Amen, Amen and Amen….
From Theological Musings:
Phil Hawkins has been doing some excellent commenting here on this blog of late. And sometimes comments are just too good to stay buried in the comments section of the blog. While I don’t seek to exalt any one person above another on this blog (save Jesus!), I just had to put this comment in its entirety up here on the front page for all to read.
To my dear brothers who are involved in the institutional church, please don’t read this so much as an “institutional vs. simple” dichotomy. But prayerfully weigh Phil’s words here and see what points of agreement might be had. Of course, dissenting opinions are welcome in the comments following this post, if one feels it necessary.
Without further ado, then, in my “Wish I Had Written This!” category comes this profound comment from (unwitting) guest blogger Phil on the recent “How (Not) to Judge Someone’s Orthodoxy” post:
Looking back at this whole discussion, I come back to this basic question–What is Christianity? Is it
(a) a set of activities in a sacred place on Sunday morning, with a list of tenets to be subscribed to as a condition of participation, coupled with rules for behavior, enforced by the official leadershipor
(b) a way of living, every day, 24/7, in relationship with Jesus Himself, and with others who also are in relationship with Him.
Going through the words of Jesus Himself in the Gospels, I cannot find anything that leads to (a); in fact, he often rebuked the leaders of the (a) system of the day. I grew up in churches, have been in churches all my life, and my conclusion now is that in most situations, the more of (a) you have, the less you have of (b); in fact, (a) tends to replace and eliminate (b)!
How did “Abide in me” come to mean “Be at the church building every time the doors are open”?
If you want to improve your relationship with someone, say your wife, do you go off to an auditorium and sit while someone who claims to know her better than you do lectures for half an hour? Or would the time be better spent going somewhere alone with your wife and conversing with her for half an hour? Which really builds the relationship with her?
I’m afraid most humans are too lazy for their own good. We’d rather have a list of rules to keep than try to walk in the Spirit. We want a doctrinal statement to assent to rather than trying to learn to hear His voice ourselves. The Hebrews started it at Mt. Sinai–they wanted Moses to hear God for them.
And for those who would say “It’s some of each, both (a) and (b)” my question is How can it be both, when (a) eliminates (b)? I think, and I suspect [frequent commenter] ded would agree (based on what he’s written here), that they are two different things, coming from two different sources. If God meant it to be a symbiosis, it would be a stable symbiosis, not constantly drifting in one direction.
To look at it another way: What has been the “fruit” of (a) in this country? Do we have a vibrant church that is transforming its culture? Are non-believers coming to Christ in droves? Are believers “turning the world upside down”?
Or is the picture more like this: “Our bookshelves are full of Christian books and videos. We have churches on every major street, more staff workers than ever before, large Sunday school departments, cell systems, mega- and meta-church seminars. We have Christian bumper stickers, political action groups, huge parachurch ministries–and in the midst of it all, we have lost every major city in North America.” Back in 1999, Wolfgang Simson included that quote from Ted Haggard in his book “Houses that Change the World”.
Maybe we do need to lay aside everything that’s been written since and go back to the New Testament for our original instructions.
“Sometimes it’s helpful to step back and ask the question: “Why are we doing this house church / simple church thing?”
