7/26/12 “WHEN THE CULTURE MOVED AND THE CHURCH DIDN’T”

7/26/12. “THE CULTURE MOVED, THE CHURCH DIDN’T”

One of the most devastating subversions ever perpetrated upon Christ’s church was in that (circa) 4th century decision (assisted by its new enthusiast, the Emperor Constantine) that it needed temples, priesthood, liturgical performances, etc. so that it didn’t play second-fiddle to the pagan religions of the day in the Roman Empire. What this ultimately resulted in was the creation of a custodial office of pastor-priests (clergy) and a passive-dependent laity who received services and attended the rites of what would become the primary visible expression of, and understanding of: the church to this day.

What got displaced, and essentially forgotten by the vast majority, was that core-discipline given to the church by Jesus: disciple-making. All of that resulted in the church being essentially emasculated or neutered, i.e., it turned from being an organically and spontaneously growing missionary movement and highly reproductive, … to that of an ecclesiastical institution that sought status but was not intentionally reproductive. I say: a devastating subversion.

I am reminded of that when I occasionally read one of my favorite poems, one by Oliver Goldsmith: The Deserted Village. Goldsmith is lamenting the demise of the quaint Irish village of “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village on the plain” (mid-18th century). At the heart of the nostalgia is his pleasant memory of the centrality of the village church, and the gentle, caring (custodial) pastor. All of that came to an end with the emergence of several social factors, among which were the greed of the gentry who did not was the peasants growing gardens and hunting (poaching) on their estates. Then, at an even larger social dislocation was the industrial revolution where cottage industries were replaced with textile factories in the cities, and the peasants were forced to leave Sweet Auburn, and move into the squalor that resulted in the cities.

But the gentle, custodial pastor had not made disciples in Auburn. He had simply provided a religious security for these simple folk. They were not equipped to be spiritually reproductive. He had failed in the core-discipline of disciple-making, so that in their new urban-industrial location without the village church, or the Sabbath tradition, they were absorbed into the urban darkness and inhumane conditions written about by Charles Dickens (and Karl Marx).

Conversely, in the 20th century, the Cultural Revolution in China disenfranchised Christians, expropriated their institutional properties, made it illegal to meet—and what happened? The church went underground, remembered its counter-cultural essence as the people of the Kingdom of God, learned again what it was that Jesus called them to be and do, … they became disciple-makers again, and the church grew exponentially.

As Mike Breen states it: “Churches don’t make disciples—disciples make churches.”

We’re at that point in history where the culture is moving rapidly into something quite different, but the church is slow to respond because it has forgotten its calling, forgotten its core-discipline: disciple-making.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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