What does church look like?
The church we read about in the New Testament was "organic." By that I mean it was born from and sustained by spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions, controlled by human hierarchy, shaped by lifeless rituals, and held together by religious programs.
To use an illustration, if I try to create an orange in a laboratory, the lab-created orange would not be organic. But if I planted a seed into the ground and it produced an orange tree, the tree would be organic.
The same way, whenever we sin-scarred mortals try to create a church the same way we would start a business corporation, we are defying the organic principle of church life. An organic church is one that is naturally produced when a group of people have encountered Jesus Christ in reality (external ecclesiastical props being unnecessary), and the DNA of the church is free to work without hindrance.
To put it in a sentence, organic church life is not a theater with a script; it's a gathered community that lives by divine life. By contrast, the modern institutional church operates on the same organizational principles that run corporate America.
Excerpt from Reimagining Church
by Frank Viola
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