My Lovers' Quarrel

2024.  A new year.  We aim for change, but the reality is it’s hard to accomplish.

40 years ago, I started working in the institutional church.  I began as an eager and naive participant. Then experience and reflection caused me to question my assumptions.  I sought new insights and perspectives, which in turn led me to advocate for change.  It’s a relationship in which I have remained engaged for 40 years, working in various positions as an ‘intrapreneur’ attempting to inspire and lead change.  However, it’s not been an easy relationship. In fact I have had an ongoing “lover’s quarrel” with the institutional church.

I write this on January 1, 2024.  A day for contemplating change.  As I started with some reflection time, I read from a meditation I frequently use. The Lectio 365 reflection for this New Years Day ended up reigniting my lover’s quarrel.  Lectio's choice of words to characterize what mission advance means, elevated the ‘full time’ Christian worker, and by default undermined the majority of those who comprise the church.  It was inadvertent, I am sure.  But that’s a symptom of institutionalization, and the reason for my quarrel with it.  The institutional structure depends on the elevation and prioritization of certain roles & gifts because without them it could not sustain its purpose as an institution, nor it’s funding.  Its recruitment, training, and polity by default advance the class of people that are required to sustain the system.  This perpetuates a cycle of self preservation.  I have discovered as an internal change-agent that although this institutional system has the ability to change itself, its very existence is threatened by the change it seeks/needs.  A paralyzing irony.

Transitioning to the often-cited models espousing less structure and reduced dependence on a clergy class, so as to become a more scattered, organic and neighbourhood/marketplace model of existence, is often endorsed in the rhetoric and even strategic initiatives of church institutions.  However, this frequently falls flat during any attempt at execution.  Change is hard.  Execution is harder.  In the past 10 years I’ve led 3 change initiatives, all endorsed and funded by my denomination, that have either been closed or reduced to token, status-quo existence because of the relentless pressures of institutional thinking and demands.

I am not anti-institution, but I have a quarrel with it.  I stayed in it for 40 years advocating for and leading change until recently when I was released due to institutional budget pressures.  I still have hope that the church-as-institution might be courageous enough to change itself.  Where that isn’t feasible, at least be a sponsor/incubator of initiatives that eventually live and grow external to it.  In other words, be magnanimous and empower/cheer on what it can’t accomplish.  However, I no longer think that is possible for my denomination, nor for others. Whatever is now being birthed that is truly new and able to engage culture as effective Kingdom ambassadors, is for the most part coming from outside the institution of the church.  They are often small and scattered initiatives.  Most likely they will never gain the size, status or collective energy typical of the institution.  There is a part of me that wishes they could.  But then I suspect they would suffer the fate of the very institutions they were trying to influence and reform.

This is an historic tug of war.  A pattern that I believe is a divine check and balance to save the church from itself.  

The 5 core APEST gifts (see endnote) that are meant to simultaneously energize the church and keep it in dynamic tension, too often fall prey to their own competing values.  Rarely are they able to perform together in their natural state of tension.  Our humanity ensures that stalemate. Human nature leads us to prefer stability, captured in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  It’s how our brains work – which is why it is hard to change in the first place.  Logically then it’s how we work in collective community, such as in politics, clubs, associations and of course, the church.  Once we have established a measure of personal or collective stability, our preference is to remain there – whether it works for us or not! But change and growth comes from tension.  That tension in the institutional church’s context is the push-pull, the in-out breathing rhythm of the APEST gifts.  Their interplay is necessary to ensure a Christian community retains and displays the dynamic necessary to ensure true impact.  This isn’t happening.  Safety, security, and tolerance for incremental change dominates the institutional church psyche and strategy.

Here is where I part ways with many of my peers.  The church as we know it is not the hope of the world. Christ, the dynamic of that community, is the Hope of the world.  Let’s not confuse the institution of the church with the Community of Christ as some do.  They are not intrinsically identical.

I repeat - The church as institution is not the hope of the world.  Christ is.  Christ living and working through His people is the basis for how we are to organize and act.  The challenge has been, and is, that the institutional needs of the church really drive their agendas for change.  Choices around strategy, personnel or budgets are made in reference to its long-term survival or viability.  Let’s just be real here: rarely is a decision made that fundamentally re-shapes the posture and structure of the church, because its hard for insiders to be change-makers due to the existential threat to their own role, status and employment.  The usual outcome of a ‘what’s next’ vision discussion is a tweak that is trumpeted as innovation.  Tweaks can be communicated with bold rhetoric.  If a bold strategy is launched, I have seen how the cost is often experienced as too heavy to sustain.  The attempt withers.  The system is sustained.

My conclusion is that the church as institution won’t change to the extent needed for significant, relevant impact on this current world because it is incapable.  To reorganize away from institution to be a collective community of ambassadors of Christ, each empowered to build the Kingdom of God, is too threatening to existing livelihoods, missiology and ecclesiology.  As has been the case through history, change happens predominantly outside the institutional form. Some change agents may remain connected as though in orbit – still within the gravitational pull of the institution.  I’ve taken that route so far.  Others leave the pull of institutional gravity entirely.

I have my point of view.  You’ve read it here and in other of my blogs.  Yet the great hope I hold is that Christ works in and through all our imperfect organizational creations.  I truly wish the institutional system could change.  I dedicated the bulk of my career to that end.  I have seen some advances but also many disappointments.  My hope for its’ transmogrification is significantly diminished.  However, my hope lies in the universal Christ who is working through His community all around this world.  Those change agents/ambassadors are inside and outside the institution of the church.  Christ is ensuring that His ways are being advanced to bless and to change individuals and communities around the world.

So, let’s keep living and acting in hope.

Harv

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APEST = Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher.  Based on Ephesians 4 and popularized as a framework by Alan Hirsch in his book The Forgotten Ways.

Changing How the World Works

I am growing weary of mission rhetoric. My thinking on what defines and comprises “mission” is definitely morphing. I grew up in an evangelical environment that was very much about ‘telling’ the story to the ‘regions beyond’. Perhaps like many of you. It wasn't world-changing.  Mostly about changing eternal addresses.

Along the lifetime of my ministry I have encountered my own and the broader church’s narrowness of engagement with broader culture, defined largely by those encounters that would lead to conversions or church attendance. Church mission-rhetoric may be to “love the world as Jesus loves”, or to be "focused on the lost”, but when push comes to shove, the metrics behind whether to keep a program or engagement going is what ultimately reveals the narrow definition of your ‘mission’.

I am a lowly voice among many writers and thinkers who are trying to yell at the church and show a “new, but not new” understanding of the Missio Dei, which embraces all things in this world as the arena for the restorative force of Gods’ Kingdom. After all, it is ‘all things’ that Christ intends to reconcile to Himself (Colossians 1:20).

How engaged are we with ‘all things’ as defining the mission of God?

The power of God to restore the world is in the loving acts of engagement with the world as it is, in order to see it become what He intends for it. We have a grand and just cause that moves far beyond ‘crossing the line’ to Jesus’ side and enjoying spiritual renewal, to a lifestyle that lives out the ways of the Kingdom of God in front of our society. It’s in that living that the power of the Gospel is experienced by the world. That power is not located exclusively through inner renewal or spiritual insight (which much of the church’s energy is dedicated to provide), but it is in the encounter between the Christ in us and the people and systems of this world.

This is how the early church transformed the world. It was not through evangelistic forays into people groups, but via societal engagements that clearly showed and offered a way of being that stood in an appealing contrast to the surrounding society [1]. Christians lived then, as we do now, within an understanding they were part of a new society, an alternate Kingdom. We live by the rules and ways of that Kingdom, which when expressed in word and deed, cannot help but interact with social, economic and political systems. (How can you read your Gospels and not see this embedded in the words and ways of Jesus?). We are to be part of a social revolution that is the direct (and inevitable) result of a Kingdom way of being. The eventual institutionalization of the early movement of the emerging church (the fate of all movements if they don’t die off completely), has had the effect of walling off this new societal revolution and instead has created some doors for entry, but which now require certain types of keys to gain entry.

We, the community of Christ on this earth will always be in tension over the radical movement outward into the world and the urge to consolidate our efforts into the institutional structures and thinking of the church. Believe me, after all I have said when I say this: May the tension never leave us. It’s the intention of the gift-mix Jesus gave to the leadership functions of the church. The apostles, prophets and evangelists are given to call us out of our consolidating tendencies so that we remain focused on living out this new society called the Kingdom in front of (and sometimes as an affront to) the world. Life calls to life. The shepherds and teachers ground us and keep reminding us that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. But rue the days, as we are in now, when we as the Christ-community settle and merely ‘send off’ the apostles, prophets and evangelists to do their work elsewhere (e.g. to “missions”, or para-church organizations, or local social agencies, or to ‘be a light’ in their jobs), while shepherds and teachers keep the non-profit wheels running and people in the pews to pay for the programs & staff that justifies our corporate existence.

This dichotomy, left unchallenged when all 5 gifts are not informing mission, reinforces to the watching world that the gathered church is NOT a new society living according to new ways of being, but has taken its place alongside other religions of choice, establishing organizational structures for maintaining loyalty and meaning for insiders.

The world is transformed by those who show up.










 Harv Matchullis


[1] For an historical look at the sociological reasons for the church’s significant advance to become 50% of the known world by AD 300, read Rodney Starks’ “The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries”

The Cautioneers

Just when I thought I had invented a new word, Google Search popped my balloon. Turns out the term ‘Cautioneers’ preceded my innovative musings. It’s the name of a band out of Toronto! It is also a term used by the Enneagram. Interestingly the Enneagram captured some of the essence of my (once innovative) meaning: ‘safe, secure, reliable, predictable, cautious’. I will take this definition & expand on it in the context of leadership, especially those who lead the followers of Jesus to their mission of restoring the world back to God.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a leader who occasionally demonstrates the characteristics of The Cautioneer. If we did not display some of these qualities (or was connected to someone who does), leadership and followership would be chaotic. Ask any follower of a purely idea-driven, “squirrel!” kind of leader.

However, to lead from the posture of a Cautioneer is what is bringing the church to a slow crawl in its mission to restore the world to Jesus. Shepherds and pastors by nature default to organizing systems and safe pasture for their flocks. These gifts dominate the paid leadership roles of the organized church. Thus, the resulting church has been defined and confined by boxes, programs and systems. It is certainly busy, but rarely is it found in the cracks of human experience and at the edges of society. There is still a “come to check out what we offer” mentality that drives the church’s mission. It’s safer that way, isn’t it? It’s a Cautioneer approach.

Interestingly the metaphors that describe the world changing ways of Jesus - salt, light, yeast and seed – inherently must be scattered in order to effect change. Yet the Cautioneer leaders find ways to gather and ‘nurture’ these elements rather than risk scattering them around. Thus, their churches are often active internally and launch out on a few forays into the world to ‘pillage the village’ and gather new recruits. Their activity makes them feel and appear they are on mission. Reality check: Activity does NOT equal mission.

I have two questions to pose, with my own answers (lest you think I don’t think about this stuff). I’m eager to hear your own responses.

1. What happened to us?

2. Can we do anything about it?

My personal opinion about what happened:

• In the past few generations or so, increasing wealth enabled resources to be poured into gathering places and then staff to take care of them.
• These places needed ‘pastors’, basically leaders who could manage the place and the activities that would justify the existence of the place.
• ‘Place’ came to define ministry and a programming boom ensued, which then elicited the need for more staff. This was helped along by a culture sympathetic to Judeo-Christian values that were eager to receive these services.
• This became the norm and our colleges and seminaries followed suit by training people for the model, but not necessarily the mission.
• We woke up to the reality that we are not in Judeo-Christian Kansas anymore, and have tried to tweak our model to be ‘relevant’.

Now here we are, in an era where many are speaking out about this. Hirsch, Barna, McLaren, Bibby, Devenish, Platt, Wright and a host of others are in various ways calling us out to cast off the Cautioneer mantle and discover new ways of thinking and organizing so that the mission can be forefront. In spiritual gift terms, the apostolic/prophetic and evangelist mantle needs a renewal within the leadership community of the local & global church. FYI those gifts will inherently seek out new models, forms and ways of being.

Frankly, I don’t hold out much hope for existing church institutions to be able to make the change. (I do hope they try). Mission rhetoric abounds, but it’s calling out from a model resistant to change and unable to change because it won’t face up to the fact parts of it won’t make it into the future. I see some churches tweaking at the edges, but unable to create a wholesale change without a decades long time-window or a commitment to disruptive change.

So to the second question, what can be done?

INDIVIDUALS or GROUPS - Start something. Don’t wait around for the wheels of institutional machinations to catch on and support your idea. The story of church growth has more to do with innovators walking out to the edge of cities, towns and social networks than it does intentional institutional initiatives. 

• Caveat: Don’t do it alone. Find mentors and advisors to help guide your endeavour. The truth is plans go wrong for lack of advice but many advisers bring success (Prov 15:22). A lot of harm has been done by Lone Rangers. A lot of good is done when pioneers rely on other pioneers.

• Encompass Partnerships is designed to assist you start something. It’s one of the key reasons we started in the first place. Contact info@encompasspartnerships.org if you want to start a conversation

CHURCHES – Become a hub of innovation. Your ship may not be able to turn easily or fast, but you can launch smaller vessels that use your ship as a resource hub. Within your gathering most definitely are those who are wired to go to the edge, to seek out new places and spaces for the gospel and do things unconventionally compared to what your church currently defines as ministry. They are those who by nature and gifting are the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists. You have already lost quite a few of them because of inattention and asking them to squeeze into what is. They leave and typically go somewhere else, start something on their own, or leave the church altogether out of frustration. So, why not instead embrace them (not too closely, because after all, they are pioneers) and develop an approach that encourages and coaches their ideas?

• Leadership is to equip ALL followers of Jesus for the work for He calls them. However, clearly your church programming is not capable of reaching as far as its people can reach. I hope that moves you to seek the answer to: How then do we empower those people? Struggle with that one! The Spirit will guide you. I’m not going to provide a 3-point answer.

• Appoint a staff person, create a department, assign time & space among existing staff – whatever works in your corporate environment, which shows and speaks to innovators that you are open!

• WHO can you partner with to ensure these people are given guidance and have some wind blown into their sails? Encompass’ coaching can help fill that role, but we have capacity issues too. You could find mentors for these people among current/former international mission workers or others who have worked in innovative, idea & project-generating environments. Find people with great coaching skills (not advice-givers) who can help a person walk through their thinking about an idea.

Whether you are that individual with a passion, or the church wanting to empower that passion, be ready for one common outcome: It will get messy. The world is messy. People’s lives are messy. Oppressive systems are messy. Yet this is where we are called to live the Life and show the Way of the One who is the key organizing Truth for a restored world.

Harv