Necessary Goods

"Father Mackenzie,
wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave --
No one was saved!
All the lonely people --
Where do they all belong?"

This lyric always strikes me. I think it is at the heart of another problem seen by many in the Church today - the loss of mission and the rise of institution.

The Church is not worthy of the name if it is not living a resourceful witness, concretely addressing people's daily needs. We need to be in the trenches living the Commission and struggling to make it reality, not in ivory towers congratulating ourselves on a job well done. As Hans Hoekendijk put it, "mission isn't everything, it's the only thing." We are called to spread the Kingdom, not the Church.

However, allow me to play - I won't say Devil's - the Church's advocate on one point here. (My Catholic sentimentality again rears its head)

Many who analyze the history of the Church will evoke in one form or another the notion of institutionalization. Typically the response is to lament the seemingly inherent human tendancy for social groups to form into hardened structures. Some are more irenic, willing to say that institutions are, at best, necessary evils.

However, there are some serious problems with the notion of necessary evils. If institutions are so evil, why are they so prevalent? What is it that pushes human communities to develop concretized forms, be it families, social clubs, governments, and religious groups? Do we write it off completely as a result of the fall?

I think that is a bit unfair and totalizes human depravity just a little too much. Certainly human social interaction is defaced by sin and this can cause our institutions to become perverted idols. However, can we leave some room that this seemingly universal human characteristic is at least in part from God? "It is not good for man to be alone"

Can we consider that institutional forms arise to provide an efficient means to achieve certain recurrent needs within the community, and that while this happens in part based merely on human practicality subject to the taint of sin, that it can also be the work of the Holy Spirit leading us to develop a system of oversight in order to benefit the outworking of the mission?

For example, a rec hockey league, in order to play the game, has certain recurrent needs: Equiptment, an arena to book, money to pay for ice time, a schedule, teams to play each other, etc. An institutional structure needs to be put in place in order to make this easier on the players so that they can just go out and play hockey. While it might seem like these details are a burden on the game, from another perspective they exist for the good of the game because without them it couldn't be played at all. From this angle, the institution promotes the common good because it releases the players to focus on their goals rather than worrying about internal needs.

Could this be true of the Church as well? Could it be that we require certain people and plans to regulate and fulfill the tasks of administration in order to free up others to do the other work. Wouldn't it be true then that these same structures, when working at their best, are actually also on the side of the mission as well?

This is not to deny that institutions can be deformed and used to promote group biases and maintain power. These are the besetting sins that come with the territory. But, by God's grace, they can also be instruments of the divine. They can be more than necessary evils, they can be necessary goods. Rather than abandoning them altogether, why not engage in constant vigilance against their distortions towards reconscilation?

Peace be with you.