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Liquid Church by Pete Ward

Liquid Church by Pete Ward is a book that I have been meaning to review for many months. At first glance you look at its hundred and eight pages and you think, "no problem". The book is not a book of practices of a parish called Liquid Church but rather a collection of theories and ideas and each one of them must be thought about and mulled over in the context of you local church. On top of that, the book is visionary and gives a picture of a church that is not here or is only in its infancies.

What is Liquid Church? Liquid Church is a response to our rapidly changing society. Where the local parish at one time was built by farmers and manufacturers who were geographically stable. As we move to a geographically and culturally fluid culture where change comes in many shapes, ways and sizes, the church needs to be more flexible to move through, around, and in amongst today's culture.....

...Solid modernity is based on our victory of the settled over the nomad; it is a culture of production rather then consumption and above all is linked to ways of organizing production that were first developed by the car maker Henry Ford. Modernity was shaped by the Fordist principles of expansion, size, plant, boundaries, norms, rules, and class orientated affinities and identities. - 16

The local church may support many good and important activities, including mission trips, evangelism, youth ministry, social projects, and so on, but they are all assessed in terms of their effect or otherwise on regular Sunday attendance. People may turn to Christ through the youth mission or Alpha course, and this is good, but they are not banked, they really don't count, until they start to attend Sunday services. - 17

I have sometimes felt that the real purpose of the church services is to enable clergy to count the congregation. This is probably a little cynical, but solid church finds its main sense of success in the number of people who attend on a Sunday. Regular church attendance is seen as being a significant test of spiritual health, and church growth is measured in size of congregations. The importance of Sunday attendance and congregational size can never be underestimated for solid church. - 18

The emphasis upon attendance at one central service enables ministers to see easily if people are starting to flag in their spiritual lives. We might attend to hear the preacher, but clergy often attend because they want to see us there. The system of counting sheep and making sure they attend can lead us into unhealthy relationships pf surveillance and control. Ministers sometimes express frustration with the way that a central service restricts their ability to experiment and be creative, and the weight of being responsible for the regular attendance of members can be intolerable. As a youth minister in a church I felt something of this pressure. When the numbers of young people sitting in the back pew increased, I was doing well, but if they started to decrease, questions were asked. The implication was that it was my job to look after their spiritual health, and this was assessed in terms of their regular attendance on Sunday mornings. - 19

In solid modernity the size of the factory building was a major sign of success. Extending the production facility was the aim of the business. Similarly sold church focus on buildings to hold more people and process more activities - 19

Solid church is built on the assumption that it is good for large numbers of very different people to meet in the same room and do the same sort of thing together. Worship therefore becomes a one-size-fits-all environment. The result is that we provide a rather bland and inoffensive diet of middle of the road music and safe spirituality. Variety in what we have to offer is severely limited by the tastes and prejudices of those who attend. Extremes are tempered because one of the key values is that we do not offend anyone who comes to church regularly. - 19

One size fits all is made into a virtue by those who run solid church. Everything about regular Sunday worship is designed to make us feel that even if we don't like it, we should still attend because it is good for us. As with cough medicine, we endure the bad taste because we are told that it is doing us good. - 20

Solid church does not disappear in liquid modernity; rather, it experiences a subtle mutation. Just as in modernity the premodern aspects of church continued, so in liquid modernity the premodern, parish-based church and the modern congregation or gathered church also continue. But while they may exist, they do not remain unchanged by the fluidity of people's lives and the surrounding culture. Liquid modernity brings out the mutation in the parish and in the congregation. These changes have emerged almost imperceptibly, so much so that many church leaders may not have noticed what has happened. Those running parishes and congregations think that they are doing what the church has always done. Unfortunately neither the congregation nor the people in the wider parish have stood still. Liquid modernity has seeped under the church door and into the sanctuary. - 25...