I share some thoughts on how the churches lack of community creates all sorts of other problems over at A Journey in Liminal Space
Tag: christendom
The Clergy-Laity Thing is a Problem
I have been writing a series of posts on Christendom and have shared both some of the positives as well as some of the negatives. Today we’ll start getting into some specifics. One of Christendom’s most enduring legacies is creating a professional clergy class. As someone who has been in full-time ministry for 34 years and ordained for…
The Early Church or Christendom? Or a Third Way?
I was preparing to write a post discussing the clergy and laity dichotomy resulting from Christendom and recognised an important point I wanted to make. Becoming the Early Church is Not the Goal While I have and will continue to critique Christendom, that does not indicate that the church pre-Christendom was perfect or nearly perfect…
Constantine and Christendom: How We Got Here
In the previous post, I provided a brief overview of Christendom. I mentioned that while a definitive definition of the term is complex, Christendom is generally used to describe the relationship between the church and the Roman Empire (and subsequently the nation-states of Europe) over the past seventeen centuries. Here I want to provide a…
Christendom: An Introduction
I often write about leadership, power, and church structures. Some of the issues and ideas I’ve presented may seem at odds with how the church has always done things. And some of the questions I receive from readers back that up. There is an old story where one fish asks another, “How’s the water?” and the second…
A Feature or a Bug?
As you may have read, I completed a dissertation this summer. The topic was something I have been thinking about for a while. In the paper, I summarised the problem I was addressing with the word Hierarchy. However, I wanted to address issues of authority, abuse of power, and what are unquestionably malformed leadership structures in…
In the Shadow of Christendom
Today is the eighth and final post in the series I’ve been writing on sermons. (You can find the series here) For the past 1700 years or so (since Constantine), the church has operated under what is commonly called Christendom. Some characteristics of this period are: the church became an institution and frequently sought position…