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Metaphorical Churches Pt. 3: The Monastery

12/17/2015

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 What is the church? Metaphors abound: the Body of Christ, the Family of God, the new Israel, a Hospital, etc.

In these posts, I will consider 3 approaches to "church" in the U.S. that seem to have some staying power. These are not the only approaches. They are not mutually exclusive, but they can be. These posts are more observational than prescriptive, but, I think every "type" of church can learn from the others. I will try to lay out some pros and cons of each approach, but this is not exhaustive and if you happen to have some personal connection to the metaphors I've chosen and you're offended, well, sorry, but please get over it. The previous post was about the "Volunteer Fire Department."
​Today's metaphor is the monastery.  Image below from traveladventures.org
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Evangelical Protestants in the United States have often heaped scorn on monasticism as "cut off from the world" while simultaneously forming communities marked by strong strains of separatism. In historical reality, monasticism is not different from any other tradition of Christianity in this: some of the best and the worst of Christianity could be found in monasteries. Here, I want to suggest that some valid elements of monastic life might also be valuable assets for the way people chose to "do" church in the U.S. This type of metaphorical church values order and tradition, but (ideally) not for its own sake. Like St. Benedict and the founders of many monastic orders, they understand that for a group of God's people to have both individual and communal spiritual life, a consistent "rule" is necessary.

Pros - If the B&B church sometimes caters to individualism, the "monastery" church is having none of it. This kind of church is suspicious that individualistic America doesn't really have a culture to which the church might enculturate its message, but the church itself can offer rootless Americans a gospel-shaped culture. If one is looking for deep roots (deeper than America itself), this is the place to go. Of course, when the people of the church go home, they may become American individualists again. When they go to work, they will have to follow an alternate rule, or be fired. At church, they will have to accept that the songs, the service, the scripture readings, etc. have not been chosen for their pleasure and comfort, but to make a collection of individuals into a gospel-shaped community, setting their personal whims and fancies aside. This kind of church has the potential to tolerate a variety of more individualistic attributes, political orientations, styles of spirituality and personality because while the church is gathered, none of those things is allowed to hold sway. The tradition rules. The individuals must, however temporarily, conform.

Cons - Of course, people who gravitate to this kind of church may only be the kind of people who like tradition, and so consumerism cannot be entirely negated. This type of church may also be the least accessible to outsiders who walk in off the street (although the traditional nature sometimes dictates that this is the kind of service that appears in T.V. and movies) without knowing anyone. And, of course, the commitment to tradition comes with its own problems. If some sort of change is really necessary, this kind of church might die before it makes that change.
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Metaphorical Churches, Pt. 2: The Volunteer Fire Department

12/8/2015

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What is the church? Metaphors abound: the Body of Christ, the Family of God, the new Israel, a Hospital, etc.

In these posts, I will consider 3 approaches to "church" in the U.S. that seem to have some staying power. These are not the only approaches. They are not mutually exclusive, but they can be. These posts are more observational than prescriptive, but, I think every "type" of church can learn from the others. I will try to lay out some pros and cons of each approach, but this is not exhaustive and if you happen to have some personal connection to the metaphors I've chosen and you're offended, well, sorry, but please get over it. The previous post was about the "Bed and Breakfast" Church. Today's metaphor is the "Volunteer Fire Department."
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This type of church focuses on training and preparedness. Some people think of this as the "high-demand church" in which a great deal of participation is obligatory, and sometimes that is true. Often enough, for members of these churches, life outside of work simply revolves around the church rather than the vast array of other recreational and extra-curricular activities common to 21st century Americans. This approach is growing more rare, but this is the Sunday School, Sunday worship, Sunday evening service and Wednesday night Bible-study church with monthly pot-luck suppers. This kind of church often spends a lot of time thinking about the outside world, praying for it and preparing for opportunities to engage with it in loving ways.

Pros - These churches can be very generous. If you have a crisis in your life, and the slightest social connection to the congregation, people from a church like this will descend like a horde of lasagna-bearing love-locusts. Regardless of whether you attend church, you will have frozen meals for a month. You will have free-babysitting. And (in the best cases) you will NOT feel like you owe them anything. To these folks, they are "just doing their jobs" as followers of Jesus. Granted, you may have to submit to being prayed for, and you may be encouraged to read your Bible, but if you shyly decline, they won't be offended. Often these churches have a great deal of camaraderie and function like extended families, raising their children village-style and giving concerted effort to training the next generation of emergency-response Christians.

Cons - Sometimes the VFD Church is a bit more reactive and proactive. It could be argued that they have skills and abilities that could be valuable in non-emergency situations as well. Sometimes "high-demand" does go too far and becomes moralistic and legalistic, which could be especially overwhelming for people not socialized to that way of doing church. Sometimes an elitist attitude of sorts can develop in relation to other Christians and non-Christians, and it's palpable. When I attended one church like this, I had the sense that they thought they were the only Christians (and the only decent people) in town. In worst-case scenarios, the services a VFD Church offers to the community do come with rather aggressive strings-attached evangelization.

image above from townofdenton.com 
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Metaphorical Churches, Pt. 1- The B&B

12/4/2015

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What is the church? Metaphors abound: the Body of Christ, the Family of God, the new Israel, a Hospital, etc.

In the following posts, I will consider 3 approaches to "church" in the U.S. that seem to have some staying power. These are not the only approaches. They are not mutually exclusive, but they can be. These posts are more observational than prescriptive, but, I think every "type" of church can learn from the others. I will try to lay out some pros and cons of each approach, but this is not exhaustive and if you happen to have some personal connection to the metaphors I've chosen and you're offended, well, sorry, but please get over it. 

The first approach, I will call the "Bed and Breakfast" Church; the emphasis is on hospitality. Sometimes this is called "seeker sensitive" in that the standard weekly gathering is oriented toward attracting and serving those people who are not Christians or not involved in the life of a church. It is also "attractional" in that this approach relies on its ability to attract people to church. It is most likely to treat the public and those who show up as clients or customers. The message is often, "come as you are" and the goal is to make them basically comfortable so that when you make the (generally soft) sales pitch (this isn't the "time-share" approach), they are in a place to say "yes."

Pros- Who doesn't like customer service? Often, these churches really care about people in their community and are great about making them feel welcome and even special. Other churches can learn a lot about hospitality from seeing a B&B in action. When people have been hurt by some other kind of church, often this kind of church helps them come back. They are very accessible and non-judgmental. I remember meeting a couple men who went to a church like this. They reported that at their previous church (where they had grown up), they had cried themselves to sleep at night because they knew "they would never be good enough for God." That's a travesty. B&B churches can also claim to have the approach that is most enculturated to American society. As more and more people in the U.S. disaffiliate with "organized religion" it seems likely that more churches will have to think about the challenge of British missiologist Lesslie Newbigin for, "the gospel to have a genuine  'missionary encounter' with Western culture." In Christian missions, it's generally agreed that enculturation ("translating" the Christian message and church into indigenous/native cultural forms, rather than forcing a foreign culture upon a people) is the way to go.
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Cons- The question is: does America have a real "culture" in the sense of a society structured for the 'cultivation' of healthy and flourishing human beings. The B&B approach can find it hard to critique the detrimental aspects of U.S. culture, particularly individualism and consumerism and hard to challenge people to move away from these things since it was the appeal to individualism and consumerism that attracted them in the first place. The medium is the message. Staff at these churches can feel a lot of pressure to perform and to develop new attractive programs and P.R. campaigns to keep consumers interested and worship can become a commodity. When I was a guest-teacher at a rather extreme rendition of a church like this, staff "backstage" after the service said things like, "I think we put out a pretty good product today." A friend told me about a church-sign he saw on the way to our church that read, "Starbucks! Food! Pony Rides!" His comment was: "We just can't compete with that." As a result, these churches can end up attracting and assuaging lazy or finicky Christian consumers from other churches, rather than authentic "seekers."

Images above taken from hotelpropeller.com and chahalemridge.com
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    Matt Hunter is a theological platypus, and he likes it that way.  You might notice that the Bible is a bit of a conglomerate creation too.

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