Church and the role of Religious Corporation

Some years ago, Chuck Colson claimed that most North American christians have a profound misunderstanding of the nature of church — they think of church, Colson said, as a building rather than as a body of people. I always thought that Colson was a little bit off in his analysis, although that might be the difference between the still functioning social institution of "church" in some parts, at least, of the United States as compared to the more secularized Canadian environment I hang out in. In my experience, no one was at all confused by language such as "the church that meets at the school" or at some other location, whereas they might take a bit longer to figure out what was meant by "the school that operates at such and such church". Everyone was quite able to distinguish between the organization that was "church" (or "school") and the label attached to the particular building that had been constructed for the primary use of that organization.

What I've since come to understand is that there really is a profound misunderstanding of the nature of church that permeates the thinking of most christians I know, myself included — the organizational conception of church that most of us operate with is profoundly different than the "body" metaphor that Paul uses to describe church.

In the title to this post I've used the label "religious corporation". I don't think there is really much practical difference between the conception of "religious corporation" and that of "charitable organization" when it comes to thinking about church. I'm going to use the term corporation in this post because I think it is a bit more precise, and also because ironically it's origins are from the Latin corpus, meaning "body".

A brief history of the Corporation

As I understand it, the idea of corporation was created as a legal concept in the realm of business. Corporation has two important fundamental features. Firstly, it is a vehicle whereby a number of individual enterprising business persons can come together in common cause in a business venture. In this capacity, the corporation provides a mechanism for the pooling of resources and the allocation of profits. The second feature, however, is more important and is the primary mark of corporation. The corporation becomes a separate legal entity, distinct from its principals or shareholders. This separation of interests is what allows the corporation to focus exclusively on the business venture at hand, without regard for its principals' other pursuits and interests. It is also what provides the principals with limited liability with respect to the actions of the corporation — bad actions on the part of the corporation can result in the principals losing the capital they invested into the corporation, but no more than that.

The separation of interests that lies at the heart of the corporation calls for those who are engaged in and with the corporation being able to distinguish between the actions that they make as part of, or on behalf of, the corporation from those actions they take on their own part. This compartmentalizing of actions has become so commonplace that we simply act that way without much thought or reflection, and we operate that way with respect to every organization of which we are a part — the church included. No one would think it at all strange to be asked whether we had performed a particular action on our own behalf or as part of the church — indeed most of us are quite aware of a need to obtain the necessary approvals for any and all actions that we might take on behalf of the church. That is, of course, just the way things work.

The apostle Paul, however, would think this very strange indeed.

Paul's concept of church as Body

In 1 Corinthians, Paul uses the image of the church as the body of Christ in several ways. We are, of course, familiar with his use of this metaphor in the context of his discussion of the diversity of spiritual gifts operating for the common good in chapter 12. Just as it is not possible for the difference between the eye and the hand to be used as evidence that the eye and the hand do not belong to the same body, so too the difference between the gifting of one and the gifting of another cannot be used to claim that the one belongs and the other does not. In addition, the diversity of gifting is essential for the body to exist at all. A body that was simply one gigantic eyeball rolling down the street would not be a body — it would just be a freak. So too with the church. Furthermore, the parts of the body are intimately joined together — when part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers, and when one part of the body is exalted, the whole body is exalted.

This intimate connection of the members to the body comes up elsewhere in Paul's instruction to the Corinthian church. In chapter 10 he alludes to it in his example of the Lord's Supper in comparison to the cultic meals offered in the pagan temples. When we eat the one bread and drink the one cup, we who are many are one body. When the pagans eat what they offer to the idols, they become intimately connected with the demon behind the idol. It is impossible to be both joined together in Jesus Christ and to be joined in fellowship with demons. Hence you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.

Perhaps the most profoundly intimate use of the church as body metaphor, however, occurs in chapter 5. At verse 15 Paul says:

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, "The two will become one flesh."

Being part of the body of Christ means being at least as intimately connected to Christ as the intimate connection of a man and a woman in marriage. Indeed, we know that scripture uses the marriage metaphor to describe the relationship of the church to Christ — she is called the Bride of Christ. Paul, however, connects the two metaphors together here by using calling forth the sexual imagery of one body (which is precisely what is at hand in dealing with sexual promiscuity and the free association with prostitutes) to connect the members of the church to Christ. As someone else has said, "Jesus is seeking a Bride, not a harem!"

For Paul, everything that we do — every action we take, every word we speak — we do as part of the body of Christ. What we do, the body does, and Christ does. That's why our ethics, our behaviour, is so important to Paul. There could be no more of a distinction between what a member of the church of Corinth did as a private individual and what he or she did on behalf of the body of Christ as there could be such a distinction between what the hand does on its own and what it does as part of the body.

From Paul's perspective, then, the church is not, and can never be, a religious corporation.

[As an aside, Paul would also have extreme difficulty with the commonly held concept of church as the purveyor of religious goods and services to a religious consumer who, if not satisfied with the quality of the product, simply takes his business down the street. To come back to the corporation metaphor, I suspect that Paul would say that you can't sell your shares in Church, Inc. without simultaneously making a huge and definitive change in the nature of your relationship with Jesus Christ. But that's another subject for another time.]

Does corporation have a role in church?

Often one's first response to discovering that something is not as it should be is to react against the whole system in its entirety. Hence we see many disillusioned people leaving churches that they've found to be over "corporatized" and setting up their own way of following Jesus away from "organized religion". I can hear the anger and frustration in the voices of many of my emergent friends directed against the {insert appropriate adjective here} church. But is corporation simply a pure evil when it comes to its connection with church? I think not.

Whenever any collection of people associating around a common purpose gets to be of a certain size, the need for organization becomes apparent. This was true in the early church as well, hence the need to appoint seven "deacons" to oversee the food distribution program in Acts 6. In the life of any church there are some things that just work better if supporting structures are established that everyone works within.

Corporation may not be needed by every church, but it is certainly a very useful and effective tool for dealing with the rest of society in certain areas. Corporation is often a more effective tool for dealing with ownership of communal property than trusteeship, for example, or the extremely unwieldly mechanism of true "tenants in common" ownership. Corporation can also be effective in dealing with governments and tax authorities, and can permit the use of tax receipts to make the generosity of the church members so much more financially effective.

Corporation can be a powerful tool and a profitable servant of the church, allowing the church to be more effective in the things that it does. The key is retaining the proper relationship between church and corporation.

Corporation is not spiritually neutral

While corporation can be a very valuable tool in the hands of the church, the use of this objective and utilitarian language should not lull us into thinking that corporation is a neutral concept, equally capable of being wielded for good or for ill in the life of the church. It is not neutral, and is both a valuable and very dangerous tool.

The status of the corporation as a separate entity from its principals is not just a legal fiction; it is also a spiritual reality. Every form of human organization, whether it be corporation, committee, Bible study group, service club, family, or whatever, generates a distinct spiritual entity that is shaped by and shapes the people involved. This spiritual entity is not independent of the people engaged in the organization — a change in those persons can and does produce a change in this spiritual entity — but it is decidedly distinct from them. The whole is not simply the sum of all the parts. This spiritual entity shapes the way the people engaged in this enterprise interact with each other, and acts to maintain a certain collective character to the group. It is inherently conservative, acting to retain a group identity even as the people in the group are succeeded by others. These characteristics can be very beneficial. However, this spiritual entity shares the same fallen nature as the human beings who generate it — it invariably seeks to extend its control and power beyond its place, and to seek its preservation and promotion over the original purposes of the group. Given free rein, it will become the master rather than the servant.

The spiritual power that is corporation — or city or nation or whatever — that over-reaches itself to become master rather than servant can be a very cruel master indeed. The stories of pastors and church leaders and church members who have been beaten down by this spiritual adversary are legion. Usually the story focuses on an individual or individuals who are seen as being responsible for the beating — and sometimes that could be indeed be true — but most often these individuals are merely scapegoats. The true adversary is not "flesh and blood" as Paul puts it in Ephesians, but principalities and powers — spiritual entities associated with the organizational and systemic structures that were meant to serve the body — that have stepped beyond their role as servant. Indeed fighting against the members of the group is ineffective in dealing with the corrupted and corrupting power. Rather it takes the combined effort and goodwill — dare I say community — of all members to redeem this power and restore it to its proper function.

The necessity of Community to church

In 1 Corinthians it seems that Paul's burden throughout the entire correspondence is to deal with threats to community within the church at Corinth. Paul evidently sees community as absolutely essential to being church; for starters, community is obviously inherent in the body metaphor. I've already stated my thesis that community is essential to dealing with fallen spiritual powers inherent in human organization and social structures, including the church.

However, I think a strong case can be made that community is also essential to the mission of the church. No less than Jesus himself indicated that it is precisely by the love his disciples have for one another that their identity as his disciples will be know by all men. Jesus made community the subject of repeated commands to his disciples in his farewell Upper Room Discourse and gave it central place in his prayer that followed. Luke reports in Acts that the early church was known by all for the extent of its community and the generosity of its members, and that this played no small part in the proclamation of its message and the expansion of its numbers.

The special role of elders

Elders in the church have a special role to guard and promote the place of community in the life of the body. This is, I believe, their primary responsibility, far exceeding any other responsibilities they may have as directors of the religious corporation. Community, of course, does not stop at the edges of the local congregation, but extends beyond to the entire Church — the communion of the saints in all places and at all times; past, present and future. It is not enough that our little group gets along famously with each other if we have no love for the "church down the road".

Elders must pay special attention to the maintenance of true community among themselves. This is necessary not simply because it is impossible to lead the church unless you are yourself church. It is also necessary in order that the elders may restrain the spiritual power of the religious corporation (and all other organizational structures as well) within its proper role of servant of the church. To this end the elders must always remember that the religious corporation is not the church, but merely the servant of the church, even as they themselves are only servants of the church. They must be on guard against importing techniques, language, and thinking patterns from the "world" where corporation is indeed allowed to be the enterprise. In particular they cannot allow themselves the luxury of distinguishing between that which they do as elders in the body of Christ and that which they do in any other capacity — everything must be done in service to Christ and Christ alone, in the same manner and spirit here as there (wherever here and there may be).

Deliberate focus on community within the group of elders is even more vital when the guardians of the corporation have allowed it to stride beyond its place and gain control it never should have had. This spiritual power cannot be attacked directly, but only indirectly through the transformation of those whose participation generates it. A group of elders who are not seriously committed to engaging openly, honestly, and deeply in each others lives can never bring such a beast back into its proper place — instead it will feast on and exploit every misunderstanding, every lack of trust, every failure of community to its own purpose.

Regrettably, the elders of too many churches have subordinated their task of being the guardians of the unity and catholicity of the Church, to the task of doing the business of the religious corporations we have called church. They have too readily immersed themselves in the development and implementation of impersonal leadership and management principles, rather than in the thoroughly personal work of community.

I have been just such an elder. God help me.