emerging church q & a

Today I was interviewed by a student researching the “emerging church.”  Here are my somewhat esoteric responses:

> Can you think of a model for the emerging church?

When I use the term “emerging church” I am not simply referring to the organization known as “emergent” (www.emergentvillage.com), rather I am speaking more broadly of faith communities seeking indigenous, incarnational expressions of Christ-community.  Though I prefer the term “Avant-church.”  As such, there is no one model for emerging church. Indigenous Christ-communities are by definition particular, even with respect to form and model.

Almost all community artists will begin by selecting a church model. Selecting a church model is kind of like making a decision between Beta or VHS; neither will serve you long term. Model selection maybe a necessary part of the birth of vision, as soon as a vision is birthed it wars with God and sets itself as an idol.  Vision must be surrendered at the feet of Christ.

Indigenous ministry requires eyes that see, ears that hear and open hearts. “Model” vision must die for people to be received and loved.

Be aware that movements like “the emerging church” have been a regular occurrence throughout church history. Emergent is showing many of the signs of renewal movements.

> How should the church measure success?

Success is very difficult to measure. The best measure I have is an intangible sense of lovingly assisting people in their efforts to connect with other communities, people, resources, rest, creation, God, etc.

My goal is not to build a church but help knit people into a Kingdom of God tapestry.

The measure of success is love. Love rarely builds large ministries. Love leads to self-emptying in the service of “us” to the glory of God.  It is marked by surrender and becoming less.

> What are some of the biggest challenges for the church in North America in postmodernism?

There are many.

The challenge of paradox; by God’s grace living in the tension – refusing to settle for “Certainty” and refusing to settle for “Uncertainty.”

With all of our “Ancient-Future” conversation the issue of the commodification of faith traditions is very challenging. The greatest challenges may be more social in nature. Broadly speaking within modernity the church thought it had a corner on truth, could define the good, could define God, and reduced Scripture to an answer book, the postmodern turn challenges those assumptions.

> How does Christianity change in the global community?

We are living into our many and varied responses right now, history will do a better job of articulating this than I can. Christianity is always changing, it as living as God is. So change within Christianity is nothing new but globalism is new. The way to alter any ethos is relational: to truly be in the world and not of it – but don’t cut yourself off from the world.

I believe that Christianity needs to become a more hospitable neighbor, embodying love in ways that lead all of humanity into full life in Christ. Not to pit one against the other but to shape us all by living Christ while making ourselves servants of the world. A good place to start could be the Western church repenting for colonization, slavery, displacing/slaughtering aboriginal peoples, patriarchy, and such.

We must remember that Christ never called us to be Christians. Christ called us to be human. (Stan Grenz said this in class yesterday)

> Why aren’t are young people coming to church anymore?

Certainly “emerging churches” are disproportionately young. That said, trust in most modern institutions is eroding on nearly every front. I sense that part of the reason may be that the atrocities of the church which proliferated after its collusion with political power are finally catching up with it. I think people may be leaving the church to save their souls. They simply can not longer in good conscience support a religion that they see as having done so much harm.

Many if not most Western modern institutions are wrestling with facets postmodern shift (education, prison, government, family, church, etc). For some years churches saw themselves as the harbinger and defender of objective truth, now that truth is seen as a relative social construct churches are unsure of the who’s/what’s/why’s of their existence.

In many ways this is a question that I no longer feel comfortable exploring within the context of an emergent church conversation, because the question subtly encourages an artificial us/them between the “emerging church” and “non-emerging church.” The reality is all churches are always emerging; all churches are being pulled forward by the hope of Christ.

> What is important for the church to focus on?

Before addressing what I think churches focus on let me highlight one think that churches should stop focusing on; they should stop focusing on “the church.” We sometimes hear church leaders say things like, “the church is the hope of the world,” what a tragedy that would be. Christ is the hope of the world, and yes the church points to Christ, and seeks to faithfully love and serve as the body of Christ, but the church is not the hope. But it’s like the story of Peter getting out of the boat to walk to Christ, when his eyes are on himself, the waves and wind he sinks, but when Peter’s being is engaged in the relationship with Christ he walks.

My sense is that the church needs to shift from a posture of assuming it hold the truth, and toward a posture and practice of discovering a way of love that reflects the love and grace of God as seen in the person of Jesus the Christ.

The church is a Trinitarian social construct supporting Kingdom living; it is intrinsically relational and thus missional.

> How do you design a worship service?

Christian worship is Trinitarian. It is diversity in oneness and oneness in diversity. I believe that worship gathering should highlight our very real differences while giving voice to our oneness in and through the work of God in Christ through the Spirit. Most Western Christian liturgy is profoundly rooted within white, male, European culture and values, this needs to be decentered.

Life is meant to be worship, not a “service.” The gatherings of the church are a place to remember who we are, discern together what is may look like to love our neighbor, and engage in formative practices that could render worship in the everyday stuff of life more plausible.

Here are a few things the community I participate with engages in. Sharing our stories; sharing storing enables us to see God in and through the face of the other. Eating together helps us live communion. Engaging physically; sometimes even touching one another; often worship has been limited to hearing words, spoken or sung, we try to imagine our gatherings as a kind of rehearsal for following Christ into the mundane. We are working really hard to guard ourselves against becoming showy or performance oriented. Relational, authentic, vulnerable, honest, open, humble… these would be some of the ideas that we see as aspirational in our convenings.

peace, dwight