Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered: An Ecclesiology of Space Reuben L. Lillie Olivet Nazarene University School of Music Paper presented on the theme “Wesleyan Ecclesiology: The Church, the People of God” held at the 52nd annual meeting of the Wesleyan Theological Society Asbury Theological Seminary Wilmore, KY March 3, 2017 Copyright © 2017 Reuben L. Lillie This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.  Abstract We need to develop a theology of space for our time. The church both views and uses space differently than we did even a generation ago. The Church of the Nazarene, for example, recently changed its official definition of “a church” to be less bound to a particular physical time and place. At the same time, we should affirm Jesus’ assurance that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matt 18:20 NRSV). Yet, as John Wesley observed in the sermon “Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity” (1789): “Does it not seem (and yet this cannot be!) that Christianity, true scriptural Christianity, has a tendency in process of time to undermine and destroy itself? For wherever true Christianity spreads . . . [and] wherever it generally prevails, it saps its own foundation. But is there no way to prevent this?” (para. 17– 18, emphasis added). Wesley reiterates his answer through the individual and corporate practices of ‘gaining, saving, and giving’ all one can (para. 19). For us today, however, we must not only assess the attitudes and motives behind these practices, but also the places and spaces where we actually—and more routinely—put them in to practice. Of particular and growing interest is the shifting urban environment. To be sure, cities have been home to diverse expressions of the church as long as Christians have inhabited them. Recent decades, however, have experienced an increased presence of new church plants as well as non-edifice-based worshiping communities, language groups, and outreach prototypes ranging from house congregations to multisite megachurches. This paper seeks to give special attention to such alternative, or third spaces, which have come to be associated with the so-called missional movement and organic church and the place that such communities and their peculiar postures toward space may hold in the development of a more coherent theology of the gathered church. iii  The Problem with Space We need a better sense of space.1 When it comes to developing a better sense of space like I have in mind, the task can prove quite difficult because any problems we might detect with our sense of space often elude us. Which is to say that the problem I have in mind for us to improve with respect to our sense of space is elusive precisely because the concept of space itself is elusive. I am not talking about that boundless ‘final frontier’ which we have dubbed ‘outer space’ per se (although I am not ruling it out either). Rather, I am talking about that “extent,” as Webster’s dictionary calls it, which is “set apart or available”2 to us as through such arbitrary and abstract ideas as here or there. This space is always “available” to us, yet it seems beyond us at the same time. That is, what I find most elusive and that for which we need to develop a fuller sense is space as it relates to our inhabiting and participating within it collectively, rather than our futile attempts to control space which usually boil down to attempting to do so individually. In the space this paper allows, I want to talk more explicitly about an ecclesiological problem with the church’s prevailing treatment of space as I see it, then to take some queues from Jesus about shifting the church’s spatial concerns, and finally to introduce some ideas for imagining how the church may better participate within space. If my paper has a thesis, it is that the church is always and inherently local. Rather than using this paper to nuance such a thesis, however, I want to explore the idea of space more generally as it relates to the church and the church to it. 1. I first presented this paper at the 52nd annual meeting of the Wesleyan Theological Society, at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, KY, March 3–4, 2017, with the conference theme “Wesleyan Ecclesiology: The Church, the People of God.” Since that conference, this paper has also inspired an interdisciplinary book-length project among some of my fellow faculty members at Olivet Nazarene University. Due to the corporate nature of the subject matter at hand and as a member of WTS myself, I routinely address the audience in the first-person plural. Unless the reader took part in the conference or else is a member of the Olivet or Nazarene communities at large, there is no pressure to identify with such statements. However, if the reader identifies with any confessional community, then I do hope that my argument offers some exchange. 2. Merriam-Webster, s.v. “space,” accessed March 3, 2017, https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/space. 1 Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 2 Then, if I have done my job as an explorer, we will be better poised to nuance how the church is realized in our various local contexts. Like many things, space is one of those notions to which humans take exception. As humans, we have a predilection to demarcate space, say, by flying flags, or by erecting physical walls, or by drawing boundary lines on maps. Animals mark “their” territory. In our own ways, we stake claim on space and dedicate it—even sacralize it—for specific purposes. But, theologically speaking, we need a better ecclesiology of space. In other words, we need to consider more deeply and more concertedly how the church—in both its gathered and dispersed forms—engages those spaces in which it is expressed, especially in spaces the church does not “own” or otherwise claim to have control. This is particularly incumbent upon the church of the here and now, our church which largely has been co-opted by and simultaneously has contributed to the constant conflation of space with the contrived use of such space. In other words, although Christians the world over would likely agree (if they could agree about anything) that the church is more than a building—certainly more than what it does in buildings at a designated time and day of the week—the church has nonetheless become socially confined to certain edifice-based expressions. This holds, for example, whether one considers whatever may be typical about the American Sunday-morning experience or the underground church in China. In the former, the freedom of religion combined with the increasingly rapid pace of personal schedules continue to siphon time away from other ecclesiastical activities in favor of a singular, all-encompassing, weekend church-going activity. In the latter, the lack of religious freedom largely restricts the gathered church to where and when it can express itself as such safely and in secret. Granted, these two examples by no means encompass the variegated expressions of the church across the Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 3 globe.3 Nonetheless, it remains that if the church is to be expressed more fully moving forward, then we need to develop a heightened awareness of ways in which the church should engage space in and for our time—at least insofar as a localized group of the church’s members has the choice. Therefore, we do well to recognize the extent to which the church and societies at large view space differently nowadays than even a generation ago. For example, in just this past year the International Church of the Nazarene changed its official definition of a local church to be freer from the culturally-contingent formalities of a schedule or location, namely, “Any group that meets regularly for spiritual nurture, worship, or instruction, with an identified leader and aligned with the message and mission of the Church . . .”4 This shift defines the church primarily in terms of why and how it meets rather than confining where these meetings take place. Still, the church meets somewhere. That is, the church is always and inherently local. As another example of this changing perspective toward space, proponents from within the so-called missional movement or organic church often prefer what they call third spaces—those spaces which are apart from either a church building or a member’s home, such as an eatery, a Meetup®, or a park—as being the primary location where discipleship takes place (more on the nature of this posture toward space later). Even as church going is crowded out of many individual’s schedules, there is room for the imaginative re-purposing of space which seems directly related to a desire for a more readily, if not a more fully, expressed ecclesiology than is afforded by weekly church services on church property. 3. For a more sociological analysis of the church in both its global and local iterations, see my coauthored essays with Charles L. Perabeau, “A World of Difference: Wesleyan Tradition and the Scientific Method in Global Contexts,” 15th annual meeting of the Wesleyan Philosophical Society, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, CA, March 10, 2016; and “#GeographyMatters: Keeping Religion and Race in Their Rightful Place,” 16 th annual meeting of the Wesleyan Philosophical Society, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, KY, March 2, 2017. 4. David P. Wilson, “New Ruling from the Board of General Superintendents—Definition of a Church,” memo to District Superintendents (USA/Canada) and Regional Directors, February 4, 2016. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 4 Jesus on the Church in Space To illustrate the deeper ecclesiological expressiveness I have in mind, consider the Gospel of Matthew, particularly ch. 18 where Jesus outlines one of the primary ways the church occurs in space: If your brother or sister sins against you, go [there] and correct them when you are alone together. If they listen to you, then you’ve won over your brother or sister. But if they won’t listen, take with you [there] one or two others so that every word may be established by the mouth of two or three witnesses. But if they still won’t pay attention [there], report it to the church. If they won’t pay attention even to the church, treat them as you would a Gentile and tax collector. I assure you that whatever you fasten on earth will be fastened in heaven. And whatever you loosen on earth will be loosened in heaven. Again I assure you that if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, then my Father who is in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I’m there with them. (Matt 18:15–20 CEB, emphasis added) At least four observations come to mind from Jesus’ highly spatial word choice in this passage. First, Jesus’ list of instructions reminds us of the extent to which the writer of Matthew saw Jesus’ newly forming church (cf. Matt 16:18) as re-appropriating the model of the ancient Greek ekklēsia (lit. “gathering of those summoned”). That is, the instructions (a) to “go and correct” another wherever it is that the two of you can do so alone together, then (b) as necessary to “take” others to such a believer who has wronged you or (c) perhaps that one to the congregation at large (i.e., the ekklēsia) demonstrate an idea of church that goes beyond what the term ekklēsia itself entails. In Greek city states the ekklēsia was designed to help that municipality better to govern itself both judicially and legislatively. It is not necessarily the case in Matt 18 that Jesus is advocating for the public correction of certain members (even so, only as a last resort). But it is clear here that Jesus expected those who would claim to be disciples (a) to be open to correction by fellow disciples, and (b) to provide space for forgiveness as a primary function within various formal instances of gathering—both as the “two or three” and as the ekklēsia at large. In my experience, we used to be better at this than we are presently. Due, at Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 5 least in part, to the ways in which “church” has been reducing more and more into single and shorter weekly gatherings, the “business of forgiveness” (in a parliamentary sense, or at least a Greco-Roman ecclesiastical one) continues to be decentralized from within our liturgical agendas in favor of reaching the end of a given service within an alloted time frame. Not only is forgiving each other uncomfortable, it takes too long and does not fit so tidily into some of our more predictable and perfunctory liturgical practices. Second, Jesus’ framing of this institutional practice of forgiveness in terms of fastening and loosening “on earth” and “in heaven,” (vv. 18–19) suggests that how and where we practice forgiveness ought to matter that much more. There are eternal consequences. Unfortunately, the conflation of the people who comprise the church with a physical building has facilitated efforts to turn “Sunday morning worship” into a more or less utilitarian production bent on pleasing the greatest number of constituents rather than making the most of opportunities to ask for and extend mercy in the raw and altruistic ways Jesus suggests in vv. 15–22 and following (cf. vv. 23–35 in the parable of the unforgiving servant). This paper is not the proper forum for unpacking an ecclesiology of forgiveness, but we should at least acknowledge some of the practices behind the point Jesus is making in this pericope.5 Third, the assurance of Jesus’ enduring presence in v. 20 is directly tied to the assurance of forgiveness in vv. 15–19. Gathering “in Jesus’ name” happens at every stage of fastening-and- loosening outlined in Matthew 18, not just in front of the ekklēsia. However, another unfortunate consequence of conflating church with edifice—and thus delimiting ekklēsia in a Greco-Roman clerical or institutional sense—is the projection of power away from the laity and onto the ordained leadership. Historically, and particularly at present, the “two or three” have been 5. Much like this footnote, I will leave the discussion about how one might “treat a Gentile and tax collector” (cf. Matt 18:17) for another time. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 6 ecclesiastically divested of the power Jesus proffers them in 18:15–20, if not actually then at least institutionally. And that is no small problem.6 This does not happen simply because the church has or uses buildings. Yet, because our language has come to brand those buildings and that weekly event which takes place there with the same name as the people who more quintessentially compose “the church,” this divestment of the power to forgive from the laity can and has become increasingly problematic to the extent that the church confines itself to such space. The edifice-based church is not wrong or bad per se. But I do want to point out how the presence of the so-called organic church and missional movements can offer a helpful corrective against confining the church to edifice. Fourth, Jesus’ reiteration in v. 20 ought to become more axiomatic for us—that the “where two or three are gathered” is also the “there” in which Jesus is incarnated among us. So, “where two or three are gathered” (v. 20) and forgiving one another is a way of detecting— better, enacting—Jesus’ presence. In other words, occasions “where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name” are those occasions where the Holy Trinity and the Body of Christ are most vividly realized—because that is where Jesus claims to be with us also. To get at Jesus’ point in grammatical terms: as we recognize the extent to which “church” has been confined to a more nounal status (i.e., as an institution, a building, an event) we need be recognize the church as more adverbially realized (i.e., by where and how it enacts Jesus’ presence). Admittedly, the notion of being adverbially realized would be redundant—even repugnant—were the emphasis not so necessary and appropriate for us to distinguish between (a) those various ideas we refer to with the word “church” on the one hand and (b) those ways and instances we want to imagine 6. This problem may be seen as a Protestant one (at least in terms of forgiveness as I have presented) given the strong objections which Protestants have been made against the Roman Catholic practice of confession to priests. In any case, the power of the clergy in this enterprise remains in tact, and Jesus’ enlisting of all followers regardless of their other roles within church leadership to recognize the power of Jesus’ presence—especially in the gathering of two or three—has been historically undermined by prioritizing those larger gatherings of the church which are more analogous to the ekklēsia. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 7 living into our identity as “the church” on the other. The words where (Gr. hou in v. 20 or pou), here (hóde or entrade), and there (ekei in v. 20 or autou), are adverbs which can be used to point out those places in which the church feels most like itself. In this way, here and there—otherwise arbitrary and abstract terms—are consistently concretized wherever two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, not merely in answer to the smalltalk question, “Where do you go to church?” For the church to be adverbially realized, besides to rhetorically split an infinitive, is to tap into the Great Commission where in your going (as the aorist participle poruenthentes may be translated) “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:19 NRSV). Likewise, to be adverbially realized is to affirm Simon Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” from earlier in Matthew’s gospel (cf. 16:16 NRSV). Moreover, it is to affirm Jesus’ subsequent proclamation to Peter as he renamed him: “on this rock,” that is, that peculiar space for encountering Christ and recognizing Jesus’ divine presence,“I will build my church” (v. 17 NRSV). Further still, the adverbially realized church bolsters our prayer life as we pray God’s will “be done, / on earth as it is in heaven” (6:10 NRSV, cf. 18:18) and “forgive us our debts” while again putting the onus on us “as we forgive our debtors” (6:12 NRSV). The adverbially realized church supercedes edifice and gives precedence to confessional space between people rather than qualifying that space with walls. Although this sort of adverbial ecclesiology has not been named as such, it is nonetheless at the heart of certain convictions within the missional movement and the organic church to which my attention is drawn. This adverbial ecclesiology from Matt 18:15–20 informs the ways in which the organic church has served to protest the reinforcement of those very problems with space which we find Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 8 being exacerbated by edifice. Not only that, but this sort of ecclesiology identifies the momentum behind how the missional movement has also tried to re-imagine the sanctification of every space we inhabit—not merely those spaces corresponding to the address printed on a church’s Articles of Incorporation or stationery. In place of building dedicated meeting places, the organic church invests almost unilaterally in highly personal relationships. Oikos and Ecclesiology Up to this point, I have been using the terms missional movement and organic church interchangeably. Indeed, they are more or less synonymous with more or less the same proponents and pundits. So, for the purposes of this paper, I will not distinguish between them so much as I will try to provide space for both of them. As terms, there are at least three things I like about them, which is to say there are at least as many ways in which I find them helpful for developing a better sense of space. First, both terms focus on the vitality and timeliness of the church in our time. Second, they both call the church at large to self-reflection—to refocus the church toward a more concerted discipleship agenda—either through protest, revision, prioritization, or perhaps simply a change of pace. Third, for good or ill, both the missional movement and the organic church are critical of institutional paradigms which we may see as hindering mission and/or inhibiting more healthy ways of making disciples (viz. Matt 18). What I do not like about these terms, however, is how abstract and jargony they are. (Note the irony of an academic paper on ecclesiology at a conference of Wesleyan theologians.) Members of the missional movement have highly idiosyncratic understandings both of “mission” and “movements” that are easy to misplace and difficult to encompass through such commonplace vocabulary. Similarly, the organic church is too often subject to overblown botanical metaphors, which—although rich and rooted in scripture—are still too easily lost in the platitudinous weeds. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 9 Perhaps this clumsiness cannot be helped because one of the better words we have (i.e., church) is already taken. But, no matter what terminology we develop for classifying and clarifying the more robust spatial ecclesiology we are seeking, we will likely suffer from this same limitation— at least until that terminology becomes more widely familiar such that it is less jargony (at which point more people would likely be ready to replace those terms too). So, I want to use the remaining space of this essay to consider some new terminology which is perhaps just as abstract and even more jargony. What better rhetorical exercise for learning a new way to walk than trying on a new pair of shoes? I am nonetheless confident the experience can be elucidating for us if we are willing to use our imaginations. The new terminology I have in mind comes out of the Greek word oikos. In addition to other ways it has been branded, oikos deals with ideas of family and the household. As such, oikos has been central to an organic/missional consciousness which values close relationships above any other form of discipleship. In fact, one of the primary spiritual disciplines to develop out of the organic church is the making of and reflecting on what are known as oikos maps. These oikos maps chart one’s day-to-day interactions among one’s several social groups of family, friends, co-workers, classmates, and the like in order to determine how much space one is providing for intentionally discipling “extended family” and then “extending” one’s household (i.e., one’s oikos) to include non-Christians.7 The logic being that if the majority of one’s time is spent among fellow Christians, then is one really taking the Great Commission seriously? More than the maps themselves, I want to see the church of the here and now more widely enter into a similar conscientious habitation of space. And although it is the word ekklēsia, not oikos, that makes an appearance in Matt 16 and 18, I find the language of oikos at 7. In my own understanding of oikos, I am also drawing upon Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1978), 348. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 10 the heart of a similar ecclesiological statement in 1 Cor 3. While the members of the church in Corinth were reportedly bickering about how best to draw their ecclesiastical lineage, Paul reminds them: The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. (1 Cor 3:8–17 NRSV) For the sake of space, I want to make two brief observations from this passage. First, oikos is the word translated most commonly in v. 9 as “building.” Second—and before that bit of irony takes a tragic turn—it is important to point out that Paul is decidedly not talking about buildings in the brick-and-mortar sense. Instead, Paul is referring to “you” Corinthians in the second-person plural as the church, specifically, “God’s temple” in whom God’s Spirit dwells (v. 16). In other words, Paul is restating Jesus’ teaching from Matt 18:20 that it is in the “two or three” where we share our presence with the divine (CEB). And this presence, rather than appropriating it solely to the ekklēsia, may be better understood metaphorically not as building just any building, but as building God’s household, which bears God’s name (cf. Matt 18:20), and where God decidedly dwells with us—and what makes us God’s family. Again, the good words in English are already taken. Ecology, (from the Gk. oikos and the suffix -logía), or “the study of the household,” belongs to the field of biology which treats the Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 11 relationships of organisms with their environment and with each other. Likewise, economics (from the Gk. oikos and the suffix -nomos), or “the management of the household,” belongs to the social sciences in its dealings with resource allocation, distribution, consumption, investment, production, and so forth. Before talking further about the ecological and economic import of oikos for the church which I have in mind—and before finally pulling back the curtain on the shiny new term I am about to coin—allow me to telegraph my thought process in the midst of writing this little essay. In trying to derive an ecclesiologically trenchant term (since I know of none), I first thought of oikostic or ecoistic as optional adjectival approximations of oikos, but they are both too homophonically caustic and/or egotistical. Then I tried working from a list of Greek suffixes, which through trial and error gave me oikophobic (which, even if I wanted to use it, is also taken by psychiatry as the fear of household appliances and other elements of the home); then ecophilic (which reminds me too much of that icky word children ask their parents to explain to them when they hear it on the news); then ecogrammatic, ecographic, and ecometric (which are all fun to think about but also seem limited by their visual and data-driven counterparts). Finally, I tapped into my affinities with Star Trek and my initial clarification from the opening paragraph of this paper that I was not necessarily thinking of space in any inter-planetary or inter-galactic sense. I give you ecozoid (from the Gr. oikos and the suffix -oid, “like, resembling, or having the form of”), meaning “having the shape or form of God’s household.” Ecozoid is synonymous with church, but like any good synonym it also carries with it the certain peculiarities, in this case, of the missional movement, the organic church, and similar ecclesiological sensitivities. As much as this absurdly awkward word may, in fact, constitute my first truly original contribution Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 12 to the academy, if it does nothing else, then I want most for it to stimulate meaningful and inventive conversation for developing a deeper understanding of human participation in space as the church. The form which the ecozoid church is taking is not simply a house-church movement. Rather, it defies notions of edifice and nuclear family units in favor of extending familial ties to whomever it encounters and wherever it encounters them (cf. Matt 12:46–50), cordially, not colonially.8 It is not that the ecozoid church is somehow against gathering. But it is against the predominant forms which many gatherings have taken within church-owned or at least church- operated spaces to the detriment of otherwise insatiable and interstitial interactions with individuals for whom edifice-constrained ecclesiologies are ineffective—those of our generation who are otherwise indifferent to religion. In other words, prevailing notions of edifice-based church ultimately serve those who would bother to show up to a building. The ecozoid church decidedly prefers to invest its time and energies to those who could care less whether a local expression of the church has a space that it controls or not. To be sure, rather than excluding edifice-based expressions, the ecozoid church actually and freely seeks to incorporate participants from within more edifice-based contexts. That is, there is nothing about an ecozoid consciousness which precludes the participation of persons who also attend buildings and events more commonly dubbed “church.” Yet, this inclusion of already-Christians is done only to the extent that such already-Christians do not detract from the adverbial realization of the church outside those church buildings and church events in said controlled environments. 8. That is, this discipleship practice does not necessarily need to include a more patently American Evangelical posture toward proselytizing. But it can certainly include acting as inclusively and lovingly as Jesus did toward others. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 13 An Ecologically Mindful Ecozoid Church In ecological terms, the ecozoid church gives legs to the recognition of humans as one of God’s many creations—not the species but a nonetheless special species uniquely positioned “here” in history to become less utilitarian in its view of space and more radically altruistic.9 Consider, for example, these two passing reflections about ecclesiology and animal behavior developed in conversations with my colleague at Olivet Nazarene University, now retired Professor of Biology Leo Finkenbinder, as I was researching for this essay. First, in any ecosystem, animals congregate for three primary reasons: (a) food collection, (b) mate selection, and (c) concern for safety. Humans exhibit a potentially exceptional fourth reason (at least as far as we can tell more generally with our current understanding of other animals) in that humans—and the church in a peculiar way—would voluntarily gather to put commonly held religious beliefs into practice. Yet, any ecclesiology—ecozoid, edifice-based, or otherwise—does well to ask the question (which deserves further research) how can the the church better congregate in light of human biology? A helpful starting place could be to observe intraspecies and interspecies rituals within the animal kingdom. I also suspect that paying attention to our biological needs could help us to make better sense of buildings (e.g., as shelter) and to think more responsibly about where, how, and why to build them. Second, in ecology, there is the principle known as competitive exclusion whereby “two species with similar [environmental makeup] cannot live together in the same place.”10 In the 9. I see John Wesley talking about radical altruism as I am calling it in terms of “gaining, saving, and giving” all one can (cf. “Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity” (1789), para. 19). While Wesley refers to money specifically, by imagining ecclesiology through ecozoid ecology and economics, I want to redress Wesley’s teaching in terms of a wider variety of resources, including the space available to us. For more about radical altruism, see my essay with Charles L. Perabeau, “#GeographyMatters: Keeping Religion and Race in Their Rightful Place.” 10. Garret Hardin, “The Competitive Exclusion Principle: An Idea that Took a Century Be Born has Implications in Ecology, Economics, and Genetics,” Science, New Series 131, no. 3409 (April 29, 1960): 1292– 1297, doi:10.1126/science.131.3409.1292. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 14 edifice-based church—an environment all its own—buildings are designed for humans to commune absent from, say, other animals. Outside the four walls of the church, these animals are in the “appropriate” environment for us to appreciate them as members within God’s creation. Once inside buildings, however, most non-human creatures fall into the category of “pests.” (Really, this is a problem in edifice-based human society at large, which is to say that this is more than a simple ecclesiological problem.) As Finkenbinder put it, “I am often struck when I drive to church on Sundays how I am on my way to be with my Christian brothers and sisters, but I am nonetheless shutting myself out from the rest of God’s creation.” In developing an ecologically mindful ecozoid ecclesiology, we cannot be content to congregate in privatized space for our own devices.11 We must continually find ways to participate in the already-created space around us, and therefore extend Christ’s presence to creation at large (cf. Matt 18:20). In Wesleyan terms, we could reconsider “the world as our parish.” Toward an Ecozoid Economy By extension, an ecozoid economy recognizes the human role as God’s managers not as a matter of totalizing dominion or control but, instead, as our responsibility. For example, the divine command behind the Hebrew verb wĕyirddu in Gen 1:26, which has been translated historically “let them have dominion” (KJV), can be framed more justly as “so that they may take charge” (CEB).12 Make no mistake, control—no matter how it is qualified—can be taken too far. The edifice-based form of church itself, tragically, is evidence of human attempts to seize too much control over the movement and activity of God’s Spirit among us. Whether to regulate the 11. There is, however, something to be said for what we do in secret (cf. Matt 6:6). For example, an integral part of Christian faith that should also be considered anew is the ways in which Christians might reconsider their individual practice of spiritual disciples. 12. NB, Gen 1:26 marks the only occurrence of wĕyirddu in the Biblical Hebrew text. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 15 Spirit through scheduled liturgical orders or to feign encapsulating the Spirit within sacred walls, humans have shown a habit for trying to constrain God as much as we have toward other humans, animals, and spaces. Still, the sense of responsibility which is highlighted in an ecozoid economy is one in which space is considered more holistically. It is not simply a matter of choosing between either edifice-based forms or non-edifice-based ones. Both cases allow for form and function to follow each other. Neither one is necessarily superior or more timely than the other. Rather, as the gospel passage instructs us, it is more important that the church is realized in all sorts of spaces—wherever two or three are gathered. One of the unfortunately more recent maladies to befall the edifice-based church is the corporation-like emphasis on “church growth” over the latter half of the twentieth century. This emphasis, despite its claim to be “seeker sensitive,” has played itself out in the form of local churches vying for more or less the same “target audiences” of people, namely, upwardly mobile and suburban families with children. That is, even though the tenets of church growth were practiced in all types of populations, those congregations operating in predominantly upwardly mobile suburban spaces experienced have experienced the most “growth” (which is to say, growth as they choose to measure it in terms of attendance to scheduled church events resulting in, among other things, larger budgets for larger building projects).13 In any case, church growth —even with a heavy dose of so-called “small groups” emphasis—necessarily operates to the detriment of the “two or three” of Matt 18:20 simply because the measure of growth within any one church gathered en masse is necessarily valued over the idiosyncratic interactions of the church scattered. As I discussed this with my colleague Paul Koch, Professor of Economics at Olivet, he helped to identify this church-growth emphasis in economic terms as a feigned 13. For a more detailed analysis of church-growth emphases by someone from within the missional movement, see Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2009). Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 16 second-best solution. Whereas the theory of the second best operates under the assumption that an optimal condition for a preferred economy cannot be satisfied, church-growth emphases presume that weekend worship services and their supporting infrastructure of “small groups” and the like need only to be improved upon rather than, potentially, to be eliminated or otherwise drastically re-appropriated in favor of other optimal liturgical practices. By contrast, an ecozoid economic prioritization of third spaces tends toward higher quality relationships that insist on delving deeper and deeper into the rip current of discipleship. Grand edifice-based and church-growth productions which follow a “liturgical” order of service are replaced with a more quintessential liturgical attitude. In other words, liturgy returns to being the constant rehearsal of the “work of the people” (Gr. leitourgia), not merely the playing out of prior leadership decisions.14 It is not simply a recursion of the quantitative argument that either smaller or bigger is somehow better. Instead, it is about the qualitative measures of reach for any local group of Christians. Since church-growth emphases have tended toward a more homogeneous sampling of the local, edifice-based churches have thus found themselves competing with other edifice-based churches for a smaller and smaller subset of the available population—the same “slice of the pie,” if you will. By contrast, the smaller-in-size discipleship relationships any local group of Christians takes on within the ecozoid economy (even potentially in partnership with edifice-based ecclesiological forms), carry the latent potential to disciple more people more effectively precisely because they operate outside of the confines of competition with other churches. Moreover, the ecozoid economy intentionally seeks out those who either reject or have been neglected by edifice-based forms of church. This breadth of reach is especially evidenced, for example, through the underground church in China today who must 14. I speak more directly into some of my liturgical concerns through my essay “Punctuation in Public Worship: The Semiotic Language within Our Liturgies,” 14th annual meeting of the Wesleyan Philosophical Society, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Mount Vernon, OH. March 5, 2015. Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 17 meet conspicuously (even as many at today’s conference would be quick to point out it was somewhat also visible in the Methodist movement in England during Wesley’s time through the band-class-society model). Ecozoid economics at its most basic level reveals how any form the church takes is ultimately limited by its operational constraints. Ecozoid congregations benefit especially from reduced overhead costs. Because (a) there is not necessarily a building to maintain within an operational budget and because (b) leadership personnel often function covocationally, ecozoid churches may almost unilaterally invest the moneys and other capital their members contribute directly back into people rather than infrastructure and upkeep. To this end, a congregation’s ministry to the poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised within a particular locale, for example, can receive higher budgetary priority. Edifice-based churches, however, are not only constrained by increased overhead, but they are also spatially constrained by the capacity of their building(s). If an ecozoid economy had nothing else going for it, the whole world is bigger than any building we could imagine putting people in. In the end, ecozoid economics is not so much about eliminating edifice-based expressions of church or even operating apart from them as it is about enlisting and empowering the “two or three,” even if that means edifice-based expressions might cease. Limited Space Because space is limited for us to consider our expanding ecclesiology of space better together, I wish to close this essay by encouraging you to imagine three ways of expressing the church with me: (a) the church as participating in space rather than merely using it for its own purposes, (b) the church as adverbially realized rather than merely functioning like a noun and Wherever Two or Three Are Gathered Lillie 18 (c) the church—the body of Christ, the family of God, the fruit of the Spirit—as taking the form of the oikos, or household of God, rather than any one species or subset of the human population. These are the voyages of the next generation of Christians. Its continuing mission: to go into all the world (cf. Matt 28:19), to seek out new life (cf. John 5:24; Rev 21:5) and new ways of disciplemaking (cf. Acts 2:42–47; 1 Pet 2:9–10), to boldly go where no one expression of the church has gone before (cf. Matt 28:20; Acts 1:8).  Bibliography Hardin, Garret . “The Competitive Exclusion Principle: An Idea that Took a Century Be Born has Implications in Ecology, Economics, and Genetics.” Science. New Series 131, no. 3409 (April 29, 1960): 1292–1297. doi:10.1126/science.131.3409.1292. Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2009. Lillie, Reuben L. “Punctuation in Public Worship: The Semiotic Language within Our Liturgies.” 14th annual meeting of the Wesleyan Philosophical Society. Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Mount Vernon, OH. March 5, 2015. Lillie, Reuben L. and Charles L. Perabeau. “A World of Difference: Wesleyan Tradition and the Scientific Method in Global Contexts.” 15th annual meeting of the Wesleyan Philosophical Society. Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, CA. March 10, 2016. ———. “#GeographyMatters: Keeping Religion and Race in Their Rightful Place.” 16th annual meeting of the Wesleyan Philosophical Society. 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