A Vision for PNW Churches (Part 5): Institution Building

Christians in generations past built institutions they knew would be tended and matured by future generations . They started building cathedrals their grandchildren would complete. They built hospitals that would become far more expansive and sophisticated than they could have ever dreamed. 

This is the fifth installment in a series on a vision for Pacific Northwest churches. We have already covered the topics of the law and gospel, worship, family, and education. We now turn to the topic of institution building.

The word “institution” should be closely related in our minds to the body of Christ. The image of a social body is a group of people, with differing gifts, organized to serve a social cause for the good of their neighbors. That is precisely what an institution is. The central institution of society is the church, and many of the most important institutions in our culture (e.g. universities, hospitals, social services, etc.) were founded by Christian people. They play a huge role in forming American culture. And that is precisely what institutions do: they form human beings. After the church, which gathers God’s people together for worship to receive the gifts of God’s grace, two of the most important institutions in society are those devoted to education and medicine. Both of these institutional traditions historically find their roots in Christian charity. Christians invented both public education and hospitals, and we are overdue to reclaim them. 

“America needs to be re-parished with Bible-believing, gospel-preaching, means-of-grace-receiving, bodies of Christ.”

This is fitting since Jesus’ ministry was largely marked by teaching people and healing their bodies and souls (Matt. 4:23). When the body of Christ follows his lead, they too begin to organize themselves toward these ends. The church fathers saw Jesus’ six deeds of love from the Final Judgment of Matthew 25— “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me” —as the main marching orders for the church. Their Master would return like a thief in the night, so they saw it as their responsibility to build institutions that did precisely these six things, so they’d be ready when he arrived. 

Christians have done this work throughout history, but in the modern era, there has been a pattern that institutions that were founded out of love for Christ were then taken over by secular-minded people or the government, and therefore they lost their religious bearings. Most universities and hospitals had religious founders, but were hijacked in subsequent generations. This has often been the result of receiving government funding, causing them to compromise on their more religiously conservative beliefs. 

Since the church is the central institution of society, church planting is the central work of institution building. Before she can reclaim schools and hospitals, she must build the places of worship in every neighborhood of our land. America needs to be re-parished with Bible-believing, gospel-preaching, means-of-grace-receiving, bodies of Christ.

Let us dream about school windows looking across the church grounds.

We also need to bring the formative institutions of our society back under the rule of God’s word, back into the oversight of the church, and reunited with the spiritual gifts of the body of Christ. Let us dream about school windows looking across the church grounds. Let the doctor’s office be under the same roof where the patient received the blessed sacrament the previous Lord’s Day. May the church recover its long history of book production and publishing. At the center of the Christian city was the sanctuary of worship. Let us build the formative communities of society closer and closer to the worship of Christ, the image of God.

The Bible envisions the church as a city (Rev. 21). It is the holy, heavenly Jerusalem that has come down and is being built on the earth. We labor for the city God is building now, while we await its completion in the age to come. And in many ways the church is a literal city:

• It has citizens (the members)

• It has laws (the commandments in the Bible)

• It has judges who enforce the laws (the elders)

• It has welfare structures (the deacons and mercy ministries)

• It has holidays that bring the city together (the Lord’s Day, Christmas, Easter, the church calendar)

• It has schools (church schools)

• It should have hospitals

Also, even though earthly cities do not own the businesses within them, businesses make up much of its cultural life. Likewise the church does not oversee the businesses of its church members, yet their businesses and vocations make up part of the cultural life of the church. Churches and pastors should think of themselves as city builders. Or rather, as Jesus the chief architect and builder, and we his foremen and workers. Under his rule, we organize and build the institutions that form the people of the society around us. 

Being a city builder requires two important qualities that go together: optimism and endurance. Optimism about the future and patient endurance for our times. On the one hand, the Bible is immensely optimistic about the direction of history: “The kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). The “three measures of flour” of the world will be leavened thoroughly with the gospel (Matt. 13:33). The vision of a transformed world should inspire us with an optimistic vision of the kingdom in the future. 

But Jesus also says that the only pathway to his kingdom is the cross. Long patient labor, with many trials, many enemies, many disappointments, is the only path for city building. The cross shouldn’t make us think that Christianity will in the long run be a failed experiment—but it should prepare us that the way to that bright future is only through a cruciform mission.

When Christians believe that the world is going to get worse and worse and that Jesus is coming very soon, they often don’t build institutions with long-term generational vision. They don’t think about building schools or hospitals that will grow and mature over the next 100 years. They become short-sighted and build things that don’t have lasting cultural impact.

In contrast, Christians in generations past built institutions they knew would be tended and matured by future generations . They started building cathedrals their grandchildren would complete. They built hospitals that would become far more expansive and sophisticated than they could have ever dreamed. 

If our churches are going to have this kind of generational impact, our default should be for our ministers to seek to have long-term pastorates. They need patient, decades-long labors, baptizing children who they watch grow up to get married and have children of their own. City builders settle into the city they are building for a lifetime. They stabilize communities and give them the confidence to patiently wait as the labors in institution building gradually take form.