The Hsu’s Views

This is the second of a two part entry. The first is here.

Ellul continues to describe the scandal of X (true Christianity) by evaluating how our need to create systems and order runs counter to X.

“When we are told that the church has ministers, and its life is organized around them, well and good. But at once we have to remember that these ministries are a gift of the Holy Spirit and not a permanent or organized thing. This leads us to invert the biblical movement. We set up pastoral positions or benefices with rectors and bishops, etc. We then fill these posts with people we think are suitable. But this is the opposite of the movement presented in the Epistles, in which the Holy Spriit gives to the church people who have the gifts of love or the word or teaching, and the church has to find a place for them even if it had not anticipated doing so. If, after a while, the Holy spirit does not give someone who has the spirit of prophecy but gives someone who has the gift of miracles, then the church must change its form and habits!”

We should probably embark on a conversation about the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers but we won’t. But what is important to capture is the idea that there could/should be a flow and flexibility in the offices of the church in relation to the giftedness of the people God has placed into its midst. Should God work within the confines of our human structures, or should our structures flex and support what God is doing?

Within many of our denominational structures, we have placed such importance on our ecclesiology that we put “Congregational” and “Presbyterian” in our names. I think it is a healthy for the church in North America as it moves into what has been called a post-denominational posture. Perhaps it will allow greater flexibility for God’s people to exercise and release their gifts as the Lord so blesses people and congregations.

Ellul continues to show the weakness of structures that are an attempt by humans to create order and sense for themselves.

“No doubt some will reply that God is not a God of disorder, incoherent, or abitrariness, but a God of order. Of course he is. Unfortunately, the whole of the Old Testament shows us that God’s order is not that which we conceive and desire. God’s order is not organization and institution (cf. the difference between judges and kings). It is not the same in every time and place. It is not a matter of repetition and habit. On the contrary, it resides in the fact that it constantly posits something new, a new beginning. Our God is a God of beginnings. There is in him no redundancy or circularity. Thus, if his church wants to be faithful to his revelation, it will be completely mobile, fluid, renascent, bubbling, creative, inventive, adventurous, and imaginative. It will never be perennial, and can never be organized or institutionalized. If the gates of death are not going to prevail against it, this is not because it is a good, solid, well-organized fortress, but because it is alive; it is Life — that is, as mobile, changing , and surprising as life. If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed.” Ellul — P. 157.

These comments thrilled me because I dream of a reimagined church that moves and functions more like a movement than an institution. I’ve been on a journey of learning about Complex Adaptive Systems (Thanks Lee) and Chaos theory. Alan Hirsh’s work in The Forgotten Ways regarding apostolic movements is exquisite and exactly right.

In short, I have felt that our structures, our organizational theories have been been efforts to create order and control, but in the process we placed limits on God and his people, choking the movement of God’s Spirit. There is order and structure, but in a very different way than what our Modern minds have been able to recognize and appreciate. Scandalous.

What would a movement of Christ look like that took seriously these organic, viral, mobile, fluid bubbling, creative, adventurous leanings. Would our structures look more like scaffolds than cathedrals, flexible and responsive to the Lord’s movements? Perhaps as denominations and local churches are freed from religious bureaucracies focused on self-preservation, they will be able to increasingly direct their energies to God’s Kingdom agenda.

“If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed.” I’m sure that the Holy Spirit would never allow the Church to get to this place… on the whole, but in North America, it feels like a dangerously large percentage of the Church has reached this point.

I’m working to subvert the further institutionalization of the church. I want to reimagine a way of following Christ that allows or even embraces chaos and disorder (in human terms). Does this make me an anarchist?

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 12:30 am and is filed under Books, Movements, Organizational Theory, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.