Here’s my contention.  We don’t know squat about Community.  We just don’t.  We are, myself certainly included, dumb when it comes to Community.  Not only is our Civic Community in disarray, but we have almost no idea what it means to live in Christian Community.  Those two, Civic and Christian Community, by the way, aren’t the same, but overlap like a good Venndiagram.  We live as Technomadic Monads, but are designed to live as Pneumasomatic Triads.  Let’s unpack that shall we…

Even as a self-professed technophile I find it disconcerting and frustrating the emotional and spiritual distance created by the 24/7, always connected, digital world.  That’s the “tech” part of the phrase.  The constant barrage of technology streaming and screaming all around us effects us, even if we don’t think we’re paying attention to it.  At the minimum it changes our perception of life.  When I ride my bike I notice things that I would never even see if I were driving.  Likewise, we’re nomadic.  We flit from this to that like bees in a clover field.  We trick ourselves into believing that proximity or placefulness doesn’t really matter.  We assume that social media connection is qualitatively the same as a meal together.  I’m not saying that a social media connection has no value, just not the same as a slow meal together with friends and family.

We’re also monads.  A monad, of course, is a single, solitary, isolated, unconnected unit.  It is, by definition, not in relationship to something else.  It is the cult of the individual.  It is me, myself, and I and the rest of the world goes blind – or might as well, since we don’t really notice one another whilst we text in the car at 60 miles an hour.  Again, I’m not saying that individuals or individuality doesn’t matter.  It does.  It just isn’t the end all, be all of my existence.

I’m convinced that we’re really supposed to be living as Pneumasomatic Triads.  A pneumatic drill is a drill powered by air.  We are designed to be powered by the Spirit.  We are spirit-ual beings, but we are not disembodied spirits.  We have a “soma,” a body.  Psychosomatic disorders are a

bodily ailment or symptom, caused by mental or emotional disturbance, in which psychological stresses adversely affect physiological (somatic) functioning to the point of distress.

Conversely, a Pneumasomatic person is a healthy, holistic Spirit-embedded, flesh and blood, human.  But we’re not health, holistic (or maybe even Spirit-embedded) if we aren’t in relationship with one another.  That’s the Triad part – We are in a divine dance with God, one another, and even ourselves.  Much like the Perichoretic nature of the Trinity itself, we hold life in a common connection with God’s self and the other.

So, instead of mediating our lives in isolated cubicles massaging our eyelids with “screens of distraction” (to use Wendell Berry’s phrase), we are meant to live in dynamic and creative tension with our sisters and brothers and God.  We are meant to be Spirit-embodied Communal creatures – Pneumasomatic Triads – instead of Technomadic Monads.

TANK WI-FI Bus

This is a follow up to my post, On Success, and it has generated some good feedback and dialog (note the comments, good stuff there).  Benson Hines posted some other links around the same topic.  Here’s an excerpt:

defining success in college ministry: Quite providentially, several college ministry thinkers have turned their attention simultaneously to the very important topic of how we define success in college ministry. (God is a gracious Synergist, isn’t He?) HeartOfCampusMinistry began a weekly series on the topic – with a post by the much-respected Dean Thune. (I’ll be posting in that series in a few weeks!) Aaron Klinefelter wrote a great (and interesting) post on an “ecological” understanding of college ministry success. I posted on why aiming for numbers isn’t (usually) a good college ministry priority. And Ian Clark is asking the same question about how we define success.

Be sure to check out those links.

I have also been pondering “modalities” and “sodalities” as they relate to the structure and success of campus ministry.  The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission by Ralph D. Winter is a must read for this.  Here’s a post about Ralph D. Winter (who died this past summer) from the Tall Skinny Kiwi.

Essentially the article deals with “Modalities” and “Sodalities” as two complementary structures for God’s Mission in the world.  This has been helpful as I think about what the WF is and how we come alongside Asbury Church and the other churches (UMC and otherwise) in the region.

Intervarsity thinks of itself this way, as do CCO and Campus Crusade, but we can also see this in the new monasticism of late with folks like Shane Claiborne and Communality (not to mention traditional Monasticism and those early Methodists).

Here’s an Intervarsity link about the topic:

Put simply, “modality” refers to the permanent structure, the local church. Multi-generational and geographically limited, a congregation puts down its roots and makes a long-term commitment to its community. As theologian Darrell Guder observes: “The parish must always be looked upon as the central and continuing form of the church.”

The second structure, “sodality,” focuses on a specialized aspect of the Lord’s purposes on earth. This “laser vision” may target a particular people group (e.g. Laotians), age group (e.g. high school students) or spiritual discipline (e.g. prayer).

Parachurch ministries like InterVarsity are sodalities—expressions of the local church, but not churches in themselves. “Para” means “along side.” Historical examples of such extensions of church ministry include first century mobile missionary missionary bands and medieval Catholic orders.

See also, The Order of the Mustard Seed.

My hope and prayer is that this will spur our minds as we consider what God is birthing at NKU and how the WF fits into the overall ecosystem of the Kingdom in our neck of the woods.

(oh, and I wrote and posted this while on a bus from NKU to downtown Cincinnati.  how cool is that?!)