This website is a work in progress, inspired by Ron Norgard, Elder of the Gibson Heights Presbyterian Church, who wrote,
“The Bible seems to prefer stories, histories and genealogies to set events and acts into context. Thus, the Mycelial Model chooses to use the whole lifetime of individuals to be the “members” of the body of Christ.
“We seem to be conscious only at the tip of time, which continuously moves forward for us, which is conveniently represented by apical growth (growth at the tip only) of the hypha, in the Mycelial Model. Branching in human affairs is based on the choices made for alternative at fateful times. Some of these choices will lead to future fusions of various sorts; others will become memories that may return in later life, many will become submerged in an adaptive unconscious to prove consequential in surprising ways at future dates, and so on. So lives will have many branches operating in each life and all operating in the presence of others like themselves.
“Finally, let me note that when viewing, say a tree, what we are actually seeing is the current state of a history of encounters of that tree with the environment so that we may call the tree a three-dimensional graph. We may call this view a “bio”-graph which is embodied by this present tree. Noting the correlation arising from the transition from biograph to biography, we again look to the biographies of individuals as the most useful representations for the members of the Body of Christ, that is, the Church. And the hyphae function as pictorial representations of the global histories of the individual members
“While there is much more to say about this model of the Church, I will end here hoping that this is enough to suggest that the mycelial model of The Mycelial Church: A Biologically Inspired Theological Architecture may have some value for a modern understanding of the Church.