Thomas O’Dea wrote, “Five Dilemmas in the Institutionalization of Religion” in 1961.  Here is a link to the original article. I first learned about this article through the insightful and briliant book, Rejesus: A Wild Messiah For A Missional Church by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost.

This is what Hirsch and Frost say on page 69 of the book:

“What happens in the beginning of a movement is that the people encounter the divine in a profound and revelatory way, but with successive generations this encounter tends to fade like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.  What begins as a revolutionary, life-transforming, confrontation with Jesus eventually subsides into a codified religion and is subsequently incorporated into normal social life.”

They describe the irresolvable dilemma in this way:

“Although genuine faith is born out of direct encounters with God, it cannot survive and prosper without some form of stability and order. Viewed positively, rituals, creeds, and organizations can help people structure their relationship with God.  In fact, we believe this is what they were initially designed for.  But unless the worshipper is very wary, the glory of the God encounter will slowly fade and the ritual, creeds, and rules intended to preserve the encounter will take its place.”

Thomas O’Dea, in the article linked to above, points out how consecutive generations tend to construct religious systems to take the place of the original encounter.  Thus, the “crisis inevitably dawns when the outward forms of worship no longer match the inward experience and spiritual condition of the participants.  Decline becomes inevitable.  Authentic Christianity is subverted and constant renewals become necessary.”  (Hirsch and Frost, 77).

So what are these five dilemmas the Thomas O’Dea wrote about?  I have summarized them below.  If you look at the original article, you will see why a summary is helpful!

1. THE DILEMMA OF MIXED MOTIVATION

In the beginning, in what O’Dea calls the “pre-institutionalized stage” of a religious movement, the disciples are gathered around a charismatic leader and there is only one single motivation.  When the movement is stabilized with an institutional matrix, new kinds of motivation arise – needs for prestige, leadership, power, and respect. An example from the New Testament is seen where we read the disciples becoming concerned with who shall be the highest in the kingdom.

Institutions can mobilize all these different kinds of motivation but selection and promotion within the organization must reflect the functional needs of the organization and therefore will not distinguish between the different motivations.  The self-interested motivation may prevail leading to its corruption.  Mixed motivation is not unique to leadership but changes the composition of its members.  With the passing of the founding generation, the religious body now contains people who have not had the original conversion experience.  “The selection process which voluntary conversion represented often kept out of the organization precisely the kinds of persons who are now brought up within it.”

2. THE SYMBOLIC DILEMMA: OBJECTIFICATION VERSUS ALIENATION

Our response to the holy is expressed not only in community, but also in worship.  However, in order to survive its charismatic moment, worship must become stabilized in established forms.  Thus, ritual develops forcing to conform our interior disposition to this symbolic order.  So, worship becomes an objective reality that imposes its own patterns upon the participants.

And yet, this “objectification” is necessary for common worship for without it prayer would be individual, not communal.  The ritualization which makes it possible to worship in community can become so routinized that it becomes cut off from the experience of the participants.  Thus, we have alienation.   (I wonder if this is what I see in contemporary church services when participants are text messaging or talking on their cell phones while the worship band plays on.)

“To symbolize the transcendent is to take the inevitable risk of losing the contact with it.  To embody the sacred in a vehicle is to run the risk of its secularization.  Yet if religious life is to be shared and transmitted down the generations the attempt must be made.”  The medium of genuine communication becomes a barrier and an object of aggression. (Could this be the basis for the “worship wars”, the denomination rifts, or the strong feelings invoked by some by the words, Emergent, Charismatic, Evangelical, or Institutional Church?)

3. THE DILEMMA OF ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER

Charismatic leadership quickly changes into a traditional structure consisting of a chief and an administrative staff.  Precedents are established, new offices and roles are formed, new communication protocols and soon the structure is in danger of complicating itself.  “The tendency or organization to complicate itself to meet new situations often transforms it into an awkward and confusing mechanism within whose context is it difficult to accomplish anything.”

4. THE DILEMMA OF DELIMITATION: CONCRETE DEFINITION VERSUS SUBSTITUTION OF LETTER FOR SPIRIT

In order to have an impact on our lives, religious insights must be translated into terms relevant for everyday life.  These terms, however elaborate, or however gifted the communicator maybe be, can’t make explicit all that is implied in the original insight or experience.  A similar thing happens when you try to explain a dream or a wonderful experience to someone.  Your words can never fully encapsulate your original experience.  And yet we must try or the experience will be lost by others.  The risk is that it may end up being reduced too much which would lead to a deadening legalism.

5. THE DILEMMA OF POWER: CONVERSION VERSUS COERCION

The propagation of Christianity involves an interior “change” or “conversion”.  This decision is the beginning of the religious life for the individual.  “With institutionalization of the religious movement, such a conversion may be replace by the socialization of the young so that a slow process of education and training substitutes for the more dramatic experience.”  Of course, this kind of socialization often paves the way for conversion.   Since religion depends on this interior disposition of the individuals who are vulnerable to outside influences, there is a temptation to use the close relation or similarities between religion and societal values to reinforce the religion.  The organization, in its search for power, is often co-opted by the very forces it seeks to control.

Those are the five dilemmas written about in the article, “Five Dilemmas in the Institutionalization of Religion”.  The article takes a long time to wade through so I hope it benefits you to have my brief synopsis here.  I searched for a summary but couldn’t find one so hopefully this one will suffice for now.  If, after reading the article, you have something to add or can word it better than I, let me know and I would be glad to include it here!

Again, comments are always welcome and not moderated.

Two recent posts addressed some questions about hell (How Not to Invite Someone to Church and Does Hell Exist) and so I thought it would be a good idea to give these 5 reasons to follow Jesus that does not include hell.  Here they are:

1. . . . the life Jesus offers is like a treasure discovered in a field and when you find it you realize it is so valuable that you would give up anything to possess it. God is worth knowing just because of how incredibly awesome he is.  (Matthew 13:44)
2. . . . God’s kingdom is near and you can be an active participant in His kingdom!
3. . . . you have a Father who loves you like no other father you’ve ever known in your life and can now discover what it means to have a daily relationship with him. (Luke 15:11-32)
4. . . . you will never know how loved you really are. (Ephesians 3:17-19)
5. . . . Jesus’ death on the cross was an act of love for you. This love will allow you to feel perfectly safe in the Father’s presence. It frees you to be exactly who you are, weaknesses and all, and never again have to pretend before him.  (1 John 4:7-21)

I also recommend the following post:

7 Reasons You Should Not Become a Christian (And One Reason You Should) by John Bowen (Wycliffe College, University of Toronto)

And, you might find this one interesting as well: Top Ten Reasons to Follow Jesus

Can you add more “positive” reasons for following Jesus?

One of the things I do not appreciate about every church I have ever been involved with is the hierarchical structure of authority.  It is very interesting to me that Dr. Barb Orlowski, in her soon-to-be-published dissertation on spiritual abuse in churches, devotes an entire chapter to the hierarchical structure of authority.  Wait a minute  . . .   so, that would mean . . . spiritual abuse might maybe “possibly” perhaps be connected to the hierarchical church structure?  Here is the link to her dissertation – pay special attention to chapter 3.

Here is an excerpt from her work:

The priesthood of all God’s people, first introduced by Luther, was lost as the church quickly returned to hierarchical structures of leadership.  The challenge we face in restoring the priesthood of all God’s people is:

1. current leaders are accustomed to control;
2. leaders fear disorder if they are not in control;
3. a sense of “professional” leadership has crept into the church, which means pastors often rely on their natural talent, instead of the Spirit and insist on looking and sounding respectable;
4. modern individualism has impacted our thinking causing us to lose the biblical perspective of the Spirit; and finally,
5. we use the wrong dominant model in church.  Most of our churches have the larger body and smaller groups.  The mistake of most churches is to import the larger group into the smaller group rather than allowing the small groups to impact the larger group.  This wrongly directed model eventually kills the small group rather than promoting “every member ministry”.  Leaders must work to make a congregational life full of participation.

from Robert Webber, The Younger Evangelicals (p150-1) as written in the above linked dissertation

I decided to “accept Jesus as my personal Saviour” when I was a young child because I was afraid of hell.  I mean, seriously, what 6 year old would not be afraid of . . .

• burning forever in a lake of fire,
• not being able to see anyone else ever,
• and having your eyeballs gauged out with a red-hot poker by Satan himself!

No sir, I did not need any more motivation than that.  I would be stupid NOT to say the sinner’s prayer.  So I did.  Many times.   I also learned that if my friends did not also accept Jesus into their heart, that their blood would be on my hands.  I never understood that one but it is what I was taught.

So without further adieu,  watch this video clip (I hope you find it as amusing as my wife and I did).

[flickrvideo]http://www.flickr.com/photos/7225566@N03/3564928729/[/flickrvideo]

I became a Christian because I was afraid of hell.  As I look back, I realize that it was not a very good way to start my relationship with God. 

I am posting this video today as a precursor to tomorrow’s post, “How (NOT) to Invite Someone to Church” where I question the role of hell in evangelism.

If you would like to read the transcript from this video, go to You Tube and click on “more info”. Also, by going to You Tube you will also find these videos of N.T. Wright as well: “Where is Hell Located?”, “What is Purgatory?”, “What does Heaven Look Like?”, and “What Will We Do in Heaven?”

The church, no matter to what tribe (denomination) you belong, will continue to use control in such a way as to keep its membership in check.  And this is not just a local but a worldwide phenomenon.  People are leaving the church and there are many more who would like to leave because they are burned out on religious manipulation, but they have been made to feel guilty with the prospect of “there is no salvation outside of the church”. 

Dave Coleman in Why Religion Doesn’t Work

Would you call yourself “Born Again”? Why do you do that when the phrase is only found once in the entire Bible? Is there more harm than benefit to calling yourself “Born Again”? For some reason, I have not used the term to describe myself or my faith for a number of years now.  I just didn’t feel comfortable using the term to describe myself, but I didn’t have any particular reason.  But now I do!  And it all thanks to Brian Walsh.

Yesterday I took my twins to my parents’ place for the afternoon and as they were playing Connect Four, I went downstairs and browsed through my father’s library.  Whenever I do this I always find something of interest.  This time it was a small paperback that I had not noticed before.  Jesus Discovered (1969) by Malcolm  Muggeridge caught my attention immediately as I leafed through its pages.

Admittedly, I don’t know much about Muggeridge (well, I do now) but here are some snippets I came across while still standing in front of the bookcase that compelled me to bring the book home with me.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought the following words were written only yesterday:

Mitsuo Fukuda wrote an article entitled, “Sermon Topics Contextualized for Japan” in which he writes that

It is reasonable that frequent quotation of foreign theologians and usage of terms such as, God, love, sin, redemption, soul, trinity and other specialized words often causes a sermon to sound foreign to the Japanese non-believer or one seeking after Christ. It is also possible that those who are seeking refreshment for their souls go away bored because of a continued stream of knowledge-oriented sermons which are meant to appeal to a person’s mind.

(I would suggest that many of the terms used in sermons today sound foreign to many non-believers whether they are Japanese or not. They sound strange to many Westerners as well!)

Unfortunately, many sermons in Japan begin with these concepts. Recognizing the limitations of sermons, Fukuda suggests 3 other starting points for preaching to Japanese. I do not think they are limited to the Japanese psyche and so I want to talk about one of those starting points here – the sense of BEAUTY.

Fukuda writes,

“The Japanese have a sensitivity that enables them to find beauty and brilliance in everything that exists. Munesuke Mita, a famous Japanese sociologist, calls this the “consciousness of original favor” (gen-on ishiki), and contrasts it to the Hebraic consciousness of original sin.

The Japanese have a sense of gratitude for even the smallest things in their everyday lives. I will call this a sensitivity for recognizing beauty and happiness in life and existence, the “‘good fortune’ consciousness” (okage ishiki).”

The contrast of the “consciousness of original favour” to the “consciousness of original sin” is interesting.

In “Simply Christian”, N.T. Wright outlines four features of human life that function as echoes of a voice. These four features are justice, spirituality, human relationships, and ( . . . drumroll, please . . . ) BEAUTY! As a church planter in Japan, this last “echo of a voice” caught my attention immediately. I want to explore this idea of the beauty that we find in our everyday lives acting as an echo. An echo of what? As a Christian, (and a follower of N.T. Wright – ha ha ), I believe it is echo of the voice that is found in the Creator God. (Note: the “creator” in Creator God is important for the Japanese context. The Japanese have many gods and they all go by the same name and written with the same Chinese character. Highlighting CREATOR, helps to distinguish God for the other Japanese gods. Perhaps this is a topic for another post someday.) This is not to say that beauty in itself will directly lead us to God, but that the echo, or the longing for beauty is part of who we are as humans and so is worthy of following after.

When talking to Japanese about God, (or, perhaps anyone in any context for that matter!) I wonder if it would be much more culturally-sensitive or culturally-appropriate to begin with this innate sense of beauty which we all have. Hmmm . . . I DO want to think about this some more.

Any comments? Any helpful advice? Can you point me somewhere to help me ponder this some more?