July 28, 2004
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Breaking Stovepipes*
It seems like any group of people tends to self-organize into smaller manageable clusters. In many schools and churches, groups become exclusive and become cliques. At Highrock, our young adult pastor Joseph Kim has promoted an anti-clique culture, resulting in a lot of open-invitation events for the whole community. On the email lists and forums calendar, you can find open events almost every day of the week. Instant social life for new Bostonians!
This large-group fellowship focus reverses the normal pattern of entrenched old-timers in the center and newcomers at the fringes. It places newcomers at the center, with warm welcomes and showers of attention. Ironically it makes some old-timers feel left out after the honeymoon period, since they are left to fend for themselves and keep up with the torrent of people coming and leaving.
It also pushes the clique problem out to a larger scale. Instead of groups within the young adults, the whole fellowship becomes a group that has a hard time interacting with the college students and families. In some ways it makes sense — different lifestyles, schedules, geography, and commitments. But we lose out on a lot of the richness that comes from intergenerational interaction.
We’ve tried to put people from different lifestage groups on the same Soul Food team, but it’s tough. Families tend to leave church earlier than young adults, and college students all come at the same time and leave together to catch the same T back to campus. And while it’s nice to meet new and different people while cooking and serving together, it hasn’t been the best avenue for building deep and lasting relationships.
Maybe regional groups are the answer. I’ve heard good things about SoCha, the South of Charles small group. But geography — the very basis of regional groups — works against us here. About 80% of young adults live in Cambridge and Somerville. Only 10% of families do.
In the end, we may not be able to break these boundaries with a programmatic approach. The best we can do is make introductions and set a vision for an open community where all types of friendships can develop. Then it’s up to the individuals to put in the work and partake of the benefits.
* The term “stovepipe” refers to what happens when people from different divisions in the same company refuse to interact.
Comments (4)
well, as people realize that this is something that’s beneficial to them, i think more groups will mix. families will realize young adults are in many ways a good source for baby sitters and are a lot of fun. young adults will realize that families are a good source of advice and much less self-conscious. and that’s just one way in which two groups may interact…
needs are a powerful motivator. it’ll happen.
I think it’s good to have some cliques for closer friendships to develop, but yeah, keeping the openness is awesome… at the same time, are you willing to tolerate more shallow conversation if you were for example, talking to someone much younger (or vice versa
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I think the problem is avoidable if everyone desires to put a lot more effort into building friendships, because common ground is there, but can be hard to find… do you think there is a common sense of wanting to invest in those “friendships with everyone”?
This is an interesting post. It is certainly unfeasible for everyone to interact with everyone in a meaningful way. Depending how you define people you can say that everyone is mixed or that everyone is in a clique of similar people. If you look at just geography, birth place, ethnicity, age, marital status, education, you will both find that everyone is mixed and everyone is in a clique of similar people. I thought swing dancing had a good mix, but it could be argued that it was just everyone who liked to swing dance
have u considered the concept of ‘house churches’ where the big congregation is broken down into smaller ones during the week (can be regionally based) and can get ministered to during the week? lay leaders serve as the pastors for the house churches which helps to breakdown the work for the head pastor and really gives a platform from which the body can minister to one another. it’s the way the underground church in china has grown the body.