New Awakening: What If?

Oboedire

by

Practicing Faith

Special to United Methodist Insight | Nov. 17, 2025

Once in a while, a question comes to my mind that upends my thinking. A lot of the time, I keep it to myself, and I surely do not turn it into a blog post. But today, it’s different. I am writing about a question I cannot shake off, one that when I have shared it with others, they respond with some version of, “I think you may be on to something.”

Before I share the question with you, let me be clear about one thing: the question is not my invention. I have formed my version in a community of people variously asking the same thing. My question is within the context of a larger questioning. That’s another reason for sharing it with you today. My question is part of a growing sense which evokes the conviction that “we may be on to something.”

Here’s the question: “What if we have gotten Cheistianity backward?” I hope you can see why the question does a number on my mind. It’s a lollapalooza question. How might it be so? And what difference does it make? That’s what I want to write about in this blog. My response overlaps with the thoughts of others but I offer it without implicating anyone else.

To engage the question, I have had to differentiate between Christianity’s institutional and theological expressions. Even then, it’s not easy to put my response into words.

Simply put, have we gotten Christianity backward (for about 1500 years) by concentrating on the organizational aspects of it to the relative neglect of its organic nature. The possibility stems from Jesus’ great commission when he told us to “make disciples” not churches (Matthew 28:19)[1]. It doesn’t take all of our institutional machinery to do that. Perhaps we have had it backward thinking that it does.

Again, let me be clear, or as clear as I can be: institutional Christianity is not bad, even though it may be backward. When any religion is “organized,” there will be buildings and budgets. And most of us have been blessed to be part Christian institutions. Even in this new-wineskin era, there are plenty of good ones to be found. The “cathedral era” is still here, and it is not going away any time soon. Perhaps it’s not meant to disappear completely.

And that brings us back to the question, “What if we have gotten Christianity backward?” What if the essence of it is a movement carried out by Christ followers rather than an institution comprised of church members? Again, this is not an either/or issue, but it is surely one crying out for attention. What if we have gotten Christianity backward by making it an institution/movement expression of faith rather than a movement/institution one. What if we have put the cart before the horse? If we have, what might we expect?

For starters, we would expect to see the prevailing model breaking down. And we are. The church as bureaucracy is collapsing under the unsustainable weight of its cost of operation. When I view this through the pruning metaphor Jesus gave us in John 15:2 (that I wrote about last week in the five-part mini series), I find both realism and hope. The realism is in acknowledging what is happening; the hope is in believing that if we see the backward part, we can also have eyes to see the reordering part.

So, we would also expect Christ followers to be envisioning a new-wineskin era, one given more to living in the Body of Christ than going to the building for Christ. We would expect that the forgotten ways (pre-cathedral era) would become the remembered ways, the re-enacted ways  [2]

This reframes the question, “What if we see that we have gotten Christian backward as the means for moving it forward?  What if God is giving us the opportunity to restore the movement/institution order? What if?

That is exactly why I wrote this post because I believe this is exactly the question we are called to ask. I ask it of myself. I ask it of you. [3]

[1] Yes, Jesus spoke about “building a church” (Matthew 16:18), but the word is a communal description, not an institutional one, as some translations make clear.  

[2] Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating Apostolic Movements, Second Edition (Brazos Press, 2016).  In Chapter 1 of the book, Alan writes about this in a section entitled, “From a Church to an Organic Movement.”  Alan has written other books further developing the ideas, and he continues to do so on Substack, “Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways.”

[3] The “New Awakening” series will continue exploring this, and many of the writings from others here on Oboedire will do so as well.