also, I’m including it here as I suspect it will become an important reference post in the future, whether readers are oriented in their roles to be theoreticians, theologians, practitioners, or – even better to mesh with the complexities of the unfolding holistic paradigm – some combination of those three perspectives.

Components

Opal Systems consists of five components, all integrated from the same paradigm and with the same purposes:

1. Opal Pyramid – a four-dimensional, four-point pyramid representing the set of all possible cultures, plus the possibility of integrating these four “pure type” points into ideal Kingdom Culture, and modeling how cultural dominances and declines occur over time.
2. Opal Profiles – assessment tools on information processing modes, communication styles, teamwork styles and roles in transformation, and cultural fluidity. Results are described as they relate with the Pyramid, so they are integrated with the main theory.
3. Opal Connection Zone Curriculum – training system of 30 core concepts and 15 skills distributed across seven topic categories (humanity, individuality, community, organizationality, culturology, ecology, futurology). All modules use illustrations from films, media, Encounters labwork, and Immersions and Expeditions.
4. Opal Encounters – lab experiences with a seven-level simulation game in cultural fieldwork. Each level synthesizes progressively more complex concepts/skills, and also integrates with the Curriculum and the Immersions and Expeditions.
5. Opal Immersions and Expeditions – installation learnings with concrete and visual media (e.g., games, toys, trading cards), case studies, and community field trips to observe and interpret cultural interactivity.

Scope

Opal Systems offers theologically-informed theories and practitioner tools designed to address:

• An individual’s or culture’s coherence with one to four “pure type” cultures. Each pure type is based on a specific information processing mode (analytic, synthetic, symbiotic, analogic) which are rooted in linguistics (specifically, comparative discourse analysis and crosscultural communications) and learning style theories.
• An individual’s or culture’s degree of coherence with the comprehensive, ideal, biblical culture. This “Kingdom Culture” is the social outworking of Christlike character. It is composited from value sets drawn from each of the four pure type cultures, and it excludes extreme versions of those values as they would be toxic.
• Personal or social transformation toward either ennoblement and good, or corruption and evil, based on movement toward or away from Christlike character and Kingdom Culture.
• Relative dominance of any cultural paradigm at a given time. This includes external factors – such as global paradigm shifts – that affect cultural ascent or descent, and the relationship of these systems to changes in mega-cultures or civilizations.
• Various relational stances among cultures, and the potential outcomes of those relationships: Monocultural isolation or hegemony. Crosscultural conflict, culture shock, assimilation, syncretism, countercultural resistance. Multicultural coexistence. Intercultural collaboration.

Sources

Opal Systems is based in original research and development work that includes:

• Processing significant personal practitioner experiences (including many apparent “failures”) in church planting, social enterprises, and crosscultural relationships .
• Original conceptualizing to create an elegant, comprehensive, organic approach that explains those findings through a set of interactive systems that uses a minimal number of principles.
• Creating primary sources, and finding secondary resources, to explain and illustrate the concepts, and to teach and train people from a variety of learning styles and cultural backgrounds.

Paradigm Elements

In this post-Christendom, post-Western era of global paradigm shifts, it is important to start from ground zero and create a wholly new model based in the emerging holistic paradigm. It won’t work to create a “new” synthesis based in the Hegelian dialectic (the cycle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis), or simply attempt to glue fragments of previous perspectives and disciplines together and call it “new.” (For instance, would American politics be fixed if we merged the Republicans and Democrats into one big party and did a mash-up of their platforms? Would it create a truly new paradigm if the progressives, fundamentalists, evangelicals, and emergents of American denominations all joined together for a mega- mega-Church, and then re-created a doctrinal statement by canceling out any items where their previous views conflicted with one another? What would be left?)

Opal Systems is my original attempt to design from scratch, using a holistic paradigm, a coherent set of systems to focus on cultural concerns. (Sometimes I call this discipline by the unfamiliar term culturology to keep people from assuming they know what I mean.) Although many sources have influenced me over the years, I have not developed Opal Systems in response to someone’s theory. I’ve based it on my own experiences, reflections, and concepts.

To accommodate readers from other backgrounds, here is a list of more traditionally-defined disciplines that capture some of many aspects of the holistic-paradigm Opal Systems:

• Narrative/biblical theology and, to some degree, systematic theology.
• Paradigm profiling, analysis, and interpretation of: end-state and instrumental values, worldview integration, operational strategies and structures (i.e., organization forms), cultural styles and lifestyles.
• Cultural geography, appreciative inquiry/asset mapping, and critical contextualization.
• Strategic foresight, analysis of cultural trends and drivers, non-linear extrapolation, scenario production.
• Organic and organizational systems design, research and strategy development, team compositing, project management, genetics, reproducibility, adaptability, sustainability.
• Virtual ethnography and network mapping.
• Linguistics, especially cultural implications of comparative rhetorical (discourse) analysis.
• Theories of creativity and learning styles, andragogy and pedagogy, game theory, simulations for training.
• Studies in film, multimedia, and hypermedia to enhance written, relational, and verbal training processes through use of complementary visual media sources.
• Geometry and mathematical modeling, fractals, set theory, paradox, parallax, and optimality theory.
• Macrohistory, eco-systems, complexity theory, and other meta-pattern approaches to various ways that elements integrate to create systems.

Implications

In traditional, modernist, analytic paradigms, Opal Systems would be considered “interdisciplinary” – requiring theoreticians and practitioners to draw from multiple separate academic disciplines. However, within emerging cultures, Opal materials would be considered as stemming from their preferred paradigm that emphasizes holistic systems. This means Opal Systems is rooted in a relatively comprehensive set of generalist perspectives and practices that are already interconnected, integrated, and interdependent – not specialist approaches that are dissected, isolated, and independent. Here are some expected outcomes of an elegant system for interpreting cultures:

• If these various system aspects have been considered well, the resulting concepts inherently include qualitative information that can be used for planning and assessment, both of personal growth by individuals and of social transformation by any size group.
• If the mathematical modeling of the system works well, it will demonstrate important principles visually. Also, all quantitative measurements (e.g., absolute location of a point, relative distance between points, sources of lines and surface area, triangulation, volume, density, etc.) will be theoretically meaningful and have practical implications for actions social transformation practitioners should take to catalyze change.
• If the training systems have been constructed well, they will validate and equip both practitioners who are more analytic in their approach to application and those who are more intuitive.
• If the training systems have been well designed, using multiple learning styles, the content modules and practical experiences will accommodate the needs of people from a wide range of learner types.

All of these have significant implications on our potential for collaboration across differences of paradigms, generations, and system design methods.  And if we cannot figure out how to do more than merely co-exist in a world of shifting paradigms, we will never be able to embody the degree of Kingdom Culture that will draw transformation in the lives of individuals and groups. And isn’t that what we’re here for?

Well, that takes us through the origin stories related to the Opal Systems, and an overview of what I’ve developed in these Systems. The next post, RD1-4 – Fractals and “The Espresso of the Thing” take a more light-hearted approach to looking at the mathematical concept of fractals – which is woven throughout the entire Opal Systems.

Summary: The metaphor of an opal comes to mind in relation to analyzing cultures, perhaps because of my own backstory in jewelry, my love of colors, and multiculturalism. (And yes, they do somehow all fit together!) This post shares some of that jewelry background, as well as a few technical aspects of opals and why I think they better capture the realities of a postmodern world than do diamonds.

Gems of Observation

My father was a watchmaker and a jeweler.  After World War II, he used the G.I. Bill to get training at the watchmaker’s school in Elgin, Illinois. When I was young, I sometimes got to watch my Dad at work, manipulating all those teeny-tiny tools with precision while wearing a “loop” magnifier lens atop his glasses. It was fascinating – but you had to stay quiet as possible so as not to disturb the delicate work being done!

And so, I’ve always been intrigued by old-fashioned mechanical watches and clocks, as well as by all kinds of precious and semi-precious gems and the metals for their settings.  I saw a lot of them over the years. For instance, I’ve seen some diamonds where the flat tabletop part was almost as big as a dime! And occasionally, Dad would have a marquis (football-shaped) diamond, or a rare yellow or pink diamond. (Actually, my favorites for diamonds are those in the brown color range, maybe because they remind me of coffee and chocolate?)

One of my favorite memories is of Dad showing us a special-order diamond. He had a sort of ritual he did when he brought it out.  First he’d set down a small piece of black velvet on the table top, and gingerly brush off any dust.  Then he’d reach into his suitcoat pocket, pull out a tiny manila envelope, and open its flap.  He’d tweak out the inner tissue-paper wrap, and carefully undo it.  Obviously, it wasn’t that the gem was fragile.  It’s just that there’s no reason to rush the joyful experience of seeing a really great diamond!  With the tissue opened, he’d slant the edge of the paper onto the velvet and tap gently until the gem came tumbling out.  He’d flip the diamond with the tabletop part upward, and center it on the black background with a pair of special jeweler’s tweezers – a kind with long, thin tongs.

That was our cue.  Everyone would lean inward to catch a glance of the glints of light that reflected off the mirror-like surfaces of the side facets.  Sooner or later, you’d see each person turn this way or that, sort of bouncing around like bobble-head dolls in slow motion, searching for that one just-right position where you could catch the best view of the diamond’s brilliance.

Ahh, yes!  It doesn’t matter how often you’ve seen gorgeous diamonds before.  There’s simply something magnetic about its majestic beauty that draws you in to those brilliant flashes of rainbow-sliced light!  Not a bad destiny for a little chunk of coal that’s endured tons and tons of pressure during its lifespan.

My father didn’t have quite the same routine for other precious or semi-precious stones like emeralds, rubies,  sapphires, opals, or garnets.  We’d still get to see them, but he’d display them in a way that made sense for their unique qualities.  Usually these gemstones were already mounted into ring settings, so he’d pull the ring out of his tray full of samples, and have someone wear it.  Naturally, the ring model would turn it this way and that, so all could see this creation from multiple angles.

Diamonds,Opals , and Some Intriguing Differences

Seeing a high-quality opal just wasn’t the same as seeing a similarly special diamond, but I found it equally fascinating.  And in fact, I’ve come to like the complexity of opals far more than the clarity of diamonds.  I find the natural contrasts between the two different stones to hold a lot of analogies for the way things are now in the world, versus the way they used to be. Let me share some of those – but first, I’ll need to give a bit of technical background so those comparisons make sense.

Diamonds have a cubic crystalline structure made out of carbon.  That means a solid-state network of molecules creates the sturdy structure of diamonds.  It’s as if layer after layer of the same cube shapes stacks upon each other in a pattern that creates crystals. As best I can illustrate it, think of this as if you had a bucket full of six-sided dice that were just thrown into it any which way. In a perfect world, if you jiggled the bucket back and forth, eventually all the dice cubes would fall into a uniform pattern with the cubes lined up side by side, end to end, row upon row, layer upon layer. That settling out is similar to what a lump of coal goes through on its way to becoming a diamond, only the tons of constant pressure caused by the earth above it push the carbon molecules into alignment, turning it from black coal to a clear diamond. Any flaws are places where the carbon doesn’t fully compact and so a black spot shows in the structure, or there is a crack or weak point.

In fact, this compacted structure is what makes diamond the hardest mineral on earth. It is anywhere from 10 to 150 times harder than versions of the next hardest mineral, corundum (which is what rubies and sapphires are formed from). Diamonds are generally faceted (cut at angles) in various patterns and the facets are then polished to be like tiny mirrors that reflect light. That’s the way to maximize their strengths as a gemstone. Usually, the more faces a diamond has, the more “brilliance” it gives in flashing back reflected light. Also, trace elements may give the diamond a distinct color instead of it being clear. Even then, faceting and polishing still bring out a lively, multicolored sparkle.

Meanwhile, opals are pretty much the opposite of diamonds. They do not have a crystalline structure. Actually, opals are made of compacted molecules of silicon dioxide – the same compound as in glass – plus water. That means they are in a “vitreous” (i.e., liquid) state.  If you’ve ever been in a very old house with its original glass windows, you’ll notice they look sort of shimmery and uneven.  That’s because glass is actually a very slow-moving liquid compound.  (Which is something I didn’t know until I stayed with my friends, the Thames family in Dallas, and they pointed out the waviness in the original glass windows of their 1920s-era home.)

The opal’s not-so-stable internal structure and its water content also contribute to making it far more fragile than a diamond. So opals generally are cut and polished smooth into rounded “cabochons” rather than cut and polished with flat facets and “table top” as are diamonds. If you try to facet an opal, it’s likely to break, if not completely shatter. And since the water can evaporate and the jewel become brittle, it’s recommend that opals be soaked occasionally to keep the water content at the appropriate level.

So, if you can’t facet an opal and polish the flat surfaces into tiny mirrors, why does the opal still have such brilliant play of colors and light? The best way I’ve found so far to illustrate it is this: It’s like an opal is a conglomeration of clusters of microscopic glass beads, immersed in a water-filled glass aquarium. Beads of similar size tend to cluster together, and as the light hits these clusters of specific-sized spheres, it diffracts (bends) around them in characteristic ways.  Each color patch is characteristic for the specific size of glass beads in that molecule cluster. The light shows up as violet to blue for the small spheres, green to yellow for medium-sized spheres, and orange to red for the larger spheres.  Mix and match clusters of different sized glass beads, and you get a more vibrant interplay of colors.

But the noble opal is also “context sensitive.”  View it from another angle, and the colorization will change in this or that patch, right before your eyes – creating that sort of shimmering rainbow iridescence that’s so distinctive that it’s been given its own term: opalescence.  It is fiery and bold in its own eye-teasing way, just as the lightning-flash brilliance of a diamond catches our eye in a different way.

Which to prefer when each has its own appeal?  To me, this internal diversity of the opal and the resulting play of colors is much more “cool” than the diamond, where every facet is designed to be uniform, and the glints of light are splashy, but kind of all look the same to me.  And that realization is where I began to shift from the physical realities inherent in opals versus diamonds, to the spiritual analogies therein.

And … Some “So What’s” of the Differences

Over the years, I’ve heard a number of illustrations for theology around the idea that God is like a diamond who has perfect character that reflects outward, or that we are like diamonds who reflect God’s glory.  But, over time, I’ve come to appreciate the opal as better capturing the essence of the theological concepts of God’s character and our reflections in His image.  The diamond is far more uniform; the opal has greater diversity.  Diamonds come in many colors of the spectrum, from blacks (yes, really!) and browns, to beige and yellows, to pinks and blues.  But each kind is translucent (clear).  Meanwhile, the background colors for opals typically range from milky white to grey, blue-grey, and near-black.  But those many patches of foreground colors shine like micro-neon lights, regardless of their backdrop.  Maybe it’s just me, but the complexity in opals says more about God’s character and our “multifaceted” reflections of Him than does the clarity in diamonds.

Also, I think there is a metaphor to explore between diamonds as representing the traditional/modernist mindset, and the opal as the holistic/”emerging era” mindset. The modern has been about precise lines, hard edges, and overall uniformity. Meanwhile, the emerging era is more about irregular patches, interconnecting boundaries, and overall diversity.

And the fact that the opal’s spheres are made of the same substance, regardless of size, draws me to opals as a spiritual metaphor for disciples and cultures.  To me, the different scales of the same substance (glass) represent the concept of fractals; there is a discernible pattern or process at work here underneath what looks like chaos. Specifically, the patterns that apply to the smallest of spheres also apply to the largest – light bends through them in particular ways, even when the results come out as different colors. So, it’s the same though different. There is both continuity and discontinuity, stability and change.  Ah-ha!  A paradox!  Which makes the opal quite friendly toward the world as it’s unfolding … don’t you think?

Similarly, even in the midst of our diversity as disciples, where it may appear there is no bond of commonalities, there is indeed.  We have humanity as common ground, even when we may differ in gender, race, learning styles, etc.

Okay, so perhaps I overstretched the analogy at this point. But a little confusion now can be helpful for eventual learning later. And the opal will pop up multiple times during our explorations of The Opal Systems and its components, so we’ll have a chance to revisit this again. And, speaking of components, the next post in our executive summary series, RD1-3, offers a slightly more technical overview of the five components in The Opal Systems: theoretical model, assessment tools, training system, simulation game, and immersion learning opportunities.

Please note: I receive no institutional support to fund my efforts in missional enterprise research and development, except for rare participation in a grant-based project. If you would like to see my work continue, please considering praying for me and, as you are able, donating to the cause with the PayPal button on my home page. Thanks for your interest!

Summary: This post shares the spiritual DNA that was grounded in the beginning of The Opal Systems – because origin stories shape everything else in the life of a person or organization.

“Origin stories” are essential to understanding the “spiritual DNA” of characteristics in a new person, new team, new group, new organization. What gets fused into the beginnings of something new often governs its entire lifespan, for better or for worse. Here is a key scene in the origin story for what sparked the Opal Systems cultural curriculum project that I have worked on since 1995.

Once upon a time, a couple of church plants ago, I was in a church start-up that ended up with a really unusual combination of people. As best I could figure out at the time, it was a core group that contained representatives of just about every major “culture formation cluster” I could think of. It wasn’t like we had a couple of Goths and some Punks, plus a few Eco-Spirituals and Cultural Creatives. Or a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Or everybody being from different generations. Nor anything quite like that.

It wasn’t that easy to figure out. But somehow, I intuitively knew that this collection of people from multiple cultures had the potential to be multicultural in a very different way from a gathering from different races or subcultures or generations. There was … there was just something about the ways they processed life so differently from each other. And I sensed that if we could only integrate ourselves into one community around this as-yet undefined “something,” that would make us the most dynamic, intercultural group I’d ever been involved with!

Others felt a similar excitement. The Holy Spirit was moving. People you’d never expect to be drawn toward Jesus showed themselves to be on a trajectory toward Him. People you’d rarely if ever find as friends were connecting and journeying together. In short, people’s lives were being transformed. Something amazing was going on! Could this become the kind of broad-based, integrative learning community I’d so longed for?

But then … something devastating went on, and the potential for such a welcoming, integrative, and transformative community gradually crumbled. Group by group, various clusters of individuals with similar cultural backgrounds left the church – and in a specific order that seemed significant. I didn’t understand what was going on, or why. All I could do is be a bystander and watch the exodus. Finally, all who remained were those who most resonated with the founding pastor. The diversity of people had gone. The reserve of good will and hope had vanished. The potential had dissolved.

I was grief-stricken and riddled with questions.

• What went wrong? Why did that happen? And why did people leave in that particular order?
• Was the quenching of a hopeful future inevitable, given the degrees of cultural difference among us? Or was it preventable? If so, how?
• Could I have foreseen this coming, and if so, what could I have said or done to bring a warning? Or would that have made no difference, because of the founding pastor’s ultimately traditional ideas of leadership, community, and culture?
• And how do all things work together?

It took almost a year of in-depth processing to make enough sense of my observations and questions about the disintegration of this young church. Eventually, I felt resolved and free enough to move on to other things, although the Spirit had already led me out of that church plant. Through my work of analysis and discernment, I realized the keys to both the potential and the demise of this group revolved around cultural dynamics. Also, somehow, issues of culture truly were more central in this situation than anything I had witnessed in any other organization. More specifically, it seemed that the interpersonal conflicts were based in how people learn differently and live their lives differently. In other words, it was about culturality not just personality. Also, this ministry meltdown was, in great part, about my learning to discern how healthy versus toxic organizational development occurs, and what happens when leaders do not respond to challenges about what seems to be flawed spiritual DNA.

Through a deep examination of the narrative storylines of what happened, I arrived at a theoretical approach to observing, analyzing, and interpreting culture. I ultimately titled it the “Opal Systems.” All the major themes that come up in my eventual cultural curriculum project (i.e., the Opal Connection Zone) were present in the DNA of that church planting experience. The Opal Systems included issues of: personhood, culturology, futurology, and organizational systems. They also included synthesizing these concepts into a practical, customized strategy for how to live life together and lead in transforming the outside community by first integrating the inside community from multicultural to intercultural.

I’ve become quite enamored of the opal, and that’s why a cultural study group I started uses Opallios – the Greek name for opal. I find opals to be a wonderful metaphor for a multicultural and multi-learning-style world, just as the diamond works well as a metaphor for a monocultural and singular-learning-style setting. In the next post, RD1-2 – Why the Opal?, I plan to share why I use the opal as an integrating metaphor, and the basics of The Opal Systems.