‘The community for me?’ or ‘Me for the community?’
The explorations of communitas (the theme for the next series of posts around The Forgotten Ways) took on a very personal form in my own experience as leader of South Melbourne Restoration Community (now called RED), the church I had the privilege of leading for 15 years. When I look back to the early dynamics of that vibrant community, especially as it was still forming, we were functioning as missional church in a very naïve, pre-cognitive, and instinctual kind of way. All we did was set out to build a community that was radically open and engaged with all kinds of people on the edges and fringes of society. Things happened. It was exciting— the community was focused and sharpened by a sense of destiny and mission and as a result we grew in a strange and wonderful kind of way. We were missional, even though at the time this was as yet largely unarticulated, and as a result we experienced a remarkable form of community.
But something seemed to change as we grew and self-consciously became a more trendy, pomo, Gen-X church. For understandable reasons lots of grounded middleclass Christians from Melbourne’s Bible belt moved to the inner city to be part of what God was doing—and we welcomed the newfound stability in what was to that point a very chaotic experience of ecclesia. These were established Christians weren’t needy and that was a wonderful change for us and we basked in a period of sublime stability. But something shifted as we became more stable. And while we gained a lot from the participation of these wonderful people, nonetheless something significant was inadvertently lost as the church culture changed and became more middle-class and steady.
There is something about middle-class culture that seems to be contrary to authentic gospel values. And this is not a statement about middleclass people per se; I myself am from a very middleclass family, but rather to isolate some of the values and assumptions that that seem to just come along as part of the deal. In the chapter on discipleship we noted that much of what goes by the name middle class involves a preoccupation with safety and security developed mostly in pursuit of what seems to best for our children. And this is understandable as long as it does not become obsessive. But when these impulses of middle class culture fuse with consumerism, as they most often do, we can add the obsession with comfort and convenience to the list. And this is not a good mix. At least as far as the Gospel and missional church is concerned.
Operating under the influence of these ‘bugs’ in our middleclass software, our community became a marketer of particularly zesty religious goods and services vying for the attention of discerning spiritual consumers. Flattered by the numerical growth, and driven by our own middle-class agendas, we thoughtlessly followed the ‘gather and amuse’ impulse implicit in church growth theory and so we grew in numbers, but something primal and indispensable was lost in the bargain. We got more transfers from other churches, but the flow of conversion slowed down to a trickle and then ran completely dry. Paradoxically, we became busier than ever before, but with less and less real missional impact. We had moved from the missional idea of ‘me for the community and the community for the world’ to the more consumptive ‘the community for me’ and it just about destroyed us. We recovered only by recalibrating the community along fundamentally missional lines, and this was not achieved without pain and numerical loss. But in doing so, we moved from an experience of church as community to that of communitas.
Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church - Alan Hirsch
Forgotten Ways Handbook, The: A Practical Guide for Developing Missional Churches - Alan Hirsch, Darryn Altclass
ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church - Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch
The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church - Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch
One question that was on my mind since I read the book last year: Those colourful people who came to faith in your community back then, where are they now?
I was thinking it might be appropriate to define what we mean by ‘middle class’ values. For instance answers.com defines ‘middle class’ values as:
“Values commonly associated with the middle class include a desire for social respectability and material wealth and an emphasis on the family and education.”
I think the desire for social respectability is a killer.
I recently resigned a church, probably too much out of frustration with not being able to lead the people to a more missional style of ministry (if I can call it a style).
Reading your post and looking back I never thought about the correlation between middle-class, our desires for security, safety, comfort and convenience, and an unwillingness to really follow Jesus.
Alan, you mentioned recalibrating the community at the cost of pain and numerical loss. In that process were you able to influence change among many of those middle class, transfer members?
I think Matt gave a good definition of ‘middle class values’.
It’s true: how do we disciple with the middle class?
I know where I am from in Canada there is a growing discontentment with Christianity of the middle class. In various younger evangelical circles, as well as a Bible college I attend, disgust is being expressed after what Matt described as “desire for social respectability and material wealth”.
There is a growing desire to live in what is being called presently as “intentional community”. Christians coming and living together with a focus of following Jesus Christ and making him LORD.
What is significant about Intentional Community is what is being communicated subconsciously. Church structure now a days (regardless of its historical roots of getting there) communicates something completely different then what it might have originally intended to.
I mean the phrase “go to church” is in the same vein as “go to school” or “go to the mall”. Its something we do, almost habitual, that in the furthest reccesses of our mind is consumeristic.
If you talk to people I guarantee that most would be disgusted at the idea of church being consumeristic, but subconsiously that’s what is communicated by our structures and models.
Kevin, I think we made some inroads into it. But the issue really comes down to discipling people in the Way of Jesus. You might explore some of our posts on that area of Apostolic Genius. It is hard, arduous perhaps, to be middle class and a Christian at the same time. Something has to give!!
Alan, you are right on the beam with much of this. As part of a 1-year-old plant in a less than affluent area of our city, we have tried to take a fairly strong missional stance which has been effective in our reach as a community. However, there is a definite behavioral variance between those that have been reached within our new ministry and because of it, and those that have attached themselves to us from a different iteration of ‘church.’
I think at least part of the answer to this comes from some of your writing Alan, as we step back and look at the community as a meeting of functional giftings rather than structure. A return to function does not leave a lot of room for comfort and material acquisition against the greater question of whether or not I either do or do not function as a mature part of the community as led by the Holy Spirit.
I wish we all could answer this in the positive, but I know that I do not always, or even most of the time, sit well with this measurement.
Greetings.
As a fellow apprentice of Jesus on this journey moving away from Christendom, I have found this topic of Communitas to be particularly important and yet difficult for the missional community that I am engaged with.
My context is suburban - north of Minneapolis- and this is important because the people who identify with Amble Road are all middle class twenty - fourtysomethings. Exactly the type of people Alan was referring to in his entry.
I feel as if we are often trying to wake a drunk person from their deep slumber and desire for them to be articulate and fully functioning upon arousal. That could not be further from reality. As we wake people to Communitas, it takes far more time than anticipated to help them focus on something other than their own belongingness needs and passive participation. Communitas requires movement and giving and generosity of spirit. Christendom has inadvertently done much to dull those senses in us.
I am hopeful, though, (as evidenced by some in my community) that once aroused and focused, many desire Communitas and are willing to participate. One piece of feedback given by one of Amble Road’s participants has been golden - “This really is a whole new way of living. Because it is not familiar to me, I need more people to model it so I can have a better picture of what we are shooting for.”
May all of us desiring to live the way of Jesus actually model this so that the next generation may have a clearer picture….
Gentrification.
There’s a little cartoon on my old workplace’s website which tries to explain the gentrification which has occurred in good ol’ St Kilda. A fella is leaning back in his chair, sipping his latte “we were so fascinated by the diversity of the area that we bought here…and now we can’t find it”.
While gentrification can have positive impacts on an area in terms of upgrading infrastructure and bringing in capital (read: stability in the church), it often leads to a community losing its “soul” and character.
Just as people have moved into St Kilda over the years to experience the diverse and bohemian lifestyle – they are really here to spectate. They don’t engage with the homeless, the street sex workers, the man wandering the street talking to the voices in his head. They just like thrill of being near it all. St Kilda is no longer the cool suburb to live in. Those seeking diversity has moved across to the north side of Melbourne. And the developers quickly follow them – erecting cafes and apartments.
Those who come into churches for the cool experience will eventually move on. At Red people wander in the door “Hi I’m Bob, I read Alan’s book?” (forehead slap)…“what time do we feed the poor this week?” (hand over a leaflet for the Salvos). As the notion of the emerging church spreads people are going to keep rocking up looking for an instant missional experience – just like they searched for the best rock worship band 5 years ago. My response to a fella on Sunday who complained about us not having the milk he likes: “you want it, you bring it”.
I do love my Sally! Hot comments ole friend.
Talk about `Bible Belts’ being associated with Protestant evangelical middle-classedness makes me imagine expanding spiritual `waistlines’ of religious folk who tend to lack important health essentials such as exercising `missional
muscles’.
To be fair, I am not saying that all Bible Belt Christians are `missionally impoverished’ in terms of contributing to the work of doing mission or its financing.
In fact, much of the funding for missional projects comes from Bible Belt middle class Christians.
But I am speculating there is an innate tendency within the `bourgoise’(middle)classes to be consumeristic and to gravitate toward those movements they identify as being `successful’ in the hope that some of that perceived successfulness will somehow rub off on them. And also in all that, some hope that they will somehow become identified by their peers through association with successful movements as being successes in personal life.
For instance, some years ago I worked as a homelessness case worker for an inner city Church organisation. That involved fostering community with street people with an emphasis on them `owning’, `taking responsibility for’, and with the help of the `workers’ trying to fulfil the goal of their eventually taking the lead in the mission of that faith community. The organization has been running for about 20 odd years. But it is still overwhelmingly `run’, staffed and managed by Uni-Theological College grads from middle-class backgrounds - the `reins of leadership’ etc. still not having been handed over to the majority of its members who are mostly still street people. Every weekend, in order to be exposed to a `real’ and `challenging’ urban missionary field groups of middle-class Bible Belt imports run, supervise and control special `Street Church’ meetings for an hour in a city square, where give handouts such as a sandwich or bit of fruit to the queues of street people who gather there - it is a weekly ritual that has gone on for many years. Yeah, the visiting Christians do meet a lot of street people there - it has many good points to it. And there is a `feel’ to it of meeting some important social and practical needs of the poor, homeless etc. But what if instead of getting the non-local middle-class Bible Belt Christians to be the bosses over it - they really own it - somehow the street people, especially those who have become Christians could actually run it, get trained, staff the work and get properly paid for it, and make the important decisions about it as the owners of it.
What I am advocating is fostering the missionally `organic’ and the transformational by empowering the `targets’ (hate that word) of our mission efforts to take up the ownership of the missional works seeded among them ASAP ( as soon as it becomes practicable). In enabling that the middle-class Christians who start up such ventures (inevitably they are typically middle class, for a variety of reasons - judging from my observations over many years) perhaps need to plan intentionally for incremental `hand backs’ of that mission project’s ownership to that `now evangelised’ local target group so that the `work’ continues to be culturally shaped and run, and owned by them. This occurs as an act of good relational faith. It also occurs as an act of trust in God to continue to bless the mission work in an ongoing way as the transition occurs, into its destiny/future etc. It also doesn’t mean that all funding and other needed support from the mission planting group gets suddenly curtailed with the handover to the `new ownership’ local community.
Anyway, I’m just speculating out aloud about how to avoid missional works being over-taken things like middle-class, Bible Belt comfortability, respectabilty, consumerism etc. Maybe I’m wrong about all this. But maybe I’m actually right. What do you think?
Another thought I’ve been just wondering about is whether the highly `intentional’ task-orientatedness of our agenda driven middle-classedness as X’n missionaries sometimes detrimentally effects the more important relationship-building and trust-building aspects of our missionary endeavours.
Alan, thank you for bringing these issues to the table. For us, a group of people who have just started to seek God and dream about a new Christian community emerge in the contexts we’re part of, these things are crucial. And these are things that concern me deeply, because all of us in the group are middle class and almost all have grown up in various churches since being young children, so we’re sort of “damaged goods”. Consumerism and comfort, I dread them, because if we cannot deal with these issues they will kill the fragile plant that is just starting to take root.
I’m looking forward reading more about this!
Be blessed
/Mattias
Well… I actually do think there’s both something of goodness and the image of God, and something fallen in need of redemption in any and every culture you’d care to name.
Within Western middle class culture, literacy, education, family, diligence, honesty, friendship, community and courtesy are valued… these are generally good things! And yes… there are significant weaknesses in over-preocupation with security, success, the individual, the nuclear family and materialism… tendencies well fed by the diabolical marriage of consumerism and the advertising industry. Yes, these things need redemption.
However, I’d want to be careful we have a thoroughly nuanced conversation here… not middle-class = bad, the only real disciples are living with the poor. (Some people start to sound like this!!!)
A further “nuance” worth exploring from the really rich story of “South/Red” is that the pattern described is pretty typical of authentic church plants (not transplants) of all different cultural stripes… after a rather chaotic period of frontline evangelism, the church faces a period of change and adjustment and (particularly if it stays as a single congregation) a period where it becomes more structured/stable and less relational/missional. I think the “gentrification” described can take some of the “blame” for the loss of missional effectiveness at South, but not for all of it. Some of this, I suspect, is just what happens when a missional community gets larger, and tries to stay a single congregation.
Yes, it’s hard to be middle class and a disciple… but it’s hard to be anything and be a disciple. We all have a cross to pick up and carry… they’re just different “crosses” depending on your cultural background.
I’d invite Alan’s (and anyone else’s) push back on this…
I agree with Janet that the evil is not “out there” but it is all of us. It is hard for anyone to pass through the eye of the needle. Yes, being dependent upon “life-style” to try to get you through is impossible.
The real problem as Alan points out is a change of worldview. Worldview change is always a “conversion” experience and frankly most people in our “Bible Belt” churches do not understand the difference between US culture and Kingdom culture. I firmly believe that it is only through challenging worldview that people can make the jump to missional. Communitas is that jump, but it means the new community lives out those missional stories, praxis, and symbols constantly. The real problem is not just socio-economic, but a non-God centered lifestyle. The only real answer is to reconstruct a new community with a missional heart.
Alan,
I really enjoy the wording of “Gather and Amuse”. It stings a little, but its true. I am also horrendously middle class and can get tied into that stability and the passivity it brings with it.
Thanks!
Tom
http://tom.my-center.net
I’ve been musing on this issue some more… reflecting that the complex “South” story might have some other elements than the introduction of “middle-classness” (without denying that’s a factor too).
I’ve been thinking about the Sunbury church plant… which started as a group of unchurched Aussies of a satellite/urban fringe town birthed through Milton and Anne Oliver’s mission (and the Holy Spirit!).
The dynamics of this group started to change when “churched” people started joining the growing congregation. It’s almost like some foreign DNA was introduced and this made “reproduction” more difficult.
These were (I’d be assuming) similar people socio-economically… it wasn’t like South where middle class people joined recovering addicts of various persuasions. But there was still something new introduced… the “churchiness” virus. It’s like the simple seed of the gospel incarnating among a people group was interrupted in some way.
This relates to Andrew’s post also… I’m wondering whether we get better “reproductive” ability for the gospel if we let the leadership emerge from within a people group (the poor, as in his example) and resist the urge to import the leadership from elsewhere… a “foreign” leadership who bring their own cultural and religious baggage with them.
I’m interested in the thoughts and experiences of others on this issue…
This morning I met a group from Kairos Prison Ministries outside West Ryde Koorong.
or Luke 4
“When I was imprisoned you visited me” “setting captives free”
“being good news to the poor…setting captives free etc” is also our call - and I argue that it is - then what is it in us that stops us from following Him into the places where the poor, blind and imprisoned are - why do we so often seem to lack the drive, passion or the intitiative and just leave it to `professionals’or experts? What is that all about when it seems so clear from the Gospels that we are called to be Good News to the poor in the name of Jesus Christ? How many of us would even want to know a poor person if we met them in the street?
They meet up with prisoners in prison and assist them to adjust to life “on the outside” when those people get discharged from prison.
Many of the men I caseworked during work with the homeless at the Cardinal Freeman Centre, Granville had encountered Kairos during stints in prison. Kairos teams visit prisons to reach out to men and women with the Gospel hope. Friendships are made which have an enduring quality about them. Pastoral care, help in preparing for release, discipleship, practical assistance upon being relased is the sort of stuff they do.
One of the women I met from Kairos today was a prisoner until 4 years ago. She had just become a Christian before she was imprisoned. Kairos volunteers visited her and discipled her in prison and assisted her to find housing on release. They also provided her with a supportive community as she adjusted to life on the outside. Often it is the process of re-adjusting to the less institutionalised life on the outside where you have to provide for yourself, pay rent and bills, start out anew, make decisions, restart establishing a social community - which presents as major challenges for ex-prisoners. Anyway, Kairos helped her with that and now she is a worker with them - a leader doing significant work in mission helping other prsioners who are where she’s been. I like the incarnational aspect of that - the missionized become the missionaries through other missionaries risking/offering themselves as servants of Christ in the manner of Luke 25
Later in the day I was thinking to myself, how many Christians actually know or want to know a poor person? How many have ever met a prisoner, or been into a prison? How many really want to know them? And yet, if Jesus’s call in Luke 4
Also, like the gentrification of St Kilda - same in Kings Cross, Darlinghurst and Woolloomooloo. There you can see BMWs, Mercedes and all other types of luxury cars parked in the same streets that also are where street prostitutes, drug addicted and homeless people find their `home’ - the rich in $1 million terrace houses and the poor squatting in the back alleys, corridors, bus shelters, under railway bridges and clustered together in parks. There is a macabre fascination held by some rich people (Christians aS WELL as non-Christians) who I know living in these suburbs with the sexy-dangerous/artistic bohemian cultural tone of these suburbs. It is risque and trendy to live “where all the nightlife is”, “where all the action is”. For some, they do volunteer their time to help the poor. But so many others couldn’t give a rat’s arse for them and are just there for the nightlife action of the area and to live 5 mins close to work. So anyway, I am just expanding a bit on what I read about the gentrification factor in Sally’s blog earlier, but talking about in a Sydney inner-city context.
In previous blog I meant Mt 25 and Luke 4
. No Luke 25
in the book. But some good stuff about the incarnation is spilled out in where it would be were it there (Jn 1
).