It could be fun and/or useful but I doubt it would take off. Churches depend on lots of volunteer effort, which is hard to coordinate without as strong a motivator as saving one’s soul. The reasons cited in the OP apply as well. The LW meetups seem to be providing community to a certain extent, but I can’t really say because I’ve never been to one (none in my area).
I dunno. I mean, don’t some martial arts dojos at least somewhat depend on a lot helpfulness/volunteering of its members?
For example, when I was taking Aikido, a standard thing we’d do when we finished was that all of us would clean up the mat, for example. Also several of us did various other things around the dojo. And I don’t think any of us thought of it in terms of “saving our souls”.
So I’d say that particular obstacle isn’t as much of a problem, we’d just need to set up the right sort of social standards/expectations for it. There may potentially be other barriers, however.
Most of that is done to foster a sense of community or to instill humility and discipline, not for its value as labor. The vast majority of the productive labor that goes into running most dojos is performed by instructors and senior students.
This applies to churches too, of course; shared labor is very good at building a sense of community, and church organizers know that. It also has applications to the donating time/donating money dichotomy that pops up periodically in the threads here on charitable donation.
Most of that is done to foster a sense of community or to instill humility and discipline, not for its value as labor. The vast majority of the productive labor that goes into running most dojos is performed by instructors and senior students.
Fair enough, although overall I got the impression that it was a combination of both. But, even so, even if it’s mostly just a “instill humility and discipline” thing, it still was possible to set up standards where we’d do that sort of thing. So to the extent that these sorts of things really do depend on volunteer labor, it should be possible to arrange.
Heck, given that the goal is to have that sort of sense of community, one could explicitly state that as a reason to get people to join in on the work.
It could be fun and/or useful but I doubt it would take off. Churches depend on lots of volunteer effort, which is hard to coordinate without as strong a motivator as saving one’s soul. The reasons cited in the OP apply as well. The LW meetups seem to be providing community to a certain extent, but I can’t really say because I’ve never been to one (none in my area).
I dunno. I mean, don’t some martial arts dojos at least somewhat depend on a lot helpfulness/volunteering of its members?
For example, when I was taking Aikido, a standard thing we’d do when we finished was that all of us would clean up the mat, for example. Also several of us did various other things around the dojo. And I don’t think any of us thought of it in terms of “saving our souls”.
So I’d say that particular obstacle isn’t as much of a problem, we’d just need to set up the right sort of social standards/expectations for it. There may potentially be other barriers, however.
Most of that is done to foster a sense of community or to instill humility and discipline, not for its value as labor. The vast majority of the productive labor that goes into running most dojos is performed by instructors and senior students.
This applies to churches too, of course; shared labor is very good at building a sense of community, and church organizers know that. It also has applications to the donating time/donating money dichotomy that pops up periodically in the threads here on charitable donation.
Fair enough, although overall I got the impression that it was a combination of both. But, even so, even if it’s mostly just a “instill humility and discipline” thing, it still was possible to set up standards where we’d do that sort of thing. So to the extent that these sorts of things really do depend on volunteer labor, it should be possible to arrange.
Heck, given that the goal is to have that sort of sense of community, one could explicitly state that as a reason to get people to join in on the work.