Saturday, July 6, 2013

The Laws of Church Dynamics




The Laws of Church Dynamics

I. Ecumenical movements are good at dialogue but bad at action.

I am reading Metaxas' book on Bonhoeffer, and currently Bonhoeffer's trying to convince the ecumenical movement to speak out against the Reich church. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. To paraphrase Thurber, falling back on ecumenical movements when times are tough is "very much like falling back full-length on a kit of carpenter's tools."

II. A church's ability to hold onto the strengths of its tradition is inversely proportional to the ability to see the strengths of other traditions.

The same wall needed to hold back the eroding waves of culture obscures what the other branches of the church are up to. This tends to result in ignorance and even suspicion of other traditions.  (Of course, it need not, and there are always those open to learn from other traditions.) 

It's sadly impractical in this culture to require adult Christians spend time in more than one tradition. 

III. It's impossible to use creeds and confessions to protect against heresy without elevating them to the level of Scripture.

If the creeds are able to serve as a correction, they must be able to decide between different readings of Scripture, and to do that, they must be able to stand over Scripture and serve as referee, much the same as other passages of Scripture are meant to do. I have spent most of my life in the Episcopal Church and the Christian Reformed Church.  For all their differences, in both churches their creeds (Apostles', etc. for the Episcopal Church, Dordt, Belgian and Heidelberg for the CRC) are functionally at par with Scripture. In the CRC this means that no reading of Scripture can ever contradict the creeds. In the Episcopal church where from time to time you run across an unfortunate priest who has lost a belief in the physicality of the resurrection (and thereby abandoned the creeds), it only means that he has also abandoned Scripture.

In fairness, I should point out that most serious Christians in credal traditions would disagree.

Churches without creeds shouldn't be smug. Creeds do serve a role, despite their dangers. The creed follows the sermon in Episcopal liturgy for a reason: no matter what the priest just said, the congregation is reminded of the divinity of Christ and his resurrection from the dead. 


IV. The more competent the clergy, the less trained and equipped the laity.

This is not to say that the less competent the clergy the more capable the laity--though that may happen at times.

Paul, in the pastorals, pointed out the importance of qualified elders and deacons. At the time, synagogue leaders were not fully supported by their congregations, but had "day jobs" as well. Over time both adopted something closer to the priesthood found in pagan churches, by establishing a full-time trained clergy. 

If you have been in churches without seminary-trained clergy you know there's some value to a formal seminary education. 

However, if you are the parish priest or church pastor, you may quickly think that training your flock in all the things you learned is like a dentist training his patients to fill their own cavities. The simplest equilibrium is the one which has dominated the past 2,000 years of church history: a weakened laity under the direction of a strong clergy.

This may not seem fair to the clergy who will tell you that their flocks aren't clambering for more training. William Willimon among others has eloquently defended the value of the pastorate. The traditional way can't be all wrong, right? [2]

Trouble is, that means there's a single person on which everything depends. It also means the laity are less equipped for ministry than they ought to be. This is easily demonstrated by asking what fraction of your church's council, vestry, etc. is well versed in Scripture. 

What's my counter-example? Check out Xenos Christian Fellowship, which has a central structure surrounded by a huge network of home churches, each of which survives (many of which thrive) without professional clergy. Their leaders are required to take at least two (?) years of training courses. How many council/vestry members can say they've done the same?

V. Churches have a finite shelf life: all churches eventually decay from the inside out and dwindle, disband, or become apostate.[1]

There are many factors which contribute to this. Multigenerational churches tend to become dynastic, and when the church contains your whole family it's very hard to make the church your new family, hating mothers and brothers for the sake of the kingdom.

The more you have to lose, the harder is it to give it up. A church which has been alive for centuries feels like a treasure to be protected more than a tool to be used for the kingdom. 

If you think your church is suffering from stagnation what should you do? It's a question of balance. Churches do experience revivals. But it's possible to spend too much time helping breathe life into your church, at the expense of other kingdom work.

I actually find Law V encouraging. In a roundabout way it reminds me that while one church declines (shrinks or acculturates) the Spirit is nevertheless at work elsewhere. This is the parable of the wedding feast, where the servants scour the hedgerows for guests. God is throwing a party, and when God throws a party, you can bet the hall will be full, of people and surprises.

VI. The Holy Spirit will eventually form a remnant of true believers within any apostate church.

This is Ezekiel's dry bones. Time and again this has happened. The mainline charismatic movement is a wonderful example. The seed will eventually find fertile soil in the hearts of those who recognize the shepherd's voice and are willing to use their talents (and minas) to give all for the pearl of great price hidden in the field. 

Seriously, of all the Laws above, this is the greatest hope: For all the Church's flaws and weaknesses, God has chosen this Body as the vessel for his Spirit. And God knows what he's doing.

I think I managed to offend everybody. What laws would you add?


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[1] Walls describes how this has worked on a global scale--the centroid of the Church moving from the Roman Empire to Europe and most recently to Africa and Asia. I am thinking on a smaller scale. I have heard of research showing that the church always becomes more like the culture over time (certainly never the other way around).  I would love to see those data.

[2] The past 2,000 years has also seen predominantly mono-ethnic churches, but that's clearly not the NT pattern. Not to say you can't serve God the way it's been done historically. You can also do ministry in mono-racial churches, but thank God that some churches feel a higher call. 

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