Emerging Grace Chronicles: II

In answer to your specific questions (all my responses are, of course, only scratching the surface, and still in flux for me as well):

1. Emerging Grace asked "Do you see church happening apart from the organization?"

Absolutely. It always has, since the days of Pentecost when the believers met in the Temple, were devoted to the Apostles' teaching, and also met in homes (Acts 2:42-47). The Bible does not seem to indicate that either location (Temple or house) was superior or "more right".

Even in churches where there are healthy home groups, most pastors will tell you that the "real Body life" happens in the home groups. It's only our consumer-driven mindset that expects a Sunday morning service to meet all our spiritual needs for a week.

Part of the idolatry of church that Cindy Bryan has been writing on recently could also have included our idolatry of church services, or at very least, our excessive and unreasonable expectations of a church service. We can't experience "community" just once a week, but those who have been in house churches can tell you that they do experience real community together -- but they didn't have to stop being a part of the larger church in order to experience this together.

(I also wonder if those who "get the most out of" church services are people whose cup is filled outside the services, and their participation in the church service is but one of many touch-points for the expression of their relationship with Jesus and the Body.)

Brian McLaren wrote, once upon a time, of the metaphor of a spider web for theology; the idea was that there were numerous "anchor points" in the developed theology of different denominations that we could tether ourselves to (see Tethered to What? for some thoughts on the need for being "tethered" to something), for a fuller understanding of theology (the study and understanding of God).

If I could highjack (re-engineer) Brian's spiderweb analogy, I'd apply it to our different relational tethering points in the Body: our house group/church, the books that we're reading, the last conference we learned something from, the Christian friends we have from other churches, our involvement with any para-church ministries, the blogs that we regularly interact with, and -- yes, let's say it -- the "institutional church" whose services we may or may not attend with any regularity.

As long as none of these things becomes our ONLY source of fellowship and input, our expectations and resulting experience of it will probably be far more healthy. So, yes, I definitely see "church" happening apart from the organization, but I'm also hoping to see "church" happening within the organization as well, although never exclusively.