BLOG 10/1/14. ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE: SURVIVAL COLONIES
As we (whether we like it or not) have moved irresistibly out of a culture formed by a Christendom narrative what with all of the traditions and forms thereof, …and are now undeniably seeking to orientate ourselves into an alternative post-Christendom narrative, and how we are to become the communal incarnation of God’s New Creation in a scene for which we have no patterns, there are a few realities that we need to acknowledge.
The Christendom narrative was formed over the period of a millennium and a half by the church significantly dependent upon the church as an ecclesiastical institution with its patterns of church sanctuaries, of clergy/church professionals/charismatic leaders, upon ecclesiastical and denominational hierarchies of control, and upon missionary organizations. Give them their due: they have been of enormous influence and blessing.
But that narrative is now history. The majority of the world’s population is now under 25 years of age. We have a generational culture that is totally not the product of that Christendom narrative. It is, however, a generational culture of awesome pragmatism and creativity. It is a generation of followers of Christ that will either find those communal expressions of God’s new humanity that have authenticity of that which Christ and the apostles set before us in scripture—or will create for themselves new forms. They will create some form in which they can realize reconciled and mutually loving relationships with those other followers of Jesus, and more pronounced in their formation by the teachings of scriptures and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Social media cannot meet such colonies. There is a need of real persons with whom to relate.
Meanwhile, there are those, usually a bit older, who are still attached to the forms of the fading Christendom narrative, and the church institutions thereof, but which churches are forgetful of their raison d’ètre—are like rudderless ships. But within these institutions many survivors seek out and find one another. They form themselves into classes, or support groups. I call such: survival colonies. Truth be told: such survival colonies could function just as well as colonies of God’s new humanity in any other venue as they do in the familiar setting of those church institutions—they could function as colonies of God’s new humanity as well on the porch of Marlay’s Irish Pub as they do in a vacant classroom at St. John’s-on-the Boulevard Church.
Their pilgrimage has involved them in those institutions of the Christendom narrative, and so they inhabit such institutions while not at all dependent upon them or theirs clergy leadership to equip them for their lives of discipleship. Their danger is that of not asking the question of such institutions: What does any of this have to do with God’s making all things new through Christ?
The context of our post-Christendom narrative is quite too much one of new challenges, of changes, of increasing diversity, of hostility, of cultural agnosticism, of transiency, and of depersonalization … to find encouragement in ossified church institutions. But there remain within such institutions those survival colonies. They, unbeknownst to themselves, frequently are the expressions of the very alternative narrative that is now irresistibly emerging, not dependent upon church institutions or ecclesiastical hierarchies or clergy control, … but rather healthy colonies of ministries to “one another” which are so much at the heart of New Testament teachings about the purpose of the church.
Being myself a pilgrim and a fellow-sojourner with such survival colonies for so long, I can only articulate my persuasion that such alternative narrative survival colonies are one of the to-be-expected, but disruptive, results of such a period of ‘liminality’ as we transport from the past Christendom culture, and into the unknowns of the church’s new generational and cultural challenges of post-Christendom. This will be an adventure full of unknowns.
