12 Witnesses

click on logo for IVM page

We’re beginning to unpack the primary concepts that separate the Institutional Church and the Missional Church.  The key?  Centralization.

The Institutional Church is a centralized church.  Everything must flow through the internal structure of the church.  That is to say, it flows through the organizational structure of church leadership.  Over the years, we’ve built quite an infrastructure within the church.  In fact, most churches would be happy to “plug-in” every single person that attends the church.  It’s sort of the goal  of the Institutional Church to get everyone at least some responsibility within the church because that would then make them faithful attenders and givers – or so they hope.

I said before that any idea or initiative has to run through the processes of leadership.  Let me give you an example.  If you know, for instance, that someone in your office is having financial problems due to circumstances beyond their control, the centralized response is to bring the need to the Pastor/Staff as a personal request.  The staff person then finds someone on the Benevolence Committee (preferably the chair) who will then contact the rest of the committee who will discuss it.  Of course, they are governed by several factors.  Their internal guidelines allow them to give only a certain amount as a maximum to prevent anyone from taking too much advantage.  Further, they may not have enough money in the account right now to make a significant impact on the situation, even if they really wanted to do so.  A really dismal situation would be if the committee was not disposed to help the person because they don’t attend the church.  I’ve seen that happen over the years.

This is not the only example we could use, but it’s handy.  Generally speaking, if an individual at the “bottom” of the structure has an idea, everything has to flow up and back down the structure of the church.  If you have a great idea, you take it to the committee who talks it to death, and then, if it doesn’t die in committee, it gets sent to the relevant staff member (assuming you have more than one) who takes it to staff meeting (again assuming you have more than one staff member).  In some Baptist churches, the deacons are in there somewhere.  They could possibly be between the committee and staff or they could be over the staff.  I’ve served in a church that required the staff to present their ideas to the deacons, who then discussed, changed and often shut down initiatives that would have changed the church’s current practices.

The upshot of this is that the Institutional Church becomes more and more immobile and the congregation becomes mostly sedentary.  Their thoughts and ideas rarely survive the process.  Their church will not survive their immobility and sedentary nature.

The only ones that can really accomplish much in this scenario are the Staff, by virtue of their position and the “top” of the structure.  They become the “doers,” but to “do” anything, they have to enlist the appropriate committee and get them on board as well as clear other governing leadership, if the initiative is too far outside the norm.  Thus the Institutional Church becomes a struggle to advance, with Pastors and Staff being yoked to a barely moving wagon full of people telling them which way to go and how.  This is your typical smaller (Institutional) church.

There is a divergence here, though.  Not all Institutional Churches struggle with systems of control as bulky as that.  They have become large enough that the structure actually becomes more simple.  The Staff are at the top, they mobilize the appropriate committee, who seeks to mobilize a broader section of the church.  However, while a more efficient structure, it is still an inefficient method of engaging the world.  The ideas here flow from the top down, so the pool of creativity is slim.  Also, because they don’t have much input, most of the people simply attend and are not very involved.  The staff and volunteer leaders are the ones that work and everyone else simply shows up on Sunday.  This is your typical large (Institutional) church.

While they have more attending on a weekly basis, their impact on the world is often not significantly different than the smaller (Institutional) church.  They do more, to be sure, but that is simply based on volume.  The ratio of Christians engaging their world to those that simply attend services is not that much different regardless of the size.

The Missional Church, in contrast and as I said before, is concerned with mobilizing the individual.  As such, the method of engagement is empowerment of the individual church member to act on what they see as a need.  Rather than finding an co-worker with a financial need and returning with that need to the church, the individual reaches into their pocket and pulls out some money and hands it over, in the Name of Christ.  If they can’t do it alone, they might call on some other Christians, maybe in their small group, maybe in the church, maybe someone that goes to a different church or (could it actually be?) from another denomination.  Even more radical, they might ask non-Christians to help.  Maybe they make it an office project, but not a local church project.

Could it be that making such a thing an office project is considered a ministry oriented and Christian thing to do?  Don’t we have to tie such things, if not to the Denomination or even the church, at least to the Kingdom?  I would submit to you, that by involving the office, the Christian office worker has actually spread the Kingdom to many more than would ever have been reached by running it back though the Benevolence Committee.  All of those involved, both giving and receiving, see Christ at work in the organizer.  It makes a larger “splash” though not as overt.

Given our culture, though, overt is just the kind of thing that would alienate the rest of the office if they are not already a part of a church.  They would perceive the action as being done to “get something” – notoriety and recognition.

You might wonder what keeps Christians from doing this kind of thing now.  I wonder the same thing.  I was asked on Sunday, as I explained the differences between the Institutional and Missional Church to our Search Committees, if this was not mostly a mindset.  The short answer is, “Yes.”  While the structures of the church have to be simplified to keep things from being killed by bureaucracy, the heart of the matter is a mindset.

The Missional individual in a Missional Church recognizes that they are the church.  They are the body of Christ.  They are the one that God has placed strategically in position to minister in His Name.

15 If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.  – James 2:15-17 (HCSB)

11 And He personally gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 for the training of the saints in the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, [growing] into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.  – Ephesians 4:11-13  [emphasis mine]

Posts with related content

• June 29, 2009 -- Missional and Relational via Paul in Athens (0)
• June 25, 2009 -- A word to the wise concerning the SBC (7)
• June 8, 2009 -- Redemptive Mission (1)
• June 3, 2009 -- Must Read – redefining success in evangelism (0)
• June 2, 2009 -- God will send you the people (3)

Church, Missional

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.