Subversive Can Openers

Jesus was a subversive. I don’t mean any disrespect with this comment; I simply want to put Jesus back into his historical and theological context within Israel’s prophetic history. As a subversive, he knew that one of the best ways in which to teach controversial things was to ask subversive questions, often to the frustration of his critics.

I believe there is a place in the twenty-first century church in the West for subversive questions (not to mention the gadflies who raise such questions). I remember coming across one such question while I read Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch’s The Shaping of Things to Come (Hendrick/Strand, 2004). It was a combination of an "Aha" and a "Hmm" moment for me. The question goes like this: “Is a can opener a can opener if it can’t open cans?”, (p. 193). Let’s think about this question in two different contexts. The first context is the average kitchen. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with can openers, whether manual or electronic, inexpensive or expensive. After a very short time (and sometimes fresh from the store) the can opener malfunctions and can't open cans. For whatever reason, it cannot accomplish the function for which it was designed. If a can opener cannot open cans then it isn’t a can opener. Instead, it becomes a paperweight that merely looks like a can opener.

That question may not seem subversive, but let's consider the second context in which to consider the question, only with a slight modification to the question itself. “Is the church still a church if it doesn’t function like a church anymore?” I recognize that with the question phrased this way the reader may become a bit defensive and reply, “Well, of course my church is still a church. It functions as one. We have fine buildings, programs, worship services, music, and members. It’s still functioning as a church.” If this is your line of thinking, let's reconsider whether that really is a biblical and historical function of a church.

A review of the story of the early church found in Acts, as well as a historical analysis of the first three centuries of the church reveals that it was not an institution. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the early church flourished and grew exponentially throughout the ancient world prior to Constantine and Christendom, from a few hundred believers to several million, growing at a rate of forty percent per decade according to some sociological analysis by Rodney Stark. The early church had no buildings, no paid clergy, no programs (not even for families and children!), and no agreed upon canon of Scripture, and yet it flourished because it was a dynamic people movement focused on Jesus and the Spirit, with the missio Dei at the heart of its identity and function. We could provide other examples of this as well throughout church history, with the underground Christian movement in China or the phenomenal church growth in the Southern hemisphere providing other illustrations.

If the purpose of the early church was to function not as an institution, but instead as a dynamic, missional, Jesus-people movement, we have to ask ourselves how this compares to how we “do church” in America and the West. How closely do we resemble the forms and purposes of the early church, or rather do we resemble institutional and business forms of organization? Have we transformed the culture, or has the culture transformed us, and so much so that now we take our present forms of church for the way things have always been and should always be?

Back to our subversive questions that we began with: Is a can opener that can no longer open cans still a can opener? Can churches that no longer function as churches still be considered churches even if they look like what we’ve become accustomed to associating with churches? These questions aren't threatening so long as we're talking about kitchen devices, but they are unsettling when applied to the church. Perhaps Jesus needs to be as subversive of the status quo in our churches as he is beyond its doors.