My views on this subject have evolved quite a bit. Ten years ago, I was definitely in the “to-hell-with-all-institutions” camp. Over the course of the decade I became somewhat “bipolar” - sometimes quite critical, other times more appreciative of its value.

For the past few years, I find myself very much where you are: recognizing the inherent institutional character of all Christian ministry, while affirming the need for legitimate prophetic protest and self-critique, so that no particular institutional form becomes an idolatrous stumbling block for the Gospel.

I also appreciate your honesty in confronting the motives that often accompany institutional critiques. I admit that in “deep past,” my own frustration with church structures stemmed from a selfish unwillingness to deal with any accountability or to recognize the valid insights from otherw with more “structure-oriented” personalities.

For any of your readers, I suggest two books that definitely helped me to fall in love with the institutional church and to see the real dangers in the “anti-institutional” mentality of some in the Emergent and House Church camps:

Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, “The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Mind-Shift That Changes Everything.”

Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, “Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion.”

In retrospect, I think the time I spent in those churches was horribly damaging. And I think the lack of hierarchy contributed to the more damaging elements of those communities.

Yes, mainline churches with tons of institutional sclerosis can have a hard time adapting to change. That can look like a bad thing, but easy change can be much worse.

When market forces hit faith communities, there is immense pressure for the churches to embrace things that the customers want. Sometimes that means innocuous things, like livelier music. But often it means selling your product by pandering to people’s worst instincts.

The churches I attended as a kid got the crowds whooped up by peddling hyper-realized eschatology and naked populism. “The end of the world is nigh” and “city-folks are dangerous snobs who want to take our guns and Bibles” are themes that can get people into church. They also stoke fear and anger. When a church tries to terrorize eleven and twelve-year-olds into answering alter call at youth group with lurid descriptions of an imminent “tribulation” (as many churches I attended did), there is something fundamentally wrong with that church — even if they do manage to pack in the crowds on Sunday.

To make my point bluntly, and a bit rudely, non-institutionalized churches have very few incentives to ratchet back the crazy. In fact, all of their incentives work the other way. The hotter the rhetoric, the more butts in the pews.

A church like the UMC is in it for the long haul. The UMC, as a large association, would have a hard time making wild claims about the end of the world happening soon — because the UMC is likely to still be here when those claims do not come to pass. The UMC has a hard time vilifying any particular demographics (city-folk, college-educated pinheads, the gub’ment, liberals), because most demographics are represented within the church.

At the end of the day, we have a free market in religion in America. That may mean that old school denominations decline, while more people-pleasin’ congregations thrive. But that doesn’t mean that the institutions that thrive in the market are doing what they should.