Institutional Church - R.I.P..?

I am indebted to Fernando Gros' Being a missional gospel for the institutional church for the inspiration behind this post.  Fernando's post crystallised some of my thinking that has been influenced by a number of other emerging church esque posts that I have come across reacting against what has been labelled the institutional church, modern church, CEO/corporate church, and/or organised religion [I will refer to this as IC from now on].

In the emerging church I think, as I have advocated before, we need to apply the discipline of self examination to ourselves, critiquing ourselves and being critiqued.  It is with that in mind that I am writing what I envision will be a 3 part piece:

• Part 1 [below] will explore where I think as emergent christians we draw our reaction to the institutional church from and that maybe rather than adovocating the death of IC we should ask ourselves at the marco level are we really that different?
• Part 2 will  build on this and explore our commonality and shared heritage with with the IC and indeed with historically with all new forms of church; and
• Part 3 will explore the hand-me-up to the christian tradition that emerging church brings and how we can also benefit from the handed down traditions and pratices of the church.

An institutional death wish?

Why do we want the institutional church to die?  Ok, maybe we don't come right out and say that we really want it to die [although some people openly do], we'd like it to live, really we would,  but if it did go terminal well wouldn't we shed many tears over it? Would I? Would you?

But what do we mean by the institutional church?  What thoughts, images, feelings spring to mind?

Do we mean a  specific church that we know, maybe one we grew up in..? 

Maybe we mean a certain type of church with a particular style that never clicked for us, liturgy or angry sermons..?

Maybe it's broader than just a type of church or a particular strand but a reaction to a whole theological position -  maybe it's all that  evangelical rules base straight lacedness..? 

Maybe we just never got to ask questions or share doubts without feeling heretical - so a reaction to modernity as we find ourselves swimming in post-modern individualistic do what you want your way world..? 

Maybe its just any church, ever, full stop!  Burnt out or bummed out by how we have been treated by christians.  We can echo the words of Danny Archer, from the film Blood Diamond, but instead of Africa we are talking about our church experience:

"Sometimes I wonder... will God ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? Then I look around and I realise... God left this place a long time ago. "

I think however we define IC it will have a large element of personal experience and a reaction against that.  I speculate here but I think many people in the emerging church have a lot of that experience in common and thus have a broad common reaction where we can define what we are not by that which we have personally experienced and do not like/agree with etc.

Reactions speak louder than words

I am not trying to minimise anyone's pain or argue that there is is anything inherently bad about the origins of the emerging church coming out of the IC.  I think it is hopeful and encouraging that rather giving up on God and being a community that gathers, the emerging church are trying to find ways of still embodying that.  I do think we need to own our baggage and be clear that in the many ways how we are constructing our ecclesiology is based on a reaction to what we have encountered and experienced. 

The ongoing excellent serious the The People Formerly Known As is to my mind a very therapeutic example of this reaction, giving people a framework to react against what they have experienced in the IC.  In many ways the TPFKA is a coalition of the damaged, the disappointed and the downright disillusioned who like white blood cells are prepared to fight off the life killing experiences of the IC and purge it from the body to which they can see it having no beneficial part.

But what are we specifically reacting against?

Institutional madness?

"All national institutions of churches...appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolise power and profit."

So wrote Thomas Paine in 1794 showing that the fear of the institution, the modern machine, the power hungry juggernaut of programmes and products that crushes people is nothing new and not a recent invention of the Wachowski brothers - although they exploited this fear in the Matrix. 

Our reaction against the institution is seen in metaphors such as organic, an emphasis on the communal or a focus on less structure more free flowing forms of liquid church.  Whilst we may fear the term institution we need to look at what underlies this?  As Brian McLaren points out in A New Kind of Christian do we really not like organised religion so that we are advocating a disorganised irreligion?  Or are we voicing concerns about how the religion has been organised and practised such that the fruit we experience seems false or hypocritical with words not matching up with actions?

Then again do we need to take a reality check - do any of us ever fully live up to our professions or our intentions?  Are we just in danger here of expressing dislike for one form of institution only to be guilty of the same practises ourselves? 

Maybe worse are we in danger of loosing something where we become deliberately disorganised or de-institutionalised whilst still bearing all the marks of an institution?  Or if eschew structure for a claim of every space being sacred and church present do we risk actually having nothing, a liquid that has nothing to contain it flows away, do we so want to end up soaked into our culture that we become indistinguishable from it?

Ligaments rather than liquid institutions?

Perhaps we need to get past our fears and admit that even our new forms of churches are institutions - ones, like those that have gone before, that are trying to be shaped by a different rhythm and practise to the other institutions of our age? Where sacrament and the sacred exist and our shared across a common history? 

Without getting too idealistic maybe it would be helpful as McLaren suggests we need to consider religion in terms of its Latin roots -  around reconnection.  Institutions that are about reconnecting us to God and each other - binding us together? Religious institutions that are ligaments rather than liquid? 

Whilst some stretch and flexibility is needed within the ligament, which can play out in the need for churches to adapt to the conditions we find ourselves too much stretch of the ligament is ultimately damaging and leads to instability. 

Not wanting to stretch this metaphor much further I still think we should recognise that the institutional church across the age is connected to each other and to try and tear or sever that link would be to impair our own being and interaction.  Whilst we may wish to deny our institutional nature I wonder how effective we can be as churches if we do not remain as such - yes that brings with it a tension, how to be an institution without being impersonal but it is not something that we can deny.

In search of the perfect church?

We can also react against our experience of church and use that reaction to create churches that are different by eradicating all the experiences that we disliked. 

When I got married my father-in-law gave a great speech part of which was about how his first born beautiful daughter did not come with an instruction manual and no way of putting her back.  In facing how to be a parent he admitted that their was a choice of either doing what their parents had done because they liked it as children or doing the total opposite because they disliked it growing up.   In the same way we can get all idealistic about church, our constructions are reaction to our modern IC parent that we didn't like so we will do the opposite - does that make our form better? Maybe for us but not universally so?  Does it mean that the IC that we come from is dying because it didn't work for us - probably not!

Creating blueprint churches are not going to lead us to better churches, just different ones.  We need recognise that the church is an institution that is full of failed people who are struggling together as well as a beautiful bride loved by Christ.  We are the good, the bad and the ugly all mixed in together and any form of gathering we have will display these attributes.  To quote from the song everyone is free to wear sunscreen

"Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will
philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasise
that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble and children respected their elders... Respect your elders."

We may want to reverse that process and see the IC as corrupt and broken and our new forms of church as free from this stain but this kind of inverse nostalgia is only that.

More so we may dislike certain practises of the IC but we need to ask ourselves where we draw our own models from?  For example we may react to the CEO model of doing church, a top down tight command and control model as being just an accommodation to business driven structures.  But in advocating team based, creative, open, flat structures are we advocating anything different from the current models advocated by current business practitioners?  Or we may dislike the consumer driven mentality, the McChurch model and instead find ourselves advocating a more niche, independent coffee shop esque structure - both of which models are drawn from the consumer market place - just reflect differing consumer preferences of our own.

In fact I go as far as to ask myself how much of the emerging church is a me-centric driven experience rich process - we may abandon attractional models but are we instead seeking to have God experiences in a church that we want to go to, filled with people who we would want to hang out with, who think and talk the same way we do? A place of people like us who we like rather than a people like them who we don't?

Christianity is churchianity?

How much do our churches provide us as places to detox from the consumer culture me centric around us and to reconnect to the counter culture of christianity? 

Do we ever stop to think that without the church there would be no christians?

That the practise of gathering together in small groups with whom we do/share life with and bigger groups to share and declare ourselves in God's story rather than God in ours, is a practise of the church since its inception right up till now?

We may choose to wish to disassociate ourselves from people who we see as being about church and rather position ourselves as people who are about the kingdom of god but in doing so we cannot dismiss the fact that the church, the body, the gathering, the community is the means where we express and embody this.  An understanding of the other centred tri-une God models for us how we are individually created but it is in other centred community that we learn character and find our purpose and affirm the purposes of others.

We may advocate that church should be modelled so that we can belong before we believe but if we do not create a separate space from our culture are we not in danger of allowing people to continue to belong in other things (even in part)?

Let's be realistic about this in our awareness - it is clear to me that I belong to many other things other than the church - whilst it suits my consumer mindset to reduce my ownership to just me and God or me and people is it to, quote Jesus, any different from what anyone one else in the world does? 

What distinguishes christianity? For Jesus it is the love that such a diverse and individual group of people show each other when they are gathered in their churchianity- which to the world looks like insanity!  That is because in our world as we know such diversity and individuality leads to selfish grabs at happiness at the expense of others.  Of course some of that still happens in church - we are after all detoxing, we are still consumer addicts and likely to fall off the waggon and back to our back stabbing ways at the slightest hint of personal happiness and fulfilment where our needs will get met on some else's expense tab!

Where are we going to learn the practises and models that will help us detox from culture and at the same time transform it - are they not within our common heritage and history as a church?  The emphasis on spiritual practises and disciplines are not new inventions but date back to when the tri-une God first called a people to be their image bearers.  We must be careful not to strip mine church history for experiences that we can exploit for ourselves  to connect to God whilst damming the IC that has used them for centuries.  Instead we must set these practises in their context, aware of the dangers that to do other wise of a form of pastiche or nostalgic church.

The same goes for the reality of  of counter cultural veiled practises, ones that are not available to be consumed/bought such as communion and baptism.  These are rites and rituals that are again shared across history and church form. 

Your thoughts?

I have painted with a broad brush because I want to show that our in our reaction to the IC we still have as many if different inconsistencies and double standards.  I have also painted myself into the picture my critique as someone who enjoys, appreciates and benefits from the emerging church conversation.  I value your thoughts/feelings, particularly:

• what do you agree with?
• what do you disagree with?
• how would you paint the picture?
• where would you paint yourself in it?

Comments

[David]

Man that's deep stuff. Stop it, my brain hurts.

Very good insight. I know Robymac talks about his experiences in 'detoxing' from church, which can mean lots of things. Like sitting in a pub watching sports, or smoking cloves on a balconey while bitching about the 'institution' and comparing the church to Wal-Mart.

But you are correct, that we do need to move on. Those of us exploring emerging are not just emerging from something but emerging to somthing, even though we may not know what that is; and for each of us, it will probably look a bit different.

- Okay so this post went too long for comments, so you can read the rest on my blog momentarily. :-)

You Paul, are a Mercutio.

Thank you.

If you want to know what that means, watch Romeo and Juliet and then head over to my blog.

And yeah, that sounds like a shameless plug... ;-)

[Philip]

Just came across your blog, really good stuff. It forces me to rethink some of my attitudes. I may pinch the pic for my blog :)

[Paul]

Hi David, sorry about the headache, how about a soothing pint or 2 when you make it to blighty for the Wake??? ;)

No need to worry about shameless plugginh, great post at your place - GO READ IT PEOPLE :)

We are people on a journey but to cut off all our routes and ties and to therefore cut ourselves out of a large part of the story seems to me to lead to spiritual amnesia.

Yes let us deal with the trauma, going through christian ER is not a fun experience but on the other side we are not a blank slate.

I liked what yoy said in your post David, we need people who can see we are all on the same side and find ways to act as bridges - and i think those bridges extend not just between modern/post modern but across our christian history and heritage to help us see ourselves in God's story anew...

Now I'm off to look for Queen Nab ;)

[Paul]

Thanks Philip for stopping by. Help yourself to the pic :)

[Rupert Ward]

Thanks Paul: good stuff.

I think it is interesting in the emerging conversation that we often are highly critical of IC that exists now, but draw huge inspiration from IC 500 or 1000 years ago ... which was perhaps even more institutionalised and corrupt!

It saddens me when people are very critical of church. THere is something in the heart of God that he is passionate about chruch. I am not saying we shouldn't be able to critique, or that everything that happens is good. Of course not. But i want to bring transformation from the inside rather lob stones from the sidelines.

It seems to me there is much that has been unhelpful, wrong, hurtful, damaging in church. At points IC has been and is abusive. There does need to be a rethink about what is church, how do we do it, what does it look like. But i think that is inherient in any human organisation, and will be as previlent in some emerging church groups (eventually) as it has been in IC.

The issue is the human heart (which i think is what you are saying). If that changes, we can see churches change ... and that starts with me!

[Dan Morehead]

Playfully, I tend to say the only other option to organized religion is disorganized religion. While there is much truth in this, there are other options. Romanticism (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism) should be see as a big determiner of this sort of discussion. Sadly, few, whether in emergent gatherings or others who wish to see institutions go by the wayside, theologically analyze what is in the intellectual water they are drinking. Institutions are necessary for sustaining practices without which a moral life cannot be sustained.

[Paul]

Hi Rupert, yes i think you are right. Critique is helpful but a pathological focus on the recent past can actually blind our critique of our own current practices, our choice of models and means etc.

thank you for working on the inside - change from the inside out ;)

[Paul]

thanks Dan. Ah yes disorganised religion or why my church isn't a cult, lol.

Thank you for highlighting romanticism it is another helpful warning from the past and gives me pause again to ask why the lenses i look through are tainted the colour that they are and by doing so what colours i may not see at all...

[Dan Morehead]

I think my last line may have been the most important. "Institutions are necessary for sustaining practices without which a moral life cannot be sustained."

[Paul]

thanks Dan, yes i think that is vital and something i picked on in part 2 - it is not that we as churches are not institutions, more what sort of institutions are we?