A challenge to the Church, Emerging or otherwise...

Rick - The Blind Beggar has issued a challenge to the Emerging Church Movement and de facto to the whole Church.  IMHO he has grasped a very significant nettle... that being said I don't fully agree with every statement he makes on the site, but... his call is to reflect on just what makes a community Missional, just what it means to live a Missional lifestyle and for the Emerging Church to abandon being post-anything and take up the challenge of being engaged fully with the missio Dei... 

Since the Jesus Movement of the late 60's and 70's, there has been a budding movement within the people of God towards an incarnate lifestyle that actively engages with the culture. Not "of the world," but the incarnation of Jesus "in the world." This movement seems to have accelerated in recent years with the rapidly changing cultural context of America and the increased marginalization of the traditional church.

Of late this movement has been manifest in what is commonly called the emerging church movement (ECM). The ECM has become a diverse and varied assembly covering a considerable spectrum on ideas, experimentation, opinion and belief. Often it appears that ideas within the ECM conversation seem to be developed more from negative personal experiences with and weaknesses in the traditional church than from any solid study of Gods revealed word. This results in the ECM often just being a rearrangement of dissatisfied Christians into a "post-modern-sensitive" church.

I'm not opposed to and support the ECM, but unless it becomes missional, it will not answer to concerns, problems, issues and decay we see in so many churches. It will have only a marginal impact on lostness, hardly a better situation than the current "church" so many in the ECM have left behind.

A return to being God's missional people is the better path in our post-Christian times for the emergent and traditional church.

I have to agree with the last two paragraphs particularly, I love the ECM; I love the way it challenges the modern colonisation of the gospel, I love the way it pushes creative boundaries, I love the way it seeks integrity and authenticity at every level, I love the way it refuses to grab labels and rejects the labels imposed from 'outside', I love the way it tries to engage every sense and every human response in worship (brain, emotions, imagination etc.)  I love the way it is exploring just what the hell it means to be community, I love the way it embrace deconstruction as a stripping away of baggage gained throughout history... etc. etc.  BUT I agree with Rick, we must not become just another stylistic consumer option of church, nor must we become so obsessed with building 'My/Our' church - with being a church for post-modern church people, that we engage only with our own needs... we must launch ourselves with abandon into the fields, sweat and bleed with the toil and get our hands blistered and filthy from the Harvest!  For it is RIPE and the workers are few!

Technorati Tags: Blogging: Church: Emerging Church: Mission

Comments

[Marc]

Before we can minister to people, both in the Church and in the World, we must minister to God. (Acts 13:2). Thus, when we as believers put a priority on spending time alone with God and in His Word daily and the person of Jesus becomes more precious to us than anything this World has to offer, then and only then can we be sent by the Holy Spirit and become missional in the sense that Jesus meant it.

Eternal life is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent (jn 17:3). To know Jesus is to know the Word (Jn 1:1)

The push to be "culturally contextual" by the ECM often at the expense of the full counsul of God is a frightening thing. Right now, IMHO, the "Church" in America is so culturally sensitive, that the World sees little or no difference between itself and the Church.

"To the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet". If the World (and the seekers of God in our congregations) do not see the doctrine of "Christ in us, the hope of Glory", then they will follow after "doctrines of demons and decitful spirits". (1Tim 4:1)

"Without Holiness, no man will see the Lord". Without holiness in the body of Christ, the World will not see the Lord in us and will go looking elsewhere for truth instead of the obvious hypocrisy they see in the "Church".

Prayer stations in services won't do it.
Prayer icons won't do it.
Watered down doctrine won't do it.

Jesus said, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me."

They MUST see Jesus in us.

This will only happen when we start giving substantial time sitting at the feet of Jesus and hearing His Word.

By His Grace,

Marc

[Mark Berry]

Marc,
Thanks for this... I completely agree with the bulk of this (especially with the final paragraphs) I guess the only thing I would not go 100% with is that I don't see it as an either/or... For me 'sitting at the feet of Christ' is not a static thing, nor does Christ reside only in Churches... so to fully engage with Christ and indeed with the Trinity we must step out of the safety of the boat onto the waves... to go with and to Christ... We often talk of Mission Spirituality... as Paul talks about in 1 Thessalonians 2, a transparent, lived out spirituality. I wish we wouldn't construct false dualisms between sacred and secular... Mission and Holiness are intrinsically tied. Can we be truly Holy if we do not take up God's call (Paul says in Galatians, that as soon as he was called he went... my belief is that we are all called to be salt AND light... now! Not in some future time when we are sorted and following some specific calling, there is more than enough calling in scripture!) but now in our vulnerability and weakness. Yes, it is risky but that is eaxctly what Christ promised/warned in Luke 10!

We must make time to sit at the feet of God, it must be an intrinsic part of our Journey, indeed a lot of ECs are exploring the place of rhythmn and rule in spiritual community.

I wonder whether Church and 'World' are seen as the same thing because a) you still have a Christendom focussed Church in the US (and a cultural religion!) b) the church has spent way too much time buying into cultural values ... consumerism (niche theology/churchmanship), prosperity theology (both in terms of material and spiritual blessing "Bless me God!" etc.), measuring success by 'bums on seats' rather than transforming society etc. etc. not because it is too sensitive to peoples hurts and needs.

I don't know what you mean by "The push to be "culturally contextual" by the ECM often at the expense of the full counsul of God is a frightening thing." in my experience the ECC is desperate to encounter and engage with the Whole Godhead and has been criticised by many for being too focussed on the teachings of Jesus rather than those of Paul??? I fear this kind of comment is one born out of reading articles rather than talking to folk involved in the ECC, most folk I know are seeking to explore and experience the whole of God, many feel the 'modern' church has limited God to what humans can understand (rationalism and cerebrality) losing sight of the immensity and Majesty of a God beyond human understanding...God as the old Hymn says 'Innefably sublime'... and reducing God to the capacity of human intelect.

Yes, indeed it is only the visible Christ in us which is key... His, words, his deeds and his Spirit... and yes it is right that the hypocrisy of the church; the love of money, success, power in contradiction to the teachings of Christ, manipulating the Gospel for the purposes of nationalism, imperialism and colonialism, using the language of love to judge and condemn, becoming the very religous bigots and reductionists that Jesus harangued etc. is a big big problem!

[sean dietrich]

My thoughts exactly.
Keep up the good blogging.
-Sean
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