Koster's Third Law of Church

When issues are important, there will always be some who believe the purpose of debate and discussion is to win-
---- rather than to discern the will of God.

Example First Order Change -- Iranian Revolution

Here is a case of a technical/first-order change where the basic rules were not changed when the revolution occurred. The result was a governing process that increasingly seems to look like that of the overthrown government.

From the New York Times, 2/3/10. Mir Hussein Moussavi, responding to the announcement by the Irnanian rulers that they would hang 9 protesters.

"The majority of people believed in the beginning of the revolution that the roots of dictatorship and despotism were abolished. I was one of them, but now I don't have the same beliefs. You can still find the elements and beliefs that lead to dictatorship."

The article went on to say that Mr Moussavi said he did not believe that the revolution had achieved its goals.

Me and the Missional Church

I recently attended a series of seminars led by Alan Roxburgh, one of the originators of the idea of the “missional” church. He is brilliant. I heard him say that the American churches are descendants of little European tribal churches. Yes. That we carry with that a lot of baggage that is superimposed over what church really ought to be. Yes. That though denominations will not go away, they are largely irrelevant to modern culture. Yes. That one polity is as good as another. Yes. That the early church made it up as they went along. Yes.

According to Mr Roxburgh, the use of the concept “missional” has been so massaged and mangled over the years that he won’t use it any more. I am told that Darrell Guder, who was also one of the original group to use the term, has said he wants his word back. Whatever the words that are used, the underlying concepts laid out by the missional church folks are something I embrace.

However, what I have written in The Challenge of the Presbyterian Church is not a prescription for the missional church, for I have written with a different concern in mind. Mr. Roxburgh’s passion and power is in changing the way the church serves Jesus Christ at the level of the service delivery system, the local congregation. He believes that all the ways we have done it in the past—we have frequently been very successful at it—are just not relevant to modern life, because we are delivering baggage from an alien culture. He seems to see the structures and polity of the church as largely irrelevant to ministry.

It is at that point that I believe I fall outside what he proposes. I am driven by Koster’s First Law of Church:
Whenever two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, two questions inevitably are raised, always in this order:

Who’s in charge here?

And

Who says it’s you?

I believe this law is right up there with the law of gravity. If it is true, it means that polity will always happen. They may have made it up as they went along in the early church, as Mr. Roxburgh so rightly points out, but they did make it up. Indeed, the emergence of a polity is manifest in the earliest Christian writings.

Many say that the church will never be really changed by changing the polity, by doing things in the various governing bodies of the church, and Mr. Roxburgh would seem to agree with that. But I believe something else. First, however irrelevant these governing bodies may seem, they have the power to impede change. Someone has to make some decisions somewhere, and these decisions will ultimately need to be made by those bodies and individuals laid out in the structures. What I write about are ways to help governing bodies and people make the kinds of decisions necessary to release the church from its baggage.

Even more, however, is the possibility that governing bodies can be the source of adaptive/second-order change. The fact that there are different logical levels involved means that one governing body is outside the other, bringing with it the different perspectives, ideas, and ideals. This difference in levels, already built into the system, could generate the kinds of change that will free us up to serve Jesus Christ in ways never foreseen. I am not ready to giv e that up. What I propose is that our sessions and presbyteries and synods and Assemblies can be responsive to the Holy Spirit in ways that can both allow good things to happen and can even be the source of such things. I believe the kinds of changes advocated by Mr. Roxburch et al, whatever label they are given, are essential..

So I believe that we cannot jettison structures and powers and polities, for inevitably we will return to the questions: who’s in charge; who says it’s you.