Ecclesiology 11 - A New Church - part 9: Church and Culture
Go get a cup of tea. This will take awhile.
The Bible paints a distinct profile of what the church is intended to be and gives the early history of the church in two cultural contexts: Palestinian Jewish society and first-century Graeco-Roman society. We see that biblically the church is the people of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, not an organizational institution. But when we look at the contemporary church, we see not only (or even primarily) the church as people; we find a proliferation of denominations, institutions, agencies, associations and buildings to which the name church is applied. How can we, in a practical way, maintain a biblical understanding of the church while the church embodies itself in such a vast array of diverse, culturally colored wineskins?
It is common to speak of the visible church and the invisible church. While this distinction is not wholly satisfactory, it does help resolve a problem always before us: the painful contrast between what the church is called to be (the holy, righteous people of God) and what it too often in fact is (an unholy, cantankerous organization of men and women). It is helpful to substitute for the visible-invisible distinction two traditional views of the church; the institutional view and the mystical view.
The institutional view identifies the visible institutional structure with the essence of the church and makes no significant distinction between the two. Thus most denominations are called churches, and in practice church and denomination mean the same thing. In this institutional view, the church becomes so wedded to its particular culture that the culturally determined nature of much of its life and structure is unperceived.
In the mystical view, however, the church floats nebulously above culture and never becomes involved in the limiting dimensions of space, time and history. Cultural factors, which affect theology, structures, and evangelism, are not taken into account.
Thus both the institutional view and the mystical view are inadequate. Both cloud the clear meaning of the church - one by too close an identification of the church with culture, the other by a removal of the church from culture. In both cases it is really culture that becomes invisible.
The church is the community of God's people. It is a charismatic organism established by God as the agent of his plan for human history. As such, it is cross-culturally valid and can be implanted and grown in any human culture. What shall we say then about the diverse institutions, organizations, denominations and architectural structures which we commonly include under the umbrella church? How do such structures relate to the church as God's community?
The two most common tendencies have been to either say that these structures are actually a part of the essence of the church, and thus "sacrelize" them, or else to take an anti-institutional stance and insist that all such structures are invalid and must be abandoned. A more helpful option, however, is to view all such structures as para-church structures which exist alongside of and parallel to the community of God's people, but are not themselves the church. These structures are useful to the extent that they aid the church in its mission, but are man-made and culturally determined. Perhaps an easier way to say it is this: we shall define the term church structure as "those persons, groups and activities ordained by Christ as The Church," and the term para-church structure as "those activities, institutions and organizations developed by the (human) church to aid it in its mission." The sacrament of communion could thus be defined as church structure, having been ordained by Christ at the Last Supper, and must be regularly incorporated into the gathering of the church. But the decisions to celebrate communion weekly, monthly or semi-annually, using wafers, crackers or leavened bread accompanied by wine or grape juice served by progression, passage or intinction all lie outside the Scriptural account of Jesus' commandment, but are related to the local community's culture. These choices, then, being completely determined by the people of the local congregation without Scriptural mandate, should be considered para-church structure and the church should be ever ready to modify or discard the matters as changes in local culture may demand.
Several benefits come from distinguishing between the church and para-church structures: (1) that which is always cross-culturally relevant (the biblically understood church) is distinguished from that which is culturally bound and determined (para-church structures). Thus one is free to see the church as culturally relevant and involved and yet not culturally bound. (2) One is free also to modify para-church structures as culture changes, for these are not themselves the church and therefore largely culturally rather than biblically determined. (3) Finally, this distinction makes it possible to see a wide range of legitimacy in denominational confessions and structures. If such structures are not themselves the church and are culturally determined, then whole volumes of controversy and polemics lose their urgency and become merely secondary. Thus the crucial consideration for structure becomes not biblical legitimacy but functional relevancy. Oh, look! A Chart!
(1) Leadership should be based on the exercise of spiritual gifts. In the New Testament, leadership was first provided by the original eleven apostles, and later by Paul and an expanding group of other apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, bishops, deacons and elders. All these leadership functions relate to spiritual gifts. It is clear, therefore, that in the New Testament leadership was based on the exercise of spiritual leadership gifts that were recognized (either formally or informally) by the church.
(2) The life and ministry of the church should be built on viable large-group and small-group structures. The early church's common life of worship, fellowship, nurture and witness reveals a dual emphasis - "in the temple and at home" (Acts 5:42). This was also the pattern the disciples had followed with Jesus. For two or three years the disciples spent much of their time either among outdoor crowds, in the temple or in private small group conferences with the Master.
Church history reveals a recurrent tendency to absolutize and institutionalize the large group, wedding it to a specific building and form, while at the same time neglecting or even condemning the small group. Virtually every major movement of spiritual renewal in the Christian church has been accompanied by a return to the small group and the proliferation of such groups in private homes for Bible study, prayer, meditation and discussion of the faith.
The gospel makes high demands of all believers and requires ardent discipline. But how is this discipline to be maintained? If the church is truly biblical, such discipline will not be imposed hierarchically but will be internal or intrinsic, enforced by the community itself on the basis of a fund of commonly shared values and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
(3) A clear distinction should be made between the church and para-church structures. Christians must see themselves as the community of God's people, not in the first place as members of an organization or club. Each congregation should be helped to understand that institutional structures are legitimate provided they really aid the church in its life and witness, but they are far from sacred. The church should take care to distinguish between its essential self and all para-church structures so that it does not become culture-bound, and so that, conversely, in periods of upheaval the wine is not thrown out with the wineskins. This is what happened, essentially, in Russia in 1917, and it could happen on a much wider scale in the future.
These three principles are illustrated below (Look! Another chart!):
Several conclusions for the church's worldwide, cross-cultural witness follow from the foregoing discussion:
(1) The church as biblically presented is always cross-culturally relevant.
(2) Similarly, the basic structures of charismatic leadership and small-group/large-group gatherings are always cross-culturally viable.
(3) On the other hand, para-church structures are not necessarily cross-culturally valid.
(4) The exercise of spiritual gifts will result in cross-cultural evangelism.
(5) The church is itself a missionary structure, and any group of missionaries may be a legitimate embodiment of the church.
(6) Conversely, para-church missionary/evangelistic structures should be created wherever necessary to get the job done and subsequently discarded when the job is complete, the cultural ramifications of the job changes, or newer, better methods of handling the job present themselves.
(7) Since they are man-made and culturally determined, all para-church structures should be subjected to continuous, rigorous sociological and theological analysis to determine their fidelity to the biblical concept of the church and their effectiveness as instruments of the church. The better sort of such para-church organizations will welcome this kind of evaluation and may even provide for it themselves. Those para-church groups which are nervous about such study are often the very ones most needing it.
Pax
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