Does Organizing Religion Defeat The Purpose?

“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH ORGANIZATION”

Dan Kimball over at Vintage Faith is asking for people’s gut reaction to the phrase “organized religion”.

Dan is writing a book and one of his chapters is about organized religion and why he believes churches need to be organized in a healthy way.  Dan realizes that the phrase “organized religion” conjures up a lot of negative vibes and he wants to take that into account.  Go by and read some of the responses and add your own thoughts…but not before you take a moment to answer my question at the end of this post.

When I hear the phrase “organized religion” I think of things like: the church caring more about numbers than individuals, more about being entertained than following Christ, worship being centered around “the sermon” rather than around God, people who are sure they have it all figured out, people who are mostly concerned with developing and maintaining their organization rather than being mostly concerned about loving and caring for others, people who are against a lot of stuff, people who want justice for their organization and the people within it but aren’t that concerned with justice for those outside of their organization, big buildings, lots of programs….I could go on but you get the picture.

Of course I don’t think that organization itself is bad, but it does seem that we have a tendency to go awry when it comes to organizing the church/religion.  It seems almost impossible for us to stop ourselves from getting so caught up in “being a successful organization” that we can’t be good followers of Christ.

Maybe our critics are saying to us in their best Col. Jessup voice:  YOU CAN’T HANDLE ORGANIZATION!!!!!!!

So my question to you is this:  Does organizing religion defeat the purpose?

Is Professional Ministry A Help Or A Hindrance To The Church?

There’s a good post and discussion going on over at Baptimergent  regarding professional ministry.  You can find the post here.  Here’s my response: 

I’ll start out with a couple of disclaimers – I am not and have never been in full time paid ministry and I do not believe that it is “wrong” for pastors to be paid a salary.

Even though I do not think it is wrong for pastors to be paid a salary I do not think that it is the best way for the church to operate. I think that it causes the church to have to be managed like a business, the congregation to have an unhealthy dependence on the paid staff of a church and tends to silent prophetic proclamation. I know many wonderful people who earn their living by being on staff at churches but I think the system needs to be dismantled.

Many of the comments I hear  talk about “all the things” that a pastor has to do. IMO all of those things should be shared by those who are members of the community. The problem is that the present system causes the members of the community to believe that the pastor should be doing those things because he is paid and the pastor to believe that he should be doing all those things because he is being compensated. Perhaps one reason most Christian’s are unaware of what spiritual gifts are bestowed upon them is because the system we have created implies that “the working body” of the church is made up of a few people who are on staff.

I know they are far and few between, but, there are groups of Christians meeting in the world without a paid staff and where the work of ministry is done by everyone in the group. So …  it is possible to do it differently.

In addition, it appears to me that a lot of “the things that have to be done” in churches today are things that have to be done to keep “the system” running and “the system” seems to resemble a country club a lot of times with all of it’s internal programs and activities.

I am always hearing that there is a problem these days getting college aged and young adults to attend/get involved in a local church but they aren’t the only ones. Many middle aged and older adults, like myself, who have devoted most of their lives to “the church” are leaving the church (if not physically, then emotionally) because it has become more of a hindrance than a help in our spiritual journey.

True Woman Manifesto – Reading The Fine Print

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pensiero/183952753/

 

 

The True Woman Manifesto is a document that was first presented at the True Woman conference in Chicago in October 2008.

 

The organizers of the conference describe True Woman as a movement.  In addition to the conference, the movement includes books, articles, a 30 day True Woman Make-Over, other resource material and the manifesto.

 

There is a three part process that women are invited to participate in when they join the movement.  1) Sign the True Woman Manifesto; 2) Start the 30 Day True Woman Make-over; and 3) Share the message.

 

I think you will be hearing a lot about this movement soon.  Women’s roles is a very hot topic in the church right now and I think we will be seeing a lot of activity on both sides of the issue in the near future.

 

Whatever side you find yourself on I encourage you to study both sides of the issue. This is an important issue that deserves a lot of discernment and wisdom.  My fear is that women will sign the document or join the movement blindly.

 

There is a good discussion about the True Woman Manifesto at the blog Evolving In Monkeytown  and a thorough three part response to the manifesto at Hevencense.

 

Let me know what you think.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Polls…

This post is a part of the November Synchroblog on “leadership.”

Check out the list of participants with links at the end of this post.

                               

This election year has brought up a lot of divisive issues…race, sex and age to name a few…but the one that I was most surprised to see come up was the issue of women in church leadership.

In September Dan Kimball blogged about the dilemma of conservative Christians supporting a woman as a vice presidential candidate but at the same time being against women being ordained as pastors. A week later David Gushee wrote an opinion piece for USA Today asking conservative evangelicals some tough questions regarding this issue. That started me thinking again about how uncomfortable I am with the whole idea of women not being allowed to do certain things in the church.

First, it is difficult to find anyone that totally agrees on where the lines are to be drawn. Is it only that women cannot be ordained? Or is it that they cannot preach at all? Or teach? Or speak? Serve as deacons? Teach in seminaries? What exactly is it that they can and cannot do? Who decides and on what basis?

Then there are all the irrationalities and contradictions to process. Why is it okay to teach children and other women, but not men? Why would it be okay to stand up and deliver a message to a group of people but not stand behind a pulpit? Is it really that much difference in teaching a 17 year old male and a 19 year old male? Why would it be okay for a woman to lead a whole nation but not a church that has 50 members? Why does the bible speak favorably of a woman judge who led, taught and had authority over men and women, a woman apostle, women who led church in their homes?

For most of my life I pretty much believed what someone else told me the bible said. That isn’t to say that I didn’t read the bible or study the bible – but I interpreted within the guidelines of what someone else told me it said (a pastor, a commentary, a particular author etc.). Over time I began to realize that I could not accept some of the popular interpretations and I began to dig deeper. One of the topics that I began to look into was the issue of a woman’s role in the church. I was surprised to find out that this was an issue that not only divided Christians and non-Christians, mainliners and evangelicals, liberals and conservatives but also conservative evangelical Christians themselves. I was also surprised that there were some very big words that were being used to describe the two main sides of the issue … egalitarian and complementarian.

Egalitarianism = Belief that there are no biblically mandated timeless distinctions between men and women in the church. They stress an equality of men and women, not merely for salvation or in essential personhood, but in opportunities to hold every office and play every role that exists in church life.

Complementarianism = Belief that there are certain timeless restrictions on women’s roles in the church. They stress that persons in positions of authority can function in loving, supportive ways that do not lead to the abuse of those in subordinate positions. Certain roles are altogether prohibited for women.

As I continued to dig and search I came to the conclusion that Paul was not a sexist, that women are not clearly forbidden to teach, preach, shepherd or lead in the church and/or the home and that Jesus was a liberator of women.

Here are some of the reasons I am an egalitarian:

1. Scripture affirms that women were leaders in ministry – Phoebe was a deacon, Priscilla was a teacher, Lydia was an overseer.

2. Paul calls Junia an apostle in Romans 16:7

3. If Scripture allows for some ministry roles then we can’t disallow it. The era and culture of the day prevented widespread ministry roles, but Paul doesn’t say that women can’t serve in leadership roles.

4. In I Cor. 11:5 Paul says that women were praying and prophesying in church. In I Cor. 14:34-35 Paul is not restricting women from speaking – otherwise women would not be allowed to sing, give testimony, or say anything at all in church. I believe that Paul was actually refuting the faulty sexist tradition that was prevalent in his day. For more on this read what Cheryl Schatz wrote in her post “Who Dared To Contradict Paul?”

5. In I Tim. 2:11-14 the idea of women being forbidden to teach men is not a universal rule. If we make this universal and transcultural then we have to make all the commands of I Timothy transcultural. Cheryl Schatz also has an excellent post on this point.

6. Jesus treated women different than culture. He taught them and considered them His disciples – Mary of Mary and Martha and the woman at the well are good examples.

7 Given examples of women’s ministry in the Bible it is wrong to take one or two passages that could be situationally conditional and use them to deny or substantially restrict a group of laborers. The burden of proof lies with those that are doing the restricting and I believe they fail to provide the needed evidence. Dave at Clouds of Heaven has an excellent post on this idea here.

But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do,
what God is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously-
take God seriously. Micah 6:8 (The Message)

 

Check out the other posts in the “Leadership Synchroblog”:

Jonathan Brink – Letter To The President

Adam Gonnerman – Aspiring to the Episcopate

Kai – Leadership – Is Servant Leadership a Broken Model?

Sally Coleman – In the world but not of it- servant leadership for the 21st Century Church

Alan Knox – Submission is given not taken

Joe Miller – Elders Lead a Healthy Family: The Future

Cobus van Wyngaard – Empowering leadership

Steve Hayes – Servant leadership

Geoff Matheson – Leadership

John Smulo – Australian Leadership Lessons

Helen Mildenhall – Leadership

Tyler Savage – Moral Leadership – Is it what we need?

Bryan Riley – Leading is to Listen and Obey

Susan Barnes – Give someone else a turn!

Liz Dyer – A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Polls…

Lionel Woods – Why Diverse Leadership is Good for America

Julie Clawson – Leadership Expectations

Ellen Haroutunian – A New Kind Of Leadership

Matt Stone – Converting Leadership

Steve Bradley – Lording or Leading?

Adam Myers – Two types of Leadership

Bethany Stedman – A Leadership Mosaic

Kathy Escobar – I’m Pretty Sure This Book Won’t Make It On The Bestseller List

Fuzzy Orthodoxy – Self Leadership

Sonja Andrews – Leadership In An Age of Cholera

Tara Hull – Leadership & Being A Single Mom

Glenn Hager – Election Day Ponderings On Leadership

Bill Ellis – Spiritual Leadership and the Re-humanizing of our World

Beth Patterson – Leadership – Being The River