History of Church

Frank Viola recently twittered, “there’s a huge difference between loving the church of Jesus Christ and loving a system that’s called “church.” Much confusion abounds here.”

The definition of church is something that’s confused me for much of my formative years as a Christian. From believing so strongly that the local church you’re a part of is truly biblical, to believing the local church in general is where God is, to believing that the idea of a local church is an absurdity, to believing in Loisy’s “Jesus preached the kingdom, but the church came instead,” I’ve wrestled in my heart not to make church an idol. But Christians do make idols of everything. The conservative evangelical makes an idol of her notions of God. The liberal mainliner makes an idol of the institutional church. How is it possible to not make any idols at all while living out a way set by a Palestinian Jew with a sketchy background?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the notion of Religionless Christianity and it’s been a huge thorn in my side. As the community I’m a part of deals with a potential death in terms of its “form” of a church, I’ve realized that I’m growing weary of giving myself to a “church.” How do I give myself to a community (the ekklesia) without, at all, giving myself to the church? Bonhoeffer writes:

…Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity–and even this garment has looked very different at different times–then what is a religionless Christianity?

The questions to be answered would surely be: What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world? How do we speak of God–without religion, i.e., without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even “speak” as we used to) in a “secular” way about God? In what way are we “religionless-secular” Christians, in what way are we those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean? What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation?

To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be a man–not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life.

Today, the divide between the secular and the sacred is being challenged as we see that the sacred is in the midst of all things. But with that in tow, Bonhoeffer’s notion of the Christian faith is one deeply rooted in the world. If church symbolizes all things separate of the world, what does it look like for church to be completely immersed in the world, while shedding all the trappings of any institution?

Lately, the emergent blogosphere has been buzzing of the death of institutional church, or ordination, or even pastorship (as we know it). It seems as if people are ready to, dare I say, move on with the next chapter in this movement called Christianity. But why are people moving on? Is it because we are tired of the system? And if we move on, what form will the Christian faith take in the context of a community? Are house churches on the right track? If not, then what?

How can Christians completely embed themselves with the problems, pains, joys, and hopes of the world and serve an unseen God that pines for the world’s salvation? Does it mean, as Bonhoeffer seems to imply, just living life?