Churchless Christian

We find everywhere today a grass roots effort to restore the family and family values. It centers on the husband and father being the spiritual leader of the home. It often includes home schooling and home birthing. As a result, many families are leaving traditional churches that split up the family and choosing to focus more on a family worship experience. This is becoming ever so evident in the explosive popularity of house churches. But the traditional church is once again changing to address this new social treat. Should this change be attributed to God?

New churches are sprouting up claiming to support family integration and family focus. In some of the new permutations, families are encouraged to retain the husband/father as a sort of para-leader, and the family operates within the church as a microcosm of the church. Do not be deceived. This is the church once again responding to the social climate of the day. It is not God. Why do I say this? Because underneath is still the same old structure that has existed for over a thousand years. It is a structure that permits and encourages men to operate as an elite class of priest. It promotes men and their agendas. And it is a structure that places men in control, having power over others in the same way that it has been through most of Christian history.

Down through the centuries, the Church has changed. Most preachers attribute this to different moves of the Holy Spirit. They refer to it as a restoration of praise, of spiritual authority, of apostles and the five-fold ministry, and of spiritual gifts and other things. I want to challenge that notion. I do NOT believe that any of the changes the Church appears to have experienced is the handiwork of God. I believe the changes we have seen are a result of pressure from social culture, and that underneath the façade of transformation, there has never been any real change. The Spirit of God brings about true transformation, not mere alterations of a faulty structure. Yet, even after all the changes the Church has been through in the past thousand years, the underlying structure has always been the same. It is a structure that promotes men and has enabled them to have control and power over others. Men’s titles may have changed during this time but not their role. They may be called pastors, but they still see themselves as priests, as an elite class. At the foundation, the contemporary Protestant church is still filled with Catholicism.

Let’s consider the Protestant movement. It is interesting that the birth of Protestantism coincided with the Renaissance movement. I believe that the birth of the Protestant movement was in response to the social pressure of the Renaissance period. During the Renaissance, people began to explore personal liberty and freedom of expression. Protestant churches were a clear reflection of this. Does it seem reasonable that it would take change in our social culture to prompt God to move or restore something? What then is the stronger influence upon the Church: God or society?

Now consider the social pressure that today’s Church faces.

We find everywhere today a grass roots effort to restore the family and family values. It centers on the husband and father being the spiritual leader of the home. It often includes home schooling and home birthing. As a result, many families are leaving traditional churches that split up the family and choosing to focus more on a family worship experience. This is becoming ever so evident in the explosive popularity of house churches. But the traditional church is once again changing to address this new social treat. Should this change be attributed to God?

New churches are sprouting up claiming to support family integration and family focus. In some of the new permutations, families are encouraged to retain the husband/father as a sort of para-leader, and the family operates within the church as a microcosm of the church. Do not be deceived. This is the church once again responding to the social climate of the day. It is not God. Why do I say this? Because underneath is still the same old structure that has existed for over a thousand years. It is a structure that permits and encourages men to operate as an elite class of priest. It promotes men and their agendas. And it is a structure that places men in control, having power over others in the same way that it has been through most of Christian history.

One of the common questions raised regarding house churches relates to their involvement in ‘mission’. What can a (little) house church do, that is effective in its local community and for overseas mission? This question often comes from the perspective that larger churches have more resources, and hence can be more effective in ‘mission’ eg a large church could afford to totally fund a large team of indigenous church planters in India.

However, organised churches are much more expensive to run than house churches, and hence house churches potentially have much more resource available for ‘mission’. The recent Time Magazine article on house churches quoted Golden Gate Seminary's Karr “ … reckons that building and staff consume 75% of a standard church's budget, with little left for good works. House churches can often dedicate up to 90% of their offerings. Karr notes that traditional church is fine "if you like buildings. But I think the reason house churches are becoming more popular is that their resources are going into something more meaningful."

These figures seem generous to ‘standard’ churches ….. many ‘standard’ churches I have seen consume much more than 75% of their budget internally, and few house churches would even spend 10% internally. In addition, if you factor in the ‘value’ of all the volunteer work required for an organised church to function, the actually running cost would be very high, with a miniscule amount going outside the church for ‘mission, or to help the poor.

As mega churches continue to emerge, some people hope that they will bring some cost efficiencies that will help increase what is going outside the church. Unfortunately, the consensus is that as churches get larger, they actually get more expensive (per person) to operate, because they need to increase their quality, provide a much broader range of ‘services etc. Occasionally I hear proud reports that mega church WXY gave lots of money to some wonderful cause (or saw lots of people ‘saved) …. I usually do some simple maths on this to work out the giving (or salvations) per member of the mega church, and always seem to find that the ‘achievement’ per member is great, but nothing remarkable … in fact I know house churches that ‘achieve’ far more than this per ‘member’.

I recall a Management course I attended years ago … they gave the example of a Government office building, and asked us to imagine it containing 1000 government employees with all the means of external communication cut off – they suggested that these 1000 people would generate enough work just organizing themselves, that they could be fully busy without generating any ‘output’. I immediately pictured the church …. In a typical ‘organised’ church, the majority of time, energy and finance can be consumed just keeping the ‘organisation’ running, with little or no external ‘output’ …. it was a scary & sobering epiphany.

Talking with a local church minister recently, he remarked how he would love to have his church (about 150 people) sponsor a micro-enterprise bank in Asia (costing about $5,000 pa for 2 years) – unfortunately they had just taken an offering for other purposes, and some of their elders were opposed to the idea, but he hoped to get the church to ‘buy’ into it. In contrast, I know of a house church where just one family have personally sponsored a micro-enterprise bank, just through giving the same amount as they were previously giving (tithing) to the organised church they were in.

I was fascinated to come across stories about a large church in Arlington, Texas – Mission Arlington – which is having huge impact in the local community. “Today Mission Arlington is ……….. nearly 4,000 in attendance) serving over 10,000 people a week in the Arlington Texas community with food, furniture, medical and dental care, school transportation, child and adult day care, counseling, etc. What can Jesus do for a community? The people of Arlington know. Every year hundreds of people come to Christ through this transformational ministry. Lives are being touched. Lives are being changed. The church should and can make a huge difference in a community. (from Ten Paradigm Shifts Toward Community Transformation by Eric Swanson). This sounds amazing …. And what is even more amazing is that Mission Arlington is a house church movement of nearly 250 community house churches (I removed these words from the quote above). Check out http://www.missionarlington.org/

So what can a house church do, that is effective in its local community and for overseas mission? I am convinced that if the people in a house church remain committed to a life of generous giving and commitment to building God’s kingdom locally and internationally, they can achieve wonderful things.

When considering Christian artifacts, we find that many of these artifacts have come to exist as a way of defining authority and especially the final authority. The Catholic Church teaches that the Church is the ultimate authority, whereas most Protestant Churches teach that such authority belongs to the Bible as the Word of God. The Catholic Church presents a very compelling argument. They point out that the Bible has only been in a language the common man understands and readily available in print for only a few centuries. What was the authority during the other eighteen centuries? The Protestants have come to use God’s Word (Bible) as the final authority in order to support their rationale for breaking away from the authority of the Catholic Church. But because the interpretation and the understanding of the Bible is NOT universally agreed upon, Protestant churches have fragmented into the dozens of denominations that we see today.

Try setting aside the arguments as to who is right concerning ultimate authority and consider the consequences of our attributing authority to “something.” By claiming the Church has final authority, the Catholics have elevated the Church to a position of deity, and by association, Church leadership is similarly elevated. This does tend to keep the Church unified, which on the surface would seem to be a good thing. But this is only good if the practices and doctrines of the Church are also correct. Additionally, by esteeming Mary and other “saints” as beings of authority, they become elevated to positions of deity as well.

The Protestants, on the other hand, have elevated the Bible to that same position of holiness to which the Catholics have elevated the Church. Now the Bible is divine. This becomes ever so apparent when you see inscribed on the cover of most Bibles the word “Holy” next to “Bible.” Many Bibles sit as shrines in homes everywhere. And though many people would never admit to it, they value their Bibles just as others value their idols. It becomes a sort of good luck charm that has the power to bring goodness upon the one who pours his affection over it.

I give lots of spiritual explanations about why I simplified my faith and gave organisation the boot in my christian faith. I believe it's a lot more aligned to the New Testament, its better evangelistically, it's more cost effective and it's more authentic than the former models I worked with, BUT...
I wonder if the reality is, that like millions of others around the world, I am a downshifter.
What's a downshifter? Its people who have decided to break out of the busyness of Western life. Often it involves people leaving jobs voluntarily for more lower paid work but which gives a better quality of life. Downshifters have come to the conclusion that RELATIONSHIPS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN POSSESSIONS. Downshifters have looked at what they are doing in life and realise that they have to make a significant change to their lives if they want to see and experience what they really desire. Instead of shifting up in wealth, power and responsibility which our consuming culture assumes, they do the opposite and downshift. Basically they are simplifying there lives in a radical way.

FACTS
70000 Australians a year are downshifting.
The number of downshifters in Australia is expected to be between 1 and 2 million people within the next ten years.

THOUGHTS
I think that the explosion of Western Christians returning to simple Christianity in all its forms, is part of this societal move towards downshifting.
For me it has been a real relief to get off the treadmill of Church programming, which in the end was hindering my families' relationships with one another and exhausting us, thus had begun to work against our values. What I love about living my faith in this way is not the theology but the simplicity. I am just now beginning to truly relax.
I think there are two ways Christians are downshifting. The first way is the Simple Church way in all its variations. Funnily enough the second way is the trend towards mega church. This can also be a sign of downshifting. People are exhausted and tired of the heavy involvement needed in the local congregational church so instead head along to the Mega Church where they can hide in the crowd and avoid all the stress and pressure while still enjoying feeling a sense of achievement. Having been on the staff of a large N.Z church I know this is true, as less than 20% (closer to 5 -10%) are involved in making it all happen, which means that literally thousands of people in one mega church have most probably downshifted from their previous church involvement level, even though they have upshifted in regards to church size (they have physically and emotionally distanced themselves from the proceedings).

I can just imagine Jesus walking across the water here at Whangateau