So often, we find ourselves talking about the Church…

But not talking about Jesus.

Witness(and read, it’s excellent) this article in the New Yorker (examining the Papal visit to Britain).

Conventional wisdom holds that such respect is increasingly misplaced, and that the papacy is increasingly a millstone around Roman Catholicism’s neck. If it weren’t for the reactionaries in the Vatican, the argument runs, priests might have been permitted to marry, forestalling the sex abuse crisis. Birth control, gay relationships, divorce and remarriage might have been blessed, bringing lapsed Catholics back into the fold. Theological dissent would have been allowed to flourish, creating a more welcoming environment for religious seekers.

…

And yes, the church’s exclusive theological claims and stringent moral message don’t go over well in a multicultural, sexually liberated society. But the example of Catholicism’s rivals suggests that the church might well be much worse off if it had simply refashioned itself to fit the prevailing values of the age. That’s what the denominations of mainline Protestantism have done, across the last four decades — and instead of gaining members, they’ve dwindled into irrelevance.

Notice the assumptions about what is good and bad.

Implied good things (at least according to conventional wisdom) are – positive public relations, no sex abuse crisis, membership increased by the lapsed coming back to the fold, dissent encouraged to welcome ‘seekers’.

Bad things are sexual abuse crises and dwindling into irrelevance- aka losing members and social influence.

The article treats the Church as an organization. Nothing wrong with that (it is one), but treating the Church as *just* an organization is a fallacy. Why? Because this whole Christianity thing is founded on the person of Christ, and you can’t discuss the Church in any meaningful fashion without discussing him.

For example, Jesus reserves the right to recast our ideas of what good and bad are.

Positive PR? Social influence? Irrelevance?  - He came unto his own, and his own did not receive him.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

Church Membership? “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden.”

A welcoming environment for dissent and discussion? “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Given the fundamental tenets of Christian doctrine (born of the Spirit, perchance, that same Spirit which no one can say where it is going?) and the centrality of Jesus Christ, it should be apparent that conventional “best organizational practices” need not apply. Whatever we are, a good morality organization we are not. Think of Lewis’ “God or a Bad Man” argument extended to we,  Christ’s followers.

It is useless and dangerously wrong to try and analyze the Christian Church as just an organization or as a social entity. It’s a logical fallacy to try and talk about the Church without first talking about Jesus.

HE IS the necessary context for grounding the discussion.

Addendum: If it is “dangerously wrong” to analyze the Christian Church as just an organization, what does this imply about trying to operate it as such?