One of the biggest shortcomings of the contemporary western church is that we have the ability to have a collective doctrine but not a collective way of life. The fairly recent renewed interest in ‘rules of life‘ hints that many people are looking for guidance in the way their life is shaped and lived out.

Churches are more than capable of outlining “What we believe” and insisting that people sign up in order to become members. What they often do not have or do, at least not without succumbing to legalism and control, is a similar approach to “How we live.” Beyond, that is, a few big issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and government assisted suicide. Divergence on which I expect churches assume they have filtered out. Add in the disappearance of church discipline, until someone discovers they crossed a line they didn’t know was there, and I suspect more Christians are ‘doing what is right in their own eyes’ than we might be comfortable with.

Critically infected by individualism as the western church is, when it comes to lifestyle too much has been abdicated to the individual and this has left behind a wisdom deficit. I suspect to fill that gap many Christian people do what everyone else does and simply Google’s for what works – when it comes to finances, parenting, relationships, mental and physical health, or what to think about the local, national and international issues of their day that trouble or bother them.

Six years ago I reflected on some work by Todd Dildane who highlighted three big challenges for most urban and suburban churches: the car and urban sprawl (making proximity and community difficult), screens and technology (making community, family life, relationships and friendship difficult) and me-culture of individualism (making wisdom hard to access and communal resources and institutions hard to build or sustain).

Better is possible.

If collectively we began to think through issues at the local church level, together evaluating where we are at and doing the work on the challenges that face us, we can at least point at a collective direction. We can begin to help one another live in a way in more accordance with our deeper values and intuitions. It will help those motivated to do so, it will give resources to those confused by the messages they hear, and will perhaps strengthen the church as an alternative, helpful wise counter-community in the middle of a still very secular society.

It is not necessary to mandate everything, to micro-manage people’s lives is a serious alternative only considered by people with Messiah complexes and aspirations to cult status. We don’t need to force anything on anyone, police compliance, or even be overly worried by people ignoring it. but helping our people think about how they live and doing that with their community is surely better than what we’re doing just now.