There’s a good article about emerging church by Andy Peck in the April edition of Christianity + Renewal, a UK magazine that serves a mainstream evangelical-charismatic readership. Peck takes a balanced approach listing both a number of key insights of the emerging church critique and many of the concerns that more traditional evangelical and charismatic onlookers might want to raise. In his conclusions he highlights the failure of the church in the UK to reach ‘postmoderns’ and notes some indications that mainstream churches are beginning to respond constructively to the challenge. But he thinks the jury is still out on whether the emerging church movement has a future. What is currently lacking are ‘success stories’ big enough to persuade the sceptics that this is more than just the church ‘pandering to the spirit of the age’.
The article is worth responding to for a couple of reasons: first, it has some good things to say and says them constructively and sympathetically; secondly, it quotes from the article ‘What is "emerging church"?’ on this website, so I feel flattered. I want to address some of the ‘concerns’ that Peck articulates, recognizing that these do not necessarily reflect his own views. These comments will probably sound more defensive than I would like. I hope the instinctive response of the emerging church to criticism from traditional evangelical and charismatic voices will be to use the dialogue to move forward rather than to reinforce division.
1. The objection is often raised that churches in other parts of the world, and even some churches in the UK, are seeing significant growth despite the fact that they unashamedly adhere to the sort of ‘modern’ practices that the emerging church is complaining about. ‘Is it because postmodernism hasn’t affected these places, or is it because the church in these areas is more vibrant?’
But the question that really has to be asked is: why are churches in the UK less vibrant? Is it simply for want of trying? Are we just not good enough Christians? Maybe. But I think the church in this country is in the state it’s in because of a particular history and context that are fundamentally different from the history and context of churches elsewhere in the world. For numerous complex reasons significant numbers of believers are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain the ‘innocence’ of the faith that they inherited. Innocence is an extremely difficult thing to recover once it has been lost. For most people the only way is forward. You go through the crisis, you are hurt and changed by the crisis, but you trust that you will come out the other side with something better. It’s not enough to say that the emerging church is ‘experimenting’ with new forms of church. I think that for many people the emerging church movement really represents a struggle to survive as the people of God.
2. The argument is put that the emerging church is worried that ‘the product (the church community) is not attractive to outsiders’. ‘Isn’t this like me failing to take a friend to see my favourite football team because I didn’t think the socio-economic background of the fans wouldn’t be to their liking?’ That is undoubtedly some truth in that: I’m sure the emerging church is prone to an inflated sense of its cultural and spiritual superiority. But, to stay with the football analogy, I would suggest that the real reason we do not invite our friends to the match is that we are afraid they will see absolutely no point in the game. Besides, the analogy draws attention to a basic problem with church as we know it: effectiveness is fundamentally conceived as ‘getting friends along’.
3. I rather agree that the journey metaphor gets over-used and that we do not escape the need to define boundaries. The journey metaphor remains important for the emerging church, however, because it captures so well the experience of believers who sense deeply that they are moving from a place of security and familiarity into an unknown future. Under these circumstances it may make good sense to look to other ways of defining the boundaries, marking the point of definite change. For example, the emerging church tends to think rather more concretely of ‘following Jesus’ than of being converted. Baptism and the Lord’s supper offer practical, externalized signs of commitment. Perhaps I could quote a sentence from a discussion of ‘the gospel as inclusive welcome’:
My point is that you can have a fairly clear and rigorous definition of what it means to be ‘Christian’ or ‘follower of Jesus’ or even, if we must use the terminology, ‘saved’, without excluding people from the distinctive type of community that is generated by the presence of God in the lives of believers.
4. In reaction to the more inclusive approach of emerging church the question is asked whether a ‘centred theology’ can work in practice. Once you make Jesus the centre, you are bound to take into account the totality of his teaching, which in effect constitutes a ‘bounded set’ (Peck later discusses Hiebert’s account of centred and bounded sets). But I’m not sure this is quite right, not least because Jesus as a person and his teaching are two very different things: a ‘set’ should consist of the same type of things. If we are going to take Jesus as the centre of a set, then the relevant boundary ought to be defined in terms of a community in relation to him. Some sort of boundary certainly exists – not everyone wants to include themselves in the set of those who are in relation to Jesus. But the real issue is how we manage that boundary. Do we spend a lot of time and effort trying to define and defend it? Do we unwittingly reinforce it culturally, intellectually, stucturally, organizationally?
5. Concerns are often raised about the potential loss of theological distinctiveness: ‘Emerging Church groups claiming we can take from the best of all traditions are like the universalists who claim that "all religions lead to God".’ The internal eclecticism of drawing on different Christian traditions is obviously not the same as the external eclecticism of claiming that all religions lead to God. But more importantly, I think that the emerging church has to be allowed the freedom and time to reconstruct for itself a viable belief system, recreate a meaningful discourse of faith. The emerging church is in the process of sifting through its heritage looking for images, language, arguments, stories, out of which to create a new medium for faith. We are relearning or learning for ourselves what our convictions ought to be: we do not entirely trust the judgment of our parents in this because we have come to recognize that their way of thinking is, in part at least, a product of their generation. I don’t see that this is an insult to ‘the very traditions from which the truth is taken’: culture is continually recycling itself; we wouldn’t have much of a New Testament if its authors (including Jesus) had been afraid to work the traditions of the Old into a new synthesis.
There’s still a long way to go. It’s not enough simply to ‘loosen’ the definition of who’s in and who’s out or to argue (Peck cites Brian McLaren and Steve Chalke here) that Jesus’ message had more to do with the kingdom of God than with ‘trusting in his death for salvation’. The emerging church still hasn’t worked out a credible biblical theology to underpin and give shape to its instincts. There is, to my mind, still too much of a preoccupation with structural and sociological issues and too little wrestling with Scripture – and for that matter too little wrestling with the God whom we believe has called us to make this journey.
6. I’m not sure Andy Peck sees the irony in his conclusion that the emerging church movement needs ‘"success stories" of such magnitude that the undecided will realise there is something in it’. My guess is that many in the emerging church movement will regard that as exactly the sort of utilitarian, self-aggrandizing, size-is-everything attitude that they are trying to get away from. It’s a good question though: what would be appropriate criteria by which to measure the ‘success’ or rightness of the movement? I’m not sure the emerging church aspires to be big. More likely we will want to see a multitude of small communities functioning consistently and creatively. But I would argue for two more fundamental, if less tangible, measures of ‘success’: i) the extent to which a different ‘ethos’ spreads through the whole church in this country regardless of what form it takes; and ii) the extent to which the church regains the ‘trust’ of the wider society in which it is embedded.
Christianity + Renewal has published a number of articles over the last few months on emerging church themes:
Getting heard in postmodern
Britain, by Laurence Singlehurst
Jumping ship … another perspective,
by Jim Thomas
Emerging or Submerging? by Chris Stoddard
Response to Christianity + Renewal article about emerging church
Thank you for posting this article Andrew. I know there are many critics of the emerging church, but before this article I had yet to hear clearly articulated concerns.
You have, so always, done a wonderful job of articulating the intangibles of a movement in its infancy. I would agree with you that it is too early to judge the worth of the emerging church since it is still trying discover and nail down the foundation of its relationship with God, the community within and the world.
My fear at this juncture is that once those foundational “theologies”, if you will, are in place the emerging church will rest in and try to preserve the structure it has created like so many of the church we criticize. As we struggle to crystallize our identity I pray that we will allow Christ to be the center. That will be flexible and organic enough to be able to really listen to God and go where He is at work.
Kurt
Response
Andrew,
Intesting article and you do a good job of pulling out the main points and responding to them. I would like to add a few things to what you have already articulated:
1. This point is interesting. I am in a very large church as you know, this church is modern in many ways but in other ways it is not a model of modernity. We have a leader who changes on a dime and is well read and has a global view of the church and a heart to equip and be relevant to those who are unchurched. Our church is growing still which has to do some with context and some with the missional nature of the church. The main thing is still the same but the approach changes. Now we have work to do before anyone would call us an emerging church but I would categorize our church as something in the middle. So I am reluctant to put churches in modern vs. postmodern categories because it is too black and white and we are not living in a black or white time but one of somekind of transition.
2. I know this is directed at the UK so it may be different than here in the U.S. but I find that comment ironic as many churches have adopted a seeker friendly or sensitive approach to church for the same reason. Don’t see the problem here.
5. You said:
I agree with you here. Too much time is spent on deconstruction and sociological issues and we don’t see much work on the theological side. That is why I like the premise of this site. It is not enough to have an ecclectic grabbing of different techniques with no thought as to a coherent biblical theology. Good word here.
6. I do think there is a point here and I am glad to see that you state that growth of some kind is important. I think we have to be careful not to get so paranoid about growth and numbers that we end up excluding because we don’t want to get too big. I think if we are to be missional than that means we should expect growth. That said I don’t think it should ever be a “who has the biggest numbers has the most success” kind of thing that we see too often either. We should focus more on the lives that are transformed and thank God for bringing those he brings. Numbers are not evil it is how they are used that gets us into trouble.
Overall, a very good synopsis and it is interesting to see how people are viewing what is happening in emerging churches. I think this kind of thing is expected due to the criticisms that are thrown at the modern church by those in the emerging church. Criticism is something that has been helpful to many in the current churchs and should be helpful to the emerging churches as well.
Not enough to be friendly
Thanks, Todd - it’s very helpful to hear a different perspective. You are certainly right to point out that the transition from whatever we had to whatever is coming is by no means a straightforward one. We naturally seek clarity - not least because a lot of people want to feel that this genuinely is a movement (indeed, a movement of the Spirit) and not just a state of confusion on the fraying edge of the church. Perhaps we need to be more alert to the dynamic of change that is going on, the direction in which we are moving, and worry less about locating groups and individuals in static categories such as ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’.
What I think is significant about point 2 is that the article equated the ‘product’ with the ‘church community’. My argument would be that the problem goes much deeper than that: it is the story, the theology, the sense of identity and purpose, the values and culture that define the community that are the problem. I think the seeker movement has done more than simply construct a user-friendly interface between the church and the unchurched; it has taken a small but significant step in the direction of redefining the ‘ideology’, the DNA, that shapes the church. (The same could probably be said for the Alpha course.) But the seeker movement has had little impact in the UK, for a number of reasons - reluctance to change, an unwillingness to make the investment, cynicism, a distrust of size, etc. This may go someway towards explaining why the emerging church movement is - as far as I can tell - being taken more seriously here than in the US.
Caught in the Middle
Andrew-I agree that the problem does go much deeper and theological reflection and all the things that define the community are critical. It is interesting that the seeker type of church has had little impact in the UK and that again does show us that context is a huge key to whatever the church does.
I do find it interesting to be at a large church that does make changes but is caricatured both by the traditional church and the emerging church. Some traditional church’s that think our style is too “soft” and thinks the church is only for believers not for seekers which means that doctrine should be taught from the pulpit and then believers can defend the faith and convince others to choose Jesus. At the same time, some emerging church thinkers say big is bad and we are only into numbers. Ironically I find that we are neither of those. Yes we are a bit modern in many ways which fits our current context, but we are seeing lives transformed and as I said above don’t really fully fit the modern charicature. We are somewhere in the middle.
I think as we look at the emerging church develop, one part of the dna that we should watch is that we don’t become exclusive in how we define what the church should be in this emerging enviornment. But as you note such are the growing pains of this movement which makes it both exciting and a challenge:). Thanks again for your comments!
Todd Olthoff