Institutional Movement

Oxymoron or match made in heaven?

I got ordained last weekend. It has been a (very) long journey and I didn’t always think this is where it would end. I will likely have more to say later about ordination and what it means to me to be ordained in my unique role, but for now, I’m mostly just grateful.

I was ordained as a minister in The Wesleyan Church, a smallish denomination somewhere within the broad swath of Evangelicalism that traces its roots back to the Methodist revival of John and Charles Wesley. Our history is one of rapid growth and revival movements, the work of God often out-pacing the ability of any one person or organization to keep up.

This is no longer the case. The Wesleyan Church, like many ecclesial bodies in the United States, is, at best, stagnant, and more honestly probably in a period of decline. While we are hardly alone, this is cause for concern.

Recently, a group of Wesleyan pastors and teachers have sought to address this crisis by attempting to answer the striking question asked a few years ago by our General Superintendent: “What will it take for the Wesleyans to become a movement again?”

I applaud this conversation. I think Wesleyans have, for too much of our recent history, had these sorts of conversations within a closely drawn circle of confidants, people with whom we could be confident we agreed.

Like much of the surrounding culture, I think our denomination was shocked to discover the depth of division present within our body in the years surrounding the election of Donald Trump in 2016, not over that issue particularly but brought to light by a related confluence of events and forces. Like many, in the years since, I think we have decided that discussion and disagreement too often devolve into open warfare, and so difficult conversations will simply have to be shelved in the name of keeping the peace.

This attitude, while understandable, is a mistake. The Wesleyan Church will never gain momentum in any particular direction, never shake off our current malaise, if we cannot have serious conversations about significant topics, topics about which we may well disagree. I am glad to see an attempt to foster just such a conversation.

In that spirit, though, I have some qualms about the framing of the problem at hand. Is “movement vs. institution” really the best way to think about the issues that face us?

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Part of my ordination in The Wesleyan Church this past Sunday.

I think I understand the basic impulse in this way of framing the conversation. There is a long history in the Wesleyan movement of organic, relatively grass-roots-oriented, lay-empowered ministry. The Wesleyans have been led more often by Wesley’s lay ministers and circuit riders without formal education than by people with degrees from elite institutions.

The Wesleyans are hardly the only ones who share a similar sentiment. How often have you heard some variation of “Christianity is not religion, it’s a relationship?” I think the two are parallel impulses. The belief seems to be that movements and relationships are natural, able to follow the prompting of the Spirit where ever He may lead, whenever He may call. Institutions and religions are clunky, stuffy, restrictive, and overly concerned with self-preservation. Movements get things done; institutions call an ad hoc committee to draft a white paper with the hopes of crafting a proposal by sometime next year.

But, full disclosure, I’ve always found the “religion vs. relationship,” “dead structure vs. organic growth” dichotomy frustrating, for the following reasons:

1. Growth can be stunted by overly rigid structures, but structure can just as easily facilitate growth. How many pastors who preach “relationship not religion” also champion the value of a weekly date night with one’s spouse? Is the date night not a “rigid ritual” that can result in “simply going through the motions?” Structure, ritual, and organization cannot simply replace the life of the entity in question, but they can absolutely provide the support and direction necessary for continued growth and health.

   This is especially true when planting in difficult soil! Planting in fertile soil and providing no structure will result in huge amounts of growth, probably of both good and bad simultaneously, and possibly at unsustainable levels, but things will grow. In difficult soil, however, careful investment of resources, directed and coordinated effort, and specific structure can make growth possible where it would not happen otherwise.

2. I suspect that the “movements grow, institutions die” trope is simply untrue in practice. We have all seen institutions stagnate and die, sometimes in spectacular fashion. But I also suspect that a huge number of “movements” similarly fail, but in ways that go unnoticed because they never garner much momentum or attention in the first place. If 90% of movements fizzle in the first year, but we only ever become aware of the 10% that “make it,” we may well have a skewed sense of the effectiveness of movements.

   Similarly, plenty of institutions grow. Look no further than the many massive, multinational corporations that seem to only grow larger and larger, year after year. More relevantly, I think the Roman Catholic Church would land pretty squarely in the “institution” category, and they only have the 1.35 billion or so baptized members. This sort of institutional growth does not resonate with the American imagination in the same way, so we do not celebrate it in like fashion, but this brings me to my third point.

3. I suspect that the American cultural imagination is naturally disposed in favor of the “movement” paradigm because it aligns with other cultural values we possess. The image of the lone genius entrepreneur, who experiences explosive success if given maximal freedom and is only foiled if restricted by red tape and clunky, over-bearing institutions, is an American archetype across multiple fields and genres.

   So much of the movement discourse is focused around removing regulations and red tape, so that the doers with an apostolic gifting can get things moving on the ground, but that ignores at least some of our denomination’s history. I submit to you that Wesley’s lay ministers were not entrepreneurs, not independent movement innovators in the American sense. They were carefully empowered in specific ways to carry out the specific vision of the movement as a whole. Wesley’s lay preachers were not sent out to figure things out on the ground on their own with a promise that all they needed was the Holy Spirit. They were given Wesley’s standard sermons and his Explanatory Notes on the NT and the Methodist meeting structure and then commissioned to implement that vision. Empower the laity, yes, but do so using the best of institutional resources and capabilities.

Much more could be said, but I think that is sufficient for now. So, let me try to further the conversation by adding a couple of questions of my own:

1. Does The Wesleyan Church possess a distinctive vision or purpose in the world that might inspire momentum? Can we articulate it? I agree with Dave Drury of DruGroup, who (in a comment on the original article) said this:

   I am particularly interested in if we can at some point clearly articulate again what are our "shared beliefs and a common cause." I wonder if you were to bring 100 Wesleyans into a room and they each built that list and could only write 3 things, would they come up with more like 75 different things, and the "shared" and "common" would be too varied these days.

2. What resources might The Wesleyan Church possess and opportunities might there be precisely because we are an institution that could be leveraged in support of momentum-generating initiatives?

3. What institutional structures, restrictions, or rituals might serve not as roadblocks to progress, but as anchors to the core identity of our movement?

Wherever you are naturally drawn on the spectrum between movement and institution, lets keep the conversation going.