AEC1999

Lois Y. Barrett

It used to be that when Christians talked about ecclesiology (that is, the nature of the church), they talked about, "What are the marks of the true church?" The word "true" here means not only "real"; it also has the old definition of being faithful, as I still can use when I talk about being true to my husband. The important question with regard to the church, the question you needed to settle before you could go on to other aspects of the church, was, "What does it mean for the church to be faithful to its Lord? What signs could you observe and see that this is a true church?"

In Table 1 is a chart that takes us on a quick trip through the centuries looking at the ecclesiological questions the church was asking and the answers church leaders gave. In the left-hand column are New Testament images of the church, as John Driver has listed them in his recent book, Images of the Church in Mission (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1997). There is a proliferation of images, many of them metaphorical and political: people of God, bride of Christ, branches on the vine, flock, holy nation, commonwealth, temple of the Holy Spirit. Many of them focus on how the church is different from the world. In the New Testament, to answer the big question about the church, the authors used images that help us understand the whole, although in partial ways in the case of metaphors, because no metaphor is an accurate picture in every respect. We have a case of mixed metaphors because no one metaphor can say everything there is to say about the church. So understanding the nature of the church happens as you live according to these images, as you become part of a new humanity, as you are a member of the family of God, as you act like a citizen of heaven, as you together are the temple housing the Holy Spirit.

The next column lists the question and answer of the ancient creeds: What is the church? The church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Here we lose the richness of multiple metaphors (the more holistic Hebrew way) and gain the precision of a more abstract description (a typically Greek way of doing things). This is not a bad answer, although it has been interpreted in some bad ways. It came to be interpreted in rigid ways that identified the true church with one particular institution, the Roman Catholic Church. Early on people started saying, "Wherever the bishop is, there is the church, and whoever is not with the bishop is not with the church." The oneness of the church was often enforced with violence after church and state became intertwined. With the bringing together of church and state, being different from the world diminished. Few Christians had a sense of peoplehood that was different from citizenship in the state.

But in the more complete meanings of these four words (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic), there is much that is biblical. In fact, in the book Missional Church (Darrell L. Guder, ed.; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), we used these four marks of the church as a way of connecting with some parts of the church in order to talk about biblical understandings of the church. We talked about apostolic not only in terms of apostolic succession of leadership but in terms of the church being sent out as apostles to the world, sent on God’s mission. We talked about being holy as being set apart and different from the world. We talked about being catholic as the church expressed through many different cultures but "according to the whole." Even though we in the Anabaptist tradition have usually not made too much of the Nicene Creed, it can help us in talking with other Christians about the nature of the true church.

Next we move to the Protestant Reformation, where people were still asking, "What is the true church? Would you know a true church if you saw it?" The Reformers were quite certain that the Roman church of the sixteenth century was not the true church. So it became important to know what would constitute the true church. For Martin Luther, the church was where the Word is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. The Reformed tradition also had this definition of the church and sometimes added "and the practice of a right church discipline." This is the beginning of an understanding of the church that is not so much concerned about who and what is the church but where the proper things are happening.

The Anabaptists of the sixteenth century generally had much longer lists of the marks of the true church. They were quite certain that Luther’s definition of the church did not place enough emphasis on right behavior, on penitence, on Christians having transformed lives. Anabaptist writers, like the biblical writers, make use of multiple images. Menno Simons in one paragraph called the church

The pure chaste bride . . . , flesh of Christ’s flesh and bone of his bone, the spiritual house of Israel, the spiritual city Jerusalem, the spiritual temple and Mount Zion, the spiritual ark of the Lord in which is hidden the true bread of heaven, Christ Jesus and his blessed Word, the green, blossoming rod of faith, and the spiritual tables of stone . . . . They are the spiritual seed of Abraham, children of the promise, in covenant with God and partakers of the heavenly blessing.¹

Likewise the Hutterite leader Peter Riedemann wrote:

The church of Christ is the basis and ground of truth, a lantern of righteousness, in which the light of grace is borne and held before the whole world, that its darkness, unbelief and blindness be thereby seen and made light, and that [people] may also learn to see and know the way of life. Therefore is the church of Christ in the first place completely filled with the light of Christ as a lantern is illuminated and made bright by the light: that his light might shine through her to others.

And as the lantern of Christ has been made light, bright and clear, enlightened by the light of the knowledge of God, its brightness and light shines out into the distance to give light to others still walking in darkness, even as Christ himself has commanded, "Let your light shine before [others], that they may see your good works and praise God, the Father in heaven." Which thing, however, cannot be other than through the strength and working of the Spirit of Christ within us. . . .

Thus the church of Christ is, and continues to be, a pillar and ground of truth, in that the truth itself shows and expresses itself in her, which truth is confirmed, ratified, and brought to pass in her by the Holy Spirit. Thus, whosoever endures and suffers the working of the Spirit of Christ is a member of this church; but whosoever does not suffer this work but allows sin to have the rule over him belongs not to the church of Christ.²

Menno Simons has probably the clearest list of "the true signs by which the Church of Christ may be known":

I. By an unadulterated, pure doctrine. ("Teach them to observe all things I have commanded you." Where the church of Christ is, there his Word is preached purely and rightly.)

II. By a scriptural use of the sacramental signs. (Baptism of those who, by faith, are born of God, who sincerely repent, who bury their sins in Christ’s death, and arise with him in newness of life; who put on Christ and have a clear conscience; participation in the Lord’s Holy Supper by the penitent who walk with their brothers and sisters in love, peace and unity, and prove by their fruits that they are the church and people of Christ.)

III. By obedience to the Word. (Let your light shine before others. Be blameless and harmless, children of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.)

IV. By unfeigned, brotherly love. (Wherever sincere, brotherly love is found without hypocrisy, with its fruits, there we find the church of Christ.)

V. By a bold confession of God and Christ. (The name, will, Word, and ordinance of Christ are confidently confessed in the face of all cruelty, tyranny, tumult, fire, sword, and violence of the world and sustained unto the end.

VI. By oppression and tribulation for the sake of the Lord's Word. (You will be hated of all nations for my name's sake. This very cross is a sure indicator of the church of Christ.)³

Menno shared with Luther the interest in the Word rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered but added obedience, love, witness to Christ in the face of persecution, and suffering for the sake of the gospel. When these are present, there is the true, the faithful church.

You will notice that even the state churches in the sixteenth century were phrasing the question in terms of faithfulness, not effectiveness. Everybody in the sixteenth century knew that sometimes faithfulness meant short-term ineffectiveness. Most Christians still had an understanding that they were living at the end of this age and God’s new era was arriving. They could hold on until God vindicated them in the age to come. So success had to do with God’s success in the long run, not necessarily our success in the short run.

In the nineteenth century in North America, new understandings of the church arose. With the gradual abolition of the state churches came the rise of a new form of church, the denomination. Church was sometimes seen as chaplain to society, as it had been in the state churches. Or it gained a new image congruent with its actual legal status in Canada and the United States—the voluntary association, or church as religious club. Church was sometimes seen not as a unity, as a communal body, but as a collection of individual Christians coming together for their mutual benefit.

In the twentieth century, with the rise of consumerism, came the image of the church as vendor of religious goods and services. People went shopping for a church. The church was sometimes seen as a means to "meet my needs." This is the image of the church that often appears these days in cartoons, such as the Doonesbury cartoon a few years ago about the couple who come to the pastor of the Little Church of Walden, shopping for a church. The pastor begins describing the church as a 12-step church—it’s all about salvation from sin, from guilt. The couple interrupts him, saying the mention of sin and guilt seems like too much negativity. Then the man looks at the church brochure, "On the other hand, you do have racquetball." The woman responds, "So do the Unitarians, honey. Let’s shop around some more."

It is in this twentieth-century context of consumerism and individualism that we need to understand the rise of the church growth movement. The twentieth century has been a utilitarian age. In order to have importance, things had to be "useful." Businesses had marketing strategies and did what was useful and effective for growth; so did many churches. The church growth movement was an attempt to get beyond radical individualism and to say, "The church is important." Yet usually the importance of the church was only instrumental—in order to get more individual people to experience salvation. The church itself was not part of God’s plan or a sign of the reign of God.

But something else had happened. Without many people realizing it, the question had changed. Instead of asking the question, "What are the marks of the true church?," now many people were asking, "What are the marks of the successful church or the growing church?" Now, in the modern era, the marks became not New Testament images and metaphors of peoplehood or creedal statements about the nature of the church but principles for being successful. The big question had changed from who or what to how.

After this long excursion through history, we finally get to natural church development. Christian Schwarz tries to distance himself in several respects from the early church growth movement, which he calls "a technocratic endeavor through and through," where people were trying to produce church growth in their own strength without God’s help (NCD, 6-7). Natural church development wants to move away from a reliance on numerical growth goals (NCD, 44). It advocates systems thinking and organic rather than mechanical models. It values quality as well as quantity, principle over the merely pragmatic. Schwarz does not value growth for its own sake; megachurches may not be healthy churches.

These are all moves in the right direction, but there are also many indications that natural church development is still in the church growth camp. Although Schwarz insists that church growth itself should never become the motivation for the church’s activities (NCD, 106), the assumption is that the healthy-quality church (that is, the faithful church) will always be a growing church. Growth is not the immediate goal but is the expected by-product of working on the quality.

Listed in the right-hand column of Table 1 are Schwarz’s eight indicators of quality. All of these are good things, for the most part. (I would take issue particularly with the indicator "inspiring worship." The central focus of worship is to be God, not our need to have a good feeling.) So these indicators are not bad. But are they sufficient? In Natural Church Development, Schwarz says that these eight characteristics of the church came from empirical research, observing nature, and studying Scripture (NCD, 13). But in the Implementation Guide, it becomes clear that the primary source of seven of these eight qualities was church growth literature. Schwarz and Schalk write, "The list of questions we used to conduct our first church growth surveys in 1987 resulted mainly from studying the church growth literature available at that time. In designing the first questionnaire, I tried to make use of those aspects that were common to most of the books" (IG, 201). They then describe their process of developing the "quality index."

We proceeded on the basis of the then unproved axiom that everything that has a positive relationship with the quantitative growth of a church—is "quality." Thus our point of departure for analyzing quality was at first a quantitative one. . . . In this way, we avoided the trap of defining what church quality is on the basis of our understanding of the Bible. . . .

In a second step, we critically examined all the emerging principles by biblical standards. . . . But such considerations are, of course, purely hypothetical, since all the factors which have been shown to have a positive relationship with church growth are in harmony with the overall teachings of the Bible. Thus at least the foundational principles of natural church development—the eight quality characteristics—can rightly be called "biblical principles." In short: biblical statements were not the starting points for our research. Rather, they served as a critical standard against which we examined what we found empirically (IG, 202-203).

The research question became: "What church growth principles are true, regardless of culture and theological persuasion?" (NCD, 19).

Thus, these eight characteristics were chosen by asking how churches grow. While there is nothing anti-Christian in these characteristics, there is also no evidence that the researchers interacted with the key themes of the Bible, in particular the centrality of the reign of God in the message of Jesus; the nature of the church as sign, foretaste, and instrument of the reign of God; or the coming fulfillment of the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven. Indeed, there is no mention of Jesus in the description of the eight characteristics. The Implementation Guide says that the theological framework on which this approach to church growth builds is treated in the German book Paradigmenwechsel in der Kirche, to which I do not have access and which has not yet been advertised by ChurchSmart Resources. (Its content is evidently not considered essential for North American churches to know.⁴) To the credit of the researchers, there is some discussion of the possible persecution of the church and how "hostile energy" might be transformed into "holy energy" through the "jiu-jitsu principle" (NCD, 70). However, there is no mention of how the church might be different from the world in terms of its behavior, and there is no discussion of the nature of the church in relation to the surrounding cultures and governments. The reader is not led to think about the being of the church, how it might listen to God’s call for it, how it might participate with Christ in God’s mission in the world.

This overlooking of key missional themes of the Bible is a result of a problem that is both theological and methodological. It is what happens when "how" comes before "why" and "what" In the learning process, it is important to start with the question "why" Why is the church important in God’s scheme of things? Why are we motivated to share the gospel? We reflect on our concrete experience. We determine why this is an important issue. The second step in the learning process is to ask "what" What is the content? What is the theory? What is the model? In what way are we to understand this? What is the theology? What is the gospel that is the reason why we are church? What is the nature of the church? What is our calling?

Only then can we move on to "how." If we have not taken care of "why" and "what," how will we know what it is we are to do? Content is never separate from form and method. Tools are not neutral. When we do not pay careful attention to the "what" of the church, the nature and being of the church, then we fall into the trap of assuming whatever understanding of the church is out there. And the primary understanding that is "out there" in the dominant culture is the understanding of the church as vendor of religious goods and services, a kind of spiritual filling station.

If we do not want just to accept the dominant culture’s definitions of the church, then we will need to look at the "what" and to do it theologically—interpreting the Bible in the midst of the congregation, in harmony with Jesus Christ, with our context in mind. Then we can get beyond defining the church in terms of its "success" and get to how the church can be a faithful and effective witness to the gospel.

When we have looked at the "why" and the "what" and the "how," then we put it into practice, reflect again on our experience, look again at the foundations of our faith and our understanding of the mission of the church, and so on around the circle.

There are people trying to do this. Through the Gospel and Our Culture Network, a number of us have drawn up a list of "Empirical Indicators of a Missional Church." (see Table 2) They are drawn from the book Missional Church, which itself is an attempt to answer the "what" question—the nature of the church in its mission in North America—through biblical study and theological method. I am part of an eight-member team, including Linford Stutzman from Eastern Mennonite Seminary and six others who are Presbyterian, independent, Lutheran, Christian Reformed, and Southern Baptist. We are using this list of "empirical indicators" to do research in a dozen or more congregations in the U.S. and Canada who in one or more ways exemplify these characteristics.

Not all of these characteristics may be positively correlated with church growth. We don’t know. Moreover, faithfulness and effectiveness are not opposites. Someone was once talking to me about the need for a balance of grace and works. I said, "No. We need more grace and more works." Faithfulness and effectiveness are the same. We don’t need to pit them against each other. We need more faithfulness and more effectiveness.

I’ll take short-term effectiveness along with faithfulness whenever I can get it. It’s one of those down payments of the Spirit, like consolations in prayer. But I pray whether or not God zaps me right then. I want to praise God even though the fig tree does not blossom this year. And I want to call the church to be faithful to the whole gospel even if it does not produce growth in numbers in the short term.

When there is a lack of effectiveness, we can’t assume we know the reason. It may be because of our own sloppiness or sin. Or it may be because of the opposition of the powers. We need spiritual discernment to understand the diverse reasons why we do not have short-term effectiveness.

And in order to get beyond being too concerned with short-term effectiveness, the church needs an adequate eschatology. The dominant culture in North America emphasizes short-term successes—the bottom line, the growth charts—because it does not have an understanding of God’s future. In God’s future, in the age to come, the Scriptures promise us there will be complete victory over evil. The martyrs, who did not experience success in the short run, will find their reward. The captives will be free. There will be no more hunger or thirst or crying. We do not know the day of God’s success, but we live in that hope, that even when the present does not seem successful, our ultimate success is assured.

On the Gospel and Our Culture Internet discussion group, this posting appeared last week from John Stonecypher. Someone else had posed the question: "What and how is success in our churches measured, if at all, by us as Christians?" He wrote:

That "if at all" sparked some thoughts: Is our culture’s inordinate obsession with "success" and "measurable, quantifiable objectives" perhaps part of the North American culture from which the church must distance herself?

Can our measurements of success be a way we manage to avoid the commands of our Lord? We measure success so that we may see which actions are producing the desired results, so that information can inform our decisions of what actions to continue, which ones to discontinue. What happens when God’s direction doesn’t appear to be succeeding? Moses’ first talk with Pharaoh resulted in Pharaoh doubling (or tripling?) the slaves’ work load. Such a spectacular failure would probably merit removal from any powerful position in one of our churches or parachurch organizations. Or if Moses were smart by our standards of measuring success, he would have dropped God’s advice and switched to tactics that might actually work. Think of the tragedy we might have seen if the Israelite warriors had gotten together in a Total Quality Management meeting after marching around Jericho for six days and decided that their lack of success meant they should do something other than that commanded by Yahweh?

With our culture’s technological gods, "how" has become the main question, perhaps the only question that is asked anymore. Bonhoeffer repeatedly urged us to place priority on "who" questions over and against "how" questions. Our first question is not, "How are we going to succeed in accomplishing this goal?" (though that is certainly an important question), but rather, "Who is the God who has invited us to participate in God’s work?"

To recapitulate, natural church development begins with the "how" to grow, not the "why" and the "what." It does not start from a biblical base. Therefore it confuses faithfulness and effectiveness. To correct these problems is not a matter of fiddling with the details but a matter of underlying assumptions.

Notes

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