Occupy The Church

An article by Matt    7 Comments

I have been following the Occupy Wall Street movement from a distance over the last month or so.  Regardless of your feelings on this movement, and I really have no desire to get into the politics behind it, I think that we are witnessing something incredibly significant.

I had lunch last week with a newspaper reporter who wrote a story on Occupy Wall Street for Guardian Media, in Trinidad.  His take on the movement, as is evidenced by his commentary, is that the movement is “an exercise in political immaturity.”  While on one hand, I am tempted to agree with him (and during our conversation I did agree with him).  It is my belief that what we are seeing is not immaturity, but instead the rise of what could very well be the first postmodern political movement that this nation has seen.

While many are saying that this movement can not possibly have any staying power, I have a feeling that this is the way of things to come.  I think that Douglas Rushkoff’s article for CNN, Think Occupy Wall Street is a phase? You don’t get it, makes one incredibly valuable point that we need to be thinking through:

Anyone who says he has no idea what these folks are protesting is not being truthful. Whether we agree with them or not, we all know what they are upset about, and we all know that there are investment bankers working on Wall Street getting richer while things for most of the rest of us are getting tougher. What upsets banking’s defenders and politicians alike is the refusal of this movement to state its terms or set its goals in the traditional language of campaigns.

That’s because, unlike a political campaign designed to get some person in office and then close up shop (as in the election of Obama), this is not a movement with a traditional narrative arc. As the product of the decentralized networked-era culture, it is less about victory than sustainability. It is not about one-pointedness, but inclusion and groping toward consensus. It is not like a book; it is like the Internet.

I think that Rushkoff has picked up on why this is significant, and why the media has been mocking the movement: they don’t care about your expectations.  This movement has decided that it is fed up, and is going to do something about it… and they really don’t care if it looks like your interpretation of a protest.  And so they have no manifesto, they have no charismatic leader, they communicate through twitter and a website, and they defy the media’s insistence on doing protests the “right” way (which allows them to sell advertising).

I think a similar move is at work in the church.  I believe that the next generations are preparing to take over the reigns of leadership, and while they may appreciate the way things were done (or not), they have no intention to continue to do things that way.  This generation recognizes that the church is becoming more and more irrelevant, and is tired of watching their peers leave their faith behind.  The question is, and I don’t fully know the answer to this, is how should the church be preparing to serve this generation?

Have YOU seen similarities between Occupy Wall Street and the church?