Sources for Artifacts
Artifact #1: Lifestyle and Values of Servants
This new paradigm of Protestant apostolic incarnational movements among the poor, was sourced from old paradigms of St Francis Xavier, St Francis of Assisi (Sabatier, 2003), and a rotund comical brother in the Anglican Franciscan order, The Rule of Taize (Bro. Roger, 1981), and the life of Kagawa of Japan (Davey, 1960) in launching Servants to Asia's Urban Poor. My reason for exploring these had been the influence by mission sociologist Ralph Winter's writing on Protestant mission orders (Winters, 1974), though I concluded that his structural arguments that Protestant missions were dynamically equivalent to Catholic orders missed the main point of the values systems of the Catholic orders. The Lifestyle and Values of Servants (Grigg, 1981; Artifact #1), that I used to launch the mission was derived from the Benedictine rule, Taize and the Anglican Franciscan rule.
Artifact #2: Companion to the Poor
There is no single major source for Companion to the Poor. Kagawa of Japan (Davey, 1960) and others mentioned in the prior artifact had been models from which I drew, a 18th Century French analysis of the theme of poverty (reference now unknown) was supplemented by the World Council of Churches theologian, Julio de Santa Ana's analysis of the history of the churches relationship to the Poor (1977). Navigator discipling gave me the essential framework for churchplanting, extended by mentoring by Chuck Huffstetler of FEGC mission. The Lakas-Angkan movement that split from the Navigators was part of a great wave of radical development thinking among Christian Filipino students. George Eldon Ladd, Professor Emeritus at Fuller, in his exegeses of the theme of the Kingdom of God (1959), enabled me to move from the fundamentalist roots of the Navigators into a full-orbed holistic understanding. Movement leadership principles were found in anthropologist, Tippett's, People Movements in Southern Polynesia (1971). Community Development theories were studied at the University of the Philippines, but the faith integration came under Bill and Grace Dyrness at Asian Theological Seminary. There were no models of economic development or theology. We just stumbled onto them as a team of radical youth. Approaches to standing for justice were influenced by Waldron Scott, Bring Forth Justice (1989), John Perkins, With Justice for All (1982), and Gustavo Gutierrez (1973) in his poetry of liberation theology (though one rejected his Marxist exegetical bias). We refined our theology as part of the People Power movement facing helicopter gunships on the freeway EDSA, during the revolution. But genuine practice came later in our lives. Community organizing was just being invented as a discipline.
Artifact #3: Spirit of Christ and the Postmodern City
The source of the data for this study was an action-reflection study as I brought together leaders in Auckland, essentially an urban anthropological approach. The core theme of revival owes much to Edwin Orr's fifty publications. Studying under Dean Emeritus at Fuller School of World Mission, Paul Pierson, extended these into a comprehensive theology of movements (1998). Extending the idea of revival into citywide transformative revival had no direct sources, but the years of seeking citywide transformation has an extensive literature which I have summarized in the City Leadership Manual (Grigg, 2007).
The concept of prophetic and apostolic structures in business and city structures as theological voices is a new paradigm, without prior sources. Similarly the relationship of the Kingdom of God to Postmodernity had no direct sources but drew on multiple sources for interpreting New Zealand's postmodernity. George Eldon Ladd (1959) has been my primary definer of the Kingdom of God. Rage and its place in societal change, in this case forcing revival to move to engagement, has sources in leftist literature of community organizing (Alinsky, 1969; Fanon, 1986). The application to postmodern discipling of businessmen came from case study research by a class of students, analyzing stories of Auckland's Christin businessmen in Creating an Auckland Business Theology (Grigg, 2000).
Artifact #4: Transformational Conversations
The source of transformational conversations as a paradigm is the slum pastors themsleves. They are a story-telling lot! It is an oral culture. Bevans is recognized at the core of writings on Contextual Theology (1996).
Rationalizing this grassroots process into an upper level theological motif involved nuances from Quine (Quine and Ulian, 1978) and their idea of knowledge as a web or net rather than foundationally derived. Nancey Murphy (1997:120) develops MacIntyre's (1988) description of tradition, to give a three dimensional, (what I call a "helical") model linking the diachronic and synchronic components of such webs. In Transformational Conversations, we mesh synchronic Quinian web analysis with diachronic analysis, interfacing the historic conversations with the present web.
The approach parallels narrative theology (Fackre, 1983). Van Engen did a cross-over of this into evangelical urban theology (1996, pp. 40-70). The idea of the entrance story, based on response to chaos or trauma came from my readings in chaos theory as related to cities. The ideas of theology being outworked as activist structures in cities had no sources except reflections on how theologial voices can be heard in a 21st century postmodern city.
Artifact #5: Kiwinomics
Several thousand slum pastors and development workers are the real authors of this book. 400 members of the first church we planted in the poor community of Tatalon in Manila clapped and celebrated as I went back 35 years later and laid out the ten principles of Economic Discipleship!! They had birthed them, and lived them, and risen out of poverty because of them. Having said that, thirty years of reading and a bookshelf of over 300 books on the topics means there are diverse sources of understanding.
The Biblical side of the faith integration was early affected by Martin Hengel's Property and Riches in the Early Church (1974).
The pragmatic side of engaging poverty reflects diverse literature on cooperatives, savings groups, microfinances (e.g. Ledgerwood, 1999), or land as entrance to capitalism (De Soto, 2002). But most of the learning has come from engagement in action and through workers I have been training feeding back on their experiences. Entrepreneurship was first called n-achievement by McLelland (1964) in the 1960's and I have dipped into this expanding field, and in forming many organizations become familiar with various frameworks for entreprneurship and management.
The critique of issues in New Zealand Capitalism is built on years living under Marxism in Kolkata, and reflecting on both liberation theology on the one hand, and the triumph of Democratic Capitalism as an alternative system as renegade Catholic priest, Novak (1982) and Christian sociologist, Berger (1987) rightly describe, supported by Christian economists, Griffith (1984) and Grant (1986). Development studies has a consistent rhetoric against asset sales since I first expolored it in 1975.
Artifact #6: MATUL Commission
Luis Bush developed the AD2000 Network in the 1990's. I was privileged to be mentored by him developing the cities network. These derived their structure to some extent from the Laussanne networks. We found no educational networks that were built on mutuality. All seemed to be a colonial download form the US or Britain, so we have stumbled along to create a new model. Nevertheless there are consistent patterns in educational forums of academic presentaitons, of peer review, of program design. All of these may be seen reflected in the MATUL website www.urbanleaders.org/ma.