A former pastor friend of mine preached powerfully and prophetically, so much so that he got asked to resign from the church about 25 years ago. He said to me that one has to consider where one’s loyalty is…..with Christ, with the people being served in Christ’s name, or with the institution that presumes to represent both. In the bottom line, he said “church” as an institution generally has a limited lifespan. The progression (as I recall him saying) was something like this:
(wo)man-> ministry -> mission -> movement -> monument -> mausoleum
There may have been one or two other stages in there and I may not have them exactly right. This may have even originated with someone else and he simply repeated it for my benefit. I added the (wo) to reflect a more personal perspective on the danger of taking one’s self and one’s ministry too seriously and forgetting that it is Christ’s ministry through us!
I remembered the lesson of his experience with the institutional church and that of some others but until I experienced it first hand I had assumed such experiences were a rare phenomenon…. now I know they are really not… all one has to do is consider how few pastors have long term “careers” compared to the number that enter ministry. And it is the careerism perspective that I think ultimately leads to the mausoleum stage.