Love/Hate the emerging church
16 Aug 2004
Here is a post I made over two years ago. Given that there are lots of new readers to this site, that a lot has happened in the past two years, I thought I’d dust thist post off from my old site and give it an airing here.
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Well here in no order, and remember from my experience, in small corner of the emerging church are the things I have learned most, and enjoyed most about the emerging church, and some experiences that make me despair the most about emerging church too.
(see continuation below)
Things I Love/Value Most
1. Theology: the freedom and company to think theologically, to find integration of my faith into a postmodern world. That church planting is no longer predicated upon getting people to pray a prayer to go to heaven when they die. The Gospel is much bigger and than that myopic premise. Finding the face of God in thinking theologically, honestly and openly, does not make you a heretic or backslider.
2. Experiment: Freedom to do church differently, to experiment, and do lots that is the same, both extremes are true and needed.
3. Connection: to people all around the world, from many countries and many church tribes.
4. Generous: realize that there is no postmodern way of doing churches, there are many ways, and we need many more, some like they currently are and some radically different, many valid and connecting in different context.
5. Team: That I don’t have to be a benevolent dictator, and I don’t have to be the slave of the church board, in between is the place of real team, serving, living and leading together, being accountable.
6. Rediscover: being free to rediscover the things my churchmanship had thrown away, liturgy, confession, litany, image, icons, church calendar, the ancient in our faith, and to know that it’s still being used for real by many traditions…
7. Tradition: Reclaiming some traditions, holding on the traditions from my current denomination, and forming new ones.
8. Mission focused: a church that serves each other and our community, the two intertwined and inseparable. Intimacy withy God necessitates involvement with each other. Ministry to the poor and social justice are not optional for churches, they are part of mission.
9. Marathon: this is going to take a very very long time, more than my life time. Investing my life in growing a community that is able to grow other church communities, full of new christians, following christ, engaged in mission….a life’s work not a couple of years gathering christians.
10. Live what we believe: my church is my family not my job, the people I do life with, share pain with, and accountably with, bring out the best and worst in me with. Being able to walk the talk, to have fears, doubts, questions, troubles and be real.
11. Relevant: to be free to use the mediums and places of our culture to communicate, without seeing them as godless.
12. Human: where doing church and being a christian is humanizing, connecting to the world and each other.
13. Love of church: I love church more than ever, doing church, being church, doing life together in all it’s mess and mistakes and imperfections. Church is so mot about me, and I find God more and more in the church, when it seems so weak and messed up.
Things about the emerging church that make me want to quit sometimes (stereotypes from my limited perspective, and things I find myself falling into along with others).
1. Sociological reactions: The attitude of writing off all of church since the beginning of christendom, the attitude of we should close all churches, that all church is wrong and modern and axiomatic to modernism, and behind that the we’re right you are wrong, leave all churches, follow us into new radical ways but then offer nothing, devalue tradtional churches, be full of bitterness, anger and create new private God spaces full of existential angst, and pride ourselves on being postmodern. To have a theology and ecclesiology that is thoughtless, non-biblical (and if I use that word they think I’m a foundationalist evangelical;-), and draws no lessons from church history (after all church history was mostly a mistake).
3. Axiomatics: if we only got rid of congregations, pastors, preaching/teaching…and all just hung out in authentic community, all would be well, with the result that 5 to 10 people hang out in coffee shops, and smoke cigars, and are so proud of being postmodern and authentic.
4. Exclusion: To become as exclusive as the evangelical church, you can’t be missional if you have a congregation, you can’t be relevant if you are an Anglican, vineyard etc. We are in you are soooo uncool, so corrupted by doing church that you are out, and Jesus would never go to your church (but he would love our middle class blog discussion night, cigars, beer and having a good moan about the church).
5. Character: bitterness, anger, resentment, exclusion, are the new characteristics of emgergers, what happened to patience, peace, kindness, patience gentleness and self control
6. Existentialism: church is now made in my image, I hate structure, I hate leaders, I hate anything and I cover it all with the spirtitualised veneer (nonsense) of saying, well I want to be organic, spirit led, postmodern…
7. Missional not: the one that bothers me the most, understanding yourself as needing to be missional, a missionary in a postmodern, post christian context, does not make you missional. Mission is something you do, not something to endlessly tote as your mantra, and then do nothing missional.
8. Intentionally unintentional: the craziness of saying “we want to be organic”, “we have no leaders”, to cover a philosophy that despises planning, strategy, models. We need to learn from real missionaries, who were very strategic, planning and intentional. If you think being intentional is a dirty word, and try not you, you’re being intentional about not being intentional.
9. Real Church: phrases like, we are just doing church, real church, as if the rest of church for the last 2,000 years wasn’t church, and wasn’t valid. If the evangelical church arrogantly wanted to declare they had rediscovered biblical christianity, we’re right the rest of you are going to hell and are wrong, then these phrases are just the same. We’re doing church right, the postmodern/ancient future/missional/communal way, and the bad nasty evangelical church, modern church, christendom church wasn’t, but hey we have it right now.
Tagged: Key-Posts
38 comments
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Comment by davidt
4.39 pm on 16 Aug 2004
good, good. Is this ‘what’s wrong with postmodern church’ conversation starting to get louder and louder? It seems that way. It’s good to analyze ourselves without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Comment by Jason Clark
4.50 pm on 16 Aug 2004
Hi David, that was a quick reply, I only just posted that :-)
Comment by will
4.50 pm on 16 Aug 2004
One thing I would add to the list of ‘loves’ would be the emphasis on social justice. That is an extension of #12, being human, but it seems worth emphasizing. I grew up without that as an understanding of the way to live out the gospel. I am coming to have a much healthier understanding of our relationship to those most in need, and it is because of emerging influences.
Comment by Jason Clark
4.57 pm on 16 Aug 2004
Thanks Will, that’s what I meant under Mission, and have added that in :-)
Comment by Michael Toy
6.15 pm on 16 Aug 2004
excellent — amen, even to the parts where you are describing my faults in a painfully accurate way.
Comment by graham
6.19 pm on 16 Aug 2004
That’s interesting Will, ‘cos – from my own limited experience – I’d put that in under “things that make me wanna quit.”
It’s sometimes felt like our love of the cool has got in the way of our social conscience.
Again, I don’t mean that as a blanket statement!
Comment by Jason Clark
6.28 pm on 16 Aug 2004
or maybe graham it’s cool to talk about social justice and mission, but never actually do. I hear so many conversations go like this…
“my church was so into itself, all it’s resources were about sundays, looking cool, whilst there are drug users two blocks down, and a council estate (public housing), that they did nothing about…I was so sick of their selfishness I quit”…
Yet I wonder why since quitting do most of those people never get involved in the drug addicts and hosuing projects, but spend all there time bitching about how their old church didn’t get involved as it should. I can look cool by talking about how back they were and how good I am for leaving and quitting, yet still do absolutely nothing!
Why when in those churches did they not do something, be the one person involved and engaged, and invite others into that? Now if you have tried that, invited others into mission/social action/ministry to the poor then been closed down by your church, good on you for quitting. But quitting because they don’t do what you never will, is not cool :-)
Comment by Jason Clark
6.39 pm on 16 Aug 2004
thanks Michael, for being honest and open, and reminding me that I find much of myself in the things I struggle with.
Comment by DannyG
9.32 pm on 16 Aug 2004
thanks for posting this Jason; very well written and I too am convicted…encouraged also.
Thanks for saying what God’s been trying to speak to me. I especially value your perspective and articulating something that many of us on this side of the pond are too fogged up to see.
Comment by Randy
10.55 pm on 16 Aug 2004
Great stuff
Let me add:
I love: the rush of dangerous christianity
I hate: the danger of dangerous christianity
I dislike the term social justice, it deposits the kingdom living in the place of “soceity” for me. Maybe semantics, but I don’t want to do social justice, I want to be a follower of Jesus in a community of followers who make real life kingdom impacts in every aspect of socieity: moreal, physical, emotional, spiritual, familial, insertyourwordhere-ial
rj
Comment by Jason Clark
12.04 am on 17 Aug 2004
Thanks for the feedback Danny, Jason.
Comment by Jason Clark
12.06 am on 17 Aug 2004
Hi randy, yes I think it’s semantics. I mean a church engaged in ministrring to the poor and helping those needing socila justice. The kingdom whenb built brings some social healing and justice. Not the liberal social justice gospel that evangelicals fear.
Comment by will
12.12 am on 17 Aug 2004
One other perspective on the social justice discussion – I do agree with Graham that in practice this can be a sham. This is where I like to make the distinction between those who embody the values of emerging and those who wear it like a suit. I see churches that that call themselves emerging that I call “emerg-e-seek” or “emergegelical” or one that I even call “emergalist” (my cynical melding of ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘emerging’). These are the churches that try to “put on” their emerging clothes without embodying the underlying values. For them, social justice programs can tend to be a gimmick and it smells like it to someone in need of a gospel touch. But most churches that I would call emerging deeply embody the spirit of Matthew 25.
Comment by Conrad
7.05 am on 17 Aug 2004
Thanks Jason; I think we’re all at our best when we’re saying “yes” and not at our best when we’re saying “no”. And lately, emergent seems to have taken a lot of “no” on board. More detail at my blog…
Trackback by New Wineskins Blog
9.40 am on 17 Aug 2004
4 thoughts: Special emerging Church
- High and Low in the emerging Church movement..A very honest piece from Jason Clark – Travelling in the main emerging Churches across the US and report what you exprerienced on your website. That’s a cool job. – New ways
Trackback by New Wineskins Blog
9.42 am on 17 Aug 2004
4 thoughts: Special “Emerging Church”
- High and Low in the emerging Church movement..A very honest piece from Jason Clark – Travelling in the main emerging Churches across the US and report what you exprerienced on your website. That’s a cool job. – New ways
Trackback by Tim Samoff // Weblog
2.58 pm on 17 Aug 2004
The good, the bad, and the emerging…
Jason Clark has just posted a “pros/cons” list, of sorts, about what he does and doesn’t like about the whole Emerging Church movement.
Without quoting anything from his post, I’ll just ask that you read it here.
Very interesting…and true.
Comment by Jason Clark
5.27 pm on 17 Aug 2004
Thanks Conrad. I would want to put some daylight bewteen “emerging church” and Emergent as a network, maybe we should change our name…to stop them being synonymous.
Comment by Jason Clark
5.36 pm on 17 Aug 2004
Hi Will, thanks for the image of “emerging clothes”. Putting on taize, labrythns, alterantive worship, doesn’t make you emerging :-)
Comment by graham
7.11 pm on 17 Aug 2004
Jason, I don’t know how serious your comment to Conrad was, but I have thought this myself more than once.
It’s quite surprising the number of people who think that Emergent is the emerging church.
Comment by Jason Clark
7.17 pm on 17 Aug 2004
Hi Graham, I’m very serious, and worry at the connection with the name. Emergent is not emerging church, at least in the forms I outlined in this post. At best Emergent is the positives I outlined above. Big difference.
Trackback by Messy Christian
1.00 am on 18 Aug 2004
Blog entries of note last week
Very late this one, but I was supposed to post this last Friday but forgot! 1. The Christian Carnival is up at Beyond the Rim. Adrian Warnock writes about a disturbing anti-Islamic article he read in Will Cummins – British
Comment by Paul
12.16 pm on 18 Aug 2004
Hi Jase,
liked your post. It seems to me that the pros fall under a heading of how church and “post-modern” people engage/fuse/appear/find comfortable/do/go/be etc.
Whilst the dislikes seem to me to be more about people’s problems with the church – the back lash/adverse reaction/source of blame for what is perceived as wrong, where people have been hurt/burnt or where people have been frustrated/don’t fit…
I don’t know if that’s a fair critique – but I suppose the love affair part would be seeing the church as an answer…
Personally, I do love the thought of emerging church as the new bride who gets married with something old, something new, something borrowed and sings the blues :) – who is a bride like her mother before her although what that embodies may look/feel different between generations. As opposed to folks who are tired of being married and just wanna get a divorce…
Grin or even worse, those who feel they’re always a bridesmaid and never the bride…
Comment by jen lemen
2.48 pm on 18 Aug 2004
which name would you change?
emergent? or emerging church?
since the emerging church is still so young and invisible at times, it will always be mistaken for its more visible supporters (i.e. emergent, the ones with the gatherings, conferences, etc.)
also, as long as brian mclaren, yourself, doug pagitt, chris seay and other names with some recognition are the coordinating team members of emergent, then the rest of the world will think that you are one and the same.
how can anyone tell when the leaders of emergent are functioning as representatives of emergent the org as opposed to representatives of their own native (and perhaps more authentic) versions of the emerging church?
i expect you all (or at least one or two of you) to either jump ship, change the name to anything but “emergent”, give it to ys or some other drastic measure any day now. but i could be mistaken.
which is the case so, so often. ;)
Comment by Jason Clark
4.32 pm on 18 Aug 2004
Hi Paul, I don’t know if it’s fair either, but I do know it’s a summary of my experience :-)
Comment by Jason Clark
4.35 pm on 18 Aug 2004
good questions Jen. Emerging church is so much bigger than just Emergent, and has so many values some similar and some not part of who we are. At it’s best it shows the inlfuence Emergent has had on emerginc church, but they aren’t the same and I wonder if they need some distinction. A question I get asked alot is “I came a across this emerging church group, I assumed that’s what Emergent is about”. Also so much of the negativety of the emerging church is not something I want emergent to be known for.
Comment by Scott
5.29 pm on 18 Aug 2004
A long way to go, but we have com a long way.
Comment by Steve K.
10.28 pm on 18 Aug 2004
Great thoughts, Jason. I just scanned them quickly, but I think I agree wholeheartedly. I’m going to have to come back and really digest this more later. But for now, thank you!
Comment by Jason Clark
10.34 pm on 18 Aug 2004
Hi Steve, great to hear from you. How are things going with you? Jason.
Trackback by knightopia.com | Journal
2.02 am on 19 Aug 2004
It’s a Love/Hate Relationship
Jason Clark of Emergent UK has posted a great entry on things he loves about the emerging church and things he’s not so chuffed about. I must say that my initial reading of it was very agreeable. I think Jason…
Comment by Barb
8.15 am on 19 Aug 2004
Thanks for these lists – they are very similar to the things that I would say I love and hate, although if I’m honest I’m very conscious how easy it is to fall into these things that I hate.
Comment by andy gr
3.42 pm on 19 Aug 2004
Can I call your attention to my new blog “emergent like slime” on http://thedeepend.squarespace.com/
Unfortunately the only noteworthy thing about it so far is the title, but that could change if everyone makes interesting comments on it…
Comment by Paul
12.21 pm on 20 Aug 2004
I was thinking more of whether my critique of your ctitique was fair or not…
Trackback by knightopia.com | Journal
2.24 pm on 20 Aug 2004
It’s a Love/Hate Relationship
Jason Clark of Emergent UK has posted a great entry on things he loves about the emerging church and things he’s not so chuffed about. I must say that my initial reading of it was very agreeable. I think Jason…
Comment by departure
10.01 am on 21 Aug 2004
Thank you for articulating all this. I have found it very helpful
Comment by Edward Pillar
2.06 pm on 21 Aug 2004
Hi Jason – very insightful comments and a helpful evaluation. I agree and treasure the church that is becoming all of the positives in your list. With you I struggle when i see evidences of the characteristics of your negatives list -particularly when I see them in myself!
But…I like coffee shops…I like cigars…is this an age thing? (mid-life crisis)?
Comment by Jason Clark
5.16 pm on 21 Aug 2004
Thanks Edward. I love cigars, coffe shops, the internet. They are part of my life and christian connection, but they are not the sum total and locus of the mission of the church ;-) Maybe I’m getting older too.
Comment by maryellen
9.21 pm on 20 Jun 2005
like so many of the comments above, I found this very helpful. unfortutely it seems when we give something a name, or a label, it takes on a life of its own, and since theology, religion, doctrine are such personal concepts, some people get pretty fierce defending what they believe is right. Truth is truth, not a concept, but a person. And since God desires a personal relationship with us through His son Jesus Christ, it is important to keep Jesus in the center of this all, not church, not style, not methods or tradition.
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