Scribblings on "circles of intimacy" and church structure

USE OF "THE CIRCLES APPROACH" IN HELPING DEEPEN COMMUNITY UNDERSTANDING AS THE PRELUDE TO APPROPRIATE DEVELOPMENT IN LOCAL FAITH COMMUNITIES COMMON LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT

A bit long winded as a title I know, but it hopefully says what it is in the tin (can)! This post will suggest a workshop for faith communities which will allow them to gain an understanding of the nature of their community. I will break iont "church-speak" for a bit here, as my experience in this sphere is long and I hope fairly thoughtful.

There are various dimensions or facets to faith community life which dictate the strength of the community and the directions in which the community might develop.

Here are a few principles:

• Above all a faith community is a living thing, it must keep moving and developing or else it will die! (OK a few communities like anemones stick to the rock and feed off passing food, but even they have to wave their tentacles about a bit! You might want to think a bit more about this.)
• People participate in the community's life because it is local to them, or they travel some distance because they like the community's style.
• Members will love the meeting place of the community along an axis of understanding it as "the house of God" (a shrine) at one extreme through to "the meeting place of my fellows" (the people are the primary thing, seldom notice the building).
• The strength of the faith community depends on a continuity of intimacy of relationship that incorporates all members, linked by relationship to the leadership and fellow community members.

The circles diagram needs a bit of introduction to help people grasp how it relates to their own life. An introduction of the pattern as it can be discerned in Christian Holy Scripture would also be appropriate, as outlined in the earlier post. (click by the "S" of Scribblings [below] and you will hopefully get a hypertext link straight to it)

Scribblings on "circles of intimacy" and church structure

Having helped group members to begin to look at their own circles of intimacy and relate them to the circles of the early church it is time to look at their own context. I describe this in the context of a multi centre setting with local leadership and an overseeing leadership (the Team Rector/District Overseer).

This can be tricky to work out as the results will depend on how long the group has been together.

Case study 1

If you are working with a new set up, bringing together previously disparate faith communities these exercises can help clarify realistic expectations for both the new leadership and the newly "married" communities.

Case study 2

If by contrast you are working with a well established cluster of communities who are at a point of transition or are struggling with their current structures the exercises can help in the formation of new structures appropriately scaled to be enabling and helpful to faithful living.

In all cases

In all cases it will help dispel any long held myths about who is strong and who is struggling in terms of individual communities. The relative merits of each community in terms of its size and scope can be better understood. The role of the leadership teams can be clarified and areas for development to strengthen the communities be identified.

I am going to concentrate on case study 2 as it is my direct experience for the last 10 years.

Here is the diagram to refresh your memory.

After an introduction to how the diagram helps us to map our personal social map it is time to get started on each individual faith communities map. The leadership with oversight over all the communities would do well to complete their own map.

Group each individual faith communities members together and ask them to list the people from their faith community (church or chapel) that they have contact with daily, weekly or monthly. (If they leave space between the lists for the inbetweeners that's OK at this point, although it aids clarity if people can judge the closest band.

So the list might look like:

      Daily      |            Weekly        |        Monthly       |      Less often         
Mary D               Fred                      Anthony P               Ginger R
Lois                   Rev Jane                    Rev Paul                Mary H
Mark N             Andrea G                  Neil S
                          Robin                       Frances (community worker)
                          Peter P                    Rex
                                                           Jemima P
                                                           Jeremy F
etc..


The group now mark the leadership members in some way, e.g. circle them in a different colour pen.
(in this case it would be Lois and Robin are the "wardens/deacons", the Revds Jane and Paul and Frances)

Nest stage is to plot the lists onto a blank circle diagram, something like the one below, including the leadership, with their coloured identifier.

The resulting plot will show the group where the personal heart of their faith community is. It will show which people are the "glue" of the community, those who have the most connection with the community as a whole. It will also reveal the place of the leadership within the faith community. Finally, and most importantly it will help to reveal how connected and intimate the community is. It will show where the points of communion and fellowship are to be found and the scale of that connectedness.

Each faith community is encouraged to share their results and to think about what they are saying about the nature of their faith community as it stands.

For the leadership in oversight it could come as a bit of a shock to see where they fit into the overall picture. 

How will their circles diagram compare? It might look something like the one following, in which I have superimposed individual communities circles diagram onto their own, biasing the connections to show where the overall  benefice/district leadership are most connected. Four local faith communities are superimposed on the leader's personal faith circle. I have not included peer or "management" elements at this point, although these, including Chapter, Fraternal and Superintendents and Bishops etc. will be very much part of the mix for the overall leadership, if only occasional but symbolically important features for local communities and their local leadership.

                           

What might this all point to?

Well in this case the "red" comunity is the one the overall leader lives in and is well known at all levels. The "reds" and "yellows" - a very small but faithful band - have some overlap, perhaps due to geography or style preferences. Similar the overlap between the "greens" and the "oranges". The green community is large and looks healthy, but is a bit more distant from the leader due to geography. The smaller, but tightly knit orange community is similarly distant, but due to its size and intensity of associations better known to the overall leader.

The leader is shown to be stretched in many directions and reliant on local leadership to give them the "heads up" when they need to be involved locally at more depth than is usually possible.

You could read a lot more, but you get the general idea. dysfunction might also show up, where by a community has a hole in the middle or is missing a band of connection, making connection between the heart of faith and the "fringes of enquiry" difficult. If we put the circles on their side, pile them up and look from the rim, cutting the pile in half as a section we might see something like the following for a medium sized church community with a range of activities throughout the week and for a very small community, where a handful of people keep the church "going", the yellow section, showing the small and faithful band in action!:

Medium sized  faith community profile, lots of social connecting activity going on.

Small community, where the faithful few keep the doors open for all! 

Well, my brain is tired after all those drawings, so I'l leave you to ponder how useful such analysis might be to you and head off to cook supper: chick pea and spinach dish tonight - perhaps with a dash of locally raised gammon on the side!