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This article was originally published in Christian Courier, March 16, 2007. Reprinted with permission. Any other reprinting of this article must have prior permission from editor@christiancourier.ca .

Notes on the Emerging Church Conversation
By Peter Schuurman
Educational Mission Leader, Christian Reformed Home Missions

“Things are changing.” It’s a truism we often hear, usually accompanied by a dose of hype and the apocalyptic warning: “You don’t want to be left behind, do you?” While I resent the manipulative nature of the remark, I do recognize that in science, business, agriculture, education and church, things change, and sometimes for good. They always have. They always will. The question is, how do we want to change? Do we want to be reactionary or accommodating, or my best hope, negotiate the change with integrity and imagination?

There is an amorphous, somewhat cheeky, mission-minded movement (or “conversation” as they prefer to call it) in the evangelical world called “the emerging church.”[i] They claim that culture has shifted dramatically with the end of Christendom and the advent of electronic media, and these “postmodern times” require a new way of being church. A new world demands a new church, and as prominent spokesperson Brian McLaren says, “we won’t need a new religion per se, but a new framework for our theology. Not a new Spirit, but a new spirituality. Not a new Christ, but a new Christian. Not a new denomination, but a new kind of church in every denomination.”[ii]

McLaren, like his colleagues, writes with a freshness and candor that is easy to swallow and digest. The mantra is: “Its not about a new model, but a new mindset.”[iii] They want to shape an authentic faith that is amenable to the postmodern crowd, and distances itself from the smarmy, rigid televangelist and the harsh legalistic conservative. They want to take the “vintage” gospel wine and its ancient spiritual practices and incarnate them in the new, more flexible and diversely coloured wineskins of postmodern life. Often this means in terms of worship, things like candles, couches, conversational sermons, and cutting edge music in the context of a strong, creative and caring community. As critic Andy Crouch puts it, and not without a load of ambivalence, they put the ‘hip’ back in discipleship.[iv]

Sociologically, these “emerging churches” can be seen as a form of protest, protest against fundamentalist evangelical churches that claim exclusive, absolute certainty and see salvation chiefly as an individual’s heavenly reward when they die, a reward given on the basis of the acceptance of a certain religious formula.[v] They see this as destructive of the gospel and they are functioning as a revitalization movement for the church, perhaps not unlike the charismatic movement, the seeker-sensitive movement, or the Jesus People in their own time.

Philosophically, they have a strong skeptical anti-institutional bias, not unlike the cynics of early Greece.[vi] Our concepts of God can become calcified, and take on a life of their own apart from God. Emerging leaders strive to question these conceptualizations and the empty ritual or routine religion that surrounds them. Peter Rollins of Ikon ministries in Ireland says, “the cynics were deeply moral individuals who questioned the ethical conduct they saw around them precisely because they loved morality so much.”[vii]

Theologically, they ground themselves in what Ray Anderson calls the “emerging theology” of Antioch in the New Testament.[viii] Jerusalem was the origin of the church, the community with the history, tradition, and privilege of proximity to the disciples and Christ. Antioch, however, was the place where the Spirit moved Paul to mobilize a missional movement for the world. In Antioch, Gentiles were embraced in a fresh and radical way that was difficult for the “fortress mentality” of the old school in Jerusalem to accept. Jerusalem was confined by the weight of its religion, while Antioch could be open and be transformed by the call and power of the Holy Spirit for the next generation of believers. Anderson believes emerging churches are the Antioch church in a world of Jerusalem churches.

These emerging churches and their leaders have no shortage of critics.[ix] Some say they have made postmodernism the norm to which they conform rather than the gospel. The contention is that they define themselves more by what they are against, which happens to be more often than not a caricature of the rest of the church. The theology they espouse is reactionary, selective,[x] sloppy, and functions (ironically) on a very modern either/or binary opposition (eg. you see headings in the books like “from believing to behaving,” “from teaching to facilitating,” “from hero to human,” “from propositional to narrative,” etc, etc.)[xi] This undoubtedly helps with its popular appeal. At a recent conference I heard someone refer to Emergent as “Christianity with spin.”

On a different note, emerging ideas are becoming their own industry, and they are “bought into” or consumed through the book market and on-line rather than flowing out of an ecclesiastical tradition and its networks.[xii] This fosters individualistic or congregationally-based theology and its fluctuating, fragmenting character. It is part of a pick-and-choose approach to life and theology, and if one is not firmly grounded in a tradition already, this modern market theology becomes--by default--one’s tradition. There is no place to stand outside of a tradition, and this is an illusion that emerging churches foster, in so far as they claim to look from the outside onto the rest of the church and move into a completely open future.[xiii]

I write as a believer in the “Reformed” tradition, a tradition that traces its Biblical roots through Dutch Protestantism , the Geneva theologian John Calvin and St. Augustine of Hippo. While this may not sound new and exciting at first glance, the facts are that we Reformed folks can see much good in the emerging church that has long been a characteristic of our own tradition.

One example is the focus on the kingdom of God rather than only individual salvation—broadening God’s work to include social justice, ecological stewardship, and a renewing of arts and science. McLaren often mentions the covenant, too, emphasizing that the promise to Abraham was not only that he would be blessed, but that he and his people would be a blessing to all nations of the earth. While McLaren hastily moves over the first part of that covenant, churches can tragically overlook the second phrase in that covenant. McLaren quotes Dallas Willard as saying: “In a pluralistic world, a religion is valued based on the benefits it brings to its non-adherents.”[xiv] In other words, by their fruits you will know them.

Emerging churches have a heightened awareness for God’s common or preserving grace in broader culture as they seek to be an incarnational presence within it. They also eschew the dualistic secular/sacred split that shapes much of evangelicalism. As John Bolt of Calvin Seminary says in a recent review, “Brian McLaren and the emerging church movement need to be applauded for taking cultural context seriously and desiring passionately to communicate to our world today.”[xv] In our tradition, of course, this comes with a healthy understanding of the antithesis—the dividing line between God’s kingdom and the dark world of sin and folly. McLaren’s latest book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope (Thomas Nelson, 2007) introduces this antithesis with a new freshness, not unlike the post-liberals at Yale University and the Radical Orthodoxy movement from Cambridge, U.K.

I read the emerging church literature because its my job to scan the shifting religious landscape. As I read, though, I am reminded of what we have claimed to be in our tradition for generations: “always Reforming.” We have named ourselves as a perpetually emerging church for hundreds of years, although we have not experimented with new forms as boldly as we did in the past. At best, this movement can inspire us to free ourselves from exhausted religious forms and dream wildly about what our local church community might yet become as we negotiate change with imagination and integrity.[xvi] Christianity Today suggests that “while the Emergent ‘conversation’ gets a lot of press for its appeal to the young, the new Reformed movement may be a larger and more pervasive phenomenon. It certainly has a much stronger institutional base.”[xvii] Unfortunately, they weren’t speaking of my denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, but of John Piper and his ilk. Still, we are probably shyer than we need to be. People are looking for deeper historical roots in this world of homeless identities, roots that reach back to Augustine through Calvin, and rest firmly on the Bible—not just as isolated texts, but as a whole story about God’s work of creation and redemption.

We need to unlearn some things that came as baggage with modernity, but we can simultaneously re-learn some things that we have forgotten in our cult of the new and improved. This is why tracing roots is not only vitally important, but a gift. Bound to others in time and space, we surrender to something greater than ourselves.

I want to yet argue that campus ministries and church plants can function very much like “emerging churches”, but alas, that is another chapter. The cultural, ecclesiastical and theological experimentation that goes on in these settings is good fodder for the broader church. As culture shifts, we need to take risks, listen to each other, and follow where the Spirit is leading. As a rooted tradition with a strong identity in God’s emerging kingdom, we are uniquely positioned to launch ourselves into the future with some degree of confidence. New branches and bright blossoms are signs of life.

Endnotes

[i] Gibbs and Bolger offer this definition from their social study of the movement: “Emerging churches are communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures.” Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. Baker Academic, 2005, p. 44. Some examples of emerging churches are Rob Bell’s Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Tim Keel’s Jacob’s Well in Kansas City, Doug Pagitt’s Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, Brian McLaren’s Cedar Ridge Community Church in Washington, D.C., and Spencer Burke, founder of www.theooze.com website. There are also emergent-type communities in Canada, U.K., and Australia.

[ii] Brian McLaren. Reinventing Your Church (re-published as The Church on the Other Side). Zondervan, 1998, p. 13. His trilogy beginning with A New Kind of Christian (Jossey-Bass, 2001) is what vaulted him into the public eye. A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004) is his most revealing and theological work (although dancing all over the theological map).

[iii] Dan Kimball. The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations. Zondervan, 2003. Kimball suggests measuring ministry by the quality of the disciples and not the numbers or “coolness” of the church. He embraces Tolkein’s poem, trusting that “Not all who wander are lost.” Leonard Sweet, in Postmodern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for the 21^st Century World. (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2000) suggests the new mindset is EPIC, meaning experiential, participatory, image-driven, and connected. See also Doug Pagitt Reimagining Spiritual Formation: A Week in the Life of an Experimental Church Zondervan, 2004.

[iv] Andy Crouch. “The Emergent Mystique,” Christianity Today, Nov. 1, 2004. Crouch also has a great chapter in Leonard Sweet, ed. The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives. (Zondervan, 2003). This book, if any, provides a robust dialogue around the emerging church experiment, with opinions ranging from conservative Reformed to Eastern Orthodox.

[v] As McLaren says, “count conversations, not conversions” A New Kind of Christian, p. 109. Tim Keel of Jacob’s Well says the urge to define “in” and “out” groups is “bounded-set thinking.” He advocates “center-set thinking” in which “Jesus is the center of a circle whose edges are fuzzy.” From Jason Byassee “Emerging Model: A Visit to Jacob’s Well,” Christian Century, September 19, 2006, p. 23.

[vi] Rob Bell of Grand Rapids’ Mars Hill is a good example of this. His popular book Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Zondervan, 2005) celebrates questioning, mystery, and a “God [that is] bigger than any religion.” (27) “Central to the Christian experience,” he says, “is the art of questioning God.” (31)

[vii] Peter Rollins. How (Not) to Speak of God. Paraclete, 2006, p. 26. This book is a mix of Derrida and Meister Eckhart.

[viii] Ray S. Anderson. An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches. (IVP, 2006). “The church must be prepared to lose its identity as an institution and find it again in the Spirit-filled community.” p. 92. It must be “a community driven by a sense of mission to the world in order to avoid becoming a community seeking to gratify its own self-interest at the expense of the world.” p. 179.

[ix] The most comprehensive critique comes from D. A. Carson. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications. (Zondervan, 2005). Carson claims that emergent leaders duck “the truth question” but James K. Smith suggests Carson is still clinging to modern notions of objectivity. An even more modern critique comes from R. Scott Smith in Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effects of Postmodernism in the Church. (Crossway, 2005). While many of their other critiques are noteworthy, when it comes to notions of truth, I recommend James K. Smith’s The Fall of Interpretation (IVP, 2000) for a Reformed, creation-based hermeneutic that takes us beyond modernism..

[x] While I empathize with much of this movement my mind sometimes wanders to H. Richard Niebuhr’s summary of liberalism: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of Christ without a cross.” The Kingdom of God in America, 1959, p. 193. I appreciate the urge to cover over some of the furniture of the Bible in order to make it more appealing to a certain audience, but that is not “vintage” gospel. Eg. McLaren’s edits on substitutionary atonement and hell. The Last Word (Jossey-Bass, 2004). See Hans Boersma Hospitality, Violence and The Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Baker, 2004) for a better strategy with regards to atonement models.

[xi] For example, all the chapters in Spencer Burke and Colleen Pepper’s Making Sense of Church: Eavesdropping on Emergent Conversations about God, Community, and Culture (Zondervan, 2003) are set up this way as is Mark Brouwer’s review “The Emerging Church” The Banner, June 2006, p. 36-38. While as a heuristic the polarities can be helpful, much of the literature sets up false choices or manipulative antitheses that restrict the imagination with regards to what the church can be.

[xii] Although about New Age religion rather than the emerging church per se, the neo-Marxist critique of “contemporary spirituality” in Jeremy Carrette and Richard King’s $elling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion (Routledge, 2005) rings with some legitimate comparison. “Consumerist spiritualities,” they say, “are generally ‘postmodern’ in orientation, with an emphasis on eclecticism, individualist experimentation and a ‘pick and mix’ approach to religious traditions.” This reflects “the concerns of the modern, ‘liberated’ individual to free themselves from the traditional constraints of religion, dogma, and ecclesiastical forms of thought-control.” (19, 27) McLaren’s sub-title in Generous Orthodoxy is revealing in this context: Why I am a missional + evangelical +post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poet + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/Calvinist + Anabaptist/Anglican + Methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-but-hopeful + emergent +unfinished Christian. Postmodern life is best equated with rabid consumerism.

[xiii] This critique comes in part from James K. Smith, who insists that the emerging church is not postmodern enough. He means a postmodernism beyond the autonomous consuming self. Smith maintains that “the most powerful way to reach a postmodern world is by recovering tradition. The most effective means of discipleship is found in liturgy.” Whose Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church. Baker, 2006, p. 25. D. A. Carson in Becoming Conversant puts it this way: “as long as you can pick and choose from something as vast as the great Tradition, you are really not bound by the disciplines of any tradition. While thinking yourself most virtuous, your choices become most idiosyncratic” (141). In effect, your “tradition” becomes a set of your own consumer preferences.

[xiv] Brian McLaren Generous Orthodoxy, Zondervan, 2004, p. 111.

[xv] Bolt, John. “An Emerging Critique of the Postmodern, Evangelical Church: A Review Essay,” Calvin Theological Journal, 2006, 205-221.

[xvi] Some call this future “post-evangelicalism.” One emerging leader loves Rudolph Bahro’s quote: “When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.” Dave Tomlinson. The Post-Evangelical. North American version ed. by John Suk, Zondervan, 2003, p. 139.

[xvii] Colin Hansen. “Young, Restless and Reformed: Calvinism is making a Comeback—and Shaking Up the Church.” Christianity Today, September 2006, p. 32f.

Copyright © Peter Schuurman 2007
This article was originally published in Christian Courier, March 16, 2007. Reprinted with permission. Any other reprinting of this article must have prior permission from editor@christiancourier.ca .