Do We Need an Institutional Church?
“What other church is there besides institutional? There’s nobody who doesn’t have problems with the church, because there’s sin in the church. But there’s no other place to be a Christian except the church. There’s sin in the local bank. There’s sin in the grocery stores. I really don’t understand this naïve criticism of the institution. I really don’t get it. Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There’s no life in the bark. It’s dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it’s prone to disease, dehydration, death. So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn’t last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it’s prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.”
-Eugene Peterson
Lego My Church
“Uncle Joel, Uncle Joel! Look what I made!”
It was my nine-year-old nephew, Caleb. He’d been tinkering in the back room for hours, it seemed. And now he wanted to show me the fruits of his labor. It was a carefully constructed Lego helicopter–and it was impressive. Each edge was smooth, every piece had a place, nothing looked out of place. My nephew apparently knows a thing or two about Legos.
I can’t say that I’m expert in the field. I, of course, never had Legos to play with as a child. Only sticks and dirt. But even so, I could appreciate what Larry Osborne is saying in one of his recent books when he suggests that people are like Legos. We are like Legos, says Osborne, because when it comes to our ability to connect with others, our capacity is limited. Some people have dozens of connecting points. Others have only a few. But either way, once those connecting points are full–they’re full. People who have reached this stage may very well be friendly to others, but it will no longer be possible for people to connect in a deep, lasting, and powerful way. They simply do not have the relational capacity.
It’s a simple insight–but extremely important for understanding the ways that church communities function. For starters, it helps explain what I like to call the “I’ve-been-here-six-months-and-everybody-was-so-friendly-at-first-but-how-come-I-still-don’t-have-any-close-friends” Phenomenon (or IBHSMAEWSFAFBHCISDHAFP for short). The less charitable explanations of this phenomenon are to suggest that those friendly faces that greeted you that first Sunday morning were insincere or that the church is cliquish (I’m not sure which would be worse) . But if we can understand that people are like Legos, then we can perhaps be more gracious. The simple reality may be that people’s connectors are full.
When a church is full of people who feel that there connectors are “full”–that they have all the meaningful relationships they need–it is a blessing. But this great gift–this thing (I think) we all want to see happen in our churches–is a double edged sword. Because the reality is that “success” in the area of community building can quickly become a barriar for growth. The bonds that connect us to one another can easily become barriars that make other people feel shut out. (Again, not necessarily because people are cliquish or insincere, but because people are only capable of so much.) This may be one reason why it more established churches (where members presumably are more connected) often find it more challenging to grow then the new church plant across town (a place where people are new and, by definition, unconnected).
But I wonder, does it have to be this way? Assuming Osborne’s premise is right (something that could be debated), is it possible for a Christian community to have people connected in rich relationships while also leaving room for others to come in? How connected should we be to our brothers and sisters in Christ? What avenues can we provide for people who are looking for connections to actually make them with others who need them?
