Institutions

I'm just finishing reading Tony Jones new book, "The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier" (Tony Jones) and it's raising some questions for me. Namely, to what extent can emerging faith communities operate within the institutional church? This is a live issue for me as I'd love to be part of an emerging faith community, but I'm also a part of an institutional church - The Uniting Church in Australia. I'm a minister of the UCA, I'm employed by the UCA (and by the institution itself, not a local congregation), and I have promised to come under the discipline of the UCA.

One thing which gives me comfort is a tradition within the UCA of being a 'movement' rather than a denomination, but there's still a lot of denominational apparatus, let me tell you! Anyway, I'll keep thinking about it and in the next couple of posts I might try to delineate the things I really like about the UCA and why I think the Church would be poorer if there was no UCA. Then I might look at some of the 'emergent' values I hold and then thirdly how these two lists sit somewhat in tension.

Comments

[Dan Morehead]

I don't think there is an institutional church and a non-institutional church, just different forms of institution. I think it should also be clear that all practices need institutions to sustain them even if institutions tend to be parasitic on the practices that they sustain. The point is that institutions need policing not eradication.

[Duncan]

I share your interest Lindsay. I'm part of two groups, one which would fit the simple church model, and the other which fits more with the typical Uniting Church structure. There's nothing stopping the Uniting Church fostering and supporting informal groups of people on the edge.

I talked this through with a reception committee this week - applying to be a Uniting Church minister after being here 7 years. I asked about being given permission to express my commitment to the Uniting Church in support of on-the-edge experiements that may involve me working outside the institution. It can be done, I was told.

[linzc]

Thanks Dan, I think you've got a good balance. In my own mind I phrase it that it's ok to be part of the institution as long as I'm never completely comfortable being part of the institution. Does that sound schizo?

Duncan, I'm sure it can be done. It's just the balancing act that is hard. For me part of the balancing act (especially as an employee of the system) is deciding when you just get on with doing stuff, using the cracks and the wiggle-room in the system to survive; and when does the system need to be challenged, shaped and changed to deliberately GIVE space for the new and different. BTW, best wishes with your journey through reception of Ministers - been there, done that!

(And perhaps that fact adds to my angst - 'cause the UCA isn't just the institution I grew up in, it's the institution I CHOSE. So it seems somehow bizarre or disloyal or blowing in the wind to now be criticising the institution.)

[Dan Morehead]

By way of footnote, my conceptions on this are largely indebted to the work of the moral philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre.

[Dan Morehead]

"Does that sound schizo?" No, in fact, I think my understanding of both the need for and the problems with institutions require feeling as you do.