You had me at Jedi Knights

My oldest son Stuart is introducing his sons to Star Wars this summer while I've been on sabbatical. As long as I have known Stuart (since he was 7) he has been a Star Wars devotee. The first movie we saw together was Star Wars. And so this is a near spiritual experience of sharing from father to sons. I even got to seen "Clone Wars" with the kids last weekend while I was baby sitting.
I have also been a fan of science fiction even before I met Stuart. Star Trek in all its many pertubations was my favorite.
But I was also a fan of the Star Wars Trilogies (both of them) and have even come to believe over the years that Reformed Theologians, like the Jedi Knights, are almost a dying breed trying desperately to preserve the radical message of God's grace revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, as the Jedi Knights strive to preserve "The Force". I have even gone so far as to imagine that the monthly group I meet with to study Karl Barths "Church Dogmatics" are the 21st century incarnation of such modern day Jedi Knights. So you can imagine my delight when I was reading Graham Standish's "Humble Leadership: Being Radically Open to God's Guidance and Grace" and he invoked both a worm hole analogy and a Star Wars analogy in his chapter on Spirit-Led Leadership. His worm hole analogy (borrowed from Bill Easum's "Leadership on the Other Side") was trying to capture the point that Mainline Churches trying to reach out to post-Christian culture is sort of like the Star Trek space ships trying to reach another universe. Unless they discover the "worm hole" it will take them forever. The good news is that we can get there, we just need to find the "wormhole" that connects the two galaxies.
The Star Wars analogy refers to N. Graham Standish's assertion that Humble Spirit-Led Leaders will have to use not only intelligence and emotional intelligence to lead the church in the 21st century but also mystical intelligence. Standish uses the image of Yoda teaching Luke Skywalker to raise his spaceship with the force and Young Skywalker being unable to do it because it's impossible. When Yoda is able to raise the space ship, Luke comments "I don't...I don't believe it." To which Yoda replies "That's why you fail." The mega point that Standish is trying to make here is that we need more than our own power to lead the church when God want's us to lead the church. We need not only intelligence and emotional inteligence but also mystical intelligence. Standish defines mystical intelligence as being aware of God's purpose and God's power and God's presence. For a guy who is reading and writing on Trinitarian Leadership, I must admit that he had me with Jedi Knight.