By "Church, of course you mean the ROMAN Church. Hardly a different model, the so-called "Holy" Roman Empire ruled Europe for over a thousand years, the Roman Church and secular Rome as one. Hardly the kind of oneness that Jesus spoke of in John 17.
As to the individual vs the collective, obedient faith is strictly a personal thing. Nobody else can have it for you. Even if we assemble together with other who do have faith, their faith is not mine as if by osmosis, I still have to have it for myself.
It isn't. Jesus was speaking of the faith. And Holy Roman Empire, or no, the faith is one. Secular models of government, democracy, republicanism have nothing to teach the Church. The Church is a top-down, not a bottom-up construct.
As to the individual vs the collective, obedient faith is strictly a personal thing. Nobody else can have it for you. Even if we assemble together with other who do have faith, their faith is not mine as if by osmosis, I still have to have it for myself.
None of which is in dispute, but it begs the question; which faith? One which is some form of personal construct or one which was handed down from Jesus to the Apostles?