What is Wrong with Churches?

I just finished an excellent book: Why Christian: For Those on the Edge of Faith by Douglas John Hall. Although the book is smart, wise, and well written throughout, my favorite chapter was on the church. For Hall, the church should be a movement, not an institution. Institutions create habits and structures designed to maintain their own power rather than to advance the underlying movement that gave them birth. They harden into forms that squeeze out the life of the movement. According to Hall, the reign of Constantine transformed the church from a movement to an institution, and that institution was coopted by the government. So too, the older Protestant churches reflect the business and professional structure of our democratic capitalistic structure.  They are designed to fit in - to make people comfortable.

Hall is not opposed to churches per se. He believes that relationships rather than individualism are central to the gospel. But he believes that churches need to foster imitation of the way that Christ lived rather than merely saying, "Lord, Lord." I take away the point that churches need to work hard at fostering love (in the sense of agape) including loving and helping the poor as a central part of their mission. They need to be more - much more - than a routine place of worship with coffee afterwards.

Comments

[Taryn]

Thanks for sending me back to read that chapter.

I am sobered by the story of a church in Atlanta that intends to discontinue its typical array of programs and worship services after Easter, in order to regroup and think about how it might address the overburdened foster care system in Atlanta, etc. It sounds like one of those evangelical mega-church type places -- but more power to them. http://www.shauninthecity.com/2011/03/its-true-preaching-my-last-sermon-series-courageous-church.html Feels like turning around the Titanic in the world of the established churches.

[Clark West]

Boy is this true! i was at a meeting of clergy yesterday and its amazing to me how much of our energy is spent in institutional maintenance. Many of us are trained to be more 'middle managers' than spiritual beings, and find ourselves needing to resist this even as our congregations need to resist thrusting us into this role. One way is to remember our less fortunate brothers and sisters--in Haiti, or Japan, for example, where the church's essence is distilled by suffering into the fragile presence of hope and love in the midst of trial.
They call us to ourselves if we will listen.