The Unchurch ... different kinds of nuts, but still nuts.
Recently, a friend of mine resigned as pastor of a mid-sized Mennonite Brethren church in Alberta. Here's the clincher: he's not only resigning as the pastor of the church in question, but also as the pastor of any church. He's done.
My friend is a great pastor, so his avocational intentions are a loss to the body of Christ. It may not be a total loss, however. He wants to start an "unchurch", which he describes as a home-based, food-centered, communion-celebrating gathering of friends. Sounds refreshing.
Some of you might remember 7-UP's "uncola" commercials from the 1970/80's. 7-UP was a can (bottle) of pop ... just like Coke and Pepsi colas. You could buy it in any drink machine ... just like Coke and Pepsi. It was stocked on every grocery store shelf ... just like Coke and Pepsi. Still, the "uncola" campaign convinced people that 7-UP was a clean, crisp, refreshing alternative to the heavy, syrupy, strip-the-rust-off-a-nail colas.
Of course, 7-UP was still a can of pop ... just like Coke and Pepsi. Like Coke and Pepsi, it was full of sugar and, therefore, high in calories and not very good at quenching thirst.
Which makes me wonder how much the unchurch will really differ from the church. The unchurch will probably lose a lot of institutional baggage. That's good. The unchurch won't be bound by precedent and dead tradition -- nobody will be saying, "We've always done it this way." (At least not right away.) That's good. The unchurch won't be trying to "take the city" for Christ. That's really good.
But the unchurch is just like the church in that it's a gathering of people, noble yet flawed to the core. Sometimes, people rise to the occasion and exceed our expectations. Often, they demonstrate an incredible ability to turn dreams into disasters.
20-somethings are pulling out of traditional churches in record numbers. If they're not leaving church altogether they're moving into house churches, where they hope to find an "unchurch" experience. Something light and refreshing, clean and clear.
George Barna, the U.S. pollster of religion, recently released his research into the house church movement. Here's how Barna sums up the scene:
- Average size of gathering: 20 people (including 7 children in gatherings with kids
- Gatherings including kids: 64%
- Of those, kids meeting with adults for whole session: 41%
- House churches meeting weekly: 80%
- Average length of service: 2 hours
- Include formal teaching: 76%
- Eat as well as meet: 85%
One noteworthy stat: 75% of people who attend a house church have been doing so for only a year or less. So, they're still in the honeymoon phase. Even in this state of newfound bliss, only 59% are satisfied with the spiritual depth of the experience. Only 66% are satisfied with the level of personal connectedness.
God bless house churches, unchurches, and any other innovative approach to church. We need fresh ways of being the body of Christ. But as long as people are involved, it will always be at least a little bit nuts!
2 comments:
Andrew Keen writes critically about the transition from the Web 1.0 Web 2.0 environment in ' The Cult of the Amateur'. There are some analogies to the breakaway house church concept the traditional church structure whom everybody loves to hate. We somewhat romantically hope that in with the democratization of the church experience will come wisdom, knowledge and grace in a way that cannot be handed down ' from Rome' . In the same way that we hope that the continuous evolutionary change to a Wikpedia definition will bring truth to the top, we hope that the ruminations of the small house church groups will bring God's voice into their hearts and God's purpose for them into their actions.
Keen fears that the Web 2.0 model will lead to the loss of experts ( pastors, university professors,music teachers), books and newspapers (as unedited Blogs replace the edited journals) , theater and concerts as we publish our own often banal experiences on U-tube and lose community as we live on ' Second life' instead of meeting at Tim Hortons or Central Baptist.
There is a problem with the individual . Darwin's evolution is arbitrary, unfeeling and is not democratic. Life's flow for the small group is generally a cruel statistical fluke. It is the leaders, experts and social institutions that provide a platform for accumulated knowledge and a synthesis towards soe sort of collective wisdom.
And so I mourn the loss of yet another pastor. We lose yet another expert, replacing him with interesting , heartfelt but in the end local and a limited view.
Keep the leaders so that the small house church groups can come back once or twice a week to the larger church and toss their ideas
Chris Anderson in the Long Tail points out that the small niech sellers will never replace the major corporations but instead supplement them. Toyota and
the Unicycle not either /or.
After your friend's 40 days in the Wilderness perhaps he will see that his congregation did need leadership, his leadership.'Do not go gently into the night'. The darkness is seductive. 'Rage against the dying of the light' Now who said that?
Einstein: I think people occasionally tire of the sage on the stage -- at least the SAME stage on the stage week after week. The solution, however, is not to do away with sages, and certainly not to abandon sagaciousness. Thanks for making that clear. We need to be reminded of what you write.
Democracy is a strange beast. I'm speaking from my experience both as a Canadian and as a Baptist, where democracy is the governing rule. We've come to equate democracy with majority rule, but this is democracy in its basest form. Instead, democracy should be an environment that allows everyone to voice not just opinions, but LEARNED opinions. This is the missing element in our democratic societies and churches: learning, reflection, contemplation, etc. Democracy is what we make it, and we haven't made much of it recently.
So, I want more experts, not fewer. A Baptist church only succeeds as a democratic entity when all its members strive to follow Jesus, search the Scriptures, practice prayer, and care for the widows and orphans.
Within each church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers will emerge. They exist -- perhaps as experts of a special order -- to prepare the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4.11,12) ... to raise the bar, rather than give the rest of the church an excuse to dumb down.
Post a Comment