Emerging Church and Culture
The post title is a little bit deceiving possibly as I am not going to talk about emerging church / culture truly but about how people make it (to me at least) appear bizzare.
Around the local web (I mean local as in I have a bunch of blogs I read based in East Anglia) that have an element of church / christian based content. A lot of these seem for some reason to focus on emerging church.
However more than not I find myself getting completley irritated by most of them because they speak a language, write in a style and present in a manner that I think is probably more alienating generally. Often its not humble and can come across rude. There are exceptions, Paul and Heather for example, where they present in a manner which is less pressing and less covered in a fashion that prevents that alienation. At times I struggle to understand what even they are talking about - however they two of only a handful that generally make emerging church a little more appealing in my eyes. This may also have more to do with that fact I know them and can feel comfortable saying I don't understand.
But I have read so much stuff that assumes arrogance and a forthright attitude that I struggle to understand how any of it can be deemed as Christian in the least. Under the banner at times of church and emerging generation all other stuff I have seen people say that we should not love gay people, we should shoot people that have done something wrong, that people who appear threatening to our culture should be made to conform. All this presented in a banner of emerging church. Anyone who tries to claim this is church or an aspect of church are wrong.
The other thing is the language used. Words tend to be long and complex and probably beyond the understanding of the general person on the street. I understand that at times this is someones journey, and that the words used are their expression on that journey - but does it need to be alienating to others? If emerging church is in the process of deconstructing and reconstructing Christianity to engage with a western society (wikipedia) I wonder if it is really only achieving a self satisification in engaging with the Christian western society.
I am not knocking emerging church - its probably good and have little experience of it - but so far many blogs around me that claim to be poponents of it, more often than not draw me further to a conclusion that for most its a means of self satisfication. I fully understand the need to make church relevant and to de-bore that general attitude there is - and to engage in things the general western society understands. But it needs to be done careful (and reverently) that an emerging generation is not something seperate from the current generation.
Around the local web (I mean local as in I have a bunch of blogs I read based in East Anglia) that have an element of church / christian based content. A lot of these seem for some reason to focus on emerging church.
However more than not I find myself getting completley irritated by most of them because they speak a language, write in a style and present in a manner that I think is probably more alienating generally. Often its not humble and can come across rude. There are exceptions, Paul and Heather for example, where they present in a manner which is less pressing and less covered in a fashion that prevents that alienation. At times I struggle to understand what even they are talking about - however they two of only a handful that generally make emerging church a little more appealing in my eyes. This may also have more to do with that fact I know them and can feel comfortable saying I don't understand.
But I have read so much stuff that assumes arrogance and a forthright attitude that I struggle to understand how any of it can be deemed as Christian in the least. Under the banner at times of church and emerging generation all other stuff I have seen people say that we should not love gay people, we should shoot people that have done something wrong, that people who appear threatening to our culture should be made to conform. All this presented in a banner of emerging church. Anyone who tries to claim this is church or an aspect of church are wrong.
The other thing is the language used. Words tend to be long and complex and probably beyond the understanding of the general person on the street. I understand that at times this is someones journey, and that the words used are their expression on that journey - but does it need to be alienating to others? If emerging church is in the process of deconstructing and reconstructing Christianity to engage with a western society (wikipedia) I wonder if it is really only achieving a self satisification in engaging with the Christian western society.
I am not knocking emerging church - its probably good and have little experience of it - but so far many blogs around me that claim to be poponents of it, more often than not draw me further to a conclusion that for most its a means of self satisfication. I fully understand the need to make church relevant and to de-bore that general attitude there is - and to engage in things the general western society understands. But it needs to be done careful (and reverently) that an emerging generation is not something seperate from the current generation.
posted by monty at
9:57 PM
8 Comments:
Good post. I'll ponder before engaging in the conversation, but just wanted to acknowledge your post.
I'll echo the good post comment.
Emerging Church is often described as a global conversation (well, I've found that it has been) which means either using inclusive language or creating a way for people to find out what you mean easily.
On a topic that, almost by definition, refuses to be defined, I guess that's a hard target to meet.
thanks for making me an exception! I think there is a lot of variety in the conversation around emergent church but I agree that sometimes the words used to describe the philosophy etc. of what people are trying to understand in the emergent thing are complicated (I find wikipedia and chambers.com pretty helpful!)
I remember reading this post on Jonny Baker's blog (http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/
jonnybaker/2006/07/
generators_of_c.html) that prompted a discussion in the comments about emergent only being the fashionable expression of a subculture - quite an interesting read!
(PS I had to break up the web address so you'd be able to read it so obviously take out the breaks! Don't know how to do hyperlinks in comments!)
I might also be so bold as to echo the `good post` sentiment.
I think, however, in one paragraph you confuse Christian practise with political opinion... IMO they overlap strongly but it's dangerous to say they're the same thing, because that leads to crusades, jihad, censorship, and general undemocratic governence.
But your point about the kind of vernacular the EC uses alienating people - I agree with you to a point, but the only part of me that disagrees is a kind of devil's advocate in so far as disagreeing for the sake of being contrary. I think the culture of EC is almost built on neologisms. We see Parliament, the BBC and EU invent PC terms all the time for various reasons, and management speak is a whole new way of speaking.
I think we live in a time where language is a very mutable, dynamic concept. More people than ver speak a foreign language. Statistics show that families communicate less thana few years ago, but communication between groups of people has been exacebated by blogs and media etc.
People in EC do have quite an elitist vernacular, but IMO, it's no different to the Christian idioms we're used to like ``the lion of judah the lamb that was slain`` or ``redeemed by the blood of the incarnate son of the trinity``. People on the street would have no more of an idea what these mean than ``deconstruction neo social paradigms``.
But EC isn't defined by their use of words, in my opinion, it's the world we live in and the ECites who like to forge their own expression and dialect to say what they mean. But the simple messages of love and harmony speak more than language every could anyway
emerging church = "we should not love gay people, we should shoot people that have done something wrong, that people who appear threatening to our culture should be made to conform" - I'm not sure that is reflective of emerging church, or indeed most church. I'd consider it extreme and in the context of emerging church specifically, I would dsy that kind of view has missed the point of what emerging church is trying to be.
Especially the point about people threatening our culture. At the centre of emergant thinking is the attempt to engage with the culture around us namely post modernity and post christendem and in that context engage and faithfully imporvise mission and evangelism as part of that culture.
Now for some that may be self satisfation as a by product. Eg if you accept the premise that in teh words of Charles Kraft an anthropogist that most evangelical churches are a "child of modernity" then for some, increasingly more, that form of church will grate against the increasing social norms and therefore lead to a disconnect. In which case a church that is more culturally relevant in it's identity and structures (not necessarily talking about style) would provide satisfaction. If you dig around writers further a field it is that drive for mission to society that underpins emergant thinking.
I agree that to the man on the street the language could be alientating but I think to the man on the street most christian language is difficult to get into. The Emergant conversation is fairly extreme as like the recent debate about penal substiutution within the evangelical tradition it's about definitions of terms that are only important to the people in the conversation not those for whom it's not an issue. Eg I'm not sure my next door neighbour is interested in the wrongs and rights of penal substitution as a concept!
ON an aside, I was reading a churchless faith again by Alan Jamieson and he researches why people leave evangelical, pentecostal and charismatic (EPC) churches. It is therefore a critique of the shortcomings of those churches. But I love his conclusions which revolve around what should emergant types engage with EPC churches about in order to not throw the baby out with the bath water. It's that approach which I think is more typical of emergant conversation and fundamentally more about treating people with dignity and simply basic respect of people even if you don't agree with them.
Excuse the long post, hope it's vaguely coherent!
Ben - picking up the love and harmony bit. MOst peoples experiences are based on their perceptions and receipt of the mesasge not the intent of the sneder. I think therefore that is what Monty might be referring to in his description of the blog circle he reads. The writers might intend love nad harmony but if their use of language is apparently harsh and discriminatory his conclusion woulld make sense.
You’re not thinking of anyone in particular are you?
On this emerging church business: I haven’t done much work on this matter myself but here are my first impressions, possibly to be corrected and enhanced by further study.
‘Emerging Church’ is one of those expressions that catches an underlying mood - probably a mood of disappointment/disaffection. That same mood might have manifested itself as far back as David Tomlinson - a defector from the quasi-cult restorationist movement - he emerged from that movement a rather disillusioned man and became the de-facto leader of “Post evangelicalism”.
Perhaps as a result of a quick succession of false dawns (involving various gnostic experiences, blessings, healings, prophecies, revivals, church structures, spiritual formulae, big personalities etc etc) crammed into living memory, a feeling of “we’ve tried all that, so where to next” prevails amongst Christians. I have seen quite a few spiritual restarts even in my time: that is, groups who attempt to clear the ground of the spiritual elaborations of their forerunners and remake church as they attempt to get back to a kind of contemporary primitive church – an oxymoron if there ever was one.
It’s not surprising, then, that the emerging church is a new philosophy of church that doesn’t want to look like a new overarching philosophy of church – after all, we’ve seen no end of them before. So the emerging church faces the logical conundrum also faced by postmodernism – how do you present a completely new philosophy without it looking like just another new philosophy? The result is a rather groping exploratory approach where the stress is on the journey rather than the destination, because all destinations, true to the postmodern sentiment, are thought to be end-of-rainbows. Sometimes there can be a downright evasiveness about just what the “new philosophy” stands for.
Emerging church knows what it isn’t, but sometimes I feel that it is not at all sure about what it actually is: Christian dissenters find themselves grasping the term “Emerging church” just as some disaffected evangelicals grasped at the term “Post evangelical” - terms that act as “rafts for the mind” when the mind is in the sea of confusing times. Thus under the umbrella of “emerging church” one can find Christains that make uneasy bedfellows – in short “emerging church” is a pastiche of views and a mixture of Christains that are trying to jump start a new kind of church, although some of them are still looking for the jump leads.
However, having said all that I find myself on balance sympathising with emerging church in as much as it is a reaction against, dowdy, strict, kitschy, plastic, corny, cosmetic, contrived, dated, out-of-touch, domineering, authoritarian, patriarchal, false, artificial, triumphalistic, pseudo, affected, unselfconscious manifestations of Christianity (if you want that in even more emotive terms see Ben). Fair enough we can all be a bit like any of those things at times, but when these tacky Christian styles come with a self confidence born of a conceited spiritual narcissism the product is very ugly phenomenon indeed, and I find myself in common cause with the emerging church people, in spite of being a “Grand Narrative” man myself.
Let me add that I do bulk at some emerging church counter reactions, reactions that may shows signs of the beginnings of a loss of grasp of the grand over arching themes of structured Christianity. Instead these themes have morphed into the shapeless blob of “God consciousness”. And the tremendous irony is that that is precisely where the affected touchy-feely narcissistic manifestations of Christianity, which emerging church is reacting against, was also taking us!
But I shouldn’t unfairly generalize on what seems to be a very variegated trend. On the matter of engaging society emerging church may have something to teach us and someone like Paul is probably the man ask about it. (and Ben!) I was fairly impressed by the authentic feel of the “Nooma” DVD’s (Rob Bell et al) and moreover there seemed to be behind them a gospel message that you and I, as fairly conservative Christains, would recognize and applaud.
I think Timothy's description might be the most thoughtful I've ever heard: "Emerging church knows what it isn’t, but sometimes I feel that it is not at all sure about what it actually is: Christian dissenters find themselves grasping the term “Emerging church” just as some disaffected evangelicals grasped at the term “Post evangelical” - terms that act as “rafts for the mind” when the mind is in the sea of confusing times. Thus under the umbrella of “emerging church” one can find Christains that make uneasy bedfellows – in short “emerging church” is a pastiche of views and a mixture of Christains that are trying to jump start a new kind of church, although some of them are still looking for the jump leads."
Personally I'm only really interested in making God's Kingdom more accessible to people outside of the church (those who've never had any contact with church - unchurched - or those put off by the church - I suppose you could call them "postchurched"!! lol!) and for those of us within the Kingdom to engage with our culture in discerning, creative ways in order to live and worship in God's world as imaginative disciples of Christ.
To do this I believe we need to examine the barriers there are within church traditions - like people being told to avoid "secular" things so as not to be "contaminated", authoritarian and paternalistic leadership, quashing debate and questions in favour of a "party line" (see penal substitution/Chalke-gate for a good example of this!!) exclusive practices and attitudes to deter people from getting involved or being heard, archaic/bad quality songs and music (!) to name a few examples.
My experience of emergent (and the conversation that is going on in a groping way to try and define where it is we'll emerge) is that there is huge openness - to the culture around us, to other traditions (even other faiths), to ancient practices and theological interpretations. In fact this openness is most often what emergent is criticised for. So I'm pretty suprised that emergent types are expressing the anti-gay, fundamentalist rhetoric Monty's describing - I've seen plenty of emergent types accused of heresy for saying homosexuality is fine etc.. But I guess Timothy is right that its a pretty big umbrella which a lot of different people under it!
Guys
Thanks for all the good posts. I wish to make it clear that I don't devalue any type of church as long as Jesus is being preached and their is fruit in peoples lives - basic stuff if you get me.
What I like about Emerging Church, is that people tell me its trying to break down barriers, I guess take Christians away from the church and back to the people. Jesus never commanded his disciples to go and meet together and make it jolly hard for those who don't understand you to join in - but to go out to the world.
My concern is that my very basic impression of emerging church is aimed at a very middle class "audience" with a high degree of intelligence. This is quite possibly true of mainstream Catholic and CofE churches where litergy makes the service alienating and inaccessible.
It would be dissapointing to me if EC came out as just another arm that succeeded in addressing one band of people (intelligent, middle class people) leaving others cold and frightened by the terminology, phrasing and expression used.
But as Paul once pointed out in a comment on a post a while back, its good there is diversity in church as that means God is accessible. I hope EC ensures it makes itself but easily achievable, desirable and challenging to ensure people at all levels are significantly challenged by the gospel message.
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