Much of the novus lumen that has occurred in my life over the last 30 months has been in the area of faith and spirituality. Especially relevant and wholly influential in my spiritual evolution has been what is known as the emerging church movement. Because this new wave within western evangelicalism is so important to me and increasingly important to many western Christians, I thought I would write about this conversation that has created so much tension in me and others.
While some label the “the church that is emerging” a movement, most who identify with all things Emergent like to call it a conversation.
Technorati Tags: church culture, ecclesiology, emerging church, evangelicalism, postmodernism
This conversation understands the Church needs to move beyond the Modern (philosophical, not technological) version of Christianity and reunderstand some aspects of our faith. It recognizes that a seismic cultural shift is occurring, and the Community of Jesus must missionally engage with that emerging culture.
Firstly, the Emergent conversation-movement realizes we are not in Kansas anymore. Western society has experienced a seismic shift over the past four decades that has completely altered the cultural landscape of Europe and America: we are a postmodern, post-Christendom society. This is the culture, and the cultural change demands a change in engagement. So one of the core values of Emergent thinking is the idea of the Church being ‘missional’ within this post-Modern culture; we are called to partner with what God is doing in postmodern Western civilization, with His mission and movement to restore individuals and creation/society to the way He intended them to be. The way we do this partnering is by “becoming all things to all people.” To post-Moderns, we must become postmodern in doxy and praxy, in thinking and practice.
Secondly, this conversation appreciates aspects of the postmodern critique of philosophical Modernism, especially as it relates to the current manifestation of Christianity. Ultimately, this movement recognizes that our current articulation of the Movement of God has been influenced by Modernism and is no longer a viable option. The professor and author Scot McKnight puts it best when he writes on his blog: “Emergent is a reaction to what the Church has to offer and what the Church is today, and what it has to offer is not enough, not good enough, not biblical enough, not spiritual enough, not radical enough, not relevant enough, not in touch with a new generation of young adults who simply will not let the ‘same old, same old’ be what they will tolerate for the Church (which is theirs too).”
In reacting to Modernism and the current version of Christianity the Emergent conversation values several things: relationships over institution; the gospel as a restoration to relationship with God and His Story now, rather than simply a consumeristic ticket to heaven later; an emphasis on an apologetics of incarnational living and orthopraxy, rather than a propositional argument of orthodoxy; evangelism by discipleship and process, not sales-pitch and end-product; experience of God and life change over intellectual study and a sterile approach of God; importance on spending money on missional work rather than Church buildings, programs, and fluff; honest-to-goodness radical confession and admission of where and who we really are, rather than superficiality and fake-Christian vinear; equipping the saints for grassroots activism over hierarchical control and church celebrityism.
This conversation-movement is not simply a stylistic change to the status-quo. No, there is a deep down sense that there is something wrong with the “state of things” within the Church, and the “system is to blame.” Which means there is a need to re-do the system, from ground up. In other words, one of the most significant features of the Emergent movement is systemic analysis. While those who are doing the analysis are not getting it completely right, the issue is clear: the system is what led us to this state and there is a need to re-work the whole thing. To be more precise, the Modern system has run its course, especially in the midst of this postmodern culture.
Again, post-Modernism as a philosophy is not the answer, Jesus is. But for those who desire to move beyond the Modern manifestation of Christocentric spirituality, postmodernism provides an adequate framework for dismantling the current system in an effort to emerge into what God intends for His community in the 21st Century.
