Held in Common

Alone, Suburban and Sorted

Richard Beck has a most interesting series of posts on suburban living here. Granted, it’s written from a North American perspective, but he’s very incisive and creative in his thinking. Here’s a taster, but all the posts are worth reading…

Specifically, I want to highlight one major facet of contemporary life in America: We rarely encounter difference in any meaningful way. For two reasons noted thus far. First, we are alone. Our civic disengagement, particularly our lack of bridging connections, gives us fewer opportunities to encounter people who are different from us. Second, we are sorted. The migration patterns of Americans over the last 30 years have sorted us into communities of like-mindedness. Thus, even if I do mix with people in my community they are likely to be people very much like myself. People who share my voting preferences, my religious beliefs, and my skin color. Again, we fail to encounter difference in these homogeneous communities.

My concern with these trends is that we rarely get to practice the skills of welcome, debate, listening, inclusion and hospitality. We begin to find difference shocking, deviant, weird and effortful to live with. Worse, as the research on group polarization showed us, separated from difference we grow more extreme in our views, demonizing difference rather than listening and learning to make room for strangers.

Isn’t church (ideally, at least) just the antidote to this kind of fragmentation? There we may (if we are fortunate, and if the church hosts this possibility): connection, welcome, debate, listening, inclusion, hospitality and difference. And, as Beck suggests, these values promote the very opposite of extremism.

Church Alive Launch

We had a brilliant launch to Church Alive today. Lively music, good presentations by Seb and Alan. An excellent meal in church with regulars and new people alike.

I feel really positive and heartened. We are asking for an increase of 22% in planned giving, and for more resourcing in terms of people, energies and time. And during a recession! But I have every reason to believe that Christ Church people will step up to the mark.

If by any chance you missed today, here are the documents we’re sending out to people…

Download Cover letter

Download Church Alive brochure

Download Financial pledge form

Watch out for the downdraught!

Thanks to Jan C for this insight…!

“Why is church a bit like a helicopter?

Because, if you get too close, you’ll get hit by the rotas!!”

Who reads this?

I’ve had some people ask recently about whether the Christ Church web site gets used much, and about how much this blog gets read.

So…

First, the blog. Here is a graph…

The top graph represents the number of page views (one-page visits to the blog - red) and site visits (multi-page visits to the blog - yellow) per month, from March 08 to March 09. A big surge in February this year, as we started blogging again. (March 09 is looks down because we are only 4 days into this month!)

We have had people read the blog site from the Philippines, Canada, the US, Alaska, and (on 27 February this year) from New Zealand.

Second, the web site. It’s now getting updated much more frequently. It gets lots of use for hall bookings. I don’t have much in the way of statistics; but it is clear that about 45% of visits to this blog site are from the Christ Church web site, so the web site is being used.

If you are a Christ Church person reading this, you could always contribute a blog post, or a piece for the web site, if you would like to try your hand!

What price community? (2)

This follows from my last post on this subject…

From Beck’s second post on this theme:

Many theologians consider bourgeoisie existence to be a kind of spiritual failure. Its focus on personal discipline (e.g., piety, prudence, thrift, sobriety) and its role as the engine of market economies makes bourgeoisie existence a pale vision of what Christianity should be or aspire to. Thus, there are frequent theological calls to reclaim or rediscover an identity, ethic, or mode of living that pulls us out of bourgeoisie existence. Christian living is to be more than personal piety and self-control. The Kingdom of God should not be squeezed into the bourgeoisie work week. A Higher Time, a Liturgical Time, should rule our lives rather than punching the bourgeoisie timeclock.

But for over 200 years, from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to this very day, these theological appeals … have had little effect…

Why is bourgeoisie existence so resistant to change?…

The bourgeoisie have been then most effective psychological and sociological innovation the world has ever seen in creating both social peace and freedom from debilitating poverty. Consequently, any alternative mode of existence or identity will have to be equally if not more effective in creating peace and prosperity…

What price community? (1)

[This is going to be a bit of a demanding read for some…]

There’s a very provocative set of posts, called Bourgeoisie and the Frustrations of Theology, over at Richard Beck's Experimental Theology. Here’s a taster, taken from the first of three posts so far…

Behind just about every theological call for community… or Trinity or anti-Empire ethics sits the problem of the bourgeoisie. In these posts I'd like to explain how the bourgeoisie are the rock theology is banging its head against…

Behind every call for church to be "community" or a reclaiming of the "Trinity" or for an ontology of "being as communion" sits a background assumption. Community, Trinity, and "being as communion" are preached over against a prevailing norm. And that norm is the Western notion of identity and personhood.

As most are aware, the Western notion of personhood stresses autonomy, individualism, and interiority. This view of the self is relatively new and many theologians have noted its pernicious impact upon both theology and the life of the church. The recommendation is to reclaim a more ancient and more healthy notion of self, where people are not isolated individuals but persons who gain identity through communion with others. For example, God's very being is defined communally. Thus, the Western notion of selfhood flies in the face of the very fabric of existence.

The point is, almost every pernicious spiritual practice we see today has its root in a notion of selfhood that prioritizes individualism over [relatedness], autonomy over interdependence, and interiority over community. So the question is: If this Western notion of identity is so bad where did it come from? And why is the Western identity so hard to exchange if such better options are available?…

...[Plato and (especially) Augustine of Hippo are the historical causes, he argues]...

...The question theology must ask is: Can the bourgeois ethic be replaced with anything of comparable effectiveness?

Christian and Marxist revolutions are often being preached at the bourgeoisie. But it is very unclear what the bourgeoisie are to do on Monday morning if they are to pay the rent. So they get up and go back to work. And that is the root dilemma of modern theology. People go back to work. If you want to change this, to offer a true alternative, you need to carve out a new mode of living, one not contingent upon participating in a bourgeois career. Few people lambasting the bourgeois identity actually make an offer of this kind. A few cults do.

So in the vacuum of this offer people head to work on Monday morning. And if they go back to work, church life is going to have to fit in around the edges of bourgeoisie existence. Church life or missional living is always going to be fighting over the scraps of what is left over from the bourgeois work week....

This coheres well with what I understand of current church practice and teaching, at least in my own setting. Richard Beck’s argument is that it is not good enough to speak about community and 'joined up' living, while people are still choosing, or needing, to live out an inherited individualist, technologically networked,  lifestyle, right down to the roots of their very daily earning practices.

Plenty to think about here. More, perhaps, on this in due course…

The biggest challenge...?

I found this today on godblog.co.uk...

What is the biggest challenge facing your church today?

General lack of commitment from parishioners...

[Lack of] focus on young people particularly teenagers...

Poor quality services...

Clergy/church leaders/elders out of touch with "real life" for most people...

No enough money to deliver plans...

Too much focus on managing the material not enough on spiritual...

I'm too busy firefighting to think about this question...

So what would your answers be??

Authentic church community living

Here is an interview with the Vicar of Christ Church which will appear soon in the Church magazine:-

1. Andrew, in your sermon on the 25th January you used the word community repeatedly, how would you define the Christ Church community?

I think I contrasted Christ Church as a community with the idea of a club. You join a club to pursue a common interest. Out of it might come some socialising and friendship, but the main aim is to collect stamps or share photographs or whatever. A community is different - more like a family, really. You don't really choose who's a member of your family. It's a given. Same with church. The idea is that it's good to rub along with all sorts of people, and not just the people we would generally tend to gravitate towards. Yes, we do have something huge in common - the worship of God. And that 'common ground' is a God who shares himself with us, us who are very unlike him in many ways. So, if God chooses to call us to community with him, we can expect also to be called - as an outworking of God's call - to express and develop community with each other. And that community is what we call Church - and, in this case, Christ Church.

2. Your sermon sounded like a call to arms, are you concerned about the commitment of our community? Why?

I am concerned that community is under threat in our society generally. People tend to connect by association and by network nowadays, often through technological media - mobile phone, Internet, car travel. There's nothing wrong with that, and I do it myself. But there's a real danger, I believe, that it will begin to replace community. And that community is precious, for the reasons I've already said. As I often say, where else but Church can you come along and hope to be accepted for yourself, whoever you are, rather than for what you can do or offer?

We in Christ Church are not immune, either, from the effects of this abrasion of community in our society at large, and I think we need to stand up on this one and be counted. In simple ways: sharing time, energy, compassion with each other, really - as we already do. But we need to remember to do it!

3. How has our community changed over the years you have been with us?

There is huge energy and commitment at Christ Church. I am constantly amazed at how invested, in all sorts of practical ways, so many people are in this Church community. But I have noticed two things.

One, people are finding it harder to commit time and energy on a regular, medium- or long-term basis to getting things done in and around Church. it's understandable. And I don't want to be banging on the whole time about getting this or that job done. But some things have to get done in order for the Church to function, and it's not always easy to find people to undertake these important tasks.

Two, I am not sure that newer people in church always quite see the call to sacrificial involvement. There's nothing wrong with sitting on the sidelines if that's where you really need to be. But there does come a time when the challenge to get stuck in will arise. I wish and pray that more of our newer people would spot this challenge and respond to it.

5. As a member of Christ Church how can I judge how much effort is enough?

Image via Wikipedia

I think that has to be between you and God. I will always put people, not jobs, first. I don't want anyone to be

totally sweating it when it comes to doing something in and around Christ Church. That only breeds guilt and resentment and reluctance. On the other hand, I do want to see people being willing to put themselves out more than a bit for the God they worship and the Church they are part of. It's Dietrich Bonhoeffer again: God's grace comes to us absolutely free of charge, but it's not cheap. In other words, we can't take God's loving call for granted, and, for it truly to work in our lives, we do need to respond to it - with all of our energy.

6. Do you see any fit between these concerns and the visionary work that Seb is leading?

Absolutely! In Church Alive we have this huge opportunity to respond, with our lives, to God's call to ministry and mission. We have taken great care to frame this group of projects round Vision. This is not just a plea for money - though the resourcing aspect is vital. It is a call to authentic Christian service, out of love for God and for the sake of others. Seb is doing such a great job of this. I really hope and pray that people will pick up the energy of Church Alive and will allow themselves to be changed from the inside by it. As I said recently in another sermon around the theme of commitment: it's not, at root, about filling this job or that. It's about responding to God's call to be a channel of his love for the world. It's about saying a big scary dangerous risky "Yes" to God, wherever that leads us.

Christ Church Barn Dance 08

Go on! Have a look at our recent church Barn Dance photos on Flickr.

We stripped the chairs out of the church and had a good time of it! Click each photo in turn and you'll see them at optimum size!

Sing to the Lord...

Tricia Coleman and Tim Drummond gave this talk as part of "Everyday Church" at a recent service at Christ Church...

At choir practice, Esther [our Director of Music] helps us to make the most of our voices with vocal exercises and practice, and the younger members use the Royal School of Church Music Voice for Life workbooks to work on their musical knowledge. Recently, we all looked at the sessions designed to enable singers to develop their understanding of their choir’s role, its background and the motivation of its members; and to encourage singers to reflect upon their own experience as members of a choir...