The bureaucratic church of the past, with its by-laws and constitutional boundaries, sees the developing church of vocation as too unmanageable, too unruly, chaotic. If everyone is empowered directly from God to engage in whatever ministry that person feels called to, just how is the church to manage the charismatic anarchy that ensues? Everyone running around doing what they discern as their call? Cray-cray!
The charge of the bureaucratic church is not without merit. In fact, bureaucracy and authority have been the ways that the church has managed itself since - and before - the time of Paul. Paul was an anomaly, you may recall. The Apostle did not know Jesus...never met the guy. His calling lacked the hands-on experience of the disciples, but rested, instead, in the power of the revelatory spirit. His calling was spiritual, charismatic, mystical. The mystic Paul countered the claim of face-to-face authority by claiming an equally sound spiritual insight. In response, Paul developed a theology of grace. That theology was later rejected as an organizing core principle of the late first century because grace was simply to unruly to institutionalize. Law and authority took it place in the concept of apostolic succession.
So, beginning as early as the the late first century c.e., the chaotic mysticism of Paul was rejected and a system of law and authority took its place. The early Christian Church was organized around law and authority, power and position. By-laws and constitutions spelled out succinctly who could be a member, what actions they had to take to maintain membership, the means of control and authority and rules for what boards and committees did and did not do. Sometimes, the rules might have allowed for how persons do things within or through the congregation that were not included in constitutions and by-laws. Rarely, that is. Normally, everything was set in proverbial stone.
The contemporary congregation finds itself at the cusp of a whole new way of thinking and organizing, however. If our churches are to be made relevant again in the developing culture in which we find ourselves, we are being forced to cede the organizational foundations of law and authority and open ourselves to organizing from the ubiquitous vocation of universal calling. We are challenged to return to pre-apostolic succession, when mysticism remained tolerable and grace was a core theological principle, to do the work that the ancients feared. We have to herd the cats of Christian spirituality.
There are three steps to the process that I can imagine:
1. Scrap the old thinking. Organizing around law and authority are things of the past, and they should be put there. This means scrapping constitutions and by-laws, along with rules about membership and activity.
2. Adopt new thinking. How does the church embody personal and communal spirituality and how can it organize itself around vocation? Are there categories of service around which the church might organize the ministries that are reflected in the calls that comprise it? What would this look like? How can we imagine and create such a fluid structure? What the heck is a fluid structure?
3. Try it. Step into the unknown of structures that reflect the theology of grace instead of law and organizations that are built around vocation instead of regulation.
Shiloh is attempting just that in the outcome of its latest five-year plan. The congregation is re-organizing around grace and vocation. Our hope is that we are able to work the bugs out of what looks like unmanageable chaos to reach a point where we minister together out of our common call, by finding a place that honors the mystical/spiritual realities of individual call.
Join us in attempting to herd the mystical and spiritual cats, in order to return to relevancy within the cultural evolution that is taking place all around us.
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