TheBolgBlog

The Stretching of Social Space

I had already been up this morning, typing on the computer.  My nine year-old son came out from his bedroom and said "I miss Chris." My son rarely expresses this kind of emotion, feelings reserved for cousins and very special friends. "I know, I miss him too. I thought he was really funny."

Doesn't sound that unusual, but the thing is, my son has never met Chris, at least physically. Chris Sligh was just voted off American Idol. We started watching the show a few weeks into the season this year,and we got hooked. In these past few episodes, my son felt connected to him, relating to him in a special way.

One thing I talk about in my classes is how modernity stretches space. Many many years ago, the space we shared with people always meant the sharing of physical space. Over the few hundred year span of modernity, more and more of our social world dealt with those at a distance from us, either across the town or across the world. Moreover, many of these people with whom we connected we did not even know, in the face-to-face conventional sense.

As Christian leaders, we spend the bulk of our time thinking about serving those with whom we share physical space. However, if physically proximate space is the only sphere in which we think missiologically, we might leave much of our social world untouched and 'secular'. Missional thinking, if it is to recognize that 'the earth is the Lord's' and thereby all realms are candidates for redemption, must increasingly focus on faceless relationships as well as the face-to-face, on American Idol as well as the relationships in the home...

Technorati Tags: American Idol, Chris Sligh, everyday life, Social Space

The Carnivalistic Life

I've been doing a good amount of reading on culture this quarter for the class I'm teaching. I ran into this writing on carnivals by Mikhail Bakhtin. He wrote that in the medieval carnival, there was no separation between performers and spectators. In fact, performers were really not performers at all; instead, they lived in this carnivalesque space. Much more than a performance, the carnival was a life lived. Both 'spectator' and 'performer' held their roles lightly in this newly shared space.

Bakhtin went on to explain that all the oppressive conditions of everyday life -- and there were plenty in medieval Europe -- were suspended during the carnival. Revelry replaced terror, laughter replaced gloominess, abundance replaced scarcity, freedom replaced all restrictions. All social inequalities, hierarchical structures, and rules of social distance were set aside as well. The carnival space combined "the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant, the wise with the stupid."

When I read this, I immediately thought about a comment I heard from Karen Ward, how her community "plays in the kingdom", i.e. practices heaven. In their church life together, they are more than simply performers -- they participate in a life lived under a different logic, they indwell a different time and space, a future time, the 'now and not yet', the rule and reign of God.

I wondered, as followers of Jesus, how we might create these free zones, these spaces where the oppression of the world does not reign. I was thinking not only in our times of meeting together but separately as well, in our workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, parks. How do we create this alternative space where hierarchies are not observed, where everyone has a voice, where people experience liberation, where laughter is frequent, where the terror is lifted, even for just a few moments? What if our 'witness' is not a performance but the creation of an alternative space, a space that does not yield to the powers of this world but strives to point to the next?

Technorati Tags: Bakhtin, carnival, Fuller Theological Seminary, Karen_Ward, kingdom of God, Social Space

Transforming Secular Space

Tom Kay has some reflections on transforming secular space that I wanted to piggy-back on. He had mentioned one of my posts regarding transforming secular space for worship. He reflected on what this might mean for the community. He is "spot on" as the Brits say -- I see the transformation of secular space in the community at-large as one of the key marks of the Emerging Church. It is one of the ways that separates the movement from traditional, New-Paradigm (Vineyard, Calvary Chapel), Cell, House, Seeker, and Purpose-Driven varieties.

These churches mentioned do not transform secular space for the reason that, like most Christendom churches, they accepted the marginal status that late modernity bequeathed to them. A 'come to us' stance might have still had some substance in the 12th century when the church spoke to all of life, when the life of the church formed much of the narrative of everyday life, when the secular did not exist. However, over the span of modernity, the church was continually pushed to the social margins. Moreover, the church began to accept another dualism, not only could they not speak to the issues of society, they could not speak to physical reality at all -- what became of utmost importance were issues of the head and heart. The church gave all other reality over to 'the secular'. What makes a church modern, even today, is the acceptance of these modern dualisms of public/private, visible/invisible, to mention only a couple.

The postmodern, in social terms, is the end of secular space. It is the acknowledgement of the spiritual connectedness of all reality. Emerging Churches look to embody their way of life within postmodern, or holistic, or spiritual cultures. These postmodern missionaries accept the givenness of culture, look for the fingerprints of God there, and hopefully, on their best days, get behind and support the work of God in the unlikeliest places. The rallying cry of Emerging Churches is Psalm 24:1 (I heard this all over England), 'the earth is the lords'. No bad people, no bad parts of town, and no bad times, just those areas waiting/groaning for redemption...to be transformed...to connect with God...