Introduction: The Loss of Community
How do we
develop community, especially Christian community? This question is
the question of our day in a way that it perhaps has never been in the history
of humankind. From the invention of the automobile to Smartphones
and Covid, community has been torn from the heart of our modern society.[1] Church
attendance has declined steadily as well. Those communal
institutions, such as schools and universities, have recently become hotbeds of
hate, the inevitable result of Progressivism.[2]
Many
Evangelical churches have contributed to the breakdown of community beyond
their shuttering churches during Covid. As Evangelicals abandoned
the mainline denominations in the 1970s-2010 that themselves abandoned
historic, Christian theology and ethics, some formed Evangelical
denominations. Many, however, became independent churches, lacking a
larger, institutional community structure that could accomplish what was needed
for missions and ministry, youth groups, camps, and K-12 education, including
denominational ministry training in seminaries. For many, the most
successful independent church was the large megachurch in which some
opportunities for community were possible precisely because of their
size. On the other hand, for many, if not most, these large gatherings
reduced church community to a one hour, once a week worship service, and the
community experienced around this was a ten minute chat after
worship. Making matters even worse, to build the large megachurch, a
‘Seeker Service’ notion of ‘church’ took urban areas by storm around the world,
from the United States to Singapore, from Australia to South Africa, from the
United Kingdom to Kenya. These churches not only reduced community
to a worship service, they also reduced worship to a surface level of Christian
veneer meant to attract non-believers. The result was that community
lacked depth of conviction and was replaced with social interaction. An aberration in Christian community also
surfaced in the notion of a multicultural church. As it turns out, community meant to be
inclusive around diversity of ethnicities introduces race as a formative and
definitive component of communal relations that undermines the focus of the
Church on Jesus Christ. Community
becomes an end in itself and is humanistic rather than purposeful and
Christocentric.[3]
To answer the
question, ‘How do we develop community?’ in a time such as ours, I return to
several periods in my life where I discovered meaningful
community. One was growing up on the edge of a town in Africa, where
neighbours, schools, Boy Scouts, and the veldt developed me in joyful
friendships of a by-gone era. Without television, we played board
games, read together, played and exercised together, and in many such ways
experienced community. Another time in my life where I experienced a
higher level of community was in our village life in England, and this is the
basis for my reflection on community in this essay.
Village
Community and Its Lessons
Our village in
rural Oxfordshire was only two hundred years old. It was less
developed than the surrounding villages, but it still had the rudiments of what
constituted a community doing life together before the invention of the motor
car.
Shortly after
moving to the village, the surviving food shop closed. It had been
conveniently located across the street from the Church of England Primary
School. Parents would walk their children to and from the school,
and they could pick up their basics on the way. Milk was delivered
to our front door in the early morning, and the milkman picked up some of the
slack left by the departing shop. He also delivered bread and a few
other basics upon order. A neighbouring farm sold
eggs. How long this had been the case I do not know, but it was located
off ‘Cuckoo Lane’!
Village life
centred around the Primary School. Twice a day, parents greeted one
another with their children on the way to and from school. They
chatted together while waiting for the afternoon school bell, making light
conversation that sometimes turned into deeper relationships. Plans
were made for children to play together or meet at the market town’s leisure
centre for racket ball lessons or a swim. It was in this way that my
wife pulled together a group of women to meet weekly to discuss Christian
parenting, start an afterschool Christian programme for the children, and pull
together a group that met in the Anglican church for a preschool children’s
group. Community life evolved out of the necessary gathering
together around the life of our children, and this community life was the basis for
Christian witness, ministry, and life together.
Off the main
road, the village had a lovely Anglican church, with its
graveyard. People were reminded of the temporality of this life and
the higher calling of the life to come in the midst of everyday
life. Life is about more than the present and more than work and
play. Few people attended the church, but they could not escape its
witness to something more than temporal pursuits. A deeper reflection on life beckons people to wider purposes that require communal life of a certain sort. A block away stood
the little Methodist Church. John Wesley had been active in these
parts of Oxfordshire. The Methodist church was nothing so grand as the Anglican church, and by its modesty it had its own witness in context: God
does not dwell in the institution of the Church built by the wealthy and
powerful but in the hearts of men and women. Wesley built community around Bible study, the pursuit of holiness, and deep Christian fellowship, ministry, and witness.
Near the
Methodist church was the village green. Many villages placed the green in a
more central and prominent place, as in the neighbouring market
town. There, the grand Anglican church stood towering over the
green, both statements about the centrality of community for a
town. Our green was tucked behind the Methodist church, but my
children and I built lovely memories of cricket practice, playing at the
playground, and cycling down by the commons, and villagers met for football and cricket matches. In much earlier days, people also met at the end of the village at 'Wrestlers' Field'. In-person, local sport creates community.
As life would
have it, we had to tear ourselves away from our beloved village some years
later and move to a new community development on the edge of an American
city. Our home was in the countryside just outside, and for necessary trips to the shops we could not help comparing how very different this new concept of town was from the English village or town. At its centre were shops and a golf course. A
dangerous four lane road ran through the community, which was really only
friendly to those with an automobile. Pedestrians beware! Instead of the church were
shops; instead of the commons was a membership golf course around which were
built wealthy homes--private palaces that easily isolated people from their neighbours. Spirituality was ripped out of the central life of the
community, and even any sort of community was barely possible around a coffee shop, theater, and
ice cream shop. Of course, our English market town had a bustling
High Street with little shops, restaurants, a library, and a large grocery
store. Yet the High Street led up, not down, the hill to the
buttercross, green, and church.
Our English
village was surrounded by two copses and several farm fields. By
English law, footpaths were permitted around fields so that people could walk
from one village to another. Rambling through the fields and
forests, past streams and rivers, taking in the beauty of the countryside or
scrambling about some ruins from the Roman or Elizabethan era provided
opportunities to converse with walking partners, or just to build father-son
relationships. I venture to suggest that
beauty, especially creation’s beauty, is important for human flourishing. Yet beauty is something best shared, and
therein is another key to community. The
trashy songs of Evangelical worship bands have replaced the magnificent music
of the church, its choirs and congregational hymn singing. The warehouse church architecture, economical
and functional as it is, fails to lift the soul to God as village churches once
did. (I suggest that cathedrals failed
to do so, despite the intention, as they drew the worshipper more to the human
achievement in itself rather than point people to God. That’s me.)
Finally, our
village produced a community that churches do as well through its greater
relationships than with just one group of peers. It is, firstly, a community of all ages that
help and benefit from one another. We
even had a retirement home on the edge of the village in a lovely old manor
with a beautiful garden. Churches, too,
need to bring people of all ages into each others’ lives. Our village did not have a public house, which is a weaker version of local community fellowship and is not the greatest place for children. Yet it was, as the name implies, offers communal fellowship around food and drink that is far stronger in the church and represented at the Lord's Table when rightly celebrated.
The English
villages developed community well well for younger children, but teenagers and college
students leaving the villages came under the lure or spell of the decrepit
culture that England has become in its defiantly post-Christian pursuits. What made the village a wonderful place for
families with young children failed to carry children through high school. We lived in England before the Smartphone or
TikTok, the ‘social networking’ that builds false community and leaves too many
youth isolated, anxious, and despairing.
The problem was that the central pieces of community, still evident but
not fully or properly functioning in the village, were already crumbling
because of television, rejection of Christianity, weak families, the Church of
England’s pursuit of the world’s values, and so forth. That is, the village community points to
elements of community, but it was too compromised to sustain communal life for
its youth.
The village
model for the church not only needs to prepare children for life in the wider
world but also to support them in their post-village journey. This is where other institutions,
organisations, activities, and so forth need to be set in place and experienced
early to support and sustain the children.
Communal practices need to have become habits, and relationships need to
be sustained. Strong families and
friendships of all ages, good practices, a clear vision, strong values, and good
character are developed through community opportunities that extend beyond the
village. As the village relates to the
market town and the market town to the city, so the village church relates to
the town church and the town church to the cathedral. Each offers or can offer additional levels
and opportunities for community. The
local church needs the larger Church, which needs good institutions such as Christian
schools, Christian groups at university, camps, training as Christians for a
variety of services, ministries, and missions, Christian scouting (Boy Scouts, which I loved as a boy, is no longer an institution I would trust), and so on.
Conclusion
My
grandchildren will grow up worshipping in churches, I am pleased to say, but the
challenges that they face in their culture and context are so great that the
church needs to figure out how to be a stronger community, not just believe,
do good things, and worship correctly—all of which are essential for a healthy community,
of course, but not enough.
I leave this
narrative of my own experience of what developed community without trying to
draw out a plan to fit all contexts. I could attempt to draw points
or lessons out more directly, but they would apply differently to different
readers in their different contexts. A reader in a New England
village would read this differently from someone in a Southern town in
America. A reader in an English village would feel the strain on
community in our day, but not to the extent of or in the same way as a reader
in an Oxford, let alone Hong Kong. So, it is probably best to leave the
narrative as it is, hoping that it might spur some discussion one way or
another for those reading it. The village offers various dimensions of community that might help Christians think through the challenges they face in an age so deficient in community. Of course, only the Biblical and theological teaching on the Church and its community is authoritative, but I find my English village provides a vision for community that encourages reflection on what we need to develop Christian community.
[1] For a sociological analysis of this, see Jonathan
Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the
Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (London:
Penguin Books, 2024).
[2] Progressivism’s
‘inclusion’ leads to a reordering in which new groups are socially included
while others are excluded, and its identity politics involves stereotyping and
collectivism that introduces tribalism. It also marches to Marxist
ideology that divides individuals into groups, the oppressors and the
oppressed. Its social theory—Critical Theory—places people in
generational, historical, racial, and gender categories that define one despite
claims that one can choose one’s identity. Consequently, there is no
grace and no forgiveness, just guilt, punishment, exclusion, and oppression
from an ideology that begins with ‘inclusion’ as a prime value.
[3]
Some of my writing on this subject has appeared on this blog:
·
How and Why
Paul Avoided Celebrating 'Diversity' as a Christian Value--and Why This Matters
for Us
https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2021/07/how-and-why-paul-avoided-celebrating.html
·
Not
'Multicultural Diversity' but 'Cultural Transformation': A Christian Reflection
on Culture
https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2021/02/not-multiculturalism-but-cultural.html
·
The Church
is Not a Zoo: Unity, Not Diversity, is the Church's Communal Value
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6624706296388983899/4739873931284250808
·
The Rise
of Identity Ecclesiology
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6624706296388983899/5741602830197974311
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