Blogotional

So, I am reading along and I come to this post from new Warnie Winner Eternal Perspectives. It is a great warning about the line between form and function in church -- something I was going to write about this week, but -- too late! Mike is specifically addressing the emerging church movement.

The function of the church is inseparable from the content of its message, emphases, and destiny. The form can and should change, as Moreland says, but the function must be intact if a local church is to keep its lampstand (Rev 2:5). When issues such as the content of the gospel, holiness, and others are compromised - or when a philosophy is adopted that is antithetical to absolute truth - then that church or movement is headed in a perilous direction.

Amen and Amen, but I wonder where the line between form and function lies. Consider modern worship music, for example. I will agree that guitars replacing organs is strictly a form issue. But the very structure of the songs, the repetitive nature of the lyrics, the minimalization of the vocabulary makes me wonder if it does not cross the line. It is "dumbing down" in a real sense.

Which leads me to this post from Adventures In Following Jesus. (HT: Transforming Sermons) Adam is examining the relationship between knowledge, belief and transformation.

Action DOES follow belief. The sad fact is that most Christians don't believe what they know. I was equating "believing" with "knowing", hence my confusion. There is a huge difference. "Knowing" involves holding the right information in your head, and maybe even cognitively agreeing with it. Believing involves ordering your life around the idea as if it were so.

Here is the question that I feel compelled to ask, "Shouldn't genuine knowledge about God create belief of itself?" In other words, "How much does theology matter?"

I think those questions help draw the line between form and function. Consider the music example. No hymn gives a thorough lesson in 5-point Calvinism or any other school of theological thought, but a hymn with really meaty lyrics does make me ponder one point or another. In that pondering I may decide something that turns from knowledge to conviction and from conviction to belief and from belief to transformation. Contrast that to singing "God is awesome" several dozen times. Aside from a certain sonambulistic ecstasy being generated in the group, what has been accomplished?

Which leads us to Adrian Warnock's post from yesterday in which he is wondering what kind of church changes the world. Typical of Adrain, he is leading us into this slowly. He begins by asking which of these quotes most accurately reflects your image of the church.

1. "A church is a large, bureaucratic, and hierarchical religious organization, which typically recruits from the upper and middle classes. It has a priesthood, sacraments, and formal liturgy. Lay participation, especially in worship, is not necessarily encouraged.? (From Oxford Reference Online)

2. "I love the local church, I believe in its potential and power. I see it as the hope of the world . . . There is nothing like the local church when it's working right. It transforms lives heart by heart, soul by soul, life by life. That's why the most important thing I can do is to lay down my heart for the cause of Christ.." Bill Hybels

There is no question that the emerging and other church movements are a direct effort to move from quote 1 to quote 2. I; however, think both of these quotes quite well describe my feelings about the church. Institutions, by their very nature, and the sinfulness of those that are in them move inexorably and inevitably towards quote 1. Fortunately, God is at work in many individuals souls in that institution and they inevitably reverberate with quote 2.

Sacraments, liturgy and the concept of priesthood matter. (I don't know about all that class stuff - he's in England, I think that is more their issue than ours.) Sacraments and liturgy matter because they preserve the important ideas about our faith in a fashion that is in fact accessible to all. Ever ask yourself why icons and litury -- because nearly universal literacy is a relatively recent development. Eer wonder why the staid and highly liturgical Roman church is growing so fast in the third world -- because of its accessibility to the less literate that remain there. Those ideas matter because, as we have seen, ideas lead to belief which leads to transformation.

Church movements and schism happen. They happen when the underlying institution become so corrupt that they are viewed as irredeemable. Yet even the 16th century reformation ultimately resulted in redemption of the Roman church. I am not sure we are at the point of irredeemable corruption yet. Stale -- oh yeah. Form often without function -- yeah. But the form is what has preserved the ideas that lead to transformation. I am wondering if we really need a movement, or just a revival?