Church as Social Network

Whenever I hear anyone make a proclamation about the future of the Church, be it demise, change, or otherwise, I take it with a grain of salt. That being said, I invite you to take out your salt shakers because I have an observation that merits some attention as we ponder the future of the Church.

This week, 70 youth and 20 adults from four Lutheran congregations in the Kansas City area have been engaged in mission, service, worship, and play in Duluth, Minnesota. This is the 4^th annual mission trip that has been organized by a growing collaborative ministry known as the Kansas City Lutheran Youth Coalition (KCLYC).  There is exponential strength that is realized through this collaborative effort when staff members, youth and adults from the four congregations work together to plan and participate in these amazing events. Just take a look at this year’s KCLYC Mission Trip Facebook page, and you’ll see what I mean.  However, I’m not proposing collaboration as a means to an end. Sure, that’s one of the reasons that KCLYC began, and there is great value in working together. As I observe the youth and their leaders interact with one another and engage in ministry throughout the year, I realize that collaboration is actually how our young people understand the Church to function. They treat the Church like a Social Network! This is a generation for whom social networking, digital and otherwise, is like breathing. Why would the Church not be a Social Network? It involves people, right?

Traditionally, we have viewed the church through a congregational lens. In the ELCA, we may talk about the three expressions of the church as congregation, synod, and the churchwide organization, but the local congregation gets the vast amount of attention in our ecclesiology. The primacy of congregational identity tends to lead us toward behaviors that resemble competition rather than collaboration. We view the mission field as a limited pool of potential “members” that must be attracted to our congregational fold. This tends to result in mistrust, envy, or narcissism. Note that these are the very things that those who claim to be spiritual rather than religious observe and reject.

The thing that I’ve observed in our KCLYC youth is that they get congregational identity, but they see it much like a node in a larger network.  For them, what are just as important are the relationships

they have with one another and the wider mission in which they are engaged. Throughout the year, many youth may choose to worship in a congregation other than their own because they want to see their friends or be part of something that is taking place on that day. They believe that they do not have just one youth director, but several. In their ecclesiology, congregations are mission outposts in a wider network of relationships that fuel mission.

The Holy Spirit continues to call, gather and send the Church in mission for the life of the world. I truly believe that our youth are giving us a glimpse of something exciting, something that transcends any boundaries that we have created, and something that we ought to heed.