I was reading recently that the word organic is being unbindingly barred from use in some academic/professional circles. Apparently it’s use has becomes so muddied that people are unwilling to accept it as a word that has any implied meaning anymore. Of course there’s always that wonderful semiotics debate that is to be had with words and their meanings but we all know semiotics is pointless anyway. The point is still to be made that once a word becomes popular, like organic so recently has, it always runs the risk of losing any real meaning. But that’s not to say that it doesn’t have some value it’s just that like anything overplayed or used it takes someone who knows it’s proper place to reign it back in and give it life once again.
It’s funny that while organic as come under great scrutiny so has the current methods of church body participation. You can hardly go anywhere now and not find a church that’s trying to in some way wrestle with the idea of meeting the needs of today’s culture. One of those ways is in small groups but there’s a lot of questions people have about these. What do they look like? Who should be in them? Do they have value? How big should they be? What is their purpose? These are all questions that beg us to wonder what churches will look like over the next 50 years. Not too long ago I was talking with a church leader and I was pointing out this trend towards small groups and house groups and the ever growing need to think and talk about it’s value for our church body. In his frustration he blurted out “If we start doing all of these small groups people will not want to meet in churches anymore?” I looked at him slyly and said, “Exactly!” It’s funny that while many would be hard pressed to argue that churches have maintained a consistent look for any real amount of time, people are content to see them as unchanging entities. I’m sure there’s all sorts of wonderful ideas to explain this phenomenon but I will leave that to others to ponder. What I’m interested in is this growing conversation about small groups that is beginning to incorporate these tones of being organic, natural, communal, missional, and emergent. I don’t think it’s so much a fad as it is a growing need for a vocabulary that is trying to put to words a vision that is still quite fuzzy.
I’ve been quite fascinated with the emerging/emergent church movement as of late in it’s growth. More than anything I’m fascinated with it’s push back to small groups of people. But these groups are not so much interested in doing small groups in the ways churches have been doing it for the last 20 years but are more interested in this unstructured quality that brings people together. What fascinates me is the question of its sustainability. I had a conversation today with a friend on whether spontaneous natural community can lead to meaningful small groups or for that matter churches. While it seems to the casual reader possibly a fixation on semantics its the words that people have been using that have made the conversation so tricky. A care group, small group, or house group use to be called the same thing. But now it seems that a great distinction is being made. It’s this refusal to be lumped together that I see as being the next major shift in Christianity today.