{"id":21181,"date":"1999-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-10-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/1999\/10\/01\/quest-for-community\/"},"modified":"1999-10-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1999-10-01T00:00:00","slug":"quest-for-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/quest-for-community\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quest For Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/strong> am an eBay addict.\nI may need help. My most recent purchase is one of the first books published\nby my Ph.D. adviser. It has been missing from my library for 20 years. I\ngot this copy for 50 cents. The postage cost more than the book. But for\n$2.50 I reclaimed my pedigree. At eBay, I feel like a kid in a candy store.<\/p>\n\n

The online auction house is one of the wonders of the last decade. From 1995\nto 1998, eBay did no outside advertising; yet it boasted 3.8 million registered\nusers and grew from 289,000 items in 1996 to 2.2 million today. With a\n$23-billion market, eBay is now worth more than Kmart, Toys R Us, Nordstrom,\nand Saks combined.<\/p>\n\n

eBay is so effective because its owners understand postmodern culture. It\nalso alerts us to what the church must do to get the attention and attendance\nof postmodern people.<\/p>\n\n

Just do it!<\/strong>\neBay makes shopping an experience. Journalist Stewart Alsop, analyzing the\nphenomenon, calls it “nail-biting, thrilling fun.” eBay works in our\nexperience-oriented economy. What keeps shoppers returning to a store? Not\njust the products. As one patron said, leaving a new Greenwich Village eatery\ncalled Peanut Butter and Company, “This is very much an experience; it’s\nnot just a sandwich.”<\/p>\n\n

Postmoderns are not willing to live at even an arm’s length from experience.\nThey want life to explode all around them. And the more extreme the better.<\/p>\n\n

Tom Beaudoin, a Gen-X Christian with a theology degree from Harvard and a\nbody piercing, says that piercing and tattooing “reflect the centrality of\npersonal and intimate experience in Xers’ lives.” Tattooing is branding\nin a brand culture, the marking of a spiritual experience.<\/p>\n\n

The pursuit of dreams, emotions, and extreme experience is not unique to\nthis era. Every expression of romanticism in history has tilted toward the\nexperiential. But never before has experience become the currency of a global\neconomic system.<\/p>\n\n

\n \n
\nAmerican Demographics<\/em> (April 1999) esteemed the quest\n for experiential faith one of the nation’s most important cultural trends.\n Yet the numbers turning to the church for guidance in this soul quest are\n becoming fewer and fewer. A spiritual awakening is taking place largely outside\n the Christian church because churches, in the words of journalist Chip Brown,\n “were more interested in repressing ecstatic experience than in nurturing\n it. Rapture (the emotion), not to say healing, was certainly not on the agenda\n of the church I was packed off to each Sunday morning.”<\/td>\n \nLiving in \n EPIC Times<\/strong>\n

To connect with postmoderns, the church will become more:<\/p>\n\n

E<\/strong>xperiential<\/p>\n\n

P<\/strong>articipatory<\/p>\n\n

I<\/strong>mage-driven<\/p>\n\n

C<\/strong>ommunal<\/p>\n\n<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n<\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n

To be sure, experiences can become idolatrous as well as addictive. Postmoderns\ncollect experiences like moderns collect stuff. The church must offer\nChrist-initiated—or what Donald Whitney calls “Scripture-induced”—experiences.<\/p>\n\n

Count me in<\/strong>\nA fellow eBay-er calls the auction site a “participant sport.” I felt such\nan adrenaline rush during my weeklong bidding war over an 1827 pewter communion\ntoken. eBay has made me into a global trader. It’s exhilarating.<\/p>\n\n

At eBay the power belongs to the people, not to the producers. In electronic\ncommerce, the buyer sets the price. It’s the medieval bazaar come to\nlife in cyberspace.<\/p>\n\n

Some call this haggling the “age of participation.” Others call it the\n“horizontal society.” Postmodern people take cues not from those above them\nbut from others around them. There are no more bosses, only clients.<\/p>\n\n

The Web typifies the trend. Online, we’re all experts: we’re all\npriests, we’re all doctors or lawyers or architects, we’re all\nauthorities in whatever we’re chatting about at the moment.<\/p>\n\n

And we’re already seeing its impact in church. The rituals of marriage\nand remembrance are becoming more EPIC.<\/p>\n\n

More than clinking glasses, weddings also feature pull-the-kiss-from-the-hat\nperformances, the surrender of the keys, and couples presenting to each other\nsymbols of the things they bring to their union.<\/p>\n\n

Do-it-yourself funerals are at a record high. More people are burying their\ndead without embalming, mortuaries, or cemeteries. More participatory rites\nare being created alongside official rituals, including ad hoc<\/em> shrines,\nwhite caskets that mourners can sign, and eulogies in which almost everyone\npresent has got to say something.<\/p>\n\n

The problem is no longer onerous taxation without representation. The problem\nnow is worship without participation. In the church, representation simply\nisn’t enough anymore.<\/p>\n\n

Get the picture?<\/p>\n\n

Visit as many of the more than 2 million eBay sites as you want. You’ll\nfind each one has an image of what is for sale. Each image comes to life\nwith story and sometimes music. Each site tries to draw you into a relationship\nwith that image and story.<\/p>\n\n

eBay is not alone in using images to establish relationships. NCR’s\nATM machines are “transforming transactions into relationships” according\nto their ads. Agency.com is dedicated to what it calls “interactive relationship\nmanagement.” Its slogan: “It’s not the medium, it’s the relationship.”<\/p>\n\n

The lesson for the church is simple: images generate emotions and people\nwill respond to their feelings.<\/p>\n\n

Postmodern culture is image-driven. The modern world was word-based. Not\nuntil the fourteenth century did truth become embedded in principles and\npositions. Its theologians tried to create an intellectual faith, placing\nreason and order at the heart of religion. Mystery and metaphor were seen\nas too fuzzy, too mystical, too illogical.<\/p>\n\n

The church now enters a world where metaphor is at the heart of spirituality.\nPropositions are lost on postmodern ears; but metaphor they will hear, images\nthey will see and understand. These come as close as human beings will get\nto a universal language. Indeed, it seems clearer than ever that metaphysics\nis nothing but metaphor.<\/p>\n\n

Someday I will hold up my Bible before a congregation, shake it, and yell\nat the top of my lungs, “This is not a book about propositions and programs\nand principles. This is a book about relationships.”<\/p>\n\n

The church, not Hollywood, ought to be the world’s greatest image factory.\nThe greatest image in the world, the image that draws people into real,\nlife-giving relationship, is the image of God in Jesus the Christ.<\/p>\n\n

I want my community<\/p>\n\n

One of the favorite words used in the context of the Web is “community.”\neBay is in the business of building communities, they say; theirs is less\nan information source than a social medium.<\/p>\n\n

The paradox is this: the pursuit of individualism has led us to this place\nof hunger for community, not of blood or nation but communities of choice.<\/p>\n\n

More than buying and selling, the electronic emporium is about posting messages\non bulletin boards, discovering new friends, and launching relationships\nat the eBay Cafe. One user said, “eBay is bringing people together to do\na lot more than trading goods. We are trading our hearts.”<\/p>\n\n

Don’t laugh.<\/p>\n\n

eBay may just be the closest experience of small-town America available to\npostmoderns. Where else can they find people with similar interests (whale\noil lamps, in my case)? Where else can they be drawn into community around\na single purpose? Where else can they tell the stories most central to who\nthey are and find people eager to hear them? Where else can they participate\nso fully and have their lives changed by the experience?<\/p>\n\n

Nowhere else.<\/p>\n\n

Except, perhaps, the church.<\/p>\n\n

And isn’t that what the gospel is all about?<\/p>\n\n

Leonard Sweet<\/strong> is professor of postmodern Christianity at\nDrew University Theological School\nMadison, New Jersey<\/em>\nLenISweet@aol.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today\/Leadership<\/em> Journal.\nClick here<\/a> for reprint information on Leadership Journal.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am an eBay addict. I may need help. My most recent purchase is one of the first books published by my Ph.D. adviser. It has been missing from my library for 20 years. I got this copy for 50 cents. The postage cost more than the book. But for $2.50 I reclaimed my pedigree. Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[2290],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[154],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[663,664,156],"tax_ctp_tags":[3726,3921,4033,4042,4067,4662,4667,5190],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-21181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-leonard-sweet","tax_publications-1999-leadership-journal","tax_publications-fall_1999-leadership-journal","tax_publications-leadership-journal","tax_ctp_tags-culture","tax_ctp_tags-experiencing-god","tax_ctp_tags-future","tax_ctp_tags-generations","tax_ctp_tags-god","tax_ctp_tags-pop-culture","tax_ctp_tags-postmodernism","tax_ctp_tags-trends"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"\nThe Quest For Community - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I am an eBay addict. 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