Lance Ford :: Blog :: Communitas and The Biggest Loser

If you are familiar with the concept of Victor Turner's Communitas (or not) you should check out the way this plays out through The Biggest Loser. I love this show (I lost 30 pounds over a 4 month period in '06 by learning how to eat and getting back to consistent work outs), got hooked on it a couple of years ago. Anyway, the concept of Communitas is sooo different than community. Most churches just experience, at best, community--fellowship. But communitas is different; it happens when a group of people go through a collective crisis. Turner called it Liminality. It is when the group faces an adaptive challenge...they must "adapt or die". When we truly journey on mission we face these challenges and communitas happens. Turner's stuff is essential reading.