When we are faced with systemic issues so great that it “seems as though” the whole system is corrupt, what do we do? Is the better solution to serve from within for the sake of reform? Or, is it better to step outside the existing system with the goal of establishing a new system based upon better methods and a better foundation?

I believe the answer to that question is not easy. How bad is the systemic flaw? How important is the system itself? Is it possible to do both? (By both, I mean to serve the existing system in its flaws and weakness while also establishing an alternative.)

If you didn’t read my introductory article “The New Underground”, you may be thinking I am talking about immigration reform or public schools. I am in fact talking about the church. In regards to the church, I have tried all the options noted above.

When we look at the historical reformers, we see these methods employed. Occasionally, there was great success. Occasionally, there was great failure. Typically, there was a mixture of success and failure with great persecution to go along with it all.

I sincerely believe we’re living in a time where a new and widespread reformation of the church is needed. What you might not expect from someone making this claim however, is that I do not view the majority of existing churches and denominations as evil or apostate. Are those kinds of churches out there? Of course. Is it the norm. Probably not.

So this begs the question, “Why?” If many churches out there are “mostly” good and some churches out there are the “bad eggs”, why call for a complete reformation of what we know and believe to be church? The clearest answer I can give is this: “To do what is right is always right to do.”

The important part is how we go about doing it.

So yes, there are obvious examples of spiritual authorities doing horrendous things in the name of Jesus. Sometimes, this points to the system, and always, this points to the person. We will know them by their fruit. Yet, we also need to examine the system from time to time and question whether or not the ecclesiology and theology of the church is what is contributing to the problems.

Some of us are mostly happy with our church structure and community because it benefits us personally, yet because of this we can become permissive of the negatives that affect others. There’s no such thing as the “perfect church”, right? So let’s just get over ourselves and move forward with what we got. For some people, this may be enough. However, many of us are not wired like that. We want the best possible. We want the “church” to be the best possible thing it can be, even if that means great change.

You may have heard the phrase, “Good is the enemy of best.” This applies here. While God uses imperfect systems and imperfect people to accomplish amazing things according to His mercy and grace, this is not an excuse to underachieve or be ignorant to change.

So, finally, what needs changing?

To get to the root of the issue, we need to go back to Paul’s letter to the Romans and consider 2nd century church life in light of Paul’s warnings. Making this difficult is one big issue that stands in the way. There is a lot of Catholic myth and revisionist history regarding the 2nd century church. It is difficult to read information about the early post-apostolic church and individuals such as Ignatius of Antioch or Polycarp of Smyrna without running into Catholic revisions and interpretations.

If we were to believe the Catholic revisions, we would think that the foundations of the Catholic church were being established as the apostles handed off succession of authority to bishops and popes. Due to the fact that much of the church at this time still met in homes, and “bishop” wasn’t so much a title of vested authority, but rather servanthood, we can see the Catholic narrative that would dominate for much of the next 1,500 years was often bogus.

Even so, it is in this era that we began to see a very concerning development. Roughly 50-70 years prior, Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans as a warning against arrogant theology regarding Israel. By the 2nd century, the Roman (and later Latinized) dominated church had divorced itself from Paul’s warnings. The growing sentiment within Christianity was that Israel, or the Jew (to be more specific), was God’s old vessel of redemption in the earth. But now that the new vessel, that is the universal (or catholic) church, has replaced Israel and the Jew.

During this time, primarily regarding the church living in the Roman Empire, the next 200ish years would further cement this error into the community. At the time of Constantine (early 4th century), the church was legalized and institutionalized in the Roman Empire. The church as a formal institution, roughly 300 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, was born. This new institution would have nothing to do with the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. Remember, they are no longer part of God’s plan.

By divorcing the Jewish elements of the gospel from the Latinized church, the roots of the tree of Christianity began to rot. With the rejection of Israel, the establishment of a pagan clergy loosely based on a syncretism of the Roman and Levitical mode (disguised by out-of-context references to the Pauline letters), began to separate itself from the common layperson. (It was in this historical period 300’s-600’s AD that tithing to the church became a Christian doctrine. It was formalized in 567 and 585 in Tours and Macon.) A new order had fully seized power, and the church adopted a new son of man as king. While I understand many people may not get this reference, “The prophet Samuel was rolling in his grave, and even Korah couldn’t imagine such a rebellion.“

We’re going to fast forward again, this time to the 15th and 16th century, to the Protestant Reformation. Now that I’ve pissed off the Catholics, now it’s the Protestant’s turn.

We idolize the reformers, yet if one of them stood before us today we’d yell heretic at them just like any rank and file Catholic priest. Just ask Francis Chan. While modern evangelicals and charismatics have since adopted a much more friendly attitude, and at times theology, regarding Israel and the Jews, this cannot be said about most of the reformers. Of these early reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, and Hus, only the Hussites had a typically favorable relationship with the Jewish people and their Hebrew customs.

The rise of Protestantism saw many errors corrected, and many biblical doctrines restored. For this, we should be very grateful to those who have labored before us. They did what they were able to do in their time and many of them paid for it with their own blood as martyrs. I believe the correct response is to learn from their willingness to correct the wrongs of the church by taking that torch and running with it in our generation.

This is where the “how we go about doing it is important.” Many of the reformers also murdered Christian, Jew, and heretic alike. Many of the methods of Protestantism were just as unjust as the Catholics from which they reformed. Most of the early reformed churches became a “little Rome” and these new denominations established their own varying clergies and ministerial orders that had more in common with Catholicism than early Christianity. Syncretism with crowns, states, and political entities continued as the Protestant church sought to establish its power and influence the way that the Catholic church, and secular institutions before had done. In other words, we still have a long way to go.

As later Protestant movements emerged, such as Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism and its later Charismatic variants, fundamentalism, Messianic Judaism, and so on – we have seen many truths restored to the church, and still many errors go on unattended. The last thing I would want to do is convey that I (or my group or people like me) have all the answers or the final answers. I pray such arrogance would never find its way into my attitudes or opinion.

I am merely suggesting we do the next right (and hard) thing. Maybe if we are going to do something new, we first need to do something ancient.

So, what is the next right thing?

I believe it is time to leave formal (institutional/traditional) church structures and their leadership methods behind. Maybe it is time to consider that “church” is one of our sacred cows. I haven’t found the bible verse yet that commands or instructs anyone to establish or plant churches. The only person to establish a “church” is Jesus (even the word church, as it is rendered from the Greek ‘ekklesia’ in Matthew 16, is a poor translation).

Is it possible for us to read the scriptures and not impose our modern view of church on the ancient text? I hope so. While it is easier to look at the Acts church and implement elements of their lifestyle into our modern church context, is that really the right thing to do? Do we even comprehend the Hebrew context of the first (mostly Jewish) believers and the Gentiles (non-Jews) who were gathered into their communities? Maybe that’s where we need to start, before we try to “re-invent” the church.

The church as it exists institutionally functions primarily to preach the Gospel “about” Jesus and bring people into a functional relationship with the church institution and its members. Yet, most Christians are not trained in the Gospel of the Kingdom (the Gospel that Jesus preached) and are largely unaware how their spiritual gifts, talents, and lives are meant to be wholly devoted to this ‘Gospel of the Kingdom that must be preached as a witness to all nations’ before the return of Jesus and the end of this present wicked age.

As Christians, we’re not called into a country club that serves as an interest group or voting block of the larger society in which we live. As Christians, we are called into a familial ambassadorship for the heavenly kingdom of the Son of God, namely Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, we are a family on a mission with a message. Do you know the message?

How many of us are preaching the coming Davidic and Jewish kingdom that will come out of heaven to establish righteousness throughout the earth and usher in the glorious age to come? The church at the present is mostly preaching either, “do this and that so that the church can rule and have dominion in this age”, or it is preaching, “give Jesus your heart so that you can go to heaven when you die.” Both of those messages have elements of truth to them, don’t get me wrong, but neither are the Gospel that Jesus or the apostles preached. Our goal in this age is neither to take dominion under Constantine’s cross, nor is it to setup our little religious societies to provide us shelter while we wait for evacuation.

Due to the emergence of “deconstruction” by many in my generation, where individuals and even churches are deconstructing aspects or even the entirety of their faith in Jesus, many of those who are questioning the validity of church are being lumped into this same category. Yet, it is largely the void, or in some cases abuse and neglect, by the church that is causing many to question their faith in Jesus. If only they thought to deconstruct the church instead of their faith in Jesus, maybe we’d be on to something. Yet, people who question the validity of salary pastors, tithe systems, oral or ecumenical traditions, spiritual coverings, or lament the lack of training in spiritual gifts, lack of a true priesthood of all believers, lack of willingness to discuss controversial theological subjects, and the list goes on… are being disregarded because we’ve got “bigger issues” like who to endorse for president or should we build a bigger sanctuary so that we can draw in more people. On top of it all, we’re acting like bureaucrats, not family members.

Another issue is we’ve lost the view that if you are in Christ, you are a member of the body of Christ. We’re not in it for our church, we’re in it as a body. Here’s what I’m getting at: Right now, the church is in a massive crisis. Not just because almost every denomination is loosing attendance, but because the church is caught in scandal. The sheer amount of sexual immorality, financial greed, divorce, abuse of children, pornography, homosexuality, and alignment with corrupt political systems among leaders in the church is staggering. Some of us look around and think, “I’m glad that’s not my church.” We may feel sad or disgusted, but thankfully we can still invite people to “our” church. The problem is that in God’s eyes, “your church” does not exist. He sees His body, and His body would make even Corinth blush with shame.

The bottom line is that God is judging the church in America and much of the west right now. He is sending “Phineas” types throughout the land to drive a spear, figuratively speaking, through the heart of the church’s immorality (see: Numbers 25). His judgment is an act of mercy, and it is time to get the hell out of Sodom, or Babylon, or Egypt, or whatever metaphor it takes to get us off our butts and moving into the wilderness.

Is it possible that much of the root of our problem is the church itself, meaning it’s institutions and systems?

Now to those who hear my message and say, “Amen.” A word of caution. God may be handing you an axe to lay to the root of the church’s broken foundation. Remember that God also raised up wicked Nebuchadnezzar once to judge His people Israel. Just because you have a gift or calling, does not mean you are an agent of righteousness or mercy. The whole point of this is to break faulty foundations and save people. Love your enemies. Do good to those who persecute you.

~ J. S. Marek