|
HOME ABOUT EMERGING HARBOR NOW PROPHETIC THOUGHTS VALUES CONTACT
Greg Austin
Allow me to posit the
following: To borrow from our Founding Fathers, with regard
to the passionate search for “a more perfect” church, “Form
should follow Function.”
Tremendous interest
surrounds the whole subject of the identification and the
practices of the authentic New Testament church. Many who
have followed the traditional church format have grown weary
of their efforts at goading a dead horse. While
statisticians chronicle the exodus of church members, and
while literally every denominational expression under the
sun experiences decline, some choose to bury their heads in
the sand of their programs while others depart in search of
something substantive and vital, something their hearts
yearn for even as their minds are not able to grasp.
I've Heard the Cry on Four Continents, the synthesis of which is: "We want more than the organized, traditional church has delivered. We need more than religion can produce or organization can provide. We're not satisfied with a song and a sermon and a social club - we want God!"
I am here addressing
structure, not doctrine, and the structure I am addressing
is spiritual and not physical or organizational, which are
valid, but auxiliary considerations not within the scope of
this discussion.
This proposal infers
certain conditions and is not an all-encompassing statement.
To be clear, the claim that “form follows function” can
include panoply of possibilities. I am speaking herein of
function produced by and issuing from applied faith in the
crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ.
A
born-again person, functioning by and through the Spirit of
God will tend towards a form that is sympathetic to
spiritual life in Christ in whatever shape it may appear.
The resulting form,
absent previously learned behaviors or past religious
experience will be life-giving, life-encouraging and
life-sustaining. How the form of such activity appears is
not a matter of essential concern, except in the sense of
personal inclination. A spiritually alive man will produce a
living form just as a fountain cannot produce both sweet
water and bitter. A spiritually dead man will produce or
follow a spiritually dead form.
My intention here is
to first de-emphasize the necessity or tendency to establish
form (either by imitation of the Acts Model or by the
invention of something new - but oh, how we like “new”).
Often when discussing any kind of emergent church
form, the question quickly goes to “how do we do it?” and
“what should it look like?” These are at best incidental
queries, and at worst, they are self-defeating. To look
first for a “how” and a “what” is to bypass the most
necessary issues, which we will examine shortly.
Secondly, I will
address the question of function changing form, which
is another dynamic of function.
Function is here
defined as the new life as represented in John 20:22 and
Acts 1, 2 among others. When the first disciples experienced
the Second Birth, function – the way they worshipped, the
way they understood God, the way they responded to a now
indwelling Holy Spirit – changed from the Judaic and Levitic
form of worship, which Jews had practiced for millennia to
something new, something untried, and something strikingly
imperfect, yet alive.
The old, sacrificial
system with its hierarchy of the Aaronic priesthood was torn
asunder even as the veil had so recently been “rent in
twain” in the Temple. However inadequately the first
disciples transitioned to a new understanding of the
outworking of the Cross, to include the liberty and freedom
thereby provided, change did occur from the old form of
“law” to the new form contained by grace. This is the change
addressed by Paul when writing to the Galatian church:
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made
us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of
bondage (5:1).
What we read in Acts
2:42-47 and following concerning the assembling together of
the new ekklesia is a radical departure from the
Judaic model even when considering the presence of residual
vestiges of the old system. I say radical, since the first
Christians were entirely Jewish, and possessed a deeply
entrenched institutional memory, knowledge, and custom, of
how one approaches and worships Jehovah God. All that had
been deeply ingrained by the teachers of the law was now
exchanged for a “new and living way” through a newly
recognized High Priest, Jesus, and through the indwelling
Holy Spirit (Jn. 14:6, 17).
With the resurrection
and subsequent ascension of Jesus and the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit at Pentecost, a new entity, a new vehicle of
God’s redemptive provision was born. Ensuing generations
would wrestle with the questions of Old and New, Law and
Grace and in the meanwhile, a fledgling and sometimes
grievously erring church would begin to walk out the intent
of heaven, reaching towards all mankind with the message of
the Good News and the “faith once delivered.”
Each generation of
Christ followers beginning with that primitive church would
find their own contextual methods of speaking with relevance
to their generations.
Traditions would be
born, sacred cows established, habits would be formed and
sacerdotal methodologies that would be engraved in stone.
Inch by inch the church structure would move from its
original center point until in many cases, a literal
“Ichabod” could appropriately be written over
their doors.
Jesus had promised to
build His church, and has now fulfilled that promise for two
millennia, but the recognition of His building, the
comprehension of what the church was originally meant to be
has gone begging in many ecclesiastical circles.
Form was increasingly
dictating function. The cart truly was placed before the
horse. For instance, those who ardently attempt to follow
the Acts 2 description as our modern pattern have difficulty
with such activities as having “all things in common” and
selling their “possessions and goods, and dividing them
among all, as anyone had need”
(Acts 2:44,45). Some of the activity of the primitive church
was spiritually induced while other activity was a product
of existent culture, or particular circumstance.
We no longer practice
the culture existent two thousand years ago, and our
circumstances differ from those of our spiritual
forefathers. How we address our specific circumstances will
not serve a future generation, since their times will call
for their unique, heaven-directed response.
If we make “form” our
first priority, we will reproduce the physical activity and
perhaps mirror the appearance of an earlier church, but we
will potentially miss the inner power source that enabled
them. The form of “continuing daily with one accord in the
temple, and breaking bread from house to house” flowed from
the function of the indwelling Christ and the life being
experienced as a result. Could it be that today’s follower
of Jesus, experiencing that same indwelling presence will
find a form, different from but no less valid than the first
church’s expression? If replication of form is our
objective, we are creating, once again a dead tradition.
Certainly, the content
of the Acts 2 description is viable in every generation:
There must be essential elements present in the church such
as worship, discipleship, fellowship and evangelism. But the
form or forms these take should not be the issue. Where does
scripture dictate that God’s people must meet on Sunday
mornings? The first followers met daily. How would following
that pattern work with 21st century
five-day-a-week work schedules? Where is the divine edict
for meeting at 9:45 or 11:00 in the morning, or meeting in a
special room (considered to be holy because God appears
there) with special carpets and special seating?
History provides ample
evidence of breakthrough, of heaven crashing into our
programs and upsetting our hallowed activities. The rise of
the Pentecostal movement beginning in 1901 in Topeka, Kansas
is one such example. Among several immediate expressions of
this Pentecostal phenomenon was the birth of the Assemblies
of God, as numbers of former Methodist and Presbyterian
leaders, among others were drawn to the new Fellowship. In
this case, function, (as identified as the
onset of the Pentecost-birthed Baptism in the Holy Spirit
and the accompanying zeal among those baptized) radically
changed the form of worship these leaders had
been trained to conduct.
More recent is the
testimony of the Charismatic movement, where function
changed the form, the shape and the traditions of many
Lutheran, Methodist, Roman Catholic and other groups.
The rise of the
Emerging or Emergent Church - and here I do not refer to
those groups calling themselves emergent
which have either abandoned the belief and practice of the
word of God or which have mixed Eastern religious practice,
New Age teaching or other experimentations with their
Christianity - provides a contemporary example of function
again changing form.
Participants of the
“organic,” “simple church,” or “house church” movements are
discovering that form is not as essential as is first
establishing function. These expressions of church initially
sought a more primitive, more intimate and more authentic
worship experience but are discovering that the questions of
“Who are we?” “What distinguishes us from the world around
us?” “What are we here for?” “How do we approach, worship
and know God in an intimate and life sustaining way?” are of
prime concern. Once function is satisfied, a form typically
appears that may or may not look like another form in the
next city or nation.
Experimenting with
form before considering function is akin to rearranging deck
chairs on the Titanic: The décor may look inviting, but the
ship is headed for disaster.
If function becomes
the subject rather than the pursuit of form, the question
moves to “What is the true function of the
church?” Perhaps if this question can be honestly answered,
form will arise of its own accord.
One of the topics of
greatest concern to many “church” leaders today is “what is
the church?” “What is its true, biblical function?” “What
does it look like?” “Where can I find it?” To answer these
questions, one must return to the beginning, and to the
Author and Founder of the church. It seems that many have
forgotten the words of Jesus, “I will build My church . . .
” and He begins that building in us.
Looking at hearts
should be a more critical concern than looking at systems or
structures, frameworks or forms. Establishing Spirit-formed
relationships, first with Christ and secondly with our
neighbors should trump the most elaborately designed
structures. When the requirement of function has been
satisfied, form will appear effortlessly.
The church isn’t “out
there,” it’s “in here.”
At the end of the day,
and perhaps even the discussion, It’s not ‘How do we
Do Church’ but ‘How do we Become
Church.’
|
