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about the author...  Alan Creech Alan is a church planter and graphic designer in Lexington, Kentucky. He, his wife Liz, and a small community of others are planting a new church there called Vine & Branches Christian Community. You can find more about what they're doing on their website - www.vbcc.net. You can contact him at vbcc@qx.net. He also has a rambling blog where you can read his mind on a regular basis - scary - www.alancreech.com.
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Form Matters by Alan Creech
"Form doesn't matter."
"We're all brothers and sisters in Christ, it shouldn't really matter what church we go to." "Why does it matter how you do church, just stop harping and leave everybody alone." Well, hmm Hmmm (clears his throat) - Frankly, to say such things, to me, shows a lack of thought. What does he mean by that? To simply say, with no qualification, that "form doesn't matter" is a statement without proper consideration of its implications. You are effectively saying at this point, "whatever anyone does or does not do and calls it church, is just fine." You don't really believe that do you? The logical implications of such an underlying belief are staggering. Perhaps it's OK if my form calls for nudity, but only when we're having Communion. Now, nudity if fine and all, but that would be, I'm thinking, bad form. What's that you say? That's ridiculous. Well, of course it is, I'm trying to make a point using hyperbole silly. More like real life, some have come to the conclusion that we, as members of Christ's Body, never need meet together on-purpose, as that Body. We just ARE Christians, sorry, "Christ followers", and we don't need to have special meeting times. I understand where that's coming from, honestly I do, but I do not think it is either correct or healthy. Maybe your form has you sitting in a large room, in chairs facing in one direction, looking at a little stand behind which a man stands talking (or yelling) at you for upwards of an hour at times - and this event is the center of your meeting time. To simply throw out, "form doesn't matter" in light of something like this or the former example, is not to consider deeply enough. Is anything connected? Does anything affect anything else? How does this form educate our thoughts about what it means to be a part of Christ? It does, whether you consciously realize it or not. It lays down tacks in your brain and your mind then draws conclusions according to the tracks it travels on. This is the predicament we're in. In a blog post, I said a while back that every kind of church is not OK. I still mean that. I didn't say it to degrade other Christians. It wasn't about coming up with a way to be superior. It's sad, but we're so used to people being that way that we can't seem to get past that thought and just hear a different concept presented as a genuine, sincere, and caring alternative. I say a very similar thing now. Form does matter. It matters how we operate as the Body, or as little bodies within the Body. It matters how we "do church" because we ARE the Church and it matters how we ARE what we ARE. Why is it important? Why does it matter? Short answer: Because some forms, some ways of doing things as the church together, more effectively facilitate the integration of people into good, working citizens of the Kingdom of God than others. Some in fact, harm this process. Some lay down, ala the above analogy, bad tracks in our heads and cause us to think wrongly about our own Body. They cause us to be spiritually retarded (and I don't mean to be crass by saying that word, I'm using it definitionally). Now, this does not, to me, mean that all churches will look exactly the same, or that they have to. I do, however, believe there probably should be a skeletal core of common ways of being that are then fleshed out in their respective contexts. There are things that are good and there are things that are bad. There are ways that are healthy and ways that are not. So, when I say form matters, I do not mean to say that I have found the one true form and you need to conform to that. I mean to say we should do good theology about what form we use as the church. There need to be reasons behind our actions. I suppose some would disagree that we need to do that kind of work. I guess we'd have to respectfully disagree then. I think to not do that work is to leave ourselves to the wind - and not to the Wind either - just the wind and perhaps to the wolves. I'll end with this: I say all this because I care about the formation of people into the image of Christ, not because I care to feel like I have found the "best way" to construct a church so it looks the prettiest. I think what form our being together as communities of faith takes has real implications for if and how well we are facilitating real deep and lasting transformation in the lives of those who are a part of those communities. So, if you mean "form doesn't matter" on a surface level - if that is the only thing you're thinking about - then for those reasons, of course it doesn't. But I'm not talking about that. I mean it matters because in some way everything matters - the way we do things is connected integrally with who we are and what we are becoming. It either helps or hinders to some degree or another. I'm for helping. Peace to all in this house. forms matter because meaning is communicated through forms. to suggest that forms are not crucial to actually living out the faith is to the make the same mistake that we perpetrate when believing that we can isloate a supra-cultural gospel - somehow freed from the tethers of culture and circumstance. Great point Len. They educate us - whether we know they are doing so or not. And just because they matter, and because we say they matter, does not mean we are unduely focused on form. We're just recognizing something.
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