The pervasive individualism of Western culture has broken down the sense of identity experienced through community. Nevertheless, the church in the post-World War II era has seen a resurgent interest in and recovery of community. Two promising models of community from which a strong worship is arising are the “basic communities” of South America and the small group movement.
Basic Communities of South America
One of the characteristics of non-modern society, whether it was of the simpler, tribal sort or of a more complex, civilized sort, was that the individual saw himself or herself in terms of the group. The group naturally tightened the bonds between individuals, creating close interdependence among them and regulating the nature of their social relationships from within. Whether the society was more simple and egalitarian or more hierarchical and stratified, the individual in non-modern society had an assigned place from birth. He or she was conditioned and limited somehow by the group, but also supported and sustained by the group. It cannot be said that this group (extended family, tribe, nation) was always a community in the sense of the word we use today, but there is no doubt that it did offer some of the features essential to any community: it personalized within the context of well-defined social relationships. Thus the individual was provided with identity and intelligibility.
The remote origins and roots of modernity were marked precisely by the breakdown of that paradigm, which took place relatively early in the Christian West. At the end of the twelfth century and throughout the thirteenth century, the individual was moving toward a position of autonomy in regard to the group. An important contributory factor was the changed relationship vis-à-vis the economic dimension at every level and the beginnings of the modern market. The ties between individual and group were breaking down, opening up room for competition among individuals as isolated units. This lies at the root of modern society and finds concrete expression at every level: in the ideology of individualism, the economics of capitalism, and the politics of liberalism.
The full unleashing of this dynamic, which matured in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has left us in the twentieth century with a society characterized by such traits as anonymity, extreme competition among individuals, and, most of all, a deterioration of social relationships, if not an outright perversion of them. All this has provided the basis and roots for new forms of domination and oppression. Converted into systems and invested with economic and political power, they crush the individual by various means and in various ways: e.g., by implementing impersonal bureaucratic rationalization; by atomizing the labor market; by dissociating work from family and group life; and by increasing migration, which accelerates the uprooting of individuals and cultural groups. In this general context we have seen a growing and widespread yearning for community from the middle of the nineteenth century on, but particularly since World War II.
The early church certainly viewed itself as a community, its point of departure being the first community composed of Jesus and the apostles he had gathered around him. The theme of the church as a community was clearly explicated from Pentecost on: in the Acts of the Apostles; the writings of Paul, John, and James; and other works. Theology and exegesis would proceed to analyze and explore that thematic treatment from various angles. The church’s early awareness of being a community began to fade markedly as time went on.
In South America, the Roman Catholic counterpoint to this loss of community was precisely the creation of “basic ecclesial communities.” This new way embraces more fully the whole of life, and thus facilitates the creation of a community in a stricter sense. As one of their pastors has written:
In the present-day circumstances, basic communities frequently manage to express various fundamental elements of Christian experience much better than parishes do. Basic ecclesial communities manage to facilitate a maximum of the Christian life with a minimum of institutional structures. The missionary element of welcoming the divine word and bearing witness to the faith is sharply accentuated. There is the practical possibility of a pluralism suited to the desires and needs of the community, which thus can experience the feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood in a more living way. In these basic communities people can fight peacefully for justice, better exercise Christian freedom in the free expression of the word, and live together in a less anonymous, hence more personal, way. In these base-level groups, it is not rare to see the rise of new charisms and ministries dedicated to the build-up of community and service to the gospel message. New pastoral options also arise. The exclusivism bound up with territorial limits is overcome. By the same token, the evangelical Christ centrism characteristic of basic communities tends to purify popular religiosity, offering adults a practical form of catechumenate in the midst of real life. The very praxis of the sacraments takes on greater ecclesial relevance within these small communities. In and through basic communities, the work of priests is made enormously easier, lay participation in the apostolate finds new space in reality, and the ecclesial community can more easily be the leaven of human reality.
Home Cell Groups
The largest church in Christendom draws from an active adherent group of 625,000 for its various weekend worship services. But to the typical parishioner, the church is only about ten persons large.
Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho, the founding pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea, has taught his people that the heartbeat of the church occurs through the “one another” ministry of small, home-based cells. These affinity-based, lay-pastored nurture groups are the center of the church’s evangelism, discipleship, worship, prayer, and fellowship.
Corporate worship celebrations are still eminently important at the Yoido church. But they function more as conventions of cell groups than as large gatherings of individuals.
These large services radiate excitement. They are characterized by the festive qualities of a political rally or a recording-artist concert. What the feasts in Jerusalem were to the clans of Israel, the corporate worship of the Yoido church is to its home cell groups.
Yet, the congregation’s sense of momentum, which regularly fills auditoriums and overflow rooms, cannot be traced solely to a charismatic speaker or talented music group. Rather, corporate worship exudes vitality because it brings together portions of more than 50,000 small, spiritual kinship groups that have each experienced the working of God during the week. The cell-driven church is at once small enough for intimacy and large enough for celebration.
The model of Yoido Full Gospel Central Church helps illustrate the burgeoning popularity of home-based small groups on all seven continents. In North America, for example, practically every church has, during the last two decades, elevated the priority of cell groups. Virtually all religious publishing houses now offer books and curriculums suitable for off-premises, lay-led small group gatherings.
Many factors contribute to this rising popularity of cell groups. With the widespread fragmentation of the nuclear family, many people are looking for a surrogate family. Others crave a personal touch in an ever-increasingly high-tech society. Still, others realize the need to establish reasonable spans of care in order to prevent leadership burnout—both of the laity and of the clergy.
For these and other reasons, many churches now consider themselves to be a fellowship “with” cell groups. For them, whatever they consider being the mission of the church—worship, evangelism, discipleship, prayer, fellowship, and the like—can occur both in the large meeting and in the small, with one reinforcing the other.
The leading-edge trend, however, goes further. It acknowledges that various-sized groups, such as cells, classes, congregations, and celebrations, are present in most churches, even if not officially recognized. As such, a social network of “cells” exists, though it may not be properly identified, resourced, encouraged, or supervised.
The trend of the future builds on that perception. It says that the effective church will see itself not as a fellowship “with” cells, but as a matrix “of” cells. The vibrancy and spiritual health of these cell-sized groupings is the engine used by the Holy Spirit to drive the church forward.
The church-“of”-groups concept is neither Korean nor limited to one particular style of worship. Its vital components—though not necessarily its identical outward forms—have been implemented in thousands of churches worldwide, spanning the spectrum of worship styles and traditions.
The cell-celebration concept is being implemented equally well in historically recent innovations (such as the seeker-sensitive church of the 1990s) as it was in the Wesleyan class meetings of the 1800s, or as it still is in the incense-burning high liturgy of a centuries-old Lutheran or Greek Orthodox setting.
Of North America’s largest and most unchurched-sensitive churches, a significant number trace their growth to a new set of priorities: clergy focusing their energy on the development and empowerment of lay leadership for cell groups. A typical infrastructure involves each church staff member working with a small number of lay coaches. Each of them, in turn, supervises a few cell group leaders. And each of them, likewise, sees to it that approximately ten people receive spiritual nurture.
These levels are sometimes connected according to life-state affinities (“youth,” “young married,” “single adults”) and, in larger metropolises, by geographic zones. At each of the levels, the men and women involved are simultaneously training apprentices. That way, when growth opportunity calls for additional leadership, the necessary personnel are already prepared to be released.
This cell-drivenness factor has become so widespread that students of the church growth movement are now seeking categories for explaining and interpreting it. On the popular level the social theory is being called the “Cho model,” “cell group church,” “cell church movement” and the “cell-celebration” paradigm.
The theological jargon gaining the greatest popularity is the term metachurch. While large churches keep burgeoning until they become mega churches, the concept meta, meaning “change,” communicates a radical paradigm shift. When examined structurally and philosophically, a metachurch, with its lay-tended cells, is as different from a traditional church of clergy-tended subcongregations as a butterfly after undergoing metamorphosis is different from a caterpillar.
Whatever the name, the phenomenon, which we believe traces its origins to the book of Acts, is undeniably linked to worship renewal and spiritual vitality. As goes the cell, so goes the church.