Institutional Naivety – #awaf no.1
30 Jun 2009
So with the outline in my previous post, I’m starting the series on Ancient Worship, Anglican Future and the intersections with Emerging Church today.
These days there seems to be a deep suspicion of all organisations, and in particular any structure, hierarchy and a basic resistance to anything that is an ‘institution’. And I for one, am convinced that institutions are the enemy of good practice (if I may paraphrase Alasdair MacIntyre badly).
By this, I mean that any institution that people form in order to deliver good practice will always wrestle with it becoming so bureaucratic and concerned for itself that it undermines the very thing it seeks to deliver in the first place.
We see this today with hospitals. Places dedicated to providing medical care to human beings can become so caught up in politics and management conflicts that the medical care they are supposed to provide becomes undermined and, in many cases, people suffer. We see the same with the church. The organisation of the church to facilitate the incarnation of the gospel quickly becomes an obstacle to the very nature and purpose of the church in the first place, and people are harmed more than helped.
Often, in reaction, we think that, in having no programmes, no hierarchy, the removal of the institution will solve the problem. After all, if the institution is getting in the way of the purpose, get rid of the institution. This response is increasingly ingrained in us, such that even using the word ‘institution’ is anathema to those seeking new ways of doing and being church. But I think how ever well intentioned, this approach is naive and inadequate to the task of being Church.
What we need is not the absence of institutions, but an articulate institutional imagination, something more than the incapacity of being ‘anti-institutional’. For if we get rid of hospitals, we might remove the problems they produce as institutions, but with it we also remove the provision of medical care from all those who had access to it before, or we restrict it to only a few who are in proximity to those who can provide it with no institutional support, or those who know how to provide to themselves. Which is what much of the ‘institution-less’ church has come to look like.
The question is not whether you can avoid being an institution; the question is what kind of institution can we imagine that will support the purposes of who and what we are trying to bring to others?
(This thought is a re-post from a previous piece I wrote)
Tagged: ecclesiology, emerging church
7 comments
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Comment by Anderson, D
6.29 am on 2 Jul 2009
Multum in parvo. This short but ingenious post should have had at least a hundred amens by now. I’ll be first. AAAAMEN, my brother!
Let me just add that there is often a disingenuousness in pretending we have rid ourselves of all institutions and hierarchies… only to substitute the old ones with new, unspoken ones.
Godspeed, Jason.
Comment by steven hamilton
12.36 am on 3 Jul 2009
there is a great quote from a roman centurion, gaius petronius, and although the fragment seems to be a mis-quote or unattested, the truth of the statement shoulod not be denied:
“We tried hard — but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”
Comment by Peter
3.00 pm on 4 Jul 2009
You made me think of a friend who compared institutional structure to the skeleton of a body a while ago. A skeleton is certainly more rigid than the rest. But if we want to avoid skeletons (because they remind os of death and they cause all sorts of trouble when they break) our churches would have to become slugs or jellyfish. While it may be true that these species multiply rapidly, it is not a very inspiring thought to me
Comment by David
9.42 am on 6 Jul 2009
Jason,
It is patently obvious that the ekklesia must have some sort of ’structure’ and involve gathering. However, it’s not obvious to me that the use of the word “institution” to refer to this is very helpful – perhaps you are being deliberately provocative.
And why the choice of a hospital as the metaphor? If a different metaphor, say a(n extended) family, or (of course) a body were used then we might come to somehat (perhaps very) different conclusions about appropriate structure for the ekklesia. And it might not be anything like what is understood in contemporary English by the word “institution”.
Comment by Jason
10.05 am on 6 Jul 2009
If the word institution is to pejorative, then don’t use it, but ‘institutions’ still exist. I did place the word in parenthesis, and I did try to say institutions are the enemy of good practice.
Choosing a hospital, was about ‘good practice’ the care of medicine, and I think care for people is an apt metaphor, with regards to church. So it was one that is redolent of the nature of church, care for others, and located in the need for structure for that care.
I didn’t say church should be structured like a hospital, and I did close asking what kind of institutional imagination we need. And I remain convinced we need more than the anti-structure pathologies.
Comment by David
10.44 am on 6 Jul 2009
I guess I’m not aware of precisely what it is that you call here “anti-structure pathologies” and seem to be reacting so strongly against.
All I see is various folk imperfectly trying to work out new structures for the ekklesia in the current era. Even those who clearly prefer words other than “institutional” (e.g. “organic”), seem to me to have clear ideas about how the ekklesia should be *structured* – including those who believe in no hierarchy other than God above the individual believer.
Personally, I just wonder where God is taking us. What is the church really going to look like in the future?
Comment by mervyn
7.06 am on 7 Jul 2009
Wrong use is not non use,it is right use! Hows that for a morning profundity !
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