Missional Communities are to Mega-Churches as Monastic Orders were to Cathedrals
Monday, July 07, 2008
A couple weeks ago I posted on the "missional" synchroblog that the missional church needed to differentiated from the mega-church. In response, my friend Craig Carter ( blog) asks, in a comment to the post, whether we could not view mega-churches as cathedrals. He says:
My point, to be up front, is that the Church as a whole takes different forms in different situations. Overall, the Church must be missional, but can the Church include both cathedrals and also monastic orders? And can contemplative orders co-exist peacefully alongside missionary orders? Can all recognize themselves as part of God's one Church? I ask because in Roman Catholicism they do, while in Protestantism it is as if the Franciscans think the bishops and the parish structure are of the devil and the Jesuits think the cloistered orders are suspect as the genuineness of their faith. And as for the mystics, well they are just beyond the pale for everyone else. Shouldn't this discussion be conducted more along the lines of "calling" rather than which structures are "right" and which are "wrong?"I agree with the general sense of what Craig says here. I have some theological/ecclesiological reservations about the shape of many mega churches, yet I hesitate to write them off. And so I argued in that same post (admittedly in a reserved fashion) that megachurches have their place within the landscape of N American Christianity. I said: "I believe the work of the mega churches is valid and has its place in the Kingdom: the ministry to the dormant unchurched of Christendom.." As Christendom wanes however, that work will become smaller and smaller.
It is for this reason that I like what Craig Carter is saying above. In some ways we might compare the place of mega-churches today with the place of cathedrals in medieval Europe. Cathedrals were at the center of Christendom. To this day, in each town in old Italy, you will see the vestiges of the town square in front of the Cathedral like church, the steeple being the highest point in the village, and all the roads leading to the church. In this pre-modern time, the church bells kept time, the daily office, and the festivals were all holy festivals that were conducted to and from the church. These Cathedrals represented a society where the language was Christian and the church was at the pinnacle of power in society. It made sense that cathedrals were "attractional." I believe many of the same conditions necessary for Cathedrals are indeed necessary for mega churches. I believe mega churches are dependent upon the sociological conditions of Christendom. Although Craig Carter's teacher, John Yoder, would wince at the integrity of such a structure for God's people, for these times and places, I want to grant at least some legitimacy to this historic way of being church.
Alongside these cathedrals however, monastic orders of various types arose. During particular times of church history when the church fell into decline, when society was taken over by "the barbarians, it was the missional orders that carried on the faith. Mission was best conducted by these missional orders and some of them were even commissioned by the Cathedral churches (Rome). These missional orders were not attractional. They almost always had flexibility and movability to their structure. Of course these orders often got in trouble with the Cathedral (Rome) church when they called the Cathedral church back to holiness and faithfulness.
Today, I can see the missional church movement as having this same kind of flexibility and movability necessary to do mission in North America whereas the mega church does not. I see the Cathedrals/mega churches as too often seduced by power. I claim it is inherent in the structure. I see that Cathedrals often fell into "servicing" a Christianity that was lowest common denominator. I see mega churches as prone to the same. I see Cathedrals/mega churches as prone to all the problems of institutionalization including inflexibility and immovability. The missional communities can do grass roots community like mega church/Cathedrals never could and never can. All of these weaknesses however do not delegitimate the Cathedral church's role in Christendom society, sometimes powerful in every way.
The question is, is Christendom good? And are we at that same point in the decline of the Cathedral Christendom church (evangelical mega church) where it needs to be called back to faithfulness? I think Christendom has its big problems. I think it's on the decline anyways. I also think today that many of the mega churches have fallen into the same bad habits as the Christendom Cathedrals of the past. I therefore see the missional church movement as being a renewal ecclesiological movement in relation to the mega church movement, much like the monastic orders were to the Cathedral church.
I love what Leonardo Boff, the Latin American theologian, says about the base communities of Latin America and their relationship to the Roman Catholic established church. I think a similar relationship can be seen in the missional communities/monastic orders relationship to the Cathedrals/mega churches. In Boff's words,
… the problem of church does not reside in the counterpoint of institution and community. These poles abide forever. The real problem resides in the manner in which both are lived, the one as well as the other: whether one pole seeks to absorb the other, cripple it, liquidate it, or each respects the other and opens itself to the other in constant willingness to be put to the question. p.7 EcclesiogenesisThis post has been much too simplified. But thanks to Craig Carter for his idea so germane to the missional discussion. He knows much more about pre-Reformation history than I. And he knows John Howard Yoder better than I. So I'd be interested in his take on this analogy.
What do you think? In what ways do you see this analogy as fruitful for the missional church/mega church discussion? How do you see missional communities/ mega churches, emerging churches/denominations working together?
Posted by David Fitch | 1:13 PM
COMMENTS:
"shot through the heart, and you're to blame, baby you give..."...ok nevermind.
points taken. jason needs to learn some history. but...one thing/question: I see that Cathedrals often fell into "servicing" a Christianity that was lowest common denominator. I see mega churches as prone to the same.
doesn't the whole "lowest common denomenator" thing rely on a combination of pluralism and consumerism/marketing that is specific to our time and to the megachurch (and so does not apply to the cathedral churches)? maybe you were referring to some phenomenon of the cathedral churches that i am missing or don't know about? maybe you're referring to the debate(s) over giving sermons in latin or some local german or italian dialect(s) of the time?
2:02 PM
oh and one more thing...about cathedrals being "attractional" (you said it made sense that they were)...along similar lines as my question on pluralism, too...the term attractional seems a bit cloudy and amorphous, i realize...so i'm not sure what you meant there (i'm sure you meant something more crystalline than i could even imagine...i say that in seriousness)...BUT...cathedrals (the architecture of them, i mean, certain aspects/parts of the "cathedral" that made it "attractive") had a certain coherence with their scholasticism that...was pretty cool. ask a megachurch leader what he means by "attractional" and you won't aget anywhere near such coherence.
now...i suppose that yoder wasn't exactly a scholastic...and i guess you could also say that the referenced scholasticism walked hand in hand rather nicely with the institutionalization that you were pointing out...i dunno...i'm sort of rambling but this is sort of a question, too. is the scholasticism that was in/behind/with the cathedrals part of what you would hope to in a sense go against as a missional church planter? that i can think of...the philosophical strands in scholasticism seem to (maybe) work well with the "inflexibility" that you were referencing. i am thinking of...maybe for example...the idealism that heidegger attacked...an attack that missional folks seem to enjoy watching...
peace!
jason
2:17 PM
David,
Thanks for the reply. You have added an important idea to my suggestion of different parts of the church having different callings to use various structures to do mission. You have also suggested the dimension of time; we may well need different structures at different times in church history (and in different places.) In other words, missionary societies reached Africa with the Gospel in the 19th century, but Africans today will soon need cathedrals (eg. Kenya is now 89% Christian). On the other hand, as you point out, at this moment in the West we need small, missional forms of church to penetrate the culture "under the radar" as hostility to Christianity grows in the circles of cultural power. As culture becomes more nominally anti-Christian instead of nominally pro-Christian, the megachurch approach works less and less well.
If we ask "What are the "Evangelical Cathedrals?" why think only of Willow Creek? I would suggest Park Street Contregational Church in Boston, Moody Church in Chicago, First Baptist Dallas, Knox Presbyterian in Toronto, etc. There is a generation of "megachurches" that existed long before 1950 that are not usually thought of as megachurches.
Here in Toronto, three such downtown "cathedrals," (Knox Presbyterian, St. Paul's Anglican Bloor Street and Walmer Road Baptist,) heard Hudson Taylor speak on the urgent need for workers in 1983 and banded together to start a lay ministry traniing institute to prepare people to be missionaries to China (which was a nearly unprecedented move at that time). This institution evolved into Tyndale University College & Seminary, where I teach today. I say all this to make a point. Members at these "cathedrals" heeded a call from a rabble rousing radical like Hudson Taylor to support a methodologically unorthodox faith mission half way around the world that was seeking to contextualize the Gospel in controversial ways in Chinese culture. (Oh, and as for irony, about a third of Tyndale Seminary students today are Chinese and we even have a Chinese seminary within a seminary!) So the point is that cathedrals and (what we thnk of today as) missional congregations can work together.
So the questions are: "What do we need here?" and "What do we need now?" Church history is our resource bag of ideas.
Sincerely,
Craig
3:04 PM
Sure, Craig, "cathedrals and missional congregations can work together." But they don't have to. We can read read church history to find plenty of ways to legitimate Christendom, plenty of constantinian examples, if we want them. But what about the radical reformation? For many of them the cathedral embodied the hegemony of the "rulers of this world" and so they torn them down. Yes, Anabaptists thought it was just fine to tear down cathedrals so they could witness to the egalitarian Gospel of Jesus Christ. Cathedrals and monasteries worked against God's egalitarian grain of the universe and needed to come down.
3:41 AM
oh and btw df your post on cathedrals seems to have interesting God timing. at the end of last week i had a couple of conversations with folks at work. basically i'm not effecient and capitalist enough and stuff. of course this had me thinking deeply all weekend...sort of in a cloud. sunday night and last night i sought out counsel from older folk at church...then your post this morning. the light i seem to be coming to isn't that i need to change jobs or anything of the sort (maybe, who knows), but more that i've been "following after" the wrong thing.
more to the story without a conclusion yet, but...yeah...still want to talk to a catholic priest, acutally...i asked the (protestant) dude i met with last night when he brought up "why would you want to put your energy into this transient stuff...buildings?"...i asked him "what do you think of icons"...he was like "i dunno...i think they're interesting." part of the story though was that he was encouraging me to spend my time/energy helping folk...which was good...i had been explaining to him how much energy i draw from the idea of making good buildings that...are in harmony with the order of creation...and draw one into a certain wonderous awe...
so yeah...more personal anecdotes...
:)
6:08 AM
the prob i have is not that megachurches dont reach some...but for most, they teach a different kind of following of Christ. there is no call to take up the cross.
now does this mean that there are good things happening in megachurches, not at all. but what i think is that there are more folks who are confused about what being a follower of Christ is, than there are people who are helped by the megacommunity.
peter
7:54 PM
Hey, David
As a member of a denomination that does indeed have a cathedral, I have to say that I don't see an evangelical comparison with megachurches. As the seat (cathedra) of the bishop, the cathedral can be viewed as the authoritative voice of the diocese, though it often is not the largest congregation nor even the biggest building. In the Vatican's eye, Boff's ecclesial communities were just that--churchlike communities--because they were not under a bishop. The danger with equating big-store megachurches with cathedrals simply because they may share some of the please-them-all activities of the type seen at, say, the National Cathedral is that megachurch pastors really need not be encouraged to operate as if they were "bishops," no matter how lightly the comparison was intended. Without a bishop there is no cathedral, no matter how big and full of fun the schedule is, and the bishop is all about overseeing others.
10:15 AM
Yeah .. I think all the comments so far have tried to delineate how far this analogy can go. I think the two "Christendom" cultures upon which the Cathedral versus mega church depends, are vastly different (as Jason points out). And I have reservations about to waht degree we affirm the mega church and its inherent consumerism and individualism. Nonethless, I do think that Craig's analogy shows, that in some times and places in church history, a larger, attractional (as Frost and Hirsch use the term) based Cathedral like church does serve to sustain a faithful Christianity. Of course I think that time has largely passed in many parts of the United States and Canada and Europe because of the inherent Christendom it is so dependent upon.
10:44 AM
The studies show that conversion growth in the American church occurs mostly within two sectors of the church, in the "MEGAS" and the "minis". By far the greatest outreach to the unchurched happens in the "minis", churches with less than 100 attendees where relational ministry occurs and those with more difficult questions and lifestyle issues can ask questions, discover answers and learn to live out those answers.
But I do think that it is a bit of an overstatement to say that we live in a post Christian culture in the United States (this may be the case in many parts of Europe). It would be hard to find people in the US who don't know at least some of the Christian stories and festivals. In the midst of a society of "inherent consumerism and individualism" I sense that the MEGAS do fill a missional need and to marginalize them is to hasten the onset of post-Christianity in the US. They do tell parts of the story very well and many of them do succeed in developing Christians with deep faith.
I may not called to ministry in the MEGA church, but I do feel that they can enhance and work with the ministry of the minis. In our MEGA sized world there is a place for the large church as a gathering place for people to learn about and grow in Christian faith. There are times when it is nice to gather with a larger community, to sense that one is part of an even bigger community. In the most healthy of the MEGAS this is very good and I think in the healthiest of the minis there is no fear that the MEGA will hurt the Gospel message or a person's life with Christ.
8:02 PM
Jason,
Consumerism was alive and well in the middle ages. The Crusades were in a larger measure what the Iraq War is today, and birthed the age of exploration for the purposes of world trade. They had a global economy back then too.
I really like this analogy of Cathedrals and Megachurches. I like the co-operative synergy of the missional and Mega. We need both to move persons and communities through their faith to maturity. We need both bones and muscles. But it is easier to grow with an endoskeleton than an exoskeleton.
I think it is very important how we structure the Cathedral/Megachurch (both architecturally and organizationally) because: it's nature is inflexible and unmoveable; it's going to be around a lot longer than the more transient meet-the-need-of-the-moment missional outreach; the goal of the church is to create a universal Christendom. Initially there was a kind of Christendom in Jerusalem, then Ethiopia,the Roman Empire, Europe, the Americas. It's like a wave spreading through time and place, with waves reflecting back from the boundaries. There are mins and maxs of faith and participation, with Armageddon as the crux of faith.
8:18 PM
Anicius...out of I'd say like about five families whose kids were very very close to me growing up...one of them doesn't have the foggiest idea about the gospel (call him Ken), and his mom used to be a Sunday school teacher (he and i have been having conversations about it lately)...one of them isn't totally ignorant, but his wife is a pastor's daughter (call him Bud)...my sister herself claims not to know the bible well enough to teach children's church...my next door neighbors grew up going to catholic mass every week and i think they have a decent idea of what's going on...and then there's a young woman who also knows next to nothing of it (call her Sue).
so to do the tally, that's two at "no idea what's going on" (Ken and Sue), one at "pretty good idea of what's going on" (next door neighbors), and two at "medium to low level of knowledge of the gospel" (Bud and my sister). and i'm in Virginia...almost in the south. interestingly if i do a similar thought experiment on my time in the ethical dregs of Los Angeles (thinking of those who are "unchurched" there), i'd say, in terms of ratios, more of them know the gospel (i think).
and maria...i'm aware of the phenomena you described in the middle ages (you could even loosen language again and say that the architects of cathedrals were high class celebrities)...but i CERTAINLY wouldn't refer to it/them as "consumerism" (those "celebrities" didn't do endorsements to get you to buy crap)!! which was in large part why in the last thread i was thinking of the two as different.
and for what its worth, to say they had global economy might be a bit of a stretch, too. trade occured throughout the known world - but for one thing there was no such thing as a globe, and for another travelling to the other end of the known world wasn't exactly what it was even lets say 300 years later (much less compared to now).
also for what its worth, one of the things i had in mind in terms of the difference between Cathedrals and mega churches...along the lines of this consumerism thing, acutally...was that the church services prey on the what some have termed "the surplus of desire." in other words, the megachurch service doesn't so much operate on "if you wanna kiss the sky, better learn how to neal" as much as "if you wanna kiss the sky, jump real high." you could point to certain aspects of a cathedral to say that they work off the "jump" principle, and to some degree it is measured by the person (whether the person operates off the "jump" or "neal" principle), but...this was, primarily, the part that I was saying in a cathedral is "just different."
4:43 AM
neal is a person's name. i meant kneel, of course :) wow. brain farts are so blinding...its like a foggy cloud blocking your vision, ha ha.
4:46 AM
maybe brain farts are like fog on a mystical Unknowing morning.
or in the misty Unseen East brain farts are more like smog than fog. all i know is my brain fart turned my kneeling to nealing and my thinking to stinking.
6:06 AM
notably - despite my pleas here in favor of the cathedrals - one of my favorite places in europe when i was travelling there studying archiecture was abbey du thoronet:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64479867@N00/304825540/
whose sanctuary, btw, was a lot like a Gothic cathedral, except simpler and smaller. notably while i was there one of the tour guides was singing/chanting medieval style. it gave chill bumps.
interestingly, however, another of my favorites was the cathedral in Como, Italy:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/truusbobjantoo/2101127956/
what's beautiful about it is hard to see in any photographs. the harmony...its moving...
but that's beside the point of df on the power stuff.
11:35 AM
If you asked your five people, "What is the religious meaning behind Christmas or Easter?" would they know? Sure, people are basically Biblically illiterate today but I do think that most have basic religious vocabularies and basic understandings of the main stories. I have run into many people in Europe who don't even have a clue that Easter has anything to do with Christianity, I don't think you'd find that level of post-Christianity in the US.
Yes, there is confusion as to what the Gospel/Good News is, but I don't think that
I have talked with people in
12:22 PM
anicius unfortunately i couldn't see all of your comment...from what i could see, however...good point. i'd say sue probably knows the meaning of christmas but not easter. my sister MIGHT know the meanding of easter (probably, maybe, not sure). i'd say Bud probably knows christmas but not easter. Ken probably knows neither, i would guess, but he may know christmas.
that said, though...as DF has pointed out elsewhere...the basic consciousness and "law" of our society is certainly becoming less and less christian, rather quickly it seems.
6:13 PM
yes ... just to be clear ... post Christendom as I refer to it ... does not refer to the whole United States ... definitely not the south ... likeiwse, in U.S. ... it certainly does not imply peole do not know who Jesus Christ is. It just implies that Jeusu Christ is seen understood held captive by post Christendom language. Jesus is "another way," a self=help progam etc...
6:31 PM
well that would certainly describe L.A.
8:43 PM
oh but/and DF (and anicius)...the "another way" thing...that would also definitely describe my work environment here in VA (norfolk/VA Beach area)...i think its more prevalent now than when i moved away (to Los Angeles) 5/6 yrs. ago.
9:09 PM
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