When Gemeinschaft no longer blesses Gesellschaft
- Nick Davis
- Jun 9, 2010
Dear friends, Nick Davis recently wrote this essay and I'd love for you to read it.
If you are in 3ci, you will know we have a passion to become a people that take light into the darkness, ever-increasingly; Actual disciples in the real world. Active in a natural, unsystematized evangelism. Real Christians for a real world. True lovers.
Our desire is to be missional and effective in reaching others with the love of God, more than building a happening church, taking on the form of a modern-day monastery, that takes people out of their real world once they get "saved".
This means we are more interested in equipping people for their "third places" than becoming everyone's "third place" as a church. (The third place refers to that place people go to live and enjoy, after first and second places, home and workspace)
That is why I want you to take the time to read Nick's essay.
Love you.
Heinz
Download Article "When Gemeinschaft no longer blesses Gesellschaft" as a PDF here.
When Community no longer Blesses Society: a Look at Pervasive Christian Subculture
““Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.”
Matthew 14:28-29
“I do not want to spend my remaining years in ministry keeping middle class people a little less nervous of death, of crime and of recession”.
D Salochi
Introduction
The church was always meant to be a city on a hill. Something raised up, visible, bold, God-ward and God-proud. She was called to proclaim truth in words of faith and deeds of love. She was ordained to suffer for righteousness. She is “ekklesia” – called out of the world, yet still very much in it. She was meant to walk many extra miles for her enemies, give away millions of cloaks and forgive billions of times over.
This would make Her emissaries of the Creator-King, wooing and calling and inviting many to the wedding supper of the lamb. She would be a fragrant garden of God; a healthy vineyard with beautiful tenants, shining out as a kind of firstfruits of Redemption. She would make her crucified king proud, her infants strong, her sinner-spectators hopeful and the religious furious.
What she was NEVER meant to be was an isolated subculture – a life-system of church-ward prosperity independent of the tide of history and the suffering of humanity. She was called by her Epitome to be an Identification with sinners, not an isolation from them (save for sanitized altar calls and “outreaches”).
What is subculture?
I do not pretend to be a sociologist, but I am sociable enough to know that it has been defined negatively since the 1950s. I have heard some use it as though it were a positive term: “at least we are not part of the prevailing culture”. Of course, Christians are called to be different – if we are the same as the non-Christians, with the same fears and goals, why on earth would any sinner approach the church for salvation, except for clever church marketing?
But subculture implies something different – something aloof and isolated and uncaring of the wider society, her needs and cries and agonies. Subculture happily churns out conferences and cell groups, services and sing-alongs without too much concern for black-eyed wives or the beaded brows of sweat-shop labourers.
I have been caught in a subcultural tendencies and tendrils for too long. “Breaking out” does not mean leaving a church that you have judged to be introverted or small-minded. It means repenting of selfishness and reversing the paralyzing effects of group think and self-congratulatory bubble-itis.
The experts’ views and my comment
Subculture has been studied in-depth in recent decades, such is its pervasiveness and power in the modern fragmented world. With the god of autonomous self in command, life is crushingly lonely for the majority (citing the decline of real community, the isolating power of virtual relationships through technology and the growing focus on work, the UK-based Loneliness Society states, “Nearly 60% of those aged between 18 to 34 questioned spoke of feeling lonely often or sometimes, compared to 35% of those aged over 55”).
Subculture becomes all the more powerful an attraction, as each one of us has an immeasurably deep need for belonging.
Writing on “subcultural capital” in 1995, Sarah Thornton described it as the “cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from members of other groups”. So this differentiation adds also a misguided but real sense of importance. Now a Christian can add “charismatic”, “deacon” or “evangelist” to his otherwise nondescript name. If he has enough skills, he could even become part of the upper echalon of the kultur.
In early studies Milton Gordon defined sub-culture as “closed and relatively cohesive systems of social organization”, not traced to a single demography but to “a world within a world”. He also adds significantly that subculture, once fully formed, “parallels the larger society in that it provides for a network of groups and institutions extending throughout the individual’s entire life cycle”.
I wonder whether we read this and immediately think of gangs, musicians or green movements. Could it be possible that church herself could fall into subcultural irrelevance? The answer is evident in the commonly-held opinion of the modern Englishman that church is outdated, outmoded and irrelevant to the needs of the modern world person. It is even more evident by the continuous slide of the world into chaos, unaffected by the millions of chorus-singing saints and billions in offerings swept up weekly.
John Irwin, American academic, expands subculture by commenting that “rather than the subset of behavior patterns of a segment, or the patterns of a small group, subculture is often thought of as a social world, a shared perspective, which is not attached firmly to any definite group or segment”. In other words, subculture can become a movement. Once the pillars and foundations of acceptance and recognition have been defined by the cool group, more and more people try to attain these accolades, without even knowing the original band members. In the church, when we preach and present anything less than the gospel of Jesus Christ, Kingdom culture will disappear and subculture will begin to root in. This is my assertion. Challenge it.
The Australian Professor Ken Gelder comments that subcultures are “social, with their own shared conventions, values and rituals, but they can also seem "immersed" or self-absorbed; a feature that distinguishes them from countercultures”. Gelder then identifies six key ways in which subcultures can be understood (my comments are non-italicized):
- “Through their often negative relations to work (as 'idle', 'parasitic', at play or at leisure, etc.).” In the church, often “work” is seen as lesser to “worship”. This then is symptomatic of ingrained subculture.
- “Through their negative or ambivalent relation to class”. Which means that class issues – racism, extortion and abuse of the underclass – are passé.
- “Through their association with territory rather than property”. The diocesian turf war. One missionary claims a village or an apostle even claims a country. A property requires stewardship, maintenance and sweat equity. Territorialism is the stuff of the feudal lords – let the peasants sweat while the lords reign. “Already you have become kings, and that without us” (1 Cor 4:8).
- “Through their movement out of the home and into non-domestic forms of belonging (i.e. social groups other than the family)”. The family is rendered less important than the church – a spiritual allegorism at best, an anathema at worst.
- “Through their stylistic ties to excess and exaggeration”. Because a subculture has no traction with the real world, and thus virtually nil effect on her, significance and success must be defined intra mures. This lends itself to spectacular possibilities of hyperbole and stunning claims to great achievement, empirically packaged and unverifiable without cat-calls and claims of “lack of faith”.
- “Through their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and massification (i.e. being swept up with “the masses”)”. Having either found or come close to parochial Rulership; having begun to enjoy belonging and success in the group; having entered a world that espouses lounging above laboring – the thought of being viewed as just a singular human being in a sea of humanity is un-contemplatable. Someone coined the phrase, “a nameless, faceless generation”, but somehow even that can become hip and sloganized into the Tribe. It was in essence insincere. We lionize our dead heroes, somehow elevating them supra societas. We forget that the apostle Paul was himself so unknown that a few men had to point his scarred face out in Jerusalem. Many men we consider heroes suffered horribly, worked excruciatingly, lived sparingly, poured out their lives sacrificially. In his book, The Defendant, GK Chesterton argues for vow and sacrifice by writing thus: “In politics the modern Jingoes practically say, 'Let us have the pleasures of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.' Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: 'Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint;…Thus in love the free-lovers say: 'Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves”
Church without Kingdom?
When we consider these six points of Gelder, we need an honesty deeper than most of us sub-culturalites naturally know. This is not only the stuff of gangs and ghettos. Where human nature has triumphed over the Divine will, these are also the self-same things that have created church subculture, and impeded the advancing of the Kingdom of God in the world, not alongside it. The Kingdom never comes alongside anything - it comes! It rises. It bursts forth, like the glorious day. It advances like the sun. It starts as a seed, but rises tall amongst all the other plants. It is wheat amongst the weeds; lilies amongst the thorns; sheep amongst wolves. It leads us boldly into worldly troubles, but promises us peace in the midst of them. It does not remove us from trials and temptations, but gives us grace and strength to overcome them. It does not immunize us from the cycles and humdrums, but provides a compelling, pearly meta-narrative that lives and beats and beckons us onwards and upwards. It comes without religious observation, yet brings real joy to sinners who seek God. It loves enemies and friends alike; it is good to all without finding fault; it is patient and kind; ethical and enduring; dramatically interested in the detail. It is real salt across the whole plate of food and real yeast amongst the whole batch of dough.
And as this Kingdom comes on earth, so the true church is formed and grows, herself involving and intervening with the same love and liveliness as her King. David Bosch said it best when he described the true church, a product of the kingdom, as “God’s experimental garden on earth, a fragment of the reign of God, having ‘the firstfruits of the Spirit’ as a pledge of what is to come”.
Misguided Assessment?
It is true that a sense of persecution, real or imagined, creates a climate for subcultural formation in the church. Add to this a noble cause, and the die is cast. But whereas youth subcultures like those explored by Phil Cohen in Chicago are seen as transitory (youth do not remain youthful), I propose that church subcultures can remain entrenched for decades, and even centuries. We randomly throw out expressions like “frozen chosen” or “dead denominations”, perchance leveraging our own sense of defrostedness from our subcultural hearths, rather than the brazen altar of heaven. Or do we possibly consider ourselves “alive” because of the applause of our diminutive group or the wild claims of “impact” and “advance” from field afar? This could be the exact antithesis of Mark Twain’s comment a century ago, on seeing his own obituary in the newspaper, that, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. Are “reports of my life greatly exaggerated”?
All over England – and the world – there are alienated and embattled pastors, subcultural thrust-outs, who now feel unprepared and impotent in their inner man. God will be their very present help in this trouble. There are also those few uber-charismatic men, charming and gifted enough to draw a big crowd and boldly label it “Success”. And then there are the true heroes, most of whom I have not met because they actually do not need the self-actualization that stems from groupishness. They have discovered the secret of Guinness’s “Audience of One” and Foster’s Solitude, which he expands as “the inward unity that frees us from the panicked need for acclaim and approval. Through it we are enabled to be genuinely alone, for the fear of obscurity is gone; and we are enabled to be genuinely with others, for they no longer control us”
Closing comment
Why did I write this article? I woke up with the desire to explore the possibility of subcultural empowerment actually disempowering the priesthood of all believers. A false hope and false harbour. I believe this is true. This is happening now. I believe it is not reserved to the masses in denominations. Recently I met with a Baptist church who are so radically involved in their community, and thus so loved by the city. I know of few charismatic churches with this testimony.
Moreover, the world is shaking and dying. So many people are “without hope and without God in this world”. Dare we be diffident in this hour? Dare we ‘hoard wealth’ in the last days, in our little subcultural enclaves? Maybe the middle-class, westernized charismatic is in the greatest peril of all. He or she is already subculturalized and immunized from mainstream suffering of the billions, before conversion. It is a short and happy hop into hand-clapping halls, all for the price of “my tithe” (money is needed to keep a formalized subculture going)…
Forgive me if I have sounded cynical. God’s sword is buried in my own heart. I cannot escape, nor do I want to. I thought I was brave in leaping into dark England. But that was the easy part. God has laid me bare and then sliced open my ribcage. For me and my honest friends we have seen indifference, self-awareness and hollow-chestedness that we hate. Hate. Is this the final product of a subculture, when the veil is torn away? Could CS Lewis be more right than we want him to be, when he penned these words: "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful"?
We need a miracle of God to wrench us free of encasements of the brassy subconscious; of ingrained expectation; of our need for affirmation from sources other than heaven. And, perchance, we serve such a miracle-working God.
“In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.” (Ps 18:6)
Nick Davis
7 June 2010
