The Congruence Theory…

April 9, 2008 | 9:00 AM

In 2005 I read an article by David Britt from Harvie Conn’s Planting and Growing Urban Churches.  Britt discussed what he refers to as the congruence theory.  Within any setting you’ll find different individuals.  From a distance these individuals often create a singular demographic, psychographic, or ethnographic.  When you look at the individuals up close, you see that each has his or her own unique mixture of demographic, psychographic, or ethnographic background.  Missiologists could break down the urbanites into an indefinite number of categories based on demographics, psychographics, and ethnographics.

According to Britt, Donald McGavran used “the term homogeneous unit to describe a ‘section of society in which all the members have something in common’.”  Britt asked himself, “Which kinds of factors tend to form the basis for a church fellowship in urban America in the latter half of the twentieth century?”  This is a valid question.  The point that he makes is that in every urban center, every individual belongs to many different circles- whether they be ethnic, social, or geographic, is not important.  That everybody has something in common with someone else is a potential unifier for urban multi-culturalism.

Think about your workplace (pastors and church staff… pretend).  Your workplace is made up of men and women of different races, ethnicities, religions, and the like.  The one common factor is that you all work at the same place.  When I worked in the cafe at Books-A-Million back in the day, there were four of us: two wiccan girls, an African-American Baptist nursing student, and this white Southern Baptist.  One of the two wiccans was from California, the other three of us were from Alabama.  I was the youngest of us four.  We were all Americans.

We had different views on a lot of things and we ran in completely different circles.  Each of us had a particular worldview that was ever-so-slightly different.  More importantly we each had our own network of friends- and that network was at times both diverse and homogeneous.  And just as we each had our own individual networks, we were a part of the one at Books-A-Million, influencing each other in various ways while we worked together.

Britt’s conclusion (and mine) is that we are all connected in some way.  It might not seem like a brilliant conclusion.  Truthfully, it’s not.  With the advent of the communication age came pluralism.  The foundation of a movement begins when we understand that The World Is Flat.

What happens when we start looking for Malcolm Gladwell’s three personalities in our networks?  Well I guess we should take a quick look at who those three personalities are.  Next time.

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