Building a blueprint for church
20 Mar 2007
Following on from this post on ‘blueprint church’, I thought I’d post some more thoughts about this issue. In particular paraphasing the ideas of Nicholas Healy, who has explored this issue in some depth. (Warning long post, with some theological reflection, and audio version is here)
Healy sees a 5 stage process that has happened in church history as people have tried to respond to their context with new forms of church. I have use it in outline, trying to apply it with my own words to the context we are in today.
1. Metaphor: We pick one word, or a phrase that ecapsulates the model/idea of church we are trying to conceive of, and in church history this might have been, ‘people of God’, ‘communion’, ‘herald’, ’servant’, and more recently we might add, ‘cell’, ‘networked’, ‘emerging’, ‘fresh expressions’ etc. As we seek to describe church we reach for these metaphors. Whilst these metaphors help us think about what church should be, and could be, it can so easily lead us to something unhelpful, the idealisation of church.
2. Idealisation: We begin to think of the church as existing int two parts/essences (bi-partite), there is the empirical church (the church we can see around us), then there is the better, truer church that we have conceived of (whether it exists or not, as yet). The dreams and aspirations we have for church can help us see the sinfulness of church, where it is failing to respond to our context, but this process can quickly lead us into a vision for church that is unable to deal with the realities of everday life. To do anything concrete immediately undermines the dream for the church. As soon as it connect with real people, the vision is polluted, corrupted, and we withdraw, or move onto the next conception of church.
3. Dogmatic Prescription:Then we might move on a stage further and become very prescriptive. If in our new model, the theory about church is X, then we must have X in our new forms of church, and if anything else happens, say Y, then we get rid of Y as it does not conform to our ideal, or we move onto to another model, or refine our model/ideas. We prescribe church in axiomatics, that our model is true and church must have certain things, and it must not have others. Whilst we do want to for good reasons exclude or include elements to our ideas of church, we can so easily end up with our models/ideas of church being reduced the the superficial measure of whether we have a sunday service or not (and I am not arguing for sunday services!).
4. Continued Reflection: The problem then becomes that we prescribe our idealism, and in reality the idealism never takes shape becuase the church is full of people, and we can end up living in an endless wish/dream of church, and give up trying to make the church concrete, and take action over our dreams. So we might stay at this point and continue reflecting, hoping that if we get our ideas, and dreams and aspirations about church clearer, if we pursuade people enough about them then maybe we’ll be able to do them.
5. Continued Idealisation: And we finally get locked into a feedback loop from our reflection into continued indealisation, that feeds us back into reflection. We find more satisfaction in the wishing of church, desiring church, than we ever do in the action of church in the comsuming of the idea of church than the doing of church.
There has never been agreement about the model of church in church history, just a succession of developing models. There are four marks of the church in history, that is it one, holy, catholic and apostolic (see the Nicene Creed). The NT had a plurality of ways of talking about the church. In the early church, when horizons might have been similar there was still a huge variety of churches.
Models can say helpful things (and we used them to map domains of our experience), but they should be used to explore the plurality of church, not the harmonisation, there isn’t one that is the ’supermodel’ or ‘exemplar’. Inherent in models it the perfect/idealised notion of church, which causes the models to be separated from the reality of everyday church life. It is the concrete church as we experience it that gives us the ability to chose the imagination of the model we land on, to start with and progress from. Yet too often our model can force an agenda for changing our context to fit the model.
Contrary to logic of models there is not a correct way, but a ‘multidirectional’ move by exploring models in the plurality of church. Our models cannot function as a normative principle but maybe in a weaker way, as a concept summarising proposals from a particular context/horizon. Our prophetic constructions should be to help us see where our ecclesiologies are not boasting soley in Jesus. Whereas too often our models of church boast in themselves, pathologically so at times, justifying their correctness by letting others know how they are not like other incorrect models of church.
Deep Church, the metaphor I am finding most helpful, is not about a better model, but a method for models, of sharing the horizons of the church in history and in the present, of going into the plurality of the experience of the church, so that we might connect people to Jesus in reality, in the real world in mission. That we will have the measure of our ideas of church, not as to whether they are different from forms of church we dislike, but that they bring others to know and follow Jesus as a way of life with others.
And even there, I am idealising and imaging a model of church, and how that takes root in a real context is the ongoing challenged and the subject of future posts. But I think it might have to do with some of these:
1. Agency: Despite the explosion of agency, of people being freed to participate, that the church has often resisted, this agancy remains superficial, and needs to go deeper, and be encouraged by the church much more.
2. Commodification: We need to unmask how commodification in consumerism had let us come to a place where church is so often an aesthetic, a style to consume, to mistake the abstraction and idealising of church, and the endless consuming of the ‘being’ and ‘nature’ of church, rather than enacting church in real life. Commodification trains the agency we have into aesthetic abstraction. The problem is that being trained as abstracting consumers means when we try to be agents of our religious traditions we end up doing so in a shallow and superficial manner, practicing ‘spirituality’, unable to embed it in any action and community and lived tradtion.
3. Plurality: We need to explore the internal plurality of church that has always existed, to help our superficial agency go deeper, to enage with the outside world and it’s plurality. We can help the dissatisfied with church to explore the pluralism of our traditions instead of letting them default to the ‘spirituality model’ of consumerism that picks stuff in plurality, in an abstracted and disembodied fashion! Instead or pretending there is one correct way to do, and be church we throw open the vaults of church history and explore that together.
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Audio Version of this post:
Tagged: Ecclesiology, Emerging-Church, Missional-Church, Theology
31 comments
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Comment by Jason
10.08 am on 20 Mar 2007
Audio version of this post is here
Comment by Paul
11.05 am on 20 Mar 2007
Thanks Jason, v interesting post. I think for myself i can see similarities with the cycle you describe not least how to cope when the abstract “perfect-for-me” church doesn’t happen/exist. When reality encounters fantasy I think for me there was a lot of frustration at first and then a realisation that the only person who could live out what i thought was my ideal of christianity was me – it’s not something i can impose on others nor indeed need others to validate – if i feel something strongly rather than complain that no one else is doing it why don’t i just get on and try living it. That has been my MO for the last couple of yrs and anger has given way to a reality that there are so many different ways of doing church that to cast church in my image rather than that of God’s is just plain unhealthy.
I think in part for me deep church is not so much an ideal expression of church but a reflection that difference is no bad thing, that just as a single church is made up of different people maybe the church catholic is made up of different expressions and that we have more in common than divides us – not least Paul’s reflections about One Lord etc…
Comment by steven hamilton
2.02 pm on 20 Mar 2007
paul –
hear, hear! one of my continuing sources of angst is that some (if not many) in the emergent church are even more selfish (and making church in their image rather than exploring what God might be doing)…they are more selfish than my parents and their faith community, which is really, modern (almost panifully so to me sometimes) and really traditional…but a lot less selfish, and rather than seeking to spend all the grace gifts of God’s Spirit on themselves, turn outward and thrust the grace of God into the world around them.
ok, let me get off my little soap box now.
thanks
Comment by Jason
5.03 pm on 20 Mar 2007
Hi Steve, isn’t the case the in church history we see people who think they are breaking with church for all the right reasons and end up repeating the same mistakes. The very thing we want to be different too can become the very thing we perpetuate.
Comment by Helen
12.53 pm on 21 Mar 2007
Jason, I’m sure that happens a lot, not just with church but whenever a group of people break away from an established group because they want to create something new and better. Their intentions are great but the results don’t always reflect their great intentions.
Comment by Jason
8.24 pm on 22 Mar 2007
I think your right Helen. However we don’t want people to stop trying new things either. How do we dream dreams but not fall into wishful thinking?
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Comment by Jason
4.54 pm on 20 Mar 2007
Hi Paul, I think we are so trained by consumerism to consume the idea of church, rather than live the reality, coupled with the rational western approach of thinking of ideals before action, then our selfish individualism, that church can never live up to our expectations.
I still think the revolution we need is not more books on who church is bad and should change, but for church to seek to address its problems, whilst Christians decide to serve, give, pray adn get stuck in at the same time.
Glad to hear your not ‘mr angry’ any more ;-)
Comment by Paul
6.41 pm on 20 Mar 2007
thanks bro, just don’t make me mad, you wouldn’t like when i’m mad, lol.
I think that the idea of consuming the idea of church is a crude one and probably is ripe for it’s own critique – can we actually consume an idea for instance [as opposed to an idea consuming us]? Where is the line between being a dreamer and and pursuing a dream?
I’m growingly increasingly unconvinced that christians who actually attend church are really consuming it – and more convinced that we have some churches set up in such a way to make it an event that is consumed for ease of entry rather than participated in but then have a cut out point where the consumers should become the providers…
I think the revolution you advocate does happen – but there is also a disconnect and it is when the disconnected start detaching i think there comes a problem of drop out. So how do we build such learning, reflection and growth into the cycle of church life as part of a healthy and whole rather than a disperate system of differing expectations and outcomes?
Comment by steven hamilton
6.54 pm on 20 Mar 2007
good words paul…as i think on them i am reminded of something down home we used to call ‘bait-and-switch’…where you lure someone in, then change everything once they are ‘trapped’…i think we do this with the good news too often, rather than reflecting the honesty that Jesus both wrecked my life and made it immensely better…
Is the rich young ruler and jesus episode a place where Jesus definitely did not do the ‘bait-and-switch’, but also let the person who did leave (drop-out) to let them leave…i think that reflects the profound faith Jesus had that the Father would pursue him somehow…
Comment by Jason
6.53 am on 21 Mar 2007
Hi Paul, I think I meant to say, we are trained by consumerism, in particular commodification, to desire, desire, the consumption of things as abstracts in themselves. There is a lot of research in this, that I think holds up. I’m trying to overlay that on church, in that we easily desire misisonal church, think about it, dream about it, buy books, go to conferences, make decisions about it, but mistake all that as having acted.
It’s the difference between ontology and agency. In consumer culture, ‘being’, the authentic self, has become about consuming aesthetics, the surface of things, rather than ‘agency’ and action.
From the cradle to the grave we are trained in the spiritual, discipline of desire, rather than action, of committment, of giving, time and energy and action to our convictions, of displacing our convictions onto aesthetics, of or compete apathy about action…see your ‘whatever post’.
I’m not saying Christians who attend church are consuming it…just highlighting the problem of consumption to real action.
does that help calrify?
Comment by Paul
8.48 am on 21 Mar 2007
thanks Jase, i appreciate the clarification and i think you are right to an extent that people can consume at a surface level and equate that with action – take the missional church example you are right that we can consume events/books/blogs etc and feel that we are missional without having actually done anything missional, i agree with you. I think though there comes a point where in my experience people either get sick of the idea and move on to the next one or they start to put what they’ve read/dreamed about into practice. So my critique of the model is its too crude, it applies at a surface level yes but makes no room for action/change to enter the equation and turn ideas into action at a certain tipping point.
then again maybe all i am saying is that it is an idea that I have got tired of consuming about consuming and am now trying to take action in the face of it to help me take action ;)
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Comment by Jason
8.55 am on 21 Mar 2007
I’m probably not hearing you properly Paul, but can you set out where and why it’s too Crude? I offered it as a diagnosis of a disposition, and that there is a way out, and that people do. But by and large it is a system people are either trapped in or willing to stay in.
With more christians leaving church than ever, and more talk about church than ever, I think there is more evidence empirically and reflectively about consumerism, to show that by and large people consume ideas, and do not take action over them.
Committment to PTA, local government, politics, social action, etc are at an all time low in every area…
If not comodification, what is the reason you see for that lack of action? You are proof of my thesis, in that you are one of the people to see through this process and take action…!
Comment by Paul
7.26 pm on 21 Mar 2007
thanks Jase you are too kind and gracious, it’s my fault for not being clear enough rather than any deficiency on your listening part.
It’s also quite hard to express in a blog post why it’s crude because that in and of itself would be a crude response but in simple terms I would say that:
i. consumerism is not a new phenom, it could be said that we now have more desires that are attainable to us but neither consumerism/market economony/desire are new to the human race.
ii. I think we like to get nostalgic about rural economic conditions versus urbanisation and make generalisations about the proces of commodification etc
iii. the consuming of ideas is not a new phenom either nor indeed is the acting out of these ideas – indeed it could be argued it is because people have held strong ideas and idealogies that much of the good and the bad has happened in our world
iv. i would argue that in the western climate we are allowed to hold ideas and act on them if we choose but with politics it has become about the middle ground and reduced polarisation has led to reduced choice – so why bother choosing?; church has often been pulled out to the margins and their is a reaction against extreme groups based on our 20th century history; in an age of information we can access and evaluate information ourselves from a variety of sources thus often suffering from info overload on the one hand or more critical evaluation of that info on the other and therefore not needing such organising activities as clubs/societies often grouped around the common transition of ideas…
v. Finally has volunteering/involvement really declined – given the pace of life and the cost of living it means that we have actually lost leisure time rather than gained it – thus we see a more 24/7 lifestyle and a reduced amount of time to offer in way of volunteer activites. Even so that does not seem to stop peope from volunteering- the Nat Stats office shows that people with higher incomes volunteer more [is that related to education? civic responsibility?} http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=1008&Pos=1&ColRank=2&Rank=208
Indeed the stats for the UK look relatively healthy:
Home Office Citizenship Survey 2003
Around 18.8 million people were engaged in active community participation (civic participation, informal & formal volunteering) in 2001, compared to 20.3 million in 2003, a rise of more than one and a half million
Formal Volunteering
11.1 million people involved in formal volunteering at least once a month are most likely to be involved in: organising or helping to run an activity or event (57%), raising or handling money (54%), leading a group/ being a member of a committee, giving other practical help (32%)
They were most likely to be working in the following areas: sports & exercise (43%), hobbies, recreation, arts, social clubs (40%), children’s education (37%), religion (37%)
Informal Volunteering
Younger people aged 16-24, were more likely to be involved in informal volunteering than any other age group
Source: http://www.timebank.org.uk/mediacentre/research.php
Like i said it is crude and i am sure that your diagnosis does hold water in that ‘what’s in it for me’ nature of humanity will play a part as will ‘this is not connecting with me so why should i take part’ etc. Barna maybe also be partly right that people are realising they don’t need church in the way they once did to provide connection, spiritual input and may indeed be finding more appropriate means themselves? Then again is that really producing a deeper spirituality or just using their time for other activities?
What do you think?
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Comment by Helen
1.00 pm on 21 Mar 2007
It seems to me that this is an old problem – on Mars Hill Paul spoke to the people who liked to hang out in the marketplace chatting – and at the end of his speech some of them said “Hey, we’d like to hear you again”.
Did they ever get beyond discussing ideas, though?
The UUs like to discuss things and laugh at themselves over it – they told me a UU joke about this when I was at a UU thing once, which I wish I could remember.
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Comment by Helen
12.55 pm on 21 Mar 2007
Oooh, I’ve never seen you angry…now I’m curious. Do you have a video of ‘angry Paul’? ;-)
Comment by Paul
7.43 pm on 21 Mar 2007
lol, erm no Helen. I used to very angry, even violent, and that would not be a pretty video :(
Altho i am grateful to divine defusal work of the Holy Spirit helping me heal and altho i still get angry i don’t hit the crakatoa violent levels of my past, which is a very good thing!
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Comment by steven hamilton
1.57 pm on 20 Mar 2007
it’s funny, ‘prescription’ is one of those naughty words from ancient Rome that would send the First class fleeing Rome because the dictator might take all their possessions. prescription was used to take advantage of others, take their property and wealth. i think i hear the echo of that above, in terms of idealization (notice my use of the American ‘z’ in this instance) and prescribing, which essentially takes advantage and imposes our stuff on other people…and here i thought Jesus said not to be like the gentiles/nations…but to let love be what others know of us. it’s like what you said, jason: “Our prophetic constructions should be to help us see where our ecclesiologies are not boasting soley in Jesus. Whereas too often our models of church boast in themselves, pathologically so at times, justifying their correctness by letting others know how they are not like other incorrect models of church. Deep Church, the metaphor I am finding most helpful, is not about a better model, but a method for models, of sharing the horizons of the church in history and in the present, of going into the plurality of the experience of the church, so that we might connect people to Jesus in reality, in the real world in mission.” Amen!
as an historian, and one who has studied church history both West and East (and now North and South), it amazes me that people can still be blind to the multiplicity and creativity of ekklesial expression that the Spirit has let shine throughout the ages. may the ever-emerging, ever-creative activity of the Spirit continue in the church…deeply
peace
Comment by Jason
5.05 pm on 20 Mar 2007
Steve, our benchmark must surely be are we connecting people to alife lived around Jesus including new christians, otherwise we’re re-arraning chairs on the Titanic. What do you make of Philip Jenkins assessment of the Global south?
Comment by steven hamilton
5.19 pm on 20 Mar 2007
in the Global South…the future looks bright . the massive shifting spiritual plate-techtonics is happening, and Kingdoms are in conflict as the faultline of the gospel progresses… actually, jenkins work really encourages me that people are looking with great perspective outside the narrow confines of caucasian ‘Western Christianity’, and confirming the gospel went forth in all directions in the first century, including Africa and Asia. after visiting the Global south several times in the past decade, the Presence of the Spirit in the church there makes my spirit come alive…i can still hear the rhythms coming from the little church in central america, with a ten-year-old girl on beat-up drums and her twelve-year-old brother on lead guitarra as their tia consuela sang to ancient rhythms springing forth anew!
it also gives me good perspective for seeing europe and north america with missional eyes…and it opens my ears and eyes to see what the Father is doing, so we can join Him, rather than rush around re-arranging the furniture on the Titanic…
peace
Comment by Tom
8.57 pm on 20 Mar 2007
Relating to your post here, Jason, have you read the Phyllis Tickle interview over at the Christianity Today blog? There’s some clear parallels between her very prescient observations and your own.
Comment by Jason Clark
10.06 pm on 20 Mar 2007
Hi Tom, no I hadn’t seen that, thank you for the link heads up.
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11.48 am on 21 Mar 2007
[...] maart 21, 2007 bij 10:47 am · Ingedeeld onder diversen Met een examen in het vooruitzicht kan ik alleen maar mijn links van de week bij elkaar plaatsen. enjoy… Prachtige post over het wezen van de kerk doorheen de geschiedenis van Jason Clark: Blueprint of the church [...]
Comment by Nich Bull
12.45 pm on 21 Mar 2007
Read this post and the comments with interest. Agree with many of the conclusions. My own perspective is that the danger of a prescribed model (can I use the word idol) of church limits the ability of a community to develop and the spirit to move. I think the challenge for ‘a church’ is to allow diversity while keeping a sense of cohesion and conversation within the diversity. I was reminded on this quote:
“The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realised by God, by others and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, his own law, and judges the brethren and himself accordingly. He acts as if he is the creator of community, as if it is his dream which holds the community together. WHen things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes first an accuser of his brethren, then God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Comment by Helen
1.05 pm on 21 Mar 2007
Jason, how do you get beyond the recursive problem that discussing the problem of church being an aesthetic that we discuss, or the problem that there’s too much discussion and not enough action, is still a discussion, and not action yet?
Do you ever wonder if blogs discussing church are part of the problem rather than the solution?
Sorry, I’m not asking this as a criticism of you but more as a question to myself about whether blogging about not taking enough action results in more action, or just more discussion. As a blogger, I do wonder about that.
I feel a bit reassured that discussions I’ve had on blogs have led to changes in my life – so it’s not as if all I do is discuss stuff. We got involved in microfinance because I read about it on a blog – that’s one example of a concrete change I’ve made.
Comment by Jim_Rapp
7.29 pm on 21 Mar 2007
Talk about a practical goof-up.
My post, #8 (http://jasonclark.ws/2007/03/19/power-of-the-web-your-help-please/#comment-9436) under the Topic, “Power of the Web,” was meant to be posted here, under “blueprint” …. bragging about being practical while failing …
Comment by steven hamilton
1.35 pm on 22 Mar 2007
jim
it warms my heart that your ministry is so practical…i think (and this goes along the lines of what jason is saying here) that more ‘theology’ needs to occur on the streets and filter its way up to the high-falutin’ ivory tower…we need much less of the Reagan-like trickle-down praxis of theology.
and i’m all for smokin’ the peace pipe (go quakers!)
in my world (not sure if i’m being too consumeristic in saying ‘my world’) i would much rather have the likes of you over for dinner and conversation (so we can collaborate on what we see the Father doing on the streets) as opposed to say ’sipping sherry’ with book peddlers…
peace
Comment by steven hamilton
10.30 pm on 21 Mar 2007
very provoking thoughts on volunteering and statistics Paul. i utterly agree with the nostalgia piece versus the realities of current urbanization…and the thought occurred to me given the demands and pressures of a 24/7 culture that both formal and informal volunteering may be a very great way for people to connect in a community-like way while doing good, or as robert putnam might say: because of loneliness and emptiness inside of many in our 24/7 culture, they are seeking to connect and gain social capital through informal and formal volunteering while feeling empowered through the way of connection, which is being purposeful with use of time and energy to ‘do good’.
and yet i think jason is talking more about how to be church (not just a church architect) and maybe (i suppose) about culture or maybe about the sweet spot that is church that can be such a prophetic counter in this kind of culture…still i agree with what i see as jason’s overarching point, too often we are crushed by idiosyncratic and idealistic tendencies coupled with structures in society that lead us further and further down the primrose path of immendiate gratification and we lose any sort of discipline, so much so that our desires may eventually consume us…
Comment by Paul
11.52 am on 22 Mar 2007
Thanks Steven, i agree with Jason’s overall wish-dream disconnect from reality thesis but i suspect that it is more to do with the emphasis of the individual/self expression of which consumerism/choice analyis may be just be one part.
I like your volunteering connection ideal, it reminds me of the film Crash and his voice over at the start of the film…
It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.
Comment by Cody
4.30 pm on 26 Apr 2007
yes so do I, I think about the film crash and laugh.
i think that his overall apearance is good:)
Comment by Jason
9.28 am on 27 Apr 2007
Hi Codie, just to let you know fake url’s and email for your comment authentication will result in your comments being deleted/unapproved. We want you to hang around and comment, but want to know who you are.
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3.21 am on 13 Jul 2007
[...] acknowleding the dangers of blueprint church and the romantic quest in vain for the perfect church – I think we also need to critique our own [...]
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