Hi sk,

After George Barna published Revolution it has become fashionable to talk about Churchless Christianity. I assume you are not referring to the South India form as depicted in the photo above.

I agree with you that the understanding of the institution of the church is different amongst Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants. I also agree with you that Protestants need a stronger ecclesiology.

I noted that you differentiate between belonging to the "evangelical" faith, tradition (the same?) and being evangelical. Also you noted some teachings and practices which may be considered heresies in the "evangelical" faith or tradition.

Boy, I cannot wait for the rest of this series. :)

Hi Dr Tang,

Tsk... I somehow knew using that picture to depict my series just wasn't very good. Thanks for confirming my suspicion! Anyway now I've changed the picture to something else, which I hope better reflects the contents of the series.

Regarding my seeming reluctance to call myself an "evangelical", it's mostly because nowadays everything seems to be "evangelical". The Word-Faith Movement is evangelical, the New Apostolic Reformation (ala Peter Wagner) is evangelical... well, basically everything, including George Bush's political decisions, haha. I just don't really know what it means anymore - so I only go so far to say that I belong to a tradition that calls itself "evangelical".

Thanks!

Jason Clark's insights has stuck with me ever since I heard them the first time here in Everything is Church:

"I was having a conversation with Fredrik, when I was in Sweden, about the growing popularity, of making ‘private god spaces’, of being post church, and making church something about not being church.

In this expression, we see a reaction to the idea that the church has so often seen sundays as the only valid space for God to be. In this paradigm, sundays are church, and the kingdom, only the sunday service is church.

So now we regale the congregation, and sundays, and see church as when I play golf, go shopping, play football. In this paradigm everything is church, and I don’t need church anymore, I’m post church.

But in the old model where nothing is church, surely it’s so restrictive that we have to say no! and find God elsewhere? And in the second model, where everything is church, then ultimately nothing is church, a kind of pantheistic ecclessiology.

A church that does not naturally lead to people connecting to God, in the places they work, and play, and live, isn’t church at all. Conversely when church becomes just the place where I chose to connect with people who do just what I want, like football, I have stopped being church, just as completely.

In the reaction to church being so disconnected from the world, we think we are being radical by moving church outside of church, but we can end up not being church at all.

So where do I see church? What about the football guy, who finds God in his football sundays, and the water-skiing woman, who finds her time with God there. When they get together and ask, how are we going to talk about our faith, how are we going to celebrate christianity together - I hate football and you can’t water ski - how are we going to connect together outside of our own exclusive narrow spheres of interest…then they get to start being church.

If sundays was all about me, jesus as my girlfriend worship, my blessing, my needs, lets not be fooled and think that church on my terms, on my interests, with fewer people is anything better, or different, it’s just the modern church on steroids, hyper modern church."

hi sivin,

for some reason when I read Clarke's remarks, it reminds me of the Rhineland and Dutch Christians in the Devotio Moderna movement in the 14th century.

I wonder how many more parallels can we find in the emerging church thinking compared with historical reform movements in the past. Are we reinventing the wheel?

Alex, I'm less familiar with the Devotio Moderna movement compared to Early German Pietism. But I think there are places where there is parallels. In fact, I ran across an article online making that connection. I think essentially it's not about reinventing the wheel (for those who don't have historic amnesia) but for me, it's flowing in the same renewing stream.

I can connect well with this series. However, I don't express my thoughts well in writing, so will share more when we meet.

I was introduced to your very interesting blog by a friend. I agree with you entirely that there is no such thing as a lone-ranger Christianity, much as that appeals to Western (and increasingly Asian) individualism.

I am, however, somewhat puzzled that despite your affirmation of Protestantism, you seem to portray Protestant ecclesiology as inferior to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox models of church. I hope you will pardon my audacity in responding to some of your views on the church and to defend Protestant/evangelical ecclesiology, especially under Part 2 of your blog. I won’t be primarily commenting on your proposal to form an “organic community” within the church institution(s).

Before that, allow me a brief comment on heresy and the patristic era. I have great respect for the church fathers, as you do, but I do not treat their pronouncements as infallible standards of orthodoxy. As an evangelical, I would assert that only the bible is infallible. For example, Cyprian stated “he cannot have God for his Father who has not the church for his mother” and Augustine famously insisted that "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" (“outside the church there is no salvation”). If by ‘church’ one means ‘institutional church’, I cannot give an unqualified agreement. (I’ll explain further under Part 2.)