Tag Archives: church politics

Doing Church—Are There Any Rules? (Rethinking Church #16)

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When the church comes to exist in a particular place and time, it inevitably takes shape in the world as a visible association of people. We can see this happening before our eyes in the New Testament. Jesus chose twelve apostles and gathered many others around him. The number twelve, clearly patterned after the twelve tribes of Israel, represents a new beginning to the people of God. In other ways, Jesus and his disciples resembled a school with Jesus as a rabbi. Early Jewish churches naturally adopted the synagogue model. As we can see in Acts, early Christians met in public spaces to listen to the apostles’ teaching and in homes to share the Lord’s Supper. As the church moved into the gentile world it also adapted models borrowed from the Greek and Roman cultures.  Many groups met in the homes of wealthy patrons, like those in the houses of Aquila and Priscilla (1 Cor 16:19) and Nympha (Col 4:15). [For this story, see Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians].

According to Acts, the first church was led by the apostles. Soon other leaders were appointed to administer some community tasks (Acts 6), and eventually James the Lord’s brother and the “elders” became the main leaders (Acts 15, Gal. 1–2). In the Old Testament, elders were traditional local, tribal, or clan leaders. The authority of elders is a natural extension of the family, and their presence was common among ancient Israel’s neighbors and in Greek and Roman villages. As the name indicates they were usually older men who were respected by the community. In many cities beyond Judea, missionary founders of churches, such as Paul and Barnabas, were the authority figures at least for a time. Apparently, some churches eventually adopted the model of elders as leaders in particular cities (Acts 20:7; 1 Tim 5:17; Titus 1:5; James 5:14; 1 Peter 5:1).

In previous essays in this series, we’ve been able to find in the New Testament clear teaching about what the church is and what it is supposed to do, but we do not find instructions specifying how it must be organized everywhere and for all time, or where to assemble to engage in its communal life, or what means it must use to accomplish its mission. Instead, we find variety on all three counts. Believers seem to be able to adapt to circumstances, adopting and modifying as necessary, models already used by other types of associations.

It seems that there is no one pattern of organization, communal life, or means of action that is essential to the church. Are we, then, left without guidance for these areas? Are we completely free to do whatever we like? No, we are not without guidance. First, there is tradition. The New Testament church grew out of and in organic continuity with Jesus’s ministry. It adapted that original community life to new circumstances but did not make a radical break. Judging by the way it preserved Jesus’s teaching and deeds as witnessed in the gospels, the early church seems to have treasured that continuity. And in our efforts to be the church Jesus built we should take pains to preserve that continuity as well.

Second, the New Testament’s clear teaching about the church’s essential constitution and mission gives guidance and sets limits to how we go about organizing and conducting communal life and accomplishing the church’s mission. It should be obvious that organizational structures, functions, offices, and means should serve the essence and mission. But experience teaches that they tend to become institutionalized, centralized, and self-perpetuating. Alternative motives and goals gradually replace the original motives and goals. Church history can be written as a tug of war between the tendency to drift and efforts to return to the church’s essential features.

Hence the church in every age must take care to keep its means aligned with its essence and mission. Many of the essays in the rest of this series will be devoted to examining the way we conduct church life in contemporary America (USA) in view of the church’s essence and mission.

“I Don’t Want to Live On The Moon” (I’m Talking to Myself, But You Can Listen, If You Like)

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When our two sons were small we’d watch Sesame Street with them almost every day. My favorite song from Sesame Street is “I Don’t Want to Live On The Moon,” written by Jeff Moss in 1978. Ernie sits on a crescent Moon and sings,

“Though I’d like to look down at the Earth from above,

I would miss all the places and people I love,

So although I might like it for one afternoon,

I don’t want to live on the moon.”

When I hear the song today I think first, wistfully, of those little blond-haired boys I used hold in my lap. (You can listen to it on YouTube. It has a haunting, wistful, nostalgic sound.) But I also think about my own ambivalence about public life, about being intimately involved in an institution of higher education and a local church. When I was in graduate school I read a three-volume work on the history of preaching. As I read the story of Gregory of Nazianzus, I thought, “That’s me!” Gregory wanted nothing more than to study, write, think, pray, and lead a quiet life. But the politically astute Basil of Caesarea manipulated him into becoming bishop of Nazianzus. Gregory was enlisted by Basil to engage in the most significant doctrinal battle in all of church history, the Arian controversy. And Gregory’s writings, especially his Five Theological Orations, are considered some of the finest theological writings of all time. Gregory was elected Patriarch of Constantinople and presided over the First Council of Constantinople, from which came the ecumenical Nicene Creed (381). But during the Council, the political maneuvering, conniving, and ambition became so rank in Gregory’s nostrils that he resigned in disgust and retreated into the countryside to write poetry for the rest of his life.

Like Gregory, I hate crowds, church politics, college politics, local politics, county politics, state politics, and national politics. I can’t stand any of it. I don’t want power over anyone. I want to think about my faith, seek truth, write down my thoughts, and be alone with myself and God. I identify with Kierkegaard and even Nietzsche, neither of whom fit into their age and wrote for only a few individuals or for those not yet born. Kierkegaard wrote for “the individual” and Nietzsche wrote for “my reader.” Sometimes, I feel like an alien or a resurrected member of an extinct species when interacting with institutions of modern culture. American churches have become more like businesses than communities created by the Spirit. Being a clergyman or clergywoman in an American church is a position for which one can be ambitious for reasons having nothing to do with a divine call. It takes lots of employees and volunteers just to keep the books, write the checks, and put on a “service” in the average church. And because they are businesses, own property, and wish to have non-profit tax status, they become as enmeshed with and subservient to the government as the Constantinian church that Gregory abandoned, the Danish church Kierkegaard attacked, and the German church Nietzsche scorned. None of it is necessary, of course—money, clergy, property or government entanglement. Perhaps these things are even detrimental to real Christian community. And Christian educational institutions are even more bound by government regulations and accrediting agencies’ views of morality and the purpose of education.

And when I am at my wits end in frustration with these things, I say to my wife, “I want to live on the moon! Let them have it, let them have it all. I don’t want it.” But I never actually do it, because,

“I would miss all the places and people I love,

So although I might like it for one afternoon,

I don’t want to live on the moon.”

Sometimes I think to myself “why do I write and teach and blog? No one cares, no one reads it, or, if they do read it, no one understands. Or, if they understand, they will soon forget.” And the words of Ecclesiastes come to mind (1:2-3; 11):

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”     says the Teacher.

“Utterly meaningless!     Everything is meaningless.”

3 What do people gain from all their labors

at which they toil under the sun?

…

11No one remembers the former generations,

and even those yet to come will not be remembered

by those who follow them.

But then I think about the people and books that have influenced me, many of whom died long ago. Where would I be if they had gone to “live on the Moon”? I am very glad Gregory wrote the Five Theological Orations before he left for the country. I am so thankful that Thomas Aquinas, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, C.S. Lewis and so many others cared enough to work so hard and love so much for people not yet born. To keep writing and teaching and putting up with various types of politics, I have to keep thinking about the “individual” that might be helped or “my reader” who might remember and not forget.

And to you “my reader” I say this: we must not allow our inability to see all the fruit of our labor to discourage us from faithfully carrying out the assignment we have been given. And as hard as it is for me to be satisfied with it, this is the true measure of success—that we are doing the task we have been given to do. We must release our labor into God’s hands to do with as he wishes. It will enough to hear the Lord say, “You have done well the work I gave you to do.”

Yes, sometimes I want to live on the Moon, but…

“I would miss all the places and people I love,

So although I might like it for one afternoon,

I don’t want to live on the moon.”

And I would be abandoning my post before God gives me leave.