Ecclesiology 20 - The New Church: Everything Else

    Since having retired, I am frequently asked if I miss being in the entertainment business.  The truthful answer is "No.  No, I don't.  I accomplished everything I set out to in entertainment, and I have moved on to another chapter in my life."  Well, as far as I can tell typing the first draft of this post, once completed, I will be finished with my discussion and amplification of Snyder's Wineskins.  I am grateful for this opportunity to do so, but I must say that I'm rather glad to be finished.  I have other things I want to do.  Let's get on with it, then, shall we?

    This final post will go over topics which we have either neglected or only touched on previously.  These issues, along with those we have addressed, will collectively constitute our church creed.  The intent is to make clear my own ideas regarding these topics, always bearing in mind that I claim no special authority from which to speak.  I am a layperson, pure and simple, whom, I trust, has from time to time heard and understood the callings of the Holy Spirit, no more nor less than that of any other person who bothers to listen.  Not only do I lay no claim to having all the answers, I'm certain that anyone reading these little missives will have at least as clear an understanding of the subjects as myself.

(1) Church Discipline and Correction.  Despite all our efforts to love everyone, even "our enemies as ourselves," conflict is bound to arise whenever people assemble themselves into groups, although I reiterate here that, with a foundation of prayer and meditation, these should at least theoretically be infrequent. I believe there are a number of biblical ways to deal with these issues when they do arise, however.

    (a) If we find that any of our leaders or laity are involved in felonious actions, by law we have no choice but to alert official authorities and let them - not us - investigate the matter.  As recent church history has made all too clear, we cannot and must not attempt to deal with such issues internally or, worse, try to "sweep them under the rug." [I thought of a few more points here after publication which I address on Oct. 9 under the title "A Quick Thought on the Church" and on Oct. 24 under the title "On Second Thought."]

    (b) It is to be hoped that, as ambassadors of Christ, we are all holding ourselves to ethical standards well beyond that of the law.  It is in these "grey" areas that most of our conflicts will likely arise.  Christ gave us a very good model of how to deal with these schisms in Matthew 18:15-17.  As for practical implementation of these edicts, I have never seen a better, more thorough or more just method than that of the Quakers' Clearness Committee.  I will not go into detail here; I am attempting to cover a lot of ground in as few words as possible.  I suggest interested parties refer to http://laquaker.blogspot.com/2019/01/resolving-conflict-quaker-way-actually.html?m=1  or type "quaker clearness committee" into the search bar on Youtube.

(2) Training.  Beginning with our first night of small group meditation, everything we do in church can be seen as training of the saints.  The overwhelming majority of our training will be just so, but some topics such as leadership responsibilities and mission activities will no doubt require more formal curricula.  Other topics such as Youth and Adult Abuse Prevention, First Aid/CPR/AED, and Fire Extinguisher Use are of such a nature that I find it inadvisable if not illegal to conduct the training in-house.  For these, we should select (and pay for) curricula generated by nationally recognized expert organizations. (By the way, our rented storefronts must never be deprived of fire extinguishers, first aid kits and AEDs.  The cost savings in neglecting these items is not worth the risk to our parishioners' health and safety.)

(3) Annual Conference.  Since early in our look at Wineskins (and more specifically in our examination of Church and Culture on August 3 of this year) we have discussed at some length the need to distinguish between church structures - those explicitly ordained by God - and para-church structures - those implemented by humankind as a means of achieving those aims set by God.  Specifically we have made it clear that, in making this distinction, we should be ever ready to dispense with para-church structure whenever the needs change or the para-church structure becomes more hindrance than help.

    To that end, I recommend each local congregation conduct an annual conference, perhaps led by the bishop, in which we reevaluate our activities with an eye to uprooting unnecessary and hindering structures and activities.  This could involve something as simple as a Saturday afternoon in someone's living room or as complex as a weekend retreat at a local Scout or YMCA camp contingent on the size and range of our congregation and its mission work.  Any way the conference is conducted, we should make a list of absolutely everything we do, from our outreach programs to the way we decorate our meeting space at Christmastide, leaving absolutely nothing off the table.  For each item on the list, we must ask the following questions:

    (a) Why do we do this?  Why did we start doing it in the first place?  What issue was this activity originally intended to address?

    (b) Does this activity still address the original issue, or has it become something we do out of tradition?

    (c) If this activity still addresses the original issue, does that issue actually still exist?  Is there a better way of dealing with it?  Has new information or new technology provided us with a preferable or more efficient way of proceeding?

    (d) If this activity has become merely traditional, how much are we investing in our tradition, our "old wineskin," as it were?  Is it time to modify or delete this activity?  Never forget that the ever-new wine of the gospel requires ever-new wineskins to contain it.

    This is not to say that tradition is bad in and of itself, for it is not.  Indeed, as illustrated below in my story of the two funerals, tradition not only has its place in church ecclesiology, it is often the only tool we have capable of comforting the afflicted. But, like everything else we do, tradition must be placed annually on the chopping block, and we must be certain that our traditions haven't become mere habits or, worse still, stumbling blocks for the uninitiated.  Tradition can be good for the group unless we allow the traditional to become sacrosanct.

    (e) There is another danger to consider when dealing with tradition and long-standing doctrine, one that Snyder overlooks altogether.  All too often, changes in church operations stem not from any movement of the Holy Spirit, but from a spirit of corporate vanity.  To one extreme, unconsidered submission can result in placating and kowtowing to bad leadership or simply spinning off in a wrong direction as illustrated exhaustively above.  But at the opposite extreme is a desire to "throw out the baby with the bath water" based on nothing more than the childish notion that "you can't tell me what to do."  When we meet in conference, as at all other times, we must be on guard that we check our pride at the door.

(4) Super Groups.  I have already iterated numerous times my dislike of the current Evangelical movement toward megachurches, with sanctuaries the size of sports arenas.  However, I see a great benefit to occasionally extending our sense of koinonia beyond the dozen or so members of our small groups or even the 50-75 people we see every Sunday in our large group worship services.  We must be reminded from time to time that each of our small "cliques" are actually part of a much larger, global group of believers who deserve our love and consideration as much as the ones we hang out with regularly.  This could best be accomplished by the intermittent gathering of "super groups" in which several of our large groups meet together, either for a special mission project or simple fellowship.

    City parks, again, seem like a perfect place to hold these super gatherings.  They are generally abundant in most areas and almost always free of charge.  As for the occasion for such super group meetings, at least three are already built into the Christian calendar - All Saints, Christmas and Easter.  Surely between us we can come up with an excuse for another during the summer months.

    I sort of like the idea of gathering the entire Church Universal together on something of a quadrennial basis, but I have no idea how to accomplish this without the extravagance of a typical business conference in which a large meeting center is booked in a more-or-less centralized urban area and members are expected to (a) help offset the cost of the room rental and (b) pay for their travel, lodging and meals from their own pockets.  For a church whose mission is specifically toward to poor, this sort of arrangement automatically precludes attendance by roughly 99% of our membership.  Maybe there is some way to conduct these conventions online at little to no cost, but I neither know how to do so nor imagine that an online experience will provide the same koinonia as face-to-face meetings do.  Until such issues can be resolved, I think this is just one of those good ideas that never gets implemented.

(5) Communication.  I love how modern technology has simplified our lives.  When I started in the theatre, if I had a message to communicate to my cast, I pinned a notice to the call board.  That was it.  Done.  Easy-peezy.  By the time I retired I was doing mental gymnastics trying to figure out the best way to get my message across.  Do I make 50 phone calls, hoping everyone answers?  Do I start one of those annoying group texts?  How about a mass email, trusting everyone to know the difference between "Reply" and "Reply All?"  Should I start a private Facebook group and demand everyone who doesn't have an account create one?  Its enough to boggle the mind.

    I still have no idea how best to engage in mass communication with only the following stipulations for guidance:

    (a) As for communicating our evangelism message, I'm sure that the best method is good old fashioned one-on-one conversations.  I strongly dislike the idea of sending our people out in groups to airports and malls to hand out pamphlets in an effort to compete with the Moonies or go door-to-door sticking magazines in people's mailboxes like the Jehovah's Witnesses.

    (b) Mass printings and/or mass media messaging also seem like unnecessary extravagances.  We're here to bring people together in Christ, not compete with advertisers for 15 seconds of consumer recognition.  I'm not even sure if I agree with the now ubiquitous live streaming of our worship services unless we do so for the benefit of our housebound and shut-in members.  I am strongly against televangelism in any of its forms.

(6) Sacraments.  We have thus far only mentioned sacraments in passing, and I confess to having no particularly unique or profound insights into their use and implementation.  I shall address each sacrament as best I can.

    (a) Baptism.  Baptism seems to be a point of major contention between the various Christian denominations.  Is baptism essential to salvation, or is it merely symbolic?  Should we baptize infants, adults, or both?  Shall baptism be conducted using submersion, immersion, affusion or aspersion?  Not only do I hold no strong opinions on these matters, the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters engage in debates on such pettiness seems to me to be a clear indication that many of us have far too much free time on our hands.  Let's get more deeply involved in missions and evangelism and put such frivolous matters aside.

    I confess to accepting baptism more as symbolic than essential.  I base this belief on the statement in Acts 16:31 that one should "believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved."  It doesn't say anything about confessional prayer, baptism, church attendance, communion or tithing.  Just "believe" and a period.  Just as animal sacrifice in the Old Testament was ordained by God for the benefit of the people, so, I believe are the sacraments of the New Testament also ordained for us. [By the way, contrary to popular belief, sacrificed animals were not left on the alter to rot.  A portion was donated to the Temple to feed the priests, and the majority of it was sent home to feed the sacrificing family.]  I don't believe God gains a thing from our baptism or communion or anything else we do.  As Paul told the Ephesians, we are saved by grace, not by works.

    Baptism of infants is really more about the dedication of the parents and the community of faith to surround the child with an environment of Christian love, whereas adult baptism represents the individual's commitment to live a Christian life.  Both are important, so I have no preference between the two.  As for method, if there happens to be a lake, river or ground tank nearby that can be used for immersion, then fine, but I don't suggest buying a large stock tank from Tractor Supply and filling it with water every time we wish to baptize someone, then dumping it onto someone's lawn and finding somewhere to store it till next time.  In this case, perhaps aspersion is a more appropriate method.

    (b) Lord's Supper.  Again, the controversy over nothing!  Weekly, monthly, semi-annually?  Wine or grape juice?  Crackers or bread?  Transubstantiation, consubstatiation, memorialism, or reformation?  Eucharist, communion or mystery?  Oh, Brother!

    Again, I can't claim to have insight or even interest in such matters.  Why not simplify the whole thing?  At some point during our Agape Feasts, let's just have an elder grab some bread and tea (or port, if you're into that sort of thing), bless them, pass them around the table with a reminder of our Lord's commandment and let our parishioners make what they will of it?  Alternately, most of our congregations will want to celebrate some sort of special Good Friday service.  How about we have a service on Thursday instead of Friday and, in consultation with a local rabbi, prepare a proper Seder meal as an opportunity to learn more of the historical context of our Lord's Supper celebration?

    (c) Marriage.  Once again a rather silly controversy, in this case one over which entire denominations are splitting at the time of this writing.  In this case the controversy stems less from the forms of our matrimonial ceremonies and more from the question of whom should be allowed to participate.  As with all the other sacraments, I can't imagine any spiritually relevant reason to get hung up on such personal and - let's be frank - insignificant matters.

    I admit to being rather fond of the old fashioned "Dearly begotten...I do...Husband and Wife" vows, but probably not for the reasons you might expect.  Throughout the history of civilization, marriage has put women in a vulnerable position.  Historically, a husband was free to abuse his wife physically, mentally and spiritually with little fear of recourse.  Fortunately there are now laws in place to make this scenario less likely, but as a scan of almost any urban newspaper will show, it does still happen.  These traditional vows are written so as to minimize this vulnerability.  They are written as a binding bilateral contract; the  bride is under no obligation to recite or fulfill her vows until after the groom has committed to his own, especially the "love, honor and cherish" bit.  There's a reason why the father of the bride is left standing between the bride and groom until after the vows have been recited.  I'm not trying to imply that traditional marriage vows are the only ones to be used by any officiant in our church, but in light of the appalling divorce rate in the West, I do think they should be considered very intently before being dismissed for something lighter weight.

    (d) Death.  Several years back, my grandmother, a staunch Baptist, and my great uncle, a devout Catholic, died within a few months of one another.  I was called upon to be a pallbearer in both funerals.  I found the differences between the two denominations' funerary styles to be quite droll.

    After sitting through a 30-minute eulogy recited by a minister who had never met my grandmother (and wondering what was taking so long), I realized that (a) the minister intended to continue preaching until everyone in the room was weeping, and (b) I appeared to be the chapel's sole holdout.  As soon as I faked a few sobs, the minister proceeded to the obligatory Invitation to Discipleship and announced the closing hymn.  When we made it to the graveside, I made a point of crying as soon as we got there, and that service lasted about ten minutes total.

    At my great uncle's funeral mass, I was not allowed as a Protestant to actually participate in the service, but I paid careful attention to the proceedings and the effect it had on the gathering.  The service was, in fact, nothing more than a normal Sunday morning mass with a brief eulogy inserted in place of the sermon.  As I watched these people go through the motions with which they were acquainted since childhood, I could tell by the expressions on their faces that they were taking great comfort from the familiarity of the rituals.  By the end of the service, a great calm had fallen on the grieving that had not been there before the mass started.

    As with all the other sacraments, I don't have any specific rites or rituals that I believe need be associated with our funerary conduct, although, with apologies to my Baptist friends and relatives, I'm not certain that I find the Invitation to Discipleship necessary at our time of grief.  I think our methodology should be carefully construed to aid the grieving process, not prolong it.

(7) Creed.  Our creed, our statement of belief, is, in general, fairly straightforward as outlined in all of our preceding posts.  At some point, it may become incumbent upon us to actually write down our creed in reference to outstanding questions: do we believe this or that concept in our faith? This is, or course, exactly why first-century church leaders began writing down the gospels and epistles; to answer questions about faith among the church.  When that happens, I think that the ultimate decisions about creed fall upon the bishops, but only in close consultation with the elders who, in turn, shall have addressed the matters with their own congregations.  I do believe that, when it comes to it, shorter is better.  God only gave the Hebrews ten laws, but they spent the next 1000 years expanding those ten into tens of thousands, just as we tend to do with the gospels today.  As always, we shall let the Holy Spirit guide us.

    As far as I can think now, that's it.  Unless some profound and unforeseen revelation happens my way, or unless at some point someone actually ventures an answerable question, I'm pretty sure I'm done.  I've enjoyed typing these thoughts and watching the reader count rise and fall, but, like my previous time as an entertainer, I think I'm ready to move on to whatever is next.  Until we meet again in this life or the next,

Pax