Failing of the Institutional Church

Message / Question

Dr Dave now that you are not in ministry you can admit the truth - is the institutional church really just a House of Cards? Is scandal, murder, abuse, and all kind of sin rife? You say that you knew of a charismatic leader who had moral sin in thier life and it was only until you were gone that they were removed from leadership since no one believed - is this more common than churchgoers think? Do we have a right to know?? Will the "House of Cards" fall crumbling down if the truth were known?

Response

First up, a slight correction. NO Christian is ever "out of the ministry" - we are all called to be ministers of the gospel every day 24/7. OK, I do what you mean by your comment, but I think it unfortunate that that people genuinely see that "professional ministry" is the only form that exists - not so, we're all in it together!

Now, the institutional church. Jesus said "I will build my church" and the word that He used for "church" signified a gathering or local assembling of believers. So the TRUE church is firstly expressed as a local gathering. (to prevent a barrage of comments, the true church is made up of all believers if all nations, places and time and will have its first meeting when Christ returns - in this response I am addressing the issue of that visible body in the world that is called the church!)

So, the local church is the primary Biblical model. There are several models or theories as to how these local gatherings (i.e. churches) should function. Generally, we have come to the conclusion that a group of local assemblings or churches can do more together than they can do on their own, thus groups of churches began to form right from the earliest days of the church's existence. To avoid a very long article, I will simply say at this point that these groups developed individual doctrinal views or modis operandi, that made each group unique from other groups. They began to be named or "denominated" corporately by such views (eg Presbyterians were governed by elders, Baptists baptised by immersion, etc). Thus we find the myriad of denomination of the planet today. When we refer to the "institutional church" we are generally referring to such (denominational) institutions.

Within any organisation that is comprised of people, there is a chance that someone, somewhere will fail in some way because of their human weakness. But, to use an old phrase, one rotten apple doesn't mean that the whole case is bad. The issue that I would have with the "institutional church" is not how many "rotten apples" are in their barrel, rather what they do when they find one. It is surely not possible to take action against a person if you don't know that they have done anything wrong. If that could be achieved, we would have no crime in the nation because the Police would arrest the "baddies" before they committed their crimes!

No, I don't think that it is a "house of cards", but I do concede that there may well be some in the church who fail and manage to hide their failings. It is absolutely wrong for a denomination to become aware of sin in one of its leaders and simply move that person from one place to another in the hope that a) the sin won't be repeated and b) that people won't find out about it. When church organisation becomes aware of sin, it should deal appropriately with the person involved. I the case that I mentioned, there were two issues. the person's "charismatic" nature convinced people in the congregation that he would never do wrong (always a dangerous thing!) and those in denominational leadership could see that the local church did not believe the accusations so why should they? However, ultimately God revealed the problem - and this is the important bit - once it was known disciplinary action was taken. I realise that, in the mean time, some people were hurt, and that was tragic, but until the denominational leaders knew or understood what was happening they didn't and couldn't act.

So is there ongoing "scandal" in the church? I guess as long as people are in it, the answer is probably "yes", but I doubt very much that it is common place. I do NOT believe that the "house of cards" image that you raised is even remotely possible. If we look at some specific denominations (especially the Roman Catholic Church in the light of recent revelations) we would have to concede that those with more people have a greater chance that some people will fail the test of time. The way that leadership deals with such issues may also need to change, but I do not see any prospect of the 'institutional churches' collapsing.

One final comment. You asked if it is "more common than churchgoers think". It's a bit like asking how many unknown cases are there? The point is that they are unknown and thus cannot be identified. So how many instances are unknown? I'm not sure how "common" churchgoers think that failure of church leaders actually is, but my feeling is that it is actually LESS common. I say that in the light of the cases that have been prosecuted in the media in recent times - the media would like us to think that it is very common - I am sure that it is not!