Campsite Rules!

In my last post I said that I would explore Hugh Valentines obstacles and possibilities of Tent Maker ministry. So here goes with the first obstacle; the church.

Hugh writes. Like all institutions, the church is concerned with control and survival. These are often buried motives - subconscious - so this ought not be read as any criticism of individuals or a comment on their considered actions.

Let's start with the word Survival. We all recall the mountain experience of Peter; commonly known as the transfiguration. Never before had he experienced the like; yet impetuous by nature he calls out, 'Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters (skerne) - one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.' (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.) It is almost as if he wished to prolong the event by making some sort of lasting structure. Uncertain, awestruck, perhaps even fearful, is he trying to control the situation into some human manageable dimension? This is not Peter's only outburst, for elsewhere he declares Jesus to be the Christ; only to be followed a further rebuttal that sets limits to his confession. A kind of "Yes, Yes but.....Hmmmmm; not like that!"

What exactly were Peter's plan's in wishing to build a skene ? The word can mean a "tent" or "temporary shelter." It can mean "tabernacle" such as a worship place; the dwelling place of God in the OT. It can mean a "house" -- a permanent dwelling place. What was the perceived need for houses? Perhaps he wants to "house" the event so that it will last forever. Someone has suggested that Peter has been diagnosed as having an "edifice complex."

Survival and structure of the church seems to go hand in hand, as surely the 'edifaces' that we build determines the boundaries we set for mission and ministry. Unfortunately, in time, the structure not only defines who we are but defines our essence. In other words, it controls our actions by deep subconscious often unarticulated notions. Let me illustrate this in thee ways

In the UK, on significant Royal occasions such as the Queens Birthday, the Kings Troop of the Royal Artillery fire a royal salute. Their drill manual explains precisely each part of the ceremony. One member of the troop, a bombardier is ordered to position himself so many yards away from the Gun down on one knee with his right arm raised in the air. When asked why, the reply was that we have always done it this way, until one bright young officer searched through military archives. He found that originally, the soldier was there to hold onto the Officer's horse in order to stop it from bolting when the gun was fired. Whilst the officer's horse is no longer part of this ceremony, the action remains. The action has now become meaningless.

Another military example with royal connections concerns the visit by a senior Royal to an army establishment. At the guardroom entrance there was a path marked by white stones and in order to ensure that the site was looking it's best, a young private was detailed to repaint the markers. In the process, he accidentally upset the paint on the path. Too late to do anything about it the spilled paint was turned into a neat square on the path. Years later and on every subsequent visit by a royal, (you've guessed it) the square is religiously recreated on the path.

I experienced a third example when a junior member of a residential college in London. Each lunch time, the duty member of staff would go to the dining room, count the number of students having lunch, write and the number and the date into the book. When the note book was full, I would take it to the administrator's office and be issued with another. When I asked what happened to the data in the book, I was told nothing, we just file them away.

Similarly, over time, rules appear to become absorbed into church structure and take on the appearance of spiritual order. Keeping these rules becomes paramount and any variation must me dealt with, isolated and expelled as it threatens the very nature of its reason for existing.

What a dilemma. On the one hand a religious order constructed overtime with defined parameters emanating from a gospel but now distant imperative and on the other, the immediacy of a gospel call to serve in a context that is counter cultural to the first and perhaps even questions its rational and structure. Is it any wonder that each appears as an obstacle to the other.

This is both a psychological as well as a theological problem as can be seen in the work of Mary Douglas. Douglas, a symbolic anthropologist examined how people give meanings to their reality and how this reality is expressed by their cultural symbols. She believed that humans actively create meanings in their social lives in order to maintain their society. By analysing these meanings, Douglas attempted to find universal symbolic patterns. By defining what is polluted, people classify their social life into two opposite categories: what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. This symbolic system gives moral order to societies. Douglas further argued that in societies where the categories of purity and pollutants are rigid, people have developed secular and religious rituals to keep themselves physically and morally pure. She claimed that these practices enforce the symbolic system and keep order in the society.

But what if this categorisation process has become skewed, altered or even corrupted based upon a wrong analysis.

It is interesting that Jesus spoke far more about Kingdom ethos than church structure and our narrow view of the church perhaps misses one of the orginal meaning of the Greek word Ekklesia - those who anywhere, in a city, village, constitute such a company and are united into one body.

It would appear that the survival of the Church through over control may well be at odds with Kingdom culture. After all, Jesus did not say the Kingdom of God is controlled by the church did he!