I never, ever want to go to a rave as pretentious as a TED talk (I want to believe such a thing does not exist, but I know full well it does…).
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I’m intrigued. Do you subscribe to a religion yourself?
Personally, no.
Well, certainly. And it’s probably useful for theists. If you’re there to associate with like-minded faithful people and worship that deity, then raising your voice in song works great in a bigger crowd. If you feel like your congregation is part of a threatened minority, or if you feel like The End Times Are Upon Us, then there will be great comfort in feeling part of God’s Army, in being a useful cog in His enormous machine.
But that’s not what I’d be looking for in a “church.” If you don’t necessarily want to be a footsoldier in anyone’s army, and you believe talking or singing to the empty uncaring heavens, while pretty, probably won’t accomplish anything particularly practical, and you want your sense of community to feel more like belonging to a family rather than belonging to a large corporation or nation/state, then you’re going to prefer a smaller, more intimate community of reasonably like-minded people.
I would add community gardening plus composting, canning and preserving; bee-keeping; nightly potlucks, crafting and sewing groups, and yoga and Fit-ball (saving injury and medical bills, greater sense of well-being).
Can you build intentional community by defining it with a negative? What rewards would such group activity offer individual participants that is equal to or greater than their own singular pursuits? How would these rewards compare to such high social virtues as ‘busyness’ and ‘rightness’, ‘celebrity’, ‘accumulating wealth’, and other such popular bragging rights? As far as I can tell and I’ve been thinking about this for years, nothing, nothing at all keeps us from beginning except that the rewards of individualism have come to seem much more tangible and likely to get one a pat on the back from peers, than almost any effort toward fostering and growing community. I think people join churches precisely so they don’t have to do all
that intentional thinking for themselves… and I hear the price of child-care is a bargain.
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I like your addenda, although nightly potlucks strike me as awfully frequent. I mean, I like to think of such a congregation as a “family,” but dinner alone with one’s actual family should happen more often, methinks. ;^)
Well, in this case I think you can. Everyone knows what a church is and what social functions it performs. Defining it as a “church without religion” doesn’t make it incomprehensible; a short sentence or two will make clear that it serves all the purposes that churches grew to serve over the last several centuries, only without the liturgy and woo.
As for why anyone would do this stuff when they could conceivably reap greater rewards by going it alone, well, I dunno. I suppose there are godly people who engage in charity and fellowship and helping each other out simply because they believe God wants them to, and that they’d get in dutch with The Big Dude In The Sky if they failed to love thy neighbor enough.
But I do believe that most of us are social animals, and most of us want to collaborate and be involved in a community. Really, what I’m looking for is nothing more than the age-old Community Center you see down by the public library. Y’know, the one that nobody ever uses. The churchy people in my life come for the Jesus and stay for the community, and maybe the reason those local secular Community Centers stand empty so often is that there’s no unifying principle behind them: come to the Community Center because… well, you live nearby and our wood paneling is more inviting than the interior of the DMV at any rate. Plus, we have a shuffleboard court.
I don’t know. There’s a yearning I feel for neighborliness, one that I first addressed last year when I built my Little Free Library. I got to know lots of my neighbors thereby, and that was cool. But I still feel that a regularly-scheduled reason to get together and shoot the breeze, grill some savory meats, and maybe learn from each other, would be a huge, huge benefit to me and my neighbors.
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I’d love to hear more details about your experience. I reserved a ticket for the Oakland congregation tonight, but I’d have to decide if it’s worth the 90 minutes and a belated dinner date.
As usual, Donald, we come at a subject from quite different experiences. You would be happy to just have the opportunity to sit down to more meals with your wife and kids; whereas, I would like to eat in the company of others more often and preferably with familiar faces, but I’d settle for shared dishes eaten at a communal table (without electronic devices!). If nothing else, potlucking would get me out of my recipe rut (a deficit appreciated only by me). “Nightly” within an intentional community usually means you show up with a dish, sit down at a table, eat and enjoy the company (or not), then head on back home or whatever is next. The participation is entirely voluntary, not required.
We can hardly find parking at the Community Centers around here. You don’t hear the crickets chirping (or yourself trying to think) over the cacophony of yak and activity packed into those spaces every day and night, especially at the Senior Center, one of the largest and best equipped spaces in the city. Too much equipment and too many bodies all pursuing their own agendas, determined to make the most of the time and money spent. ‘Everything steps on everything else?’ After one class, you pretty much know to show up for any future class with ear plugs and steel-toed boots.
Everyone does not know what a church is and what social functions it performs, especially the latter, not any more. A friend of mine, one I’ve mentioned to you, joined a church. She is now known in her close-knit neighborhood as ‘The Religious One’. She does not get invited to the more alcoholic-centric parties, automatically seen as a turd in their punchbowl. Why did she join a church? – to address the costs of her husband’s addiction, the deep debt it placed them in and the possibility of bankruptcy, the possibility of a divorce, the effect this was having on her then three year old and infant sons, her trashed self-esteem and isolation… not an atypical story, pretty much the norm these days if you talk to someone long enough. Is this what church’s are meant to address? What happens when you can’t give your problems to The Dude in the Sky? Well, you can purchase friends and services, but churches are more budget-friendly.
We could idealistically sit here and list all the fun stuff we’d like to share with others under some communal umbrella, but when people show up, they’ll come in the doors as whole but possibly hurt, damaged and broken human beings. Film night and fellowship won’t help them. So, let me add an urgent care clinic and counseling center, a bank that lends at ‘CEO-low’ interest rates, and a PAC.
@MarkNeu, @Jewels_Vern - UU congregations are intentionally highly variable. I’m sorry if the congregations you visited weren’t comfortable for you, but that’s kind of a predictable downside of purposefully welcoming nearly everyone. You might not have a UU church/fellowship/association nearby that will work for you.
The first congregation my family joined was a fellowship, very very atheistic (hey, it’s a college town) and people were outspoken about their dislike of “god language” and “new age crystal nonsense”. Our current congregation is a church, much more friendly to theists like me, and invocations of (completely undefined) divinity are commonplace. (I always say we’ve got the coolest atheists ever, because they cheerfully put up with my pantheism and with the mystic types.)
Anyway, it’s not a 100% predictor, but if a group of UUs call themselves a “church” they are probably comfortable with the language of theism (although they will have atheist members). If they call themselves a “fellowship” they most likely do not have a paid minister (although they might have paid child care attendants, musicians, cleaning staff, etc.) and they may not even have a formal weekly “service”. The rest of the (many) names mean even less - if they call themselves a “Society” it’s probably a nod to the Quakers (UUs and Quakers work together well, he said rather understatedly) but that doesn’t necessarily mean they practice radical non-violence or don’t sing on Sundays. They are all unique communities so you kind of have to reach out in order to see what they are like.
@zakbos, welcome and good luck!
Didn’t think you did, just from past BB experience. I’d hesitate to call atheism per se a religion, but I know what you mean kinda about the ‘battle-lines drawn’ crowd. If you ask me, there’s enjoying part of being a bolshy crowd, and liking going round bothering folks, and there’s believing/not believing in gods. The venn diagram of all that would be illuminating, I reckon.
Well, I know there is no God, its all this atheism stuff that I can’t believe in.
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I went last Sunday. It was extremely awkward. Lots of singing and clapping and basically making a mockery out of the way people in religious churches choose to celebrate their faith.
While I was there last sunday I described it almost exactly the same way. “It’s like a Ted Talk but with James Taylor sing-a-longs in between speakers.” It was very awkward for me.
Cory, please don’t compare these to Mega-Churches. Mega-churches have attendance rates in the thousands. The Sunday Assembly is usually in the 200 or fewer range.
Thank you!
That’s why I go to the pub on Sundays.
You see, The Donald, that is why I like you. I would sign up for that. If all it is is a Sunday gathering full of Church-lite happy crap, then screw that, sounds boring. But the way you put it, with an actual community built around a common purpose (the “strong vibrant helpful community” itself) I would join that. I’d lead a section of it, for the common good! It would be fun.
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…and rejoice that they didn’t have to be in their stupid group. (And then after church, go grab a bunch of nice abandoned Hummers and McMansions.)
I agree! Where do you live? We can get started right away!
Looked at that way, the Rapture would be pretty sweet.
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