catching up on books 2... organic community

i read organic community by joseph myers when i was at the big chill in the summer (i woke up before others i was camping with as i tend to be a morning person). i thought it was excellent and have been meaning to revisit it since. so i took it with me on a train journey yesterday and re-read it.

one of the challenges for churches (or any institutions that have been around a while - businesses, political parties, voluntary groups, etc) is that in the emerging culture everything has or is shifting. so while we talk about emerging church, we also need to talk about and re-imagine emerging worship, leadership, discipleship, community, mission and so on. this book helps give some tools for thinking about how to help create community in the new environment and what leadership might be like. joseph encourages a shift in thinking away from a mindset of programming community to using organic order to develop an environment where community can emerge. this may sound like a small difference but it's huge. he describes leaders as environmentalists - people who create an environment of participation where the community takes initiatives, comes up with ideas, does stuff, makes things happen etc. (this chimes in very closely with some of the sensibilities of web 2.0 that i have blogged about before). if you are involved in a community like a church then i'd encourage you to read the book. it's also very interesting for organisations like cms who are trying to rethink how people connect - where the old way has been membership, creating an environment where people participate is definitely the way it's going.

for some of us this way of doing things is the air we breathe, it's instinctive. but for others who were trained to be leaders in a different context the shift away from leader as expert or teacher or director to this is quite a challenge. it requires a mind shift and probably a different set of skills as well as considerable letting go of status and power. the challenge is if you are in a church community like that can it shift to this new way of being and relating? i hope so but suspect it might be a tough journey.

to give you a flavour here are a few quotes i underlined in the summer in my tent!...

In our desire to help people with their lives, we program community, which sometimes harms more than it helps. We are discovering it is more helpful to nuture environments where spontaneous community can emerge.

Our job is to help people with their lives rather than build infrastructures that help institutions stay alive

At their best small groups supply an organic-ordered environment for some people in some seasons of their lives to grow their sense of healthy community and belonging. At their worst small groups deliver a manufactured environment that is promoted for all people and for every season of life.

[Describing purpose driven, cell church, seeker sensitive and the other fads that come along and get marketed and sold to everyone as the solution etc...]
These all worked with those participants in those communities; they worked in those environments. We get into trouble when we think someone else's model will work exactly as described with our participants in our communities in our environments. We turn a descriptive organic order pattern into a forced prescriptive master plan pattern.

Create environments that validate the patterns people naturally use to connect?

People want to particpate in organic ways not in strategic ways. They really don't care about strategies of participation; they are interested in the participation itself.

People are not interested in hearing us tell them how to participate. Nor do they want us to consider what they offer to do as invalid because their gifts aren't on our list. People would like the opportunity for their ideas, gifts, and personality to shape the group. They are interested in developing groups that make sense to them.

Story is the measure of community

It is an assumption that position clearly indicates where power lies. It isn't reality.

Comments

[Phil G]

How fast can you read!!!???

[jonny]

it's a small book!

[David Derbyshire]

In our church people appear to like having a small group programme as they know what is happening. We follow a four weekly pattern of prayer, socialising, biblical application with one other week that often involves something creative using different members’ gifts. In our group we try hard to involve everyone in planning and to get everyone to lead a session.

We would say our groups and church is based around relationships. We have had groups where everyone just goes to whoever’s house they want to but found difficulties in travel arrangements and baby-sitting, not to mention the feeling that some of us where becoming a bit cliquey. So we reorganised our groups to take these things into account.

We even discussed Purpose Driven Life in our groups a few years back, albeit quite critically yet I think at least to some extent we are doing what you describe in this book. So are we programmed or organic? I don’t think I am quite getting what this book is saying about the problem with a small group programme say. Any thoughts?

[jonny]

jo isn't saying small groups are bad. what can be a problem is if it's seen as the solution for everybody in terms of discipleship for all time. small groups have been the life blood of many churches and church movements. but they can get stuck and some people are called to do other things, invest time elsewhere etc... the point about being organic is just shifting emphasis away from the fixed structure to being flexible to go with ideas and newness as it emerges. it sounds like you experienced exactly this when groups became cliquey and you re-imagined things...

[David Derbyshire]

Yes, over the last few years we have re-imagined our groups two or three times. Interestingly they have had an organic feel when they have had a specific purpose – we did have specific serving groups for a while but the groups that studied 'Purpose Driven Life' were probably the most organic, maybe ironically in the light of the comment about ‘purpose driven’ groups? Each group met at different times in the week: some in the day time - for home workers - and one of them at Starbucks.

Generally, as a church we see each other a lot I think - both sociably and for other meetings (e.g. planning church and mission activities etc). Perhaps we need to acknowledge this more as you said it is "the air that we breathe" so it is not always easy to recognise.