I’m thinking about small group ministries that so many churches offer these days. Many seem to be based on good principles of mutual care, and some are based around the idea that the small group or cell is the basic building-block of the church. At one time I might have said that a church without a small group ministry is missing out on a critical element of church life. In my CLB, we were all about small groups, at least in the earlier days (they became more mechanized than organic nearer the end). I remember a lot of the cell church material as well, and the attempts at hybridizing the purer forms of cell church and the megachurch mentality. I wonder now if a church with a small group ministry isn’t sometimes an oxymoronic expression of community, an attempt to replicate in smaller units the thing that’s fundamentally missing from the larger context… but since it’s fundamentally a program, its makeup cuts across the formation of organic relationship and true community.
I’ve been setting aside a few things along these lines for the past little while.
For example, in a house church (implied by the small group / cell church comparison), there’s no building… but there are times when a building is a missional positive. Ben Sternke asks, The church is not a building… or is it? — he reflects on an older post on the subject by David Fitch. In such contexts, the building might be referred to as a “ministry center,” but I imagine that some care must be taken to not slip into an attractional mode.
Justin Baeder talks about Gathering-Centered Ecclesiology, what he describes as a post-congregational expression of church that sounds a lot like a network of simple house churches, and jives very well the years-old vision I’ve had for a structure of the local church in a city or region.
One of the most striking posts that I’ve been mulling over for a while is Philip Edwards’ Church, What Church?, which points to nhm-i.org which in turn points to organic-church.org, which reads,
WARNING
This Site Is Dangerous!!!
If you are satisfied with your Church experience, then please do not browse through this site any further. You have been warned… The ideas presented here will challenge you and spoil you for church as usual!A Complete Reformation
We suggest that a New and Complete Reformation of Church as we know it is very much needed today! We invite you to join us in this exciting journey of discovery!
That sounds ominous… but Philip must have gone browsing anyway. He quotes,
The earliest English translation of the Bible (from the Latin Vulgate) was by John Wycliffe in 1380 (and was handwritten). THIS bible does not contain the word CHURCH. Congregation was used instead (still not a correct rendition of “Ekklesia” in my opinion).
and
In 1611, the King James Version of the bible was completed. The translators were instructed to ensure that the translation would not contradict what was being done in the Anglican Church (King Henry the 8th had split from the Catholics in 1529). The “brief” to the translators of the KJV had 15 general rules that they were instructed to follow. The most significant with regard to our study of the word “Church” is rule 3 which states, “The Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the Word Church not to be translated Congregation &c.”
The point here being that the Greek word ekklesia, now commonly translated “church” had previously been customarily translated as “congregation.” Of course we know it means “assembly” and senses to this effect; I like the word “gathering,” where the “church” is gathered from the places where it is spread through the community, and they come together for their various purposes. “Church” in my mind is a word better reserved for “the church catholic,” the worldwide body of Christ. “Local church” is a linguistic convention that is functional to help make a distinction between the two. The word “church” itself originated from the Greek kyriake, meaning “of the Lord” — supporting its use as a collective noun for Christians.
It would appear that the popularization of the term “church” in lieu of “congregation” began with the 1611 KJV. The effect, to my mind, has been to blur the distinction between the local congregation and the larger organization of the church. For Henry VIII and his successors, this might be seen to have a political aim of associating each congregation with the larger Church of England… implying that the blurring of the distinction was intentional. It’s rather difficult to say if this was the case, of course… but the effect seems to be much along these lines. Nowadays, this leads to much confusion in reading the English Bible and the interpretations that follow, namely that difficulty with one local church expression is projected as difficulty with the Body of Christ as a whole. To the point, criticizing the organization of the local church is in many circles misunderstood to be a direct criticism of the Bride of Christ.
Perhaps we need some new language, or at least some more common convention in using what we’ve got more precisely. Obviously there’s much more here for further thought and analysis… anyone care to offer some ideas?
Great questions! We’ve bumped up against this issue a bit because I am starting a new gathering/community (meeting primarily on Sunday nights) that is not a “church plant” in our language, but it will likely involve people who have never come to our Sunday morning services, and will be in a different locale than the “parent” church meets. So for some people, it will feel like a “church” as they’ve known it (community of believers gathering for Word and Sacrament), but we aren’t putting “church” in the title, mainly just for simplicity’s sake. The usage of the term here seems to mean “an independent financial organization” because that’s the only sense that we aren’t a “church”. But maybe we’re a “congregation”, we certainly are a distinct “community” that’s part of the “Church catholic”…
So anyway, it’s an interesting topic… and I agree that we could use some different terminology.
Straining at gnats again, are we? Call it what you will it is the church. Any body of believers transformed by grace and empowered by the Spirit is, IMHO, a church. Ecclesiastical struggles continue apace as individuals abuse their leadership or, worse, usurp the authority of God.
In the interest of full disclosure I am baptist by denomination. Our polity is congregational with each “local church” being an autonomous entity within any larger association. In short, the church I pastor answers to no governing body above it. In fact all the larger association, local, state, and national answer, in principle, to us. I say that to say my view may be skewed.
“Charge them before God not to quarrel about word, which does not good, but only ruins the hearers.” 2 Tim 2:14
Let’s just get on with the business of being the church gathered, scattered, or otherwise engaged in His kingdom purposes.
Dang, but those gnats get stuck in my teeth! Part of the issue is that some of us have been charged with disparaging the Church when we speak only of the church, or have been the subject of those who would wish to reign with the authority of the Church when they barely speak for the church. Add to that the fact that in the attempt to be about the business of being part of the Church, some have been accused of not being a “real” church in an attempt to delegitimize. All this to say simply that we don’t always mean the same thing by the terms, and for some, they’re loaded.
Many people will preach on the different Greek words for “love” but don’t recognize any distinction in the terms I’ve outlined here, viz., the local church vs. the corporate (worldwide) Body of Christ. IOW, “a church” is part of “the Church” so the two terms are not fully synonymous… and many of us struggle so much with the church because of our love for the Church.
In regards to small groups, the question seems to be how to foster and support organic, natural formation of such groups without it becoming forced and programmatic. All the while keeping in mind that there is always the danger of people slipping through the cracks. Perhaps we just such people? Nah, that doesn’t seem right, does it… :)
I don’t even come close to having an answer for this but I’d say the trajectory we need to be on should be a much more Jesus/Gospel focused one. But hey, what do I know?
oops – end of 1st paragraph should say “Perhaps we just ignore such people”.
I too find myself picking gnats out of my teeth on a regular basis, Bro. Maynard. I understand the dissatisfaction with words and how they are sometimes used. The problem is they are the only tools we have to communicate certain concepts. And, like it or not, even in changing the name the problems tend to stay the same. I know one gentleman who, in his illustrious career, has been a janitor, custodian, sanitation worker and environmental maintenance supervisor, but despite all the name changes he’s still the guy who cleans the toilets and takes out the trash. I think many are caught in the same trap in playing with the words of church/congregation/body. At the end of the day we are still His people, called by His name. Imperfect. Sure. Maddeningly so at times. Let us never lose sight of the fact that the wheat and tares are freely sown together. He will do the separating later.
I have watched some (three to be exact) new church plants with a sad humor over the last few years. All began with an ideal of divesting themselves of all the baggage of “church” and starting fresh and new. Problem is that within a few short years they have their own “traditions” and “programs” and “problems” (everybody needs children’s workers!). All but one of these bright new lights has gone out after a brilliant flash of light. Please don’t think that I am against “new ways of doing things”. Quite the opposite. I believe we must engage the culture on its turf and we simply cannot do that within the walls of the church on the corner.
I say all of this to simply say, let’s just be the church. These are not “new” problems. The church has struggled in some fashion with them from its earliest days of existence. Will there be opposition, oppression, and difficulties? Count on it. However, we can also count on His sufficient grace to sustain us. Let’s remember that it is not our church but His.
Fascinating post. The whole concept of the role of today’s institutional church has come into such question that a group of us produced a video documentary to try to sort out what is happening today with so many believers leaving the institutional form of church to seek a deeper relationship with God.
Fascinating post. There has been such a response to the institutional church lately that’s caught my attention. The whole idea of millions leaving the institutional church to find a deeper relationship with God prompted us to produce a video documentary about the whole thing.
I just wonder whether the ‘what is church?’ debate, which is so much to do with terminology, does not confuse terms by making them synonomous when there may be distinctions. As an example, does ‘church’ mean the same as ‘bride of Christ’ ? ‘Bride’ speaks to me of love and intimacy and commitment and more than ‘gathering together.’ In the months before I got married, I gathered frequently with the woman who was to be my wife but a moment came when she became my bride and the focus of the ‘gathering’ became unrecognisably different.