I’ve always been struck by how the “parish model” of church (it’s what I call it) seems to be universal and timeless. For hundreds of years, faith communities have gathered at a communal building or location for worship/learning/fellowship, no matter if it is a Christian chapel,a Jewish synagogue, a Muslim mosque, a Buddhist sangha: the community gathered at a place. Even druids gathered at common oak groves. That said, couldn’t ours today be a simple place, a minimalist place, something on the scale of a storefront or a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall? A single, self-contained facility? Yes, let’s also do house church, farm church, yurt church, pavilion at the park church, but let’s look at why parish church has lasted so long - “Why?”
gathering in a worship space is indeed almost as old as faith itself. As we know, building the temple was a huge achievement for the earliest Jews, which set the precedent for all of us who follow the faiths 'of the book'. Not to mention other faiths altogether.
On the other hand, having a worship space that is also a program space, classroom space, and office space (and all supported by one local congregation) is relatively new - its boom was in the 20th century.
And this is not sustainable. It's been killing organized religion - of all kinds - for decades.
sure, our worship space today *could* be many things. But it *must* be something different - and very soon - or we will lose the vast majority of them.
I think a new church is emerging, and we need to shepherd it into being.
Personally, i think we need to pay much more attention to the 'stuff' (as I say in this post) - we need to streamline our administration, organization, and finances, and excavate our worship and faith formation from the current 20th century institutional format it's in.
I think we need to embrace technology in the form of small business tools that help solopreneurs create their own enterprises and use them to create faith communities our ancient brothers and sisters would recognize and communities that today's seekers would want to join.
Oooh, thanks for sharing a workable model for this. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Urban Holmes’ assertion that worship needs a sacred time, sacred place and sacred person/shaman — ‘sacred’ as in set apart, to help the process of transcendence. House church is none of those things, but it’s definitely a sacred gathering.
Some wisdom I’ve heard is that it works best with only one moving part: if you move from house to house, for instance, keep the same day/time and have the same administrative leader.
I’ve always been struck by how the “parish model” of church (it’s what I call it) seems to be universal and timeless. For hundreds of years, faith communities have gathered at a communal building or location for worship/learning/fellowship, no matter if it is a Christian chapel,a Jewish synagogue, a Muslim mosque, a Buddhist sangha: the community gathered at a place. Even druids gathered at common oak groves. That said, couldn’t ours today be a simple place, a minimalist place, something on the scale of a storefront or a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall? A single, self-contained facility? Yes, let’s also do house church, farm church, yurt church, pavilion at the park church, but let’s look at why parish church has lasted so long - “Why?”
I think you are conflating two different things.
gathering in a worship space is indeed almost as old as faith itself. As we know, building the temple was a huge achievement for the earliest Jews, which set the precedent for all of us who follow the faiths 'of the book'. Not to mention other faiths altogether.
On the other hand, having a worship space that is also a program space, classroom space, and office space (and all supported by one local congregation) is relatively new - its boom was in the 20th century.
And this is not sustainable. It's been killing organized religion - of all kinds - for decades.
sure, our worship space today *could* be many things. But it *must* be something different - and very soon - or we will lose the vast majority of them.
Thank you for your response. I appreciate it. If you were able to create that “something different”, what would be your go-to scenario?
that is my whole ministry!
I think a new church is emerging, and we need to shepherd it into being.
Personally, i think we need to pay much more attention to the 'stuff' (as I say in this post) - we need to streamline our administration, organization, and finances, and excavate our worship and faith formation from the current 20th century institutional format it's in.
I think we need to embrace technology in the form of small business tools that help solopreneurs create their own enterprises and use them to create faith communities our ancient brothers and sisters would recognize and communities that today's seekers would want to join.
Oooh, thanks for sharing a workable model for this. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Urban Holmes’ assertion that worship needs a sacred time, sacred place and sacred person/shaman — ‘sacred’ as in set apart, to help the process of transcendence. House church is none of those things, but it’s definitely a sacred gathering.
and no matter what kind of gathering it is, it eventually needs some kind of management/structure around it, or it won't last.
Some wisdom I’ve heard is that it works best with only one moving part: if you move from house to house, for instance, keep the same day/time and have the same administrative leader.
Good stuff. Thanks, Fr. Cathie. You hit on both sides of the issue and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it myself.
I'd love to hear more of what you're thinking!!