This is a beautiful and concise work from Kokichi Kurosaki (1886-1970). It’s interesting to hear his perspective of western religion’s departure from one loving community to the sectarian institution it has become. You can read this, and other works free, from the website awildernessvoice.com. Here is an excerpt below.
This koinonia–living in fellowship with God and Christ, having access to God and meeting Him in love and faith–is the real Ekklesia. In such experience of life, Christians will meet together, worship God together, help one another and do various good works in cooperation. As is natural in human society so in the Ekklesia, there will be division of labor according to the varieties of gifts (I Cor. 12:27-28). Everything will be controlled by the Head, Christ and each member will do his own part in obedience to the will of the Head. No human institutions, rituals or ceremonies are necessary to realize this. The Ekklesia cannot be formed by human knowledge and human activities. Indeed, it was of these products that the tower of Babel was built. The institutional church may have some outward likeness to the Ekklesia, but spiritual fellowship with God and Christ is more stifled than helped by the formalities of the church.
The legal unity of human organization, which is so often governed by men appointed by human methods is substitute for spiritual unity. By its very nature–being an institution–the organized church is prone to become fleshly rather than spiritual. Also, the existing sectarianism is itself a proof of fleshly-mindedness. “For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving like ordinary men?” (I Cor. 3:3). The Ekklesia, on the other hand, is a product of the Spirit. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary that spiritual means be employed in its government and edification.
If we do not give the rightful preeminence to koinonia with God through Christ as the center of Christian faith we cannot but fail, for there are only two courses before us. Aside from secular atheism and the materialistic concept, if we do not find satisfaction through communion with God–for which we were created–then, invariably, we will try to find reality and satisfaction in the “Churchianity” of institution, forms and doctrines. Lacking spiritual “life,” we turn to “religion”–the lifeless corpse.
Kokichi Kurosaki, One Body of Christ