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

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."

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 

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