The expanding circle

My wife and I had a great evening last Thursday night at the house of some new friends, folks associated with the group I wrote about last week. They have been involved in this group for around twelve years and have been there for the ups and downs but they seem excited about what God is doing. I think there are other people who live near us that would benefit from being a part of this group, including my family!

What is challenging is that this group is in a state of transition. They are no longer associated with a larger worldwide group and that means there is some uncertainty about what direction to take. That is one of those things about simple church groups. Things rarely seem to be quite as formal and planned and that makes people nervous. We like predictability and routine and when you take away a lot of the controls and structures you can’t be certain what you are going to get.

It must have been like this for the first Christians. They came out of their religious traditions, many of them the highly regulated Jewish tradition, and into a brand new faith. While some people seem to think that there were established local churches running VBS programs and printing liturgical calendars the day after Pentecost, the reality is that the first century of Christianity must have been constantly in turmoil and uncertainty. They were persecuted, they were scattered, they didn’t have centuries of church traditions to cling to. They could only cling to Christ and to each other. I think that must have made them stronger by making them weaker. They had no political power, no military power, no legal defense groups to go to court on their behalf. Their signature attribute was weakness and when Christians are weakest, they cling most strongly to Jesus.

When you think about it, why should we seek to be strong, to be self-reliant, to be respected and powerful in the world? Don’t those things draw us away from Him and cause us to trust and rely in ourselves? It is fascinating to me that so often the earliest days of the church were examples of weakness and uncertainty. This was not a new religion out to conquer the world by brilliant arguments or by the sword. Christianity was a people of misfits and outcast that suffered great persecution and thrived in spite of it, or perhaps because of it. Think about the stoning of Stephen….


Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:54-60)

Here is a man who was being stoned for preaching Christ and beheld Jesus as he was dying. His last words were not a condemnation or a call for justice, he prayed for forgiveness for those who murdered him. What a far cry that is from the church today! Or the witness of the Anabaptist martyrs who went to torturous deaths praising God. Why do we seek security and freedom in all the wrong places, places that will always disappoint, instead of in the one place that will never fail us, in Jesus Christ and Him alone?

I am looking forward to spending more time with this group of Christians and hope that we can be a blessing to them. There are so many people in our area who need to hear about Christ and so many Christians seeking fellowship beyond pews and pulpits. These brothers and sisters will probably never fill sanctuaries with crowds of people but I am certain we can have an outsized impact on our community if we cling to Christ and trust Him to build His church.

What does “The Institutional Church” mean?

“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. “‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’ (Revelation 3:1-6)

I will come back to the above passage of Scripture in a moment. First, to the question at hand: what do we mean when we speak of the “institutional church”? I often rail against the institutional church and advocate for a simple church model (or house church, organic church, what have you). That is fine and dandy but what exactly is the institutional church anyway? That is kind of hard to define. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of obscenity that he wasn’t sure he could define it “But I know it when I see it”. I am not comparing the institutional church to obscenity but the point is the same. We know the institutional church when we see it but have a hard time defining it.

It is pretty hard to define the institutional church but that has never stopped me and I was asked that question on a different blog, so I want to give it a shot and solicit feedback from others on what exactly is the institutional church and how do we define it.

The institutional church, at its most fundamental, is the most visible and culturally recognizable manifestation of organized religion that finds its primary definition and purpose in the weekly Sunday morning meeting.

In general the institutional church is that form of ecclesiology that has been the traditionally accepted form in Western culture since the Reformation. Furthermore, the Protestant/Evangelical institutional church is by and large a modification of the Roman Catholic institutional church. The theology is radically different but the practices remain much the same: a formal and rigidly scheduled weekly gathering, mute observance by most of the church during that gathering, a ritualistic observance of the Lord’s Supper, a clerical class that is distinguished from the laity by extra-Biblical educational standards and that derives its financial support from the offerings of that same laity, and finally a focus on performance instead of mutual edification. We have removed the authoritarian pope but replaced him with a pastor-centric model that invests an untoward amount of authority and an unsustainable amount of responsibility on the shoulders of one or perhaps a few men.

In the institutional form of the church, the institution itself becomes self-sustaining. In other words a local church is not simply a gathering of believers in a given geographic area, which is what we see in Scripture. It is a carefully defined institution that is differentiated from all other similar groups in an area. The individual institutions may or may not be linked to other institutions but each institution has an identity of its own: a building, a bank account, a tax identification number, employees. The inertia that sustains institutional churches, fueled by savings accounts and weekly offerings from Christians and non-Christians alike, can keep an institutional church functioning for years or decades. Many of these institutional churches meet each week, go through the religious rituals and pay their bills but accomplish little else.

It is hard to distinguish between our cultural icons and reality sometimes. This is true in the church as much and perhaps more so than anywhere else. Say “Moses” and it is hard not to picture Charlton Heston or if you have young children perhaps the cartoon character Moses from the animated film “The Prince of Egypt”. Say “church” and we automatically picture Sunday morning, a building with pews and a pulpit, a preacher, in at 11 and out at 12. That image is so ingrained in our culture and our cultural memory that it is difficult to dig through that and read what the Bible has to say about the church without picturing preachers, pews, programs and pulpits. When we do, what we find looks very little like what our culture defines as “church”. This disconnect has crippled and splintered the gathered church for centuries.

Thankfully, I am starting to see some major fault lines as more and more people abandon the institutional church and messily try to find a better way. The conditions now are ripe for it. The internet makes information sharing easy and almost instantaneous. The culture around us is rapidly becoming less religious. The institutional church no longer can use the state to execute those who question its practices. We are in a perfect position to radically change the way the church functions and return it to its Biblical roots. Many have tried before and met with obstacles, ridicule and even torture and death but there has never been a better time to break the chokehold of institutionalism on the church of Jesus Christ.

So back to the Scripture above. What is being described is the church in Sardis that looks superficially like it is alive but in reality is mostly spiritually dead. The institutional church is much like this picture. It looks alive. People are there, there are cultural religious rituals being observed, the lawn is mowed and the lights are on. Spiritually though it is dead because it has reduced the fellowship of the saints of Christ, the blood bought Bride of Christ, to a ritualistic performance that we squeeze into the same time as an episode of The Bachelor and like a TV show we mostly are sitting stock still in silence, wearing uncomfortable clothes and sitting in uncomfortable seats listening to someone else speak. This is the church?

Perhaps the people in a given institutional church really are alive spiritually but how can you tell? In an audience of 100 people staring at the guy in the front of the room, some will be engaged, some will clearly not be but the ability of someone to pay attention and nod vigorously at the appropriate time during a sermon is in no way a measure of their spiritual life. In fact, the best measure of the spiritual state of someone is what happens outside of the church meeting. It is ironic that in the one place that Western culture agrees is “the church” is the same place that you are least likely to see the church functioning as it should.

Another thought on the Anabaptists

It seems odd that the Anabaptists, who were imprisoned, tortured and murdered by Protestants and Catholics alike, have somehow become the bad guys to a certain subset of the church.

At it again

So once again I get an email with nothing but a link and once again it takes me to the blog of one Wes White. You might remember his name from the post telling his readers that house churches invariably either grow up into "real churches" or devolve into cults you don't want around anyway. I addressed that slanderous accusation here as well as on his blog but he never bothered to respond. Since he just copied and pasted the article I can maybe understand it but if you are going to post something that accuses and slanders other Christians, you best think it through before you hit "publish post" and be prepared in this day and age to defend what you said.

The latest post from Wes purports to defend the institutional church as a flawed but vital...institution. Keep in mind that this is not a discussing of tax policy or business strategy or who should be the first pick in the upcoming NFL draft (hint: not Cam Newton!). We are talking about the Church, the blood bought Bride of Christ and the sole authority of the church is the Scripture. So when you title your post: What’s Right with the Institutional Church and then start by saying (emphasis mine):

Are there problems with institutional churches? Of course. Every sort of organization has problems. However, do the problems outweigh the benefits? I do not believe so. Let me tell you why I think that the institutional church is a good idea.

Of course, I could argue this same point directly from the Bible, but I want to just consider the institutional Church in terms of the nature of a society. Let’s suppose that we had no specific instructions on organization and just see what would happen if Christians tried to get together.

I have to think you are off target right out of the gate. Of course as I commented on his blog and no surprise to readers of my blog, I don't think you actually can argue in favor of the institutional church directly from the Bible. I wan to look at some of his arguments and show why they are flawed but I am writing this at 11:30 at night and getting super sleepy.

Why do I care what people like Wes White think? Just leave it alone! I simply can't do that. One, I sincerely desire for Wes and other people like him to step outside of the institutional church and see the messy but incredibly rich life of community that can exist when you unshackle the church from the fetters of institutionalism. Second, I see blog conversations like this as a way to get people studying and thinking. I don't expect anyone to be convinced by the force of my arguments but I hope that when people read this stuff and compare the arguments being made to Scripture that they will honestly and openly study and think their way through the issues and come to a conclusion based on Scripture and not on pragmatism and tradition. So as long as people post stuff like what Wes put up, I will post rebuttals like this in the hope that we can have a conversation and perhaps even an argument but that in the end we all end up a little wiser.

I think this is a safe assumption

Almost no one who uses "Anabaptist" as a pejorative has ever read anything written by Anabaptists or by someone sympathetic to Anabaptism.

Informative interview on house churches

I listened to this interview today. It is from Steve Atkerson of the New Testament Restoration Fellowship.I liked it because the interviewer from some radio station in Atlanta (when did they get electricity in Georgia I wonder?) is asking some tough questions, as are the callers, but it is not hostile and Steve does a great job responding. It is good stuff especially if you are not sold on the idea of simple or house church gatherings.

Give it a listen here.

A New Documentary on Homeschooling

What do you think of this trailer for a new documentary called Indoctrination?

IndoctriNation Trailer from IndoctriNation on Vimeo.

It seemed a bit over the top to me, especially the music, although I probably agree with the message...

Just Because

It doesn’t matter which Half-God you pick

It is easy for people to like a Half-God.

Some people like the Half-God who is all retribution, all condemnation, all holiness and justice, the Half-God who judges the nations and elects some to salvation while passing over others. A Half-God who is all wrath and begrudging mercy.

Some people like the Half-God who is all about mercy, who calls us to love the poor, who weeps over Jerusalem and hangs out with lepers and sinners. A Half-God who is all mercy and that just doesn’t have the heart to condemn anyone.

We don’t have the option of loving a Half-God. A Half-God is no God at all. Our God is a very complete God who is infinitely complex, a God who is both unfathomably transcendent and yet who dwelt among us. A God who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and yet is also The Lamb Who Was Slain. A whole God, a God who commands His people to proclaim the Gospel of repentance of sin to all nations, a Gospel that describes hell in no uncertain terms but also the richness of the ministry of reconciliation.

A Half-God may be easier to understand and more convenient but it takes a whole God to be holy and merciful, loving and just, a Lion and a Lamb.

Great Tweet!

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God working in our offices on sermon preparation to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom and handy with tools, whom we will appoint to this duty to the office of deacon. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word to the preparation of sermons which we will deliver on Sunday.” (Acts 6:1-4 ESV Re-Mix)

I saw this tweet last night from Steve McCoy and wanted to share it:

Acts 6 isn't about choosing servants so that the Apostles can spend 25 hrs a week in the study to prep for 1 sermon.

That is good stuff!

Many a preacher sees Acts 6 as not only an excuse but a command to spend most of the week preparing for their Sunday sermon(s). I have read many men piously talking about how many hours a week they spend in sermon preparation, as if it is some sort of badge of honor to spend 20, 30 or more hours every week reading about a couple of verses you are going to sermonize about on Sunday. If you read Acts 6 in context, what should be happening if you are not working a regular job and are not engaged in works of mercy is that you should spend all of your time out of the church and preaching the Gospel to the lost. You aren’t likely going to talk to many lost people while sitting at your desk looking through a half dozen commentaries to make sure you get just the right nuance in your sermon. Another great reason to read the Scriptures in context and read them for what they actually say, not what we assume they say.

The Problem With Preaching

Eric Carpenter put out a great post last night, 4 Problematic Defenses of Preaching Monologue Sermons During Church Gatherings, where he looks at the deep problems associated with the four most common defenses of the monologue sermon that dominates church life in much of the evangelical world. I have run into all of these and if you already assume that monologue preaching is proper because that is what we culturally expect, they certainly seem like sound defenses. When you step back and really examine them, they fall apart. Jump over to Eric's post and take a look and leave a comment or three.

Wonder why America is in trouble? No one makes anything anymore

A nation of takers, not makers