Reaching Unity

Please view the video before reading the text that follows. The article will provide context and suggest some practical steps for incorporating what the video covers into the Sunday church meeting.

In the film, The Shawshank Redemption, Brooks Hatlen has been incarcerated for so long that the prison and its customs have come to define his life. Hatlen serves as the prison librarian, a role that provides him with a meaningful identity. When notified of his parole, he sees the outside world as a threat to his security. To remain imprisoned, he attempts to kill another inmate. Hatlen had become institutionalized.

I have a childhood memory of visiting the wax museum in Victoria, Canada. One exhibit haunted me long after our tour: a prisoner in a cell so tiny he could not even stand upright in it. And yet, when it came time for his release from prison, he refused. The man had become institutionalized in his cubicle.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day failed to give Jesus a hearing because he did not remain inside the confines of their revered religious practices. As Jesus told them: “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions” (Mark 7:8). They had become institutionalized in Judaism.

After the pastor in our mother church asked me to plant a church, the denomination insisted that I be ordained. They assigned me a mentor, a pastor in a nearby city. That year, our denominational conference was held near enough that we both attended. We were sitting together, when one of the speakers challenged the audience: “Turn to the person sitting next to you, share the names of non-Christians, and pray for them.” My pastor-mentor faced me with more than a little panic: “I don’t know any non-Christians.”

He had been institutionalized in his church circle.

Church life in the 21st century threatens us with becoming institutionalized. It is all too easy to slip into a life that orbits around the organized church. We can begin to depend on it, looking mainly to it for purpose and meaning. It offers us roles to fill, social circles to occupy, rewards for compliance, and predictable routines to follow.

Once institutionalized, we resist changes to the familiar organization. Many of us came to know church life as children. We did not realize back then that scores of our “doing church” routines on Sundays were not necessarily Bible ways of meeting. Instead, those practices had been inherited from the grandparents of the grandparents of our grandparents. Their habits had hardened into religious traditions that opposed reform—even biblical reform.

One such tradition puts a single person—almost always the pastor—front and center stage throughout the church meeting. On a typical Sunday, the pastor welcomes attendees, presents the announcements, leads in the “pastoral prayer,” preaches the sermon, and pronounces the benediction. On occasion, the church also expects the pastor to baptize new believers, officiate during Communion, and lead church business meetings.

Are there exceptions? Yes. But the every-week, monovoiced meeting format—of which Scripture knows nothing—has been the prevailing pattern for centuries. As one blogger writes, “The local weekly church meeting was never supposed to be a one-man show . . . .” Yet institutionalization makes it almost impossible for us to imagine any other structure for a church meeting. Naturally, in a gathering of 250—or even 100—people, it would be impossible for all to speak up or exercise their giftings within that single meeting. What, then, would be possible in such a large-group setting?

Here are seven specific—and realistic—suggestions:

1. Seek out and invite individuals to share how they are seeing God at work during the week—in their families, their neighborhoods, and their workplaces. Such individuals could be coached, not on what to say but how to say it effectively and concisely within the time available for such input during the meeting.

2. Ask those who are willing and can do so capably to lead in public prayer. This responsibility could be conducted on a rotational basis, so that the congregation hears different voices leading in prayer from week to week. Doing so will communicate that those without ecclesiastical titles can and may pray out loud.

3. Regularly include reports from home-group representatives on what God is doing among them. This, too, should involve some helpful coaching to make certain the narrative is effectively delivered.

4. Have members of the governing body address the congregation. Their contributions could cover issues currently facing the church and, from time to time, updates on what board members are discussing and deciding.

5. Allow believers—in addition to the senior pastor—to baptize. This can work very effectively, with parents baptizing their children and Christians baptizing those with whom they have had a significant ministry. Scripture nowhere requires that only ordained pastors do the baptizing. This practice stems completely from church tradition.

6. Rotate teaching responsibilities. Scripture assures us that God has granted the gift of teaching to some within the Body Christ. Identify those with that gift and provide them with opportunities to speak to the whole congregation. This rotation, of course, would include the pastor, who would also serve as coach among the teaching team.

7. Select panels of two to four from the congregation. Have them sit in a semi-circle up front as they discuss issues of discipleship. Give each panel a question to talk over. Subjects might include such topics as: “How can I discover God’s purpose for my life?” “How can we bring up our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord?” “What are some keys to building relationships with our neighbors?” “How can I, as a Christian, serve as a light among my coworkers?”

Over time, as these and other participatory practices become the norm, they will push against monovoiced institutionalization. Those in the congregation will come with heightened interest and expectancy. Christians will grow as they step up to new responsibilities in their apprenticeship to Jesus. Those in the church will get to know and pray for one another, rather than remaining mere strangers in an audience. And when that happens, the church will be on its way to reaching the unity Jesus prayed for in John 17.