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Attention to Space Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site. Most of the time when the issue of space is raised within church circles our minds go to either: those churches that are growing in average attendance and activities and are beginning to need more space to comfortably accommodate those in attendance, or those churches that are declining in average attendance and activities and now have growing amounts of space that they do not need. However, at a recent Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) cluster event Marietta Community Chapel, a congregation in the Lancaster Mennonite Conference, reported on their use of another kind of space…belonging space. In the Second Phase of PMC (the Experimenting Phase) the Marietta Community Chapel had identified as their adaptive challenge “to find ways to improve connectedness and assimilation within the fellowship at Marietta Community Chapel”. In their work of unpacking the adaptive challenge their Missional Engagement Team (MET) read The Search to Belong in which the author, Joseph R. Myers identifies four types of belonging space: public, social, personal and intimate. As the MET at Marietta Community Chapel did its work they discovered that what Myers stated in his book was also true for them: “Unwittingly we have promoted two exclusive environments of belonging: Large (Public) and small (intimate). This does not lead to healthy belonging.” (Page 62) They discovered an underlying assumption that real spiritual growth and connection only takes place in the small, intimate settings, causing personal and social settings to be ignored and undervalued in church programming. Myers also pointed out that moving everyone toward intimate settings is often a goal of churches, but this is unrealistic for several reasons, including the fact that intimate connection only happens with one or two people, and sometimes people are not interested or ready to be at that place. Additionally, persons cannot be forced into sacred places of connection, but space can be created that might allow those friendship to emerge organically. The MET made a decision to try an experiment; they began to promote small groups that would combine the social and personal belonging space. They then asked the congregation for ideas for “interest groups” and for volunteers to lead those groups. From October to early December nine interest groups were held, including:
These groups functioned for a specific period of time (with a clear ending time, which lowered initial commitment). In their reflection on the experiment Marietta Community Chapel learned:
The pastoral team then declared January as “Nexus” month, encouraging people within the congregation to take initiative to connect with people they do not know well…someone within the church, a neighbor, a co-worker. The goal, “to create space in our lives for relationships.” In mid-February the congregation was given a chance to share their experiences at a Sunday morning worship service. Several stories were shared, including three families that told about connections they had made with neighbors and friends outside the church. Through the simple sharing of these stories several other people within the congregation were encouraged to think beyond themselves. Paying attention to the space between social space and personal space as a place to develop belonging reminded me of a story that I read some time ago about a few elderly gentlemen in a particular congregation that decided to start an interest group around their passion for model railroading. Some of the youth in the congregation got hooked, and soon they were inviting friends who were not a part of any church to come with them. After some months the group, made up of elderly men and youth, needed more dedicated physical space to expand their model railroading passion. Together they found a store-front building. Together they found a way to continually add on to, update and modify the layout. Together they decided when the store would be open and who would be there. Together they found ways to share the Gospel as they worked. The use of personal passion grew into a ministry where personal space was combined with social space to develop relationships that crossed all sorts of social boundaries. As Christians we believe that God has created humans to live in relationship, with God, with other humans, with all of nature. Missional congregations often seem to pay attention to the belonging space (the place where relationships are developed) when combining personal space with social space. What kind of spaces are you creating within the missional ministry of your congregation for the development of relationships that the people in your communities are craving? John Mueller Nowell is Church Innovations' Director of Consulting. |
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