The Structure and Function of the Modern Church

The extent to which the Church has been "Greekified" is extreme once you really get into it and study the history. It has affected almost everything. For example: the modus operandi whereby one man gets up in front of the congregation, in a building specifically reserved for this purpose, and lectures (read: "preaches") to a crowd with no interaction, discussion, or challenge between "preacher/priest" and "congregation" is Greek. It's modeled on what took place at Greek philosophical academies, as well as the practice of the itinerate philosopher (Peripatetics), which was popular in the Greek/Roman world of the early church. The Peripatetics were Aristotelian.

If the Apostle Paul were invited into one of our typical church meetings and saw only one man give an oration patterned after the Greek philosophers of his day, with absolutely no interaction with the "laymen," Paul would demand to know "What's going on here?" This modern pattern bears no resemblance to the New Testament pattern, although it is unwittingly patterned after ancient Greek itinerant moralists. The "sermon" is an unscriptural tradition, imported from Greco-Roman paganism. Some preachers, of course, fail to meet even the standards of the Greek philosophers. Their "preaching" is pure entertainment.

Many would point to the "sermons" in the book of Acts as support for the modern practice, e.g. Acts 20:7:

The word, "preached" is, dialegomai: it's a "dialogue" not a "monologue." Dialegomai means: "to say thoroughly, that is, discuss (in argument or exhortation): - dispute, reason (with), speak.". It comes from the word "di" which means "a combining form meaning 'two', 'double'. Do you really believe Paul preached a sermon that lasted 12 hours? What he did was dialogue with them. They "talked" together.

Dialegomai is also translated as "reasoned" in Acts 17:2, where Paul "reasoned" in the synagogue out of the scriptures. Paul "reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath" (Acts 18:4,19). In church, the preacher doesn't "reason" with anybody, but simply talks with no chance of interaction with those in the audience. Dialegomai is also translated as "disputed" in Acts 17:17, where Paul "disputed in the synagogue", and in Acts 19:18 where he was "disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God." In Church, the minister or elder or priest does not give anyone the chance to "dispute" or "question" him.

There simply was no "preaching" or "sermon" as we popularly conceive it today. When we talk to our neighbor about the things of God, we engage in "official and professional instruction" as priest-kings of Christ! The gates of hell are assaulted and overcome by our "informal discussion". When we get together with other believers, friends, family, etc, and discuss, dispute, argue, exhort, teach, encourage, learn, pray, and share a common meal, THAT is the Church. Modern churches have replaced the discussion and animated conversation of the New Testament with "sermons," an invention of the Greeks, and a man-made tradition.

We should always be conscious of Christ's Presence "where two or three are gathered in My Name." Whenever we obey the command to assemble together for praising God, Scripture reading and study, discussion, exhortation and comfort, prayer and singing, and remembering the Lord's death in the communal meal, we are clearly engaging in a very special activity. It is, indeed, Sacramental.

I once ran across a paper by a Reformed theologian named Paul Fahey called, "Why Do We Gather as a Church?" The subtitle was "The Bible's Answer Compared to Modern Practice." I agreed with it (an unusual occurrence to be sure!) to such an amazing degree that I copied it. I'm glad I did because as far as I can tell it is no longer posted on the net. I've wondered if maybe he caught too much flak for it and had to take it down. So here it is!

Notice the conclusion:

We have seen the reasons for gathering, and what the New Testament says we should do when we do gather. Should we not question the practice of going to a building which we call church, attending without any form of involvement or participation (apart from singing en masse which does not even include choice of song), sitting and listening to one man for a considerable time, and following a carefully prepared liturgy or meeting structure? The apostles would find such procedure astonishing. It has no support in the Bible and fails to train people in righteousness to the degree we should expect...

It "fails to train people in righteousness to the degree we should expect" because Greek philosophy has co-opted and corrupted the Church, which was grafted onto the root of Abraham. The true church (yes, it DOES exist) is STILL grafted onto the root of Abraham. The root of Plato grows into a completely different kind of tree. The institutional, visible, church that you see today, be it Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, with a few exceptions here and there, is grafted onto the root of Plato. In my opinion, the two systems - Abrahamic and Platonic - are diametrically opposed, and no true integration is possible.

Following are some of my thoughts copy-and-pasted from a discussion on Xanga.

Now, for those who might still be feeling some warm fuzzies for this or that established church, consider the following please:

There is no difference, absolutely no difference, between the "Church" and any major corporation. It owns assets, in other words, it has a stake in the world system. It has corporate structure; the governing structure is from the top down (that is necessary because it owns assets that have to be managed. If there are no assets to be managed then top-down hierarchical structure is not necessary and Jesus' teaching of the upside-down Kingdom wherein the greatest is the servant of all actually becomes possible). There are good people and bad people in it, just as there are in any major organization. The way to advance in the "Church" is the same as climbing the corporate ladder anywhere else. The politics are the same. It could be argued that the politics in the church are worse because in order to advance one has to be "spiritual". This leads to all kinds of deception and hypocrisy. Statistically, the divorce rate is the same, the suicide rate is the same, the drug and alcohol abuse rates are the same, and the sexual abuse rates are the same as the culture-at-large. This goes for Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodox. What does this tell you? There IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE "CHURCH" AND THE "WORLD".

Secondly, to become a pastor in the established church is akin to a death sentence. The following is taken from: http://www.spiritualdisciplines.org/ruin.html

The title is: The Almost Inevitable Ruin of Every Pastor. Keep in mind that this article was written by a seminary professor to try to help his students NOT be ruined. I think THAT is an exercise in futility, but that's my opinion. If you're interested, go read it, it might be an eye-opener for you.

(Quote) Once when a Southern Baptist denominational executive [NOTICE - "DENOMINATIONAL EXECUTIVE"!!!] was on the Midwestern Seminary campus in the late 1990s, he asserted that statistics show that for every twenty men who enter the ministry, by the time those men reach age sixty-five, only one will still be in the ministry.

Despite all the commitment with which they began the race, despite all the investment of time and money to prepare, despite the years of spent in service, despite the cost of retooling and redirecting their lives, nearly all will leave the ministry. Some will opt out for health reasons. Some will wash out in their private lives. Some will bow out, realizing they had misread the call of God. Some will bail out because the stress is so great. Some will be forced out by their churches. Some will walk out from sheer frustration and a sense of failure. And if you haven't given serious thought to leaving the ministry, you haven't been in it very long. Despite the fact that no one goes into the ministry to be a casualty, the ruin of almost every minister, it seems, is inevitable. For in addition to the high percentage of those who leave the ministry, sometimes it appears that of those who do stay in the ministry, many of them have been ruined in other ways. They may get ruined by money, either by the desire for it or the lack of it. They make far too many choices based upon getting more money, or else they smolder in their attitude toward the church because they don't get paid enough. (Close quote)

Here are specific "ruins" the author deals with:

1) Sex - "25 to 35 percent of ministers [are] involved in inappropriate sexual behavior"
2) Power
3) Pride
4) Cynicism

In spite of this professor's efforts and his applications and teachings from the pastoral epistles, only one in twenty will avoid "ruin" of one kind or another. What does this tell you?

Argument: The Church is made up of sinful humans and so therefore we should not expect a "perfect" Church. "All have sinned..."

Response: You'll get no argument from me concerning all have sinned, I know that first hand as well as anybody, however, it misses my point. I can see how that could happen. I will try to be clearer. I'm not suggesting that an "uncorrupted" church is going to have only sinless people in it. What I'm talking about is the structure of the organization. The post by Aplatypus that started this thread included a description of the Real Church:

"...a weary adventurer happens upon a hut and the kindly inhabitants take him in, feed and clothe him, and give him a place to rest."

and

"...the Real Church is comprised of those little huts scattered around the world housing those who are God's people..."

As he also said, some of those huts are inside the established church, many are not. What I was suggesting was not that the Church is corrupted because of sinful people, but that people are corrupted by the false church, a church that is organized as a top down hierarchy, that owns and manages assets, that is structured exactly like any corporation, and that by its very structure encourages deception and hypocrisy. The examples and statistics I gave were meant to illustrate that the worldly structure of the church encourages and in some cases perhaps causes the ruin of those who participate in her in exactly the same way as people are ruined by the world system, which leads to my position that the established church is part and parcel of the world system. People fall prey to sex, money, and power in the church just like they do everywhere else. It's hard to see any difference. Now that doesn't mean that there are not true believers participating in the church system that don't get ruined - there are. But there are true believers participating in other worldly institutions that don't get ruined by them. I'm saying that there is no difference between the established church and any other organization/institution.

When I spoke of the uncorrupted church I did not mean that the members were sinless. What I meant was the structure of the thing is uncorrupted. Those little huts are structured just like God intended. One of the metaphors is that, taken together in totality, they are a body. I like to say, an organism, not an organization. They are also spoken of as a temple, but notice that the language that is used qualifies the concept of an actual building - "...you are LIVING stones built together..." The Real Church is an organism. It is structured organically, and everything is exactly backwards from the way it is in the world. The least is the greatest, the poorest is the richest, and power is made perfect in weakness. It seems to me that the example and teachings of Jesus are diametrically opposed to a church that owns assets, and is governed by a top down hierarchy - one that employs "denominational executives."

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