In the last post, I asked if churches work best when they are centralized or decentralized.
Let’s back up a step and ask whether Christianity is more of a centralized or decentralized religion.
First, you could say that pre-exilic Judaism was a centralized temple-based religion.
During the exile, Judaism was forced to decentralize with multiple synagogue’s serving as the gathering point for smaller circles of Jews.
Second temple Judaism was more of a hybrid. The temple was central, but synagogues were spread throughout Palestine and beyond.
Early Christianity was decentralized. You could argue that Jerusalem was considered to be headquarters for a few decades, but after 70 AD, that wasn’t the case.
Eventually, Christianity became more centralized with the home office being located in Rome. Fast forward through a bunch of church history and the way you answer the question above depends on what kind of church/denomination you’re a part of. I guess most of us would say that it is a hybrid of some sort.
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
So Christ doesn’t constitute a center?
big white hat what are you suggesting?
Let’s consider Islam. A more centralized religion I am not aware of:
Geographic center – Mecca
Liguistic requirement – Arabic
Cultural mandate – Sharia Law
Religious authority – Imams serve as sole interpreters of Quran
In comparison to a religion like Islam, present day Christianity (even in its Catholic form) is not as evil in its centralization as we might think. In fact, the strength of the Christian gospel is its transcendence. It has no language requirement, no Cultural requirement (unless you live in the bible belt), no geographic requirement, etc… Jesus is infinitely translatable. Mohammed is not.
How this relates into the discussion on centralized leadership…I have no idea.
What would a hybrid spider/starfish look like, though? Are inter-phyla genetic monstrosities what God had in mind in creating bio-diversity?
Or is this a false-dilemma question?
I think ol’ apostle Paul’s got the better metaphor with the human body. Some tissues grow back when excised. Some don’t. They have different structures and functions – but a body has a single DNA code that makes it different.
There may have been few enough Christians in century one that they’d have been parts or members of that body; nowadays there are enough of us that, individually, we’re probably just cells. But cells of the same type often hang out together to perform a specific function. Some race through the bloodstream bringing life-giving oxygen to every part of the body. Others help think, nourish, reproduce, fight off harmful elements, grow, repair damage, perceive, communicate, and maintain an even temperature.
Christ, the head, directs that magnificent body to do what He needs done in this world, whether the individual parts/cells of that body can always perceive what that is or not. So in that way, His church is centralized.
When something bad happens in a localized area of that body, the individual cells don’t have to be told what to do; it’s programmed into them genetically. They gather to help, to heal, to rebuild, to protect, to knit together and cherish each other. In that way, Christ’s church is de-centralized.
I think it’s a best-of-both-worlds design.