The Nature of Christian Organization Today

I have written in the past on the emergent movement.  While I have never talked in much depth about their theology, I am quite interested in the sociological trends of places like emergent village.  I recieve their newsletter via e-mail and was again interested in the direction they are taking.  They are suggesting four shifts in priority that generally follow the organizational structure in our changing world:

1. Reduce and decentralize by getting rid of the national coordinator position (this means Tony will be moving on).
2. Re-emphasize the importance of the website as a central hub.
3. To decentralize by depending on grassroot organizations to plan events rather than emergent village to plan events themselves.
4. To Reconfigure the board

I do not consider myself an expert on emergent (I have not read enough of the author’s who call themselves ‘emergent,’ nor do I have the time to do so), but I have been watching the conversation for some years and have been greatly interested by the sociological trends.  All of their goals for the “new” emergent-village seem to be about less national presence and more presence as network node (perhapas the anti-federalists were right all along).  There is a term recently introduced to me by my blogging friend Nate called subsidiarity.  I am so excited by this word because it brings to term some of the ideas that have been boiling in my brain.  This concept suggests that matters ought to be handled by the smallest group possible.  It would probably have been the view of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy and probably embodies many of the grassroots organizations throughout United States history.  There is a good conversation going on about this idea at catholicanarchy (read the comments).  I want to quote one of the comments here:

I think (and I cant take credit for this) that locality is such a wonderful answer to capitalism & globalization. Wendell berry is the best critiquer of this system that I can think of. Why can’t people be happy with solving the problems and providing for the needs of their own communities? Everything is always mass produced and shipped all over whether or not its wanted/needed elsewhere. This is where advertising and the creation of perceived needs come in. What is really troubling is when we think about how this has come into Christianity in the form of evangelism.

Why join a subsidarity movement?  Well, as Christians we hopefully realize that the best way to work is through the local church as an expression of the catholic church (universal, not necessarily Roman Catholic).  Could we argue that God uses subsidarity?  He chose a particular people group in a particular place to be the expression of his love to the world.  The particularity of God in ‘choosing’ one group to, in turn, bless the wold holistically, seem to show subsidarity, or the idea that working through one group as a kind of tree that spreads its root deep, as his guiding principle.  As Christians, we need to remember that bigger is not always better.

Is ‘change’ really what we need?

Brittian said something really interesting over at his blog today:

Walter Brueggemann spoke about in The Prophetic Imagination.  He said that the Empire of control and competition, is constantly co-opting people’s revolutions.  In other words, when was the last time a revolutionary didn’t eventually become Emperor?  Think Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler…but maybe even more unfortunate are those true believers like the French revolutionaries whose ideas of liberty and equality eventually turned into a reign of terror.  Why?  Brueggemann points out that it is because those revolutions and revolutionaries bought into a critical deception.  The immediacy of their hope.  Anytime, he comments, the hope is too “here and now” it becomes prime real estate for imperial control.  The tangible, touchable, manageable realities of linear thought and rational process are Their domain.  Finally he councils us not to be Managers of change but rather to be Imaginers…  Poets, provocateurs, singers of songs, artists, prophets, painters, sculptors, wordsmiths, etc… Envision a new world, live into that new reality…but don’t necessarily engage in the dangerous assumption that CHANGE is the end all solution.

Brittian specifically is talking about the new ‘green revolution’ that seems to be taking place and how the same big companies are changing their marketing tactics to market to this target audience.  Rob Bell and Don Golden say someting similiar about the oppressed becoming the oppressors from Egypt to Jerusalem in their new book Jesus Wants to Save Christians (44-45):

God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied them…

To forget this, to fail to hear the cry, to preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless, is to miss what God had in mind…

Exile is when you forget your story

Exile isn’t just about location; exile is about the state of your soul.

Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others.

Exile is when you’re a stranger to the purposes of God

We have to be careful that we do not buy into ‘change’ as an idea simply as a cool ‘alternative.’  Otherwise, when things ‘change’ we will somehow believe we have reached our goal.  This new green revolution has become ‘the norm’ and the world has begun capitalizing off the label.  Ryan Bolger has a good graphic that I would like to borrow.  The image is a table of the difference between the ‘green’ revolution and the way that perhaps we should respond as Christians (labeled as ‘blue’).

He asks the important question, does the church need a color?  Over at Jesus Manifesto as well there has been an important discussion going on about language.  Who are we leaving out and who are we including based on our language?  It is easier than people sometimes think to learn a cultural language or a certain theological bent and to extol that theological bent to your congregation, but the danger is that the theology begins trumping Jesus Christ and the particular plan and revelation of God throughout time and space–the one that transcends cultures.  It is actually very easy for big companies to read this “cultural language” and create products which they can capitalize off of to “co-opt” the revolution (as Brittian said earlier).

The questions then are large: How does Christianity stay focused on Christianity and avoid being eaten up into a larger mass culture created by the media and big business?  How do we deal with the major environmental movements in a way that is true the particularity of Christ?  Which direction is the church going and is it the right direction? Are we following Christ or are we following culture?  If we are following culture, to what extent to we dwelve into it?  Over at emergent village one person argues that almost nothing is off limits.  Do you agree that Christians can go anywhere and do anything in the name of Christ?  Are there limits on our freedom as Paul often talked about, for the sake of our brothers?