Impact your community by being a catalyst

It always starts out small.

A few people tired of playing games become a network of small groups forging a sense of community by being catalysts for change.

Our website logo features a cluster of grapes hanging from a vine. The active process of grapes becoming wine --fermentation-- is started by a catalyst.

"Catalyst" comes from the Greek word kattaluo that means: "destroy, dissolve, come to nought, overthrow, throw down."

Sounds like a downer. But the catalytic process actually is essential to life. ... and to faith.

The Old Testament prophets were catalysts, according to this definition. (That's why they never got invited to cocktail parties).

The mission God gave Jeremiah the prophet was: "See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant." (Jeremiah 1:10)

Science tells us a catalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction by removing products that hinder or slow down the necessary reaction.

What does this have to do with Trinity Foundation?

Our work challenging the church to take in the homeless, our investigation of televangelist excesses, satire that punctures religious self-importance in The Wittenburg Door and the very presence of our eclectic faith community in our city all follow this pattern.

• First, we are iconoclastic without apology. That means we mock society's commonly venerated idols and challenge the values and ideas prevalent in whatever environment we find ourselves.

• Second, a catalyst does not become part of the end product. In other words, Trinity Foundation is never attempting to start something that it owns or controls. Instead, it changes the conversation, shakes up the frame of reference and diverts the flow in a new direction.

To do its job, a catalyst doesn't need anything other than who and what it is. Prophets don't require much overhead ( OK, maybe a hair shirt and a steady supply of locusts and wild honey, if you're old-school). The prophet's only job is to "prepare the way of the Lord" like John the Baptist did... as a catalyst.

Once that process kicks in, then "I must decrease and He must increase." The spiritual "building and planting" part of Jeremiah's commission flows naturally from there.

What does this have to do with me?

If you want to shake up your world, you can start right where you are. Just tell God, "I give up."

Warning: You'd better sit down. God usually starts by smashing your own idolatry first.

Next, ask God to guide you to a like-minded group of people, or start your own group. In the first century, a small group of catalysts turned the world upside down within a generation.

Let us know your response, and we'll answer questions, send resources and do anything else we can to support you. You'll probably be a different kind of catalyst than we are, and we'd like to hear about it and share it with others.

Join us to be part of our catalytic network.

E-mail: trinity@trinityfi.org