Suburbia is a Time Sink
MusingsJust a musing this morning.
I am struggling to know how to encourage discipleship-oriented church life in outer London suburbia. People live such fast lives, have such long commutes, so little ability to claw back time to dwell on the things of God or to consider what next steps they would like to take with him. Many people in my church attend a home group, but it is a real sacrifice of time for them in a world that absorbs time and doesn't let you have it back. For many it is about all they can realistically manage in their frantic schedules. There is so little time for reflection, contemplation, working together on projects that fulfil God's purposes for our area or building community of depth.
Our home group is making some progress. We seem to be getting to the point where we can have safe discussion of depth about personal and spiritual things, but it has taken a lot of effort (and skill on the part of the group leaders) to make a start. And we are only at the start. To go much further our mindset needs to shift so that the church as a whole - everyone in it - hankers after depth, significant spiritual growth and grace-filled community.
The paradigms and life-rhythms of suburbia work against all these things. For the same reasons it works against evangelism too. Non-Christians live fast lives. They are materially wealthy, not asking big questions of life and faith and unlikely to cross the threshold of a church building.
What will attract them is the quality and depth of the loving community that they see or hear about. Jesus did say "by this all people will know you are my disciples - that you love each other." But it is difficult to build love without a commitment to depth with each other, and difficult to get a commitment to depth without time, and difficult to find time because this is suburbia.
Suburbia is a time-sink.
Reader Comments (10)
Fascinating stuff, Marcus. I'd throw another few things into the mix:
1. Difficult for us to get to know commuters because they are simply not there much of the time - so many of the contacts I develop are with older folk because I bump into them in the street. Our congregation reflects the above - the vast majority are retired or work locally.
2. Disconnect between work life and church. I tried a few months back to run a 'take your vicar to work' project. No interest whatsoever.
3. Family as an idol - one fringe member, for example, will only come to church if her husband is working.
4. One thing that does seem to work is parent-toddler groups, because those women who do stay at home in outer suburbia can often find themselves terribly isolated. Our parent-toddler group is growing exponentially. We're praying they get converted in droves - although that probably isn't going to help the over-feminised church issue.
We are seeing the same Jim. The early learners / stay at home parent phenomenon provides a very important bridge for us. Suburbia is a lonely place for all its wealth. I agree with the possibility of over-emphasising one gender in church life, so we are doing our best to encourage whole families to take an active interest in how we cater for the needs of their youngsters. One example being the appointment of an associate pastor for families and youth discipleship.
I think in this area we have to put church at the heart of community and at the heart of family life if we are going to be heard be saying anything relevant by most people who don't know us yet
Without knowing the circumstances I can't comment in detail - but if the first is an inference from the behaviour described in the second part of the sentence, then I don't think it's that clear cut.
One other impact of suburban lifestyle is on genuine local church-based evangelism...for those who work in London the non-Christians with whom they have the most prolonged and meaningful contact could actually live hours away from them. Doesn't make effective outreach any easier, in my experience!
There are other options for evangelism - the various midweek meetings that some of the central london churches put on can be effectively used to introduce people you know to christianity.
Sorry for not being clearer, Chris. The issue for me is that how we spend our time reveals our priorities. The trend I'm seeing is that the Lord's day has become not so much a day for spending together with the family of God, but for retreating into our own nuclear families. This is exacerbated in suburbia by the time pressure people are under. So some real-life examples of this are - and I haven't diluted these at all
- My unconverted husband isn't working this Sunday, so church isn't even an option
- It's a lovely summer day, so let's go to the beach instead of church
- I can't come to the church fellowship lunch, because my husband simply won't put up with having to get his own lunch, even though I provide lunch for him every other Sunday of the year
Is our family life important? Yes, of course, hugely so, and the Bible says so. But to such an extent that our commitment to meet with God together with our Christian brothers and sisters lags way behind?
The suburban setup means that meeting at other times is also difficult.
Sorry Jim - I assumed you were talking about home group meetings rather than Sundays.
That said, having to work on Sundays is sometimes - not always - the price the working class end up paying for middle class convenience, so it's still not all that clearcut.
I really value the city centre evangelistic midweek meetings. But what they don't provide is much experience of genuine community of depth. Church is more than evangelism. While I am not the slightest bit worried of new forms, I think that the community of grace is a core apologetic of the gospel - by this all will know you're my disciples, that you love each other.
From Jim's comments I guess that one of the main difficulties that we struggle with is the notion of church-as-another-activity to attend, rather than the local expression of God's family of which I am an inextricable part. It seem that for some there is little notion of the body being damaged by folk who think it is OK to decide on a week by week basis whether they want to be in or not. That strikes me as a very consumerist view of church.
But not less than evangelism - and in the context of active witnessing to those we work with - many of whom will live miles away from us how else do you propose that we go about it ? After all, I'm just suggesting that this is one stage in their gradual entry into their own communities of grace, some of which might overlap with our own.
TBH I think you are right that a lot of this is down to a consumerist attitude to church. However, I do think that church leaders make a rod for their own backs here - the answer is not to provide a lot of busy-work style meetings for people to attend during the week and at the same time demote the Sunday service in importance.
I wasn't so much thinking of those who work on Sundays, Chris. as htose who priorities leisure and family time over church. In our congregation, the Sunday workers tend to be those from ethnic minorities, who work in the care sector, and often have little say about when they are rostered for work. When they can turn up they do.
One thing we have started doing is emailing our church notices out, and although we mainly did that to save paper, I have had some nice emails from people who haven't been able to make it to church but really appreciate being kept in touch, and have asked for prayer for specific issues.
So maybe this is one way forward - using new technologies to give a sense of belonging, which will hopefully provoke a greater yearning for face-to-face meeting.