There are two distinct parts to this church/bar vision, one is (wait for it) the church, and the other is (bet you can't guess) the bar. I'm researching the two separately in the hope that at some point in the future they'll come together.
Okay, let's deal with the 'church' side of things first. In the summer I spent a few days at the Northumbria Community and was really inspired by their monastic approach to Christian community. They have a 'mother house' (the centre up north called Nether Springs), but also a nation-wide network of smaller, dispersed communities that are linked to one another by a common rule of life and core values. Individual members of these mini communities are expected to visit the mother house at least once a year (a pilgrimage, if you will), but other than that they meet independently.
Now I happen to be pretty much obsessed with all things Celtic AND all things monastic, so seeing this model in action started the rusty cogs in my brain tortuously turning. What if this model would work in a bar church setting? What if the bar acted as the centre (...or, to use proper old-school terminology, the 'abbey') in which a community gathered and went out from to perform mission and ministry, setting up mini-communities all over the place???I started to get excited.
Not long after putting this idea down on paper, I had a meeting with a guy called Ray Ashley (Not Rick Astley, as I was tempted to call him), another forlorn dreamer who believes the pubs and churches are made for each other. Ray has been doing some amazing work with his pub church network (http://www.pubchurch.co.uk/) and when we met, it didn't take long to discover that we have a very similar vision. In fact, when I shared with him my 'bar monastery' vision, we realised that we have almost exactly the same vision.
I started to get very excited.
Ray and I have decided to get to know each other over the coming months and to go on some retreats together in order to test our respective visions' compatibility and to see if there's scope for us working together, but the initial signs are looking positive.
Nice one. It is so interesting to see the way God raises up, in each new 'era', new ways of breaking out of our institutional moulds, to create dynamic communities and spawning networks.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of your abbey-monastery metaphor.
However, you know what happened! The Abbey became dominant, and dominating, and an institution.
We need to beware of seeing 'the Abbey' as the 'true church', but as a more mature, resourcing 'church' or community of faith. It has the capacity to spawn lots of satellites of emerging communities of Jesus-followers, but must not become controlling of them.
These emerging communities should be encouraged/taught to see that the are equally 'communities of faith' (or 'churches', if you will), and with the same 'power' as the 'mother' community, to baptise new Jesus-followers, and to eat in fellowship with Jesus and with each other, and to disciple and to pastor each other in the way of Jesus.
And the new communities should be encouraged and challenged by the mother church/community to be looking to the multiplication of even more 'communities' in the near future, and not to become ossified and institutionalised.