Recently finishing a book entitled, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.
I recommend it if you are interested.
One little gem in this book speaks of communities an collectives. Here is the section I find interesting (emphasis added):
A collective is very different from an ordinary community. Whereas communities can be passive (though no all of them are by any means) collectives cannot. In communities, people learn in order to belong. In a collective, people belong in order to learn. Communities derive their strength from creating a sense of belonging, while collectives derive theirs from participation.
This little distinction seems to capture the tension between what I can best describe as modern and post-modern leadership in the Church. Bot a community and a collective have their place, but it seems to me that more and more of my peers and those younger than me (post-moderns) long for collectives.
We live in a Facebook time in which we have a sense of "belonging" (even if it is superficial at times). I have belonging, but I do not have collective.
Each small group that I have been a part of that contains a critical mass of post-moderns builds itself as a community. This is what they have been taught, this is what their parents and their grand parents set up small groups communities. They are groups of people who come together in order to belong to one another. So social activities take precedence over spiritual formation or missional outreach.
And each small group with a critical mass of post-moderns eventually folds under lack of interest.
Could it be that the models of creating community are no longer effective in creating and building a Church?
Could it be that the models of creating collectives are more effective?
Could it be why wikipedia is so popular? It is a collective in which people belong in order to learn. Could it be that Churches who expect people to learn how to belong are building communities which no longer meet the need or address the world?
Could it be that Churches could lead the way in collective building?
It seems to me that Jesus had a collective of 12 and was rejected by his community.
Maybe Jesus was onto something.
I recommend it if you are interested.
One little gem in this book speaks of communities an collectives. Here is the section I find interesting (emphasis added):
A collective is very different from an ordinary community. Whereas communities can be passive (though no all of them are by any means) collectives cannot. In communities, people learn in order to belong. In a collective, people belong in order to learn. Communities derive their strength from creating a sense of belonging, while collectives derive theirs from participation.
We live in a Facebook time in which we have a sense of "belonging" (even if it is superficial at times). I have belonging, but I do not have collective.
Each small group that I have been a part of that contains a critical mass of post-moderns builds itself as a community. This is what they have been taught, this is what their parents and their grand parents set up small groups communities. They are groups of people who come together in order to belong to one another. So social activities take precedence over spiritual formation or missional outreach.
Could it be that the models of creating community are no longer effective in creating and building a Church?
Could it be that the models of creating collectives are more effective?
Could it be why wikipedia is so popular? It is a collective in which people belong in order to learn. Could it be that Churches who expect people to learn how to belong are building communities which no longer meet the need or address the world?
Could it be that Churches could lead the way in collective building?
It seems to me that Jesus had a collective of 12 and was rejected by his community.
Maybe Jesus was onto something.