A Jesus Way: I Can’t Do This On My Own

A friend of mine has me listening to an audio version of So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore. You might find it pretty interesting, if you haven’t checked it out already.

Just friday I was listening to Mark Driscoll talk about how a movement becomes an organization to get things done, then becomes an institution with staff and real-estate and eventually loses sight of it’s original goals, and the goal becomes the sustenance of the institution. At that point, the game is over and it’s a matter of time before the institution becomes a museum. There’s a curator there who reminisces about the glory days, but they, “haven’t seen the Holy Spirit since the Nixon administration.”

I’m not sure who your target audience is, but I think we have to make a clear distinction in this kind of discussion between the institutions and the actual body. It get’s muddied enough in real life, without confusing the issue on paper.

That said, I think groups of people form organizations that become institutions with good goals in mind, most of the time. The dangers of institutions I think are plain to us, but I don’t think the bare fact of the institution is the problem. The problem is people don’t understand the Gospel. Whether you have a church full of two-faced hypocrites (legalistic), or a scattering of self-made ‘spirituals’ (license), they need to hear the Gospel. Though I think we’ll agree the fact that folks can remain members of a “Church” institution for years and never hear enough of the Gospel to repent of legalism and hypocrisy is the greater tragedy, and the greater hindrance to the cause of Christ.

I think a good question is, are Churches as institutions always enough of a hindrance to never be the way to do things? If so, what else do we intentionally pursue?

Good questions. My only point in all of this is to counter any weight I’ve created in previous posts that might lead people to assume that following a Jesus Way might be something you can do alone. You can’t. Therefore you get Church.

Although this is not a treatise on the Church, a serious discussion of what the Church is must be grounded in what Jesus was focused on: how to live in the Kingdom of God.

Can radical new movements do this? Sometimes. Can institutions do this? Sometimes.

In McLaren’s “Finding Our Way Again,” he has this incredible illustration, showing how God was at work in those who sided with Galileo that the earth revolved around the sun. They stood up for truth. But in time, the establish churches repented, and came to accept the science. So, God was at work in both, moving them, in time. When I’m frustrated with my institutional or radical brothers, I try to remember that.

I’d be interested to know who the ‘radical’ and ‘institutional’ folks are, though that’s probably not a conversation for this forum.

Seems like I’m hearing about McLaren everywhere just now. I’ll accept McLaren’s illustration is a good one for this discussion, if we assume that it’s a discussion about church forms and practices, and also assume that the Church God is working in is still those with a faith rooted in the Gospel of Christ. I’m increasingly afraid that McLaren means a great deal more than that. Even so, it’s comforting to remember that God is in control.