"Church"? ...A Way Forward!

Part 1 of this discussion.
Part 2 of this discussion.

As we continue to discuss “church," many believe the organized structure we call “church” is lacking.  Often, it causes people to feel disenfranchised, floating, and maybe even an outcast.   Even people who love Jesus may struggle with the tension between being faithful to Jesus and being faithful to an organized “church” that constantly identifies itself as THE way the people of God commune.

Add to this the further complications of denominations and distinctions of various organizations.  Also, the drive to be relevant to a demographic, to market and brand, to be friendly to outsiders, to tailor to families, to hit the general audience of infotainment who are not habituated toward stimulating cultural conversation and intellectual stretching.  The mix becomes more complicated and the way forward less clear.

We cannot just wipe the slate clean and start over.  The 19^th century proved that becomes a hotbed of cults and strange new “organizations,” usually creating more faction than unity.

However, we can step back and get a bigger picture, allow for the various expressions of the “church” and then give ourselves the freedom to be responsible for ourselves without decrying that some people don’t like “church.”  We have to be okay with their leaving the “church” is not a bad thing.  If denominations dwindle their influence and power, if fewer “churches” are being planted, we have to be okay with that not being a bad thing.  If our friends, family, or children do not want to be affiliated with “church,” we have to be okay with that not being a bad thing.

Where do we step back?  Some have spoken for the need to be Scriptural and not just cater to our frustrations.  Duly noted.  The way forward must coincide with God’s larger story as revealed through Scripture.  Some have spoken that we need to be relevant to today’s needs.  Also duly noted.  The Scripture gives plenty of space for cultural context, not requiring we all wear togas, eat kosher, and quote Plato before we can engage healthy spirituality.

So what is “church”?  I raise the question this way because unless we know what we are, we cannot proceed forward.  And I think this is part of the identity that has been lost, like the guy who wanted to start a company to make chocolate and got so involved in accounting and marketing he forgot his love for chocolate.

It is important when we look up the meaning of “church” in the Scripture, we don’t just see how Strong’s defines “ekklesia” in Greek.  We have to note how this word is used in different contexts.  For example, “church” cannot mean the building on the corner when mentioned in Matthew 18 as a place for discipline.  There was no “church” of that kind.  So we have to wonder at what Jesus is referring to and if the same meaning can be brought forward.  Or take Acts 7 when Stephen talks about the people of Israel at Sinai.  The KJV actually translates them as the “church” of Israel.  Other translations call it the “assembly” of Israel.  This also is not the building on the corner as we know it.

“Assembly” is the plain definition of “church.”  And, throughout the Scripture, it seems to refer to either a local gathering or the identity of a larger group of people.  You might say you have an assembly in Ephesus or an assembly on the earth.  The assembly of Ephesus is part of the assembly on earth.  When we say “church” it has these different meanings depending on where you stand, though they are tightly connected as a concept for people under the same banner.

Another thing to note about “ekklesia” in the New Testament is how it is used in the Greek Old Testament.  In the Old Testament it refers to the “Assembly of Israel.”  In fact, the Hebrew word behind “ekklesia” is the word “kahal” which is the “House or Commonwealth of Israel.” 

The important link for us to consider (and this is the part that many people refuse to entertain) is that the New Testament was written by Jews who wrote with Hebrew concepts behind their word choices.  So when they say “ekklesia,” they are thinking of the same way they use “ekklesia” as Jews.  They aren’t creating a new concept.  To the New Testament writers, “Ekklesia” is the “House of Israel.”  As one Jewish scholar notes, “There is no ‘church’ in the Scripture!”  He, of course, means no “church” as we  usually define it.  The identity of believers of the God of Israel are part of the House of Israel.  Read Romans 9-11 and see how Gentiles are grafted into the Jewish story.  If we really want to be organic and “big picture” we have to cast our identity in with Israel for there is no other identity for the people of God but through them and their Messiah, Jesus.

Okay, that’s big picture.  The “church” wasn’t invented 2000 years ago.  It was created and chosen by God.  Beginning with Abraham, the nations are being reconciled to God through Abraham’s people and all who will be part of that story.

That big picture, if we really sit in it, will affect everything else we think about theology, our identity, and our purpose.  The Catholic Church believed (and still does) that the Jews are replaced by Christians, hence all the Jewish temple imagery imported into cathedrals.  The Temple has been rebuilt, complete with sacrifice on the alter at every Mass.  The Reformers also carried this idea forward, believing they replaced the Jews.  Notice how many reformed theologians and preachers (some of whom are a household name for church-folk) will quote the Old Testament and replace “Israel” with their own view of “church” as inheritors of promise.  A variety of Protestant churches still call the front of their church the “alter” and have “alter calls” as the “mercy seat.”  This is all Temple talk as if something in our church and our gathering has replaced God’s real Temple and the Jewish people.

I do not believe the Gentile church has replaced the Jews.  I think we're part of them as younger siblings.  This is how we are very different from the Abrahamic faith of Islam which continues the replacement tradition, replacing the Jews, then the Christians.  Rather, the Christian story is the Jewish story.  It's one story.

If I had one guess why today’s “churches” are covered in criticism, it is because God is moving among us.  He’s gently pointing out that our idea of church has missed the larger picture of his work in the world.  Until we see Israel as the center people of the story, we will miss what is going on.  While this may raise just as many questions as it answers, we have to press forward.  The fragmentation of “church” as we know it, may not be a bad thing.

So what about that building on the corner?  This has been the larger puzzle for me.  I can’t say that I’m totally confident in my view on this yet.  I haven’t heard others talk about it, so that always leaves me cautious.  However, this won’t be the first time I’ve stumbled on some ideas and found out later that it was a clearer path.

The building on the corner we affectionately call “church” is actually a community center.  Just as my little town of Steamboat has a community center, so the “church” in Steamboat has a variety of community centers.  These centers have names like “Baptist,” “Methodist,” “Christian” in the titles.  But they are not the church.  The church is believers in the Messiah of Israel who are part of the House of Israel.

These believers create all sorts of community benefits: community centers (formerly called “churches”), hospitals, universities, shelters, pregnancy care clinics, non-profits, etc.  When believers want to create a building in which to meet, that is their choice.  The sad part is when people feel guilted into going to the community center every week to be part of “church.”

This is where I differ from many church critics.  I do not want us to abolish community centers (formerly called “churches”).  If people want to run them as a place to meet others, for non-believers to investigate biblical questions, for weddings and funerals, for therapy, then that is their prerogative.  I don’t see any Biblical reason why this should not be so.

Many may agree with this and find this a normal way to think about the building organization.  But I invite you to watch your language and see how you speak about the community center.  Do you call it the “Lord’s house?”  Do you call it the place of worship?  Do you speak of going to the center as “going to church”?  Are you frustrated when the numbers and down which triggers a feeling that fewer people love God today?  These are all evidence that we really have identified the church as the organization on the corner.

I find it interesting when Paul speaks of the church in Ephesus.  Think of the House of Israel in Ephesus, the gentiles included.  Think of the people assembling together, in homes, or however they gathered to worship and share.  While people together will organize, this does not mean people together automatically become an “organization” as we see it today.  This wasn’t an organization with large offerings for the local community centers.  This wasn’t an organization complete with pastors, elders, deacons in every gathering running the show.  Each assembly may well not have had their own elders, as each assembly may not be that large or may have people coming and going to different gatherings around the town.

This may be why many people feeling more connected through their coworkers are their work, through coffee shop conversations, through informal get-togethers with friends.  It may be that we are being a community by living in community.  The community center called “church” moves away from the center of our attention to the periphery.  Just like there is more to Steamboat than our community center, so most of our identity as God’s community needs to take place outside of any community center, indeed, even without one.

So where to the people God gifts with being pastor/teachers, elders, deacons, etc, fit in?  I’m still unsure if these are “offices” as we use the term today.  They may just be recognized gifted people just as the Jews saw their elders, teachers, and servants (the same titles of appointment are used for those who assisted Moses).  They assist the larger church, sitting at the gates with the other Jewish elders, likely going to differing gatherings and participating in a larger community.  I believe elders were over the whole city of people, not just over one street corner as we have it today.  Notice when Paul commissions the elders of Ephesus in Acts; he doesn’t commission them to their local gatherings but over the “church of God,” the House of Israel in the area. Imagine that being the case today, where elders weren’t limited to a board of directors in a community center, were not “professional” ministers, but were considered watchdogs against abuse and harmful ideas in the larger body. 

I can really see how positions of leadership in this kind of setting safeguards against the narcissism we see in many leaders today.  They would be recognized by the people rather than appointed by a few.  And if people didn’t see them as elders without the qualifications Paul lists in Timothy, then their authority would be unrecognized.  It would be the people of the House of Israel who would recognize them, not the institution that put them on payroll.

What about membership?  Membership means you’re part of the House of Israel.  You can make a membership at the community center, just like you can if you started a Christian Golf Club.  But the Scripture doesn’t speak of membership in those terms.  It is always being a “member” of the organic body of Israel with the Jewish Messiah as the Head.  Many members, one Body, with Jesus as the Head.

What about the disenfranchised people who struggle over leaving their community center and painfully believe they are leaving the “church”?  We pray for them.  We get involved in their lives.  We do not pretend the community center is what unites us.  We might even join them as they seek to implement the faith in fresh ways.  And we start taking responsibility for ourselves with a bigger picture of who we are as the people of God. 

Perhaps this could well answer Christian Smith’s call to adjust “church” for emerging adults, as he talked about in a recent interview.

"Lost in Translation" interview with Christian Smith,

Many churches are set up to cater to married couples with children. This is a well-known fact. And they may try to do something for teens and emerging adults. But trying to be more conscious and intentional about the language they use, the programs they offer, so those who are not married and don't have children are not sidelined—that's a start. But it probably will require more creative thinking about context—I don't even want to say programs—but ways to form communities and places where people can connect and work out common interests beyond the standard worship service and Sunday school.

I like his reference to "context."  Yes, on my view, we need to place our whole paradigm within a different context.

I could be way off.  I need to be convinced that I'm not.  If this larger vision is what God is up to, reminding his people that they are not disconnected from the House of Israel, preparing the world for Messiah’s return, are we willing to step away from our religious loyalty to the community center and consider the wilder following of the Spirit in the broader House of God?  Are we willing to gathering however the Spirit leads us in unity, engaging in spiritual growth, intelligent conversation, prayer, sharing, song, and teaching one another?

"Church"? ... unraveling the crisis

Continuing the theme of the previous post, I’ve appreciated several observations that I want to summarize.

1)  Many Christians are discouraged with “church,” not just any "church," but “church” in general, not only as irrelevant but unbiblical.

2) Pastors and elders tend to blame the lazy and complaining people in the congregation for many of these problems.  These problems would be sorted out if people were hard-working, more submissive to leadership, and knew the Bible.
3)  Some of these complaints are surface issues, symptoms of a deeper problem. These symptoms include, but are not limited to, 

• a general unfriendliness of fellow Christians in large group settings,
  
• passivity, the masses listening to the few,
• content control,
  
• church is an entertainment production to attract a larger attendance,  
• the church mimics popular culture with appeal to instant gratification, 
• and an authoritarian approach where those at the top tell those under them what to think and believe without equipping them with good reasons or practice.
  

3) Some of the complaints are systematic, including, but not limited to, 

• a strict hierarchy (senior pastor at top, etc) of the church creates a more passive approach from the people,
• the institution tends to focus on abstract beliefs and programs rather than relationships, 
• denomination create an environment unwilling to identity with other “churches,” 
• church services, pastoral “vision” and programs tend to leave out how the Spirit moves among a people with the Messiah as the real head, 
• leadership caters more to the masses than to individuals, 
• our evangelical churches overemphasis on Paul’s letters to the exclusion of the gospels and Old Testament.

What I want us to consider in this post as we search for the root of this issue (and I do believe some of the root is clearly knowable and that changes can be made) is to consider that many people EXPECT more out of the “church” (as we know it) than it seems able to give.  Likewise, the “church” (as we know it), may be promising more than it can deliver.  I feel these assumptions are themselves indicators of something deeper that needs definition.

We may find some helpful perspective in identifying what the “church” IS in general.  The previous comments have made a distinction made between the people and the institution.  This is an important distinction if we're to unravel the larger crisis we see today.

• Is the church both of them?   
• Is the organizing of a people an automatic institution as we know it?   
• Have we historically been thinking of the “offices” “format,” “government,” “membership” qualities of the institution in the right way (do we automatically use the verses to justify the positions and formats we have at our “church”?),  
• Do we identify ourselves more closely with the people or the institution?   
• Do we identify ourselves along denominational lines and part of a pastor’s flock OR do we more automatically identify ourselves with all Jesus followers in our town?   
• Does the "way we've always done it" cloud our reading of Scripture for what it really says?
• Is there a new way to think about this distinction  between people and institution we haven’t thought of before? 

• And, most importantly, are we in a posture of humility, willing to change should we need to? 

Continued on next post.

What Exactly is "Church"?

We've all witnessed the onslaught of recent publishing.  We've read the articles that speak to so many people leaving church.  We've seen the books by people disillusioned with church.  We're heard the statistics decrying that most students won't even attend church by the time they are out of college.  Many leaders are fretting over the dropped attendance as an indication of the spiritual maturity of the Christian population.

What exactly is going on here? Why are people discouraged with church? What is church that it isn't meeting people's needs? What is it about church that seems to be missing the point?

Many surface features come to mind: music, preaching, shifting more liberal or more conservative, trendy, laziness, etc. But there must be something more. Is there something intrinsic to today's church that repels so many people who follow Jesus (and those who don't!)?

I really want to know some what you're observing where you are? What are you feeling about church that troubles you? What are people talking about? Have you heard some important insights? What is "church" and what should we do about it? Throw them into the comment section and let's discuss!

Continued on next post.

Beyond the Border: The Mystery of Mystery

When I began to take my faith serious in my late teens, few things made me feel more alone among God’s so-called people than when my Christian community discouraged me from testing and pressing into my faith. They would say, “Don’t think too much!” or in more disguised positive ways like, “You just have to take it by faith,” or in ways that made me feel like I had a disease like, “Man, you’re deep!” Pressing into the so-called “deeper” things with thoughtful reflection was my life’s blood. If life itself was a meaningful as I sensed that it was, I couldn’t settle for pat answers, party-lines, and the insistent simpleness of the mob who fail to risk their reputation for freedom.

That was how I felt then, needing to push aside systems and people, including the church, in order to find light and truth. My quest continues. But the irresistible gnawing at my soul in those early years was unbearable, a real darkness, a kind of hell. A recent Christianity Today article moved this theme in me, “Reveling in the Mystery.” D.H. Williams, professor at Baylor College, explores the mystery of God. He writes, “As a result, Christianity has struggled since the 3rd century to avoid what theologian Jaroslav Pelikan called a "tyranny of epistemology" in its understanding of God and God's revelation to us. Simply put, this tyranny occurs when Christians think of God as a great field of investigation, a problem to be solved.” I can affirm that some have treated God as a problem to be solved. Wrap God up in a pretty box with a bow on top and call it “Christianity.” In reality, these are seeking merely propositions about God, in part, because the more you know the more you can control. It is a tyranny both of the knower and for those around him. I find that people in this position are often insecure and afraid and need our patience.

Many in the Emergent movement have decried the tyranny of epistemology, sometimes overstating exactly what the tyranny is out of their own insecurity, but still bearing at the heart of it an insistence that when we act as though we have the special corner on truth, all parsed and dissected, we are actually farther than God in our arrogance than we ever were without our knowledge. In dissecting our theology too much, we something gets lost. The patient dies. I know some groups that denounced the Emergent church as heretical, yet I suspect that denouncement can only come from those who have both misunderstood as well as become tyrants themselves with a wooden view of God and the universe. Yet, the other spectrum is equally dangerous, that we can know very little and must revel in nebulous mystery if we’re going anywhere. Reveling in mystery can become wallowing in mystery. Some of the people of my growing up years were like this, taking “faith” to mean contentment in not knowing even basic ideas revealed to us by God—things that God seems very keen on us knowing.

Williams then takes the reader through several stages in the mystical journey of the Christian journey, drawn from Gregory of Nyssa who draws these ideas from Moses. The reading is very interesting, so I recommend going through the article (one of the better ones by CT). While I’m unsure of Gregory’s hermeneutic that Moses life is an outline for our own, I do think many of the mystical experiences in this article are common to those who press into God, bringing all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

In reading the article, I wondered how we can explain mystery more clearly, at least to me. What exactly is mystery? Where does mystery begin?

Paul often talks about the "mystery of time," by which he means things we did not know and now do know. Jesus the Messiah being one such example of a revealed mystery. We did not know God would send THIS kind of Messiah! This is one of the pleasures of surprise in education: every day new knowledge comes to us. More mysteries revealed. With this kind of mystery, we go into the darkness of knowing that we don’t know. And, once illuminated, we now know.

Many of our questions in life are like this. We come to learn many things, just as the questioners Nicodemus and Thomas came to learn by simply asking their questions. And we continue to know as we grow. Like a child must have pureed vegetables, an adult gets to indulge in all the crispy pleasure of a ripened broccoli. We get to grow up in our knowledge too, taking in all that we are capable of. “When I became a man, I put away childish things.”

But there is another kind of mystery, one that is more interesting to me and more at the heart of this post. It is the "mystery of relationship." Mike Mason wrote the only marriage book I recommend for anyone serious about getting married called, “The Mystery of Marriage.” Marriage is a mystery, because marriage is relational. Unlike the mystery of education, where we grow to know more as we study, the mystery of relationships involves mysteries we may never know as we have no capacity to get into the mind of the other. As much as we can show courtesy to see things from another’s perspective, we can never get inside their skin.

This is true with God as well. He reveals things to us, but we only know him as we get to know him. Because he is Creator and we are creaturely, many things about him I may never know, but can only experience. I’ve heard the verse abused, “His ways are higher than our ways,” to mean that that God is indescribable, past understanding. But that’s not the context of Isaiah (55:8). God is referring to his love, that quality so broad and deep, that we hardly approach understanding how much he cares about his creation and to what ends he goes to be with humans and redeem them. Who knows what he will do next? Who knows what his full feelings are for me? Who knows how far he is inviting me up his mountain? That is mysterious indeed.

Paul was getting at this kind of mystery in Ephesians, when he wrote, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:17-19). Love is a mystery. It is only known, not through propositions, but through experience. Like a rainbow, you can see love, but you cannot bottle it.

This morning I listened to the bull elks bugling in the forest around our cabin. The bulls are collecting harems, their mistresses of the rut. Their trumpeting bugle echoes off the canyon walls, inciting fights from other bulls and inviting cow elks to their bedroom chambers.

I hike into the 100 acres of aspen, pine, and gamble oak that we affectionately call the “White Woods”. I see the sign, the scraped trees, the scat on the ground. I smell the musk in the air. I even walked up on a bull last week. Within my boundaries, I can explore what the elk are doing, see the spike following the bull, see the cow a hundred yards to the south making her approach.

I think of the boundaries as the knowledge we grow into. And while there is still much to know, knowledge is available to me. Yet what goes on outside my boundaries? I can still hear bugling. But I cannot explore it. I cannot see the clashing of antlers between two mature bulls. I cannot count the number of heads in the herds. My boundaries are not limitless. Beyond my borders, mystery comes to me in sounds and hints, enough for my imagination to marvel at what lies beyond.

Most of each person lies beyond our borders: My wife, my friends, God, and even myself. I am closer to myself than anyone else in existence, yet I have depths I do not understand. My self-knowledge is limited. I gain some tools through therapy, unpacking my past, letting the Spirit search me, knowing myself and my desires, but I see a deep, dark well within me, one that I will never fully know. I explore what I can until I hit the border when I can go no further. I can grow in virtue, but it will require more than willpower to change myself. If I’m mysterious to me, if I have parts inaccessible by my own faculties, then all I can do is hear the faintest hints of who I am and what lies beneath and let my imagination marvel. “I am fearfully made.”

The mystery of mystery is that God’s generosity puts us in a world too big for us, inviting us to know all we can and marvel in what is beyond. We do this generosity a disservice when we use “mystery” to be lazy, as an excuse from pushing into love because our souls are weak and undisciplined. Only a mind awake takes the greatest pleasures in what is unknowable because it it knows its own limits, seeing mystery not as a hindrance nor as fearful, but a place filled with God’s love unfolding colors I can only dare to dream about.

One day we will see God’s face and I pray that we recognize it. Perhaps the only way forward is to take what God has revealed, press into its meaning as much as we can, and then allow the mysteries that lie beyond the border continue to sound off.