A mentor of mine once told me that part of my job is to leave the office sometimes and go to the movies, or go for a walk, or go to the lake so that I can get distance from what I am trying to do. It’s like leaving the main floor at a show and going up into the balcony to get a different view, a broader view. I remembered this today because of a book I’ve been reading.

The book is Divergent by Veronica Roth–a young adult fantasy novel about a young woman who doesn’t fit in with the prescribed “factions” in a futuristic Chicago. As I draw toward the close of the book I started remembering things I had heard about divergent thinking before I ever picked up this book. (It has also become a movie.)

Divergent thinking is about being open to the unexpected, making connections between things that are not generally connected, imagining new possibilities. We can experience divergent thinking in brainstorming or stream of consciousness free-writing that we don’t try to direct or control. Divergent thinking is what my mentor was encouraging me to do by leaving my regular work contexts in order to broaden my perspective.

Divergent thinking is needed in our society right now, as so many things shift and change. The church especially needs this. As the world changes, the church cannot be what it was once. But what can it be? How can it evolve and adapt to a new context?

I read today that the average church has 52 members. Can we imagine what a healthy 52 member church would be like going forward, instead of lamenting that it is not a larger collection of people? Can a small community be generative, not just holding on to what they have had or been in the past?

My colleague Kara Root is the pastor of Lake Nakomis Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, MN, and over the last 6 years or so, after a 9-month discerning process, her small congregation has centered its life around sabbath, hospitality, and worship.

Twice a month they worship on Sunday mornings, and twice a month they gather on Saturday nights for a more contemplative worship service and take Sunday as a conscious sabbath. Their only rule is that they not do anything out of obligation. On fifth Sundays they worship at a community emergency children’s shelter.

Kara tells the story on video here: http://vimeo.com/93041207. If you want a little inspiration, watch it! She also blogs here at “in the hereandnow.”

I don’t know if she would think of their process at Lake Nakomis as a process of divergent thinking, but I think I would need divergent thinking myself to get to such a creative and different model of how to “be the church.”

Experimentation has been a liberating concept for them as well as for Grace Commons. I’m wondering what next steps are for Grace Commons, but I’m also wondering about next steps for St. James, a more traditional-style church.

It’s often difficult to break out of convergent thinking and into divergent thinking to find things to try. You have to be brave to be divergent, which is also one of the points of this young adult novel I’ve been enjoying. Be brave. Be divergent. And do it together, in community. That’s my takeaway today.