DanWilt.com :: Conversations On Worship, Creativity and Culture.

Frank responded to me, and I’ll post his response below, with his permission:

Frank,

Thank you for your thoughtful and irenic response below.

I will do due diligence and pursue reading your books.

My apologies if I missed the issues which you raise.

I am friends with Brian as well, and appreciate his approach to these issues, so I look forward to appreciating your approach in the same ways.

I’ll respond after I’ve done my homework.

With thanks,

Dan

On 5-Oct-08, at 4:02 PM, Violabooks@aol.com wrote:

Hi Dan.

Thanks for writing me. I do appreciate it.

I’m unsure if you’ve carefully read a recent blog post of mine (http://frankviola.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/why-i-left-the-institutional-church-continuing-the-dialogue/ ), but it appears evident that you’ve not read my books — either “Pagan Christianity” or the positive sequel — “Reimagining Church”. I say this because you aren’t interacting with my actual position. Instead, you are beating up a straw man, which I assume is completely unwitting on your part.

My good friend Brian McLaren and I have talked extensively about this being the chief response among most of our critics. May I suggest that you read (or re-read) this from Brian himself?
http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/2006/07/a_friendly_note_to_my_critics_382.html

Contrary to what you are assuming, I affirm both contextualization and post-biblical institutions and inventions, and my books make this very clear. I thank God for computers (on most days!) My argument lies in a completely different sphere altogether. One that you’ve not addressed in your email.

Even so, I believe it’s a mistake to suggest that those of us who stand in the lineage of the Radical Reformers should equally forfeit our Bible and the Christian faith (out an assumed logical conclusion). It is precisely because of our devotion to both that has caused us to leave that which we felt has departed from the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. I’m referring to a particular system and not to God’s people who are within that system.

I affirm that you feel God has called you to work within what I have defined as “the institutional church system” — (my books define this; and it’s not what you’re assuming). And I have no problem with that at all. It’s unfortunate to me, however, that you don’t seem to equally affirm the millions of us who have left that system — both in the past and the present — to obey our conscience and to seek faithfulness to the living headship of the Lord Jesus Christ as we understand it. And to affirm our testimony that we have found Christ in His fullness outside of that system with one another.

I do appreciate that you will read my books as I believe you will better understand my views. Then perhaps we can have a sustentative conversation on the actual issues (smile).

Please feel free to post my response to your blog, as I just read it and see that you posted your email to me. Interestingly, Shane Claiborne, who I see you have a link to, got to the essence of what I’m writing about in his endorsement for the book – http://www.ReimaginingChurch.org

I hope that helps.

Yours in the bonds of Calvary,
Frank

—————–
NOTE: The constructive sequel to “Pagan Christianity” is now available: Go to http://www.ReimaginingChurch.org

Frank Viola (violabooks@aol.com)
website: http://www.frankviola.com
blog: http://www.frankviola.wordpress.com/
myspace: http://www.myspace.com/frankaviola
friends: http://www.housechurchresource.org

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In a message dated 10/5/2008 2:04:02 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, danwilt@mac.com writes:
Frank,

I have yet to read your book, so I will. I promise.

Others have suggested that you adequately responded in your blog post
to my comment.

I appreciate the heart and soul of your expressions on why you’ve left
the institutional church.

Here is my issue, and it formed the basis of my “Dorothy and the
wizard” analogy. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and I’m tired – so I’m going
to send more stream of consciousness than that with which I am
comfortable. Forgive me, if you would, for lack of editing.

If your case for leaving such an enculturated, institutional
Christianity is indeed true…

We should leave the bible. It is an accumulation of variant texts,
culturally shaped, and driven by human efforts to apprehend God across
time and history (functionally, that is called an institution).

It was preceded by, and built upon, books, stories and experiences
delivered to it by Jewish institutions – themselves iterations of
culture in times and places. More institutions, flawed as they are.

In fact, the voice of the New Testament writers resonates with the
amplification of thousands of years of, dare I say it, institutional
Judaism ( for all of it’s errant ways, a protector and keeper of the
Jewish worldview, and even a deliver of the Hebrew scriptures into our
hands), and as well with thousands of years of repeated rituals,
symbolic actions and structures meant to serve a diverse family of
humanity in remembering the Story that holds the universe on its course.

The following is not intended to be adversarial, but honest. Please
read the first sentence as it is presented – without sarcasm and with
serious presentation.

I suggest, that in leaving large or small institutionalized systems
and religious systems (flawed as they are) you may want to consider,
simultaneously leaving your faith – as it seems to me that the
expression of faith for which you are question can be disembodied
somehow from the accoutrements of culture and somehow rooted in a
deeply historical narrative – brought to you by a variety of
institutions facilitating human beings both documenting their
revelations and delivering them to you.

In other words, from where does your faith come to us? It comes to us
through institutions that developed around it’s delivery to you, and
to me, and to a new generation.

Aerodynamics are not biblical. Quantum mechanics are not biblical.
Biotechnology is not biblical. Plumbing is not biblical. Electricity
is not biblical. Well, maybe they are, but I can’t find you verses to
point this out to you. Why do we embrace them? Because of their
truthfulness, helpfulness and in some cases, because of their
enlightening to us of biblical ideas.

In fact, myriad realities of cultural exploration, discovery and
progress lack representation in the Bible. This is where our
deification of the Word of God has led us – to expect it to cover all
the terrain God intends to cover. This is utterly unhelpful, and in my
estimation, untrue to the biblical message.

We neglect in our reading of the New Testament that which is observed
and assumed by it’s writers – institutions come and go to serve ideas
and practices. Simply because they need to be changed, evaluated, and
de- or re-constructed, does not speak of their intrinsic flaw – it
speaks of their limited value as vehicles that call us to:

Remember from where we’ve come, to

Reclaim ancient truths repeated (often by institutional practices)
daily, weekly, yearly and across millenia, and to

Renew our commitment to these truths in light of our tendency to
daily, weekly, yearly and across millenia… to forget.

Institutional church? You are correct. It has limited value.

Should it be discarded for a new, free from of spirituality? I’ve
taken that path myself, and it tires me.

I now expect the Church institutional – secondarily to the Church
triumphant – to learn once again to deliver the oppressed from both
demons and poverty-inducing systems, to sing the songs of Zion in
fresh cultural sounds and words, and to further the cause of the
Christ of the historic and culturally-embedded scriptures – to co-
mission with Him in the bringing of His Kingdom.

This is why I stay in the institutional Church. I want my great,
great, great grandchildren to remember the Story that moves us forward
toward new creation, resurrection, and the new Eden to come.

I stay in the institutional Church because a heavy, dull axe will cut
a tree down faster than a sharp, small razor blade.

I stay in the institutional Church because I don’t trust myself to
deliver to the next generation all that they may need to remember – I
will choose to deliver that message in community, through formal and
information institutions and cultural vehicles, and in tandem with
others of my age and ilk.

To do so, I will rely on generations past, whose voices still ring in
my ears through institutions that made books, built cathedrals,
created songs, did justice, loved mercy, and walked humbly with God.

I will do so relying on scriptures that landed in our lap because of
institutions (in most cases) that scribed and re-scribed them as they
worshipped in both glorious and flawed institutions.

I won’t stop brushing my teeth or praying each morning because I am
now bored. I will, like a new plant, shoot feeder roots into the soil
looking for the beauty, resource and sustenance that lies embedded in
rock, clay and dirt – fitting words for an institution.

This morning, I took the eucharist again, for the five-hundredth time
I’m sure, and it was boring. But, I remembered. I could see through
the sounds, and smells and smiles and symbols, to the message. In some
cases, they became larger to me because of the beauty with which I was
surrounded.

Bored? No. I found that for which I was looking.

Dan Wilt
Director, The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies
http://www.danwilt.com

I posted this over on Jeff Strong’s Mere Disciple (http://meredisciple.com/blog/?p=37#comment-8) blog:

This is where I live, Jeff; thanks for the post. I’ve promised Frank to read Reimagining Church as our dialogue continues, which is just good form.

Jill, misunderstanding or not, I hear the same tones in the articles and voices that call for this fresh approach (and I am not antagonistic to them, by any means).

Frank’s thinking, and the “new ways” of being the community of Christ (and thereby doing the church’s co-mission with Christ), will either be some form of institution in 20 years or another layer that serves our next galvanizing of resource into an institution.

In this scenario, institutions can be gifts that serve a time and place, and a mission. I simply don’t believe that and “institutionless” faith exists – though we buck the present ones we find. The family is an institution – and must continually be tweaked in a time, place and a context – but to suggest it is archaic now, and we should move on would be foolish.

In the same spirit (though the analogy breaks down, I know), the institutions that have formed to further mission at a time, in a place, in culture (not in all cases, as history screams at us) must be evaluated.

I also am not suggesting that Frank’s present disclaiming should not exist in the conversation we must necessarily have in this generation – I do embrace his voice. We actually need the “runningprophets” to run to God and ask hard questions (like “to whom or from whom am I running) that will fuel work within the systems that be. They have to watch “why they leave” as much as we have to watch “why we stay.” A symbiotic approach should be welcomed.

However, I simply do not believe a new version of institutionless Christianity can or will rise – it will simply take on new clothing of another age.

Many of my dear friends have “left” the institutional Church, and I fully understand their positions and deeply love them. I’ve been tempted to take this path, literally hundreds of times, myself.

However, I say that as long as no shared resources are brought together over long periods of time to accomplish a significantly shared communal mission (projects or church budgets), and no movement arises from their shared work (boards and leadership communities), and no explorations into expensive arts of worship (cathedrals, buildings, ways of eucharist, music, etc.) are pursued, they might succeed at having a version of “institutionless” Christianity.

That is, unless they remain in families and communities – other flawed but beautiful institutions – demanding loving leaders to continually bring reform and reinvest the ways of Christ into aging approaches to our mission in the world.

For me, age is beautiful – and must continually be both gleaned from and challenged. This is how we honor the mothers and fathers whose DNA we irresistibly bear.

Friends,

I’ve read the article, “Why I Left The Institutional Church,” I’ve read some of the themes in Pagan Christianity, and I’m about to engage with all of Frank’s ideas in Reimagining Church.

I’m neither setting up, nor swinging at a strawman.

I’m suggesting that Frank hasn’t left anything. We can’t leave our past. We can only, from its ashes, rise as a fresh phoenix in the world. In our rising, our DNA will remain the same.

While there is tremendous, tremendous value in all of Frank’s work – I am an advocate from within and a celebrant of his ideas – I simply do not believe there is any such thing as an “institutionless” Christianity that can be rediscovered in some new, objective way.

These jewels run through human hands – and institutions are the result.

We inherit a conglomeration of perspectives from history, our language (hat tip to Derrida) and the cultural soup in which we swim.

I applaud our shared vision of a recovered communal vision of the Church. I applaud it, and further it in all my work at the Institute. I am in the ranks. I sing the song. I champion the ideals. I applaud it. Did I say all of this already?

I will simply be challenging, as I do my homework, what I believe to be (yes, I will read the book) a negative view of both historical process and the nature of the institutional church.

The title of Frank’s article, the only piece I have read of his, is exactly this – “Why I Left….” There is no straw man here. That’s what he called his article.

I simply believe that God has been as intimately and historically involved with the casting out of demons, the caring for the poor and marginalized, and the enacting of the ministry of Jesus – as He has been with us figuring out what the Body of Christ should look like when Constantine declared his conversion and evil popes wielded imperialistic power.

We can’t leave our great, great grandparents. We can only reform their ways.

Leave the building? Sure. Leave the services? Sure. Leave the routinization and concretization of Christianity? Sure. Leave the institution – try as you will, human beings are creatures of habit, and once we do something that works, we try to do it again – and an institution is born.

Again, as long as our Reimagined Church (published by an institution) never needs to write a paycheck, build a building, or gather corporate resource, maybe we could actually, truly, unequivocally “leave” the institutional church.

Finally, let me say again, I am not married to church institutions and their structures. I have a love/hate relationship with them.

I simply embrace their flawed value, and place in our story.

I will use them, build them, renew them, and even leave them, as best as I can – given that I am their child.

Roger, thanks for the thought, but my use of the word “tempted” was not intended to skew negative. I do appreciate your words regarding the reasons many have “left.”

By tempted, I meant that the idea of formal disconnection with any concretized institutional structures was welcome. Many days, it still is for me, so I am actually extremely sympathetic with those who say they have “left.”

I’m still not saying that the “leaving” is bad. I’m saying that the idea that all institutions can actually be utterly left is a fallacy – especially when we’re carrying with us in our luggage, on our diaspora from the institution, the same scriptures, fundamental beliefs, essential theologies and historically shared narrative of people of faith moving together through culture and time.

I’m suggesting that the leaving does not actually occur in the objective and complete way that I hear it being spoken.

I’m suggesting that we take, and create, a new institutional progression wherever we go. The definition of “institution” is where I return – institutions are human patterns with cumulative effect. Of course they are fallible. We are. Why would we expect them not to be?

I suppose what I want to say is this. Rename the article, Frank (and friends who like the title) –

“Why I Left The Current Institutional Church Structures In Which I Had My Church Experiences (As Did Others, With Similar Pain Or Desire For Reform) In Order To Create A Fresh, Organic, Communally Institutional Paradigm For The Community Of Christ-Followers That We Happen To Still Call The Church In The 21st Century, In Order That We Might Recover Vital Ideas Which We Have Lost.”

But I suppose that title would be too long, and the term “institutional” is too loaded to embrace as a normal, fallible human layering of culture.

If words mean nothing, or little, we’re fine. If words mean something, I’m looking for more nuance in the use of the term “institutional church,” and I’m apparently (I really didn’t plan to get into the discussion of ecclesiology this far, I might add) advocating that we never actually leave institutions on one level – human beings reform their vision, commitments and actions – which generate new institutions.

No, this is not semantics. Institutions are good, and some are more helpful than other. I look forward to the living institutions that will flow out of Frank’s work, my friends, and yours, Roger.

But don’t say an institution is left behind for something “other.” It’s another institutional paradigm in a nascent state. For this fresh approach, I am grateful – and will participate.

Here is the definition of “institution” from Wikipedia:

Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior.

The term, institution, is commonly applied to customs and behavior patterns important to a society, as well as to particular formal organizations of government and public service. As structures and mechanisms of social order among humans, institutions are one of the principal objects of study in the social sciences, including sociology, political science and economics. Institutions are a central concern for law, the formal regime for political rule-making and enforcement. The creation and evolution of institutions is a primary topic for history.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Aspects of Institutions
* 2 Perspectives of the Social Sciences
* 3 Notes
* 4 References
* 5 See also
* 6 External links

[edit] Aspects of Institutions

Although unindividual, formal organizations, commonly identified as “institutions,” may be deliberately and intentionally created by people, the development and functioning of institutions in society in general may be regarded as an instance of emergence; that is, institutions arise, develop and function in a pattern of social self-organization, which goes beyond the conscious intentions of the individual humans involved.

As mechanisms of social cooperation, institutions are manifest in both objectively real, formal organizations, such as the U.S. Congress, or the Roman Catholic Church, and, also, in informal social order and organization, reflecting human psychology, culture, habits and customs. Most important institutions, considered abstractly, have both objective and subjective aspects: examples include money and marriage. The institution of money encompasses many formal organizations, including banks and government treasury departments and stock exchanges, which may be termed, “institutions,” as well as subjective experiences, which guide people in their pursuit of personal well-being. Powerful institutions are able to imbue a paper currency with certain value, and to induce millions into cooperative production and trade in pursuit of economic ends abstractly denominated in that currency’s units. The subjective experience of money is so pervasive and persuasive that economists talk of the “money illusion” and try to disabuse their students of it, in preparation for learning economic analysis.

Marriage and family, as a set of institutions, also encompass formal and informal, objective and subjective aspects. Both governments and religious institutions make and enforce rules and laws regarding marriage and family, create and regulate various concepts of how people relate to one another, and what their rights, obligations and duties may be as a consequence.

Culture and custom permeate marriage and family. In the United States and western Europe, a transition from a conception of marriage, as license for sexual intercourse granted by Church and State, to a conception of marriage as a form of contract, freely entered into, has occasioned momentous social and political controversies regarding laws and customs governing the freedom of women, divorce, cohabitation outside marriage, contraception, and homosexuality.

Examples of recently emerging institutions may include many Web 2.0 socially based internet activities, such as open source software or free software, and wikipedia itself.

I had just created a lovely, large response to your thoughts, Brian. As I tried to post, it locked up, and deleted. That was a sad moment, as I’m busy working on other things, and wrote (as I’m wont to do in this discussion) out of passion.

Brian, your thoughts are helpful, and I appreciate your last line.

Frank has consistently titled two pieces in ways I, to be honest, despise.

“Pagan Christianity” and “Why I Left The Institutional Church.”

The first, tells me that someone thinks cultural formations of Christianity are largely negative.

The second, in my mind, is a poor title and smacks of the same historic arrogance that has always precipitated beautiful new movements with errant views of the soil from which they spring.

Hey, just being honest.

This may help my readers to understand me better:

The institutional church was never the antagonist in my story – though I see that for many, it has been for them.

In fact, my experience in liturgical churches (my upbringing) and then in a few hundred denominations since then, has been largely good, enriching, rooting and aesthetically charged with the grandeur of God (Hopkins) for me.

Talk about feeling like you don’t fit in, in many contemporary church movements. I’ve looked into more pastors “deer in the headlights” eyes than I can to admit when I talk about the glory of the eucharistic symbol, the liminality of beauty, or the sacrality of time and routine in worship thinking.

For many (not all) in contemporary and emerging contexts, old feels bad. For me, old feels rich, mineable, important, primal, educational and even applicable.

More circles, couches, sound systems, guitars, bricks and quick paintings don’t draw me – community and mission, coupled with creationality in aesthetics, art, music, buildings, narrative, explorative formats and excellence do draw me – all mingled in a fine stew of tremendous respect for how Christians of myriad ages have fought to exercise their faith healthily in culture.

Not-So-Subtle-Reform-Language? Yes. I’ll lead a brigade, and do.

Subtle-Replacement-Language? Distance and the language of new discovery hearkening back millenia but skimming over centuries? Don’t do so well with that.

For me, it’s like the teenager who can’t hear the Dad, but will listen to the grandfather. Then we mature, and the Dad starts to make sense – just when our teenagers are starting to disdain us and our pagan ways.

And… I’m not saying Frank is saying that. I’ll read the books, especially Reimagining Church as is his recommendation.

The titles, so far, of the first book and the article, tire me.

Then again, may I come up with perfect titles for books (that certain bloggers don’t read), summing up my entire thesis without flaw so no one ever needs more clarity. I’d leave an institution for that.

Wait, I can’t leave an institution. I need an institution to publish my books and get them out there. Wait, some Christian publishing institutions came from the institutional church, or those in it. Wait. I’ll start my own publishing company. Wait. Then I’ll have to publish someone else’s books in 50 years. Wait. Then I’m an institution.

Thanks for this Brian. This is why I rarely, if ever, use the term “emergent.”

I use “emerging.” Today, the words are loaded, and span an ocean.

Thanks for pushing me.