Towards a more biblical model of the church

Richard Halverson:

When the Greeks got the gospel, they turned it into a philosophy; when the Romans got it, they turned it into a government; when the Europeans got it, they turned it into a culture, and when the Americans got it, they turned it into a business

If most churches (American anyone) were examined by a naive person unfamiliar with them, what would they compare it with? Reggie McNeal proposes (Present Future) that our churches as they are are properly compared to social clubs, while many besides Halverson have made the comparison to a corporation, with the senior pastor as CEO, other pastors and staff as upper management, and those sitting mostly idle in the pews as the clientele.

The Bible though most often refers to the church as a family. Yes, it refers to it as the body of Christ, an army, and many other analogies, but family and familial references are most common. But what would we say about a family that gathered once per week to stare at the back of heads, only one person really shared, and the gathering was strictly scripted? That would be labeled as more than just dysfunctional.

How do we move back to a more biblically model?

A new view of "church"

Those who know me know that I believe there is something fundamentally off about church as it is practiced in America. There are really too many points to make about what is wrong to summarize here, but you can find many a thing looking through the history of this blog.

I've come to realize through a transition in thinking that the alternatives I was advocating were wrong, at least in the details. This was really climaxed in thought in May. If there was one spark in this shift, it was sitting around the fireplace at Ransomed Heart's "Advanced Boot Camp" with a group that included a couple of my regular readers of this blog, and Craig McConnell. Craig and I have had off and on conversations around this topic and some others, but it had been one on one. I don't know if Craig's thinking had shifted, or he brought out a nuance of it in a group, or I had never noticed his use of some words, or just what, but something he said struck me. It was the way he used the word "church", talking of it breaking out at times when disciples are gathered. Now, the way he used it and means it may differ from the reaction and resulting developing conclusions I've come to, so please don't treat my words and thoughts as his. His contextual use of the word "church" and the way I took it (he could have meant something entirely different) is the topic here.

So just what does it mean, "church". There's an analogy I read in the preface or intro to Frank Viola's new book Reimaging Church that describes beautifully the kind of shift in thinking. Early scientists trying to study our solar system were baffled in trying to compute orbits and the like. Until Galileo. The problem was that early astronomers were trying to make their computations geocentric, that is, centered around the earth. Galileo proposed that they should be heliocentric, that is, centered around the sun. Galileo was treated as a heretic for his thinking, due to a false belief that the Bible taught that the earth was central.

In many ways, I think I've been trapped by some remaining "geocentric" thinking. So I've proposed or sided with new ways of structuring church, new hierarchies, etc. I've advocated some great concepts, like organic church, but treating it as a different way of structuring things. That misses the point, I now think.

Now, after that discussion around a fireplace, I picked up a copy of Jake Colsen's So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore I had owned but not read yet, followed by reading The Shack by William P. Young. Both are novels, but they expose a different way of thinking. Looking at church as much more relational, much more embedded in life, rather than a separate entity shoved to a building on a street corner that one visits occasionally, or even a separate structured time in a home.

What is this new view of church? It is really hard to put into a few words. The words one would like to use are often loaded with alternate meaning that will throw off the reader. Other words are entirely biblical, but in practice their meanings have been twisted. But let me attempt it anyway, and I invited conversation to help express this better.

In some ways, the church as the body of Christ is an extension of the Trinity. When we look at the scriptural descriptions of the relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we don't see a hierarchy, but rather a community which complements each other. As we read through something like I Cor 11-14, we see a community about the mutual edification of one another. Paul in his Corinthian letters doesn't address a hierarchy, but charges each member to be about what he describes to do.

And while we see regular meetings, I don't think the regular meetings are central. Jesus is. It is about relationships, to one another and to God. If meetings are central, relationships aren't. The meetings feed the relationships. They help maintain them. Interesting, there isn't a single description or instruction about the gatherings being worship, but there are plenty about edification, encouragement, spurring on one another to love and good deeds ...

When it comes to hierarchy, it is every member ministry. Some do have roles, but Paul described them as for the equipping of the saints, not lording over them. Jesus even described that we shouldn't be like those who lord it over one another (Matthew 20:25, see also I Peter 5:3).

What it really comes down to is this: if we are following Jesus, our communities will arise as they should in our contexts. That, I believe, is what happened in the first century. Looking at what happened then should be limited to seeing how they contextualized to their society being the body of Christ.

The problem is, many of us have such an embedded thoughts influenced by the way things have become rather than what was intended. I still struggle with this, and at times, struggle with being "anti" the way things have become.

Every Story Follows the Same Basic Plot IV: Restoration

See Part III
See part II
See part I

Finally, every story ends or will end with a sense of restoration. In Gladiator, Maximus defeats Commodus and restores the Senate, and in his own personal story, Maximus reunites with his wife and son on the other side of death. In Walk the Line, in the Thanksgiving Day scene, after his father demonstrates contempt for Johnny Cash again, June Carter comes to "rescue" his spirit. In the Lord of the Rings, the one Ring is destroyed and Aragorn takes his place as king. In Prince Caspian, Narnia is restored with a son of Adam on the throne again. In God and man's story, Jesus dies, is buried and is resurrected, beginning the restoration of the relationship of humanity and God that is ongoing.

Restoration is available, it is there. Often in our own stories that we are now living, we must find a way to recognize the real truth of the shattering and how we are striving.

Every Story Follows the Same Basic Plot III: Striving

See part II
See part I

Once the Shalom is shattered, then follows the striving. The story continues by either a striving to restore Shalom in a false way, sometimes by killing the pain of Shalom lost (addictions, etc).

In Walk The Line, Johnny Cash looks first to his music, then to drugs. In the Lord of the Rings, many in the story want the power of the Ring itself to use to restore things. In the story of man, God provides a covenant and a Law as a tutor to the time of ultimate redemption comes, but man puts hope in law-keeping at best, his own ability at worst.

In the lives of individuals, the striving comes in various forms. It may be religion, it may be drugs or alcohol, sex, work, living vicariously through their children, et al. Often it is by trying to control something in someway. Usually it is really a form of distraction.

Brennan Manning has labeled this kind of striving as playing the "Impostor". John Eldredge labels a person in this state as a "poser". This stage of the story is when we try to deny, cover over, or fake our way through our wound. Often the characters in the story are even unaware of the falsehood of their approach.

See Part IV

Every Story follows the same basic plot Part II: Shattered

See part 1

In any story, there is something that shatters the Shalom, the peace, the ideal state. This too can be implied before the beginning we see. In the movie Gladiator, it came when Rome moved to depend on a Caesar rather than the Senate, and in the story of the main character, Maximus, with the death of the Caesar he pledged loyalty to. In The Matrix, it happened before the opening scenes when the machines took over. In Walk The Line, it happened when Cash's brother died in the accident. In God's story, it happened with the angelic rebellion, and in man's story with the Fall.

The shattering happens in many ways, but generally it involves a wound and loss. A boy becomes orphaned in a way -- either through the actually loss of a parent, or in the practical loss of a parent to alcoholism or other means. A young woman suffers a breakup from a lover. A man loses a friend. We become in someway an orphan, widow(er), or stranger.

See Part III

Every story follows the same plot part I

A couple years back I heard Dan Allender speak on "story". This was after the release of his book To Be Told (recommended reading). Allender spoke of the importance of knowing your own story and sharing story.

In this seminar, Allender spoke over several sessions on how every story follows the same pattern, and seeing this in our lives can benefit us and help us see the direction God has for us. And make sense of our lives. Interesting, this isn't in his book or fully shown in the workbook, though some elements are there. In the interest of popularizing this for others benefit, I want to share it in my own words. I break this up in four parts:
1) Shalom
2) Shattered
3) Striving
4) Restoration

Part 1, Shalom

In every story, there is an opening period of shalom -- of peace, tranquility, of harmony. It may be implied -- generations ago, there was a great king who ruled in peace; when a person was young, he lived with a model family; once upon at time there was a happy princess. In God's story, there was "In the beginning". Not Genesis 1, but John 1. John 1 starts in a time predating Genesis 1, with "in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God". There was the Trinity, before anything was created living in harmony. Or, if you want to go to Genesis 1 to the story of man, there was the Garden of Eden. In the movies, we can turn to movies like Gladiator, where they speak of a Rome that once was, and is to be again. In the movie Walk the Line, we see young Johnny Cash and his brother planning and dreaming in their bedroom.

Every story has a Shalom, or the echo of one that was there sometime before the beginning of the story that is implied in the story.

Part II

Godly organization

I may have written about this before (edit: yep, in January), but I wanted to return to it with a new approach and some new thoughts.

Dee Hock, former high muckie muck with VISA International (the credit card guys), coined a term called "chaordic". It is order that arises out of chaos. Numerous late 20th and early 21st century innovators in the greater church have embraced chaordic as an approach to church growth and new church plants.

Basically, it is allowing organization to naturally arise by focusing solely on a common mission complemented with commonly held values. Some would interpret much of what happened in Acts and what Paul did as just that: Paul would preach in an area, stay to disciple awhile, then return months or a year or two later and recognize the leaders (elders) that were there already. Yes, most interpretations say appoint, but I would say they are probably right in that Paul probably simply recognized those who were leaders who were of good character and influence and appointed them.

Some also refer to this kind of organization as organic, others use terms like endoskeleton (as opposed to the institutional approach that resembles an exoskeleton). We can all observe that when we are in a small group of friends or in a small group of coworkers thrown together for training or such, there is a naturally occurring organization that arises. I think back simply to my bunkhouse at Advanced Boot Camp in May: when we were thrown together for the practicums on the four streams, we managed to quickly organize and get moving without predetermining a structure or organizational philosophy. (ok, maybe the Holy Spirit was involved there in seeing that happen -- but doesn't that sort of reinforce my point?).

Anything is possible with God of course, but some observations are that "natural" organization is best with smaller numbers. And it would seem that smaller churches are most effective. Generally, if a church is growing, it is growing faster if it is smaller -- two five hundred member churches that are growing grow faster than one thousand member growing church, and five 100 member churches faster than one 500 member church. Moreover, (I'll have to find the references for all this) the smaller churches tend to grow with new converts, the large with "transfers". So the real growth rate is much better with the smaller.

Another observation made by some organizational experts is that formal structure tends to occur when a group hits 20 or so. The larger the organization, the more "structured" in man's eye it gets. Is this good? Look at the business world -- the fastest growing businesses are always the smallest. Few Fortune 500 companies even sustain 3% annual growth over a long duration. More jobs are created "per capita" by small companies than large ones. One case in point -- San Diego lost several huge aerospace employers in the eighties, but the city's unemployment rate didn't spike long term as a result, despite the lack of new business moving in or other large employers hiring in large numbers. What happened, it was discovered years later, was that many of the unemployed started small businesses, and that ended up absorbing the unemployed rapidly. Small is beautiful, as my friend Greg says.

Another thought on organization -- we may think of the small as unorganized, but is anything unorganized really unorganized? The analogy is looking at a piece of land as "undeveloped". Ever realize that is an insult to God? It is undeveloped only in the eyes of man. God has spent centuries invested in that land, hasn't he? If we are a God led people, can we really ever be unorganized in our units? And aren't we more unorganized when we rely on man made bureaucracies?

Law v Grace

Law gives us something to manipulate for our advantage, and gives us some sense of control. Grace doesn't have such a "handle" on it.

The Pharisees upheld the law because it gave them a means of control. But as was said by someone around the campfire this weekend, you can't balance rules, control, and rigid formal structure with grace. 1% law and 99% grace is still legalism.

Law permits us to restrict in many ways. Not only freedom, but it also allows us too much discretion where law doesn't speak. Grace as a way of life knows no such bounds. Law would require us to give a fixed set of our income to an institution. Grace demands from us to love until it hurts -- which may require none of our income if we are poor, or the majority of it if we are wealthy.

Law requires debate of rule interpretation, grace demands us stop debating when anger or condemnation is interpreted in our words.

In the process of detoxing from four wall church, I'm finding how the rigid ritual of "church" reinforces the idea of keeping law -- whether an old one, or re-interpreting the New Testament in a way to derive a new one. As Alan Hirsch writes, the "medium is the message". What message does the medium of ritual express? That of form, of format mattering. Our medium often gives off the message of law. What would a grace-filled gathering look like?

Community

This past weekend, I went camping with six other guys and six boys. Thirteen of us all together, all the adult men disciples. We shot guns and rifles on a makeshift rifle range, had campfires, a couple of us went white water rafting et al.

In many ways, it was more of a church than what happens on a Sunday.

If church is a community that is centered on Christ, then what was experienced was more of a church than what is typically labeled as such. We challenged each other, we had some deep theological discussion (including a rousing one on if it is 1% law and 99% grace, it's 100% legalism), we encouraged each other, we spurred one another on to doing good afterward, we sympathized and comforted one in our crowd who's facing having to get a legal separation early this week, etc. And I believe God was more glorified in it than if we had stared at the back of each others' heads singing with one of us giving a talk somewhere along the way.

That, my friends, is what I'm learning a church to really be, as intended. We glorified God in our interaction, we had fellowship, we had times of discipling one another, we ministered one another, and we were sounding boards for one another in how we will be about the God given missions of our lives. Moreso, I believe, than the churches of four walls and a pulpit.

Some thoughts on post-modernism

By definition, almost, if I consider myself a post-modern, I'm not. So I won't claim to be, or not to be, one. I do find myself increasingly rejecting much of modernism, while holding on to other items of it. In many ways, I belong to a "bridge" generation -- I'm very late in the baby boomers generation, what some have labeled a 'tweener (those late in the baby boomer cycle or early in "generation X" or whatever the next generation is called).

(click here to see more about my exposure to postmodernism and some previous thoughts on the topic)

I do find much to be appreciated in both modernism and postmodernism.

The clip above (http://www.youtube.com/v/9RA-JzVxGTg for those who get this imported into Facebook or the like) illustrates one of the supposed differences between modernism and postmodernism -- belief in objective truth vs belief in relativistic truth. What a load of crap this is, at least as a "defining" difference. It is characteristic, but not a part of the definition. In fact, there really is no good definition of postmodernism.

Do some postmoderns belief in relativism? Yes, they do. But this is at best characteristic of postmodernism, not defining. In fact, a flaw of moderns is their need for clear definition. And in defining postmodernism, they find a cause to reject everything about it. Modernistic thinking, which dominates Churchianity too often, is setting up a kind of cultural war. Rather than comparing and contrasting the two schools of thought (though it is actually only one, as only one builds walls), they defend and more often attack.

And if they aren't attacking, moderns are busy defining postmodernism in modernistic terms. As the "expert" moderns teach other moderns about postmodernism, they perpetuate the division, the misconceptions. So the moderns end up trying to convert postmoderns to modernism, rather than trying to bridge the gap.

To me, postmodernism represents a great opportunity for the church. At the beginning of the modern era, modern thought corrupted the movement of Christ and so much of discipleship became about knowledge and discerning truth. Postmodernism is characterized (not defined :-)) by an emphasis on experience, on doing. Modernism seems to be characterized by a thought that you are how you think. Postmodernism, to quote a character from Batman Begins, "it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you". There is opportunity to swing the pendulum back, but if modern thinkers persist in thinking in terms of walls, they miss a chance to influence and the pendulum will swing (in some ways, is swinging) to far the other way.

Exclusion v Inclusion

I know there are some that reject anything from the "emergent" thought, but there is much valuable there to appreciate. (Just test the fruit before accepting it).

One thing that I've heard from it which is beautiful is the view of membership that accepts and loves all, and deals with sin after. It is a realization that Jesus adds to his church, so membership is to our individual "communities", not a church. The church belongs to Jesus, not us. We welcome them into our community, then as we help them journey with Jesus, confronting sin comes later.

And as Greg Boyd writes in The Myth of a Christian Nation, we are never once called to be the moral guardians of anyone outside our fellowship, but rather we are instead called to love people the way that Jesus did, by meeting their needs and loving them even if they kill us in return. If sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes aren't coming around our community they way they came around Jesus, then why not? Do we love them like He did?

Now, my qualm with this viewpoint is in wanting "guidance" on when challenging sin is to be done. When along the way? But I'm starting to see that as my hangup, not a reason not to live and love and accept.

Atheism as a moral choice

Did the title get your attention?

Some may know that for a few years, I was at Brian McLaren's church. He is a great guy, who asks great questions, though he and I may disagree on many of the answers that arise. Though I left the church to move, like many around the time that did leave because of a "revisioning" of the church under his successor, I would have left as well anyway.

Still, I came across this video and found it very intriguing. I knew early Christians were often labeled atheists due to not following the state gods, but casting modern atheism as a moral choice, to think of it as not believing in "this god" or "that god". To me, it sparks some questions on how to view evangelism, and creates some sympathies for atheism. How do we introduce people to a god they don't know, the one revealed in Jesus Christ? How do we separate the view of the true God from the one that bears a resemblance to him, but is one of war?

I know a great many Christians who have much of the doctrine, theology and dogma right, but their god is not one of love. It is one of moralistic judging. of rules. of separation rather than community.

Such a view does not necessarily mean a kind of universalism about things. We can love, and welcome others to our communities, and in those communities introduce them to the God of love. When we intrigue them with this God who is love, then we can talk to them about what separates them from relationship with him. But first, we need to reject the false gods who faith in justifies war and hate. That's not to say that war is not sometimes necessary to rescue many from a few oppressors. But the war and violence spewing from judgment and condemnation ... this is not from a God of love.

God is a god of love ... and redemption.

More admin stuff

Rethinking the name of the blog. markwinstead.blogspot.com just isn't cutting it.

Suggestions welcome. Right now I'm favoring repackaging a name I already claim, restoringheart.blogspot.com.

Edited: I've decided to repackage restoring heart.

Reboot

In order to simplify, I'm merging my blogs into one spot.

Old blog posts and new ones within the themes of Restoringheart.blogspot.com have a label "Restoring Heart". Those from redemptivecommunities.blogspot.com, old and new ones in that theme have "Redemptive Communities".

This new merged blog will also contain thoughts from various other topics as I journey.