Tuesday, April 07, 2015
Only One Personality Matters
A while back @ BHT they were discussing personality driven churches versus institutions:
But what really scares me here is that to operate on the personality level, bereft of institution is to a) not worry, at all, about preserving anything through time and b) to punt on affecting culture on a large scale. But most importantly, I think running the church on a personality basis is a means of preserving our own personalities - it is a way of making the self the focus. Is that not antithetical to Christianity where the other is supposed to be the focus?
Only one personality matters in Christianity - Christs. The idea od Christian leadership is to get out of the way of that.
church institution personality
The idea that Christianity can be preserved in institutions may be so anathema to so many American Christians they don’t realize that be decoupling Christian life from some kind of institutional anchoring point that the kinds of cults of personality we’ve seen in Calvary Chapel or SGM or MH settings is probably inevitable. And a lot of American evangelicals wouldn’t even want it any other way because the kinds of institutional brakes that might slow down a single charismatic personality from steamrollilng his or her way to getting the mission accomplished would be dismissed as “bereft of the spirit”.Those are scary thoughts, and I cannot help but think of the passages about being of Paul and Apollo. Christ matter, not who takes you to Him.
But what really scares me here is that to operate on the personality level, bereft of institution is to a) not worry, at all, about preserving anything through time and b) to punt on affecting culture on a large scale. But most importantly, I think running the church on a personality basis is a means of preserving our own personalities - it is a way of making the self the focus. Is that not antithetical to Christianity where the other is supposed to be the focus?
Only one personality matters in Christianity - Christs. The idea od Christian leadership is to get out of the way of that.
church institution personality
