How do you feel about the fellowship hall? Do you enjoy the time after service in the large room with the drinks and snacks as time to catch up with others, meet new people, and partake in some fellowship as the name might suggest? Or do you have feelings of nervousness, dread, and fear? If it is the former, Praise God! You’re making the fellowship hall what it is in theory meant to do. But if it is the latter, you are not alone. I’ve had a number of conversations about the fellowship hall and many people are intimidated by it.
I don’t think people were intimidated when we were a smaller church in a smaller building. Maybe it’s something about the large ceiling space and warehouse-y feel? But then again, people were intimidated by it at the old, warmer feeling building. So, I don’t think it’s the space. Maybe it’s the number of people there now? We feel guilty that we may not know everyone with the large number of people? Perhaps. Please, voice your feelings about the fellowship hall (anonymously on seminarythoughts.wordpress.com if you like) and let me know how you feel about it and why.
My theory is that we dislike the fellowship hall because it is does not meet us in the type of culture we are accustomed to. Let me explain.
As I’ve talked about on other occassions, there are 2 dimensions to culture: grid and group. Briefly, group is the amount of importance the group as a whole plays to the individuals and grid is the amount of structure in relating with others there may be. When people are afraid of the fellowship hall because they might offend someone for not remembering their name, being afraid of offending is high group, remembering the name is part of grid. When people are afraid to meet new people because they don’t know what to say, that is a fear based in not understanding the structure in relating with others and that is an indicator of high grid. Generally speaking, North American culture is low group, low grid: every individual can do whatever they like and say whatever they want and no one will take offense because everyone understands it is the right of the individual for personal expression. Generally speaking, Korean culture is high group, high grid: people worry if they are to address using the honorifics, use korean “noona/unni” and “hyung/oppa”, say the right words, do the right things(use 2 hands when receiving or giving something, etc.). All those unspoken, unwritten rules are high grid, and the worry of offending someone is high group.
Our church is predominantly Korean-American which means we’re somewhere in-between these two seemingly opposing cultures. But, I think the Korean in us kicks in when we go to the fellowship hall. Our fears of offending others take over, and we tend to do what we are familiar with and what won’t offend. The fellowship hall structure as we are familiar with it is a very low group, low grid structure. You go into a big room and talk with whoever you like and do whatever you want. The high group high grid person in us gets uncomfortable with that.
How then, can we make the time are more genuine time of fellowship? Remove the cultural barriers that are making it ineffective. Contextualize it, as it were. I suggest we make our fellowship time a bit more structured. Raise our grid level a bit. We can either do this by teaching our people how to interact with others (explicitly or implicitly…implicit communication works best in high group high grid cultures) or by providing a structure to make the rules more explicit. In the short term, providing a structure (for example, games, tables, seating, etc.) can be effective, but I believe would be too hard to maintain in the long term. The flip side is difficult because we are so subcnsciously inculturated in our culture that it’s hard to teach what everyone “should” already know.
How do you feel about the fellowship hall, and what would it look like to you to share in genuine fellowship after service?
[...] and why that number seems to be growing. I was thinking about it in terms of grid and group (see this post for a primer) and was thinking we are unaware of the rules for relating with one another (grid). [...]