From time to time on this blog, I will be publishing what I call “priceless quotes.” These will come from scholars, theologians, church practitioners, writers, et al.
What makes them “priceless” is not only the power of the truth they contain, but the fact that relatively few people have ever seen them. When we do an edition of “priceless quotes,” comments will be open for a limited time. So let us know what you think of a particular quote and how it hits you. And if you found others on the same theme that you would put in the “great” category, feel free to add them.
Today’s blog will feature three such quotes. Comments will be open Sunday and Monday.
“The real trouble is not in fact that the Church is too rich, but that it has become heavily institutionalized, with a crushing investment in maintenance. It has the characteristics of the dinosaur and the battleship. It is saddled with a plant and programme beyond its means, so that it is absorbed in problems of supply and preoccupied with survival. The inertia of the machine is such that the financial allocations, the legalities, the channels of organization, the attitudes of mind, are all set in the direction of continuing and enhancing the status quo. If one wants to pursue a course which cuts across these channels, then most of one’s energies are exhausted before one ever reaches the enemy lines.”
-John A.T. Robinson
“Increasing institutionalism is the clearest mark of early Catholicism – when church becomes increasingly identified with institution, when authority becomes increasingly coterminous with office, when a basic distinction between clergy and laity becomes increasingly self-evident, when grace becomes increasingly narrowed to well-defined ritual acts. We saw above that such features were absent from first generation Christianity, though in the second generation the picture was beginning to change.”
- James D. G. Dunn
“The clergy-laity dichotomy is a direct carry-over from pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism and a throwback to the Old Testament priesthood. It is one of the principal obstacles to the church effectively being God’s agent of the kingdom today because it creates a false idea that only ‘holy men,’ namely, ordained ministers, are really qualified and responsible for leadership and significant ministry. In the New Testament there are functional distinctions between various kinds of ministries but no hierarchical division between clergy and laity.”
- Howard Snyder
11 Comments
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The Howard Snyder quote is the best!
i wonder what my pastor would say when reading these…
Before a single thought of leaving the institution was a probably thought in my head, I often had an uneasy sense of ‘cleaning the aquarium’.
We worked for years, hard, every day, to keep those programs afloat.
No longer.
All three quotes are piquantly succinct. (Is that a tautology??)
Being more familiar with Howard Snyder’s writing I find his quote most attractive. I’d highly recommend reading his book The Community of the King.
Tom
Nothing untrue about any of the quotes, but the tone of each of them is a little too negative for me. There is a time and place for “church bashing” but I find folks respond with more joy and inspiration when presented with the light rather than a critique of the darkness.
I heard a pastor today saying that the Wednesday night small groups were our ‘equipping time’, that the ‘church’ was going to grow and everyone was needed to minister according to their gifts — the typical good-sounding phrases that get thrown around continually; but the entire context was his desire for people to get involved in serving and cleanup crews for the Wednesday night meal and the nursery. Which is fine and honorable if it needs done and you believe in the institution’s vision, but the lack of mention of mutual spiritual ministry was glaring.
The height of ministry available is ’small group leader’ which is facillitating a list of discussion questions based on the Sunday sermon or that week’s Bible reading. These are really sweet, sincere people who think they are very radical and would probably agree with all your quotes and never think it ironic.
(Not enough interest in organic church in my town yet, so I still visit this ‘church’ since I grew up there, and the small group does sometimes break out into some good sharing, in spite of the list of questions that we never finish.)
By the by, no fair blogging about ‘is there any book in the last 50 years that everyone has liked’ and not having open comments. That was just cruel. My first thought was ‘Mere Christianity’ by Lewis, since I have never heard a negative comment on that and everyone quotes Lewis. But the book is actually 60 years old. Sigh…
On a similar note, I just read how every new Bible translation beginning with the Vulgate has been howled at as scandalous. It took 50 years for the critics to stop dissing the original King James version. If every new Bible translation is accused of being heretical for no reason, how can we expect a regular book not to be attacked?
Frank – I really admire and appreciate your work. These quotations really nail how I feel about this “institution” I’ve served for so long. I’m in the process of disentangling myself from the the traditional church to become a planter and am relying heavily on your writings. Please check out my blog at http://faith4tomorrow.blogspot.com and leave me a comment on how I might proceed from here. Thank you so much for ALL your work – especially Pagan Christianity and Reimagining Church. Keep it up! Your voice is absolutely vital! Gratefully – Toby Jones
Angela, “Mere Christianity” is a good choice, but it too has scores of Christian critics. Check out the Amazon page below – the book has 39 one star reviews and 21 two star reviews. So not all Christians liked it.
http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652888/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223292441&sr=8-1
Jeff, none of those quotes were “bashing the church.” This view reflects the common mistake made toward prophetic voices that challenge a “religious system” and a “humanly invented way of doing things.” The confusion regarding what the church of Jesus Christ is and the institutional system that calls itself “church” is so drastic that such prophetic voices are sorely and profoundly needed today to recover God’s thought regarding the body of Christ. I think it’s a mistake to view them as “church bashing.”
I think the NT is a good example of the balance between presenting light and exposing darkness … which often happens at the same time … including in the ministry of Jesus Himself. I see this same balance in the writings of the men I quoted and most who are speaking and writing about the church today.
Frank
Maybe you are right. Maybe it depends on what your definition of church bashing is. Two years ago quotes like those did sound prophetic to me and enabled me to start getting my spiritual priorities straight. After a while though I needed more info on what to do rather than what not to do. Sort of like your 2 books: you start with what it ain’t, then move on to what it should be.
The first quote really speaks to my experience. My first steps into questioning the institution came during my Introduction to Christian Ministry class in college. After spending a whole semester learning maintenance, all I could think was, is this it? Is this all ministry is in the American church? So much time is spent on maintaining, where do you find the time and energy to change things that need to be changed? Where do you find time for actual people?
Useful quotes!, highlighting the issue of mindset – that ‘this’ – what we have for so long experienced as ‘church’ and have come to expect (and feel familiarly reassured by, that “Yes, we are ‘doing church’ as it’s meant to be done, and doing it rather well… we surely are real Christians”) -
…that ‘this’ may in fact be quite different from what God intends, far short of Christ’s best for us and our best for him (=freedom in him).
Is much church activity our SIMULATION of what WE THINK Christianity would look like – rather than truly EXPERIENCING LIFE IN GOD empowered by his Spirit?