mDna - Communitas and organic systems concluding thoughts
Continuing our look at mDNA - communitas not comminity and how it applies to Northern Community. The other posts in the mDNA series are here
Concluding thoughts
Alan Hirsch uses a provocative question to illustrate the state of the western Church: ‘Is a can opener a can opener if it can’t open a can anymore?’ It is question that we need to take very seriously. Have we as the church lost our call, our vocation and purpose? For too long we have attempted to correct the ills of the Church with quick packaged fixes. This will not solve our current predicament in the long term. While we need to be careful that we don’t look back on the early church with rose coloured glasses and idealise the experiences, there is much that we can learn from the pre-Constantine environment. We can learn what it is like to adapt to our environment where church and state are less intertwined.
There is no simple fix but rather like a gardener we need to tend the garden of the church with organic principles that will bear fruit over the long term. This will not be easy. Hirsch’s picture of a church that has communitas formed around the common task of mission is a compelling one. This will not look the same in every context. There are many organisational structures that can support such a focus on mission. Some churches will worship alongside the mission, some will incarnate themselves into certain cultural subgroups, others will allow the church to express multiple and diverse missional contexts. All are valid and all are needed for the adapative missional challenges that we face as a Western church at the dawn of this new century. May God be with us as we dream, as we incarnate and work in communitas.
Hirsch argues that the two elements of the mDNA model that we have explored (organic systems and communitas not community) are present in the experiences of the early church and the church under persecution in China. The principles of these two elements are important if we are to meet the challenge of our new environment as the people of God. Our experiences will not be the same as the early church or even the church in China, yet we need to learn from such lessons from our history.
Both of the elements (organic systems and communitas not community) have been present in the journey of Northern. The element of organic systems remind us that we must be careful not to freeze our new missional initiatives in time but to see the mission imperative as the goal and not a certain structure, style or model. In addition, the communitas not community also challenges us. We have experienced the energy that comes from communitas as a whole church seeking to merge and also as teams within our Church in our congregations and missional teams. It is actually the separation of congregations and the missional teams that our challenge lies and this continues to be a work in progress. The mDNA elements continue to be helpful in assessing our journey so far.