Church in a postmodern society - Richard Tiplady

Church in a postmodern societyRichard TipladyIntroductionWhat is the purpose of church meetings? Why do we gather together? To singhymns and songs of worship? To hear the word of God preached? To meet infellowship with other Christians? At the church which I attended after first becoming aChristian, the minister had a favourite saying; “What does the story of doubtingThomas tell us? Never miss a meeting, you don’t know what might happen!”Evangelical Christians are fond of their statements of faith, yet we frequently work toa far more visible method of calculating orthodoxy, that is, consistent and frequentattendance at church on Sundays, and midweek as well if possible. Catholicprofessor and Dominican Edward Cleary comments on this; “Latin AmericanPentecostalism shares characteristics of religion in the United States. Specifically, itplaces exceptional emphasis on congregational participation and worship attendanceas a measure of religious involvement” (IBMR 28/2, Apr 2004, p51)But have we ever in fact stopped to consider why evangelicalism functions in thisway?“I have sometimes felt that the real purpose of church services is to enableclergy to count the congregation. This is probably a little cynical, but churchesoften find their main sense of success in the number of people who attend ona Sunday. Regular church attendance is seen as being a significant test ofspiritual health, and church growth is measured in the size of congregations.The importance of Sunday attendance and congregational size can never beunderestimated for solid church” (Pete Ward, Liquid Church).Mission strategy in recent decades has focussed on the importance of churchplantingrather than just doing evangelism, that is, combining Christians in newcommunities for worship, teaching, fellowship and mission.“Problems arise when younger missionaries are expected to plant churchesaccording to a model that they themselves find boring and irrelevant. It is notuncommon to find young missionaries whose only motive for attending churchis a latent sense of Christian duty, and who come away each week wonderingwhy they bothered to go. Such a situation cause problems at three levels : thepersonal spirituality of the younger missionary who faith is weakened, notstrengthened, by church attendance; the ineffectiveness of the missionary asevangelist and church-planter (after all, why draw people into a church whereyou rarely meet God?); and tension and division in the missionary team itself”(Peter Stephenson, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, in Postmission).Church attendance in Europe is in freefall. Year by year, across Europe,congregations are shrinking or closing. Most of those congregations that seem to beholding their own, and the few that are growing, tend to do so because of transfergrowth, that is, new members from other churches.And yet across Europe we find a massive interest in spirituality. In a continent that isgenerally prosperous, and where even its poor can generally not be said to bestarving, there is a desire for something beyond material possessions. People aresearching for meaning, for transcendence (something beyond themselves), for- 1 -

identity. But they are generally not looking at churches for this. It is not uncommon tohear people say of themselves that they are “spiritual but not religious”, with thechurch being included in the latter category. All too often, we have createdcommunities where spiritual experience is tied to meetings and membership, as wellas participation in a whole host of other institutional activities. The spiritual seekerlooks at the social price tag, and looks elsewhere.Community and church in pre-modern, modern and post-modern societiesIn pre-modern societies, communities were based around land and a sense of place.The parish system served well across Europe as a way for the church to reach allthose, rich and poor alike, who owned, lived or worked on the land in a given place.The modern era was characterised by a significant change, which affected the waythat churches were organised. Emigration, urbanisation and industrialization meantthat the land and the parish became less important. Community was reconstituted inthe expanding industrial cities on the basis of shared culture and shared experience.Class, not place, became the most important signifier of identity. Churches emergedwith an emphasis on congregation and club, where people gathered to worship withthose who were like them, rather than those who lived in the same village. Workingclassand middle-class denominations arose.The postmodern era changes our ideas of identity and community again. Identity isnot based on a common sense of place, since we are all more able to be highlymobile now. Nor is it based on common experience or social class. In his book,“Bowling Alone”, Harvard professor Robert Putnam argues that America’s ‘socialcapital’, a term which refers to “features of social organization such as networks,norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit”,is being reduced. He quotes a staggering array of statistics showing that across alltypes of social association, such as religious affiliation (church attendance), unionmembership, participation in parent-teacher associations and the number ofvolunteers for civic organizations such as the Boy Scouts and the Red Cross,involvement has declined in the last fifty years. The title of his article came from hisdiscovery that, while more Americans go tenpin bowling than ever, participation inorganized bowling leagues fell 40 per cent between 1980 and 1993. This is not atrend that affects America alone. Putnam shows that a decline in the level of socialengagement is also evident in Europe. People are meeting together less frequently inorganised groups.The very concept of personal identity is more fluid and changeable in a postmoderncontext. Our identities are more complex, more changeable and less certain. Thepostmodern world creates new forms of fragmentation and dispersal. In modernity,human identities were kept securely in place by clearly-defined class and genderroles. Now we have the freedom to choose our identity, to change it, to succeed orfail alone. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman comments:“What emerges from our fading social norms is naked, frightened, aggressiveego in search of love and help. In the search for itself and an affectionatesociality, it easily gets lost in the jungle of the self. Someone who is pokingaround in the fog of his or her own self is no longer capable of noticing thatthis isolation, this solitary confinement of the ego is a “mass sentence” towhich we have each been individually condemned”.- 2 -

In such a context, many churches base their outreach strategies on the offering ofcommunity and identity to those adrift in an uncaring world. These strategies usuallytake one of the following three forms:1. church as heritage siteIn the premodern era, the worship of the church was part of a commonlyownedculture. In the modern era, the church was closely related to theaspirations and experiences of different social and ethnic groups (or ‘peoplegroups’, as we now call them). As living expressions of a past era, church hasfor some taken on a historical character. This is not a turn-off for some – theweekly visit to church becomes attractive precisely because of its historicalflavour. The church is valuable because it preserves the traditions of the pastand makes them accessible to new generation. Its music, architecture andliterature are prized for being artistically significant. In effect, the churchbecomes part of the heritage industry, and the emphasis lies in preserving forfuture generations that with which we have been entrusted.2. church as refugeThe fluid, ever-changing environment of postmodernity offers little support orchelter in the face of overwhelming change and almost unlimited choice. Inthese circumstances, people look for safe and welcoming places where theycan find a sense of togetherness and safety. When a wider sense ofcommunity has all but eroded, churches develop into places of refuge wherewe can retreat for a while. In home groups, Sunday school, youth ministriesand social activities we can meet people who share our values.The bigger the shelter, the more comfortable it becomes, and more people itcan accommodate. Some churches have turned from being a refuge intobeing a resort; no longer a place for emergency help, it becomes an attractiveplace for a vacation, or even to live in all year round. And so people retreatfrom the wider world and have no appreciable impact upon it whatsoever.3. church as a nostalgic communityThis form of church appeals to an imagined past, where the sun was alwaysshining, birds sang in the trees, and society was a cohesive and supportiveplace where everyone knew everyone else. We tell ourselves that young andold no longer meet together in our society except in our churches, but suchchurches are more about wishful thinking than reality. Most churches tend tobe fairly monochrome, with different ethnic groups and different social classesmeeting in different buildings or at different times. This form of church seeksto recreate a fantasy world that never really existed in reality.The problem for each of these three models is that while they have responded tosome small degree to the postmodern society around us, they do not take itseriously, nor do they consider how they can express the gospel fully within thatculture. They are throwbacks to an earlier age, and look like ill-fitting imports fromanother place. They degrade the full implications of the gospel, which is that everyculture, including postmodernity, can be inhabited and transformed by Jesus Christ,and they confuse the practice holding on to past structures and practices withfaithfulness to the living God. The possibility of engaging effectively in mission withour surrounding culture is reduced, because by becoming a heritage site, a refuge, ora nostalgic community, they have become (and are perceived) to be separated fromordinary life.- 3 -

The network churchSo what might a church that looks at home in a postmodern society look like? Afterall, the church has always organised itself according to prevailing social models. Inthe earliest days of Christianity, the Roman household provided a useful model, latersupplemented by the collegia and burial clubs(!). Presbyterianism looks a lot like thecity council of Calvin’s Geneva, and congregationalism reflects the emergingdemocratic ideals of post-Reformation Europe.So what social models are available to us at this time?The network structure has underpinned a number of recently successfulorganizations. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which along with itsco-ordinator Jody Williams was awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, and theJubilee 2000 Coalition, which persuaded several governments to write off debtsowed by Third World countries, are two such examples. Al-Qaeda is another. Allthree of these organizations have benefited from a network structure that allowspassionate and committed individuals and groups to contribute to a wider purpose(whether for good or ill) with a minimum of co-ordination and administration. Widelyseen as an effective antidote to bureaucracy (the corporate equivalent of arthritis),the network has arrived as the organizational structure for a globalizing postmodernworld.There are a number of reasons for this:1. networks are good at handling diversityThe first great strength of networks is that they can cope with variety andcomplexity. Instead of requiring standard operating principles across an entireorganization for the sake of consistency, networks are by nature diverse. In apostmodern context that is suspicious of all attempts to define a norm, this isboth welcome and appropriate.2. networks are about connectionsBecause there is less need to focus attention on making sure that eachmember or ‘node’ of the network fits into a coherent predetermined pattern,more time and energy can be spent on the links between these nodes. Whatmatters are the connections; what is connected is much less critical. The keyto an effective network is the communication between its various parts.Interaction between groups that are different from each other is a prerequisitefor the kind of knowledge creation that is required to thrive in an everchangingand complex environment.3. networks are adaptableNetworks have another advantage in a world of unpredictable change – theyare flexible and adaptable. Taken as a whole, and especially if it contains awide variety of different types of member, a network can adapt to almost anysort of change. It can be likened to a flotilla rather than a supertanker. If it isheading towards rocks in a storm, the supertanker is too cumbersome to turnand avoid the oncoming disaster. Some of the flotilla might also be lost in thesame situation, but most will survive.If congregational life has been the key to church in the modern era, then networkflows are the key to church life in a postmodern era.So what might a network church look like?- 4 -

1. Communication, not congregationIf congregation was the normative model for the church in a modern era, thencommunication will be the dominant theme for a postmodern network church.Individuals and small groups might connect in a variety of ways and locations,through a retreat centre, a sports team, a (Bible) reading group, a music group, aChristian radio station, etc. All these connections would involve sharing in life inChrist in some way, and membership would not be measured in terms ofattendance at worship, but in terms of participation in the network, which wouldinclude both Christians and non-Christians.2. New forms of communityIn postmodernity, community is in a state of continual change. The growth infragmentation and individualism leads some to conclude that community is dead.But I think that this is wrong. It is not dead – it is just different. People still want tobe with each other, to find significance in relationships, and to make a differencein other people’s lives. But in our postmodern context this is not expressed somuch in organise meetings; it is expressed through constant communication. Cellphones, email, instant messaging, photo and video messaging – millions ofEuropean young people have developed new forms of connectivity. It iscommunity based on communication rather than meeting. But it is more than avirtual community, since these young people also meet face-to-face regularly.The network church needs to take this form of communication seriously.3. Leadership by exampleModern churches ordain those who are safe and steady, and who will lead fromthe front (of the meeting). Postmodern church will not be able to rely on meeting,on visibility of attendance, and on authority. People are free to shop, and willgravitate towards those who they perceive as enlightened, who have somethingspecial that is worth hearing or learning from – these people will be the realleaders, regardless of their position. Leadership will be by influence rather thancontrol. Those who are perceived to have met with God, and who have beenchanged by him, will be the guides, the teachers who lead into holy andpassionate living for Jesus Christ. Already we see congregational leaders beingsupplanted in influence by spiritual directors, those who will guide into aspirituality that goes beyond the safe confines of the congregation.Creating postmodern network churches in 21 st century EuropeIn this paper I have set out a vision for the future of the church in Europe – a networkchurch, not a congregation, based on the reality of contemporary postmoderncommunity, not the nostalgic communities of refuge that many of our churches havebecome.So I leave you with a question, which I hope also doubles as a vision; can existingmission organisation and churches make their expertise available to a newgeneration of Christians, helping them to communicate the true spiritual life in Christwith their peers, to build new forms of Christian community based on communicationrather than congregation, and to allow a new generation of charismatic leaders toemerge who will have the kind of impact on postmodern young people that we canonly dream about?© Richard Tiplady 2004http://www.tiplady.org.uk- 5 -