I would have let the usual systems get back to you, but it seems that right now I’m being considered a spammy site by the powerful Google (even though I’m a stockholder).

Brant, we might even be discussing two different things. My main point is that I think tradition is there whether we like it or not.  You can no more break away from it than you can gravity.  It is more than the denom’s we go to or if we take the Lord’s Supper before or after the “Anthem” or even if you decide to not “go to church” in the “show-up-on-sunday-at-a-designated-building-for-christians” way. 

To me tradition is more about the Legacy of truth about God left by the Holy Spirit working in his Church.  The Holy Spirit leads the Church to the truth, to Christ.  These “truths” or revelations about what is recorded in Scripture have been recorded and kept.  They will not change. They were recorded because they were stamping out un-truths about God and Christ from here to wherever.  They are our doctrines, our interpretations, and our very outlook on life. You could even say a kind of blueprint for sanity.  When Jesus said “on this rock I will BUILD my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it,” He meant it.  And build it He did.  He is still building it. 

Tradition and authority also means that we can know that there have been those that have gone before us, who are connected to us that have known the same things we are knowing, by the same Holy Spirit; therefore reinforcing and proving our own small revelations.  In a way, tradition is our “revelation measuring stick” when it comes to biblical interpretation.  I find a great deal of comfort in this. 

I wonder if what I hear you talking about is mostly Christian living. (Not meant to oversimplify) – Which just happens to be the most important and vital vehicle for the Good News.  And the dynamic changes you are talking about are in format rather than authority or tradition.  Where does tradition and authorit come in? Well, they are the great well that you or me or any other Chrisitian have to draw from when trying to communicate about our mysterious God.  Real question in the end is: who do you listen to when checking those revelations?

Zach, I haven’t read that. Sounds pretty cool though.  Nice Lewis reference in the title.

Mother Kirk: Essays and Forays in Practical Ecclesiology

Doug Wilson is the author.  I have heard it’s amazing.  Probably a bit of a different perspective than what is being discussed here, but I’m sure there would be some overlap. 

http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Kirk-Essays-Practical-Ecclesiology/dp/1885767722/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6889914-2951815?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176141197&sr=8-1

Yes, I think some are going to be more amenable to abandoning “as we’ve always done it” than others.  There’s a tremendous power, there.

And it’s also true that modern (American) churches have largely adopted corporate models.  This is now spreading around the world, which should be no surprise, as corporations and American culture spread, as well.

But I do agree with what you’re saying.  I don’t think it speaks to whether or not our current attractional, expertized, corporate approaches are ultimately damaging to our conceptions of what “church” is, but I think it’s valid.

Just the same, we might consider the difficulty of challenging the status quo for those with a financial stake in it, and there are many. 

It should matter that I’ve grown up in churches (many) and had “success” as a paid church minister, and could yet be a successful preacher.  I’ve also been offered (twice) music minister jobs.  For people with certain abilities, there’s more than just money at stake:  the corporate arrangements we now have can be huge for ego.  You can be a sort-of star, in a little world.  So, actually, for my personality and ego, there are big pluses for the status quo.

Up-front skill people can go to the front of the line.  And ego, how we feel about ourselves, is a huge, huge motivator.  Advertisers figured this one out.

How we define “church” should be, I think based on the way we live our lives together.  I have to admit, I filter everything—including Paul’s wisdom on having shepherds, etc.—through Jesus’s teachings and example.  And I think the “structure” we need is the Sermon on the Mount. 

We worry that we’d be afloat in heresy-land, but Jesus doesn’t say the hierarchy, the educated, the truly informed, would lead us into all truth.  He said the Holy Spirit would.  It’s a little too mysterious for my rationalist tastes, but that’s what he said.

I’m just thinking this after a long evening of “church” in the cul-de-sac yesterday.  It dawned on me that these people I sit in a lawn chair circle with every day are unique.  Most of them are extroverted and none of them are shy.  Most of them like to learn, to figure things out, to research and study and ask questions.  They’re teachable for the most part.  Etc. Etc.  And, this is odd and maybe not a factor at all, but none of us work in a traditional office job.  Two of the guys work for corporation with hierarchies but they are in charge of people in that structure, not on the bottom of it.  And they have access to the top guy and a freedom to innovate and dot heir own thing to some degree too.

I’m wondering then if we do the cul-de-sac thing so well because it fits our preferences and personality – because it works for us and not because it works for everyone.

I know no one here is saying ditching the institutional church model is for everyone.  But it sure is implied…at least as I read over my own comments.

Could church in the cul-de-sac work for a bunch of accountants who have worked years within a corporate institution and even love that?  I’m thinking of Seth’s church (my father-in-law pastors it) full of business men – millionaires galore.  Structure is, for many of them, part of who they are.  They would fold without it.  Without a bulletin giving the morning some order.  Without a CEO/pastor making the calls. Without committees informing and over-ruling those calls.

What we have in the comments is Brant (an artsy guy with a somewhat flexible life and somewhat egalitarian job) talking with Seth (a composer and film maker with a very flexible life and job) talking with me (an independent artist who is his own boss and who has the most flexible life imaginable) about how not ideal structure and hierarchy is in a church.  COuld it be guys that we’re defining “church” for everyone else in a way that really best suits the few who think and live as we do?

Not rhetorical.  Serious question.  I don’t want to be doing that but I fear, in the moments when I’m pro-ant-institutional church, that I am, in fact, that guy.

I agree with you that order is something God values.  (“His divine nature is clearly seen through what has been made.”—this is why I’m ultimately an absolutist in artistic terms.)

I’m just wondering if the way WE have fashioned order isn’t a function of our weakness, rather than strength, which is akin, I think, to what you’re saying.

Could the lifestyle of the Sermon on the Mount be the true order of things?  We’re not told to behave any old way, it’s not chaos-as-lifestyle. 

Like the physical body dynamism I was talking about:  I’m thinking the goal is for the Holy Spirit to animate us to live in a way that makes people think, in the midst of our changes, through the centuries, “That’s Jesus.”

And I think it’s really the living that provides the right and beautiful order, which is why I think Jesus, smartest teacher ever and God incarnate, spent so much time talking about that and so little about forms and titles that we spend our lives dealing with.

I’m just thinking this stuff through, though.  Clearly, part of our lifestyle of love means, for example, actually acting as shepherds, elders, those who serve in an other-centered way, taking responsibility for others.  That’s what I’m *trying* to do, myself, now that I’m old and stuff.

Brant

I think we may be saying the same thing here…

“I do not believe it is human structures that keep the Church a coherent concept.  I believe it is the Holy Spirit, and it’s far more mystical than any denominational or hierarchical structure that we can possibly fashion.”

Couldn’t agree more.  It all starts with Him.  I just think that a dependency on the order instead of on Him is the reason for stagnation.  But again, there is nothing more mysterious than a galaxy and nothing more boring than random t.v. static. So being mysterious doesn’t mean that the order is inherently doomed or a bore.  Or that churches will not look similar someday. One day the Church will be “The Church” again.  I think you see this trend already.  Churches are dropping the denom. names like “Baptist” and saying “The Church at…” instead. More and more Protestant churches embracing the Creeds is another sign.  Even in the Catholic Church.  Most Protestants would be stunned by some of the Vatican II stuff.

An interesting thing to note about order, even in the Catholic Church, is that it all came out of necessity.  Bishops, Church Calendar, etc.  So I just feel that once you shake the shackles of order then you start re-inventing the wheel out of those same necessities.  But maybe re-inventing it is a way to keep it dynamic.  Could be… I guess I am tired of re-inventing and am ready for something else. I mean, do we have to go back to the drawing board every… single… time???  I heard someone say one time that “I just want to go to church, take the body and blood an know that I am okay.” That’s kind of me these days.

Again, excellent stuff my friend.

It is a well-known fact that BRANT, in fact, rules.

“Order” is clearly valued by God, given what we can infer from nature.  But so is dynamism.  The human organism, itself, retains its coherence, despite the fact that every atom in our body is replaced in less than ten years.  Every single atom, changed, and yet “Seth” is still “Seth”, and “Brant” is yet “Brant”. 

Our body is composed of interchanging dust; we are “more wave than particle”, and yet we continue our spiritual coherence.

God values order, yes, but also clearly values dynamic change, in mysterious ways. 

I do not believe it is human structures that keep the Church a coherent concept.  I believe it is the Holy Spirit, and it’s far more mystical than any denominational or hierarchical structure that we can possibly fashion.

It is the Holy Spirit that binds us, not a need to belong to the RCC or EO or any of thousands of offshoots.

I don’t think it’s “structure” that must stay the same.  I think the Holy Spirit must stay the same, and He does.  I see the Body of Christ then, composed of dust particles (us) which constantly change and are interchanged, but the Holy Spirit mystically guides it and leads it.

Yes, men WANT to “get it together” and be “decisive”, but I think the Body is far more mysical than that.  We tend toward order and structure, and away from dynamism; we tend toward rules and law, and away from grace; we tend toward the concrete, and away from mystery; and we tend toward kings, and away from being truly led by the Holy Spirit, which binds us in ways we cannot see or structure or plan.