Interestingly enough, today a very nice religion professor came in to speak to Bill, the founding pastor, about his thoughts on this movement. What ensued was a very enlightening conversation that helped set a lot of my thoughts on this movement in line. I now share some of my thoughts post-that conversation.
I have taken a keen interest in "the emerging church" strictly on the basis of the grounds for conversation, which is: a conversation based on how the Spirit is calling the church to respond to the postmodern culture. A common belief that I tend to resonate with is that the modern institutional church has grown stagnant in many areas, including, losing its prophetic voice to the world, losing the rich creativity and diversity once found in traditional worship, and its openness to be constantly transformed by the Spirit...to name a few. I have heard it described as a means to balance the aims of the "contemporary church" movement with the roots of the "traditional church" founding. So this is where the conversation starts.
If you haven't clicked the link to the wikipedia article above, please do so. Understand it? I can't either! Just notice how many references there are!
Therein lies the problem and beauty with this conversation. The problem is that many many pastors, authors, seminary students, and others have used this conversation as a chance to become experts on the "new thing." There are a lot of egos out there writing on this subject and telling people how they can create an "emerging church." Wait...wasn't this just a de-constructing conversation? Since when did we start constructing again? These writers have taken this in all different directions. Don't get me wrong - there is beauty in this, as I mention. The beauty is that people are openly talking about where they think the Spirit is calling the church. Why aren't we doing this more often? As we carry on with old traditions, we lose sight of new opportunities that arise. We also turn away the people who are looking for a new prophetic word from God or a new way to connect to the needs of the community.
Another issue with this movement is something Bill has often mentioned. The emergent church conversation is an ecclesiological movement (about how we do church) and not a theological movement (what we believe). Now these two are very much related. Of course there is theology to how we do church. However, the point is that we should aim to keep our theological grounding in the reformed tradition. The emergent church conversation aims to re-evaluate these deeply held beliefs to explore new ways of expression that better serve as a response to our postmodern culture.
So back to this whole cringing at the thought of Broad Street being an "emerging church." I'm with them there. There's no need to label ourselves here, especially as something that is meant to be deconstructive of such labels! However, I do believe that Broad Street is faithfully attempting to answer the issues faced by the struggles and stagnancies of the greater church. Please note that I'm not singling out one church, nor am I rejecting my upbringing in the traditional church. But rather, I'm bringing up notions, as mentioned earlier of: losing a prophetic voice to the world, losing a rich creativity and diversity once found in traditional worship, and an openness to be constantly transformed by the Spirit. I recognize Broad Street is in a VERY unique situation, as a young church community with a very high ceiling for experiencing revolutionary experiments in being church. However, this doesn't mean that we can't at least TALK about these things more in the institutional church!
I raise a few questions not to lead any sort of agenda or answer any questions, but rather to encourage dialogue. These are questions that I wrestle with myself.
WHAT defines church? WHAT is the point of having "members"? WHAT defines a successful church? HOW can a church be prophetic? WHO is the church excluding? WHY do we worship the way we do? WHAT could be different?
These kind of questions could dumbfound a session..."WHY would you even ask these things! We've been doing just fine. We're growing in numbers and having very meaningful worship services, what else needs to be done?" Even talking about change is a difficult thing to do sometimes when it calls us to ask questions that aren't always so 'decent' or 'in order'.
Just remember, Jesus asked the hard questions too! It's all about the conversation.
P.S. one final critique about the most popular expressions of the "emergent church" movement that I have often heard and it has really rung true since I've been at Broad Street...have you ever noticed the demographic makeup of who these people are? Hint: I fit the mold perfectly (minus a goatee):
No comments:
Post a Comment