Do "Parish" and "Order" Mix Well?

Let me introduce two highfalutin words: "modality" and "sodality."

"Modality" equates to your corner church--in Catholic terms, a parish.  "Sodality" equates to a missions organization--in Catholic terms, an order.  Much ink has been used up by discussing how these two types of endeavors relate to each other.  Bonhoeffer (and Ralph Winter, and many others) have talked about what they see as the huge mistake the Catholic church made in separating these two.  Once there were monasteries, says Bonhoeffer, it created a two-tier system of faith.  There was the nominal one available for the average Joe and Josephine and there was the heroic version for the superstar. 

And so there have been occasional attempts to mix the two, sometimes by using the word "radical" in the description. " At our church, we're not just talking about faith, we're talking about 'radical' faith!"  This does run the risk of revisiting the Bonhoeffer objection--if my faith is "radical," does your merely run of the mill "faith" have any meaning whatsoever?

But these endeavors almost always run aground.  I think of the fire of the early Jesus Movement churches, fueled on hippie idealism.  A big spark to the strong sense of mission that these churches often felt was fueled by a conviction that the world was about to end, so they could feel free to break into a sprint. But the world--unless those of us reading this have missed something important--didn't end, and the fire of those churches either burned out or conformed to life in the parish.

Here's the thing.  A good number of you reading this--myself very much included--can't picture a faith where the lines of modality and sodality don't cross.  (There was a double-negative in there somewhere.  We want the lines to cross.  We don't want just a modality and yet we don't want to run off and join a sodality.  We want both.) 

But we face daunting odds.  Church start-ups have no dilemma here.  They're by nature both modality and sodality.  It's only when they succeed that the challenge begins.  Once that happens, to my mind, there are very few models of thriving modality/sodality communiites.  (I'm sure many of you will have your favorite candidate along these lines: feel free to suggest away.  That said, in my world, they seem pretty scant.)

The risk?  If you over-pitch the sodality part, it could feel oppressive.  "Do you understand the circumstances of my life?  I'm not ready to run off an join the circus (or Youth with a Mission, or the Jesuits) just at this point!  Am I such a bad person for enjoying a Sunday morning service, going to a small group when I can, praying each day, reading the Bible when I can?  Does God not love me unless I become a spiritual hero?"

Of course over-pitching the modality part is what gives many of us pause.  We're hoping for a bit more of a sense of mission than, say, pitching:" Just love each other well.  Do your best to connect with God and live as godly a life as you can pull off."

To leave you with a tease: I do have a current theory about how to foment community where both modality and sodality can live as happy neighbors and traveling companions.  But I'm wondering about your experience with this.  Do you crave a community along these lines?  Why or why not?  What might such a community look like?

Comments

[Ty Denney]

Interesting post Dave. I don't think I have heard modality and sodality used since my Fuller days. I have worked in an organization/church that had its own sending arm to it - we did all our own training and sending to equip willing folks to plant churches all over the world. It was awesome and inspiring to alot of people. I now work with a international missions organization that is not attach to a parish and I also see that it is extremely effective in its reach and influence. We help churches that normally would not get to be involved with global engagement to get activated with it. It think so much of this conversation has to to with leadership, vision, and how one defines church.

[andrew]

In our Home Group, we have ex-missionaries who can get pretty radical and we have some laid back people who I've never seen get radical. I've always felt some weird pressure between the two different types of people. Well, last night we read this:

Mark 14:4-7
Some of those at the table were indignant. “Why waste such expensive perfume?” they asked. “It could have been sold for a year’s wages and the money given to the poor!” So they scolded her harshly. But Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. Why criticize her for doing such a good thing to me? You will always have the poor among you, and you can help them whenever you want to. But you will not always have me."

We felt like Jesus was saying, "there is a natural time to get radical and there is a natural time to take care of business as usual, so pay attention to your heart".

For me the challenge has always been maintaining my own connection to Jesus so that when the time comes to do something radical, my heart becomes engaged and I don't miss it. But I definitely feel that I would rather miss the opportunity than fake it.

The next challenge is to "come back to reality" after going on a radical spree. The missionaries in our Home Group have really struggled with this. No church in the community has been good enough for them and they judge other people like crazy (they are very open about their struggles with this). They have changed a lot and we have become good friends, but they constantly struggle with just being "modal".

[Nathan]

Back in the late 90’s our church went through a pretty “radical” shift to us. It dealt with things along these very lines. For us it was in the middle of the “seeker church” vs “disciple church” debates. The question seemed to be: who is church for “sinners” or saints?” The answer we found in our wrestling was - neither, but rather that the Church was for God and He is for everyone. This really opened up things for us. We found ourselves free to be a community who gathered together formally on Sunday mornings as well as during the week in each others homes to experience God and worship, learn, and pray for each other. But we also found that this freed us to be “radical” plant workers, longshoremen, engineers, stay-at-home parents, teachers, doctors, musicians, etc. throughout the week. It was as if in experiencing God we were caught up on mission with Him to give ourselves away for others in radical ways at the places He already had us.

[steven hamilton]

i'd love to hear more of your theory for both/and...because i for one would really crave that kind of community, if for no other reason in that it seems really invitational, in a way that invites people to belong and participate whoever they are and wherever they are in various seasons of their journey in life...

[Jeff]

Great thoughts. We have a few older couples in our small group (in a church of mostly 20somethings) who, on one hand, love the youthful idealism of our church, and at the same time, give the occasional raised eyebrow at some overwrought missional effort. And yet- they left their previous church almost precisely for a lack of that same outward-focused zeal.

I'm looking forward to your theory.

[bsergott]

This topic is really central for me. My wife and I have studied intentional, covenant communities (almost monastic in their approach and zeal) for years. We desire to have something like that in our church life. The problem is that they have never been very successful. They either go so radical (not a term I like) that they became very heavy with pastoral control, sometimes to the point of arranged marriages and the like. Or they just sort of faded away into obscurity. But I have noticed that even when successful for an extended period of time, these communities always had a real separation from modal faith expressions. These communities were usually made up of Catholics, looking for something more than the usual, "uninspired" parish life. The problem was that all of these radical faith Catholics were spending all of their energy and even their tithes with the covenant community outside of the parish. They were showing up at the parish on Sundays, using them more as a sacramental filling station than a vibrant faith family. So, their relationship to the parish was insincere, and the parish was suffering, because it wasn't receiving the vibrancy that these people offered. We need "radical faith" people to be doing life with the "ordinary faith" people in our churches. They can inspire the ordinary faith people to take some risks and step out a bit more. Also, the radical people can be challenged to try to live life outside of a hothouse of faith, to be more grounded.

I want to believe that we can have a vibrant parish life that is infused with a monastic order vision. There has to be a way to have covenant community inside the vibrant life of a parish, without setting up a faith caste system. Just because I haven't seen it done well, doesn't mean it's not possible. As soon as I get some insight, I'm writing a book on this.

[bsergott]

By the way, a great book that hits on this topic is "The Celtic Way of Evangelism" by George Hunter.

[steven hamilton]

i've read that book, and somewhat inspired by it and trying to see how to apply it in our context.

"I want to believe that we can have a vibrant parish life that is infused with a monastic order vision. There has to be a way to have covenant community inside the vibrant life of a parish, without setting up a faith caste system."

this really resonates with me, and i'd love to be a part of ore conversations in this direction...

[bsergott]

The main thrust of that book was off topic for this discussion, but it hits on a lot of good stuff in the issue of what vibrant monastic community did and can look like.

It is kind of tough to keep the faith that real vibrant parish life is possible. I am always looking for more people who want that for good discussion and mutual encouragement!

[Dave Schmelzer]

A comment from David Benedetto on Facebook:

A very interesting thought, And yes you are right I don't want to imagine the situation where both modality and sodality don't intersect. My thought is this that maybe instead of viewing the two as some two tier hierachy they be vied more as a means unto the other. The image that comes to mind would be like a pair of support towers holding a ... See Moresuspension bridge below. The structure of both the modal and sodal bodies really should support the flow of life between to missonal and communal.
And for a modal and sodal to operate together they must operate in tension with each other: without sodality the modal becomes isolated and without modality the sodal disperse.
But i'm probably wrong....

[Theresa Musante]

My youth group as a teen struggled a bit with this. The pastor was very into evangelism and ended up spending all his time pushing us towards that. In the end, I just felt turned off to evangelism and uncared for. It seemed that we had given up on being a good community and were exclusively trying to be an outreach group.

Which makes me think that in order to do both, there has to be more caring for the individual member's spiritual health and vitality to balance out any push towards reaching outwards.

[Rodger Otero]

YES! I, for one, desperately want to part of a community at the intersection of Modality and Sodality. As for your tease, I'm sure we'd all love to hear some practical ideas and possibilities! Please share! (I'm a bit too tired to think for myself right now...)