I remember a few years back at an old church of mine “cliques” were the all the rage. No one was quite sure what exactly they were (when does a group of friends become a clique?) or who was in them, but they were definitely a bad thing that needed to be stamped out. It was known that some people were not in cliques, leaving them feeling socially alienated and alone. Definitely ‘A Bad Thing’ - no arguement there. But what was the solution? Any group that became too close knit, too exlusive, was to be frowned upon - as Christians we accept all people, so you need to be friends with all people all the time. To do otherwise is un-Chirst like.

And fair enough too. What a wonderful church it would be were everyone had a deep, close, relationship with everyone else. You’d never be left without anyone to talk to, and no one would ever leave after the service, you would all be too busy talking about deep and meaningful things. You’d all be one great big…

However, like most initiatives based on an ideal, they don’t play out well in reality. Ideals and pragmatics rarely mix. People might have become a bit more suspicious (read: envious) of those who were ‘in’, but beyond that those on the outside stayed on the outside, those who ‘in’ stayed well and truely in (social melodrama of the time not withstanding).

Looking back, the whole thing seemed incredibly flawed. Instead of breaking up those insidious “cliques” people should have been trying to create more small groups with like-minded people where they could feel at home. Everyone wants their own clique, thats why they get jealous or unhappy when they don’t have one. And indeed that’s what happened - witness the rise of the weekday bible study group. Now everyone has their own little clique to call their own, and it works well.

Most of the time. Fast forward a few years to the present day, and I find myself longing for a clique to belong to. Its not that I feel excluded, its the absense of any real social groups at all that bothers me. Everyone says hi, asks the exact same mundane questions week in, week out (guilty as charged), and is generally very polite and friendly. A church were everyone’s friends with everyone else. Sounds familiar? But there is something sorely lacking.

I am in a clique of sorts - my best friend from high school and I have been going to church together (and leaving a couple behind) for years. But a clique of two is no clique at all. And now we find ourselves considering whether to embark on another church shopping adventure, probably in the search of that elusive, small group of like minded people we can call friends. Currently at church, the teachings fine, often quite good. I’m in a bible study which I enjoy. And everyones so damn accepting that its hard to tell who’s your friend and who’s just being polite - unfortunately it adds up to very little. I’d gladly exchange all the polite conversation with varied and interesting people for a few closer friends with something vaguely in common. But 5 minute chats once a week/fortnight before we all disperse to our geographically distant homes do not build friendships.

Anyway, enough of my ranting. I’m wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem? Is it common? Can anything be done about it? (In my opinion, you can’t impose a social culture on the majority of people, you either accept whats there or find a better/different one.) Is it really such a bad thing to up and leave on such ignoble grounds (if only there was some problem with the teaching!) ?

Hmmm.

Luke

Re: What I would give for a clique

I personally find cliques quite proper and reasonable in a church (or other, for that matter) environment.  People will naturally gravitate towards those they either have something in common with or feel an affinity with.

My attitude towards cliques is mainly based on experiences similar to Luke’s: the “we are one big happy family” mentality that drove me crazy in my old church.  The most annoying thing about that mentality was that it was impossible for you to have a dinner / drink / bushwalk / etc, without inviting everyone...and then the problems started as X found the topic boring or Y had something “more important” to discuss.  Or Z hated that restaurant so we all had to change.  Still bitter, unfortunately. :(

Cliques are bad when they begin to exclude people from any discussion, or even refuse to associated with Z as he/she is not good enough for us.  Those cliques should be stamped out immediately.  As should similar groups who feel they have enough people and won’t even talk to anyone else - I remember an horrific experience at a church I visited where every teenager my age ignored me - it was left to the wonderful dears in their 60s to look after me.  I didn’t mind the conversation - but being ignored grated on me: I was not looking for life-long friendship, simply acknowledgment I existed!

[quote author="Luke Stevens"]
I’m wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem? Is it common? 

Yes and I am sure Yes again.

Many churches I have been a parishoner at have hated cliques (mainly evangelical: I am not meaning to cast dispersions and denegrate, it is my experience; other churches seem to not be as concerned) and sought to remove them - and by the church I mean not so much the priest but the laity: they hate to be excluded from anything.  Perhaps this was as I have mainly been to younger-churches; the ones with older (and wiser?) members seem to take it in their stride.

[quote author="Luke Stevens"]
Can anything be done about it? (In my opinion, you can’t impose a social culture on the majority of people, you either accept whats there or find a better/different one.) Is it really such a bad thing to up and leave on such ignoble grounds (if only there was some problem with the teaching!) ?

Why do you believe it to be an “ignoble” [the one word in the Bible that gets me laughing...hope I never come across it while I’m reading in church!] ground?  Churches are there to help you “grow”, spiritually as well as in terms of knowledge: I see nothing wrong with considering leaving if you are not getting what you need.

Before you pack your bags and leave your pew, however, have you talked to your priest about it?  Do you think there is anyone else other than you and your friend who may want to be in such a group?  Have you considered “visting” other churches’ Bible Studies or Fellowships?  [Not sure if that is “two-timing”; I did it when my old church was dishing out milk and I wanted meat].  It sounds as if you really love your current church, and it would be a shame to leave if a mid-way could be found.

Then again, a break and new start can be needed: I knew when it was time for me to leave my old church and unfortunately kept hanging on for comfort which resulted in me hitting new depths in my Christian life.  I needed somewhere else and I am extremely happy and blessed to know I (eventually) moved on to somewhere where I can grow and explore more.

My scattered thoughts,
Ian.

Re: What I would give for a clique

[quote author="Ian Holder"]My attitude towards cliques is mainly based on experiences similar to Luke’s: the “we are one big happy family” mentality that drove me crazy in my old church.  The most annoying thing about that mentality was that it was impossible for you to have a dinner / drink / bushwalk / etc, without inviting everyone...and then the problems started as X found the topic boring or Y had something “more important” to discuss.  Or Z hated that restaurant so we all had to change.  Still bitter, unfortunately. :(

Ditto on all that’s been said, “we’re one big happy family”, yeah, that doesn’t do anything!  I remember being in church meetings where there were serious discussions on how to “break up the cliques”.  It’s appalling.  What are all our ‘small groups’ or ‘bible studies’ or ‘men’s groups’ if not just cliques?  “A rose by any other name...”

I think the problem we have now is that because we have criticised and destroyed the ‘cliques’ in our churches we now have people just ‘floating’ like what Luke was describing:
[quote author="Luke Stevens"]Its not that I feel excluded, its the absence of any real social groups at all that bothers me. Everyone says hi, asks the exact same mundane questions week in, week out (guilty as charged), and is generally very polite and friendly. A church were everyone’s friends with everyone else. Sounds familiar? But there is something sorely lacking.

What the heck is the point to going church every week if we don’t know each other intimately?  How can we ” carry each other’s burdens ” or feel safe enough to ” confess our sins to each other ” if we don’t even know each other well enough to discuss anything other than how the Panthers won again (woo hoo!) or what the weather’s been like?

The solution may not be cliques, but I don’t know what else would do it.  I think everyone should read CS Lewis’ essay on The Inner Ring (it’s in Screwtape Proposes a Toast).  This part in particular I like:
[quote author="CS Lewis"]Let Inner Rings be an unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?

The ‘Inner Ring’ or ‘clique’ is not inherently a bad thing, though not the desired state of affairs, as Luke mentioned, and we should not desire them for the status they bring.

Let me end this with Lewis’ words, I think they apply here well, just replace ‘sound craftsmen’ with ‘good Christian’ and ‘profession’ with ‘church’:

[quote author="CS Lewis"]If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

Amen to that.

Glenn

cliques

I agree with a lot of what is being said on this forum. I hear and share the longing for intimacy in Christian fellowship that is being expressed and agree that it is not easy to find.  Churches do need to be able to nurture and encourage people in more personal ways than just attending the big gathering on Sundays.

However, I do urge caution in our terminology. The small group intimacy that is being desired is definitely not the same thing as being part of a “clique” and we ought not be wanting to be part of one.

[quote author="Oxford English Dictionary"]a clique is defined as a small and exclusive party or set, a narrow coterie or circle: a term of reproach or contempt, applied generally to such as are considered to associate for unworthy or selfish ends, or to small and select bodies who arrogate supreme authority in matters of social status, literature, etc

There’s nothing wrong with small circles of friends. We need them and they are part of God’s provision to nourish and encourage us. The small groups movement that started I think back in the late 60’s/early 70’s is one of the very positive things to have happened in church life globally in recent decades.

But when the behaviour of a small group is exclusive, when a group leaves others out and is unfriendly towards them, or fails to recognise the contribution that new members might be able to make, then that is ungodly behaviour. It should be resisted and opposed. This is what I understand a clique to be - not merely a small group of like-minded friends, but a group that shuts others out.  They usually end up being very hurtful to others, especially if the clique is in a position of leadership in a church. The end result is that gifted people are left without any way of using their gifts in that church. (I wonder how many church leaderships think that their church is “one big happy family” when the reality is that many of the congregation are excluded from active ministry, or have ministries that are simply ignored or unrecognised, because the truth is that the leadership group is actually very cliquey.)

I’ve seen it in youth groups, where some kids are just plain awful to others who would like to be “in on the action” as well.

{Such environments are the breeding place for all sorts of emotional abuse, but that is another story!}

I know that all of you agree with this, but I am a bit concerned about the potential for some damaging misunderstanding that can come from a failure to choose the right words.

I suspect, Luke, that the phenomenon you have observed is often actually one clique resenting the emergence of another group (not a clique) that is perceived as a potential threat to their “power base” within the church. They handle this by discouraging them and calling them dangerous, when all the time they are merely reinforcing their own exlusive situation.

I’ve experienced this, but don’t want to dwell on it here. I have had some really good experiences, too. When I used to attend St Matthews’ in Wanniassa, ACT, under John Mason’s leadership back in the early 1980’s, we had a terrific small group work going on. The key to it, I believe, was that we knew how to grow the number of groups. We did this essentially by setting size limits on each group and requiring that once a certain size had been reached the group would become two groups, so that new members could be welcomed in. I’m not saying it was easy or totally smooth, as it was often painful to decide to stop meeting with people you loved being with and decide how to split the group up, but it enabled the ministry to thrive without any cliques developing. It gave people who could lead groups the chance to do so if they wanted and it gave everyone a welcoming mentality to newcomers. There was always room for one more!

And some great friendships were formed, many of which last to this day.

In fact, I think that small groups like this need to redefine their membership every couple of years or else they risk getting set in their ways and the fellowship becoming stale. It’s good to get “new blood”, new ideas into a group.

Of course, there is a place for some groups that are exclusive in a sense. In a social context, there can only be so many on the tennis team at any one time, for instance. Or in the church context, not everyone can be on parish council at the same time, nor can everyone be on the roster for leading services or being a lay preacher.  But the difference between a team of people working together on a project that is positive and one that is a clique is the degree of openness they have to other people’s contributions, the degree of accountability they have to other people and the degree of transparency there is about who is part of the group and who isn’t. When it becomes closed off, as if the font of all wisdom resided within the one little group, it is wrong; or if there is never any rotation of membership, then that is wrong; or if people are not able to get involved but the reasons for that are not clear and open to being rethought, then that is wrong.

(Wasn’t this what South Sydney rabbitohs were effectively working through recently?)

There is also a place for some degree of screening of membership of some groups to ensure that new members don’t undo the work or break the spirit of the group. But the criteria for determining that have to be clear and objective, not whimsical and subjectively determined by the existing group members.

None of this is easy. Our sinful humanity will get in the way. I agree with the sentiments of many in this thread that sometimes the sledge hammer approach of “banning” all groups is inappropriate and unhelpful. But I also think that it is dangerous to countenance the presence of cliques within church fellowships or other areas of life. May God grant us all wisdom and humility to find the right way to find and experience appropriate intimacy in Christian fellowship.

(I have just thought of a corollary to this. It is one of the reasons that God has given us families. The husband-wife relationship is one of the great ways of meeting our needs for intimacy and fellowship. I don’t want that to open up cans of worms about singleness, etc as I am not saying it is the only way to find lasting human love and friendship. Even though I have a great relationship with my wife and my children, I do still need other friendships. However, many of them revolve around my family and the friends we share together. The family is, I suppose, one example of a very acceptable form of exclusivity - in fact it is totally damaging when some aspects of that exclusivity are broken. Yet the best families are welcoming to friends and offer a safe environment for others to share in the life of the family in appropriate ways. Anyway, this is probably another topic if others want to run with it some more.)

cliques how bizarre !

the only times I’ve ever heard the word used have been in church contexts - so I decided right now I’d do a Google search on the word, and came up with this very pretty website:

groove on !

to quote from irunaclique ...

I Run a Clique is specifically for those people who have created their very own cliques, and would like to get recognition for it ...

so they do exist out there in the “real” world,

Lynn

Well done, warren.  I was thinking similar thoughts,m but you beat me to it :)and worded it better than I would have anyway.  I guess I see the big difference between cliques and godly small groups, is that cliques are insular, small groups are outward focussed.  My clique exists to make me feel good, which is why I resist adding new members.  I don’t allow anyone else in there because the clique fulfulls all my needs.. new people will only make me uncomfortable, and make me work at new friendships.

Godly small groups should exist for the benefit of the other people in the group, and as such we should be willing to reach out to others in an effort to bless them as well. 

We all exist in cliques, but they aren’t all as extreme as the dictionary definition.  it comes back to our focus, wether we are in the group to serve ourselves or others

Irrespective of what word you use for it, I think the point of the original post was about unofficial ‘small groups’.  The word ‘clique’ was used, but I don’t think Luke, or Ian or myself meant it in the negative sense.  We all know that they can be negative, but as CS Lewis said, they don’t have to be.  It depends on their intent, or if there even is an ‘intent’. 

Our churches have been very quick, I think maybe too quick, to try and be ‘inclusive’, in the sense that everyone is included in everything, and as Ian mentioned that is unworkable, and as Luke mentioned it often results in us not actually getting to know each other.  Unless you belong to a very small church, there is a definite need to split into smaller social groups, for whatever reason, so that we can support each other as I mentioned earlier. 

I am currently in a small group where we have been discussing the issue of new people coming into the group.  This can’t just be dealt with by a blanket “you must always allow new people in” rule, because that can be very destructive, as I have witnessed in the past.  If the group is just a standard bible study, then sure, it can grow naturally without problem (usually).  But if the group has a more personal aspect, like sharing personal issues, temptations and sins, then bringing in a new person can have devastating results on trust issues. 

This can be doubly so if there is a non-Christian in the group just starting to open up.  It also depends if we are talking about formal groups like bible studies or small groups, or if we’re just talking about a group of friends who all go to church.  If said group of friends want to go out and do things together, what is the harm?  If it becomes a status thing where they don’t want to associate with others from the church at any time, then that is a problem.  But I have been told by church leadership that spending time with the same people from church is a bad thing.  This resulted in our group splintering and unsuccessfully trying to ‘socialise’ with other people who we had very little in common with & in the end we all were left somewhat in the situation that Luke mentioned at the start: floating without any real closeness.  That is lunacy.  It’s not like we were excluding others deliberately, and new people did come ‘in’ to our ‘group’, and most of us were involved in a ministry in the church in some way.  What was the harm in us all socialising together regularly?  Because we were made to feel very guilty about it.

Glenn

Cliques

Hi there

This has been a fascinating discussion, but I wonder if I could go back to Luke’s original post.
Luke, I’d like to encourage you to think and pray very carefully before you go “church shopping” (argh! Hate that phrase!). You have said that the teaching in your church is usually good, and that you belong to a good study group - what steps are
you taking to address the problem of a lack of intimate friendships in the congregation?
I don’t mean to sound preachy or “holier than thou”, but I think we all need to be careful of the “church consumer” mentality that says “If I’m not getting what I want/need then I’m going somewhere else”. The truth is that we will never find a church that meets all our needs because churches are full of fallible human beings like me! Its a bit like marriage really I suppose. I can’t simply move on to another relationship because my spouse is failing to satisfy my needs. My job is to work hard to satisfy his needs and look to Christ to meet mine.  Shouldn’t our job in our churches be to use our gifts to serve our fellow believers, rather than expect the church to serve us?
My husband and I have been thinking very carefully about this recently. Unlike you spoiled Sydneysiders, we country folk (cue mooing, baaing, birdsong etc) don’t exactly have a smorgasbord of spiritual choices on the church front.  Changing churches in a small community is a tricky proposition:
* the other churches are worse
* you’d keep running into people from your old church in Woolies etc to the
great awkwardness of all involved.
We’ve had to decide after much prayer and thought that we must continue to commit ourselves to this particular group of people, despite days when we feel like banging our heads oagainst the wall in frustration.  God has been good - he has given us a thriving ministry with youth, some fabulous friendships and Katoomba Convention tapes to stop us from starving to death! In addition, we have learnt much from our church in the areas of pastoral care and fellowship.
I am sure that there are very good reasons for choosing to change churches, but I also think that the culture of “church shopping” can be very unhelpful, both to “shoppers” and churches.

Lydia

PS I’m not having a go at you personally Luke. I’m probably feeling cheesed because you have a choice and we don’t!

Lydia! Gasp!

An other-person-centred, sacrificial-servant mentality to church going!!!!

Who’da thunk it!!!!