Institutionalism
By Timothy Glover
Is the church an institution through which we receive blessings from God or is it made up of “priests” whose only intercessor is Christ? Is a person’s relationship to God an immediate relationship or is it with an institution which is then linked to God?
I affirm that the Bible’s teaching about the nature of the church shows it to be a relationship of individuals who are in a covenant relationship with God. It is not made up of all local churches. It is made up of individual saints. In addition, the church is never said to be the savior. Rather, it is the saved. Now, a local church can legitimately be termed “an institution” as individual saints pull together as a team. The problem is when the institution (local church) prevails over the individual’s direct responsibility to God. For example, my responsibility is not removed because I’m a member of a local church who shares that work. I must not surrender my parental obligations to teach my children to the local church where they are taught in a class. Institutional thinking led to what is today called Roman Catholicism. The idea is that the institution can give certain “sacraments” to those who come to it. In this case, union with the church is the means to salvation. Originally, it was taught by the first century writers of the Bible that the church is the product, the result of individuals being saved (Acts 2:47).
Changes away from institutionalism occurred slowly. Still, it has never been removed. First, during the reformation, certain people began to think in terms of measuring the church by the Scriptures instead of measuring the Scriptures by the church. This provided the basis for the reforms of the fifteenth century. What did these reforms create? They created more institutions with different creeds. They did not free themselves from the institutional concept of the church.
Second, the Swiss Anabaptists carried us farther away from institutionalism by emphasizing the importance of individual obedience to God with or without the blessing of the church. And since then, many more have carried forth the idea that each individual has an obligation to God before institutionalism.
If the church is the product of saved people, how can you have the church today? Is it necessary to establish a historical tie to the Apostles in order to have the church? Or, is the tie established when our faith and practice conforms to their teaching? If the church is the product of saved people, then when we do what individuals did (as in Acts 2 ) in response to the spoken word, we also will make up the church as they made up the church then.
Still, who is going to examine whether a practice is according to the Apostles’ teaching? Will it be the church or will it be the conscience of each individual who examines faith and practice by the Word? I advocate that it must be the individual. The difference between institutionalism and the church is that the former is essentially loyalty to a “party” whereas the church (saved individuals) is loyal to God’s word on an individual basis. In one, people look to an institution for salvation. In the other, people look to God’s word and have a direct relationship to God in which no one mediates between them and God except Christ.
Therefore, a non-institutional person is one who has a relationship with God independent of anyone else except Christ. His or her concern is not what the “church” teaches but what the Bible teaches. He or she is accountable to God not the church.
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