I find the refusal of many Christians to reconsider the way Church is biblically meant to meet mind-boggling. The same people who decry liberal scholarship’s view of the Bible as containing error, who shake their heads at egalitarians dismissing certain texts as culture-specific, who are outraged at the reinterpretation of verses that identify homosexual relationships as sinful, these are the people who look at 1 Corinthians 11-14 and say without blushing that what is described there does not provide a model for Christian meetings.

Now, I will give kudos where kudos should be given. Some people outright admit that their refusal stems from living and earning a living in a Church structure for the majority of their lives (see 7^th comment, though Spencer is not an inerrantist nor a complementarian, so maybe he’s not a good example). Others do cast an evaluative eye over their own Church systems and acknowledge the need for some changes. But the idea of a complete overhaul and maybe even getting rid of the one-man preaching band – preaching, I tell you! – is akin to denying the deity of Christ.

Take a look at the quote below. It was hauled out by Imonk as a slam-dunk response to the yet-to-be-published book, Pagan Christianity and, by implication, all others who would question Church-as-we-know-it. I myself have huge reservations about Frank Viola and his approach to critiquing the “institutional church”; Viola, and George Johnny-come-lately Barna, seems to want to tear the present Church system down using guilt by pagan-association and pointing out where things are failing, whereas I believe the more biblical approach is to look at the Bible (strangely enough). Still, while I don’t want to be thrown in with Viola and Barna, I hardly think Peterson has dropped words of irreproachable wisdom here.

What other church is there besides institutional? There’s nobody who doesn’t have problems with the church because there is sin the church.  But there is no other place to be a Christian except the church… I really don’t understand this naive criticism of the institution.  I really don’t get it.

Frederick Von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree.  There’s no life in the bark. It’s dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within.  And the tree grows and grows and grows.  If you take the bark off, it’s prone to disease, dehydration, death.

So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive.  And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn’t last long.  It disappears, gets sick, and it’s prone to all kinds of disease, heresy and narcissism.

Eugene Peterson in an interview, Christianity Today March 2005 (p.45). 

Quite apart from the need to define terms (what is the “institutional church”?), Eugene seems to be taking the lowest common denominator and using it as the norm. “Yes, I know it looks like a corpse, but the heart is still beating. My friends, here is an example of a living human being!”

Who would deny that the “institutional church” is not a Church? Christ is everywhere his people are. There are healthy Church’s and unhealthy ones; Churches with a lot of life and Churches with only sparks; there are those that function well and those that function poorly. But is it true that institutionalism is as necessary to the Church as bark is to a tree? Bark?

My friends, you need another analogy. The Church is a corporate person, not a plant, and persons already have something that protects them from disease, dehydration and death. It’s a living thing called skin. Yes, institutional structure has been used of God, and yes, it keeps a church going – often beyond its use-by date – but here is my question:

Since when is it considered integrity to choose what works over what the Bible teaches?

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