Should the church be considered an institution?

I've been thinking and reading about ecclesiology, the study of the church. My guiding question has been, what role does institutionalization play in how we understand and participate in church? I've been curious because of the loose conclusions I've drawn in my latest book. The final chapter provides some direction for how the church could organize itself in a world where pastoral leaders were no longer paid. The chapter is not so much a theology of the church as group of pragmatic suggestions. However, after teaching a class on this topic in February, I thought it would be interesting to take my practical suggestions and see how they might hold up theologically. 

My research on ecclesiology is in the early stages. So early, in fact, that I've veered off course ever so slightly to explore the institutionalization of religion from a sociological lens. Fascinated by a work called Sociology and the Study of Religion by Thomas F. O'Dea, I've come to learn language and a framework for housing religious experience and expression within a container, or institution, that lasts. O'Dea describes five dilemmas that arise through "transforming the religious experience to render it continuously available to the mass of men and to provide for it a stable institutionalized context." (p. 251). In other word, these are the tensions that religion faces when attempting to contain the movement in a social institution:

1. The Dilemma of Mixed Motivations.

This dilemma describes the challenge of shifting leadership from an original charismatic leader to offices and roles that offer prestige in and of themselves. Whereas the original gathering centred on the charismatic leader and their vision, when they pass from the scene, the new leaders are promoted and given respectable positions to keep the movement going. The motivation toward the original leader's vision can become mixed with the desire to hold the positions of influence and power for the community as it adapts to new social realities. This represents a mixing of motivations.   

2. The Dilemma of Objectification verses Alienation.

The experience of worship is the natural human response to the holy. In order for worship to be corporate in nature there needs to be rituals, symbols, and stories that are shared among worshippers. However, the once current rituals, symbols, and stories that aided in corporate worship, over time become cut off from the subjective experience of the participants. Where once religious liturgy created communal resonance and formation, it may become cut off from those seekers, alienating individuals from the holy. This objectification of worship weakens its corporate nature and alienates those from the very God they seek through attempting to embody that which is sacred in rituals, symbols, and stories. The dilemma exists because if religion is to be passed on through generations, rituals, symbols, and stories are the only way to do it.

3. The Dilemma of Administrative Order.

As noted in the first dilemma, movements must be ordered if they are to continue. This ordering results in bureaucratic offices and structures. Bureaucracy begets bureaucracy and before long the organization becomes complicated and unwieldy with poor communication and overlapping spheres of authority. The first dilemma complicates this one with those overseeing the expanding areas of the organization desiring the success of the vary areas they are overseeing. This leads to greater expansion of offices and structures.

4. The Dilemma of Delimitation.  

As religious movements grow and get pass on they must be translated and applied to various situations. Their is a tension between concretizing principles and creating rules where ethical insights may have governed. If these insights remain abstract it will remain out of reach for most. However, once they are set as rules, they become legalistic and inflexible commands that may clarify the letter of the law while missing the spirit of it.

5. The Dilemma of Power.

Religion and religious experience occurs in the human heart. Conversion results in a transformation of the heart and as religion is institutionalized, there are values that get expressed communally and socially. However, in the process of institutionalization, religion becomes a repository of societal values. Religion must relate to societal values and it is in this interaction that religious conformity and political loyalty start to happen. This intermingling of societal values and religious values seems to be inevitable. 

 

I have very little to say about these categories right now. I guess I'm wondering whether the Christian movement needs to function within institutional categories like these. Is this what Jesus and the apostles envisioned when they were in the early days of the mission? I think not. Instead, I wonder if the Triune God planned to lead people through relational influence, both with God and God's people. Philosopher Dallas Willard hints at this in his final chapter of The Divine Conspiracy: "the presence of a good person touches, influences, and may even govern people nearby through the respect inspired in their hearts, the focused presence of the Trinitarian personality upon the earth will govern through the clarity and force of its own goodness, and indirectly through its transformed people." (p. 381) No offices, rituals, bureaucracy, concrete principles, or talk of social values. There is simply the presence of goodness. Transformed by goodness. Simply beautiful.

I can't say the same for concrete.