Mission, Power, and Getting Real

NOTE: I've substantially edited this blog to address more clearly its central purpose.

Over the Advent and Christmas season I’ve been re-reading the gospels, asking myself again just who this Jesus is and what does he teach. 

One thing is quite clear: the church structure of the UMC simply does not exist in the teaching of Jesus. Nor is it found described in Acts and the Epistles. You would have to be able to squeeze water from rocks to get anything like our book of Discipline from scripture. Or for that matter anything like the older Protestant churches and their antecedents in Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. 

Despite the endless arguments, a plain reading of the New Testament shows what is normative in scripture concerning the Church isn’t the structure of the church, but its mission. A mission is what Jesus passed on to his disciples, not an org chart. 

The churches we have today are the result of a long evolution in which Christian communities structured themselves to  carry out their mission in an ever changing kaleidoscope of cultures and social situations. The structures that emerged aren't modeled on scripture, even if scripture describes their antecedents. But the leaders of the emerging institutions used scripture, which had become a widely accepted authority among Christian communities, to justify these structures. 

The result is the confusion between source and authorization that bedevils every aspect of Christian theology and ecclesiology. Scripture may be called upon to authorize Christian teaching and practice even when it is not directly the source of that teaching and practice. Put more directly concerning church polity; scripture is used to justify the taking and distributing power for the purpose of mission even when the particular allocation of power in the church isn’t actually found in scripture. 

If it is the mission of the church that is normative, not structure, then what is critical for evaluating the appropriate structure for the church is twofold: 1. Our understanding of the the mission given us by Christ, and 2. Our understanding of the most effective structure for carrying out that mission in a particular place and time.

You can see this in the rise of the Methodist movement. Wesley had both a different concept of the mission of the church than Anglicanism in his day, and he developed a structure for his movement suited to carrying out that mission. (He also, in calling himself a “scriptural bishop,” indulged in confusing source with authorization. He wanted the power derived from calling on scripture to authorize his actions, while his use of scripture as a source for the new church structure he was creating was specious. As even his brother recognized.)

It's not necessary to review the history of the Methodist movement to assert that within a generation Methodists were developing expanded understandings of the Methodist mission and new ideas about the structure that could carry out that mission. That process has never ended because the challenges faced by the church as it grew and expanded in tandem with rapid social change demanded that structures evolve. This was particularly the case as the institutionalized evangelistic revival movement Wesley created became an established church whose members wanted it to provide a whole range of ministries and services. 

Today we are in another phase of both reconsidering the mission of the church and how to best organize for that mission. Indeed we've come to an impasse with two different visions of the mission of the church, and indeed possibly more than two. One clearly understands that the defense of a particular vision of orthodoxy, an orthodoxy that extends into the structure of human society beyond the church (with regard to marriage), is a key aspect of the mission of the church. The other believes that the evolution of church practice and doctrine to address new understandings of the nature of human society beyond the church is a key mission of the church.

The structures that will serve one of these missions will not serve the other, for one requires a tight discipline around the maintenance and spread of orthodoxy, while the other requires a generous latitude as emerging understandings are explored and ultimately embraced. Neither, I note, is precisely an expression of the mission Christ gave his apostles, although no doubt both would argue that in some sense theirs is consonant with it.

In any case at this point neither group has shown an interest in discussing commonly held understandings of mission that might provide the basis for a shared structure of some sort for engaging that mission. Instead they have focused on their particular missions and the inevitably exclusive demands on structure that these make.

The inevitable result will be a split such as Methodists experienced on several occasions in the 19th century. Perhaps it would be less fraught with emotion if we understood that the process in which we are engaged is one of a continued evolution of the church rather than a denial of the teaching of scripture. And hopefully at some future time our factions will be able to once again dialogue about their common mission instead of propagandizing for their distinctive views.