"They Love the Church, but..."

Marc Chagall, Snow, Winter in Vitebsk, 1911

One of the clearest statements about loving the church but questioning the organization may be found on the Out of Ur blog. It was written by Skye Jethani, managing editor of Leadership, in March 2008, and is called, "They Love the Church, but not the Institution."

Here are some of the things he says. I encourage you to read the whole article. I can relate.

I am not anti-institution. I am not one of those rabid fluid-organic-anti-linear-pomo-loosy goosey-anti-establishment church people. I believe structure is necessary. Structure is good and even God-ordained. We see organization and structure from the very foundation of the church in Acts. But these structures always existed to serve God’s people in the fulfillment of their mission. Today, it seems like God’s people exist to serve the institution in the fulfillment of its mission (which is usually to become a bigger institution). Most of the curricula available to pastors on spiritual gifts and service focus on getting people to serve within their institution. Rarely does a church recruit, equip, and release saints to serve the mission outside its own immediate structure. (Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon, is a refreshing exception.)

This is the heart of my dilemma. I sometimes feel the energies and time I pour into the institution doesn’t translate into God’s people being more equipped for the ministry of loving God and neighbor. Could my spiritual and personal resources bear more fruit if poured into real people (the church), rather than into the institutional trough they feed from on Sundays? I’m haunted by that question.

...Without doubt there are numerous factors behind our exaltation of the church institution above the community of saints that created it, but one critical component may be cultural. In our consumer culture we’ve come to believe that institutions are the vessels of God’s Spirit and power. (The reason for this is a subject I explore in more depth in my book due out next year.) The assumption is that with the right curriculum, the right principles, and the right programs, values, and goals, the Spirit will act to produce the ministry outcomes we envision. This plug-and-play approach to ministry makes God a predictable, mechanical device and it assumes his Spirit resides within organizations and systems rather than people.

Yet another voice...

Marc Chagall, I and the Village

Count mine as yet one more voice who says, "I love Jesus, I love the church, but I seriously question the organization that the church has become."

My observations are not especially insightful, my questions not unique. I have no desire to bash or lash out from a perspective of having been hurt or wounded. I am not a battered sheep nor a neglected lamb. A child of the 60s and 70s, it might be said that I have an oppositional streak, and that "question authority" was ingrained in me from an early age. Nevertheless, I also carry a good bit of Midwestern conservatism in me, and my path has been fairly conventional over the years.

However, I find myself with many others in our culture at the moment on the outside looking in when it comes to the organized or institutional church.

The purpose of this blog is to capture insights from others who are standing with me out here, and to personally work through my own thoughts and feelings.