4 Form & Freedom
Form & Freedom I turn now from the polarization of the conservative and the radical to that of the structured and the unstructured. Secular structures are everywhere crumbling. There is a worldwide rebellion against rigid institutional forms and a universal feeling after freedom and flexibility. The Christian church, regarded in many parts of the world as one of the major
Establishment structures, cannot escape this challenge of our times. Besides, the challenge comes from inside as well as outside. Many Christian young people are calling for a new and unstructured kind of Christianity shorn of the ecclesiastical encumbrances which have been inherited from the past.
Let me spell out the three main expressions of this mood. They concern the church and its ministry, the conduct of public worship and relations with fellow
Bal anced Christianity Christians. It is seldom safe to generalize. Yet one may say, first, that many are looking for churches without a fixed form. Groups of Christians, now meeting in many parts of the world, are breaking away from tradition and doing their own thing in their own way.
Second, there is a desire for worship services without order, in which the minister no longer dominates everything but congregational participation is encouraged, in which the organ is replaced by the guitar and an ancient liturgy by the language of today, and in which there is more freedom less form, more spontaneity less starch. Third, there is a rejection of denominationalism and a new emphasis on independency.
The younger generation is quite content to cut the cords which tie them to the past and even to other churches of the present. They want to call themselves
Christians without any denominational label.
Without question these three demands have considerable cogency. They are strongly felt and forcefully stated. We cannot simply write them off as the crazy irresponsibilities of the young. There is a widespread quest for the free, the flexible, the spontaneous, the unstructured. The older and more traditional generation of Christians needs to understand it, to be sympathetic to it and to go along with it as far as they can.
We all have to agree that the Holy Spirit can be—and
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sometimes has been—imprisoned in our structures and stifled by our forms.
Nevertheless, there is something to be said on the other side. Freedom is not a synonym for anarchy.
What case can be made, then, for forms and structures of some kind?
First, a structured church. Christians come from different church backgrounds and cherish different traditions. Yet most if not all of us will agree that the Founder of the church intended it to have a visible structure. True, the church has its invisible aspect, in that only "the Lord knows those who are his" (2
Timothy 2:19). Yet we cannot take refuge in the doctrine of the true church's invisibility in order to deny that Jesus Christ meant his people to be seen and known as such. He himself instituted baptism as the rite of initiation into his church, and baptism is a public and visible drama. He also instituted his Supper as the Christian fellowship meal by which the church identifies itself, excludes nonmembers and exercises discipline over members. Again, he appointed pastors to feed his flock. So, wherever you have baptism, the Lord's Supper and a pastorate, or, in traditional terms, a ministry and sacraments, you have a structure. It may be simpler and more flexible than in many historic denominations, but it remains a clear and defi
Bal anced Christianity nite structure. Moreover, one can strongly argue the value of having a ministry and sacraments (or ordinances) that are mutually acknowledged by different churches.
Second, formal worship. Speaking personally, I am all for the spontaneous, exuberant, joyful, noisy worship of the young, even if sometimes it can be painful, as I once experienced in Beirut when my right ear was only inches from the trombone! Some of our services are far too formal, respectable and dull. At the same time, in some modern meetings the almost total loss of the dimension of reverence disturbs me. Some believers seem to assume that the chief evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit is noise. Have we forgotten that a dove is as much an emblem of the Holy
Spirit as are wind and fire? When he visits his people in power, he sometimes brings quietness, silence, reverence and awe. His still small voice is heard. People bow down in wonder before the majesty of the living
God and worship: "The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him" (Habakkuk 2:20). I am not suggesting that reverence and formality invariably go together, for informal gatherings can also be reverent, while formal services can have dignity and beauty without a true, spiritual reverence. But where outward dignity and inward reverence are
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found in conjunction, the worship that is offered is greatly honoring to God.
Third, a connectional principle. Most of us would want to insist on at least a degree of independence for the local church. Each local church, according to the New Testament, is a local, visible manifestation of the universal church. And the local church, not just the universal church, is called the temple of God and the body of Christ (the local church in 1 Corinthians 3:16; 12:27; and the universal church in Ephesians 2:19-22; 4:4, 16). Nevertheless, it is possible to carry this principle of the local church's autonomy too far and virtually to ignore all other Christians of the past and present. When this happens, the local church has become so self-contained as to despise the church of God in time and space.
We need therefore to remind ourselves of certain biblical truths which Christian people (especially the young) tend to forget. Are you interested only in the present? Are you the "now generation" who echoes with relish the famous dictum of Henry Ford that "history is bunk"? It sometimes seems so. Then what kind of God do you believe in? For the God of the Bible is the God of history, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Moses and the prophets, of Jesus Christ and his apostles and the postapostolic church, working
Bal anced Christianity out his purposes across the centuries. If God is the Lord of history, how can we ignore history or take no interest in it? He is also God of the whole church. The unity of the church derives from the unity of the Godhead. It is because there is one Father that there is only one family, because there is one Lord that there is only one faith, hope and baptism, and because there is one Spirit that there is only one body (see Ephesians 4:4-6).
So, if we cannot ignore the past, we cannot ignore the present either. True, the whole question of relations with other Christians is controversial and complicated, and certainly Scripture gives us no warrant to seek or secure unity without truth. But it gives us no warrant either to seek truth without unity. Independency is right. But so is fellowship in the common faith we profess.
Once again, my plea is that we do not polarize on this issue. There is a necessary place in Christ's church for both the structured and the unstructured, both the formal and the informal, both the dignified and the spontaneous, both independency and communion.
The early church sets us a healthy example in this matter. We read that, immediately after the day of Pentecost, the Spirit-filled believers "continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in
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their homes and ate together" (Acts 2:46). So they did not immediately reject the institutional church. They worked to reform it according to the gospel. And they supplemented the formal prayer services of the temple with their own home meetings. It seems to me that every local congregation should include in its program both the more dignified services in church and the more informal fellowship meetings in homes. The older, traditional church members who love the liturgy need to experience the freedom of home worship, while the younger church members who love noise and spontaneity need to experience the dignity and reverence of formal church services. The combination is very healthy.