The spirituality of my local community

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was going to start researching the spirituality of the town I live in. For a relatively small town of around 25,000, Sherwood has quite a bit of spiritual activity, with two magic shops, a psychic healer, clairvoyant, a yoga centre, a spiritualist church, and a Buddhist meditation centre. I’ve managed to spend time with most of these individuals and groups now, and have had some really interesting conversations.

All these groups confirmed that there is a strong spiritual ‘undercurrent’ in the town. It seems that while people don’t talk about spirituality in casual conversation, people are open if they are given the right environment. One yoga instructor described the people of Sherwood as very reflective and ‘looking for faith in something’. I asked one pagan whether business had been affected by the recession and they answered ‘not at all, spirituality is seen as a necessity, not a luxury’.

Apparently all the centres attract a wide range of clientele, although many said that they are particularly popular with mum’s whose children have just gone to school or left home as they are looking for a new focus and meaning in life.

The pagans said that young adults are usually sceptical, but curious, and often drop into the shops for a ‘reading’ or similar experience. In fact one young shop assistant I spoke to admitted to having struggled with a fear of death all her life, and so went to a pagan for advice, and the reading she was given was so accurate that she’s now committed to herself to paganism as a lifestyle.

I was keen to know more about whether these centres were offering one-off experiences or a lifestyle. They all said that while they are happy to lead people into isolated experiences, they were keen that people see what they do as a way of life. One yoga instructor said, for example, that while they are happy for people to simply come for a workout, their real focus is promoting a holistic lifestyle of physical, emotional and spiritual awareness and well being.

One of the key themes in all these conversations was spiritual experience. All my questions were answered with descriptions of tangible spiritual experiences, which drew people into a lifestyle. This reminded me of the way Jesus often ministered. He offered people an experience of himself—e.g. through healing, forgiveness, deliverance etc—and then invited them to follow him. And the early church followed a similar pattern. As Paul said to the Corinthians ‘my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Sprit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power’

So it seems to me that in some ways, these spiritual practitioners are closer to the way Jesus ministered than the local churches. They demonstrate a spiritual reality and then invite people to explore further.

This has got me thinking about the type of mission we need to engage in, and the type of church that would need to emerge from this mission, if we are to be effective in our mission to this spiritually curious community.

Tim