Biting the hand that feeds…
4 Mar 2009
I became aware of this book, “Evaluating Fresh Expressions”, for two reasons.
Firstly Pete Rollins, when I was with him at Calvin College in January told me he had written a chapter for it, ‘Biting the hand that feeds’. He mentioned the chapter after reading something I had written anti-instutionalism.
Then Dave Male at Ridley, Cambridge asked me to look at the chapter by Martyn Percy, ‘Old Tricks for New Dogs: A critique of fresh expression’, before I teach there this friday, 6th march.
I’ll get back to Martyn Percy, once I have been to Ridley on friday, and maybe review the book more here. Meantime it’s the chapter by Pete, that I want to refer to here, and some of the stuff I had written that related to it.
So Pete’s chapter. Even though the subtitle of the chapter, looks like an apology for how emerging groups, have ‘bitten the hand that feeds them’, the chapter is not that at all really.
It’s explicitly about how Pete sees the anglican system in providing space for fresh expressions, has led to objective systemic and institutional violence with the people involved (see bottom page 74). In short Pete concludes that groups lining up to be fresh expressions need to be careful lest the system perverts the very thing they are trying to be (page 84). So I infer from the title, and then this outline, that if you want to be a fresh expression, do it outside the system, and don’t expect the system to fund you, because it comes with violent strings attached.
There are so may levels to respond to the chapter, one would be a critique of how Pete understand power, and structure and the philosophy that has informed that, and whether it is valid. For her I want to look at a different system that is far more violent than the one with in the Anglican church.
Whilst systems do mitigate against changes in practice, the violence Pete sees as objective to the system, is also for me, about how often those in ‘revolution’, might be caught in the consumer abstraction of change, that is no real change at all. There is a much more violent system in place outside the church.
I have suggested here previously, how consumer culture takes our dreams and desire for alternatives, change and revolution and disembowels them from any real and lasting concrete action. Heath and Potter (in the book Rebel Sell) provide one of the most compelling descriptions of this phenomenon, combining philosophical analysis of consumer culture with a review of popular culture.
They unearth the popular notion that being ‘authentic’ means being countercultural, that is the need to be alternative and unpopular. This most often translates into the language of revolution, of trying to opt out of the system, to ‘jam’ the prevailing culture. In practice consumerism co-opts us owing to its nature as material to repackage and sell.
In terms of church, this translates into our reading books on missional church, attending missional events, leaving existing churches to be revolutionary, and at the end of the day, we ‘consumer’ mission, rather than do the dirty handed work of bringing about a concrete church and mission. We are captured by the process of consuming – we consume the idea of our blueprint idealised churches and ultimately do nothing in terms of real missions. Or maybe blame the institutional church for not funding our dreams, or for corrupting them.
The idea of the ‘trickster’ as rebel, able to subvert the nature of church, is seen to be captive to the process of consumption. The rebel is not a rebel at all, but is rather complicit and pandering to the agenda of consumerism. St Augustine’s warned of the danger of loving love itself, of how the direction of our affections can become about escape into simulacra in place of real things, such that we might see how the love of revolution, the anticipation and excitement in being ‘rebellious’ panders to the titillation of consumer agency while resulting in no real revolution at all.
The trickster who seeks to subvert the church, to draw attention to the failings of the church, can end up as absurd as the man in a story from Immanuel Kant’s lectures on anthropology who, on seeing a child fall into water and start to drown, complains that there is no one taking action to save the child.
A well-known emerging-church blogger, wrote an autobiographical piece on why he had left his church. He described how the members of the church drove in their cars past the poor, the homeless and drug addicts, on their way to spending their money on producing worship events, having bypassed the needs around them. It was enough for him, showing how the people of his church had failed to engage with the poor, to justify the leaving of his church.
I did wonder why the author was unable to point out that he himself had not stopped, or whether he had tried to minister and invite the other members of his community to serve the poor with him. Perhaps then something amazing and truly revolutionary could have taken place.
Or maybe it wasn’t the system that stopped real change, it was the system of consumer culture that was far more objectively violent and perverting.
Tagged: Books, Consumerism, Power, Resources
15 comments
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Comment by Rick Cruse
1.35 pm on 4 Mar 2009
I remember drinking coffee with you at the Burlington Hotel in Worthing some three years ago. One of your challenges to me was not to disengage from local church, that you saw and spoke with too many who threw their hands up in disgust and walked away. My initial thought after that conversation was “no way.” Then it became, “but where?” Now, God has brought my wife and me to what seems to many as an obscure part of the world, Nova Scotia, one of the Maritime provinces of Canada. We discovered that, for us, the road to extending the Kingdom was to find a community of people who wanted to follow Jesus (whatever that might mean) with whom we could “do life.” In his grace and mercy these folks were crazy enough to invited us, and we were crazy enough to accept the invitation. We are “doing life” with them, as well as doing death, divorce, depression, victory, worship, and so on. What a privilege; what a joy; what heartbreak! Life. Slowly by slowly eyes are opening, hearts are loosening, lives are being touched and transformed…and not just “in the church.” We are discovering how to “add value to our [broader] community…in Jesus’ name.” I still read (more than I should), but I have sworn off conferences and seminars. There are too many “methods” out there to try, so I just stay close to home, love people, make wine with them, build friendships in the broader community, and encourage people to love and good deeds. It’s life and it’s good.
Comment by Jason
1.13 pm on 5 Mar 2009
That coffee seems such a long time ago, and great to hear you that you are ’smoking what you sell’ mate,
Jase
Comment by Rick Cruse
1.38 pm on 4 Mar 2009
P.S. for what it’s worth…. I’ll be 60 in a few weeks, yet find my greatest joy and most energizing activity in meeting weekly with several young men in their 20s, finally carrying out my own personal mission statement written some 8 years ago: harvesting my life to sow seeds in the next generation. A few days ago, one of the guys made this statement, “meeting with you is the high point of my week.” Life doesn’t get any better.
Comment by Jamie Arpin-Ricci
4.17 pm on 4 Mar 2009
This is an excellent reminder. Our new Little Flowers Community church plant has been working hard at this. St. Francis has been our example in his refusal to be an active critic of the church, while being a passive Christian. Instead, he loved God and neighbour, seeking for his own example to it’s own critique. He loved God and His Church, even those expressions that had become compromised and corrupt. Christ in them shone brighter to Francis. Most of all, however, he was far too aware of his own failings to give too much attention to what he was not, seeking rather to become more like Christ.
We are clumsily following this example as a small, inner city church. We have really come to respect and love the more “traditional” expressions that many of us have come out of. They are family we love and relate to, not an older model to be sent to the scrap heap.
Peace,
Jamie
Comment by Jason
1.14 pm on 5 Mar 2009
From what I know and read of you Jamie, your an example of good practice and mission.
Jase
Comment by Paul
7.26 pm on 4 Mar 2009
so more biting the finger nails of our own hands and ruining our nie manicures then…
Comment by Richard Sudworth
10.03 am on 9 Mar 2009
On the button Jason!
Comment by Jason
10.18 am on 9 Mar 2009
Tnx Richard, was good to see your brother last Friday at Ridley when I was teaching.
I hope your well mate.
Jase
Comment by Jonny
10.27 am on 9 Mar 2009
thanks Jason,
that’s really helpful. I am one who though aware of the ‘rebel sell’ is also a sucker for it. And so I swing between ‘anti-institutional’ and loving and believing in church. Thanks for reminding me why I do the later.
Comment by Jason Clark
3.39 pm on 9 Mar 2009
Good place to be Jonny
Comment by Orion
10.44 am on 9 Mar 2009
Thanks Jason, I read this with interest.
I haven’t read Rollins, but it sounds like he buys the Derridean metaphysic pretty wholesale, equating power with humans (the ‘institutional church’) exercising their self-interest, in a way that ends up making violence ultimate. It seems more faithful to the christian story to believe that Christ is actually at work in the church, that its power structures might seem somewhat ‘unnatural’ to those of us whose idea of nature is tainted in virtue of our being fallen, and that peace is the more fundamental reality. As Jonny said, thanks for a reminder of why it is we commit to the concrete church.
Comment by Jason Clark
3.42 pm on 9 Mar 2009
I think Pete certainly has. The cross as a real event, in relation to power, and violence is vital to the Christian faith, and no wonder at odds for Pete who sees no need for a real resurrection.
Comment by Yew Khuen
12.19 pm on 10 Mar 2009
Hi Jason
You’ve touched on something very close to my experience. I’ve been leading a cell group in a mega-church for 5 years now. Had huge struggles with the worship style, doctrine, and predominant cookie-cutter way of doing things. Even considered moving on at various points. Then reading about the Schisms in our history inspired me to stay and not break fellowship.
It’s not been easy being part of the “system” while still trying new things within my cell group meetings (not all of it with express sanction from the leadership!). I do wonder sometime when there’ll be a “crackdown” and the music ends. But have been meeting others with similar struggles whom I’ve wouldnt have been able to encourage had I left. I take heart from NT Wright’s exhortation to “be in prayer at the place where the world is in pain” or words to that effect.
Sivin and I are waiting for the day you’re able to stopover in Malaysia!
Shalom!
Yew Khuen
Comment by Jason Clark
1.09 pm on 11 Mar 2009
Hi Yew, great to hear from you, and I will make it to see you. Sivin is going to help me with the students on the D.Min program I’ll be directing, http://www.gmldmin.org.
So I think 2010 I’ll be visiting to talk about that and visit STM with him. Would be great to meet up with you
May the Lord bless you on all you are doing, it can’t be easy, but the way of the cross never is.
Jase
Comment by rodney neill
3.39 pm on 11 Mar 2009
hello Jason,
You post is so true and reflects my experience of a couple of years involvement in an experimental collective outside the church! i dare not say any more.
Rodney
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