The problem with institutions

Alan Hirsch has recently written two posts on the subject of the church as an insitution, and how that affects its ability to do mission.
This is a quote from the second post.
Perhaps a further exploration of what is meant by institutionalism is needed here: Institutions are organizations initially set up in order to fill a necessary religious and social function and to provide some sort of structural support for whatever that function requires. In many ways they fulfill the very purpose of structure; organization is needed if we seek to act collectively for common cause. And all movements start this way, but in the initial stages structure exists solely to support the grassroots. The problem happens when the newly instituted structures move beyond being simply structural support and become a governing body of sorts-structure becomes centralized governance. So religious institutionalism happens when in the name of some convenience we set up a system to do what we must do ourselves so that over time the structures we create to do this take on a life of their own...

To read the first post, click here.

Both these posts appear on Alan's blog, The Forgotten Ways: the missional musings of Alan Hirsch (developing apostolic imagination and practice in Western contexts)