When people ask me what the 'emerging church' is, one of the resources I point them to is the book Emerging Churches
by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger. In a recent email conversation I summarised the 9 common characteristics they find in emerging churches, and a number of people seemed to find my summary helpful so I thought I'd put it up here for reference.
The Cliff Notes version is this: they identify nine characteristics of emerging churchs:
- they tend to identify heavily with the life and teaching of Jesus as much as his death and resurrection - a 'kingdom' emphasis if you will;
- they tend to break down the secular/sacred dualism thus being generally far more optimistic about culture (seeing God at work in it) and identifying with the concept of the church joining with God the Missio Dei, rather than the Church being the sole (or main) instrument of God's work. They are also thus warm towards a sacramentalist approach.
- they tend to emphasise the importance of community; and value family over institution.
- they tend to value hospitality, generosity to the stranger, inclusiveness.
- they tend to value service to others and to see that such service should be generous and transparent (without ulterior motivation).
- they tend to emphasise full participation with God in the redemption of the world and hence worship tends to be multi-sensory, all-age, participatory, dialogical, holistic, etc.
- related to this, there is a strong emphasis on creativity (participating with my gifts) and aesthetics.
- leadership tends to be seen as relational, corporate, vulnerable, influential (rather than authoritarian), passionate (rather than rationally driven), facilitative.
- there is a strong interest in learning from, and incorporating into life and worship, the 'best' of ancient thinking but more particularly *practice*, especially practices of spirituality (some refer to an emergence of a 'new monasticism').
In Australia (as no doubt elsewhere) that film, The Da Vinci Code, is stirring up a hornet's nest. The Sydney Anglican Diocese has funded $50,000 worth of ads to show in cinemas and a website, Challenging Da Vinci. Clearly there is interest in the person of Jesus, but the real question for me is do we take the negative approach of debunking the movie (and book), or can we actually connect positively? In the article above, the Uniting Church President, Rev. Dr. Dean Drayton is quoted as saying that popular culture was an 'important avenue from which Australians may start to search for answers to the deeply spiritual questions they continue to ask today.' This is good.
But even better are the comments of Brian McLaren on SojoMail, where he says,
'For all the flaws of Brown's book, I think what he's doing is suggesting that the dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And I think people have a sense that that's true. ... I also think that the whole issue of male domination is huge and that Brown's suggestion that the real Jesus was not as misogynist or anti-woman as the Christian religion often has been is very attractive. Brown's book is about exposing hypocrisy and cover-up in organized religion, and it is exposing organized religion's grasping for power. Again, there's something in that that people resonate with in the age of pedophilia scandals, televangelists, and religious political alliances. As a follower of Jesus I resonate with their concerns as well.'
I think that my own response might be to see if I can organise a discussion event entitled 'The Scandalous Life and Words of Jesus' noting that just like Dan Brown, Jesus was someone who regularly aired concerns about the church and was at his most critical when addressing religious hypocrisy.
For the past couple of weeks there have been two stories dominating the Australian news media. The first is the plight of some miners trapped in a mine collapse, the long and arduous task of rescuing the two survivors (one died), and their eventual release yesterday. The second story concerns a little girl who was very badly burned some years back when a car ran into her pre-school - after a miraculous and much publicised recovery over the past few years, she was last week, again hit by a car while being pushed across a pedestrian crossing in her stroller and is now in critical but stable condition in hospital.
In church last Sunday, at my prompting, we prayed for the trapped miners as well as the family of the dead miner, and for little Sophie and her family as well. Yet even while asking people to pray for these situations, there was a nagging thought within me that wondered why we focus on certain people or situations which seem somehow newsworthy or attractive, while often ignoring the many other equally needy people or situations.
In the end I guess I decided that it's ok to focus on someone in particular, provided that they act as a symbol for all the others in need who don't get publicity. It's ok to pray for the current media cause célèbre, provided this leads you also to praying for all those who have not been highlighted by the media but nevertheless need the special hand of God in their lives too.
HT to an old colleague, Fernando Gros, for pointing to an interesting discussion on emergent-us and ThinkTank about the place of creeds (or otherwise) in the emergent church.
It's a big topic (as some of the comments and Track-Backs on the two sites demonstrate), but my own top-of-the-head response is that the distinction related to the functions of creeds is important. One of the strong emphases of emerging church is relationship and I wonder whether the reality is that the proper functioning of creeds is to guide us in relationship - with God and with our co–religionists. That being said, the question then becomes whether a (theoretical emergent) creed or statement of belief is likely to lead to a deeper or richer relationship with God or with our fellow travellers on the emerging journey.
Of course these things always come down to a judgement call, but my own sense is that for many emerging church people who have been shaped (or perhaps mis-shaped!) by a programmatic and propositional approach to relationship with God, a more apophatic or agnostic approach actually enables a new appreciation for God and a new richness of possibilities in the relationship.
Similarly, my instinct is that our current situation is much less shaped by a previous sense of Christian isolation - the so called 'fortress mentality' - in which a statement of shared belief acts as a cohesive force within a group which sees itself as in some senses 'against' the outside world. Instead the kind of cultural optimism, and sense of the Misseo Dei as being much wider than the work of the Church, which characterises much emergent thinking is (IMO) much more likely to find nurture and sustenance in approaches which are always open to new ways of finding / considering / imaging the divine, even if they are not entirely consonant with the language of many Christian creeds, be they 'modern' or 'catholic'.
What then of the question of the emerging church's catholic tendencies? I guess I want to have my cake and eat it too, by saying that while we deliberately identify ourselves with the faith community which has derived coherence from the ecumenical creeds, we can continue to say that we do not regard adherence to those creeds as a necessary self-descriptor.
But then again, I may be talking nonsense - it often happens before my first coffee. :-)
I regularly listen to podcasts of my favourite ABC programs: Late Night Live, The Religion Report, The Spirit of Things, The Science Show, All in the Mind etc. Yesterday there was an interesting Religion Report show entitled Catholics and Condoms. The first interviewee was Dr Janet E. Smith, who holds the Fr. Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. Dr Smith perpetrated the most illogical (and to my mind, morally bankrupt) argument I have heard in a long time. But first to a runner–up argument, also from Dr Smith: in defending the Catholic church's stance on the use of condoms, she made the comment that serious theologians were currently discussing whether the use of condoms was immoral, not because of their contraceptive effect but because the “unitive” act of intercourse was invalid because it was skin touching latex, rather than skin touching skin! Now I don't know about any of you but even when wearing a condom, I find it hard to have sex without a whole lot of touching going on. The image sprang to mind of 'serious Vatican theologians' careful studying a couple mid-coitus in order to ascertain what percentage of skin to skin contact there was or perhaps to determine whether the right bits were making any 'unitive' contact. My God! No wonder the vast majority of the community see us (Christians) as irrelevant.
Now with this comment I could have relaxed, my monthly quota of pseudo-academic inanity well and truly satified, but no... there was better to come! Dr Smith in full flight is a force to behold and her next foray concerned the specific case of married couples where one partner has aids, and (as the interviewer pointed out) in some cultures it is almost impossible for the wife to say no to the demand for intercourse with her husband (let alone the New Testament teaching that regular witholding is a moral evil). Dr Smith's tactic was masterful! Why (she asked) do we worry so much about condoms? Let us consider an analogy. If we had a problem with a bunch of men who went around beating women with sticks, why would we spend our time recommending that the women wear helmets? Wouldn't it be better to spend our time and energy stopping the men from doing it?
<Deep Sigh> Now here is the most perfect example imaginable of what Basil Mitchell (Nolloth Professor Emiritus of Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Oxford) calls “playing Theological Ping Pong”. Set up two options (ping and pong - telling women to wear helmets, stopping men beating them with sticks); imply without supporting argument that the two are mutually exclusive (which clearly they aren't), and then triumphantly declare that since it clearly isn't ping it must be pong! Let us dwell in Dr Smith's analogy for just a minute. Clearly it isn't right to ignore the reprehensible behaviour of the men. But nor is it right to ignore the actual plight of the women by insisting that it is morally wrong of them to wear helmets till their menfolk change! (Perhaps because it would disrupt the unitive nature of the club hitting her head!?) And part of the educative process with those men might well be empowering the women to say, “I can't stop you hitting me but I can wear a helmet so I won't be knocked out by your behaviour.” The logical paucity of this argument left me grinding my teeth in rage that the interviewer let it go through to the keeper without a blink.
Ok. Rant finished. Return to your normal life. I'm taking deep breaths...
Perhaps it's because of the Sydney setting I know so well (Suzie and I did much of our courting round the forecourts of the Sydney Opera House) but a passage in a recent Brian McLaren post moved me to tears:
We walked down to the “Circular Quay” where the famous Sydney Opera House is situated. Across from the Opera House is a district called “The Rocks” - full of shops, sidewalk booths, etc. It was a perfect summer day, beautiful breeze, blue sky, sailboats filling the bay behind us. A jazz group was playing on a stage in a courtyard, and we got something to eat and enjoyed their music. A middle-aged couple got up and started dancing - they were amazing! Then an old lady got up, then an old man, and soon there were half-a-dozen people spontaneously dancing to this beautiful music - blues, swing, etc.
Near the stage, I noticed a five or six year old boy who appeared mentally handicapped. He was absolutely entranced with the music. He put up a fist to his mouth as if it were a trumpet and pretended to play it with his other hand. Soon, without realizing it, he had moved out beside the stage. His eyes were closed and he was playing his heart out on his imaginary trumpet. The sax player noticed this, and the hopped off the stage and stood beside the young guy. When he opened his eyes, the sax player started dancing around as he played and the little boy followed his lead. Then the trumpet player saw them, and he came down. The little boy in between the two musicians ... “playing” and dancing in an obvious state of ecstasy - the audience started applauding and I know my eyes were overflowing with tears to see something so beautiful and spontaneous and glorious.
Then I looked back to where the boy had been, and his grandfather was standing there in obvious delight to see his grandson so happy. I leaned over to Grace and whispered, “It's a glimpse of the kingdom of God.”
A story like that makes me yearn for the coming of the Kingdom - not “pie in the sky when we die by and by” - but “your will be done on earth as in heaven”. Amen.
Heard an interesting quote on the radio today. A fellow loosely quoted John Calvin as saying “If we were made of the stuff of stars, we might have something of worth, but actually we are not made of the stuff of stars - we are made of mud. And we have not just mud in our shoes, mud on our clothes, and mud on our faces, but mud in our hearts and mud in our souls.”
Of course the irony is that any cosmologist will tell you that actually we *are* made of the stuff of stars. The carbon we are made of (and the mud too for that matter!) is made from elements which can only be born in the heart of stars and shot out to the cosmos when they die in spectacular supernovae.
This got me thinking: is it only that we need a new metaphor, to bring Calvin up-to-date scientifically? Or is it perhaps time for a new and more optimistic theological anthropology - one which moves beyond an obsession with sin and guilt, and rejoices in our status as children of the stars?
My friend Niall recently wrote about critical realism as an alternative to postmodernism. This seems to have been triggered by a concern that post-modernism was a philosophically incoherent mish-mash and not well thought of in academic circles. But I'm not too sure that the disdain of philosophers is relevant to the use of post-modernism as an identifier. You see my own take is that post-modernism is a cultural phenomenon more than it is a philosophical. Post-modernism refers primarily (ISTM) to the cultural shift which is simply responding to what started happening in philosophy as far back as Kant.
So if you want to call yourself post-modern, do so and academics be damned!
My own denomination, the Uniting Church in Australia, got rid of the language of 'parish' some years back. And generally the term parish is seen as related to the outdated “Christendom model” which saw everyone as Christians and hence as members of the parish (of the established religion).
So I was somewhat surprised the other day to be listening to an 'emergent' sort of podcast (Conversatio fidei - you can pick it up here: http://conversatio.blogspot.com/) and hear one of the speakers refer to wanting to regain something of the parish sense!
This surprising thought made sense on reflection, within the emergent context. You see many 'emergent' people and groups break down the identification sometimes found in the church of “The Kingdom of God” and “The Church”. Emergent people/groups tend to see a much broader picture of God's work within the world and a greater sense that all people are on a spiritual journey - not just an elite (read Christian) few. So the sense is that a particular local church's mission is to be a cheerleader, enabler, chaplain, encourager to what God is doing within its own local community - and a recogniser and encourager of the ways in which God is working in each person in that community. Hence the renewed sense of “parish” - that this area (all of it) and the people within it (all of them) are those for whom we are called to care, chaplain, shepherd etc in their spiritual journeys and in their doing (however patchy) of the work of the Kingdom.
Interesting...
One of the things which I've always struggled about concerning baptism is the way in which it can be seen as a means of God's grace. In what way has a baby who is baptised been graced compared to a baby who hasn't been baptised? If they both suddenly die, is their status before God different? Is that fair? What of the many baptised babies who never seem to connect further with the Christian faith? Did God's grace not work for them?
Then this evening I had a thought. WHat if God's grace through baptism is not for the baptised, but for the world? What if baptism makes the baptised person a sign (technical meaning) of God's grace to the world? In Genesis 12:1-3, Abraham is given God's blessing - but that blessing is instrumental - Abraham is blessed in order to be a blessing to others - not so that he can be part of a nifty club of people God loves. What if baptism works the same way?
In being baptised, the child is both symbolising God's grace for the whole world - his promise to work transformatively in human lives. The child is also acting as a means of that transformative grace - at the least, just by being a living enactment of the gospel to those watching the baptism. But of course for those who go on to live out their baptismal faith they are invited and indeed called to be a means of God's grace to the whole world in every aspect of the living of their lives - that's what being a Christian is all about.
