this is post #2 of lenses on community. let me say again that these are not meant to be 'categories.'
'industrial' community
modernity, the industrial revolution, and baby boomers sum up this kind of church (yes, how's that for pigeon-holing!). while the word 'institutional' would be an unhelpful use of the word, it is true that baby boomers have taken to 'organised' church, not like ducks to water, but like olympic swimmers to 100 metre pools with lanes and stop watches... industrial community is ordered, purposeful community.
people
industrial communities not only have members, they have staff, clients, customers, team leaders, and departments. people need to have a particular place in such communities. they are helped to identify their gifts and match it to a particular role. because industrial church is purposeful (driven...), all of the parts of the body need to work together seamlessly, efficiently and well. the best worship leaders, etc etc. this is one of the great strengths and weaknesses of industrial communities - team-work and productivity by many names. there's something almost socialist about the way that the organisation helps you to find your place within it. (says he as a policital lefty...)
place
industrial community is not place-bound. it is regional, not local. provided that the right conditions are present, it can happen anywhere. unlike geographic community. we expect people to travel to a regional church (rather than expecting church to travel to them) it relies more on common interest than common location (or even common memory - what, or rather, how, is memory when it becomes place-less?). if agricultural communities are communities of location, industrial communities are half-way to being communities of affinity (see next post). The half-way is important, because industrial communities usually have more 'agriculturals' than 'tribals'. why? because agriculturals understand, in fact applaud, productivity. and because boomers are the children of boosters. hence the 'gap' with the more 'tribal' gen x.
space
yet industrials both choose and create a space. sometimes they inherit an 'agricultural' space, but ideally they choose. social mobility (with transport) is the big shift here. choose where to live, and then live in your car... geographically, place literally becomes 'my space': the front porch becomes the back yard. industrialists build factories. they renovate, remove memorials, and indeed memory (and then seek to recreate it). all spaces ought to be functional, as efficient and effective as ministry teams. one result is that the church becomes, not so much a gathering centre but an activity centre - a seven-day-a-week program place. In a very real sense, place is secondary to space, and space should be variable. Spatially, home matters less than before, unless it's hosting a small group. In a real sense, purposeful church doesn't know what to do with non-church-member households, since they can't be a place for church programs.
time
industrial time is structured time. clock time. tick tock tick tock. schedule time, deadline time, planning time. time is purpose-driven, goal-oriented. hours, minutes and seconds are counted in ways that agriculturalists never imagined. time can be 'lost'! for agriculturalists, time has a slow, regular rhythm. for industrialists, time is measured, incremental, intentional. so industrial churches tend to fill up time, not release it. church households feel pressured by the time demands on their members. for industrials, time and space must both be ordered, and indeed order is needed to make the new place sacred.
purpose
industrial church is 'effective' church. not merely called, but driven. (remember when driven was the opposite of called?) the booster generation built the foundations, the boomers put a factory on it. John Drane has called it 'mcdonaldisation'. it must be said that the 'boosters' knew how to replicate - MYF, PFA, CE, BYF - youth programs were everywhere. but the boomers created national staff and curriculum. today the internet has given us global, purposeful church. this is not all bad, but the problem with the factory is not so much its orderliness, but how it is and isnt a product of a local community of interest-bearers. and also the extent to which many people discover that they just don't fit such an ordered world.
leadership
most church leadership books for 20 years have been about industrial church, albeit often working on more organic than mechanistic systems. industrial leaders are managers and CEO's, they are also persuaders and innovaters - change agents who care about transforming what their parents built. they are at the top of a pyramid of staff (= 'team') - that's how you build and effective large organisation. they strive for excellence, and either achieve it (5%) or feel inadequate (95%).
industrial churches and industrial leaders, like those before them, have worked within their time, and in a very real sense, sought to grab hold of a 'boom period' of productivity in the face of major sociological and economic shifts. what seems clear is that success through this lens is almost always about growth, effectiveness, resources and results. what is this saying, I wonder?
hmm... this post got a lot longer as I went... I seem to be making some of this up as I go along...