Current Thoughts On The Home Church

For enoumerous reasons which I won't get into here, (see my last two blogs) I would be considered the perfect candidate, ripe for the picking, for the “Home Church” movement led by Frank Viola, for the “Emergent Church” movement led by Brian McLaren and for other movements that are seeking ways to 1. Do church the way it was done in the days of Paul (Viola) or 2. Do church in a way that will emerge along with the emerging culture (McLaren).

And I admit that I have fallen prey to these two “shifts”. I have eaten up George Barna’s book “Revolution” and Frank Viola’s books “Pagan Christianity” and “Reimagining Church”, and admit to having truly enjoyed them; Pagan Christianity and Revolution in particular are jam packed with “facts” that can hardly be denied (whether or not you we agree with their conclusions). I find myself less interested in McLaren’s emerging Church; but have been heavily influenced as of late by moderate emerging thinkers (Wright, Olson, McKnight; men who are more conservative and theologically competent).

Yet inside I am a little boy wishing to hold on to the days of old; the days (for me) when the pastor (or youth pastor) was not just a man who cared, but was a man who taught also. And when church (for me) was not just a place to go, it was the place to be, it understood the concept of fellowship even if it had never heard the word – koinonia.

And so as I said in a previous blog, I am not prepared to give up on “church” – that is, the institutional church - the way it is understood today. (Read that sentence again if you only skimmed it, for it is very important for my position).

Many of my friends have picked up the baton handed to them by Viola and Barna which carries the motto “Stop doing church and start being Church”. By this they usually mean, “Stop doing church the way it is done today and start doing Church the way it was done in the first century” (I'll qualify this statement below, stay with me, I believe I am being fair).

The argument goes, lets get back to first century Church: doing away with the Pastors “office” (didn’t exist back then); doing away with Bishops and Elders “offices” (Bishop, Elder and Shepherd-teachers are synonymous in the N.T.) and doing away with the distinction made between “professional” and “lay” Christians; doing away with the church building; with tithing; with planned “worship” (perhaps even with instruments?).

Part of me wants to embrace this motto – at least its intentions – whole heartedly; while another part remains reserved.

My biggest problem with the motto is that - it seems to me - to be a word game. Stop doing church and start being Church. It sounds nice but let’s think about this for a moment shall we. So let’s say we’ve stopped “doing” church in order that we might start “being” Church. What does it mean that we “be” church: Shall we gather together for fellowship? Yes. Shall there be teaching in our midst? Sure. Shall we financially take care of each other? Most definitely! Should we continue with the sacraments? Of course! Shall we be a light to our community and the world, corporately? Heck yah! So then, if by “being” church we are “doing” fellowship; teaching; sacraments; evangelism and the list goes on, then are we not by “being” the Church also “doing” Church. Don’t we “do” what we “are”?

What they mean by the phrase “Stop doing church and start being the Church” is “stop doing Institutional Church and start ‘doing’ first century Church”. And so the motto is - so it seems to me - slightly deceiving and should truthfully go “stop doing church your way and start doing church our way”; and of course “our way” is a strong reference to the way of the first century church. But they word the motto intentionally as “…start being the Church” because (and here's the qualification referred to above) they wish to emphasis the absolute requirement of what it means to “be” Church. When you become a Christian you ‘become’ the Church by definition (this point, I think, is a positive re-emphasis that the Home Church movement has offered to remind us of). This swinging of the pendulum is to counteract or combat nominalism within the Churches all over the world: “yah, I’m a Christian because I ‘go’ to church” – a wrong but all too common attitude. However, the motto itself strongly implies that everyone who is “doing” institutional church are not “being” the Church. Yet this goes back to our previous criticism: once you stop “doing” institutional church and start “doing” first century Church, you are still doing church! Can you not “do” and “be” at the same time? Or rather, don’t the two go together like “hand-in-glove” (James – the Message)? Faith and works?

I wish to add a point here that space won’t permit me to elaborate presently: I am not convinced that doing church the way it was done in the first century is necessary, or even possible on a large practical scale! But we should (I believe) continue to go back to the scriptures and ask: could we be doing church better? I believe we could; particularily speaking: in our concept of preaching/teaching, our concept of fellowship, and our concept of giving - all of which can - I believe - be done "better" (by 'better' I mean more biblical and therefore more beneficial to the body of Christ) if we would be willing to return to the scriptures afresh.

Just my current thoughts on the Home Church,

Derek

P.S. if you agree with the statement above: “we should continue to go back to the scriptures and ask: could we be doing church better?” Then you just may be Post-Conservative.

www.pensees-derek.blogspot.com