Jonathan Leeman- Individualism is not the Problem

Tuesday is Pastor's day at Resolve. Today we feature an article extract from Jonathan Leeman featured at Church Matters and published in Modern Reformation journal. You can read the whole thing here which is worth doing because the extract rather parachutes into the middle.

'Several lessons for churches follow from the communitarian story, say its proponents. For starters, we must recover an understanding of the church as a community of people, not an impersonal institution. (9) The institutionalization of the church can be seen in everything from the centralization of authority in the bishop, to the commingling of church and state following Constantine, to the tangled mess of committees down at First Baptist, to the membership classes and packets of the megachurch. But if relationships are what constitute the church's essence, any structures that do exist should be organic, liquid, or natural (again, consider the titles: Organic Church, Organic Community, Liquid Church, or Natural Church Development). Also, preaching should not be a monologue but a dialogue. Congregations should be encouraged to speak and learn from a multiplicity of viewpoints. (10)

Conversion should not so much be treated as a one-time event, because life within this community will lead to continual change and reformation. Better to speak of a conversation or at least a "continuing conversion," which like a conversationimplies a continual openness to new perspectives. (11) Semper reformandi, right?

Central values or purposes should be emphasized, not exclusivistic boundaries (following "centered-set thinking" rather than "bounded-set thinking"). (12) Outsiders should feel embraced and encouraged to serve. (13)

The old practices of membership and discipline hinder this kind of relational embrace and stop the conversation. In general, the church's posture toward the world must be one of invitation, embrace, and the declaring of God's shalom in Christ, for "through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross" (Col. 1:20, NRSV). Any gospel that's fixated on my own salvation rather than God's kingdom work of restoring peace and justice to all of creation is "too small." (14) Jesus is not just about me; he's about the whole cosmos. I need to get over myself.

Ultimately, mission serves the purpose of communion. "Ultimately," says theologian Simon Chan, "all things are to be brought back into communion with the triune God. Communion is the ultimate end, not mission." (15) Ultimately, the mutual glorification project of Father and Son that we read about in the Gospel of John, by which they alternatively give and receive love and glory, extends to the church and then to all creation. "May they be one as we are one" (see John 17:20-26).

The old hierarchies between male and female, insider and outsider, clergy and laity, must be abolished. And so, the picture of God as Lord gives way to the picture of God as Father, which then gives way to the picture of God as Friend. (16)...

Western culture today is "individualistic," no doubt about it. But I believe there's a difference between a clinical-sounding sociologist's word like "individualistic" and a pulpit-pounding fundamentalist preacher's word like "disobedient" or "hates authority." But that's what individualism is. It's plain old disobedience to God. We won't get very far if we don't pull off these
secular masks and call them by their old-fashioned, Sunday school-sounding names. Loneliness is not the problem. A refusal to live life on anyone else's terms is. Another way to put all this: we're not dealing with a relationship problem, but a worship problem.

The solution then is not community; it's repentance. The solution is a changing of heart and direction-in the individual! This repentance includes joining a community and making relationships. But it's joining a particular kind of community where self is no longer sovereign and where one is called to obedience to the church as an expression of obedience to God. It's the
joining of a community where God's Word and the worship of God are supreme in everything.
Entering into biblical church membership means submitting oneself to a body of relationships with authoritative structures, a body in which different members assume different roles even though together they constitute one body. What's more, all of those relationships together conspire to give worship and praise to God.

Most Christians don't think of themselves as repenting or, analogously, submitting when they join a church. Maybe they feel lonely and join the church for fellowship. Maybe they have considered the biblical arguments for church membership and become persuaded that it's the right thing to do. Maybe they've never thought about it at all and have just done what all the
Christians they know do. But whatever their conscious experience, joining a church is fundamentally a matter of repentance and submission. It's not simply a matter of "joining" or "committing" or "due relatedness." It's certainly not a matter of joining some club with various membership privileges, as when one joins a country club. Insofar as the word "member" carries that connotation in Western minds, it's an unfortunate word to use. Still, it's a good word to use, because submitting to a local church and becoming a member is an external enactment of what it means to submit to Christ and become a member of his body. It's keeping the imperative of what Christ has accomplished in the indicative. Submitting to a local church on earth, in the language of Christian ethics, is a becoming of what we are in heaven.'