Is the Universal Church an Institution or a Movement?

Continuing our conversation regarding the relative importance of intentional gatherings for the church, the most helpful way I’ve resolved this conflict and others (like whether to rent rooms, buy buildings or meet in homes) has been attempting to understand what type of thing the universal church is in its basic form.

I believe the distortion of the church began several generations after the early church when it morphed from an aggressive, scrappy movement of church planters trying to transform the world to an established, slow moving, rarely changing institution of society.

What is an Institution: Like universities, hospitals and government agencies institutions begin with a big idea that realize its vision over generations of steady establishment. They are pillars of society that can be trusted to be the same and provide the same services to my children and grandchildren as they did for me. They inspire people to give time, energy and money to solidify its form and function because those who build them are energized by the vision that they are establishing something to last and serve generations from cradle to grave in a consistent fashion.

What is a Movement: An idea that spawns a grass roots effort to transform a community, culture or the whole world. Like the Civil Rights Movement of the 60’s, time, energy and money went to short-term, aggressive efforts that struck at the heart of culture. Creative ideas are regularly attempted, change is the only constant and 100% of the resources are always utilized to the max.

When I read the New Testament, from beginning to end, it seems to resemble a movement and when I look across all aspects of the church today it resembles an institution in almost every one of its forms.

Even church planters, with movement like fervor, attempt to institutionalize what they’re building as quickly as possible by constructing buildings, refining church constitutions and stabilizing the regular activities of the parish.

My growing conviction is the church, as organic bodies, exists to fuel the establishment of the Kingdom of God but in the process they themselves have become the establishment and the movement has largely disappeared.

Nothing spoke this louder to me than during the 3 years I lived in the Northeast where our town had 14 Christian churches where only 1 of the 14 believed in the Gospel, the resurrection of Christ or the Inspiration of Scripture. All were planted by believers and now all are led by non-believers because these churches were institutionalized around resources rather than around an idea.

I want everything I build to have a natural self-destruct mechanism in it so that, if it strays from its original idea, it will quickly dissolve. This is the way of the movement; to expend all of its resources in short bursts of aggressive action and to leave nothing for institutionalized people to maintain long after its forgotten why it was built in the first place.

~ Jeremy