What makes a Church Institutional

That post, from a few days ago, on people who believe in Jesus but who also reject organized religion created, as my posts here often do, a conversation more interesting, to me at least, than the post itself.

In the off-the-blog exchange I was challenged with a number of questions, one of which was:

What makes a church institutional?

The question came in the context of that discussion and the answer I gave fit that context. It's not an all-inclusive answer but it's worth mentioning because, as far as it goes, I believe it's accurate and important.

An institutional church is a church with a laity.

Among the other questions asked of me in that off-the-blog chat was if our churches in Winebrenner's day were institutional.

By this definition, they weren't.

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As I read the ERC's new New Strategic Plan, the plan is ripe with theological corruption and error.

Most of all, the plan stinks theologically because of its emphasis on pastors and hierarchical leadership...

...and its lack of emphasis on life in the Spirit and the priesthood of every disciple.

The New Testament says that Jesus made us to be a "kingdom and priests."

The ERC's new New Strategic Plan makes most of the people in the Conference followers, not priests...

...and followers not of Jesus...

...but of healthy, life-giving pastors and Conference leaders.

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Because of the emphasis on pastors and hierarchical leaders, the new New Strategic Plan is, really, all about laity.

It is institutional.

Check out the history of the Kingdom of God:

Spiritual growth and numerical expansion comes where there is no concept of a laity, and where the whole body consists of men and women who are empowered to minister and who are zealous for, as early Church of God people said it, "the conversion of sinners."

Whether it meant to or not, through the new New Strategic Plan, the ERC has chosen to place its hope for the future, not in its whole body of saints empowered by, and walking in, the Spirit, but in a more effective community of pastors and the members of the hierarchy that leads it.

Said differently, the new New Strategic Plan has increased the degree to which the ERC is organized religion. It makes the gospel about the church, pastors and leadership, not about Jesus and the Father.  As such, it will have nothing to say to the growing universe of people who:

1. Believe in God but reject organized religion, or
2. Love Jesus but hate the church.

The Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing has never blessed the sort of thing the 2017 ERC new New Strategic Plan envisions.

Before it's too late, we must repent.