The Hefted Church

The hefted holiday maker is a phrase that Julian Baggini comes up with in his book Welcome to Every-town. He distinguishes between the herded, the hefted and the individual - When i reflect on Church I find them three rather useful terms.

The herd is obvious, you follow the crowd you go with the majority, because that is the easiest. Choices are removed as you climb on board the coach and the coach takes you to all the places that you could possibly want to go. However, you sacrifice choice and spontaneity for convenience. We don't really get any students at Sanctus1, and the reason why is because the majority of them are herded. They'll go where the other students go because it's convenient...

At the other end is the individual, those independent free spirits who seek out the unusual places just because they don't like the herd or being herded. This is, of course, over simplistic - the 'independent traveller' is also herded - just in a different way. They are herded by the rough guide or lonely planet...yes, they have a degree more choice, but they are still herded.

The heft is very interesting and reminds me of the flea circus. A heft is an unfenced area of a field that sheep learn to keep themselves in. This was originally taught to them by a Shepherd, but as time goes on the sheep pass it on to each other - they no longer need shepherding they have been hefted...the territorial boundaries become blurred and more flexible, but they rarely stray beyond them and there are no fences to keep them in.

Need I say more?

Technorati Tags: Ben Edson, emerging church, Hefted Herd

Comments

[kester]

This is great.

What's the sense in which he uses this for a hefted holiday-maker?

[Ben Edson]

His take is that we always choose the heft because it is comfortable. The heft is where we encounter those of a similiar worldview to us. When we choose a holiday we always choose within our heft, whether that is the heft of Club 20-30 in Albufeira or Jules Verne to the galapagos islands, because we want to be with like-minded people.

Therefore when we go on holiday we still carry the worldview of our heft. If within our heft at home we go out on Saturday night and get absolutely balddered then when on holiday we will not seek something very different, but just exergate the behaviour of the heft.

[Tom Allen]

There is an even more interesting missional analogy. After the most recent foot and mouth outbreak in Cumbria when whole hefted flocks were slaughtered by Government, there was considerable concern about how farmers would re-stock, since it was believed that the "heftedness" was passed down through generations of sheep. However it has since been discovered that with some relatively rudmentary input from the shepherds that the sheep instictively re-established their heftedness. Perhaps they are the emerging church of the sheep world!