We are coming up quickly on the end of this tour through Alan Hirsch latest contribution to the recovering of a missional movement in the western Church. Today we look at the final chapter and the sixth major element of mDNA (missional DNA).

The chapter opens with three quotes, two of which you may have seen rotating through my own quote bot at top right. Here is the best one: "It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly seeking, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. We are explorers..." Command Ben Sisko, Deep Space Nine

As we work through the chapter I'll point up some parallels to the work Alan Roxburgh did in The Sky is Falling. Roxburgh spent three chapters discussing various aspects of Communitas in relation to liminality, the church and cultural shift.

The title of this eighth chapter is Communitas, not Community. That's telling, of course, since Alan's agenda is partly to contrast what we have known in our settled, and generally attractional, Christendom mode as opposed to the incarnational-missional movement that Jesus is recovering in His Church. We might have known some elements of community, but here in the west we have rarely experienced communitas.

Alan understands the difference well. As his own faith community, South Melbourne Restoration Community, experienced growth they attracted a large group of middle class Christians. That group began to define their existence and their ethos, which became increasingly maintenance and attraction. But that heralded the loss of communitas and the death of a missional ethos. So what is communitas?

"Liminality and Communitas" was the title of the essay by Victor Turner (1969). Turner's concept denoted intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging, often in connection with rituals. In communitas, people stand together "outside" society, and society is strengthened by this otherness. The concept is in many ways the opposite of Marx's alienation and is closely related to Durkheim's ideas about the "sacred" (vs. the "profane").

"Communitas as a social form alternates with "normal" social structure, and is, according to Turner's theories, not limited to the liminal phase in rites de passage. Many social phenomena are difficult to place within the rites de passage model of separation, liminality and reintegration, [but] may more naturally be considered a form of "anti-structure", alternating with normal social structure. Turner detached the phenomena liminality and communitas from the model for transitional rituals (Turner 1969). The two social models exist simultaneously in a society, and no normal society can function adequately without this dialectic with communitas (Turner 1967:129). The alternation between the two states follows successively and is enforced naturally." (Definition quoted from: Eggen, Øyvind: Troens Bekjennere: Kontinuitet og endring i en læstadiansk menighet, translated by Finn Sivert Nielsen.)

In The Sky is Falling Roxburgh talks about rites of passage, writing that, "Communitas describes a latter, potential phase of Liminality. Communitas is about what can happen to the relationships among a divergent group undergoing discontinuous change together." (102) Discontinuous change refers, in part, to loss of cultural stability. When the culture shifts rapidly and roles are disembedded, we are thrown into Liminality and anxiety and chaos ensue. People or societies in a liminal phase are a "kind of institutional capsule or pocket which contains the germ of future social developments, of societal change" (Turner, 1982:45).

Turner describes five stages of liminality. Later in the liminal process the tension between anti-structure and structure becomes acute. One group will desperately seek to return the system to stability and equilibrium. Another will continue to fight against structure, thereby undermining the creative dynamic of liminality. Roxburgh argues that this is where dialogue is needed and has the potential to assist in the birth of something new. "Communitas is a new kind of commons, an open space where we might discover and learn from one another in powerfully innovative ways… The commons is an archaic, unfamiliar idea.. [it] refers to those spaces (land, ideas, values, relationships) open to ordinary people. They are collectively owned." (Roxburgh, 109)

The difference between Roxburgh and Hirsch appears here. Where Hirsch appreciates this new common space and its importance for reimagining church, he sees it as a fixture in the life of a missional movement; not temporary, but a part of missional DNA. Roxburgh, with Turner, sees it as part of a transitional phase. On the other hand, Hirsch recognizes that liminality is virtually impossible to maintain. The history of Christianity is a movement through liminality to stability and back to liminality. That movement can be found cycling through the life of faith communities in a single generation. It's hard to remain on the edge. (And this would be a good place to recall the work of Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Niebuhr demonstrated how affluence and upward mobility cause us to shy away from risk and generate conservativism).

Alan discusses the necessity of risk and adventure in a living and vital movement, and notes that Jesus "had nowhere to lay his head." It's not difficult to see that those interested in maintaining the status quo have too much invested to risk change, and that settled and institutionalized organizations prefer stable roles, professional managers over innovation and leadership, and work to minimize risk. In contrast, Alan quotes David Bosch,

“Strictly speaking one ought to say that the church is always in a state of crisis and that its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it. This ought to be the case because of the abiding tension between the church's essential nature and its empirical condition... That there were so many centuries of crisis-free existence for the Church was therefore an abnormality... And if the atmosphere of crisislessness still lingers on in many parts of the West, this is simply the result of a dangerous delusion. Let us also know that to encounter crisis is to encounter the possibility of truly being the Church. (Transforming Mission, 2) Alan moves from here to look at film and literature to try to get a handle on the nature of communitas. He looks at The Lord of the Rings and Finding Nemo. Nemo reminds us of the insights from biology. Stable systems inevitably decay, and organisms which manage to avoid all stress become weak and subject to disease. "Use it or lose it" is a good line to remember. Apart from an element of danger and challenge, we simply don't do well in this world. Alan writes,

"Without any real engagement from the outside world churches quickly become sheltered artificial environments, ecclesial fish tanks that are safeguarded from the danger of the surrounding environment. They become closed systems with their own peculiar cultures that have little relational, social and cultural associations to the world outside.... Want to test this? I heard recently that 80 percent of kids brought up in Christian youth groups who then go on to university lose their faith in the first year!" (230)

Alan reminds us that equilibrium precedes death, and that one of the roles of leadership is to destabilize the system to allow new life to emerge. One could almost wish for the eleventh and twelfth chapters from The Shaping of Things to Come to be tacked on here.. "Imagination and the Leadership Task," and "Organizing the Revolution."

Alan closes the chapter with a consideration of "organizing principles." These form the center around which a group structures its life: its mission and purpose. The "settled" community exists for itself; the missional community exists for others. Harking back again to "Shaping," Alan recalls the dualistic mindset that has prevailed; while the mindset is now largely understood, the practices which grow out of dualism are still common. The earlier diagram is now enhanced with the addition of "communitas" to the missional-incarnational center.

Alan references Karl Barth in the closing pages. Barth recognized the need for adaptation and change when he gave guidance to a pastor in Marxist Germany in the 1950s…

“No, the church’s existence does not always have to possess the same form in the future that it possessed in the past as though this were the only possible pattern.

“No, the continuance and victory of the cause of God which the Christian Church is to serve with her witness, is not unconditionally linked with the forms of existence which it has had until now.

“Yes, the hour may strike, and perhaps has already struck when God, to our discomfiture, but to his glory and for the salvation of mankind, will put an end to this mode of existence because it lacks integrity.

“Yes, it could be our duty to free ourselves inwardly from our dependency on that mode of existence even while it still lasts. Indeed, on the assumption that it may one day entirely disappear, we should look about us for new ventures in new directions.

“Yes, as the Church of God we may depend on it that if only we are attentive, God will show us such new ways as we can hardly anticipate now. And as the people who are bound to God, we may even now claim unconquerably security for ourselves through him. For his name is above all names…” Letter to a Pastor in the German Democratic Republic, in How to Serve God in a Marxist Land (New York: Association Press, 1959) 45-80


CLICK HERE TO READ PARTS: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5/6 - 7