Blogging necessitates casual readings of one another’s hearts. But I don’t think you’re getting the point of those of us in the ‘diaspora’…

In my experience–

something is rumbling
something ’bout to bumble out
someone is humbling me
turning me inside out

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

Thanks for pushing me.

I think you’re having the same reaction to the word “institution” that others have when you use the word “emergent”.

Brilliant statement here Dan, not sure if it is the remnant of the original reply: “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.”

I hope you’re getting some rest.

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.

I think he mostly is talking about reformation of practice based on a reformation of faith. If the medium is the message, then what does the current medium of the Church express to our culture and our community about the nature of God? I can honor and appreciate my family while still recognizing it’s inherent dysfunctions with cycles and systems I must break free from for the sake of the next generation of my family. (and I need to admit I’ll perpetuate my own new dysfunctions however un-intentionally)

Frank’s written two great articles that have been turned into books. Don’t get bogged down by the filler and throw away lyrics that are there just because the song needed a second verse. There are some elements of practice that will only be changed by starting your own family unit, which I don’t think Frank feels requires us to deny where we’ve come from, just try to be healthier than we’ve been.

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.

Your biases are showing. Many of us weren’t ‘tempted’ to leave.

Some of us have been called out, others were driven out by sinful leaders, still others rejected for bringing truth–scapegoated–and still others were ‘bored out of their gourds’ out.

The point is: There are millions of us who have left (and yet still finding life with Jesus) in the borderlands.

Labeling our leavings as a giving into ‘temptation’ reveals that you do not fully understand your friend’s ‘positions’, though I’m confident you still deeply love them.

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.

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.