“Every church member who loves the church will also be deeply pained by it. This does not, however, call for discarding the church, but for reforming and renewing it.” This quote so reflects my thinking about the Church at the moment that I thought I’d share it with you. It comes from Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission 
I have been trying to keep abreast of some of the many-faceted discussion on the Internet about the “emergent church”, simple church, home church etc. etc. Some of it is inspiring, some of it so negative about the existing “institutional” church it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. How to walk the fine line of living with the dissatisfaction and unfulfilled desire on one hand, while upholding the Church as the divine strategy for communicating the kingdom of God to the world? Bosch quotes a timely warning from Bonhoeffer :
“He who loves the dream of a Christian community more than the community itself, often does great damage to that community, no matter how well-intentioned he might be”.
I have no doubt that God is working in the local churches around us. But I have the uncomfortable feeling that the church’s structures often stand in the way of Christians fulfilling their mission in the world. What we call “evangelism” is all about trying to get people to come into our buildings, and very little about being out there making a difference among this generation’s “lepers, widows, poor, lame, blind” - the kind of people that Jesus spent much of his time with.
Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world. Howard Snyder 1983, Liberating the Church
This is of course a very old discussion which has been going on since long before I became a Christian, and it’s a shame that it’s taken me 20 years to catch up! Back in my student days when I knew everything I used to think that people who talked like this were “unspiritual” and had their priorities in the wrong place.
Anyone out there feeling like me?
My sentiments exactly. Hmmm…. and some of my favorite authors on the subject too. Bosch’s other great quote from Transforming Mission is where he calls the Church “…both a theological and a sociological entity, an inseperable union of the divine and the dusty…. It is this church, ambiguous in the extreme which is ‘missionary by its very nature,’ the pilgrim people of God” (p. 389).
The divine and the dusty - that perspective allows you to deal with the church as it is while holding up what it should be. It is the same perpsective that allows us to deal with each other within the church as well - the collection of those who have been made holy and are being made holy, transformed and being transformed.
I heard a chapel message once at Wheaton, Dr. Okholm, I believe was speaking and he spoke of theology as a “2000 year-old Bible study.” I have been thinking about that lately. A lot of extreme conservatism (read that fundamentalism especially) in the church thinks it is doing the church a favor by locking things down tight and immovable. What they are doing is closing off the Bible study. That consigns the church to irrelevance. Keep the Bible study open. Keep asking what it is that God is doing in the world today and what it is that His word has to say about it.
Enjoyed your blog! Maybe I should restart mine!
Paul
15 mars 2007 15:18
Hi Paul,
Yes, you really should restart your blog! Enjoyed reading your thoughts. That divine and dusty perspective is a great antidote for getting cynical about church.
Last night I had a dream. With a bunch of people we were standing on some arctic ice field, carving a giant ship from out of the ice. When the ship was about to be ready to go to sea, I was stand on it’s rear end. The ice under my feet began to break and I was swallowed by the sea. There I was, gone in a second.
I woke up and thought about this dream. A picture of the pain and scars I have from church. Until three years ago I was pastoring a local church and got mobbed out of office. A devestating experience, not simply losing one job and going to another.
I often wondered: why? One reason may have been my discontent with leaving things the way they are, as a friend suggested. Church can be a nice way to make your own world safe and cozy, salvation and all. You close yourself off from the disturbing realities of the bad outside world in Jesus’ little Arc Of The Small Flock. Clear rules, to avoid the pain of having to deal with the hurts of this fallenness. “Rules were invented by elders so they could get to bed early,” as Gene Edwards (A Tale of Three Kings) put it.
Last Saturday I finished the thesis of my MA theology programm. I wrote about the Irish monks (Columban, Gallus, Fursa and others) that came to France in the Early Middleages. They initiated a monasterial movement that in a lot of ways shaped Europe into what it is today. My goal was to find out how they could be so successful - and to learn from it as a modern church that often is completely irrelevant to the world around it. In a nutshell: This irofrankish monasterial movement was speaking the cultural language of the Franks. It provided very practical structural answers by moving to where the people were (to the pagans, the pagani - as in “living in the country side”, where a distinguished city-living Christian wouldn’t go). Most of all they lived a life of exchange, over interwovenness in economical, social, cultural and spiritual ways with the people around them. What a difference to the programm oriented approach of todays churches. Their’s was a whole-life approach; no, not an approach. Better: They lived with the people.
The bit about Kingdom people and Church people is a cunning observation. By closing ourselves off in our cozy communities the color of the curtains and the length or our skirts become life-and-death issues; and we totally miss what’s around is. God and all.