Emergent Christianity

"What are you guys doing?"
Had someone from my Canadian home church ask what was up with the "more decentralized ... church model stuff" we've been living in for the last several years. How should I articulate what we're about to people who would probably only see a methodology if they were to look at or visit us? It's simple, yet tricky, because although what we do is different, it's not "about" a method or a model. People learn about our organization, our methods, or our church model thinking that will tell them what we're about. But the number of planned meetings, the size, the deliberate networking, etc., is all very much peripheral to what we're about, even though those things are the most immediately apparent identifying characteristics.

We are trying to authentically and fully embrace, enter into, and share life with each other with God. We are trying to offer ourselves to God (as individuals and as sisters and brothers together) as malleable as possible so that we can grow more fully into the life that our Creator invites us into. We are trying to allow God to form us into the people we are created to become so that we may live more fully with our Creator in the most abundant life possible, for which we are created. This all boils down to one thing: pursuing God together.

Although we did not know it at the time, we've ended up in what can be identified as a missional community that is part of the Emergent church conversation and experience.

Websites with stuff re: Missional/Emergent church worth reading:
Allelon: Living the Story, Embodying the Kingdom
Emergent Village
Short Article: "Just Who Is Emergent, Anyway?"

There is a foundational shift in the way people are understanding what it means to be followers of Christ, to be people living with God through Christ together in the power of the Spirit. When those understandings change, what we do also begins to change to better express our understandings of who, what, why, and Whose we are. What we're doing is part of a growing phenomenon of Christians re-examining very basic understandings and assumptions of what it means to be and live as God’s people in the world - but think of it as "conversations" rather than a "movement."

Most recently, this happened in the UK about 30 years ago when Christians experienced the death of Christendom: churches became museums and Christians were left with a major identity crisis and few meaningful ways to express their faith. North America is now experiencing its own version of a similar phenomenon right on schedule, about one generation (Canada) or two (the U.S.) behind Western Europe. This is mostly old news to many Christians in Vancouver, Toronto, and the "blue states" of the USA. Many in the “Bible Belt” still don’t see what all the fuss is about, but they will.

Emergent Christianity: the Negative Reaction of Malcontents?
It is becoming embarrassingly obvious that much of Christianity as we know it, experience it, and express it, is fast becoming increasingly irrelevant to the world and the churched. It's one thing to appear irrelevant to the world: that might mean that as God's people need to better articulate ourselves (verbally and non-verbally). It's another thing when the sincere pursuit of God and Kingdom life becomes stymied by the very institutions, practices, and teachings that are intended to facilitate genuine life with God through Christ. Which group of people did Jesus reserve His harshest rebukes for? The acute disconnect many Christians are experiencing between "real life" and their church/religious/Christian experience is reaching an intolerable threshold and provoking a fundamental re-examining of our basic understandings regarding who we are and what our purpose is.

Some attempt to do this in a negative reaction to whatever church tradition they grew up in. Guys who grew up in pop Evangelical or fundamentalist/legalistic churches get disillusioned and see it all as shallow, compromised, flaky, fake, and fearful (esp. if they're in their first year of seminary). Sometimes they'll turn to more liturgical or historical Christian traditions (Anglican/Episcopal, Catholic, Orthodox, mainline churches) – I have peers pursing each one of these. (Let's not forget that people are flowing out of those traditions, too, and faster than Evangelical malcontents can replace them.) Some get bitter and judgemental and ditch church altogether – I have friends (ministry students!) doing this as well. Others look to forms of Christianity that are "on the edge," and when asked, "Why are you getting into Missional/Emergent/organic church stuff?" their answer is often, "Because traditional church sucks/is dead/is full of hypocrites," etc. Basically: our stuff is right because their stuff is wrong. That's a poor reason to pursue anything. If something is worth pursuing, it should be so because of its own merits, not the lack of merit in something else.

Personally, I think these malcontent scenarios are often (not always) caused by failure on the part of disillusioned 20-somethings to recognize a regular stage of personal growth. Rather than finding something on which to blame the discomfort we feel during transitional stages in life (like the ones where we learn to own our own faith), we should look first to our many "planks" (to commandeer one of Christ's metaphors for my own purposes). Judgemental condemnation, regardless of its degree of accuracy, is a poor response, in my opinion. To echo one popular ACU professor, when we bring critique of the church we must do so as "loyal opposition" with "tears in our eyes" - there must be no question that love is the motive delivering these hard truths.

Emergent Christianity as a Positive Pursuit of God
Given the times in which we live, our faith journeys will likely expand beyond the borders of whichever denominational heritage nurtured us in spiritual infancy. No one Christian tradition, no matter how old it claims to be, has cornered the market on facilitating life together with God. But that particular heritage in which we were re-born (whatever it may be) should not become the scape-goat we use to avoid owning up to our own spiritual immaturity and experiencing the spiritual crucible. Ditching one tradition simply to adopt another is ultimately futile. An equal-enough degree of frustration with the new heritage will only be avoided through ignorance. I tried it once. We ought not to cut ties with our denominational roots; rather we should expand the diversity of our personal Christian territory.

When we choose change, or rather, choose to grow, it should be for the goodness of that which we pursue, not primarily for the lack of badness that we are trying to leave behind. I believe I can honestly say that pursuit of God and genuine life with Him led me to re-ask basic questions about the nature and purpose of God’s people and God's Kingdom. My current pursuit and experience of life with God in His family can be categorized as emergent because what I have found to be the best means of facilitating the pursuit of God in community happens to fit what is being called emergent. I didn't choose the emergent bandwagon because I'm cheesed off at more traditional expressions of Christianity or because I think it's "better than" something else. Our approach to life with God can accurately be called emergent, but we pursue God in that way because it is the best way we know to pursue God – we would live this life at this time regardless of the state of traditional or emergent Christian practice.

We were looking for a community in which our allegiance to and pursuit of God through Christ together could take priority over our allegiance to pretty much anything else. We found the willing, and our journey continued.

What we do (methods, organization, etc.) is now determined according to what best facilitates our growth toward who we understand we are supposed to be in Christ and the purposes for which God redeems, grows, and interacts with us. The perceived failings of traditional Christianity don't really factor in. We are not promoting one “way” to do things – the specifics of what is best to do will change somewhat with the context. We are basically attempting to rediscover “the plot” of the Big Story into which God is inviting us, and in that rediscover our identity and role in that Story: redemption and life with God in His Kingdom, through Christ, empowered by the Spirit. The point is the pursuit of and life with God through Christ in the Spirit together. The nature, intentions, and activity of God determines the nature, activity, and intentions of the community.

For Church of Christ folks, MissionAlive.org and TheTruthTree.org/MetroSoul are good CoC examples of attempts to put this stuff in action in North America.

What we’re doing with our ‘simple/organic church networks’ in Abilene (oh how we long for decent terminology! =) is missional and unavoidably part of what is being described as the Emergent church (the wide variety of 'new' missional expressions of Christianity and Christian life) – or at least, we're travelling that path. I should note that most of the people in our network aren't aware of this, nor would they care to know. They are just sharing life together with God the way they most faithfully know how – and that’s how I think it should be. Those of us with seminary training don’t teach about ‘missional’ or ‘emergent’ explicitly in our churches. It’s about living with God together and engaging Life with Him... not perpetuating a ‘movement.’ You’ll see in emergent church discussion that it is often described as the emergent church “conversation” and rarely as a “movement” – there is a serious effort not to lose the Plot and get sidetracked from the original purpose of all this: authentically living into life together with God as His people.

Among the variety of missional, emergent church expressions, we are a form of “simple church” or “organic church” or “house church networks.” Emergent/missional attempts can manifest themselves very differently, from the more radical (varieties of communal living arrangements) to the less methodologically experimental (traditional church structures with a major change of heart). But the form or model is not what is most important here. Models are tools, subject to constant revision. It's the 'why' that is most important:
…because we are trying to give our allegiance to God through Christ above all other allegiances;
…because we are trying to enter more fully the life into which God invites us;
…because we desire to live together with God as we are intended to live;
…because we desire to become the people we are created and intended by God to become;
…because we desire to live with our Creator in His life and mission…

…ultimately, because God.