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.

Theodrama

I recently was given links to a couple blog/forums of some stimulating friends of years gone by, Edmontonians all. Dissatisfaction with the Church has lead them to some significant thinking and rethinking about the future, or lack therof, of the Old Evangelicalism. One of the percieved problems seems to be a Church that glories in itself and its doctrine rather than mucking it up in the dirt of human history.

I believe this discussion may benefit from an explanation of the contrast between what are called "epic" and "dramatic" visions of the Christian life. My vocabulary here builds from the work of the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans urs Von Bathasar. I think much of it will resonate with some of the concerns I've seen expressed here by others. I hope it might supply some categories to articulate the differences between the developing understandings of the nature and mission of the Church, and that of classical Protestant Evangelicalism.

The epic play is one in which the reader knows the story and how it ends. "Epic" approaches to theology, most common in modernity, are essentially spectatorial and depict the Christian life from the outside and with a degree of extraction, like a painting that captures a whole narrative in one frame. A true dramatic play is full of shift, suspense and surprise - throwing the reader into the fray of confusion along with the characters. Thus a theologically "dramatic" approach allows recognition that we are still on the way, that the play is still unfolding, that we are a part of it, and that our understanding, and especially our desire to claim total comprehension (and thus quasi-apocalyptic resolution) of our situation, should be chastened by the recognition that more awaits us in the future.

An epic minded Christian will be interested in a tidy system of belief and practice and will expect that the plot will run along mechanically towards a predictable end; he will want his Church to be a blueprint of completeness, normativity, universal application, and systematic coherence. This leads to an attitude that claims to have all the answers, and nothing more to learn. This is painfully all too familiar.

The dramatic follower of Christ revels only in the boast of the Apostle Paul - in the Cross of Jesus Christ. She will endure struggle, growth, and decline, twisting and turning with the plot, aware that God will have some surprises in store regarding how things turn out in the end. She will have an expectation of learning from unexpected partners in the play - truth from other religions, lessons from the social outcast, etc. This is a breath of the Spirit of renewal.

Evangelicalism struggles to be reborn from the epic to the dramatic. Ecclesia semper
reformanda est.

For your consideration and encouragement, the contemporary Catholic Church, although not without its own issues and remaining epic qualities, has been on the move in the latter direction as well. Stereotypically much more tradition oriented and institutionalized than conventional Evangelicalism (although some Evangelical churches are far more wooden in their views but just don't acknowledge it on paper), there is a deep-rooted Catholic spirituality that embraces the dramatic divine-human interplay and celebrates and encourages a faith that is real, earthy, sincerely communal, and holistically missional. While it is sometimes incorrectly characterized as a massive unchangeable religious monolith, the Catholic Church has, and in fact always is undergoing periods of tremendous shift and development. Perhaps its greatest strength, and the reason it has lasted the test of time, is its ability to understand that God's Revelation is dynamic enough to allow itself to be dramatically translated for new times and places, and that the Church must be embracing of new forms of worship and new doctrinal expressions. Sometimes this seems a slow process, but sometimes things happen fast.

In the new evolution, we will have partners we do not expect.