Spiritual Towers of Babel

Looking back on a couple of church splits I've been up close to and the outcomes from them, and stories of other splits, well, while recognizing God can make good come of anything, I wonder of God engineered the splits as he saw those churches as spiritual towers of Babel.

One of those in particular I remember in the year before the split, they started "testimonials" in the service (funny how you call it service with so little serving going on in them). Each testimony seemed to talk about how great the church was, how the church did this or that for them. How the church was like their extended family. Rarely if ever was there a mention of God. And the catalyst to the split was a meeting of a handful of those recognized as the next generation of leaders of the church and a couple of their mentors to discuss how to reach the lost in the area more effectively. In that meeting one idea was to plant a different kind of church not so obviously consisting of members whose parents, grandparents, great grandparents etc were Christians. That idea got around and drew flack as "you need to stay here and build this church".

How many churches are spiritual towers of Babel? How many of those is God plotting redemption of, possibly even planning its split? Does God do such?

New site

Just to let followers of this blog know ... I've started a ning (social networking) site for topics related to much of what I post here in the blog.

It's Christianity without the BS. On the website, the "bs" is spelled out, so you may want to keep the kiddies away. The name kind of says it all. I'm hoping for it to develop to a site for those who need to vent about the system, those who need healing from the wounds the religious systems out there inflict on people, a place to detox from addiction to religion and learn to become addicted to Jesus instead, and maybe even a place where constructive dialogue on practicing a BS free following of Jesus can occur.

Religion is easy

Religion is easy, relationship is hard.

Christ intended for us to practice relationship, not religion.

The word "religion" in the NT

Stuff discovered looking up other stuff ...

James in James 1:26-27 appears to using a bit of sarcasm when using the closest Biblical Greek word for "religion". The word used there is "thraskeia" (closest transliteration of the word from the Greek I'm capable of). Interestingly, the word thraskeia is used twice more in scripture (and interestingly, never used in Greek translations of the OT that predated Jesus' earthly life) -- In Acts 26:5 it refers to the formal system of Pharisaism. Col. 2:18 is a warning against avid the worship of angels. So, what is the story behind the word?

According to Thomas de Quincey in 'Memorials and Other Papers', to the classical thinkers (classical in this sense of the Greeks and Romans from the rise of Greece to the fall of Rome), religion, whether thraskeia or the word cultus, meant simply ritual - no morals, no teaching, no transformation. Simply ritual in the name of appeasing the God who motivated it. (Now admittedly, Thomas de Quincey is no theologian, but he wasn't writing about theology. He was writing about the ancient culture that James was -- it gives context to James use of the word).

With this background, when James used "thraskeia", he would have seemed to have chosen it carefully given its nuances of meaning. He didn't say those who claim to be more godly, pious, spiritual, etc. But more bound to keeping a code, a set of rituals. He points to the rituals these religious types of their day should be practicing.

Hmmmmm.

Embedding is blocked on this version (do watch it!) but here is one I can embed:



I think it has a lot of why I don't go to traditional church anymore embedded into this song. I think of singing it to the institutional church. .

What is the church to be?

For regular blog readers, I feel like I almost should be apologetic with the stuck themes here. It's just something that is stuck like a bad song in my mind.

It's hard to argue with what people say the church should be, but I do anyway. It is amazing how little is said in scripture about the purpose of the church, but so many do impose a belief on it. Some common ones:

A vehicle for spreading the gospel. Absolutely no scriptural basis for this. The early church commonly hid its gatherings, and carefully screened those who came before they came, due to the persecution common the first few centuries of the existence of the movement of Christ. The whole "seeker friendly" modern concepts would be foreign to the first century Christian. One did not bring them to church to convert them; one introduced the new disciple to the church.

When Paul and Barnabas were sent by the Antioch church - they weren't funded by them, the church in Antioch did not set up the tour, etc. They laid hands and sent them out. They had before hand perhaps did some training, then just sent them. No program, no infrastructure. They equipped them, encouraged them, and sent them on their way. Paul wrote of accepting no money - he was a tentmaker where he went.

The result of such thought makes Amway representatives. Not well rounded disciples. Such an approach results in a church which is considered a failure if it is not growing numerically, or seeing numeric growth in some way if the focus is in making "disciples" over there, where ever over there is.

The church is a place of healing - a hospital for sinners. Very common thought. Also no basis in scripture. It is another case of how examples or commands in scripture to disciples get cast off to the "church", which then makes a "program" to handle the issue/concern/command.

The result of such thought makes a place that doesn't expect or at least not welcome the "healthy". If healing happens, suddenly there is no point for a person to be there. It is as if we do not expect healing to occur if this is how we define church.

The church is a place of worship. Scripture never mentions that the church ever gathered for worship. I'm not counting those "headers" injected into most translations around I Corinthians 14. No, the church is said to have gathered for "encouraging and exhorting one another" or "to spur one another on to love and good deeds". Worship produces Jesus admirers, not Jesus disciples.

The church is a gathering for us to learn about God.
A variation on the church as an evangelical tool. Interesting history on this one - it is a perception of the church that emerged about the time the Bible became readily available for the masses due to the printing press. Knowledge replaced discipleship. Knowing replaced doing.


The church is a humanitarian organization. (or a place to impact the world, or that sort of thing). Closer I think, but still not too well grounded in scripture. The result is a place of goody-goody people at best. A reaction in the wrong direction from the knowledge emphasis crowd so dominate in Christian society.

What is it that the church should be, then? Scripturally, we see the church gathering as a community, not a sit down and shut up and follow the clergy. We see Paul instructing on the gatherings being centered on being a community and equipping one another. It's not about a vision for the church - the church had its vision and lost it. It's vision is to be a community of believers seeking to be Christs - the original meaning of "Christian" was "little Christ". Christ listened to the Father for his mission, not a pastor, not a church board. The early church, from what we could tell, commissioned the called to the work they were called to, not recruited its members to those programs the leaders were called to "lead". The leaders were servants, they were ones called to equip.

A church following its commission is one that equips its members for what they are called to. Not letting a clergy class define what the church is called to and recruiting to those programs.

Environments

Remember, churches produce church members.

Recently I was watching some Andy Stanley sermon video. Normally I don't do that sort of thing, but it came to my attention with its intriguing promo. Talk about bait and switch. Stanley was talking about why his church does the things it does, in the way it does. It was all about introducing "seekers" to Jesus Christ, by creating environments with the church for people to get involved with Christians or to "experience" faith first hand - try it on in other words.

This is a buy-in to the myth that the purpose of any church involves making disciples. But churches make church members, disciples make disciples. Biblically, a church is simply a community of disciples who encourage and equip one another. The disciples do the work, not serve as volunteers for church programs. The disciples are to answer the call of God, not the assignment to a church function. The environments that a church creates are ones to spur its members on to love and good deeds. The church of today has assumed the role of the disciples. The church is to be about equipping, not doing.

What we commonly see is churches whose leaders turn this on its ear, who talk like a business - we pool resources to maximize impact. They justify taking over the roles meant to be born by disciples for various 'efficiencies' reasons. Or in older line churches, it's about not trusting the laity, but bringing in the 'professionals'. But maximum impact is not made by programs, but by relationships. Relationships are not between a church and someone, but between two someones.

Church leaders who are interested in evangelism shouldn't come up with programs, but equip and encourage the disciples among their membership. They should get out of the way, at best facilitating ways for the disciples to interact meaningfully with their neighbors, which probably means just cutting back on the programs so disciples have time to be neighbors, co-workers, and/or friends.