In Love With Cool.
26 Apr 2004
Thought for the week…
One criticism of modernity is how christians have forced people who aren’t christians to undergo a culture nuturing, to become a christian.
So we take a normal non/pre/unchurch/christian (please chose the least offensive…that’s another blog idea), and ask them to change how they dress, do their hair, and use strange words, and become a cultural freak to their friends and family.
So now we have (feel the irony building) postmodern christians opening their communities/groups/cliches/niches to people, as long as they change their clothes, language, music choices, hair colour, language…so refreshingly different. With some people you can almost feel that unless you look like bono from U2, complete with shades you aren’t post modern.
Now taking my tongue out of my cheek, what point am I driving at? I think it is true that the church has forced people to change their culture to engage with the church in a way that has been hugely damaging. The church has asked people to come out of the worlds culture, and adopt it’s sociological nuances, and vibe.
But christians in love with the idea of postmodernity, who want to see them selves as post modern run the risk of being hyper modern fashion victims. Taking enculturation to an extreme to be trendy and “relevant”, they result in the same things but at the opposite end of the spectrum of cultural adaption and synthesis. They flip and flap from conference to conference, event to event, say the same stuff, go drink coffee with some “edgy” person in Amsterdam/New York/LA who isn’t a beleiver then go on the next tour with new info fresh from the post modern world. This is the reason why, God forbid, I still like to read guys like Maxwell, Hybels, Ed Young Jr., and gasp other church leaders. Why? Most of them or still leading people. It’s refreshing to hear from people who are actually still doing church.
Both groups are a sociological response that has failed to engage in re-thinking the gospel message, and moved beyond the fetishm of surface images. Indeed scholars such as Graham Ward, argue that the modern world was obesessed with fetish, and there is a continuing trajectory of hyper modernity, that thinks it’s postmodern but is not. Rather they are hyper modern fetishists.
It’s always easier to go to one extreme or the other, and far harder to live with both. Living with both might mean that we have people very conservative on the outside who have very different internal worlds, and vice versa.
I had a great exmaple of this in making a new friend with a superb guy who planted an emerging church with harley davidson bikers…his group is comprised of new christians who are very postmodern, yet tells me there are aparently, very modern christian bikers…a great example of fetishism at both ends :-).
Yet he and I had so much in common, our faith expressed in very different ways externally was built on an internal world very similar, of non-foundationalism.
Rodney Clapp, in “A Peculiar People” talks about how christianity is it’s most successful when the christian subculture people are in is their dominant culture, something youth leaders have known for year :-) So concluding thought, how do we form new emerging church communities, that have a dominant christian subculture that strengthens faith in a liminal situation but leaves us open and engaging to the culture around us? Maybe that’s the billion dollar question.
11 comments
Trackback
Comment by Dave
9.46 am on 26 Apr 2004
This is great Jase and you hit with a round hammer on a number of things. When I first joined a church, I found myself changing from the inside out. I found myself becoming self conscious, in a positive way, about what was disjointed about my life. I then went and joined another church, where I met the women who is now my wife. At this church comments made, looks and even the way people treated you (lovely people though they were) somehow combined to create an invisible but powerful pressure to conform. So out went the art work, out went the role playing games, out went the long hair and within a year I really fitted in.
Maybe this was just a continuation of what God had begun in the previous church – I can say I really grew in this time. Or maybe it was more of a cultural dominance. As I reflect back on it now – I wish I had someone talk it through with me rather than just make me feel like i was tarred by the works of the devil. God used it – and I stuck around, but i wonder how many people didn’t?
Great bit about reading widely Jase – keep prevoking us mate.
Comment by libby
10.25 am on 26 Apr 2004
Hi..1st time here…loved what you said..but cant say ive ever been under pressure to change what i am..if you know who you are in Christ then why would anyone follow what the church is saying on how we should look talk and so on…is it the church doesnt know who they are in Christ…?
Comment by Serena
2.11 pm on 26 Apr 2004
Thanks, Jason. It’s a thoughtprovoking post. I got here via Maggi’s journal, and I will be linking to you from my youth group’s community too. So thank you!
Comment by Chris Marlow
2.16 pm on 26 Apr 2004
How, funny and true…Yesterday, I read maxwell for the first time in 2 years…I was having some “staffing” issues and I really needed some proper advice. Why are Christians so extreme? Sure, I do not agree with everything Maxwell does or says…But, that does not mean I can’t learn from him!
Comment by Geoff Holsclaw
3.19 pm on 26 Apr 2004
“how do we form new emerging church communities, that have a dominant christian subculture that strengthens faith in a liminal situation but leaves us open and engaging to the culture around us?”
by moving into the city instead of the suburbs…creating a visible community (which excludes “commuter churches”) that displays/performs the gospel before the dominant culture…and through encouraging the hospitality.
there, i’ve answered the billion dollar question.
but really, at one level I believe we need to do the above, but it also really begs the question of conversion, discipleship, and ecclesiology. how does the church relate to culture, it’s very complex.
Comment by ScottB
4.35 pm on 26 Apr 2004
It seems that this question goes back to the early church on many levels. If you think about the questions that Clement and Tertullian wrestled with in terms of the relationship between philosophy and Christianity, it’s the same conversation. Other examples might include circumcision or what to do with the local meat market, which happens to be a part of the local shrine to a pagan deity.
Is it the billion dollar question? You bet. We’ve been wrestling with it since God called a people from the rest of humanity to be His people. What does it look like for us? I think it’s going to look differently from community to community – but it has to begin with an incarnational orientation that’s informed by a grasp of church history. I think I’m going to post more over at theopraxis; you’ve got me thinking.
Trackback by theopraxis
8.48 pm on 26 Apr 2004
Metaphors
Jason Clark has a great post on being in love with cool. One question that he raises is, “So … how do we form new emerging church communities, that have a dominant christian subculture that strengthens faith in a liminal…
Comment by Chris Harrison
9.20 pm on 26 Apr 2004
That is the billion dollar question. And how do you create an emergent community amidst a community that emerged in 1950? The history of the church is still sitting in the pews, untouched by this new relevant post church culture kind of making them pre-relevant. I hunger for the emergent worship, but I worship in a pre-emergent community. Thanks for the post. Good to know that there is frustration felt by others alongside this particular post mod (r)evolution.
Trackback by theopraxis
10.27 pm on 26 Apr 2004
Metaphors
Jason Clark has a great post on being in love with cool. One question that he raises is, “So … how do we form new emerging church communities, that have a dominant christian subculture that strengthens faith in a liminal…
Comment by ScottB
11.16 pm on 26 Apr 2004
Apologies for the double ping!
Comment by BW
2.03 pm on 5 May 2004
An involved member of an emerging church plant, I am increasingly intimidated by my peer group/ in-crowd, and nervous as to where this sort of attitude seems to be leading the 20s-30s in our particular church – reason for post: I would love to know if this is experienced elsewhere.
We have a large number of ‘young adults’ who have joined church after either disillusionment with another during childhood, or association with a church-attending friend and no previous personal church exp. There seems to be a growing trend to be enthusiastic to shake off your Old Self, but sometimes this includes the good bits of you that defined you as a decent person to begin with as well! I am coming up against a terrifying new Stepford-like attitude to conform to what They think is important to be a NKOChristian. In this (apparently Paul-like :s) process, a new Pharisee-like attitude is emerging, where people who don’t fit Their mold are outcast, rejected, excluded, and alienated from the social scene. Their ‘godliness’ (dutiful publicised bible reading/ church leadership roles/ service, lack of publicised partying/ alcohol-aided enjoyment, and any negative treatment of others) is respected and rewarded, and I have been talked about as either jealous or bitter, despite leading a life of passionate faith a bit more privately.
It is everyones complete ignorance and blindness to this that pushes me further away from my beloved church, and that terrifies me, as the reason I left my previous, modern, church was adults behaving in this exact same manner.
I thought we had ‘emerged’ better.
I spent time on holiday recently with a girl who had sex with a waiter in a basement corridor one night, and struggled sitting with her in the bar one evening, because I didn’t want the other guests to think I might be like that too… but then God spoke and I reminded myself how Jesus would have treated this girl.
I think when you talk about where Church is heading, you must, must, MUST keep that at the very forefront of your heart… all these new terms, and the idea that worship has to be this way now, or that way then… churches are multi-cultural, multi-generational (our family worship time the other week certainly had many squirming.), multi-class, multi-levels of intelligence/ education, multi-interest… you cannot please or include everyone, but at the very heart of every church, I believe you must remember to have Love and Acceptance, at the very base of what you believe in, and be so very aware of where your welcoming heart is at.
It’s not all about who is going out on Saturday night (I am so tired of hearing the sentence “Everyone was There”), but about who did not, and who speaks to them. Who is not included, who is not involved, who is not popular, invited…?
I made some very good Muslim friends on holiday, and their attitude towards me was more heart-warming and God-like than any I have encountered from my peers in my Christian life in my home church.
That saddens me greatly.
Comments are now closed.