Jason Evans 15 October 2008 Articles, Featured, RE:church 1,520 views 7 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

I will start by stating what will be obvious to some: we don’t control the Church. We are co-workers with Christ, but it is not ours, it is God’s. In this way, the 2nd Principle for Co-operatives is not universal for Christian faith communities. But I still believe that these principles are worthy of reflection…

2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control
Co-operatives are democratic organizations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and co-operatives at other levels are also organized in a democratic manner.

It is certainly easier to go the way of theological and/or ecclesiological coercion–allowing only a few to determine the outcomes for the many. Building consensus is time consuming and it most often requires sacrifice from all parties involved. When our community began a conversation on economics, I figured we could talk about it for a month, covering everything I thought was important… Instead, we spent almost four months talking about it.

It is worth reflecting on our motives to move away from the kind of democratic control that co-ops embody. We need to ask ourselves, “Is there any impatience and selfishness driving me away from consensus building?”

I wrote an article a few months back in which I quoted Chris Seay from an interview I conducted with him. For the sake of this discussion, I quote him again:

“We tend to subdivide the Body in a way that has no natural relationships or interaction because we’re built on felt-need models. Instead, single people need to learn from married people; young marrieds without kids should learn from married people with kids; and married people with kids should learn from married people with grown kids.”
(read the article)

Our tendency towards subdividing the Body disables the collective wisdom we have together. When we do not subdivide we learn from each other; we learn to dialog, to listen and to empathize–we learn to make decisions together, to work together more holistically. Yes, there are those that have been educated and trained in theology and biblical studies but this does not mean that they ought to exercise control over all outcomes. A few years ago, blogger Andrew Jones (aka Tall Skinny Kiwi) wrote an article on theOOZE called this theological dictatorship:

“Tyranny thrives in a vacuum of passivity. Finds its voice inside an intimidated silence. It cannot live under the lively chatter of dinner-table conversation. Dictators cannot bully themselves to the front when leadership is valued by character instead of rank, and is distributed out to the right people for the right moment. Like ducks flying in formation, until the change, when another duck takes the lead for the present direction. Ducks have leadership. Just not the One Leader who leads all the time. And for every thing. And every direction.” (emphasis mine)

On the day of Pentecost, Peter quotes the prophet Joel whose vision of the day of the Lord pictured an egalitarian outpouring of the Spirit of God on young and old, male and female. This dream of a community that embraces all is what Paul consistently speaks of: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” As Cavanaugh points out, Paul is not saying that our diversity is erased, rather the inequities within our diversity are exposed. But it also needs to be noted that the gifts of our diversity are brought together for the benefit of all as well: “Because there is one loaf, our many-ness becomes one-ness—Christ doesn’t become fragmented in us. Rather, we become unified in him.” (1 Corinthians 10:15, The Message)

If this be the case, than why would we organize ourselves in a manner that stifles the voice of the collected Body? I don’t mean to assume that all of our Christian structures are designed to do so. But lacking the wisdom to consistently reflect on whether or not our systems empower the “royal priesthood” exposes a lack of concern for this–leaving room for those that would abuse the system to do so.

What does it look when we move towards a more democratic polity? It’s messy! It means that we acknowledge that the Spirit of God speaks through each and everyone of us–even the kids. It means we move towards structures that allow people to find their voices and learn to discern together. It requires that we learn to listen and communicate better within the a local community (which you don’t have to visit too many churches to find out how bad of a job we do at this internally most of the time). It teaches humility to those of us that are used to having a platform.

In our community, I am surrounded by children, single young adults still in college and folks much older than I. It is humbling when a young college student says something that I feel like I should have. It can be frustrating when an older gentleman urges us to restrain from something I feel we should do. But if it weren’t for this kind of structure, a mentally disabled friend of ours would never feel as though his presence was necessary. The homeless mystic would not have a space to offer his wisdom. And the young child would not be heard as she speaks wisdom beyond her years. More and more, I am struck by just how much more we learn from the presence of the disabled, the marginalized, the young, the old or the homeless than from anything I bring to the table.

Does this mean that we do not have leadership? I don’t think so. I have talked to a lot of “house church” people who deny the need for leadership, which is either naive or ignorant in my opinion. There are always those that lead within a community, whether it is acknowledged leadership or not, and often momentarily as Andrew Jones explains. The difference here is that we are talking about leadership that is given rather than assumed. This approach to leadership is not simply the practice of co-ops, but is also rooted in Christian traditions, such as Anabaptism. As our little “collective” grows we are struggling to keep aware of this and it is not easy. But, still, we feel we must try. We are asking ourselves questions about how leadership that represents a particular community gathers with other representative leaders. But as well, we are asking how all of these communities gather so that we do not create a system in which only the leaders communicate from one community to another. Our first experiments in re-organizing ourselves in this manner were with our dear friends of Matthew’s House. Founding leader, Rick Horton used to say something that has always stuck with me and I believe still rings true, “We have one vision, but many voices.”

NOTE: This is the third article in the Church As A Co-op series. The others can be found here:
• Introduction
• 1st Principle

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