As the gospel proclaimed by the church has been reduced to individual salvation, that salvation has itself become the purpose and program of the church. When the church went through the paradigm shift from its initial shape as a movement to its continuing shape as an institution, its focus was more and more upon the administration of the salvation. (Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church, 133)

Ultimately, then, it might be helpful to question the role of Jesus’ prophetic, eschatological temple action when addressing the role of the Church as an institution throughout history, though doing so is outside the focus of our present study.

This emphasis upon individuals and efficiency is closely mirrored, of course, in the first century Temple where the buying and selling of sacrificial animals had been reduced to a science, whereby individuals were promised the forgiveness of sins. In this sense, both the first century Temple as well as contemporary Western churches have missed the importance of being a “house of prayer for all nations;” (see Mark 15.17) the latter of which having done so at least in part by a misappropriation of Donald McGavran’s “homogenous units” principle.

Phyllis Tickle also examines the result of churches marketing themselves to meet the “needs” of church shoppers in her recent book The Great Emergence. She notes that beginning in the middle of the 20th century

[c]hurches began to have more building programs for basketball courts and swimming pools and fellowship halls that for sanctuaries and naves. Hugely expensive to maintain as well as to build, none of those courts and pools and meeting halls has as much to do with spiritual or religious growth in faith as they did with effecting a uniformity of social experience and formation that would be conducive to a uniformity of belief. (The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why, 90-91.)

Julia Duin, religion editor for The Washington Times also notes the change in perspective. Following a discussion with a couple in Norfolk, Virginia, she writes “[t]hey were tired of how every church they entered was involved in some kind of building project. ‘Why is small bad?’ Diane asked as we chatted in an ethnic restaurant near one of her art shows. ‘Why does everyone want to be the Crystal Cathedral?’” (Quitting Church, 60) This prizing of the large over small is a further development of the two sacred cows, individualization and efficiency. As Fitch notes, “when numbers reach a certain level, a further increase in numbers may deter achieving the goals of being the body of Christ.” (The Great Giveaway, 29)

A final dilemma of contemporary Western church life is not as clearly seen within the first century Temple as previous aspects have been, though this does not minimize it’s problematic nature for contemporary ecclesiology. An over-reliance upon those in church leadership is also built upon the modernist ideas of individualism and efficiency. Fitch asserts that “effective leadership”

subtly trains pastors to act and behave as if they are in control of the church. These CEO-pastor-leaders do not serve, they lead; they do not submit to the community and the mutual gifts of the Spirit, they direct the organization; they do not see the church as an alive organism in which the Spirit moves to discern the future, they discern the future… Such pastors cannot help but become more controlling, authoritarian, and bottom-line oriented. (The Great Giveaway, 82. He continues: “When you take such pastors, formed as they are into effective leaders and trained into a scientific understanding of Scripture, you have a double recipe for heavy-handed despotism and future church splits.”)

As aforementioned, this is not precisely mirrored in the first century Temple, though it’s underlying current can be seen if we carefully factor in Jesus’ assertion that God’s house is to be a place wherein people can commune with God, as opposed to simply receiving spiritual goods and services, administrated by an authority figure. (See Mark 11.17)

A subset of this demand for “effective leadership” can also be seen in the unnecessary dependence upon preaching. Though thorough examination is outside the realm of our study, it should be noted that the Greek word kerusso, found through the New Testament and commonly translated at “preach”, should be more accurately rendered “communicate.” If recognized by churches, the preached word could more appropriately take it’s place among numerous ways of communicating the Word, which could also help diminish the capacity with which sermons can become passive shows in which the congregation must be entertained.

Fitch insightfully examines how an over-reliance upon the preached Word can reinforce a passive, individualistic faith. Referring to it as “The Lecture Hall,” he asserts “[t]he orientation of the worship service is toward the sermon. The goal is maintaining orthodox scriptural doctrine.” (The Great Giveaway, 97) This, he argues, worked when the dominant culture was in line with the church, though in a postmodern, post-Christian culture, such a rationalistic, individualistic means of communication cannot be called upon to effectively transform the congregation as it once did. This reality is completely missed by both Thom and Sam Rainer, authors of Essential Church?, as well as Julia Duin, in her otherwise helpful book, Quitting Church.

We have addressed both the first century temple system and Jesus’ action within it, as well as ways in which the contemporary Western church has “given away” what it means to be church, and next will turn our attention to renewing practices that could help the Western church rediscover it’s role as a community for the nations.

Alongside Solomon and the Apostle Paul, we should note [t]he God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. (Acts 17.24, contra Greene and Robinson, Metavista, 124) Though presently the term is practically viewed as profane, numerous scholars have asserted the inevitability of “institution.” Julia Duin, for instance, notes,

[t]he problem seems to be the church itself. Survey after survey says many Americans continue their private religious practices, such as reading the Bible, praying to God, and even sharing their faith in Jesus Christ. But they have given up on the institution. (Quitting Church, 18)

Note also Rainer and Rainer, Essential Church?, 76:

Christ and the church are bonded like the joining of a husband and wife in one flesh. Breaking this bond is serious. Yet droves of students are divorcing the church, and they do not cite irreconcilable differences… They leave quietly, and the church continues on as usual.”

Regarding the inevitability of institution, Eddie Gibbs, asserts, “[m]ost movements and organizations go through a life cycle if events are left to take their own course… The movement which the founder launched degenerates into a machine and ends up a monument.” (In Name Only: Tackling the Problem of Nominal Christianity, 19) Note also, Guder, Continuing Conversion, 187:

Movements do not remain movements: they either become institutions or they disappear. This is a sociological axiom. When a group of people gathers a second time to continue doing what they did when they gathered the first time, they have become an institution… Movements that claim that they are not institutions are practicing self-delusion.

Gibbs further notes the ways in which succeeding generations are further distanced from the intentions of the founder by time and space, which explicates why the “lifespan of a given organization is between sixty and eighty years… unless intervention strategies are in place.” (In Name Only, 20) In light of Gibbs’ research, then, we should recognize that the temple – as a function of the holy place in ancient Israel – had been thoroughly institutionalized, in modern parlance.

This perspective can be seen throughout Jesus’ ministry, as he continually speaks with and heals “others” without regard to the Temple system, which may help explain his continual request for secrecy (Again, we are thinking primarily of Mark’s account, which regularly depicts Jesus requesting silence, even from the demonic, since they know “who He is.” N.T. Wright thus asserts that Jesus’

deepest belief regarding the Temple was eschatological: the time had come for God to judge the entire institution. It had come to symbolize the injustice that characterized the society on the inside and on the outside, the rejection of the vocation to be the light of the world, the city set on a hill that would draw unto itself all the peoples of the world. (The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is, 54)

Thus, in judging the “entire institution,” Jesus’ prophetic action both points to the eschatological end of the Temple system, as well as its replacement by an holistic community of equal members. Historically speaking, of course, it could be argued that Jesus’ prophetic action was fulfilled by the Romans in 70 AD, though our continual focus here will be upon the theological and missiological implications of this event. It is our contention, then, that the role of institutional Christianity in the West is in many ways analogous to the holy place in first century Israel:

[i]n a postmodern society power no longer resides in old institutions such as the monarchy, the judiciary, the church, or, indeed, parliament. Just where power is actually institutionalized and maintained is not easy to discern, because the dispersal of power, as Foucault contended, is going on all the time. (Greene and Robinson, Metavista, 59)

Gibbs similarly notes,

Churches shaped by the big-business models of the industrial age, with their centralization of power and dependent and accountable branch offices, struggled to interpret the different entrepreneurial climate of the information age… The challenges they face parallel those of major corporations when their markets became increasingly diversified and subject to sudden changes in customer demands. Whereas denominational executives find themselves too removed from the frontline and overwhelmed by institutional challenges, preoccupied with “firefighting” flare-ups and with downsizing strategies, it is those church leaders at ground level grappling with the challenges of ministry and mission in their local contexts, who are most aware of the changes taking place. (ChurchMorph: How Megatrends Are Reshaping Christian Communities, 22-23)

After having thus explicated Jesus’ temple action in light of the Temple’s original purpose, we now turn our attention to the ways in which contemporary ecclesiology has begun to mirror the problems inherent in the first century temple system.

In their book Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination, Colin Greene and Martin Robinson note the bleak reality:

In the past 50 years, mainline historical denominations of every kind have experienced a catastrophic numerical decline in terms of church attendance and active participation in church life and ministry, so much so that it is calculated that if this trend continues, some denominations will actually go out of business by the middle of this century. (Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination, xvi)

Thom and Sam Rainer, likewise, state,

[m]ost churches are dwindling… The population in the United States is exploding, recently surpassing the three hundred million mark. But the church is losing ground. We are in a steep decline. The American church is dying. (Essential Church? Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts, 8)

As such, the church growth movement – originally pioneered in part by the late Donald McGavran and Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission (now the School of Intercultural Studies) – has given way to a rather different conversation. Instead of investigating methods through which pastors are equipped to build bigger churches, the books under our examination address how to best live into the church’s original missional calling. (Greene and Robinson offer a helpful examination of the Church Growth Movement in light of missional ecclesiology in Metavista, 177-178) The purpose of this essay, then, is to analyze recent literature addressing missional ecclesiology in light of Jesus’ temple act as a model by which we are called to reform our ecclesiological understanding.

Jesus’ action in the temple is reported in each of the four canonical gospel accounts, though slight variations occur between them. For this reason, we will rely primarily upon Mark’s account, which is believed to be the earliest by the majority of contemporary New Testament scholars. According to Markan Priority, then, this earliest gospel account forms the basis for the other two synoptic gospels – Matthew and Luke – which interpret the temple event in light of their particular contexts. Mark 11.15-18 states:

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written:
‘My house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

However, reading this passage without reference to its place within a Markan “sandwich story” betrays its ultimate function in the text. A Markan sandwich story is composed of a simple chaism, consisting of A-B-A¹, whereby the elements on the story’s beginning and end help clarify the meaning of the middle, thus making an even larger point than if the middle story stood on it’s own. Therefore, factoring in the “figless” fig tree in verses 12-14 (A) and the same tree withered the next day in verses 20-21 (A¹), we see that Jesus’ temple action is more than a cleansing.

For this reason, we must ultimately disagree with Greene and Robinson when – in their earnest desire to combat individual Christianity composed of “those who want to reconceive Christianity without the church at all” – they state “Jesus never abandoned either the synagogue or the Temple,” in Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination, 185.

Jesus’ action thus reveals the Temple’s eschatological destruction in favor of the coming Kingdom. Guder asserts that instead of the common Jewish understanding that “God’s claims had a geographical magnetic point,”

[i]n [Jesus’] interpretation of the law, his critique of the religious leaders of the day, and his actions toward the marginal and the non-Jewish, he demonstrated the universal scope of the kingdom drawing near. He challenged the very heart of the restrictive view of God’s saving work when he cleansed the temple… He taught his disciples to pray for the coming of the kingdom “on earth” and not just in Judea, and he sent them out “to make disciples of the nations.” (The Continuing Conversion of the Church, 78-79. As aforementioned, we should question his use of the term cleansing.)

This realization that the temple is no longer serving as a light to the nations is heightened by alluding to the original purpose for the temple, as prayed by King Solomon:

[a]s for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name – for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm – when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name. (1^st Kings 8.41-43, see also Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination, 124.)

Few would question the legitimacy of the original purpose of the Temple, though, in examining its historical development, it could be argued that what Jesus was objecting to in the Temple was its “institutionalization.”