Rethinking Church, Part Four: Community and Accountability

 This is part four of a five-part series I'm calling Rethinking Church. In this post, we're going to talk
about community and accountability. How does modern institutional Christianity define these two terms? Is institutional religion's model for community a valid one? Is accountability the means for creating genuine community?

As a reminder, I'm writing this series in the following order. I strongly urge you to read these in the order written as each one builds on the previous.

• Rethinking Church, Part 1: The Centrality of the Pastor
• Rethinking Church, Part 2: The Pastor's Calling, Authority, and Our Use of Honorific Titles
  
• Rethinking Church, Part 3: The Clergy-Laity Distinction
  
• Rethinking Church, Part 4: Community and Accountability (this post)
• Rethinking Church, Part 5: Formal Church Membership 

I think it's safe to say that in an institutional religious system of top-down authority, one would expect that the definitions of community and accountability would vary from the definitions of those same words outside the influence of that same institutional system. And that is certainly the case here. In a pastor-centered church system that's

Rethinking Church, Part Three: The Clergy-Laity Distinction

This is part three of a five-part series I'm calling Rethinking Church. In this post, we're going to talk about the clergy/laity distinction that we've inherited from church history. Is there a special class of religiously trained people called clergy in the body of Christ? As a reminder, I'm writing this series from the point of view of a former pastor with 20+ years experience pastoring various institutional churches. This post is a closer look at one more way institutional church has elevated the role of pastor by insisting he or she has a special, elite calling that the rest of us don't have. This is further reinforced with the pastor being given unlimited authority within the congregation as reflected in the required use of honorific titles. This top-down approach to doing church has been handed to us by hundreds of years of church tradition, not by any mandate found in scripture or coming from God. 

From my own experience and my conversations with others, I see at least five areas where I believe the institutional church has erred to varying degrees, opening the door to a structure within the church that is crippling it and causing disillusionment in those that have left. I'm writing this series in the following order:

• Rethinking Church, Part 1: The Centrality of the Pastor
• Rethinking Church, Part 2: The Pastor's Calling, Authority, and Our Use of Honorific Titles
  
• Rethinking Church, Part 3: The Clergy-Laity Distinction (this post)
  
• Rethinking Church, Part 4: Community and Accountability
• Rethinking Church, Part 5: Formal Church Membership 

I strongly urge you to read these in the order written as each one builds on the previous. 

I've previously noted that Ignatius of Antioch's insistence that

Rethinking Church, Part Two: The Pastor's Calling, Authority, and Our Use of Honorific Titles

This is part two of a five-part series I'm calling Rethinking Church. In this post, we're going to talk about a pastor's calling, authority, and why we feel the need to use honorific titles when referring to pastors. As a reminder, I'm writing this series from the point of view of a former pastor with 20+ years experience pastoring various institutional churches. This post is a closer look at one more way institutional church has elevated the role of pastor by insisting he or she has a special, elite calling that the rest of us don't have. This is further reinforced with the pastor being given unlimited authority within the congregation as reflected in the required use of honorific titles. This top-down approach to doing church has been handed to us by hundreds of years of church tradition, not by any mandate found in scripture or coming from God. 

From my own experience and my conversations with others, I see at least five areas where I believe the institutional church has erred to varying degrees, opening the door to a structure within the church that is crippling it and causing disillusionment in those that have left. I'm writing this series in the following order:

• Rethinking Church, Part 1: The Centrality of the Pastor
• Rethinking Church, Part 2: The Pastor's Calling, Authority, and Our Use of Honorific Titles (this post)
  
• Rethinking Church, Part 3: The Clergy-Laity Distinction
• Rethinking Church, Part 4: Community and Accountability
• Rethinking Church, Part 5: Formal Church Membership 

I strongly urge you to read these in the order written as each one builds on the previous.

 We talked last time about

Rethinking Church, Part One: The Centrality of the Pastor

People have become disillusioned with the institutional church and are leaving it in droves. From all the statistics I've read the reasons vary, but a large number who've left are leaving not because they've left Jesus, but because they feel the institutional church has. As a result, many are leaving it and finding more authentic community outside of its walls, myself included. They are done. Josh Packard was correct in saying, 

"The Dones are people who are disillusioned with church. Though they were committed to the church for years—often as lay leaders—they no longer attend. Whether because they're dissatisfied with the structure, social message, or politics of the institutional church, they've decided they are better off without organized religion." - Source: Meet the Dones 

This post is part one of a five-part series I'm calling Rethinking Church. In this post, we're simply going to sort out what a pastor is. This will be the foundation for the posts that follow. I'll be writing this series from the point of view of a former pastor with 20+ years experience pastoring various institutional churches. I thought it good to start by looking more closely at the role of pastors because I feel one way the modern institutional church has complicated things and come off the rails is by making the pastor the focal point of the church, not unlike the CEO of a corporation. This top-down approach to doing church has been handed to us by hundreds of years of church tradition, not by any mandate found in scripture or coming from God. 

From my own experience and my conversations with others, I see at least five areas where I believe the institutional church has erred to varying degrees, opening the door to a structure within the church that is crippling it and causing disillusionment in those that have left. I'm writing this series in the following order: