Some thoughts on Function over Form

A recent post and subsequent discussion on Jesus Outside the Box has started me thinking about the church – and the difference between function and form.

It seems to me that form, while important, is largely an issue of pragmatism, whereas function is biblically mandated. That is to say, the way we do church has, in the eyes of God, the ability to flex and change to suit the circumstances, but why we do church is an issue settled in the mind of God.

And, as is often the case, we tend to get it backwards and act like the form is prescribed and the function is a matter of personal need or preference. Church wars and denominational fractures are abundant over issues of who has the authority, what kind, how long and in what format we worship, whether or not we pay the pastor, who can be the pastor, who can be become a member, whether or not there should be members and why there are members, who can take communion, and how we do communion and baptism… the list goes on. And these are all matters of form. They are the how of church.

Whereas the why of church is up to me: I need the fellowship, I require time to heal, I like these people and we get along so well, we all see eye-to-eye, I like the kind of music they (oh, that’s a killer word in the church: “they”) offer (another killer word!), the preacher is so good… so I think I’ll go here. And, yes, I’m well aware that I’ve just over-lapped my two lists; that I’ve put similar things in the how and why columns. I’ve done so because it’s what we do. We confuse and interchange the how and the why of church. We pick and choose why we go (or don't go) somewhere and we fight over how our church does church. All the time missing the fact that church isn't somewhere we go but is who we are!

And a major reason why we fight and quibble and refuse to agree on these issues is because the Bible is: a) silent, b) ambivalent or c) ambiguous on them. So we draw our lines, pull out our favourite proof-texts and interpretations of those texts and hammer away at one another, or (in my humble opinion) even worse, refuse to discuss it any further, and then go our separate ways.

Does the Bible have anything to say about form? Absolutely – sometimes. As you read through Acts, and the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon) and the other portions here and there in the New Testament that address the structure of the earliest church gatherings (bits in Romans, Corinthians, and even hints in the Gospels), you seem to get a hodgepodge of pictures: house churches, large gatherings, bishop led groups, autonomous congregations, pastor/deacon/elder/bishop combinations, lay-led, professional clergy, apostle-driven, spontaneously-started, spirit-led, liturgical… churches. There seems to be a little of everything and nothing specific mandated. In fact, most of the texts seem to assume that there is some sort of structure in place, and then proceed to provide correctives or bring advice on how to continue in a healthy way. I can’t think of any text that says flat-out “You’re doing it the wrong way,” or “You’re missing this or that vital piece.”

But when it comes to function – why does the church exist – the Bible says some pretty pointed, direct things. There are at least two complimentary pictures presented in the Gospels and Epistles that spell out the function of the church. And something that we have mostly missed in the west (or at least, in the US and Canada) is that both pictures are profoundly corporate and only secondarily address the individual believer. Church is who we are as friends and followers of Jesus, not where I go as a believer.

The Church is the Body of Jesus

One of the main paradigms articulated over and over is that the believers gathered constitute the Body of Jesus Christ on the earth, in his physical absence. You are not the incarnation of Jesus, nor am I. But we are. This thought first came to me one time I was reading Ephesians 1:22-23. Paul says that the church is the fullness of him who fills everything. It's the same kind of language Paul uses to describe the relationship between Jesus and his Father in Colossians 1:19-20. It's incarnation language. Paul is saying that the church, you and I together as friends of Jesus, embody him on the earth.

When the world outside of Jesus looks at the friends of Jesus together, they are supposed to see Jesus! I don't incarnate the Son of Man by myself. I'm too sin-stained, too self-centred, too not-divine to accurately portray Jesus to the world. But the redeemed of God together, we're supposed to do just that.

We're supposed to be bearers of the Presence. We're supposed to be ministers of compassion and mercy. We're supposed to walk in unity and love of one another. We're supposed to spur one another on, support, exhort, encourage, bear with, lean on, strengthen, care for one another. All of the things our natural bodies do. Corporate unity and identity shouldn't be such a foreign idea to us: we live it every day in our fleshly bodies. Many parts, one body. It's what we are. And, for the most part, my body's many parts function in inter-dependent unity with each other.

The Body of Christ is why the church exists. It is what calls us to be agents of justice and compassion, just as Jesus embodied the justice and compassion of Father God. It invites us to be Spirit-filled and Spirit-led, just as Jesus walked in complete agreement with the Spirit of our Father. It obliges us to live in unity with one another, and with Jesus, just as Jesus lived in absolute unity with his Father. It is in this context that we receive and function in our spiritual gifts. It is in this context that we celebrate the Lord's Supper and it is to this end that we are baptized.

The Body of Christ is the paradigm that calls the church to everything incarnational in her ministry.

The Church is the Bride of Jesus

The other major paradigm given in the New Testament is that of the Bride. The clear train of thought in the New Testament, brought to it's conclusion in Revelation, is that the Father is creating a worthy Bride for his Son from every nation on the earth. A corporate Bride, and Royal gathered community of the Redeemed that is worthy of her Redeemer.

It is a picture that stretches our understanding of corporate identity. And I think that is why we first get such a clear picture of the corporate Body in scripture. Like I already said, the Body is an image we can at least get our heads around - after all, it's what we are in our fleshly existence.

But we are so much more than that. Corporately we are becoming the spotless Bride. Corporately are called to the ministry of intimacy. The Bride is about worship, about adoration, about holiness and purity. She is why we treat one another with tenderness and gentleness. She is why we pray, and study, why we question and learn, and sing, and dance, and weep and celebrate. Our gatherings are but a shadow of a feast that is coming (sometimes a pretty dim shadow, sometimes almost a reflection).

And, I believe, the Bride is why we evangelize. In Jesus' earthly ministry his Kingdom work was about the incarnation. But his redemptive work, his purchasing men and women for God and his building of an inheritance, was about securing a Bride. It was about capturing the hearts of men and women in the place of intimacy.

So it is with the church.

Our kingdom work is incarnational; we advance the Kingdom of God because we are the Body of Christ. Our redemptive work, our bringing men and women to Jesus and being made holy with them, is about intimacy. It is about filling hearts with passion for Jesus.

There are other pictures used in scripture as well. And some of them do address the individual more specifically. In fact, there are aspects of both the Body and Bride paradigms that speak to us as individual parts of the corporate whole. But the church's function is to be the holy people, the royal priesthood, and it's not a function we can play alone.

How we express that, how we do church, has a lot of latitude. And we would do well to remember that when we are tempted to pick on this expression or that structure; you may do church in a completely different way than I do: your traditions, style, and structure may not look at all like mine. But together we are the church: Jesus' Body on the earth and his beautiful Bride for the age to come.

Any thoughts... ?