These three weeks before the travel portion of my sabbatical are being spent in study and retreat (except for some family obligations). I am immersing myself in Calvin and Knox -- Book IV of the Institutes, the Ecclesiastical Disciplines, some biographical and historical materials, plus some modern books on ecclesiology. During my initial stop in Paris, I am being asked to lead two sessions at the American Church in Paris as "theologian-in-residence": a bible study on the Nature of the Church and a workshop on Calvin's Legacy for Church Order. Since I tend to be deadline- and task-driven, this has helped focus my preparations.
Much has been made recently of "the missional church movement." The moniker "missional church" was coined by Darrell Guder, now Professor of Missiology and Ecumenism at Princeton Theological Seminary. Put broadly, the movement is a response to the challenges raised by the disestablishment of the church in a post-Constantinian age that redefines the church not in terms of structure, but action. Instead of saying, "The church of Christ establishes its mission" the missional church inverts the order and says, "The mission of Christ establishes its church." In other words, the "true church" (to use Reformation language) exists only where the mission of God (missio Dei) is being performed. Some contrast this "participatory" understanding of mission with the "instrumental" practice of mission by an established church.
This of course, stands in contrast to Calvin's understanding that the true church exists wherever the Word of God is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered (Knox would add, in the spirit of Calvin, "where discipline is rightly exercised"). Missional critics might say that this static, Word-centered, definition of church reflects a cultural captivity to an age in which the church is an established institution; indeed, Knox's addendum would seem to require a power structure intended to maintain order.
A major flaw in the missional church challenge is that there can be no such thing as a disembodied church. Even if one accepts, for sake of argument, that the mission of God establishes its church, that church cannot exist without organizational form. Much of the New Testament was written to address issues pertaining to the correct form and order of this nascent organization. It took no more than three chapters in the book of Acts from the birth of the church at Pentecost to the first issues of discipline (Ananias and Sapphira) and internal conflict (the dispute over the distribution of bread to widows). The earliest writings (Galatians, First Corinthians) are efforts to establish order and correct error. Indeed, there is precious little in these letters about mission (except for Paul's attempts to justify his apostolic authority by appealing to his own mission work).
In his book In Good Company: The Church as Polis Stanley Hauerwas also addresses the question of the nature of the church in a post-Constantinian age. He has sympathy for the Anabaptist vision of John Howard Yoder and others which defines the church as a unique community set apart to embody the presence of Christ. He takes this further, however, by developing a Eucharistic model of the church by correcting the separatist tendencies of Yoder with a concept of the church being "the Body of Christ, broken for the world." In this way, I think Hauerwas (who gives credit also to Karl Barth, 20th century heir of the Calvin legacy), taps into the Christocentric and cruciform shape of the church that is largely missing in the missional church model.
To be sure, the institutional form of the church, whether in Geneva, Rome, or Louisville, is neither infallible nor immutable. But the church must have a form, a body, to perform its mission. The mission of God does not just "happen," it emerges out of a community that forms people in the disciplines of the church, and sustains them as they perform that mission. Hauerwas quotes Greek Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky:
Christianity entered history as a new social order, or rather a new social dimension. From the very beginning Christianity was not primarily a “doctrine,” but exactly a “community.” There was not only a “Message” to be proclaimed and delivered, and “Good News” to be declared. There was precisely a New Community, distinct and peculiar in the process of growth and formation, to which members were called and recruited. Indeed, “fellowship” (koinonia) was the basic category of Christian existence. (“Empire and Desert: Antinomies of Christian History,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 1957, p. 133 in Hauerwas, p. 28.)
The disciplines identified by Calvin and Knox -- disciplines of right preaching, eucharistic integrity, and mutual accountability -- define the church that is able to embody Christ's presence in and for the world. These aren't about the church's relationship to cultural centers of power, but the church's relationship to the spiritual center of power found in the Spirit of Christ and formed by the Word of God.
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