Church, Brains, and Social Interaction
I love thinking about the church and how it could be better at bringing people in. Whether it is Sunday mornings, volunteer opportunities, or smaller group gatherings- there are almost always areas local churches can improve in welcoming new people.
Why should the church bother doing this? Without welcoming people, we will not get better at evangelism and discipleship. We will end up talking to ourselves and our effectiveness decreases. Thankfully, God can use the local church in spite of itself, and often does even when we don't think about these things. However, why not try to improve if we can do so?
So, in that vein, I started wondering about how we process social interactions and if there was anything we could learn and improve on in local churches. The main reason I started thinking about this was I read a short but provocative article entitled Falling Walls: Social Relationships as a Spatial Problem.
The main thing that post prompted me to think is about how people immediately orient themselves to other people when they enter a local church for the very first time. In most traditional church settings, we navigate people toward a central room for a worship service where almost all of the seating is facing one direction and a limited amount of people dominate the time. Usually, the sermon takes up more time than any other single element in the service, except for maybe music, depending on the church.
In either case, we may be creating an abstract spatial environment where people are orienting themselves towards dependence. It may not be our goal, but it is what we are doing by the very nature of how we are using our time on Sunday mornings. I'm reminded of what Alan Hirsch and Leonard Sweet said in The Forgotten Ways about how seating has an impact on how we interact with one another.
Put differently, Sunday mornings may be causing us to think about our relationship to pastors and music leaders in a dependency relationship. By default, whoever is in the front, even if they are using conversational tone and delivery methods, becomes an authority rather than a peer in the faith.
Why would this matter? 1 Peter 2:5-9 makes it clear the church is called to be a priesthood of all believers. The special class status of the priesthood has been abolished by Jesus on the cross. Discipleship means we are all called to a peer relationship where only Christ is lifted up.
Am I saying any of the following?: 1. Authority structures should be broken apart in the church. 2. Authority structures are evil. 3. Authority, education, or specialization are bad for the church. 4. Traditional church is evil or unhelpful.
No!
I'm not saying any of those things or any thing else that might be inferred negatively.
What I am saying is that the church could do better. Maybe we keep Sunday morning worship services as they are, but we find other ways to come alongside people and re-orient the social organization in our brains.
Here are some possibly helpful questions.
-Do we have settings where the people who are usually up front serve no other role than coming alongside as friends and fellow servants?
-Do we have Sundays where there is opportunity for communal expression of the gifts of the body?
-Do we regularly allow other people to speak and share the stage?
-How do we effectively demonstrate the priesthood of all believers?
-Are we building communities or creating top-down dependency structures in our volunteer systems?
Final thoughts:
1. Church should be somewhere we build positive stress and social interactions. If your "meet and greet" time isn't more than a quick hand-shake, you might just be causing someone undue stress. Train your church to go beyond a "hi" and invite people to be a part of a meal or neighborhood event where they can get to know one another.
2. It's a good idea to tell people explicitly what we think, expect, and want from them. Every church has a liturgy, even a home church, even if it's informal. Let me people know what you are doing. Giving people new information can help build a bond of trust. This would be a simple area of communication lots of different people can regularly be involved in. Have someone different each week explain things like communion, offering, or upcoming activities in the week.
3. Practical ways of incorporating what we believe theologically are important. They help us to learn in different ways than just hearing or reading. Let's reflect the reality of being the body of Christ instead of just talking about it. We can start with our initial interactions.
Why should the church bother doing this? Without welcoming people, we will not get better at evangelism and discipleship. We will end up talking to ourselves and our effectiveness decreases. Thankfully, God can use the local church in spite of itself, and often does even when we don't think about these things. However, why not try to improve if we can do so?
So, in that vein, I started wondering about how we process social interactions and if there was anything we could learn and improve on in local churches. The main reason I started thinking about this was I read a short but provocative article entitled Falling Walls: Social Relationships as a Spatial Problem.
The main thing that post prompted me to think is about how people immediately orient themselves to other people when they enter a local church for the very first time. In most traditional church settings, we navigate people toward a central room for a worship service where almost all of the seating is facing one direction and a limited amount of people dominate the time. Usually, the sermon takes up more time than any other single element in the service, except for maybe music, depending on the church.
In either case, we may be creating an abstract spatial environment where people are orienting themselves towards dependence. It may not be our goal, but it is what we are doing by the very nature of how we are using our time on Sunday mornings. I'm reminded of what Alan Hirsch and Leonard Sweet said in The Forgotten Ways about how seating has an impact on how we interact with one another.
Put differently, Sunday mornings may be causing us to think about our relationship to pastors and music leaders in a dependency relationship. By default, whoever is in the front, even if they are using conversational tone and delivery methods, becomes an authority rather than a peer in the faith.
Why would this matter? 1 Peter 2:5-9 makes it clear the church is called to be a priesthood of all believers. The special class status of the priesthood has been abolished by Jesus on the cross. Discipleship means we are all called to a peer relationship where only Christ is lifted up.
Am I saying any of the following?: 1. Authority structures should be broken apart in the church. 2. Authority structures are evil. 3. Authority, education, or specialization are bad for the church. 4. Traditional church is evil or unhelpful.
No!
I'm not saying any of those things or any thing else that might be inferred negatively.
What I am saying is that the church could do better. Maybe we keep Sunday morning worship services as they are, but we find other ways to come alongside people and re-orient the social organization in our brains.
Here are some possibly helpful questions.
-Do we have settings where the people who are usually up front serve no other role than coming alongside as friends and fellow servants?
-Do we have Sundays where there is opportunity for communal expression of the gifts of the body?
-Do we regularly allow other people to speak and share the stage?
-How do we effectively demonstrate the priesthood of all believers?
-Are we building communities or creating top-down dependency structures in our volunteer systems?
Final thoughts:
1. Church should be somewhere we build positive stress and social interactions. If your "meet and greet" time isn't more than a quick hand-shake, you might just be causing someone undue stress. Train your church to go beyond a "hi" and invite people to be a part of a meal or neighborhood event where they can get to know one another.
2. It's a good idea to tell people explicitly what we think, expect, and want from them. Every church has a liturgy, even a home church, even if it's informal. Let me people know what you are doing. Giving people new information can help build a bond of trust. This would be a simple area of communication lots of different people can regularly be involved in. Have someone different each week explain things like communion, offering, or upcoming activities in the week.
3. Practical ways of incorporating what we believe theologically are important. They help us to learn in different ways than just hearing or reading. Let's reflect the reality of being the body of Christ instead of just talking about it. We can start with our initial interactions.
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