Top
Browse > Home / Praxis / Why I am not a primitivist

Why I am not a primitivist

Written by Mark Van Steenwyk : September 11, 2008

I’m very sympathetic to the house church or “simple church” model.  As far as structures and models go, it is a great ecclesial starting point. I think every would-be church planter should start with simple and move towards complexity after honest and thoughtful logistical and theological reflection.

Conventional wisdom used to be that house churches and simple churches were the domain for pissed off anti-intellectuals who don’t know how to play well with others. But with the success of folks like Neil Cole, Frank Viola, Alan Hirsch, Robert Banks, etc., simple churches have gained respectability.

From time to time I get emails from people or run into people who assume that I am something of a primitivist. A primitivist is someone who believes that we ought to get back to doing church the way it was done in Acts. They read Acts 2 and 4 and see a decentralized house church movement and think that we ought to do house churches because it was what they did.  I disagree.

The early church “did” church a certain way for a number of reasons.  I think a lot of it was driven by cultural assumptions and logistical necessity.  The truth is, there weren’t lots of buildings that one could rent for large gatherings.  It makes complete sense to meet in homes during their day.

However, I believe that they did church a certain way out of theological reasons as well.  They believed that “church” = “family.” Kinship language is used frequently when expressing the reality of the Church.  Church is commonly refered to as the oikos (household), we are brothers and sisters in Christ.  Christ is the firstborn.  God is our abba, etc.

They also did church a certain way because they seemed to be of the impression that there was only one high priest (Jesus) and the rest of us are all priests.  There is no strict hierarchy of any sort in the New Testament.  Every form of leadership was decentralized.  There were plural elders, plural deacons, plural apostles, and none of these embodied a “lordly” sort of authority.  Instead, the authority was that of charism (Spirit-gifting for ministry).  The Holy Spirit directed and led through the people, who were to consider themselves a temple of flesh and blood.  And in such a scenario, some may be called to lead, and some may have a stronger hand in decision making, but we never see any one person vested with the authority to make determinative decisions on behalf of an entire congregation.

Our church forms communicate theological assumptions. It is a beautiful thing when a community shares decision making and acts like a family of priests who are willing to adopt others into the family. It is a beautiful thing when they practice hospitality and share good things with those in need.

Unfortunately, the temptation with church forms–including house churches–is that folks sometimes get so focused on the form of church that they forget the important things like being Spirit-led, loving, hospitable, and gracious. Rather, they become focused on propagating an agenda.

When we started Missio Dei, we had a house church agenda…the form mattered more than the quality of our relationships.  Because of that, Missio Dei had to die twice in order to be reborn into a group of people who don’t sweat the structure so much as long as what we do is determined thoughfully, lovingly, and prayerfully. As Missio Dei comes up on its 5th Anniversary, my thoughts reach back. I’m reminded of how naive I was, how insistent I was that things had to be a certain way, and how much pressure I felt to perform.

If I had it to do all over again, I would simply to gather friends together in our house to pray and dream–to not have expectations or agendas except only to listen to the Spirit about what he wanted to do among us. The hard part of that, of course, is that when the Spirit speaks into our listening ears, we have to decide whether or not we will obey. When we come into things with a rigid agenda–even one as basic as primitivism–it can stiffle the move of the Spirit.

Mark Van Steenwyk is the editor of JesusManifesto.com. He is a Mennonite pastor (Missio Dei in Minneapolis), writer, speaker, and grassroots educator. He lives in South Minneapolis with his wife (Amy), son (Jonas) and some of their friends.


If you appreciate articles like this, consider making a donation to help Jesus Manifesto pay the bills.


Print This Article Print This Article

for further reading . . .

· Filed Under Praxis 

Comments

Viewing 14 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Good article, I think it's important to have a general framework within which to work (ie house church) but to also open up time and space for creativity and for the Spirit to move. Even house churches (for all their potential) can quelch the Spirit.
    • ^
    • v
    the she-wolf of incontinene 3 years ago
    In addition to what blorge said (which was right on) you need time for everyone to come together. I go to Hope, so it's largeish, and I certainly don't talk to everyone every Sunday, but there's something great, something spiritually uniting about looking out during worship on people you've known for years and seeing that they're worshipping to - that you're doing the same thing. Sharing a journey, if you'll permit me the overused Christian aphorism.
    But there's value in the house church model - actually knowing the people, talking. These things are important. Sounds like you're tacking to a good middle.
    • ^
    • v
    That is really interesting.. My wife and I are being called to start up a house church.. Out of those 4 authors you listed, what books would you recommend by them?

    I've been really interested by the Chinese home church model where there is no central church, just thousands and thousands of people meeting in each others home each week. Its beautiful and organic.. I wonder if anything like that could take root here in the US?
    • ^
    • v
    What, specifically, were some of the failing point you stumbled across? How did Missio Dei surmount those?
    • ^
    • v
    Well, there is always (in any form of church) a balance between inner and outer. Is our identity static (inner) or open to new member (outer)? Is our community mostly about supporting each other (inner) or service (outer)? Etc...

    For us, the issue was that that some of the groups were too inward and it made it hard to have a shared missional identity.

    Another issue was about formation. There was (and probably still is) a tension between having an egalitarian approach to everything and allowing for a property difference between those with a discipling role and those being mentored. I'm planning to write more about this later. The main problem was that we had folks coming together each having a vote without having an accompanying amount of ownership in the process. It is easy to give everyone a vote, but it takes time and intentional formation to foster shared ownership.
    • ^
    • v
    Helpful comments - it seems that the form of church is less important than the ability to hold lightly to the form of church.
    • ^
    • v
    Nice Mark.
    • ^
    • v
    Read Frost and Hirch's "The Shaping of Things to Come" or Hirch's "Forgotten Ways." Neil Cole's "Organic Community" is good. And Bank's "Paul's Idea of Community."
    • ^
    • v
    I'm drawing from my own imperfect recollections of what I learned from Dr. Moritz.

    I don't think an emph on house churches is primitivism. I believe this is because my understanding
    of the church is trifold: Iocal (house) churches(sometimes called cell-groups), (everything but local) parachurches and the institutions that are dynamically worked out to help us follow and communicate Christ.

    As you may notice, there is an isometry between this ecclesiological model and the trinity.

    In this line of thinking, the local churches are supposed to be a permanent fixture for the reason that large churches are good for raising buildings and paying church leaders, but they are much worse at building community, exercising church discipline and building up everyone's spiritual gifts. And, of course, the money not spent on buildings empowers a lot more people to do ministry while holding strategic part time jobs, the trick is to find ways that the part-time 'ministers" can receive health care and other stuff that usually only comes w. full-time jobs. Local churches wd be 30 or less, as decentralized as possible, and split along geographical lines when it grows to be too big.

    Parachurches, which are basically everything else besides local churches, shd be in the image of the local churches and derive all of their power from the local churches. This can be done by having parachurches of different degrees. A parachurch of degree one wd have 30 or less stewards from different local churches. A parachurch of degree two wd have 30 or less stewards from different parachurches of degree one. And, a parachurch of degree n wd have 30 or less stewards from different parachurches of degree n-1. The parachurches wd be specific in their focus/purpose and not be permanent offices, they wd be formed and reformed by their constituent local churches and parachurches of lower degrees as the Holy Spirit leads them to do so and not have official buildings or rigid hierarchy.

    So one can hold to the use of local churches as critical, while allowing that there is a lot of room for alterations in the parachurches and the specific institutions, including the local rules of faith or what-not. There can also be times of celebration when many local churches get together, but this can be done quasi-periodically w. rented space.

    So is this primitivism? no, it's an attempt to emph the need for both continuity and change with the continuity element being the radical Christ-centered decentralization and the change part being the extent and manner of dialogue among Christ-followers regarding how we communicate in word and deed the identity and significance of Christ.

    dlw
    • ^
    • v
    Father Robert Lyons 3 weeks ago
    As one who skirts the borders between a hierarchy and local Church model, I have sympathies with both sides of many of the issues that bless/plague house churches and 'primitivist' Christianity.

    For me, Primitivism (namely Primitive Catholicisim) is an expression of the Christian faith that seeks to get back to an ante-Nicene understanding of what is essential about the Christian faith, using the Scripture as our source, and trusting the cultural experience of the Church Fathers (those taught by the apostles and their earliest successors) to help us with obtaining a broader cultural base in which we can exposit on the meaning and depth of the Scriptures.

    As for leadership, my Synod and the Primitive Catholic movement tend to favor consensus on the local level. We don't make major decisions if there is no consensus, save on emergency issues, major disciplinary concerns, or sensitive pastoral matters (when the discretion of the presbyter is necessary). The local presbyter(s), deacon(s), and deaconess(es) serve the community according to their gifts (as do all of the members of the assembly), but they are called out from the assembly by the bishop through prayer and the laying on of hands. They are held accountable by the bishop because, as much as consensus must play an important role in the local Church, there are certain issues that a local presbyter has to stand for and pronounce the judgement of God as revealed in Scripture. The bishop, however, isn't a monarch in this system. He makes decisions based on the discernment and consensus of all of his brother bishops. This form of 'primitivism' works well for us, and we feel that it maintains the concept of Apostolic Succession in a line of bishops well, while at the same time preventing it from becoming a case of 'scarlet fever', where each bishop can still achieve a higher status until, ultimately, he can be seen by some of the faithful as displacing God.

    So, while we'll probably disagree on elements of our ecclesiology, I largely agree with the spirit and sentiment of what you are saying. We cannot reconstruct the ancient Church. We can, however, speak where they spoke, and remain open to the Spirit in areas that are not 'definitively' unified on the basis of Scripture as the Church recieved it in her earliest days.

    My wife and I are prayerfully discerning starting a house Church (yea, a Catholic house Church... sounds like a bit of a misnomer, I suppose!) and looking at how the Lord would use us in ministry in the days to come. Please pray for us, as we continue to pray for you.

    Rob+
    • ^
    • v
    Thanks for this. We've been pioneering a storytelling ministry for about three years now, and we're seeing signs of structure taking over from dreaming, and I'm wondering what to do about it. On the other hand it's so tempting to build a structure so we feel like we are doing something...
    • ^
    • v
    When you say "no strict hierarchy", how do you conceptualize the authority of the apostles, and how does that related to the ecclesiology of the house church movement?

    (On another note, you stole the thunder of an submission I'm working on. Maybe I'll submit it anyway and let the editors decide.)

    Hope things are going well.

    Ben
    • ^
    • v
    I'm not convinced that apostolic authority was hierarchical. It was a missional authority. When a missionary shows up and calls people to faith in Christ, they are authoritative insofar as they are delivering the Gospel of Christ and, as such, represent the authority of Christ. Once they have been baptized and taught the way of Christ, that apostolic authority has been divested. This is similar to the authority of mentors and parents, rather than the authority of a church officer or clergy.
    • ^
    • v
    Good thoughts man. I think you're on to something. Why is it that Christians seem to approach this issue as an either/or option instead of a both/and. What may work in one context may resemble the primitive church but in another context something different. What you are doing may not "work" with a group of baby boomers who are reaching retirement and whose peers have a perspective on the church that is more "traditional." I guess it comes down to where we are at and the group to whom the Lord wishes us to reach. The problem comes when we try to make the form (beyond what is seen in Scripture with leadership and community) dogma that is universally applicable to all Christians everywhere and in which any deviation is viewed as heretical and thus a matter of salvation.

Trackbacks

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus
Bottom