Church As A Co-op: 1st Principle

A while ago, I wrote about looking at the structure of co-operatives as helpful for understanding church. Back then, I wrote:

I have recently been interested in co-operatives as a model for understanding the Church. More specifically, local, geographic expressions of the Church; a congregation. I’ve been reading through the website of the International Co-operative Alliance. While churches cannot qualify as true co-operatives, there are potentially shared values and defining characteristics. I thought I would share some of my thoughts on those commonalities.

I’d like to start this up again by looking at the ICA’s first principle which is stated on their site as follows:

1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership
Co-operatives are voluntary organizations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.

As Christians, we often are not as inclusive and welcoming as this statement encourages. We often expect others to believe certain things and behave a certain way before we allow them to belong, to be welcomed amongst us. What would it look like for churches to begin practicing radical inclusion? What if we put a value on first making room for the “other?”

Radical Inclusion
Many are aware of my relationship with Matt Casper, co-author of Jim and Casper go to Church. Matt is an atheist, still Matt and I–along with others that are and have been part of the Collective–often discuss spirituality and it’s place in the world. Through including Matt, welcoming someone whose beliefs are quite contrary to ours, we have learned even more about our faith than we would have without him. I have told Matt that our friendship has made my faith stronger. He has pressed me to think about things that I am simply not challenged to by my fellow Christians. Our friendship is based on a common confession, we both admitted that we could be wrong about some things we believed. It started us on a path to listening to each other, being willing to self-critique and learn from each other. Matt and his co-author refer to this as “dialog over debate.”

Matt isn’t the only person that has had different perspectives on religion, sexuality or politics who have participated in our community life. Each time we have been stretched and our faith has grown deeper. Our Somali Muslim friends have shown us how privileged the Christian religion is perceived by many of the world’s poor. This forced us to ask ourselves how to rightly express and embody God’s preference for the poor. Our Buddhist friend exposed how shallow some of our spiritual practices were. His actions made us desire more space for the Holy Spirit to work in our lives. Our gay friends have shown us what it is to be hated by those that claim Christ. We have been challenged to ask just how defined by love we really are. Our Pagan friend opened our eyes to how much creation cries out in worship of it’s Creator, stirring a deeper appreciation and concern for the natural world within us. People of color in our midst have lovingly directed those of us that are of European heritage towards honest awareness of our privilege and access that others lack.

A willingness to listen and the opportunity to be heard can heal many wounds.

Broadening our acceptance of others does not have to equal shallow discipleship. On the contrary, we have often found that the “other” has often had a deeper appreciation for the call to Christ than those that have been raised in homogeneous, consumer-oriented Christian atmospheres. Referring to Matt again, he has often jokingly told me he isn’t a Christian because he’s too lazy. He has recognized that discipleship to Christ radically alters one’s lifestyle.

Co-creation
In The Source of Life, Jurgen Moltmann writes, “If Christianity is to become aware of what it is, we must abandon the pastoral church, which takes care of people, which is the usual form of the Western church. Instead, we have to call to life a Christian community church. Either we set about this church reform by ourselves, or it will be forced on us by the loss of church members.”

What Moltmann implies is that we have built a church system that is dependent upon the professional, in his words, this is the “pastoral church”. In this environment, the professional, the clergy provide spiritual goods and services to the many. Lay people become consumers and their faith, a casual hobby. What would it look like if we re-imagined all members as clergy–as those called to co-create Christian communities amidst the world?

I think we could start by reflecting on Paul’s words to the church in Corinth, “When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all…” Do our liturgies create space for all to participate rather than be spectators?

Some would think that this approach would simply bring chaos to church life. I don’t think so. Certainly, if we just open the floor without any sense of duty and responsibility for each other, things could get unhealthy quite fast. But if as Peterson interprets, we intend to each bring “something that will be useful for all” or as the ICA states, we each “accept the responsibilities of membership” than we have a metric for what it means to participate equally. At this point, intent rather than content takes precedence, which seems to line up with Jesus’ statements about the woman who washed his feet, or the widow’s coin.

Making space for all of those in a faith community to co-create Christian community addresses a variety of hang-up’s the Church has developed during the era of Enlightenment. It makes contextualizing the Gospel more feasible, it heightens our expectancy of those who call themselves disciples of Christ, it allows people of different backgrounds, life stage, status and capability to equally participate and while different, it is easier than having a paid leader do everything.

Next up: Reflecting on the ICA’s 2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control

Jason Evans is a co-founder of the Ecclesia Collective and a member of the Hawthorn House. He is married to