A Good Word for the Institution

To say that institutional religion is not wildly popular these days would be an understatement. We are all for freedom and protest and we take it as axiomatic that everyone should be able to do his own thing. Not only the church, but any institution is regarded with the gravest suspicion. We link institutions with dreary bureaucracies and find it hard to discover a vestige of life in any of them.

It is not surprising that the church comes in for its share of the general criticism. Take worship. The Bible does not contain a specific command to believers to worship on Sunday, though there are references in the New Testament to worship on that day as the practice of the early church. But all through the ages Christians have seen Sunday as the day of worship. Whether on that day or some other, there can be no doubt that a gathering for worship is important. Anyway, there is a specific direction not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Heb. 10:25).

But when we do this it is easy to concentrate on the wrong things. We can get caught up in the rituals of approach to God. Whether we feel that the right way is that of set forms or whether we feel we must renounce all set forms, we can so concentrate on the act of worship that we see little beyond that. The right performance of worship becomes an end in itself.

Other things follow. If worship is so important, then we must have an appropriate sanctuary. We take steps to erect a worthy building and that lands us in expenditure for maintenance. We provide for choirs, service sheets, hymn books, and a multitude of aids to worship. We give thought to the needs of specific groups, such as young people. We find the need for choirs, Sunday schools, organizations for men and for women, for young marrieds, and others.

We give thought to the community in which we live. We think of ways we can help the sick or the aged. We set up service groups of a variety of kinds and do our best to meet the needs of those in various kinds of want.

There can be no objection in principle to such activities. They are either acts of Christian compassion or acts of Christian devotion. Both are important.

But unfortunately in doing all this we can build up quite an organization. It is so easy to be caught up in the multiplicity of tasks involved that we lose sight of the main thing. We punctiliously perform the outward acts but lose the freedom of the Spirit. We get caught up in routine. We overlook the fact that Christianity is concerned not with the right performance of this or that act but with faith and love and hope. In our care to see that the right things are done we can neglect the weightier matters of our attitude to God and to man. We spend so much of our time simply causing the wheels to turn that we begin to wonder whether we are doing anything more than perpetuate the institution.

So there has been a turning away, particularly but not only among younger people. There has arisen a conviction that all is not well with the church and that we would be better off to abandon the institution. If we had none of the organization to run we could concentrate on simply living out the Christian faith. We would be free from many of the burdens with which we now weigh ourselves down and we would be able to give ourselves over to a simpler lifestyle that more closely resembles the kind of thing we see in the New Testament.

There is something undeniably attractive about this. Nobody who has been active in the church can be oblivious of the fact that there is far too much routine for comfort. Nor can it be denied that much of what happens in so many of our churches and ecclesiastical institutions generally is a matter of simply keeping the institution going. It would be good to be rid of all that serves no Christian purpose.

But to be rid of the institution altogether is quite another matter. The big reason for this, of course, is that the church clearly has its place in God’s plan. “The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion,” a serious man said to John Wesley, “Therefore a man must find companions or make them.” And that is true. There is much in the Christian way that is concerned with the individual. But when all this is said it is still the case that believers belong together in the body of Christ. They are commanded to assemble from time to time as we have already noticed. But more than this, the New Testament sees believers as a unity.

Christ prayed that his followers might be one (John 17:20f.) and there are many indications in the New Testament that we who are in the body of Christ belong together. The very use of the expression “body of Christ” implies this. The members of a body may be widely different but they cannot make up a body apart from being together. Illustrations of the church (such as the bride of Christ or a building) often stress the theme of belonging.

There can be no doubt but that the New Testament envisages Christians as functioning as a unity. There is an essential corporateness about the Christian way. If we are to be biblical this cannot be dispensed with. It is not easy to see how formal expression can be given to this concept without an institution. This is not to endorse everything about the present institution. It is simply to affirm that somehow the “togetherness” of the Christian way must be expressed.

And, of course, there are values that the institution protects. For example, when a way of worshiping or a pattern of thinking or a manner of living has been shown to be valuable the institution is a useful way of retaining it and of spreading it to other members. All this may become too fixed and too traditional. But there are values in it nevertheless.

There are functions that can be exercised in an institution far more easily than outside, for example that of theological education. It is true that many of our best seminaries and colleges are private institutions. But apart from an institutional church with accepted patterns and functions there would be little agreement on what to study and little incentive to engage in research.

The institution gives stability. It will be there when the individual passes on and it will stand for ideals and teachings. We cannot do without this continuing testimony.

There are dangers in the institution. We must always be on our guard. There can be vested ecclesiastical interests that blind us to realities. The institution must be continually subjected to scrutiny and it must always be the object of reformation. But when all this is said it is perilous for Christians to try to do without an institutional church of some sort. Community is integral to the Christian way and this demands some form of institution.

To do away with the institution would be to reduce Christianity to a simplistic individualism. Not that way lies authentic Christianity.

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