Communitas = short-term unsustainable mission.

I've been pondering this for some time now so here goes. About four years ago i wrote an article for a journal exploring contemporary emerging missiology, one of the conclusions that i came to was something called a hermeneutic of communitas. As the years progress I'm getting less convinced of the missiological significance of communitas, i think that is maybe as ineffective as short term mission, and that the focus should be more on aggregation than communitas...let me explain further.

Communitas arises out of situations of liminality of being on the margin, a term borrowed from Arnold van Gennep's concept of rites de passage. The transitional experience of a rite de passage is marked by three phases: separation, margin or ‘limen’, and aggregation. A participant in a rite de passage, whether in the formal sense or the informal is first separated from the social structure he or she formally occupied, then experiences a period of time on the margin during which the subject is in some way transformed and introduced to the new situation he or she will occupy next. A re-gathering or "aggregation" back into the structure of society follows and completes the process. It is the middle phase that seems to interest most writers in the emerging church, the 'liminal' period, when one is neither here nor there in terms of social structure. One is marginal and Turner calls the experience one of liminality. The experience of marginal people, experiencing liminality, is one of communitas.

Frost in Exiles (which I'm still to be convinced by) develops the notion of communitas further and has a tendency, with Turner, to glamorises communitas over community for example: ‘Attending a middle-class church in a respectable middle-class neighbourhood isn’t a liminal experience. Joining a peace movement in a neighbourhood obsessed with military might is. Travelling to Indonesia to help with the international relief effort after a tsunami is. Joining a church-planting team is’ (123, 2006). This is an unhelpful polarity as all these experiences can be an experience of liminality, or they can be incredibly safe. Experiences of communitas need to be aggregated back into the life of the wider community, or communitas becomes a short-term unsustainable mission team and hence the ideal of communitas becomes another name for short-term mission rather than long-term meaningful transformation.

Frost, to his credit, mentions that the reintegration of the communitas into the mainstream church can be a profound experience for both involved, indeed Turner suggested that it is in the dialect between communitas and normal society that the future hope resides. This dialect, or the aggregation, is therefore the most significant part of the experience of communitas. Communitas is unsustainable short-term mission whereas aggregation is the point of profound transformation for both communitas and normal society.

This is where i think that my vocation is, to be a point of dialect with the communitas and normal society, between the emerging church and the church catholic. I think that this is a step on from some of the early emerging churches, who were not interested in dialect, but only communitas. This is not a a value judgement as we would not be able to have the current dialect without the earlier experiences of liminality.

Technorati Tags: Ben Edson, emerging church, Fresh Expressions

Comments

[Malcolm]

great post Ben!

[julie]

i agree ben and i share your growing sense of where you are in your role and purpose - can you say more though about the struggle that constitutes aggregation ? - in the whole liminality/rites of passage paradigm, there is no going back - the person passing through is transformed completely (ie the child becomes an adult) - there is no returning apart from a completely transformed rather than redefined identity, role and presence - they are like aliens for a while, trying to work out what life in a new body really means - can you speak some more about the process of helping those who have been through that experience to aggregate effectively ? one of the things that concerns me most about aggregation is that in the liminality paradigm, the person returns as an adult and aggregates into an adult society that is already fully developed and mature in its expression - can we say that really about the conventional catholic church we might be returning to become part of ?

[Makeesha Fisher]

good question julie. My question would be how you explain the early church and the church in China that lives in a constant state of liminality and how that factors into your opinion that there's somehow a "going back" or a building up walls around the liminal "experience"

[Ben Edson]

julie, i think that my experience of aggregation is ongoing. there are time when i feel connected to the wider church, there are times when i feel very alone. After 6 years of leading sanctus1 we are only now beginning to explore our relationship with the wider church - how can the aggregation begin and how can both partners in that process be valued, so that we can affirm the trad but also value the transforming effect of limimality. I am a person who has my feet in both camps, sometimes this makes me feel as though i have sold out but at other times i can see a bigger picture and this excites me.

a fully adult society should not be one that is fixed and i would suggest that each newly aggregated community should change the adult society that they are part of...the hard thing is convncing the institution to change! the only way to do this is to stay connected and work at it...

[Michael]

Very interesting post. I really like the notion of communitas, but also question its sustainability. I do, however, like what Frost said about aiming for community. Community does not work as goal unto itself. If community can be developed through liminal experiences and a continued outward orientation, it seems healthier.

[julie]

ben - i share too strongly in your feet in both camps experience !!! - as a leader i too struggle with feeling at home and accepted in one context and often alone and misjudged for my 'divergency' in another - as an advisor who has been handed the challenging task of helping out with the painful process of aggregation, i have really struggled for a decade with the issue of how to facilitate healthy aggregation - a major task has been looking at language and learning in the church - we need new ways of learning together and new ways of engaging in dialogue that will enable this process - but the 'church' seems to be a relatively reluctant and ineffective learner in that area - i partly agree that 'each newly aggregated society should change the adult society that they become part of' - only partly though, because i struggle with the difference between the processes of inclusion and integration - my experience so far is that the traditional or conventional church sees aggregation mainly as an issue of integration and so remains inflexible in changing its 'system' fundamentally to accomodate new ideas and patterns of expression - instead it expects those that have travelled a different course to settle down and adapt 'back into' what's there - helping the church to look at aggregation as a process of inclusion (changing the system to fit the individual)is a whole other story - an extremely difficult task - i love it, but it sure is a brainbusting, heartbreaking, soulstretching experience in leadership !! makes me think how much we do need to help and support each other as leaders around these issues

makeesha - i am not really of the opinion that there is or even should be a 'going back' - i was just pointing out that in a lot of the 'liminality' studies and literature (especially those that use tribal rites of passage into adulthood as an example of liminality), returning and re-entering a society that has not changed is a normal part of the process (even though the person who went through the liminal experience is transformed) - those that return are transformed to fulfil a well formed and traditional role as adults in that society and life goes on as normal, with very little change - what i am suggesting is that the liminality analogy has its limits when we think about the church - as you point out, china and the early church are obvious and wonderful examples of how the analogy doesn't work if you try to stretch it too far - as someone who is trying to help the conventional church to grapple with this issue, i have often used the analogy of my role in supporting emerging groups as being like a midwife, but for an alien baby, one that we have no idea what it will look like, need to survive/thrive or require from us - it does have different dna fundamentally (as frost, hirsch and everyone else seem to be trying so hard to tell us) - adopting a human child is tricky and challenging but entirely possible - adopting and fully including an alien one is............beyond any words i have to decribe the immensity of the task - what do you think ?

[maggi]

hear hear.

[Makeesha Fisher]

I get the feeling from julie and others that we all feel pretty much the same about this issue but we're sort of talking past each other because of our different church contexts. I'm encouraged to see that those within "established" churches/denominations/organizations are wrestling with what this means for them :)

[Richard Sudworth]

Thanks for the welcome back to the blog world....Fascinating and stimulating post, especially remembering the journal article in question. I wonder if the "place to be" is in a constant cycle of communitas leading to aggregation leading to communitas and so on.

[julie]

i love the sense of movement you suggest richard, especially if the emphasis is spiral rather than flat circle - think that is right on with how the Spirit of God moves - still have big questions about how healthy aggregation happens though - how do you see that happening healthily in our sometimes more rigid institutional contexts ? peace, julie

[paul at soupablog]

very helpful post (and comments). thanks

[pault]

a bunch of us - from across the xtain tradition-spectrum - many have been thru alt and emerg stuff and left it behind... are working in several cities at re-aggregating around spheres in creation - saints from across our cities are re-aggregating deep IN creation and its groans/promise - the effects are:

1. decolonisation/detox from christian empire (emerging church language and praxis is still a colonial expression of christianity)
2. exp a new solidarity with (very specific sphers of) creation, people and God (often i that order- real community= all 3 (God + people = colonial sect)
3 way relationship: creation, people and god

3. build church horizontally across cities / localities that have suff resistance to empire in 3 ways (from many others around- scotland, NI and england way off the emrging radar):

Core decolonisations Process in scotland/uk/europe:
1. learn how to launch our God given-dreams into creation not let them be coopted by existing colonial christian landscape-
2. create new aggregations around these shared dreams - spheres: arts & media, education, gov/politics, social justice, science, health, law - live out publically (living parables) 3 habits... i these creation spaces...

1.habit 1: imaginatively model leaderless social org ie catalyse transformation - no gurus, no book-celebs no names and platforms please! instead: transform via ALL gifts of the body in that locality - (some have counted 26 in their locality alone - biblical body language is far too rich to be coopted into the roman/greek caste/colonial disempowering praxis of nic-o-lationism- ie NIcking the laity ) no heads/leaders please we are the body - only.

2. habit 2: stop walling/defending borders around around our dreams-in-action and covenant to instead: move with margins out to: ALL creation/ends of earth; no sects please we're christian!

3. habit 3: create coop economies in each of these spaces that serves creation NOt ourselves (our own narcissism: services/buildings/status/roles and pour it into healing the land/locality/saints dreams for their locality instead) - to see what kind of spirit a project /congo/ has - look at what they spend their money on...
no narcissisistic economies (tithing) please we are the saints

sent - ALL of us sent - to imaginatively, bodly, serve creation- ALL of it...every bit o it..

fab news of Christ's kingdom = a practical comic anti-empire that even estate kids can learn and understand and practice for themselves in their own backyards - is great news

if the gospel (great news) isn't good news to creation/poorest - then it isnae! THE good news - it's a colonial rip off! a straw jesus. The post-emerging challenge - is to embrace and aggregate around our sharded dreams for specific parts of creation in our cities/localities- and get stuck into whatever global flows affect these localities.

Jesus has never left galilee - it's us who have- and caused ourselves untold pain and addiction -and robbed not only ourselves but a groaning creation of our birthright and promise and heritage in Christ - waiting just ahead of us out there in the mud of another jordan..

[pault]

flippin eck - that's an awful long post! sorry about that - walloped it out as i was shooting out the door without editing.

[Ben Edson]

it was a long post - but really interested to hear what you're doing up there. looks fascinating.