In recent years, we have seen the emergence of associations for the exchange of knowledge, local mutual aid services, accorderies, etc. The principle is that the participants render services to each other, each in turn; the idea is, by the way, to renew close social ties.
Some helped each other more than we helped each other
This way of working highlights a blind spot in Church mutual aid: it has often brought together generous people, ready to give a lot of their time, but whose help almost always went in one direction. Some helped each other, more than we helped each other. A consequence of this asymmetry is that the question of the social form that emerged from this mutual aid has hardly been asked. Those implementing an action worked together, sometimes without much thought, until conflicts arose.
In associations of a new type, which have emerged in our villages and our neighborhoods, there is always an office, organizers and certain volunteers who are more committed than the others. But the fact of giving yourself the goal of forming a network, in which the maximum number of people find their place, changes the situation. We no longer focus only on the materiality of the service rendered, but also on the role that everyone can play, on what everyone can receive by giving.
The split between the diaconate and the parishes is classic
Paying attention to the type of social network that emerges from diaconal action provides tools for addressing a classic question: that of the divide between diaconates and parishes. It is often observed that people who are active on one side are less so on the other and that the two groups rub shoulders without taking advantage of their respective skills. One of the difficulties stems from the fact that they operate on different social registers. Protestant communities have not always experienced the universal priesthood in its full extent, but they are aware that the Church is a body made up of exchanges and reciprocity. Conversely, diaconates are often made up of volunteers who commit themselves individually and do not imagine themselves forming a body, or a network, whose relationships have meaning.
If there must be a reinvention of mutual aid, it undoubtedly requires this awareness: there is no dichotomy between spirituality on the one hand and the exchange of goods or services on the other.
In reality, any action raises the question of its meaning, of the way in which it binds us to others, of the suffering that we experience, of the frustration that we encounter while implementing a project, of what we receive from others and, ultimately, from the social construction of grace. It is the culmination of the grace that God has given us, individually and collectively.
As soon as these questions are taken into consideration in ordinary Church life and in a network of mutual aid, it is easier to build bridges between the two entities: everyone can move from one circle to another, build cross fertilizations, to consider the life of faith as a continuum where what makes the meaning of our existence and the call to which we respond obey a single motive.