I find the description of organic community offered by Seth Barnes and others like him refreshing, particularly in the 'social contract' intellectual climate of the modern West. As the body of Christ, we are members of one another, and I think Seth/John Eldredge are right to decry the ways in which institutional church life can so often become arm's-length and superficial.
That said, the very title of his post reveals something I find deeply frustrating, for the very same reason that I find Barnes and those like him refreshing. It seems to me the whole idea of "institutional church VS community" undermines its own intentions in a number of ways, as I saw, for instance, in San Francisco over spring break.
In San Francisco, there is a really neat organization called ReImagine that does community outreach and invites people to come in for specific periods of time for deliberate spiritual formation and simply learning to live richly (in the relational, rather than the material sense).
I see this community as a kind of vaccine against a lot of social problems in the inner city, not because it is solving all of them, but because I see a community ethic of mutuality, intentionality, living well where one is at (and inviting others into that life) as the proper response to the pain, suffering and disorder that groups like Westmont's Spring Break In the City teams seek to address. Offering to those within your reach the opportunity to live well and become more human in intentional community affords them the chance to avoid the paths on which many of those suffering on the city streets find themselves.
However, ReImagine follows the same 'community vs institution' paradigm described by Seth, with a self-described ecclesial ethic of "being the Church, rather than going to church." Now, in some sense there's no such thing as going to church. There's only being the Church, but what this appears to mean for groups like ReImagine is that, since the old, 'institutional' structures of ecclesial life are becoming obsolete, the way forward is to abandon them (and the communities they gather).
And this abandonment is really the heart of the issue. It reveals and identity crisis in the Church that has long screamed for attention. However, as a response to such a crisis, this abandonment only spreads the rift in the universal Church in new directions. The new great schism is no longer between East and West, or between Catholics and Protestants, but between 'community' and 'institution', and, like its predecessors, presents an illegitimate dichotomy.
Yes, community means gathering at more than an arm's length. Yes, community means a revealing, and often uncomfortable commitment to authenticity. Yes, community means more than just showing up for an hour on Sunday. But community means those with Barnes' and ReImagine's vision gathering at more than arm's length with those in the musty old institutions (gathered nonetheless in commitment to Jesus' Lordship) and calling them to live up to their creeds and mission statements.
Community means a commitment to authenticity that is uncomfortable for institutions because it challenges them to a lifestyle of shaking off stagnation and calls them to be what they are in the economy of salvation. This is uncomfortable for those voicing such calling because it challenges them to remain committed even when things don't go as they'd hoped. And this kind of commitment at least involves showing up on Sunday.
Seth and ReImagine have good sensibilities about what community life is, and they have developed these sensibilities out of a commitment to the Jesus revealed in Scripture and proclaimed in the Church. But the Bibles read in house churches come from somewhere. And there are reasons these fellowships worship God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit rather than, say, great victor over the Demiurge.
The traditional forms of liturgy and ecclesial life aren't going anywhere, and the community-oriented meaning at the heart of house church practice is also the very substance of the traditional liturgies. Those who want to 'shake off' the institutional structures of the Church by abandoning them do a disservice not only to themselves but to the entire mission of the Church catholic by undermining the ecclesial history on whose frontier they stand. They distance themselves from the visible, historic communities through which their central doctrines have been preserved from the beginning, and from the visible, contemporary communities already doing many of the same social outreaches in the same places.
In the case of ReImagine, there are so many 'institutional' church outreaches taking place in San Francisco that have been doing the same things for decades (such as the St. Anthony Foundation, Missions Outpost Fellowship and St. Boniface church). ReImagine pursues a community ethic and has a vision that stands to further enrich ministries like St. Anthony, but if groups like ReImagine write off the structures that give rise to such ministries, they give up this opportunity to serve the whole Church with their gifts.
This leaves St. Anthony a bit short-changed, but also undermines the mission of the whole Church in San Francisco by further compromising its unity. It also leaves ReImagine a bit short-changed. 'Institutional' and 'liturgical' church ministries have been in San Francisco much longer and have deep roots in the city's culture (not to mention the Church's culture).
If groups like ReImagine want to take the city's pulse, places like St. Boniface church, or Missions Outpost are good ones to start. Of course, not all of these groups are necessarily silent to one another, or even on negative terms. But the issue at hand is community, specifically how we live together as Church, and living in community involves commitment to those in one's immediate circle, but also to the whole Church.
Longer standing institutions need to hear the voices of those like ReImagine and Seth Barnes, while those like Barnes and ReImagine could benefit from robust accounts of the practices of more 'high-church' traditions. The community ethic articulated by those like Eldredge, Barnes and ReImagine stands to breathe fresh air into stagnating liturgical churches precisely where they have become dry by presenting a concrete contemporary rendering of the very community ethics enshrined in more 'liturgical' structures and rituals.
Such rendering holds the potential for recovering some of the most profound traditions of the Church, while the structures and rituals themselves offer a depth, richness and theological robustness unmatched in most contemporary media. As high church-ers and free church-ers, and everyone in between, we need to discern the body of Christ, and we need to share ourselves with one another, to offer wisdom, and dialog with one another - both interpersonally and inter-confessionally - especially when we disagree.
Naturally, since I've taken such liberties to mention(even link!) certain people and organizations by name, I appreciate their feedback and corrections, and welcome any resulting dialog.
