Anyway, I’ve just recently finished reading his book Tribes with Jono (we read books together to direct our discussion in supervision meetings when we catch up). I thought this book was excellent.
The book is not traditional. It has no chapters, and reads somewhat more like a series of blog posts linked to a central idea.
The idea, is that in today’s world everyone is organised into Tribes. But unlike in ye olden days when they were based around race or geographical area, Tribes are now based on interests and causes and the internet frees them from geographical constraints. Godin says Tribes are all about communication, and a Tribe leader is the person who allows a group of people communicate about an idea or interest that they share.
Godin encourages us to be heretics. That’s sometimes an uncomfortable thing to read when you’re a Christian, but rather than encouraging us to say Jesus and Budda are all the same, what Godin means by his heretic encouragement is that we need to get over our fear and buck the system. We need to believe in our ideas and move forward with them, go against the pre-existing and often prohibiting structures and organisations we find ourselves in. This will led to great success and we have nothing to fear because nobody kills heretics anymore, either they ignore you, sack you or you led a great revolution by getting people talking about your dreams and ideas (essentially a Tribe).
There is much the church can learn for Seth Godin, and I think many pastors should read this book and Godin’s blog. Over the next little while, I will be going a little bit more in depth with some of Godin’s ideas and why I think the church needs to listen to this secular prophet.
