steve has posted his thoughts in response to a question on the tour in london – is the emerging church just a temporary phenomenon of a particular social subgroup [middle class, hip] rather than anything more universally applicable?
as ever steve has some great thoughts. i thought his second point was a particularly interesting one and one that i haven’t heard many times so i’ll quote it here…
2. emerging church is happening in the part of society that questions and generates culture in all fields, not just church. many emerging church people are professional culture-changers bringing their external skills to bear on church. hence the perception that emerging church is ‘hip’ – hip means skill in cultural manipulation. it’s to be expected that the drive for cultural change in the church should come from such people, rather than the parts of society who simply accept the culture they’re given.
that’s why, when you apply the method – when you open up a free space for contributions – you get these people. they’re the ones who want to experiment and change things. they’re the ones who actually want to use such a space, and understand where it might lead.
But isn’t that exzactly what someone from within that sub culture would say
I mean we’d all love to think that we’re leading the way in the world and ahead/better/more aware/more advanced/have an edge than those who aren’t in our little sub
i’m not saying he’s wrong but its possible he’s not and that the emerging church is only relevent to those to whom post-modernism is relevant or just to those who actually give a dam about pomo
Only time will really tell
good come back matt!
The question that most spoke to me at the london blah thingy was whether this was so much window dressing; another fashion accessory for the iLife lifestyle; paperback theological discussions that make us feel a cut above the average pew warmer – OR – is it an actual theological shift, has something changed, has something been discovered or rediscovered that actually has relevance to peoples lives? Well that’s what came out on my table 🙂
I’m working on my answer to that one and i think it’s something that needs to be brought into focus or we are simply adding noise to the torrent that already polutes our minds and souls.
The equally important sub questions that brings are:
1. Does it work?
2. Are lives being changed?
3. Is it good news to people?
4. Is gods kingdom being extended by all this?
Lord, save me from being hip 🙂
Point 2: ‘… the part of society that questions and generates culture’. This is deeply, deeply patronising. In reality everybody shapes culture. Though it’s true to say that certain privileged and metropolitan people do tend to be the ones who shape (privileged and metropolitan) media culture. But that barely connects with the everyday experiences of most other people in the world.
I am interested in Robin’s point, but am left to ponder – is what is going on a discussion about ‘success’ and how that is both measured and managed? Do we still play success by numbers, akin to the Churhc growth movement, or the electoral role of the CofE? Do we create a means test of spirituality? Can you ever discern the discipleship merits of an individual or group? And then where does that leave theological and ecclesiological differences?
If indeed the emerging church is a theological gearshift within Christianity, by what means do we monitor this – rather than remaining individual or networked subgroups of the ichurch generation?
I have no answers to this, yet remain challenged by what may result from this discussion…
“Success” is one of those words that has suffered from multiple meanings depending on your context and appears to be hi-jacked to only apply to material, positional and measurably things – so much so that it becomes a negative to avoid.
However, my heart is to have a successful relationship with god. I want to succeed in getting to know him better. I want the good news about the kingdom of god to be heard by more and more people and i want to be successful in making a difference to the poverty and hardship i find on my own doorstep. I do want to see a difference – yes – i’m not bothered about measuring it. Hopefully we can emerge beyond such things as lists and numbers.
I don’t believe it’s enough for “Emergent” to be about making individual (stereotype alert!) white middle class disillusioned evangelicals feel better about themselves (although of course this is lovely). Jesus talked about joining him on a quest and changing the world – bringing good news to the poor. This is the key that, to me, is emerging.
People bear fruit – you don’t need a spirituality yard stick – you just need to be in relationship with them, and if we can grasp the love of god and love each other then our theological differences don’t really matter – it’s a shift from “i’m right” to “wow these people are really hurting how can i love them more?”. Time spent arguing our distinctives is time lost serving each other. It’s late and i’m starting to babble 🙂
Interesting idea, heard it kicked around a few times over the past decade. If it *is* true, then the EC is the church of the creative class, which means it is the church of the people who work in advertising, film, new media, art, architecture, etc. Not just people who are into that stuff and think it is cool, the people who are actually doing it. By extension, the people who work in the global cities, live in the global cities, commute globally, etc.
Is this true? I don’t know, you tell me. I suspect the EC is partly that, but also in parts a lot more mainstream and embedded in the consumer culture, rather than just creating it.
This is primarily an issue of class – in years gone by the Victorian gentlemen would ride out for the hunt, the ladies would sit and knit – the people of a certain class had time to do this stuff – everyone else was just to busy trying to survive. I’m not even sure some people have the energy if they get to church at all to ask the question, “does this connect with me?”, “how would I do Church differently if I was in charge” – EC is undoubtably a sub-group, and is in danger of disappearing up it’s own backside – there are similarities with mega church in that EC thinks it is more important to the church catholic than it actually is.
It amuses me when people talk about ‘The Emerging Church’ as if it was a body similar to the Evangelical Alliance with a statement of beliefs that everyone signs up to, to prove their uniformity and conformity. Surely the whole point of Ryan’s book is that there is a huge diversity of stuff happening under the banner of emerging church but that there are some common pratices that can help us understand what’s going on and why. Both Ali and Steve’s comments about class and culture makers may be true of some sections of the emerging church, but I don’t know that they accurately reflect the majority of what’s happening. It seems to me that there are lots of ordinary people working hard to connect their faith to the culture around them and to advance the kingdom of God who will never write books about it but just get on with it. They don’t deserve your disparaging remark, Ali, and I wonder why you felt the need to make it.
I think that the danger for the church as a whole at the moment is that it is easier to make stylistic changes than to follow the most basic teachings of Jesus. Way back int the 80’s David Watson said “Christians in the West, have largely neglected what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ . The vast majority of Western Christians are church-members, pew-fillers, hymn-singers, sermon-tasters, Bible-readers, even born-again believers or Spirit-filled Charismatics – and we have got some those here this morning – but aren’t true disciples of Jesus Christ” I think his words are just as true today unfortunately – this is not meant as an attack on any particular branch of the church more as a challenge to us all let’s be disciples of Jesus first and formost and emergent/evangelical/anglican/etc… a distant second!
“The scandal of the church is that the Christ-event is no longer life- changing, it has become life- enhancing. We’ve lost the power and joy that makes real disciples, and we’ve become consumers of religion and not disciples of Jesus Christ.”
John Sentamu (Archbishop of York)
I was looking for this quote earlier it just sums up my earleir post.
I do think that there is the possibility that the emergent movement does have it’s head up it’s own ass. That there is a tendency to overblow our self importance. I can’t see any of us guys working for the SUN or The News of The World, important culture shapers. Middle class people debating middle class issues that the masses really don’t care about.
Maybe I could have been more tactful. I know many people who are out there doing the stuff and engaging within culture – and it’s their culture, they haven’t gone as missionaries, they live there. They aren’t famous, some of the don’t have computers, they don’t use multi media . . . and a lot of what they do wouldn’t strike people as emerging – i.e. the anglo catholic priest who leads “canoe holidays”; the single mum who checks her emails at most once a month and leads some great outreach work among the kids on her estate – doing church with them, and it’s emerging . . . I don’t know if the kids she works with will EVER go to “church”.
There is a danger that we take ourselves too seriously, I count myself as one of those who is exploring “emergent” so I am being disparaging about myself, Jen!
There is an “emerging” market, and all I was trying to say was it’s getting a bit crowded with people falling over each other to comment or write stuff. An exponent of “Emerging” would be Brian McLaren . . but does he have to use a gnostic sounding title (which also sounds a bit pretentious) in his latest book, “The secret message of Jesus”, we have intelligent church, messy church, fresh expressions of church – I’m worried that we are more interesed in “branding” than just making a difference.
As someone who is ‘in’ neither the mainstream/institutional Church nor any of the many varieties and versions of emerging Church, I find this type of conversation very interesting. I’m fascinated by the amount of times I hear Christian projects, agencies or even ideas described as pioneering, innovative, ground-breaking etc. Steve does mention culture changers on his blog but goes on to relate this to humility and that it cannot be known whether what people are doing will have any long-term significance or not. This should always be bourn in mind when reflecting on ones own work and life.
Although entirely unscientific I decided to ask 20 people in U.K. and another 20 in the USA (all of whom I knew + over half of whom would define themselves as Christian) whether they knew anything of the emerging Church. 2 said they had. I also had a short discussion about some of the principles that many emerging Churches are based around e.g. inclusiveness, renewing leadership, powersharing etc. and no more than 5 of the people were willing to say that they saw these principles existing in the Churches that they knew.
I most certainly do not want to discourage people from undertaking the path they have chosen – in fact I would strongly encourage people to keep going – but people should not get ahead of themselves. I totally agree with Ali that “There is an “emerging” market” and I would suggest that this ‘market’ has not yet had the cultural impact that some seem to think.