I had an interesting day yesterday at MTAG. Part of our day involved a presentation by Cid Latty founder of the cafe church network. Cid told us all about how this network of Churches meeting in Costa coffee had grown up all over the UK in the past few years. A great story about a person who was committed to a mission cause and did something about it.
We had the opportunity to question Cid afterward and I asked him a question regarding church in consumer culture, and I was really interested by his response. Basically my question was this: Costa/Starbucks/Nero's are not contextual, they have a brand and they apply that brand which they apply irrespective of context. They do not listen to their context. Is this what Cafe Church is also doing? Developing a brand identity and then applying that irrespective of context. I was fascinated by his response and am still reflecting on it.
His response was essential yes this is what we are doing. But by doing this we are taking the culture on consumerism seriously. We are not dismissing it for a distance but are engaging with it by creating a brand of church that works in the context of consumerism. Now, the purist in me hates this response, as it says that Church must never be driven by the culture of consumerism, however the missional part of my nature is fascinated by what he is saying. He is saying that to engage with this context we need to be contextual to consumerism.
The question is, that Cid also moved onto address, is when do we challenge this cultural context? However, we must first start from a point of engagement with it rather than just throwing rocks at it as many of the ant-capitalist protesters do.
Tags: BenEdson, CafeChurch, Consumerism
First a comment, then a question:
I think we need to be careful in our definition of "context" and culture. The fact is that there are a lot of people sitting in Coffee Costas at the moment, many of whom make a habit of going there regularly. So in one sense, the brand is generating its own context which is cultural because human beings are in it and choose to go to it. So I think this is a form of self-generating contextualisation, which is very typical of the wider culture of the West. So this may be why the missional bit of you is OK about this.
The question: did he change his name to Cid Latte or what?
Posted by: Paul Roberts | December 04, 2009 at 10:11 AM
If you are remotely interested in the science behind consumerism (as opposed simply to particular manifestations of it) I heartily urge you to read Spent, by Geoffrey Miller (should be out in paperback soon).
He teases out the evolutionary psychology behind branding (book's controversial and hugely entertaining too - Guardian gives a good review).
I've been thinking about the role of Church as the redundancy in society - the slack in humanity's rope. This book gives good reasons for explaining how such a pointless institution might have evolved, in the form of costly signalling (like a peacock's tail).
Of course, the point is that once the Church accepts its inherent pointlessness, it is free to celebrate any which way it wants: a hugely appealing draw for people who have targets and societal labels and tick-boxes forced on them. And that celebration is the best that humanity has to offer.
Evolutionary Psychology is the bugbear of certain arms of the Church insofar as it is linked to the new atheism. But I challenge and urge the Church to go proactive and start immersing itself in this field sooner rather than later.
Posted by: Steve Lancaster | December 04, 2009 at 02:46 PM
cid's name is latty not latte! but close enough...
Posted by: benedson | December 07, 2009 at 09:37 AM