What's Holding the Church Back?

We had the opportunity last night to help some friends move. After all was done, we had the opportunity to listen to a couple of people talk about their frustrations with previous ministries. The more I listen, the more I find that the system we have adopted as the vehicle to take the message of Jesus to the world is holding back the church. There is a drain on the power that the church could have on influencing this world but it is sacred to the majority.

The following is a excerpt from a newsletter put out by Wolfgang Simson called: The FridayFax. This article focused on the church presence in China.

"How evil schemes can work out for good (Rom 8:28)
Many close observers trace the numerical explosion of the Chinese housechurches back to four things that Mao and his Cultural Revolution did to the Church:
1) Systematic persecution with the very real threat of total annihilation seriously raised the price of becoming a Christian. To convert to Jesus Christ became basically synonymous to having given up life and being ready to die for one’s faith.
2) Banishing missionaries removed the stifling influence of colonializing and stagnating, dysfunctional, Western Churchianity and forced the Chinese followers of Christ to develop own, indigenous and Non-Western forms of church.
3) Killing all senior, second- and third-level leadership of Christians forcefully removed the biggest stopper of organic, multiplying growth traditional Christianity knows: static, stifling, pharaohnic and highly qualified and professional leaders obstructing the following generations to naturally grow into responsibility. Removing the first three levels of ecclesial hierarchy forced “Brother and Sister Normal” into action and threw them into the water like nothing else would ever have, therefore thrusting many thousands into taking responsibility.
4) Banning public meetings and nationalizing church property delivered the church from the amazingly effective cage of building- and programme-based Christianity, freed it from a Constantinian mindset and being forever focused on a edifice-complex. Without this deliverance to happen, church multiplication would always automatically mean the multiplication of “sanctuaries”, pastors and pews, a process that the Western Church has proven over Millennia to be too costly, time-consuming and anti-organic in order to truly spread the gospel. The
Maoist Revolution and surely not the Missionaries, Pastors and their own structures had allowed the Chinese Christians to stop bringing people to “church”, and start bringing the church to the people with amazing results. Many Christian leaders in China have said, publicly or in private: “Thank God for Mao!”
Is there something here that the rest of the world could learn from this – without paying the costly and gruesome price for these lessons?"

I think that these conclusions he has come to are worth thinking through. The implications of what Wolfgang presents would have a radical impact on the influence of the church within our own culture. Now I know that God continues to use the system described here to change some people, so I am not saying that God isn't active in what we call the "institutionalized" church, but it is a weaker vessel.

A reread of John chapter four might prove helpful in this discussion as Jesus describes a time when there will not be a place here nor there where we worship. Jesus was pointing to a time when the people of God would infiltrate the world and be His people. Instead, we have created a system where we go to this place or that place to worship. And that system has been in place since Constantine.

If you would like to read the entire newsletter from Wolfgang, here is the link.