Where's the balance?

I've been chewing on an interesting dilemma lately. In seminary circles, one of the great challenges of the day is to persuade local churches to adopt a missional stance toward ministry. For many churches, this is very hard. It's simply so different from what people are comfortable with... I don't like that word much, you know...

Comfortable. It just rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? When Traditional model churches get comfortable, they also become (largely) immovable.

And then they die.

So, as you can imagine, changing this paradigm of thinking is considered a top priority for many of today's seminary grads (and many current pastors, too). But there's another dynamic in play in this discussion.

One of the most serious criticisms of the emerging church movement (I know, it's not really a 'movement', but the label works right now)... What was I saying? Oh yes. One of the most serious criticisms of the EC movement is that they are often so very light on doctrine. Some are worse - they are bordering on heretical when it comes to doctrine. But does this need to be the case?

Mark Driscoll would emphatically say, 'No!'. So would others, and I agree. But mere agreement isn't getting me anywhere in my thinking. I need to think this through. What might such a balanced ministry look like? Is it really possible?

My mind wanders back to the late 1980s. At that time, I was involved in an IFCA church that was not nearly as legalistic as many I've stumbled across. But nevertheless, it was an IFCA church. Traditional model. Hymn books and an organ. Ties and dresses. I often found myself wondering (sometimes out loud, but that's another story!) why churches with strong and solid doctrinal positions (such as the IFCA church I attended) couldn't also have more emotionally meaningful corporate worship. Not that there's anything wrong with hymns - please don't think that's what I'm saying. It's just that when churches refuse to sing anything but hymns it often leads to a cold ritualism for most participants - a rut, if you will.

Anyway ... back to the topic. I wondered why it seemed that the churches with the most vibrant corporate worship were the weakest on doctrine, while the churches strongest on doctrine were weakest on corporate worship. At the time, I was told that seeking "emotionalism" (which, as it turns out, was code for 'a meaningful experience of worship') was unwise and spiritually dangerous. We didn't want to be labelled as charis-maniacs, you know!

How sad. It's the same reason I don't think anyone in the IFCA ever preached a message on the Holy Spirit during the entire 1980s... but again, I digress.

In that context, it was with great joy that I discovered (in the 1990s) churches that actually had both: great corporate worship and sound doctrine. [Note: I understand that "sound doctrine" is a subjective category, and I do not take it to mean "doctrine that matches mine". To take this further would take me even further afield... Like that ever happens!]

So I began to study this phenomenon - how did these churches come to have both? What I found was that the problem all along had been almost strictly an issue of making one's personal preference a dogmatic issue. I hesitate to say these words, to be honest. But I genuinely think that the cold hard truth is this: churches that refused to sing anything but "the great hymns of the faith" were basically saying...

If you don't agree with my personal taste in music, you're not truly spiritual.

Do you hear the ridiculousness of that statement? The sad part is that this thinking became so common and so ingrained that there are still people today that seriously believe only hymns glorify God. I feel myself venturing off topic again...

Focus, grasshopper. Focus.

OK. So in this context, I've been thinking through the current version of the same paradigm. Churches today find themselves (often) choosing to be either missional or sound and solid in doctrine. But both are important things to be. The simpleton within me says "just do both". Could it really be that simple?

In this juxtaposition, the 1980s worship music has to correspond to the 2000s missional thinking; the 1980s doctrine to the 2000s doctrine. So what was the hang-up in the 1980s? Personal preference for musical style. If the analogy holds, the problem today, then, would be ...

Personal preference for traditional (read: 1950s) ministry models.

778 words into this post and I'm no closer to anything truly helpful.

This gets me nowhere in the situation I described to start this post. The EC movement has a good grasp on missional thinking; what they often lack is sound doctrine. So really, the key to making this juxtaposition valuable has to be the churches in the 1980s that had vibrant corporate worship but poor doctrine. What of them? Did they get things worked out in the 1990s?

Here's where I get depressed. No; they didn't. And they haven't. These churches still have vibrant corporate worship but shaky (at best) doctrine. Too many of them fell victim to Prosperity Gospel. Too many were won over by Word of Faith teaching.

But there's hope. I have to believe that traditional model churches with sound doctrine can become missional. I've seen it happen. I have friends who can give first-hand accounts.

And I have to believe that missional model churches can find sound doctrine. But that's all it is for me right now, one of those "I choose to believe it" things. A leap of faith, if you will.

But what if I'm wrong?

Hatushili