The reason a place exists generally drives how it functions. For example, if it's my intention to manufacture widgets my building might have some office space up front with cubicles for my widget designers, sales force and my office from which I run my widget empire. In the back there will be a large space with widget building machinery, stockrooms for widget parts and a shipping bay from which my widgets are shipped worldwide. My operation would be in an industrial park near a lot of other places that looked like mine. If I am providing financial consulting services to wealthy clients my building will be in a different part of town. My office would be elegantly appointed with a large mahogany desk, leather chair and an array of computers tracking all the latest financial information. Here I would want my clients to feel comfortable that I could make their financial dreams come true. Different function, different form.
What does this have to do with church? When you misunderstand your function it's reflected in your form. I'm a big fan of Seth Godin. His genius is in marketing and his observations are incredibly insightful. He comments on businesses that misunderstand why they exist. It's my contention that, by and large, churches misunderstand why they exist. The function of the church is to be the body of Christ. Ask almost any Christian and they'll tell you that. It's reflexive, almost like flinching when a bug flies in your face. Christians have even written songs about it. A body is an organism. A living, breathing, active thing. Why is it, then, that most churches seem to be laying inert? Nearly every mainline Christian denomination in America is in decline. Some in steep decline. I think it may be that the church has created forms that don't fit its true function. Somewhere along the way churches became synagogues and that's when the wheels started coming off.
Synagogues were invented in Babylon. It's true! Round about 687 B.C.E. the Babylonians, empowered by God, inflicted his discipline on the people of the southern kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem was leveled and those who survived the attacks were carted off to live in Babylon for about 70 years. The Israelites, stunned by their reversal of fortune, started to gather and discuss what had happened to them. Believing that the only true place to worship God was in the Temple and only in Jerusalem, they had no "house of worship". Instead they created meeting places called synagogues. Here they gathered to have exhaustive discussions on what went wrong, how to do it right should they ever get the chance to try again, who should be invited into their club and who should be excluded. They developed an incredibly complex set of rules and regulations to insure that, once the Temple was restored, nothing like this would ever happen again. They read scripture, sang songs, listened to the learned ones and decided who was right and who was wrong. Sound familiar?
Jesus came along and told these folks that they misunderstood their function. They called on God and used his name in a variety of ways but did not know him. They missed the point of relationship with him. Jesus set things right and gave the body definition and purpose. He called people to follow him then he served. He went to the needy, poor, lame, blind, rejected and outcast. He irritated the religious by going against all the carefully developed rules they had been figuring out since the good old days in Babylon. Jesus "repurposed" believers and sent them out to serve the world. Somehow, along the way, these believers started building synagogues. Once this form became entrenched it wasn't too long before function started to follow. Today we have institutionalized religion. People spend an inordinate amount of time sitting around listening to learned folks and arguing over who's right, who's wrong, who's in, who's out and how do we keep the rules so God is happy with us.
Maybe it's time for the church to ask if it's function is really best served by mult-million dollar building complexes sitting on plots of land all over town. If a body is meant to be active and effective, able to move quickly as the head gives it signals, maybe having buildings, property and a mortgage isn't the best form. Imagine if all Christians came out of their synagogues and started to see each other as part of the same body. What might the church look like if the forms it used really fit the function it was meant for?
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