Organism, to Organization, to Institution Series – Part 8
(A single cell organism is a building block of life. When multiplying, how can you prevent it from becoming an institution where the organism can easily die or become lost in its structure? The following blogs in this series will examine the Church as an organized institution or an organism built on relationships.)
Let’s look at the church through the eye’s of Katrina Scherbern’ view or Organism Organization where she defines seven characteristics. Let’s look at her forth one:
4. Living things reproduce
As I said in my last blog: My “little girl” became a woman, who as a mother birthed another “little girl”, a grand daughter for me. That is how living things work; they grow, mature, and multiply.
Reproduction should be a natural expression of a developmental life. Most Christians today who do not grow spiritually, who are encouraged to remain passive, not active, who have their spiritual passions stifled by leadership or structure, never reproduce.
Again reproduction is a natural process in the five fold. The evangelist majors in reproduction. His cry is, “You must be born again,” being born of the water and the spirit. Life never begins unless there is birth; reproduction is a necessity for spiritual life. A new Christian, one just born into the faith of knowing Jesus Christ, has an enthusiasm, which is contagious. It brings life to the entire body, the cell! Evangelistic churches or church plants breed enthusiasm.
But more needs to be reproduced than just the evangelistic spirit. Shepherding, nurturing, caring, needs to be reproduced in the cell to assure growth in the cell and when it multiplies. Sound apostolic teaching with truth revealed in the Logos Word and lived out through the Rhema Word are necessary ingredients to a health cell, or church. A revelatory spirit for truth and a desire for intimate worship also needs nurturing in order for the cell to divide properly. Finally, apostolic networking needs reproducing so both cells remain the same in Jesus Christ. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
If an individual believer and a local church is not reproducing itself over a period of time, it needs to look into why? Sects like the Cloisters of Lancaster and the Shakers are dead sects, having only their community buildings as museums of remembrance. Without spiritual reproduction, their cells died and their organism died with it.