From Movement to Institution to Movement

It is hard to think of a movement which has not been quantified, compartmentalized, and turned into an institution. The civil rights movement has become a special interest group run for the most part by a power elite. The evangelical movement has become a market niche. Churches more and more are religious social clubs.

Think of the early church. It thrived until it became an institution. Then it became tied in with government and ecclesiatical authority. Once that happened, we plunged straight into the dark ages.

I am a Baptist. In my own particular tradition, we began as a non-denominational, back to the Bible movement in the Enlightenment. Our worship was based on free worship. Now I am in a Baptist church that has 2 responsive reading a Sunday, and which gives siginificant sums to denominational coffers. Our Baptist forefathers would roll over in their grave if they saw this. To them this would simply not be baptist.

The question is, once something has went from an institution to a movement can it go back again, or do we keep needing to go off and to do new things? Even locally, can a new movement of Christ happen in a old institution? Maybe within it I think. But does the aphorism of new wine requiring new wine skins as Jesus said apply to this situation?

I am still thinking on it.