In his book Congregations in America Mark Chaves writes about routinization (p 151) and new religions emerging to occupy the niches vacated by the institutionalization of a movement (p 152).
I watch some of this process occur in the routinization and institutionalization of the Vineyard. I entered the Vineyard when it was part of the Calvary Chapel movement in the early ‘80s. John Wimber became the leader of an already blossoming group of churches within the CC movement. There was nothing drastic about this group of churches. The movement toward institutionalization occurred in what could be labeled the 5Ms. Beginning with a MAN with a vision, he incorporated other MEN (and women) to help him carry out his vision. These communities became a MOVEMENT, which in a short period after the founder’s death became a MEMORIAL, moving toward its concrete state of being a MONUMENT.
Chaves implies that “new groups” will always spring up. What is often missing in “start up” groups is the understanding of sociological history that suggests that within the lifetime of the beginning by a founder a monument will appear. I suppose that one could hinder the apparent inevitable hardening of the religious arteries by at least being aware of previous history.
Hear ye, hear ye, natives of the emergent church movement. Find a way to help the children of the emergent church culture who are to come, become who they are while the emergent church culture freezes into a harden monument.
Why do we think that the early church is a panacea of design. In a little over a generation it moved from a charismatic to a somewhat structured form. The story of the church in the NT is dynamic not static. That story is useful to help us understand trends not to try and reproduce one layer of the story as a concrete production.
Those who begin with the thinking that they can produce something “new and fresh” and it will always be that way are doomed to a frustration in life. There are cycles in church life as with all life that God created. No church last forever ala the churches in chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation.
Should we be surprised that Scripture seems to know in front of the data that there are moves from structure (Jewish) to anti-structure (Early Church) to structure (Late 1st Century Church). Structure did not first occur with the advent of Constantine.
Over the weekend I heard Alan Roxburgh suggest that structure and anti-structure must learn to live in harmony. The church survives when she finds such harmony. Of course, Roxburgh did not use the word harmony, that's my paraphrase after dippin' into Sweetguage!
Posted by drwinn at September 10, 2004 06:28 AM