I had an interesting conversation a couple of months ago. One of my friends had just gone to an emergent worship service with different prayer stations, candles, music, etc. She expressed to me how alienating she found this experience as a black woman and she asked me, what is the emergent church? My instinct was to describe it in church historical terms rather than theological terms… that is, I described it as a movement growing out of church historical developments in particularly white, north american church praxis.

The most popular concept that has been used – even over-used – to describe effective Christian ministry in recent years is that of ‘Incarnational Ministry’. Many books have been written, many articles posted on the Internet, to explain the concept and explore its implications for contemporary cultural missiology (Google it and see!). Richard Passmore, in his book Meet Them Where They Are At, is perhaps the most pragmatic exponent of this view. Pete Ward, in Youthwork and the Mission of God and Danny Brierley in Joined Up both explore the same idea, as does Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Church, albeit within a wider ministerial context than the previous authors.

I’m very interested in hearing some voices on the matter of relational development.  Much is being made about the need for relational ministry in the emerging church, and there are some phenomenal methodological advances being made in the field.

What I am concerned about is the theology behind these relational developments.  It appears that most of the development in this area is sociological rather than theological and the Bible is being used to justify methods rather than being the epistemological source.

Has anyone seen a developed theology of relationship?

The simple observation that I want to make is that the emerging movement / conversation / church is defined principally in terms of people emerging out from something, primarily evangelicalism, but also, for many, the restricting limitations of the culture and traditions of charismatic and pentecostal church, and, for others, from Anglicanism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, liberalism, conservatism et al. For that reason, uniting with any ‘ism’, any other movement, would be retrograde. That is not to say that people from every ‘ism’, from every kind of community, cannot join with the emerging movement / church / conversation. Quite the opposite is true.