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The Jesus story is the story.

It's the story. In Earth Currents I pick up on C. S. Lewis and his idea of myth. It is myth become history, the story of which all other stories that have any truth in them are a reflection. It finally comes to the question, What will you do with Jesus? If a person or church really commits themselves to Jesus, they adopt a worldview that cannot be accommodated within postmodernism but becomes a critique of postmodernism.

Is the narrative of Jesus an entering wedge for postmodern minds?

Yes, because it's a particular story. It's an individual story. It's very experiential. Evangelicals often talk about giving witness, giving their testimony, which ought to point to Jesus. It opens that door. And then unbelievers are confronted with it, and the Holy Spirit can use that. At first they may approach the story simply on an individual basis. But even if they're only seeking their own meaning in life, people can't genuinely encounter Christ without that breaking through to something deeper and broader—if they continue to follow and become a part of the body, the church.

You don't seem to see any value in hierarchical thinking about church. Is there nothing redeemable there? Is there no kernel of truth in it?

There is a kernel of truth in the recognition of structure and that there is a place for authority. But I view it as primarily pernicious. The more I've thought about it, the more I've looked in the Scripture, I think it's pernicious because when it operates at a worldview level, which it tends to do, it undermines the proper kind of relationship that people ought to have with God and with one another in the body of Christ. My argument is you can have authority and structure better with a biblically based ecological model than with one that is hierarchical.

That doesn't mean that hierarchical structure isn't something that God can use. But I view it as not ideal. And it is definitely not of the essence of the Church.

I heard a Catholic archbishop speak about ecclesiology recently. At the beginning of the 21st century, he was still stuck on structures and offices as of the essence of the church.

It's interesting to read the documents of Vatican II on the church where they try to have it both ways—with a great affirmation of peoplehood and also of the structures. There's an anthropological principle at work here: Over time, structures tend to take on more dominance than what we in theory allow them. That's true of all structures, not just hierarchical ones.

In the '50s we saw American denominations reorganize along the line of corporations. In the '80s we saw large local churches build on models of business leadership. What is right and what is wrong about the church modeling itself structurally on business?

The key distinction is between the church as the body of Christ, the community of God's people, and the various structures that we create. The church can learn a lot from business about how to manage its property, how to keep on mission, how to be clear about what it's doing, and so on. Our organizational and financial structures can learn a lot from business. But in the final analysis all of those structures are there to serve something more dynamic, which is the functioning of the body of Christ.

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November (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46