There is an old story about five blind men who were given the task of describing an elephant. Depending on where the men were positioned, they in turn described the elephant as a mountain, a fire hose, a tree trunk and a spear. (The blind man who grabbed the elephant's tail and thought it was like a fly-swatter had the presence of mind to keep his mouth shut.) The story doesn't go into detail about the fighting that took place between the other four to resolve the issue, as apparently none of them considered that they could all be partially correct.
God is infinitely more complex than the elephant. Many of us have had an experience with God that has given us a certain impression of what He is like. However, God is just too big for us to experience more than just a small part of Him. Many people live their entire lives being satisfied with their partial view of God, either by choice or out of ignorance that there is perhaps more to see. Others learn to relate to others who have a different experience of God, and hopefully increase in their knowledge of Him in the process. However, we don't increase in our experience of God by merely relating to other Christians. To do that, we must occasionally reposition ourselves, stepping out of the box of our personal traditions, so that we can experience God from new angles.
It has been my intent over the few years to keep "walking around the elephant" and to take as many others with me as I can drag. As a result, it was often hard to describe our various home groups, as we rarely did things the same way twice. We had, as our primary values, relating to God, and relating to each other, and found that these values could take on many forms. I often found that it was the group who was dragging me around to some new view.
However, working within the structure of a church, even a smallish church, has proven to be more difficult. There seems to be an innate rigidity in the typical church that resists attempts to do something new, or merely to do something in a new way. No matter how much we talk about valuing organism over organization, it seems as though where two or more or gathered, the system (or "the machine," as we say) takes over.
Of course, everyone resists change to some extent. The fact that we were created with skeletal systems indicates that we are creatures who depend upon a certain amount of structure. People groups also require a certain amount of structure. Put 50 people together and they will in very short order create some kind of functional system, whether it's just to decide who will go get the chips and beer. But, take 50 people, or even 10 people, and have them start a "church," and superfluous structures begin forming out of thin air - or rather, out of our notions about what a church should be. The concept of traditional church has a power that is almost impossible to withstand.
I think this has a lot to do with the cultural expectations of "church," which unfortunately seem to have become the Western church's secondary cornerstones. A few years ago I sat in a room with about 12 people as we considered how to start a new church. The question before us was, "what are the essential elements of a church?" I was astounded at many of the responses, and by the extraneous work that people were willing to take on (which, by the way, took time and energy away from developing community). Things like the Sunday Morning Service and the Head Pastor model, though neither has any real New Testament basis, have actually become foundational to our concept of church.
Let's take another look at our blind men. Each one, being fairly happy with their position at the elephant, starts laying a few stones. The first one, the Head Pastor stone, marks one corner, directly across from the cornerstone marked "Jesus." The next stone, the Sunday Morning Service stone, marks another corner, and so on. Pretty soon the foundation is laid and the church is built, and there it will stay, with no means of ever discovering what lays outside the box they now call the church.
So how do we do church differently? How can we create a structure that does not prevent us from discovering the many facets of God? What we need is something that moves - we don't need a monument, we need a hovercraft!
The first thing we need to do is realize that the aforementioned cornerstones are not cornerstones at all; we cannot afford to entrench them. They may be useful tools for some churches at some times, but they are not essential to being the church. The only essential elements of church that I can see are contained in this statement: "wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." That is church, pure and simple. Relying too much on anything else creates immobility and contributes to an "us and them" mentality within the church (something that Paul warned against in 1 Corinthians 3:4).
We also need to establish among our people the value of remaining fluid. However, in order to do that we need to provide some new, transportable base upon which to build this fluid structure. We already have, of course, our only real foundation, which is the Gospel of the Kingdom. To this we add no other foundation; we only add the "architectural guidelines," if you will, for our structure.
My current thinking (my thinking is pretty fluid, too) is that all we really need besides the Gospel is inherent in the Gospel itself, which can pretty well be described by the intertwined concepts of "relationship" and "community." The Gospel is only lived out as we are first in relationship to the Head, Jesus, to the rest of the Body, the Church, and of course in relationship to the world. Again, we come back to Jesus' statement, "wherever two or more are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them."
So, then, we have the foundational rock of the Gospel, which of course, rests solely on the work of Jesus. That, in effect, is our "elephant." To be a church, I think we should be in relationship with the entire elephant, not just the part we think we know, or like, or what fits our personality. At least, we should be willing to be in relationship with the entire elephant, though we know that is impossible considering our human limitations. This means we must have, as one of our highest priorities or values, a commitment to being fluid enough to be in relationship with all of God. This, of course, presupposes a belief that we, ourselves, are myopic in our view of God and of the Church, as well as in our view of ourselves.
Next, we must be committed to each other. Throughout our journey we will, hopefully, bump into various other like-minded people and "clump" together (the fellowship that Todd Hunter has been working with calls itself "a fearless clump of seekers"). We will also hopefully "convert" others along the way, who will also clump with us. This is a natural, organic development of church. In my opinion, this is The Way It Should Be. We need to have as a co-equal value, a commitment to those that God has clumped together.
This commitment includes allowing our interaction to lead us in new understandings of God. Not valuing the "head pastor" as essential, we will probably not have just one person navigating the way; the direction of our journey will be set as we interact as a group with God.
A third value (actually, it's part B of our 2nd value) needs to be a commitment to the rest of The Church. Again, we cannot afford to have an "us & them" mentality. In our fellowship's journey together around the elephant (we are no longer a blind man, we have become a visionary fellowship), we will encounter both other visionary fellowships as well as the structures built by our blind men. They each have an experience with God that is also part of us; for in reality we are the same body. As John Donne once said, "no man is an island." The same holds for fellowships. We are part and parcel with each and every visionary group and blind man who has a relationship with God, and we must value that to the same extent that we value relationship within our little fellowship clump.
Of course, we need to realize that most of the blind men, as well as many of the other visionary groups, may not hold to this value, and may despise what they perceive as our lack of foundation. No matter - we must continue to value them, and to look at their position to search out any truth that we may need to discover.
What else do we need? Oh yes, a good Sunday School program. OK, so I am just kidding. I don't think we really require anything else. Everything else - missionary sending, outreach, Bible study - all will come naturally if we are truly and honestly relating to God and are sensitive to His leading. My theory is that our commitment to being fluid and walking around the elephant will make our fellowship more apt to follow the leading of the Spirit. When the woman at the well tried to engage Jesus with a theological discussion about which mountain God was at, Jesus gave her a remarkably postmodern answer: God is seeking those who will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. With these commitments - as this really what I have been talking about - everything else should follow.
However, let us state one more relational commitment, which is implied in our commitment to the Gospel: our commitment to the world. Though it is my belief that the church exists primarily to be in relationship with Christ, Jesus came For God So Loved The World. Because it is Jesus' mission to be the mediating savior of the world, our commitment to Him and our relationship with Him joins us securely and permanently to His mission. Though this is the subject for another time, let me just comment that our growing relationship with Jesus only comes as we join Him in going where He goes and working along side of Him.
To quickly summarize, I have boiled the essence of church down to a commitment to three relationships: 1) A vital, growing and changing relationship to God, 2a) A relationship to those we "clump" to, 2b) A relationship to the entire Church, and 3) A missional relationship to the world. These commitments will require some type of structure; don't misunderstand me as saying that all structure is wrong. I am just challenging us to rethink our structures, as I suspect that we can find newer, more efficient and more relevant structures.
As I have dialogued with people over the years about the lack of need for so much rigid structure in church organizations, usually referring to my home group as a model for how church could work, often there has come the argument that this can only work for a small group. Once a church reaches a certain size, they say - say 100, 200 people - you can't do church the same way; then you need to move into a more conventional structure.
I honestly don't know if that theory is true. Perhaps at a certain size, even with commitment to the values I have mentioned, fluidity is hampered. If so, then, it begs the question, "why do we need churches that big?" It sounds to me that once size is a problem, operating in smaller groups would be a solution, which is basic cell-church theory. The difference here, however, is that cell-churches have often fallen into the blind man category as they have entrenched themselves in their own positions.
I am not suggesting that the New Church cannot meet on Sunday mornings, or that they cannot have a single or head pastor. They can even own a building with a steeple, if they feel led, just as long as they don't make it foundational to who they are, or insist that others do it, too. The New Church needs an attitude of humility and a commitment to flexibility, founded upon the principle that "we know in part," that we need to know more [of God], and that we will do anything we need to do to know Him more fully and to communicate to the world.
That is the challenge facing The New Church by Alden Swan
