For a long time, I’ve believed that the model of pastors and laity is not the correct model for the church. It’s been easy to believe this, being in a church that did not have a pastor.
For a long time, I’ve believed that the church should be a low-overhead institution, not a huge, property-owning, salary-paying behemoth. It’s been easy for me to believe this, being in a church that has no budget and no assets.
For a long time, I’ve believed that churches should move beyond the worship service to other methods of communal and spiritual practice. It’s been easy for me to believe this, being in a church that doesn’t really have a worship service.
For a long time, I’ve believed that congregationalism - the idea that we’re one group of Christians and you over there are another church, a separate group - is wrong. It’s been hard for me to believe this, being in a church that is just such a separate group.
I much prefer, but have been unable to live out, the idea that the church is a network, an organization unlike a company or a nonprofit but much like a web of relationships. Now, no longer having a regular Sunday church to call my congregation, I need to start thinking seriously about what this network approach to being the people of God looks like.
Throw it all out. We’ve gotten it wrong in too many ways for too many years to bother any more.
Start fresh. Start with kingdom living. Start with theology. Start with relationships. Forget about meetings and structures and organizations and goods and services and just see what emerges.
That’s where I am. It’s 11 PM on a Saturday night, and I don’t want to “go to church” anywhere tomorrow morning. We did that for five years, and a month ago stopped, and while we’ve gone to two great churches since then on Sundays, I don’t want to continue. I don’t think that’s where the future lies, and I can’t continue doing something I don’t believe in any more.
I do believe in Jesus. I do believe in a God who created the world and everything in it. I do believe in a gospel message that teaches us the true path to life.
Let’s start there and see what emerges.
Of course we have 1 Tim 3, which clearly lays out a hierarchy within the Church, 1 Cor 9 indicates that pastors deserve to be paid. Yes, most churches do emphasize their systems way too much, but it is important not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Scripture clearly states that we are to bear with one another and continue meeting with one another. We are also to submit to our Elders.
I think that all Christians are called to be full time ministers within their family, their workplaces, and their communities. The corporate church exists to keep all of these little ministries in line with scripture, and to motivate and facilitate and equip the development of the ministries of the individual. If you find a church that believes and practices this, you will have the best of both worlds
Oddly it is often the megachurches that do the best job at this. Simply because providing quality pastoral care for 3000 people is impossible, so they train and delegate.
Notice in Acts 2, after the 3000 where baptized they continued to meet at the temple, but also met in one another’s homes..
I don’t like a lot of things and am quite convinced that we have a lot of things messed up still. However, I am also quite convinced that we will always be jars of clay that somehow God is able to use for the sake of his kingdom.
My thoughts for whatever they are worth.
Rex
Ithaca Church of Christ
Ithaca, NY
Josh, I don’t disagree with the principles you outlined, but I think we’ve made a mistake in viewing them as applicable to separate congregations rather than to the city church as a whole.
Rex, thanks for your encouragement.
Justin,
I just wanted to thank you for this post. Please know that there are many who share your perspective. I’ve recently spent time with friends in the States that feel the same, and many of them also feel stuck. They know what they’re frustrated with, but they don’t really know what to do about it. I appreciate that you have included what you do want. I’d encourage you to continue exploring life in the Kingdom outside a congregational church, and to try to articulate that as much as possible to the folks who are happy in the traditional structure.
stepchild
This is exactly where I was six months ago, when I walked out on the church never to return. Thanks for writing this and know that you’re not alone. Unfortunately it is difficult to find local Christian community outside the church, as I have found.
Rather than “going to church”, what about “being the church” - sounds like semantics but I think this is what Jesus lived. Being the church takes hard work, being there for others when your world is easy but someone else might need help. It’s about relationships and community, being there for one another through the good times and the bad times. You can’t just “be there” for someone you don’t know. So, if theology and relationship are where you want to go, perhaps a small, struggling church is something to consider. Maybe there is one right around the corner looking for someone like you…
I wonder if part of what I need to do is get back into the blogosphere. I’ve dropped out lately, not reading or commenting on other blogs, and that was something that was good for me at one time.
If it’s 50 or 500 people reading and saying the same things to each other, and never challenging themselves or being informed by, gasp, scripture, then maybe it’s a waste of time, but I think it can be more than that.
[...] Churches are Wrong - read this post from Justin at Radical Congruency. Short and simple, but pretty compelling. Here’s a quick quote: I much prefer, but have been unable to live out, the idea that the church is a network, an organization unlike a company or a nonprofit but much like a web of relationships. Now, no longer having a regular Sunday church to call my congregation, I need to start thinking seriously about what this network approach to being the people of God looks like. [...]
justin,
good thoughts. very good thoughts.
my one point that i would offer for thought: i agree and disagree. i agree with you because you’ve come to your conviction. it’s your small ‘t’ truth…your ecclesiology. i can find no fault in it.
i disagree because others - however much you may feel they’ve gotten in wrong in so many ways - is their conviction. to their credit, they are seeking to live out that conviction. to your credit, you are living out your conviction.
which leads me to the thought that you shared about the idea that the church is a network. i agree which is the reason why we are all connected.
e
It seems our spirits are more kindred than previously imagined…
Hi Justin. I read abook recently called “The Starfish and the Spider” which looks from a business perspective at exactly the kind of network organisations you talk about (known in the book as starfish, versus traditional hierarchical organisations called spiders). It is fascinating and I suggest you read it. It is the best commentary on the church that I have read.
The book tells many storys of these starfish organisations and looks for the common characteristics. If the findings are correct, looks to me like Jesus founded a starfish, not a spider. This is good news. Starfish can’t be easily destroyed. They don’t cost money, they are besed on goodwill, trust and helping each other out.
Oddly, we seem to not like starfish organisations and tend to create spiders. However amongst all the spider churches that dominate the landscape, the starfish is still very much alive and well underneath, under the radar. How many times have you been shown how Jesus wants us to live through the quiet example of a believer? How many times has real insight into the bible come from a conversation in a pub? How many works of service, mission or whatever are done without a mention in the notice sheet on a Sunday?
I’m keen to follow this investigation into how to do starfish better.
Chris
hmm…church of the blogosphere…an interesting idea. Since the church is the people, perhaps it would work - it’s there when I need it. I need the vitality of new ideas, but I think I more than ideas. I need actual, physical people walking the journey with me, ones who are there to give me a hug when I need it.
This is where it gets tricky - does the emerging church try to go beyond the consumer model of church where we come for what we can get? If so, then how do we know when we become a church? Is it the commitment that keeps everyone coming back to support each other? Is it important to worship in community to help remind us of the story and to make a place where others can hear the story? As Walter Brueggemann says affluence breads amnesia. Are we so blessed that we don’t see the need to worship when life is good?
My church comes together regularly to worship in community. People come when they can and we all understand. But how do we keep people committed because right now things are so loose that I wonder why I go. And if we go when we feel like it or it’s convenient, then how can we be there when someone else needs us physically there? Sometimes the touch of Jesus was all it took.
If I understand that I don’t go to “get something” but there isn’t a sense of journeying together, then why go? So, here I am back where you started this - the answer seems elusive and one that I am struggling to find. But if churches are people, then are churches wrong or do we just need to discover how to be the church? Maybe we are church even when we aren’t sure what we are doing…
Rebecca
I think you’re on to something, but I wonder if your reaction to the ills of modern churches aren’t pushing you away from realizing it fully.
What I mean is that in modern society christian community is equal to the local church. Going out on your own and trying to forge community apart from it may prove to be extraordinarily difficult. Most Christians will turn their heads and blink at you for trying to be a Christian outside of the local church. How can you forge a community if most of the folks you want to commune with are in their own communities that you don’t want to be a part of?
I think that you might find that visiting churches will lead you to folks that you can have that community with. Is it how God would want it? I dunno, He didn’t specifically say. He did make it clear how important the Christian community is, how we realize it is a bit up to us.
The other thing I’ve realized lately is I can’t throw it all out. I’m a product of my history and my church’s and my family’s. I can’t escape it and erase it’s influence on my thinking. And I can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be either. All I can do is love people, serve them and God and be Jesus in every circumstance the best I can.
I’m with you there. I find I have this love hate relationship with my RSS reader. RSS means I can read many blogs easily, but it also has seemed to mean that I never get into the discussions in the comments and I don’t develop the community relationships that I loved in my early days of blogging. I need to ween myself off my reader for the sites that I feel a strong sense of community with, maybe for even more than that.
I feel the same way. Bear in mind that all of what I’m about to say is colored by my experience with my own church and perhaps not representative - here it comes:
One of the two great failings of Christianity if to deliver on Paul’s promise of a “new man” or nature in any significant way and/or on any scale. Christianity is mostly people running new junk through the same grinder.
Nowhere is this more apparent or discouraging than in your local church.
I’ve decided, however, that i will not be one of the monkeys who divides into us and them and, seeing the church as them, starts treating them with anything other than the utmost in compassion. I am a man, created in the image of almighty God. So …
I continue to go to my church precisely to provide a perspective that is first an foremost gospel-based Christian , which is oddly enough very rare, as God give me grace to do.
Though I try to be gentle and not allow things to get heated, I have nonetheless very much become the odd man out. The message in my church has gotten so distorted that people essentially believe I am backslidden because I am not a Republican.
I then gently inform them that I am not a Democrat either, but a disciple of Christ.
Hi Dan,
Can you say more about what you mean when you say ‘find local Christian community outside the church’? I think if you find local Christian community, you’ve found the church. I think it’s time to stop seeing “a church” as the way to be a part of “the church,” but I’m not clear on what a viable alternative might be. How’s being ex-church going for you?
Hi Rebecca,
It’s not so much about finding the right church as finding the right way to be the church in the first place. Part of what I’m expressing here is that our focus on individual, isolated congregations is the wrong approach entirely.
Having said that, there are some great churches out there, and I don’t mean to devalue what they’re doing at all. Eugene’s church (Quest) comes to mind (hi, Eugene!).
I don’t want to end up being critical of all organized gatherings of Christians, and I don’t want to just surf from group to group, enjoying the community I find without having to actually invest time and energy in helping to nurture that community. Postmodern church-shopping is not what I’m going for here.
More on this, perhaps in a new post…thanks for the great feedback, everyone. Gotta love how provocative post titles get lots of comments
Hi, Dan,
You are right - it is about finding the right way to be church. And I do understand - it’s Thursday 9 pm and I’m already thinking about staying home on Sunday. If so many of us want a different kind of church, then why is it so hard? There are times when my church has been a real community but right now it’s back to pseudo-community. But here I am, ready to give up, and yesterday someone told the the story of the Rabbi’s gift (http://www.community4me.com/rabbisgift.html). And now, I can only wonder is the Messiah one of us?
Rebecca
[...] by the response to my last post, I feel I should flesh out what I see as the future of interaction between Christians in an area, [...]
Justin, I have attended church 10 times longer than you and am coming to the same conclusions. Guess I’m just slow!
Excellent blog, keep up the good work my friend.
When you say “churches are wrong” and you’ve “gone to two great churches”, I guess I don’t think it’s possible to go to church.
With humility, and a request for your patience, I repeat an old story about the Mayonnaise jar and 2 cups of coffee….
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began he wordlessly picked up a very large mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous “Yes!”
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
“Now,” said the professor as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things…your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions…and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.
The sand is everything else…the small stuff. “If you put the sand in the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.”
“Pay attention to the things that are really critical to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get a physical checkup. Take your spouse out to dinner. Take care of the golf balls first…the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled and said, “I’m glad you asked. The coffee just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”
Apply this story to your Christian life. Pay attention to the golf balls that the Lord has for your life. The sand comes last and the coffee applies all the time.
What are the Christian golf balls? I suggest the basic doctrines of the faith…..the authority and inerrancy of scripture, the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ, the total depravity and spiritual lostness of humanity, the substitutionary atonement and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, assurance of salvation, and the imminent physical return of Christ. Your personal conversion and new birth, John 3:3. Your descipling of others, and anything else the Holy Spirit reveals to you. The rest is pebbles and sand.
Jesus speaks to us as individuals, through the Word of God and the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Everything I need to please the Lord is in my Bible.
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the faith and correcting error, for resetting the direction of a man’s life and training him in good living. The scriptures are the comprehensive equipment of the man of God and fit him fully for all branches of his work. II Tim. 3:16, 17.
My requirement is to be obedient. So I stay tuned to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit and I’m happy and thankful in serving Him. (even when I must confess sin to Him to be cleansed). As I am, the Holy Spirit will cause me to grow in Christ and reveal the next golf ball He wants me to be aware of.
Be alert. Don’t let the sand into the jar first. You won’t have any room for the golf balls.
Great post Justin. For those of us endeavoring to follow Christ outside the context of established church groups there are many questions. As Bob posted recently there are some foundational issues that we can not dispense with but as Justin describes, the real issues (I hope) are not that we have dispensed with true theology but that we have a hard time finding community in the absence of the establishment.
Don’t misunderstand me, I am still convinced that the Kingdom can only be entered into through complete transformation of the mind and soul. However, I’ve spent my whole life inside a church building where many of the practices are barriers to entering the Kingdom.
I know that we cannot participate in what God is doing in our world purely as individuals. We need a community to be whole and this is the rub. How do we ‘floating’ Christ followers cultivate community outside of the establishment?
I’m beginning to agree with you. I have a semi-solution for myself and that is the community of friends I have formed around my association with a ministry called the Association for Christian Character Develpment. They do training two of which are Breakthrough and Discovery.
To explain them is difficult but the result in my life have been a disatisfaction with the low level of authenticity and real community within the churches I’m familiar with.
These trainings are experiential in nature such that a person attending them can learn to notice their impact on others and see if that lines up with who they say they are. And to be interested with recieving feedback about that impact. Simon Tugwell’s book The Beatitudes; Soundings in Christian Traditions has changed my reasons for going to church. Thanks, Warren
“I do believe in a gospel message that teaches us the true path to life.
Let’s start there and see what emerges.”
Hello Justin:
Your starting point is still too late, and that is the thing that threw the churches off the track.
Paul said that God preached the gospel for the first time to Abraham. Abraham believed, the gospel, and it was counted unto him for righteousness, making Abraham the father of all those after him who believe the gospel, and have that belief counted unto them for righteousness.
You have to start with Abraham, and discover the gospel as God preached it. The gospel which would have required the Apostolic overthrow of the Roman Empire, and had to be altered to form the Universal Church of the Roman Empire.
Abe, I am completely in favor of overthrowing the Roman Empire. Will you join me?
Hello Justin:
Alas it is too late. Rome destroyed Apostolic Christianity in 325AD, and it has been represented ever since by a pagan religion…LOL
[...] at least as compared to the early church and what we’re actually told in scripture (not that churches are wrong, but that we might not have figured everything out fully [...]
Hello Justin,
I just stumbled across this blog while looking up stuff about plastic water bottles, ha ha. But, I must say I’ve found your posts on Christianity and the church quite interesting. I like how you hold two sides in tension, saying we need to stick with scripture but also a desire to reach out beyond the ordinary and our understanding.
Anyway. I suggest that finding community with believers that breaks out of the everyday “church structure” can be found when we begin to live out our faith. AS we live out our beliefs by feeding the hungry, serving the needy, and gathering together for prayer or planning, community will just sort of happen. Not that it is that simple, I do believe that we need to be proactive. A lot of the relationships I’ve formed with believers were birthed as we pursued the living out of Christ’s call upon our lives.
Jason,
Check out Frank Viola and George Barna’s Pagan Christianity,
they spell out precisely why you are correct! I have an interview with Frank Viola on my blog. Peace
Let’s first see if we can agree that even as Christians we are all disobedient [1 Jn. 1:1]. Then let’s try to agree when we do get to heaven we might find that all of us have been wrong.
My father’s first son, my brother sent me this link, I was not looking for anything of the kind; so excuse me if I miss the point and get off on a rabbit trail.
As Christinas we have what the non-christian does not have and is the ritht to disagree with what other Christians say even if they are our leaders/shepherds; which is why so many of the statements on this site are such as they are [1 Cor. 8:12-13].
The shepherd of the local church in Hebrews 13:17 is admonished to care for the soul of his flock and when that is not taking place then one can feel like so many of you have stated, yet in verse 7 we are told to follow them. It is hard to follow someone when we are forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is. It is easy to put one another down, the hard part is to pick each other up.
Ask yourself some questions;like this: when was the last time I sat through a teaching on the doctrine of God, the Son and the Holy Ghose or put another way when was the last time the shepherd preached on the topic? When was the last time you discipled a person, that is walked them through the concept of 2 Timothy 2:2 until the four fold chain was complete? There are many things in the word of God which we as Children of God to complain about but what about doing together, can we find those issues?
Yes, so many of you still can be right in your take on the local churches and we all could be also wrong. I not so sure the problem/issue is the local church as much it is the under-shepherd not doing his God given job by discipling his congergation, and raising up men and women to do the same; that is disciple others. Meeting places can not be problematic in and of them self, it must be what we don’t learning when we’re there. But are we in a state of wanting to learn or are we there for the express purpose of finding wrong with the system and those there?
Just how many people do you know who have gone to a school of higher learning and still after paying all their hundreds of thousands of dollars still find wrong with the school and its teaching; then there is the O. J. T. to which yes we too have problems with, why because after time it seems to us as people that we know a better way of—. Does that mean you/we are right and the others are wrong apperently!
I take a position that when we take a closer look at the word of God we can find that there is a biblical systemic design for the church, but in today’s churches atmostpher it becomes threatening to us the shepherds, it might make us give up what we think we have or it might make us say we’ve been wrong all this time and the excuses go on and on.
What we as saints must be willing to do is to call into question some of our leaders/shepherds of these churches. Does discipling mean by the masses or does it mean one on one? Call the shepherd in to question about it. Does all scripture mean all or what you want it to mean? Call the shepherd in to question about it. If the word of God is given for the doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness then why is it when we do hear a sermon or a teaching we only get one of these points and not all four?
Forgive me for taking your time away from witnessing for Christ to those who need salvation and other who need to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Again we, as Christians, all at one time or another are disobedient; pray that the Spirit of God will cause us to repent.
Be of good cheer
Hi, All… Maybe figuring out how to do and be church really isn’t the goal. If the folks God has called me into community with are at church (and at bookstores, and gas stations, and ball games), then we go and love and be available. I think the reason pseudo-church has happened is because we are less about loving people based on what they need and what God is doing, and more about trying to invent systems and experiences that most efficiently satisfy a more superficial need.
In the end, if I’m loving those who are loving God, the form WILL change as authentic community grows. Maybe more authentic community will only come as people are more radically known and loved, regardless of the venue. Just thoughts - great discussion!
I believe we should follow Christ. He gave us his spirit which gaves us power to do great things. Such as cast out demons,lay hands on the sick and tell others about the gospel. Church is good. But, we must learn how to get out the four walls of the church and go out to the hedges and highways and compel others to come in to the church. Going to church is like going to school. Once you graudate(meaning learn the things of God/ His word) Be mature and able to win souls for christ. Basically, all I’m trying to say is try not to let a day go by without doing what Jesus did. Someone soul may be on the line. Churches are where people repent,get baptism,receive the holy spirit, praise, worship and get encourgment. Those are all good. We all have are personal walk with God. Remember we are living in the last days. Try to hear from God and not man… I love all, Be blessed and stay strong in the will of God.
Justin, I quit going to church about a year ago and at first felt rather guilty. Now I am realizing it is about being out in my comminity and being there for people when they are in need. I have learned to be of service and it has not happened in the church. I do still take my daughter to church occassionally so I can fulfill her final sacrament for Confirmation. However, I am quite disillussionied with the RC Church.
Nancy
[...] on from my post about not going to Church while I’m on the road, I was intrigued to read Justin’s post on the Radical Congruency blog. He goes a stage further than me and more or less argues that church [...]
Justin,
I agree with a large part of your position. I tend to take a both/and position, personally. I know there are many for whom “church as usual” has become irrelevant. There are also those that are comfortable with the more traditional church service. Therefore, in our own church, we are as likely to hold a discussion and loose communion as a more traditional service.
In the hopes of facilitating and encouraging Progressives to explore faith as they feel led, we and some like minded pastors and lay people have formed an alliance of Progressives: One that seeks to affirm and defend the autonomy of the individual bodies, while rallying around those things that we hold in common. Within the Progressive Christian Alliance, there are traditional Sunday morning, Sunday evening congregations; house churches; discussion groups that meet in coffee bars; and congregations that meet in parks. We have those of evangelical, mainline, catholic, and charismatic persuasions; who have chosen to ally with others abd gain strength in diversity.
So, all of that being said: Keep the faith. Continue exploring a faith and expression thereof that is relevant to you and your circle. It is not necesarry to adopt the corporate model of success that has become the norm for the institutional church. In the end, our success or failure will not be determined by “the church” but rather by the one that we seek to serve.
Peace,
Roger