In order to restore this cultural capital and community to our world, Putnam suggests that we need to help integrate people’s lives back into the official social structures of the culture. These social structures form a sort of frame around which culture is built, and around which we can rebuild our communities. This solution is noble and thoughtful; asking people to shorten their commutes to work, watch less TV, carpool, join groups in their workplaces, or re-up for civic institutions are all solid starting points. But is this enough?

For example, Putnam states, “Let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 the level of civic engagement among Americans then coming of age in all parts of our society will match that of their grandparents when they were that same age, and that at the same time bridging social capital will be substantially greater than it was in their grandparents’ era.”⁴ This is commendable. However, society seems to have fragmented such that even the ideas and institutions that we are called back to are fundamentally characterized by individualism — so much so that participating in them often feels like engaging with social cannibals, rather than other contributors. We have all had experiences that were intended to create community, which ended up leaving us feeling exhausted and drained, instead of refreshed.

Another problem is that we have no allegiance to a civic whole, no metanarrative, or any real connection with our grandparents. We don’t know how they lived or have any real understanding of their times and challenges. Many of us simply have no models to work from, guides to follow, or vision to move toward. We cannot go back to a way of life we are so thoroughly removed from.

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE CHURCH

In the midst of this cultural fragmentation, the church has tried to address the problem by calling people to a vision of true community. But no matter how hard we try, the cultural forces are often too powerful and persuasive to counteract. We are barely different from our culture — busy, driven, individualistic, and disconnected — and so, we too have lost our social capital. Our lives also lack that mystical missing ingredient. We have become cultural consumers who no longer have the networks, norms, or values for anything other than our own peace and affluence. It shouldn’t be this way. As people who are called to be a new and different kind of community — a city on a hill — we should offer something toward the common good and the renewal of our world. But because our schedules, practices, values, and networks are often identical to those who are not believers, we lack the ability to offer them anything different than the fragmenting forces they are already encountering in society. We have somehow forgotten that we are called to something bigger than our own fulfillment and dreams.

Church leaders have become aware of this problem. We’ve recognized the importance of social capital and its connection to spreading the gospel, and we’ve scrambled to bridge the gaps in our fragmented culture. The primary way we have done this is through small group ministry. The general idea is to invite people back together by organizing them in ways that let them connect around the main needs of their lives. For many, this has been an interesting experience. Programming community based on demographics may help people connect, but it often fails to help people in the areas of their norms and values. We can create “a church network” (small group) but many struggle to integrate this weekly-programmed event into the norms, values, and other networks of their lives.

Despite its good intentions, programmed community often feels like a small group version of eHarmony. Fill out a life stage/felt needs profile and you are matched up with other people at a similar stage of life and loneliness with the hope that it all works out. Different communities have had varying degrees of success with this approach, but for the cynics outside the church, this is hardly different from what is available in the world. And these inward-facing, needs-based groups often fail to take into consideration the kingdom of God at large.

Many churches with small group ministries are now publicly vocalizing this angst. They are coming to the conclusion that traditional small group ministry has too often done little to impact the way people actually live or reorient their lives around the kingdom of God. I believe success has been limited in the small group approach because it fails to address at least two of the deeper realities of our lives.

Time. People’s lives are now centered on their jobs, leisure activities, and families, and this inward vision is reinforced by millions of marketing messages each year. Therefore, we must wrestle with this question: how can we get people to care about the greater good, when we don’t have a shared commitment to anything greater than our own careers and shrinking leisure time? People have lost their allegiance to the church’s vision if it doesn’t help fulfill their own, and in an evercompetitive workplace requiring longer and longer hours, personal time becomes the highest commodity. People simply can’t center their busy lives on official church programs anymore.

Trust. Another concern for leaders has been the distrust of authority and disillusionment with the institutional church. It seems that no matter how hard church leaders try, or what the latest conference offers, it’s extremely hard to get people to believe that the church knows best. Combine that with the heartbreaking hypocrisy of exposed national leaders, and you have a real problem. When cynicism and secularism are the framing narrative of culture, getting people to center their lives on officially established programs under official church authority is increasingly hard. Moreover, because the church has been ostracized by the culture and pushed to the fringe of society, to call people to deep involvement in an institution that is so disconnected means we have to pull them further away from engaging in the networks, norms, and values that actually make up their lives.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the programmed approach is that it can cause real disconnects with our mission. If people only have social networks, norms, and values that interact inside the church, then we cannot connect meaningfully with the culture at large. This leaves us radically disconnected. We can unintentionally isolate people from the greater community and become so desperate to “connect” that we sever other organic relationships that allow the gospel to flow from one life to another. In essence, we lose the ability to be salt and light. We lose kingdom opportunities in networks, norms, and values that let us be a voice of an alternative vision to the world.

Anna, the actress, waitress, and recovering alcoholic, eventually became a Christian, and her passion for connection in the church was contagious. She served in the children’s ministry, got involved in a small group, and even came to church early to greet new people. At coffee recently, she expressed her concern that something seemed to be missing. All of these programs were still rooted within the confines of her small church network and didn’t overlap with the other parts of her life. She was also struggling to live the values of Jesus out in the “real world” and in other networks of friends. It was like there was a giant disconnect between her church world and the rest of the world. While pouring out her thoughts on this, she said something to the effect of, “We simply cannot love one another as Jesus commanded, if our lives only overlap in 15-minute segments before and after programmed Christian events. And we cannot reach out to those far from God if the normal flow of our lives is disconnected from theirs and channeled into church programs. It’s like God calls us to life together, to the weaving of the fabric and moments of our lives, so the expression of the kingdom becomes a reality in our midst, rather than a idea in our heads.”

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