I am a fan of music – not just any music, but good music, the kind that transcends time and space and launches the hearer into a sublime setting of being. My spin on music has often been called arrogant and elitist – very similar to my fondness finely crafted ales, Americanos, and films – yet to me, my opinion seems honest and tested. Not long ago I went back and gave a good listen to Johnny Cash’s last album but paid special attention to the tone and attitude of the Man in Black’s relation to the words he was crooning. As he covered Trent Reznor’s Hurt I was struck by the profundity of a particular line: “What have become, my sweetest friend, everyone I know goes away in the end.” I’m sure Trent had a particular reason for that line and if I am lucky enough to have a conversation with him someday, I might ask him what he was implying. Nonetheless, I hear that line and it becomes something to me – something honest and tested. Yet, the “sweetest friend” is not a person but an entity, an institution, a thing –to me, it is the local church.
It seems that we have entered a season where ecclesiology has become the doctrine of choice amongst writers, teachers, bloggers, pastors, tweeters, facebookers, and manic street preachers. Every generation lives in a world where particulars of theology need to be wrestled with, fleshed out, debated, argued, rethought, re-examined, and reconditioned. Life is lived in reaction – the pendulum of thought and action sways from one extreme to the other, always rising to the surface when it is absent in daily life.
I remember as a teenager recognizing that eschatology was keen to the church – youth group was filled with presentations of “experts” back masking Iron Maiden albums and trying desperately to convince me there was subversive, Hollywood agenda bent to turn me into a devil worshipper, Frank Peretti wrote some fabulous novels (or discipleship curriculum – depending on whom you ask) regarding spiritual warfare that scared the nevaluw (read your Hebrew/Aramaic from Daniel 2...) out of me, and evangelism was about asking people, “If you died tonight do you know that you would be in hell?” The devil, demons, hell and Ozzy Osbourne were popular and the doctrine of the end times was the filter to see world. Wait, maybe not much as changed: Ozzy is even more popular in his elder years and Hell as a subject is all the rage – if you believe in such a place…
Anyway, today in 2011, ecclesiology seems to be the new filter by which we process the world. Endless questions are being raised: What is the Church? What is the pastor? Does the Church need a pastor? Do we need a building? Are we better off meeting in homes like the Acts Church? What authority is necessary for Church life? Do we need elders? Deacons? Is it about program? Relationships? Discipleship? Missions? Can we meet online? Do we need to meet each week? Is Sunday the only day of corporate gathering? What are the sacraments? Are they “sacred” or is everything “sacred?” When do we administer them? What about membership – is it needed anymore? Is it possible to discipline anymore? How big is orthodoxy? How wide is it? How deep is it? What about orthopraxy? What are the essentials of our faith? Ought we embrace creeds? What about denominations – have they run their course? What about Independent churches – is it theologically sound to be “independent?” What is “Emergent?” What is “Traditional?” What is “Evangelical?” What is “Mainline?” What is “Liberal?” What is “Conservative?” And what about all those loud voices in our world: TV preachers who want your seed money, conservative radio hosts who want you to believe there is no room for social justice in the local church, liberal bloggers who want you to quit the church– take your ball and go home, pastors who rethink the reality of hell, pastors who gossip about pastors who rethink the reality of hell, Christian radio that supports positive and encouraging expressions but leaves little for those who are hurting or lamenting, and a myriad of other noises, voices and trumpets.
Church by definition, according to the Greek term ecclesia, is rooted in the gathered assembly and the Acts 1 and 2 church seemed to get that much. The line in chapter two that stumps me is the idea that they had everything in common. I’ve raised that profound ideal in groups and wondered aloud if it is possible to have all things in common. The literalists speak confidently that it is not literal and seek some understanding that allows their “type A” brains to maintain while the idealists dream of utopian communities where the “common” is not an ideal but an unmoving norm. Either way, the “common” becomes very uncommon. Yet even as I write these words I long for a better answer. Perhaps the idea of “assembly” is the foundation of having ALL in common, because it is only in the plurality of the assembly, that the “all” in its inherit plural form, can live, breath and find its being. To me, the great attack on ecclesiology is not from the outside, but by those who remove themselves from the “all” and try to live it independently of one another – where one group tries to live without the other, where one group draws the proverbial line in the sand and lives as a divider of God’s people, where one group determines who is on what team – as if it were a cheap game.
Ecclesiology needs to be centered in humility and optimism – two character traits inherit to a fully functioning assembly. Without humility and optimism we are left with arrogance and trite criticism. What if all church leaders spent 2012 seeking humility and optimism for their communities – how different would our churches look? Yet, you and I both know that will never happen. Didn’t you know, it is nearly impossible to get the “All” to center on anything in common – that seems to be true and tested…and in the end, she seems to just go away - the sweetest friend.
