Form and Function
Marketing guru Seth Godin sparked my thoughts about forms with a blog post this week in which he writes,
“When the form changes, so does the underlying business model, which of course changes the function as well. …
“The question that gets asked about technology, the one that is almost always precisely the wrong question is, ‘How does this advance help our business?’
“The correct question is, ‘how does this advance undermine our business model and require us/enable us to build a new one?’ ...
“When a change in form comes to your industry, the first thing to discover is how it will change the function.”
While I think Godin’s wisdom is applicable to our churches for financial reasons — we absolutely need new “business models” to create sustainable faith communities — I think there’s an even deeper change that’s happening, which greatly affects how new faith communities will function.
That change is the theological shift to being missional: From viewing mission as something churches do to seeing it as something God is doing, and we (as the Church) are privileged to get to participate in.
In his new book The Church Is Flat, ecclesiologist Dr. Tony Jones writes, “What practices cannot do, however, is tell us anything about God. The practices of a community, instead, tell us how a community responds to the work of God.”
Jones uses the theology of Jurgen Moltmann to better understand and challenge the new forms of church being experimented with in the emerging church movement (ECM). He quotes Moltmann, who said (speaking at Ministers’ Week at Candler School of Theology in 1978): “Every change in theory demands a change in practice. Every practice demands a change in theory. Every change in theory and practice must bring a corresponding change in the rituals of life.”
I would argue that the emerging missional church movement — and the theological shift in thinking about God’s mission that undergirds it — is demanding we change our practices, our functions, our forms and ways of being and doing church in this new era. That may sound scary, because it “undermines our business model,” but (as Godin says) it also presents us with an exciting opportunity to build something new, something deeply contextual and relevant/faithful for our time and our place.
Comment
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Comment by Steve K. on October 26, 2011 at 8:20am -
Bob, that's a great point about "continuity," in the midst of change and adaptation. I absolutely agree. I'd love to talk to you more about that, in fact. I'm going to message you about setting up a time to do that!
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Comment by Robert Cornwall on October 26, 2011 at 8:17am -
Steve,
Thanks for the posting. While this transition in self-understanding will demand changes in the way we live and work as church, I think it is also important to recognize that there is also continuity.
One of the strengths of the Disciples heritage is the freedom to change and adapt. That occurred on the frontier. But, as Mark Toulouse notes in his article at Discipliana, the "founders" bought into cultural understandings of the day that blinded them to other realities, including the way in which the church existed through the ages. My hope and prayer is that being missional isn't simply another fad, like the church growth movement of the past era. I also hope that we don't get too caught up in our own sense of being on the right side of history!
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