|
ATLANTA -- Here's a story from author Diana Butler Bass for all those people in mainline denominations who don't quite get the Emergent Church movement. After Bass http://www.dianabutlerbass.com/ had published her book Christianity for the Rest of Us, she got a letter from one of her husband's relatives, 82-year-old Uncle David. He is one of eight active members of an 18-member congregation in a small town in Texas. (That this is a mainline church goes without saying.) "We have tried everything to get new members," Uncle David wrote. "Results, zero. But we haven't tried changing our church or ourselves. We remain the frozen eight." Sometimes it's hard to say exactly what Emergent is -- it's a way of thinking, an approach to Christianity that's dynamic and fluid and not hierarchical, built around words like relationship and authentic and postmodern. It means different things in different places.
ATLANTA -- Here's a story from author Diana Butler Bass for all those people in mainline denominations who don't quite get the Emergent Church movement. After Bass http://www.dianabutlerbass.com/ had published her book Christianity for the Rest of Us, she got a letter from one of her husband's relatives, 82-year-old Uncle David. He is one of eight active members of an 18-member congregation in a small town in Texas. (That this is a mainline church goes without saying.) "We have tried everything to get new members," Uncle David wrote. "Results, zero. But we haven't tried changing our church or ourselves. We remain the frozen eight." Sometimes it's hard to say exactly what Emergent is -- it's a way of thinking, an approach to Christianity that's dynamic and fluid and not hierarchical, built around words like relationship and authentic and postmodern. It means different things in different places. It's the opposite of Uncle David's church. Some people in mainline denominations -- frustrated, maybe a little desperate -- would like the Emergent crowd to hand them a play-by-play they can follow to magically yank young people back in their doors. It doesn't work that way. But more and more, folks in mainline denominations are paying attention, sometimes joining the Emergent conversation and even the action. A recent seminar at Columbia Theological Seminary (Decatur, Ga.) on Emergent practices and mainline denominations drew more than 330 people from 33 states, Canada and South Africa -- by far the largest continuing education event Columbia has ever held. Presbyterian pastors, some young and cool, some with gray hair and bifocals, showed up, trying to figure how a denomination that's lost millions of members can hold on to what's valuable from tradition and stop being Uncle David's frozen church. A new Website -- www.presbymergent.org -- was launched during the conference Jan.30-Feb.1, to keep the conversation going after folks went home. And people told stories -- offering glimpses of what they're doing, of what could be. For example: Tim and Saranell Hartman, Presbyterian co-pastors in Baltimore, don't work in a church building. They don't hold worship. They do spend a lot of time talking theology in coffee houses and bars and playing in an adult kickball league that has 116 teams -- on which almost no one is over 40. "We are pastors to people outside the church," Saranell said. "We love that. We love that we are out beyond the walls of the building so we can really be in people's lives." Their goal, Tim said, is not to start a new institution. "What we want to be about is starting a movement, a movement of people wanting to live out the kingdom of God. ... We don't want to build these things that are all about being self sustaining." And lest people think Emergent church is all about young people in big cities: Adam Walker Cleaveland, http://pomomusings.com/ a student at Princeton Theological Seminary (and the heart behind presbymergent.org), started doing Emergent worship in Wendell, Idaho -- a small town of 2,000 people. Kids came, grandparents came. And surprisingly, he said, "Everybody loved it." Here are some of the other ideas that floated through this gathering. Emergent church is not one-size-fits-all. What exactly is Emergent church? It's a conversation that's been going on the last decade or so about how to be missional Christians in a postmodern setting. There's not a single answer, but it's being discussed in places such as Emergent Village http://www.emergentvillage.com/ and by authors such as Brian McLaren, http://www.brianmclaren.net/ one of the keynoters for the Columbia conference. While many of those involved in the conversation are in their 20s and 30s, what Emergent is not is some sort of magical formula of attracting young people to church. And the appeal of Emergent thinking isn't limited to young adults. "It's for everyone who hates church," one Presbyterian pastor said matter-of-factly. What she meant is: It's for people who want an authentic encounter with God, and too often aren't finding it in traditional congregations. Congregations should be "cauldrons of theological participation and imagination," said Doug Pagitt, http://www.dougpagitt.com/ an Emergent leader and pastor of Solomon's Porch, http://www.solomonsporch.com/ a Minneapolis church. He showed an e-mail he got from young woman who wrote that "I do not believe in God, the Bible," but she wanted to remain part of the Solomon's Porch community. "I would submit to you that the church has always involved the voices of the nonbelievers and the struggling and the doubting in the formation of who they are," Pagitt said. "Of course she should be involved." Open the senses. Emergent worship is sensory, involving body, prayer or music or images, not just the mind. "We're gong to do a little exercise letting Scripture wash over you," Presbyterian minister Troy Bronsink said during one worship time. Musicians and readers included men, women, black, white, folks wearing dreadlocks and caps, standing all around the church. They started repeating certain phrases: Eyes searching for truth. Houses to abide in. I will build you, and you shall be built. Rest for the earth. And the phrases were punctuated by music, by photographs -- trees, cityscapes, crowds, birds, war zones, rivers, gridlock, rolling hills -- and by longer passages from Scripture. "If a word or phrase grabs you," Bronsink said, "just let it stick there." Resistance. It's the force that has to be acknowledged. While some mainline congregations are open to innovation and change, others are not. "I long for that kind of community," one Presbyterian pastor said over coffee. But in her congregation, "we really don't want to be relational. We want to be nice to each other. But when it comes down to sharing our guts, our deepest thoughts, we're not sure we want to do that." There also was frustration that some mainliners want a new approach to be handed over -- not to bubble up messily from theology and passion. At this conference, blogs were buzzing with thoughts like "too white" and "too old," too disgruntled. "Did someone make them come?" blogged Jan Edmiston, http://www.churchforstarvingartists.blogspot.com/ a pastor from northern Virginia. "Were they thinking someone would offer a quick fix as in: `All you have to do is light some candles and hire an edgy young adult to lead an alt service and everything will be great and your church will thrive again just like in the 1950s?' " She also wrote: "Emergent is not about age (after all). It's about a willingness to make ministry about the community outside the congregation -- rather than the congregation." During one workshop on Presbyterianism and the Emergent church, people were asked to list words they associate with the Presbyterian church. Those included: connectionalism, rich tradition, discord, and "Antiques Roadshow." The words for Emergent? Among them: incarnational, risky, untidy, organic. Also: arrogant and pretentious. Pagitt recounted a commercial he'd seen watching TV one Sunday morning. (When you worship Sunday night, you can sit around in your pajamas and watch TV on Sunday morning, he said). The gist of the commercial (for General Electric) was this: "Welcome to the earth. It's a great time to be alive!" How about that instead of a message too many churches give, Pagitt said -- that "no one's thought a new thing in 500 years." Mainline or evangelical? McLaren said the Emergent movement at the beginning had the reputation of being basically evangelical -- but it's broadened, and he estimates it's now about half from the non-denominational evangelical world, half from mainline denominations. He said people are becoming less and less interested in those labels -- the words "evangelical" and "mainline" are not bipolar, McLaren said. "There are a lot of very, very conservative, evangelical people in mainline churches" and "there are a few evangelicals who aren't Republican." He also hinted at some of the tensions: there has been some skepticism of Emerging church in the evangelical world. "It remains to be seen whether the evangelicals will even want any of these (Emergent) people at the table or how many of them," McLaren said. If evangelicals only want people who think a certain way, and if the mainline denominations open the table to more approaches, "that could be interesting. I'm hoping that won't happen in the evangelical world. There are signs that it won't, and signs that it will." But some contend that the more Christians become intentional and postmodern in their thinking, doctrinal differences will drop away. When Catholics and Pentecostals and evangelicals and mainline Christians grapple with living out their faith in the world, they often move towards what they have in common, McLaren said. "Instead of arguing over who's got the right form, we say we've got a lot of work to do." But he also said that greed, pride, fear, and hate can be obstacles to Christians really considering the questions a changing world presents. "We're worried about money, we're worried about market share, we're worried about people leaving one church and going to another," McLaren said. Emergent and mainline aren't mutually exclusive. While Emergent thinking is not the norm in mainline denominations -- far from it -- there are examples of mainline pastors trying new things. "I compare my traditions to gigantic cruise ships," that are big and powerful, but don't change direction well, said Karen M. Ward, abbess and rector of Church of the Apostles http://www.apostleschurch.org/home.php in Seattle, which is affiliated both with the Episcopal church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (To continue the analogy, here's Presbyterian pastor Jud Hendrix, describing the frustration that led him and colleague Liz Kaznak to found Covenant Community Church http://www.cccoflouisville.org/welcome.html in Louisville: "We felt like we were cruise ship directors doing programs on a cruise ship," Hendrix said. Since then, Covenant has created small intentional communities that are considered the most important part of being "church," Hendrix said. The church's Web site -- in a direct reference to the dissatisfaction many young people feel with church -- states: "Quite possibly better than nothing".) Apostles, where the average age is 27, describes itself as "a future church with an ancient faith" -- offering everything from a Marvin Gaye Eucharistic service (with "Mercy Mercy Me" as the song of confession) to a service using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Ward says she draws on the strength of her denominations' traditions while also being committed to "helping God change everything." Holly Rankin Zaher, a pastor from Pittsburgh, introduced herself by saying: "I'm Holly. I'm an Episcopalian." "Hi, Holly," the crowd answered back -- parodying a 12-step program approach. Zaher is a founding member of Three Nails, http://www.threenails.org/ an Episcopal cell church. And she told this gathering that the Episcopal church "is my tribe, and I'm unapologetic about it. There's a reason why I've stayed in the Episcopal church. I think it has something beautiful for today's context." Mix-ins. Some mainline congregations that consider themselves traditional also can see in their practices elements of Emergent thinking. One Presbyterian pastor, for example, said he sees a hunger for community at the coffee time at his church -- people linger well into the afternoon, talking, wanting to be connected. Some mainline congregations use labyrinths, Taizé services, offer communion every Sunday. Bass, who describes herself as "the radical in pearls" in the Emergent crowd, said lots of people don't even know what mainline means anymore. She describes it as brand-name religion -- "the churches that put their names on the signs out front." But Bass said it makes no sense to expect that people who are offered 82,000 different flavor combinations at Starbucks (she's done the research and says that's the number!) are going to accept a one-size-fits-all approach handed down from denominational headquarters. "The people in the pews are going to look at this and think, `This is absolutely ridiculous,' " Bass said. "Who do they think we are, a bunch of robots?" The challenge, suggested Tony Jones http://theoblogy.blogspot.com/ of Emergent Village, is to have the courage to rethink the great traditions -- to build on them, but also to go someplace wildly new. One person in attendance used an analogy of a dining table -- asking whether the mainline churches want young adults to shuffle off to the "kids' table" or whether they're willing to make space at the big table for everyone. And Jones acknowledged that Emergent folk have their own forms of conformity ("we dress a certain way," he said, "and we wear the cool glasses"), and need to be able to answer questions about belief -- in the midst of all the innovation, what do they actually stand for theologically? It's fair to ask, "What are you?" Jones said. "You're like Baskin-Robbins' 31 flavors. Where do you stand?" A mission for Christ's church. Sometimes, Emergent folks would rather talk about what gets done, rather than the structure for doing it. "Does Christ's church have a mission, or does Christ's mission have a church?" McLaren asked. "This issue of why we're here, what we're here to do, is very, very central." The Emergent focus is related to the missional church, said Betty Meadows, executive presbyter of Mid-Kentucky presbytery, who brought several carloads of pastors to the Columbia conference. "It's all the same language. It's just coming through a different door." Jones told of an Emergent congregation that was considering renting space in a mainline church -- and which was told there was no way the pews could be removed to bring in couches and chairs; the pews were bolted to the floor. The Emergent folks pulled out tools. Ten minutes later, a pew was moved. "We're in this liminal time, when we're working out these things," he said. If the Emergent crowd pulls out the pews to haul in couches, some day "our kids are going to say, `Burn the couches," Jones said. "What would be a tragic mistake for us would be if we got horribly offended when our kids burned the couches," instead of saying: "Burn the couches, and make it your own thing. Make the gospel incarnate in whatever crazy culture it is in 20 or 30 years."
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comment form
Its something that churches have to deal with as it shapes church culture. We have to engage it in conversation to help some of our old churches to reinvent themselves without going full blown into some of the church growth Materials.
NET RESULTS needs to do some more stuff in this direction.
Pastor Chris
http://www.evangelismcoach.org