Church

Ross Woods
With thanks to Jim Longbottom for his ideas

"Church" can be conceived in many ways, and these have implications for evangelism style, non-Christian perceptions of Christianity, and church planting strategy.

We need to think through what kind of "church" will they understand, enjoy, feel accepted and make close friends in. Will they like the meeting style, and will the church work as a base for evangelism? What kind of "church" will be accepted in their community? Will an institutional church be a liability or an asset?

1. The church is a network of personal friends who share an affinity. Personal loyalties are strong. This conception works best under threat of persecution. It is also important in the West, where society alienates people, who then need group acceptance. It also fits with the post-modern tendency to distrust institutionalist churches. Home group cell churches are a good example.

2. The church is an institution. It is formally structured, officially recognised by the government, and administered by officers who are appointed according to defined procedures. Its history (or "heritage") gives its members a strong sense of identity. This conception works best when government endorsement is important, such as some kind of registration.

The institutionalism of the church has been considered integral to genuine Christianity, and some European countries still have state churches.

As another example, in one country, people wouldn’t attend a church unless it was recognized by the government, which had outlawed subversive groups and illegal meetings.

3. The church is a gathering of the people of God. They may primarily define themselves as the redeemed, or those who obey God, or those who have the Holy Spirit. This kind of conception suits a variety of groups. Some churches have used the imagery of the Old Testament people of God gathered in Temple worship.

For example, a persecuted church had no list of members. If the authorities asked a Christian who else was a Christian, they could answer "There are no members. The church is anyone who comes to a meeting." As there was no members list, nobody could be traced and persecuted for being a church member.

4. The missional church looks primarily outward; it is enthusiastic about passing on a message of life to others.

In the past, mission was often conceived as proclaiming an exclusively spiritual message for the soul and an instantaneous conversion experience. The present trend is toward more holism, including the quality of the personal relationship and physical, social or emotional needs.

5. A particular form of the missional church is an evangelistic outreach run by a pastor-apostle. For example, Paul rented the Hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus for two years. Many Pentecostals have used this conception as the basis for their ecclesiology. In effect, it can create a pastor-owned church where people might be committed to do little more than attend and donate money.

6. The church is a migratory network. Highly mobile people might migrate between regular meetings at different locations, while being unable to participate in one meeting exclusively and consistently. Not much is known about this kind of church, although some preliminary observations have been made. (There is probably also a nomadic church, but not much is known about that either.)

7. The church is a variety of meetings, held together by a common administrative structure and common goals. This kind of church might have many different meetings at different times of the week, with wide variations is kinds of members of each group. They might also meet at different locations, but identify themselves as one church with many different kinds of meeting. Large churches following this pattern frequently become mini-denominations. 

For example, this kind of church is increasingly common in the West. The causes appear to be (a) Post-modernism’s emphasis on diversity and (b) contemporary demands for a more comprehensive range of church activities.

8. The church is a function of the village community. Nearly everybody in the village is considered to be affiliated with the church in some way, and the church conducts communal activities for all people in the village. The same group of people also do many other things together (such as run a school or hold markets) that they do not identify as church. This mentality is, obviously, mainly found in villages where substantial numbers of people have confessed Christianity at some stage. The church leadership, if not necessarily the same as the village leadership, works closely with village leaders to get anything done.

For example, in one group of  villages, all baptised men automatically became members of the deaconate. The church was open to all members of the village.

9. The church is a function of an extended family, or group of extended families. The church might comprise one or more extended families, particularly in rural settings where large extended families live near each other on inherited farmland. Newcomers realise they are outsiders. The church is run by the family patriarchs and new Christians are largely excluded from the decision-making process. In some cases, this view might be very similar to the "village community" view.

10. The church is a coordinated set of activities located in a designated building. This is most seen where the building has become an indispensable facility for church ministries, and fosters "come-to-the-building" methods of evangelism. Precipitating factors include:

• Some churches are so big that they can’t meet except in a large building.
• Some cultures see the church building as a sanctuary or specialized place for worship or communion with God. This is more likely to be the case when special ceremonies, equipment, or furniture is identified as part of "really going to church".
• Some countries legally require churches to meet in  registered buildings.
• The Old Testament imagery of the Tabernacle and the Temple are commonly used to justify this view.

Examples are easy to find; this has been the "normal" western European view of church, but is common when the building has become a necessary ministry facility.

11. The church is a walled enclave against the evil world. On the good side, the church can be a refuge that offers warmth and friendship. Its people can be trusted. It may also offer help to outsiders in times of need.

But it has a bad side. By setting up a closed community, the church then builds its own barriers to evangelism. The "evil world" soon translates to "evil people", and church members develop aloof or separatist attitudes to outsiders. The church culture becomes an end in itself, and outsiders must go though a long enculturation process to become accepted.

12. The church is a wounded healer, a helping community with a primarily personal and pastoral ministry. The church and its people admit their own imperfections and hurts, but they are growing and changing. They can offer help and empathetic care to others, who are also seen to be personally hurting and needing healing.

13. The pastoral view of a church is that of a shepherd and the sheep, and is a clear teaching of the New Testament. It reflects the basic church need that people with pastoral gifts will look out for the well-being and personal growth of the people under their care. However, churches that focus exclusively on member care can lose their missional role to the world outside. This does not differ greatly from the wounded healer view.

14. The church is social justice agency,  a helping community with a mandate to help the powerless and disadvantaged who cannot help themselves. On the bad side, it can lose its spiritual message and degenerate into leftist, secular, political activism or into right-wing secular philanthropy. On the good side, a social justice conception of the church can bring a healthy holism to the Christian message, bringing credibility to the church, reaching people in urgent need, and generating real change for good in the wider community.

15. A church is a worship centre where people gather together to meet God and enjoy His presence in a way not available to solitary individuals. Scriptural support in the New Testament and in the Psalms is easy to find, with the common picture of the assembled people of God meeting with God in the Temple. Some biblical passages lend themselves to pictures of planned formal worship, and some pictures to spontaneous exuberant worship.

It assumes that church is a relationship with other people and with God. This view lends itself to attractional evangelism, where newcomers see worship and learn about God by what they see. To some extent it lends itself to another soteriology, that salvation is knowing God personally and worshipping Him.

16. The church is a prophetic agency. The church is vehicle of the voice of God, both to its members and to the world. It sees the world’s major problem lack of a message from God and lack of foresight from a divine perspective.

17. Teaching churches in the Reformation tradition hold that the written Word of God can be explained in such a way the church members can put it into practice in their own lives. The interpersonal spiritual dynamic has always been always essential. But this view can degenerate to the notion that information causes spiritual growth and that proclaiming the Word of God is synonymous with expository sermons. That is, it is easy to lose the interpersonal spiritual dynamic.

About these conceptions:

All these conceptions are consistent with the New Testament, if not actively supported by it.

Several pictures of church (missional, prohetic, pastoral and teaching are drawn from dominant gifts: prophet apostle, pastor and teacher (cf. Eph. 4:11). Each is an undeniably valid view of the church, but is limited by seeing it though the eyes of only one gift or one kind of religious temperament.

Most are fairly compatible with each other, and some naturally occur together. For example, church as building-related activities and church as institution co-occur because it is usually the institution that owns the building.

But in some cultural circumstances, conceptions may be quite mutually exclusive. For example:

1. The network of friends deliberately avoid institutionalism to preserve the personal nature of church. They might avoid building-centredness for the same reason.
2. The "no-members" churches deliberately avoid institutionalism and building-centredness to avoid persecution.
3. The village church cannot sustain the variety of services coming in mega-churches, and probably would not want to. In village churches, everybody expects to know everybody else very well and in non-church roles.

Another conception, this time one to be frowned upon, is the cultic church. It is identified by:

1. An authoritarian leadership style.
2. Clear teachings, which are tightly defined and defended to maximise conformity, provide a distinctive group identity, and provide a basis for authoritarianism.
3. A belief that outsiders are wrong, and that members of other churches are unsaved or at least unenlightened.
4. Usually some kind of veneration of the founder, sometimes as a prophetic voice or enlightened one.
5. Cultural conformity, which may include clothes, food, daily schedules, and even business structures.
6. Willingness to expel non-conforming members.

Looking from the outside, it is almost frightening how much these characteristics appear to apply to many mainline evangelical churches.