Institution or Kingdom?

What is a church?  It is a group of people that God has brought together, it is the body of Christ, and it is a place to worship and serve God.  Churches come in all styles and sizes, and each congregation has a unique witness and identity.  If one church tries to be “just like” another church, there’s bound to be disappointment and frustration.

But no matter what you think of our church (or of any other church), you need to make a fundamental choice about its nature:

Is the church an institution or a kingdom?

When we think of the church primarily as an institution, our focus centers upon issues that we find in other organizations.  We pay attention to the church’s resources: its finances, its building, and its officers and membership.  We want to be stable or growing, with a healthy budget, well-maintained facilities, capable leaders, and increasing attendance.  We look to the long-term health of the church: will it continue to exist in the future?  Do we have all the pieces in place that it takes for the church as an organization to continue to exist?  If we do, then we’re a successful church.

When we think of the church as a kingdom, however, we pay attention to other factors.  By calling the church a kingdom, we recognize that there is a King who is in control of the church.  We are the citizens of the kingdom and subject of the King, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Our role as citizens and subjects is to do our King’s will.  We trust that he sets plans in place and equips us with resources to fulfill them.  When we follow those plans and use those resources to fulfill his purposes, then we’re a successful church.

If you get an “itch” that things aren’t going right in church, the itch you feel depends upon your view of the church.  If you think of it primarily as an institution, then you start to itch if you think that it doesn’t have enough money or people or whatever else to remain viable.  But if you think of the church primarily as a kingdom, you get an itch when you think that the church isn’t fulfilling its purpose in God’s program.

It’s popular for many people to say that they don’t like “organized religion,” perhaps because they’ve been in contact with too many churches that viewed themselves primarily as institutions.  These are the churches that ask for people to give more money, attend more functions, and serve on more committees in order to keep the church going.  Institutionally-focused churches leave people cold because they become simply another demand upon busy people, without offering much in return.

There will always be an institutional aspect to the church.  We can’t fulfill the mission that God gives us if we can’t pay the bills and if we don’t have anyone willing to do the work.  But when the church is a kingdom, all these things serve the greater purpose of doing the work of God in our community.

Why Doesn't God Do Something? He Did, He Will

As our nation continues to reel from the horrific events in Newtown, Connecticut last month, it’s natural for many of us to ask, “Where is God in the midst of this tragedy?”  The answer to that question has everything to do with the holiday we just celebrated, and a lesser-known holiday that’s just around the corner.

A one-page newsletter message is hardly the place to delve into question about why evil and suffering exists in a world ruled by a loving, all-powerful God, even if I was bold enough to think that I had the final answer to this perplexing question.  But it is a place to remind us all about what God does in the face of terrible events like the deaths of children and school staff in a small New England town.

God could come down with mighty power and destroy all those who perpetrate such appalling crimes on the face of the earth.  We could each come up with a list of the dastardly people who deserve God’s wrath.  However, if all of these lists would be combined into one master list of people for God to smite, there would be precious few people whose names would not appear upon it.  Each of us, in one way or another, are guilty of contributing to the misery that fills this world of ours.

Or, God could simply wash his hands of us all.  He look upon us with disgust and leave us to our own devices.  To abandon us in this way, however, would require him to deny his own nature of love.  God delights in sharing himself with all those who will receive it.  To withhold his blessings would mean that he would no longer be the God that he is.

So, God did something different.  He came to share this difficult, sometimes heart-breaking life with us.  At Christmas we celebrate the fact that God became one of us: a human being in every like us except for our sin.  He suffered, he wept, he was hungry, and he felt the full range of emotion that we face.  In fact, while he was still in diapers (or whatever they used for diapers back then), an event every bit as gruesome as the murders in Connecticut took place in the village where Jesus was born.  A jealous king tried to use unsuspecting foreign dignitaries to track down the One whom he considered to be a threat to his authority.  In his savage desire to maintain his grip of power, he slaughtered all the baby boys of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1-18).  The Christian calendar marks January 6 as the day when those foreigners, whom we know as the wise men, came to see Jesus.

The world was a ghastly, ugly place long before God entered it as the man Jesus.  It was brutal and nasty while he lived among us, and it continues to be cruel and wicked.  Each generation witnesses its own unspeakable crimes.  But, because of the God who has come to share life with us, we know that we endure it in his presence.  We seek glimpses of his glory in the midst of our sorrow and rage, and we fix our hope upon the final vindication and restoration of this world that he loves more than we can imagine.