We do not have political parties in the Church and our political patronage is not as deep or broad as it was in the heyday of American politics. We do not have the layers of political offices in which to identify and promote political candidates. Some would suggest we have the rudiments of such a system and some would insist that this is exactly what we ought to be doing -- conducting the business of the Church as if it were some grand plebiscite voting on what God's Word says, what it means, and how it is to be lived out. We already have something of the kind coming at us through the rear entrance as culture influences and shapes what we are willing to tolerate as God's Word and what we have decided to overlook. We do not need to give culture and the mind of the individual more room to influence or shape Christian faith and practice.
Although some might disagree, I do not believe I am naive. I know some of this will always be there and our baser nature always wants to fight for control and self-preservation. But do we formalize this as the way we act as a church body or do we right against the intrusion of worldly ideas of how to govern the Church? Do we interpret elections as mandates for change or for the status quo? Do we measure these mandates by election majorities? Do we play politics with the numbers in order to diminish our opponents or magnify our favorites? Social media has become the perfect platform to do this. We can do this almost anonymously -- doing everything from character assassination to slander while hiding who is doing the accusing. Is that serving us well?
I am not here simply thinking of such things as elections and votes but also policy based governance. We want efficiency in the Church and in the name of efficiency we have elected to put more power into fewer hands. At the same time, we have not bothered to differentiate between authority and responsibility and so the power gets to choose. In my own church body we chose to eliminate boards and executives and funnel nearly everything through a very few hands. We have done a mighty fine job of burning good people out and promoting some to their level of incompetence and, worse, created a perfect scenario for blame politics. We blame our leaders for every problem in the Church -- from not having babies and the graying of the pews to not recruiting enough pastors. We seem to look everywhere to blame someone for the problems that belong to everyone. How is that working for us so far?
Finally, everyone agrees we need rules. A constitution and bylaws are those rules, duly adopted and faithfully enforced. But we cannot and will not solve some of the vexing problems of the day by throwing bylaws at them. We cannot bylaw our way to more people in the pews or more souls baptized or more folks being catechized or more folks coming to the rail or more missionaries sent or more church workers trained. Votes cannot create the answers to the problems we have largely created for ourselves. We all need to look into the mirror and admit this and work, as best we are able and where we are placed, to correct our inadvertent or deliberate errors. Governance can sustain what is but it cannot grow the Church. Leaders can faithfully lead the Church but they cannot grow it either (especially in Rome where they have no wife!). It is frustrating for us to work so hard to make the business of the Church about votes, governance about control, and then to ignore how our rules cannot fix what we have broken. When we begin to admit this, we just may take the first step toward improving the state of things. That is called repentance.
2 comments:
Who are you referring to in your 38 uses of "we"?
We, the Invisible Church?
We, the Visible Church?
We, the non-Romanist non-Eastern Church?
We, the Evangelical Lutheran Church?
We, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod?
We, the registered 501(c)(3) tax-exempt religious corporation headquartered in St. Louis Missouri?
We, the LCMS members favoring a congregational polity within the LCMS?
We, the LCMS members favoring an episcopist polity within the LCMS?
We, the LCMS members supporting the United list of LCMS office candidates?
We, the LCMS members not supporting the United list of LCMS office candidates?
I have often wondered if the organizational structure of the church on earth, as the Lord Jesus would have described it to the Apostles, might have been intended to be a multitude of small, local, community based, faithful churches. Perhaps, even as Peter was given the keys, the Lord foresaw that He had in mind no centralized headquarters, no bureaucratic expansion, no conventions, polls, or elections, no weighty chain of command, no policy committees, no districts or ceremonial titles. I wonder. Why? So much of it, while often practical for uniformity and order, seems to get in the way of the Gospel, turning the Great Commission into a monolithic body weighed down by wrangling and rivalry, and swelled with policies and confusing edicts. I have no answer. Yet I do not agree that all this organizational fluff really advances the Gospel. However, when the church grows from a few followers to thousands as in the early chapters of the book of Acts, some organization was needed to create order from a loose confederation of small but growing congregations. One must acknowledge the practical aspects of church planting, the need for seminaries, ministries of charity, and even the support of political and moral causes related to things like the pro-life movement, and Christian education. All of these demand organization, rules, and leaders. But this can be a slippery slope too. We see great Christian educational institutions that succumbed to the culture, laid aside their original mission, and invited secular and non believers to attend and participate in their curriculum, resulting in compromises which destroyed their witness. Governance always involves consensus and compromise, but when the wicked enter a Christian organization, it is usually to impose standards which water down the Gospel for the sake of inclusion. Another urgent need is for faithful leadership not given to whim or fancy. In my humble view, in order for the LCMS to remain free of secular intrusion, it must ensure it is faithful, even at the expense of less growth or influence. We have the example of the churches in the opening pages of Revelation, and God will judge.
Soli Deo Gloria
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