Our culture has changed. We used to live in a neighbourhood. Now we live in a network. But our churches are still divided up into parishes, one for each neighbourhood. Many of our churches are filled with people from several locations — networked together by ties of profession or association or interests and concerns — anything but neighbourhood. Should we reorganize our churches? Can we?
Perhaps network and neighbourhood can coexist. They often do. Diversity is manageable. Plus they share a common interest — the Kingdom of God. But there are still two sides in such a parish.
The parish side of the equation is a neighbourhood group with its own identity and a parochial tradition. If confronted by outsiders who aren’t part of the family, they will sometimes circle the wagons to defend the way things have always been done.
The network side of the parish may include those more in tune with a wider circle of people. They’re likely to bring a greater range of options to the table, with attitudes more flexible and resistant to parochial ways of doing things. Modern society has created a potential clash of cultures in the church, but it’s not just about networking. The conflict runs deeper.
The flight from geographical neighbourhood identity is just one aspect of a flight from structured society more generally. All kinds of boundaries and structures and set ways are suspect nowadays. Modern people are fixated on freedom and mobility. Churches, as they see it, are not very open. Moderns are often not keen on joining a congregation, let alone a denomination.
They find ideology, worship, labels, direction and proper church ways all too confining. They crave openness, free engagement, personal mission, new ways, diversity, varied context, open loyalties, even contrariness. We’re living in a time of culture clash across society, when parish structures and traditions are on the defensive.
And there’s another culture clash, within the same individuals. On the one hand, they’re outward and adventurous in their modern ways. On the other hand, they’re inwardly obsessed by a compulsive drive to consume and then consume some more, driven by an all-powerful marketing industry. This conflicted personality disorder does not leave them well equipped to respond to our message of spiritual values and moderate living. It leaves us on the outside looking in.
However there’s a growing reaction to such an empty alienating lifestyle. They’re not necessarily turning to the church, but many of them are nagged by doubts about the meaningless compulsions of modern life — searching for a vision they can’t quite put their finger on. The more perceptive among them are searching for a mission — searching for structure — searching for meaningful ritual even. We have that in spades for them.
At the same time, they’re searching for meaning in a world that’s upside-down. This leads many of them towards issues of social justice and rebalancing a society severely out of joint. We the church can identify with that. We had our beginnings in the midst of injustice and abuse. And we bring a spiritual perspective to it. That gives us considerable common ground with many of these seekers — and points us to our own mission.
And it sets our task — to preserve a valuable parochial tradition that is also backward in some ways — while we confront a modernism that drives the world forward and backward at the same time. It’s a tall order, and we first need to learn how to talk with them.