mDNA - Can you create communitas?
Continuing our look at mDNA - communitas not comminity and how it applies to Northern Community. The other posts in the mDNA series are here
Can you create communitas?
At a church with which I was formerly involved, an elders meeting was discussing how the church needed to be reinvigorated. One of the elders declared with great passion that ‘what we need is another building project’. I inwardly groaned but this elder was onto something. You see this elder, and indeed the church in its recent history was most passionate and vigorous when it had been working through some major renovations to its buildings. The church had experienced an expression of communitas around a common task, in this case a building project. During the project, leaders were focussed on making concrete decisions and many of the church members we involved in fund raising. There was a palpable sense of excitement about new opportunities and environments. The congregations even moved out of the church premises for the duration of the building project, so they also experienced a sense of dislocation. This sense of dislocation caused them to lose some members, but the majority that remained formed around the common task and goal and experienced communitas.
The challenge of course is not to create an endless run of building programs but to discover the communitas experience in missional activity. A church which has lost its purpose may seek to recapture that feeling through the creation of artificial common tasks. Imagine for a moment if the power, creativity and energy that was released for the building project was put into rediscovering the true purpose of the church – that of mission.
However, a church does not necessarily need a single joint communitas experience. Teams of people can be released in different directions to allow them to experience the power of communitas. In fact, even if the church does have one communitas experience such as that experienced at my former church with the building project, people often experience communitas within smaller common task teams. The smaller teams have the advantage of increasing the feeling of communitas because people see the effect of their own role more directly in the overall task. If a church has multiple teams of people, each working on a different goal or project, there is a sense that the communitas experience is heightened due to their identity of being unique and important
November 2nd, 2005 at 9:01 pm
In the book Disciple, Ortiz describes a time when the church he led (in Argentina) had “simulated persecution”. That meant they weren’t allowed to use the building, and had to meet only in homes. I don’t know whether there were any other facets to this persecution (it’s a while since I read it).
I don’t know whether that’s a good idea or not.
November 3rd, 2005 at 8:28 am
I can only repeat my questions from your previous entires…I don’t think we can experience communitas, real communitas, without life threatening persecution. I don’t think meeting in a hall for a few months really counts!
Having said that, and experiencing a fairly unique building project at present, I do agree that a common project can unify a group of people. A common task can bring people together of different ages and stages in life and this is refreshing - even fun! Thus, the excitement grows, enthusiasm is passed on and momentum is gained. But it is not a banding together and a dependence on each other for survival that I think characterises a group formed arounded the communitas experience.
Communitas around mission? Perhaps. But a large groups will have multiple groups involved in a diverse range of mission. The groups may bond, feel unique, but at the same time isolated from the rest of the gathering. “Nobody else cares!” is often the cry and their own mission becomes more important than anybody elses. Eventually the disillusionment and fracturing of the community sets in.
I’m being pretty negative, I realises that, but I think it reflects the reality. No use making this communitas thing something that it isn’t. I’m grateful for Hirsch putting it out there for discussion, but I don’t think the concept has any legs.
Can you create communitas? No.
Somebody else has to create it for you by threatening your life and the lives of those you love.
November 3rd, 2005 at 8:43 am
Hi Matt! Yes, I agree with you that communitas if defined by the socialogist (can’t think of the name at the moment) can only be arrived at through an encounter with a life-threatening situation.
I guess what I have been doing is not defining communitas as narrowly as that. But, that the same energy, creativity, team sense, vision etc etc can be released around mission by creating teams and moving people out of their comfort zones. For me this is what the life-threatening situation does - it moves people out of stable, comfortable, static positions into movement. It is the creation of missional movement that I am interested in.
I am thinking on the run here. I need to go back and re-check Al’s definition of communitas.
November 4th, 2005 at 8:56 am
The notion of communitas as applied to church is a nonsense. It was first used by Turner to describe initiation rites in tribal cultures. Communitas is that in-between stage, between childhood and maturity. It is an artificially induced transitional stage. But you don’t live there. You can’t. That’s its whole point. It’s a transition stage.
I think applying communitas to the emerging church will only serve to keep us in our juvenile adolesence. Isn’t it time the emerging church got beyond it’s adolesence and got on with the task of mature Christian discipleship and living.
I’m noting this on my blog if people want to “go at me.”
November 4th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
I don’t know Steve. A nonsense? That sounds very strong.
I think that the creativity, passion, drive, energy of communitas can also be applied to “mature Christian discipleship and living”.
I do think that you can’t sustain communitas for long periods. There are natural rythmns and seasons. The challenge for established churches is that often the so called mature Christian discipleship and living is seen as the same as a safe, rigid and frozen state. To create missional movement - a communitas experience can be had when things are initiated and it is in this way that communitas is created.
Someone said to me recently - that communitas may be at its best at the threat of death just as the early church and the church in China experienced it. But, what about when a Church or a group of people, or an individual put it all on the line. If the thing fails their physical life may not be threatened but can the same effect happen if all that they invest is threatening - which at times is their “life”.
I agree that Turner used it to describe a artifically induced rite of passage but is not the effect and experience of communitas experience wider than that? It is, I believe a helpful image for new missional activity but not a place that we want to live all the time.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
I agree with you to some extent Phil and admire your peacemaking ability. But then I trip over your last sentence “It is, I believe a helpful image for new missional activity but not a place that we want to live all the time.” But I want mission all the time, all through my lifestyle and discipleship. So perhaps that’s why my language is strong. I don’t want mission priviliged as only in communitas and in the new, only for the young, adolescent and pioneering. I want patterns and spiritalities that offer mission for all people, at all stages.
November 4th, 2005 at 1:02 pm
Yes I agree that we want mission all the time. Mission can continue to happen without that communitas feeling. Sounds like a drug
What I am trying to say that the communitas experience is an intense experience, a team building experience, an experience of momenteum that generally I think the Church desperately needs. I think that local Church and the Church as a whole should always be spinning off missional activities that prompt the communitas experience. This is not to say this is the only thing the Church does. Far from it. But rather to borrow from Alan Roxburgh three zone model - a way of releasing people into the green zone.
I am starting to think we are talking cross purposes here. Because I am certainly not saying that the communitas experience is only for those in new church planting environmens - I am saying the opposite.
November 8th, 2005 at 10:58 am
I personally don’t give a steamy turd of concern over whether we use the term communitas or not.
What I do believe is that whenever we step out of the comfort of consumer Christianity and start living the gospel in a sacrifical way, start reaching out to those that are truly hurting we will need both God and His church in much greater ways. When we see our needs met by each other, and are in the midst of challenging circumstances we grow in unity with each other.
Now I have literally risked my life with others when bullfighting, and later in a less extravagent way with a friend while working as a repossesor. I do think these intense circumstances make us cling to each other in ways that are unique. But I have experienced just as deep of a connection with those that I have ministered with. When one of the church members cycled into acute paranoid schizofrenia and we all had to deal with it, when a close friend of the church got pregnant and decided to abort the baby, when David Koresh’s son started hanging around with us, when we had to rally around our drunk homeless punk rock mission and served barbeques every week. Now this intensity of community does not last forever. But as we are faithful to do mission, we will find it repeated often.
Saying I want to live as a missionary every minute of every day is one thing. But to link communitas and its inability to live there with our call to do mission is not correct. I am committed to my wife. We experience the most intense intimace during times of trial, and times of sexual interaction, yet we cannot live in either of those places all the time. Yet our commitment to each other never stops, it is the intensity of “feeling” that is not consistant, yet our lives and love are consitant.
the rev
November 8th, 2005 at 5:53 pm
Maybe the communitas thing is an effect rather than a cause of the church being on mission.
That doesn’t take away the question of how to get people excited about the mission.
Maybe Al might have more to say about this.
November 8th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
I have found that when mission is happening people either get excited or they leave. So get doing mission, recklessly, aggressively, dangerously and people will join you and you will experience deeper community or you will be very lonely.
the rev