It is interesting to look at the macro perspective of church history. About fifteen years ago it suddenly occurred to me that there has been seismic changes in the shape of Christianity about every 500 years. The church began as a rather powerless group of outsiders. Sometimes they were persecuted and at other times they were simply ignored as one among many sects that occasionally popped up in society. Then not quite 500 years into their history, Constantine made them the official religion of the empire. Suddenly they needed to respond to power and institutions from the perspective of an insider. Some think that was a terrible change for the church, but I think it was just part of the incarnation.
Then, about 1,000 CE, there was another seismic change when the East and the West split. Christianity was now following two separate streams — the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic communities. Westerners have only begun to rediscover in the last 50 years or so the rich spirituality reflected in our Eastern cousins.
Around 1500, the Protestant Reformation took place. As one church historian said, if the purpose of the movement was to reform the one church, it was a failure, because it released a spirit that soon fractured the Body of Christ into the thousands of shards that now exist. It began by following the rise of nationalism around the world but soon outstripped the states in splitting and resplitting, often over major issues that 50 to 100 years later no one can remember but the fractured community still remains.
Now we are 500 years later. What is happening now that is shaking the very roots of Christianity. While there are still pockets of either legal or cultural establishment of Christianity, for the most part the Body of Christ is being totally disestablished. Not only does the church itself have less and less power in the larger, more secular communities, but the structured church is even losing the loyalty of those who claim to be Christians. In this country we have two parallel phenomenons affecting the viability of the church. First came the mega church which has drained the vitality out of many moderate size churches. Now the megachurch seems to be topping out and a new movement is continuing to grow. We could call it the Believers and not Belongers. These are people who claim a deep spirituality and, in many cases, a loyalty to Jesus as the Christ, but they want nothing to do with the church as we currently know it.
As a good Presbyterian who believes in the sovereignty of God, my question is, “What is God doing?’ in this fourth phase of the 500 year cycle?
