How to Be Miserable in Your Christian Life
Chapter Three: Avoid the Institutional Church
(Section Five: Non-Institutional Options)
So if you’re avoiding the institutional church, what are
your options? Well, you could always go solo. That’s the easiest way of staying
in your comfort zone: just avoid all other Christians altogether. It’s easy
enough nowadays to be a Christian without church—you just pretend like you are
your own “Body of Christ” (in the hope, of course, that among the members of
the Body you happen to be a torso rather than an ankle, and thus can keep some
measure of a self-sustaining existence apart from the other members). You can
join an imaginary church by watching one on TV or on the Internet. It’s the
easiest way to pretend you’re part of the church without actually being part of
it, and you will rarely, if ever, have to interact with anyone who pushes you
out of your comfort zone.
If you’re
truly daring, you can join one of the new movements of other Christians who are
also disaffected with the institutional church. There’s usually a motley band
of this sort around somewhere, if you know where to look, and they usually
don’t mind a few extra tagalongs (so long as you’re willing to submit to their
institutional model). If you go this route, though, there are a few things to
keep in mind: movements of this type have a tendency to become normal local
churches after awhile. (I suspect this is because of the insidious nature of
institutionalism over against the derring-do of revolutionary authenticity, but
an alternative explanation could be the work of the Holy Spirit.) So as soon as
your nontraditional Christian movement starts to look suspiciously like an institution,
be ready to jump ship. Thankfully, this will not happen to all such movements,
because some will descend into personality cults (which are often very
effective sources of long-term misery), and will disintegrate into nothingness
as soon as the founding leader gets bored.
If you are
part of a nontraditional Christian movement instead of a local church, there
are some effective things you can do to make sure that it never becomes a
boring old institution. One of the easiest ways to do this is to never pay your
pastor. Paid pastors are institutional stooges. They may, it is true,
accomplish far more ministry in the name of the church, often behind the
scenes, that their own congregations are even unaware of—unheralded labors in
pastoral care, compassion for the poor, deep study of the Scriptures, and
persevering, dedicated prayer—but the institutional factor of having salaried
clergy just isn’t worth the risk. If you stick to unpaid leaders for your movement,
pseudo-monastic order, or house church, you’ll guarantee that your leaders
don’t have the time or freedom to deepen their ministries or their personal
Christian walks to the point of becoming thoroughly institutionalized.
Also, it’s
a good idea to choose just a single dimension of the full-orbed biblical model
of the church, and to focus all your attention on that one angle.
Specialization, as we know, leads to excellence. So never mind the fact that
institutional churches have always been devoted to three equal branches of
ministry: the worship of God (the upward ministry), the work of discipleship
(the inward ministry), and the missional outreach to the world (the outward
ministry). Just choose one of the three, and devote yourselves to that. It’s
helpful if you can do this in contrast to an institutional church in your
neighborhood, so that it looks like their missional efforts pale in comparison
to your own (but don’t mention, of course, that they are quite probably better
at the other two aspects of Christian growth than you are, because that would
negate your selling-point).
If you’re
not willing to go solo or to risk joining a nontraditional Christian group that
might possibly turn into a dreaded institution, then there’s still another
avenue open for you. You can become one of the perpetually disaffected
adventurers journeying through our Christian landscape, always visiting
different churches until they find the perfect one. This is a good recipe for
preserving your misery, because it allows you to maintain your narrowness and
your comfort zone while still being a part of local churches. You can even, at
times, stay for weeks or months at any given church, but ultimately you’ll find
that you’ll have to move on, because someone or something within the church
will finally make it clear to you that it is simply not the right place for you.
So you’ll go on, out to another one, looking for the perfect church.
This is a great strategy for a
miserable Christian life, because, as you might have guessed, there is no
perfect church. Or, at least, not one that’s perfect for your current comfort
zone. Oh, some churches out there might claim that they are perfect in at least
one respect: they are the handiwork of God and the beloved Bride of Christ (a
point we may be forced to concede); but in the sense of perfectly conforming to
my personal tastes, there are no churches that have ever reached, nor will ever
reach, that high standard. Usually, this is because churches are composed of
people who are not me, and that irritates me out of my habituated comfort after
awhile. Thus, the quest for the perfect church goes on! And as long as I’m not
committing to be a long-term part of a local church, then I’m not in danger of
being stretched, broadened, and forced into those deeper disciplines that might
eradicate my long-sought-for misery.
Bottom
line: stay away from the institutional church if you want any hope for being
miserable. It’s certainly possible that you can find misery even while part of
a church, but it’s almost guaranteed apart from it.