NCD Discipleship Resources
Next Generation of Church and Spirituality
Imagine a church where your pastor is in another city and the sermon is "broadcast" to the various campuses. Imagine a church where the garage band (not the "modern" but still melodious music that you may hear on K-Love (a US Christian radio station) today) is the worship music. Imagine a church where the Bible is on everyone's iPhone and everyone can annotate and comment on both the pastor's interpretation and each other's comments, much like a Wiki. Imagine a church where the call to get real, go deep, and re-write communion, the Body and community as an scuba dive immersion into the psyche where AA resembles this next generation as much as the Mustang convertible resembles the Conestoga covered wagon... Now imagine that this is only scratching the surface of what church is evolving into...
What do you think the next generation of church will be?
Which of these colors of spirituality will this be reflected in?
If you look at music where the focus isn't on the beauty but on the "realness" of the music and where human failings are both accommodated in the music and expected as part of it. Where music isn't a polished thing but is raw. Is that still sensuality?
If you look at the Word where the Bible becomes a Wiki marked up by all, is that still Scripture-Driven?
If you look at encounters with God as being akin to the song "What if God was One of Us" or "Counting Blue Cars", is that still Enthusiastic?
If people took to holding a Communion of the Body via "flash mob" groups or a thousand person "pilgrimage" on a virtual Vatican in Facebook, is that still Sacramental?
Or what about people meeting at a virtual monastery?
Mary
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Comments
Now imagine that this is only scratching the surface ...
Submitted by Ougenweyde on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 6:24am.
Thanks, Mary,
I could find questions here that I use to ask, and I am glad to find you asking them.
I woud not see any problem classifying the song "Counting Blue Cars" to be enthusiastic (while I would consider it more sensual) in the sense of NCD. Another question besides the color is the direction - goes it inward, to the center, or outward, away from the center? I cannot say just from listening to the song, but it gives a feeling of "ambiguous inwardness" to me. After all, those flash mob and facebook and whatever web 2.0 community trends do not say anything about the heart of the people being in there, just like going to a Southern Baptist service on Sunday doesn't say much of anything about the heart of the person doing it: Nothing of the complete spectrum from vile to divine can be fully excluded. Furthermore, this "Emergent Church" movement seems being merchandised more and more, becoming a market more and more.
The virtuality thing, communicating ten times more in quantity and frequency while being less together is from my point of view a medal whose shiny side I absolutely like, and would never underestimate. Using these new channels of communication has given me the opportunity to communicate other content, and with so many other people than before. On the other side there is no real touch and feel in the virtual world. A friend of mine strongly preferred physical presence to any other forms of communication, and in most of our email correspondence there was a point where he did not want to continue without a physical meeting. And he was not the only one ...
But still, you may be totally right assuming that those will be elements on the surface of the future church. The question for me is: Will the inside be different? Will it be just a surface that results from living within the surrounding world that is like this? Or will it be a really different church from the inside? Chances are that it will, but this is not sure. For me, this surface seems weird enough for most of the current christians as we seem to be afraid, or reluctant to contextualize our faith to better communicate with the world. And sticking to the perceived weirdness of the surface we should adapt indeed, we might miss the point again.
Anyway, I consider this crisis of Postmodernity to be full of opportunities that God has created: To become a Church that is real, broken, and playful in the best sense of the word.
Whaddyathink?
Klemens
Klemens
You say: "there is no real touch and feel in the virtual world"
I know people who say that they "feel" (yes they use a tactile word to describe this) a million miles away when they stand in the same room as people who are alien to them. To them, the physical closeness of a handshake during a greeting is as superficial as wearing sackcloth and ashes in public to appear holy. They do feel closer to those who share their mind and heart than those who breathe the same air molecules. These are the same people who quite often point out the hypocrisy of those who want the touch and presence of those around them and yet are unwilling to go a few steps farther to the poor across town.
In fact, I was recently at one church where people refused to change pews to allow visitors and newcomers to enter at a safe place where they don't feel surrounded, outnumbered, and basically in the sights/crosshairs of the "established" congregation. In that case, physical presence was an intimidating thing more like a bully than a welcoming hand.
I'm not saying that the conscious intention of the church was to be a bully. What I'm saying is that different people experience things differently... sort of like, well, different spiritual styles. The same thing can be experienced in multiple ways.
This leads to a main question. The differences are significantly based upon generational preferences - style of music, style of teaching, style/importance of physical elements, style of emphasis (focus on pure-beauty-goodness-glory vs brokenness-grace-prodigal-raw-real). If those differences are so great that each is unwilling to sacrifice their preferences to nurture and contribute to a unified church, how much is about commands in the great commission to "go" and "make", and how much is about our personal preferences and personal comforts?
I'm not trying to judge here (although I can see how this might come out that way). I struggle with this on a regular basis. What is the basis for choosing a church and committing to it? How much of it is how I feel and how much of it is what I'm called to do? How do we "know" when we are called to get out of our comfort zone and when it is acceptable to continue within it? And even if we were to get out of our comfort zone, there are dozens of churches in most locations. How might we choose a church then if our personal comfort and personal preference are not a part of it?
(note here that I tend to move, hundreds of miles each time I move, about once a year lately)
Mary