The Institutional Idol

As my denomination draws closer to an impending split between two groups unable to reconcile differences, there is much talk in the more conservative circles about the birth of the new church.  While I am not sure how new it will be, it will be different.  There is talk about an improved version, but the great danger is that there will be superficial changes made and then everything will be packaged in the old box.  This will mean that the new church will be like the old church minus the things which the new church is so against.   

Very recently my personal devotional life has taken me to the Matthew passage about the danger of putting new wine into old wineskins.  The bottom line is that it will not work.  According to Jesus new wine requires new wineskins.  It is a passage that is easy enough to understand, but one that is hard for us to bring into existence.  Thinking in that direction is hard and knowing how to work in that direction is an intellectual impossibility for many of today's leaders.  We could go on doing what we have done in the past which is taking the new and taking the life and power out of it so it will continue to fit inside the way the church does ministry.      

Of course, I am retired.  I am one of those worn out Methodist preachers who is no longer in the fray.  To use a local expression, it might be said I no longer have a dog in that hunt.  But, it is also true that the distance granted by retirement gives a different perspective.  The look back is sometimes filled with regret that the institutional part of the church became more important than the spiritual life of the church.  The institutional church is a hard idol to throw off the altar and when we do, we remember too easily where we put it.  If there is a new spirit within the new church, it will not last long in that old institutional holding wineskin.