I am going to write a couple of posts on the book "The Emerging Church" and what has changed or not from my perspective since the 5 years it came out. Each post will address something I have learned or has changed or has stayed the same and has been further affirmed.
The first one I will write about and one big change from 5 years ago (or actually 6 or 7 when I was actually writing the book) is that there is a different context and definition regarding the term the "emerging church" that has developed since then. For some, this may be uninteresting and may not care - but for others it is significant, especially if you have been in the midst of it all and seen the change of definition happen.
Andrew Jones blogged about this very thing last week in a post called "The Emerging Church: You Say Dump It" and why he is not going to be using the terms emerging or emergent any longer. Bob Hyatt from Portland blogged about the same topic in his post called "Look who's done with words like "Emergent"". I really respect both of these guys and I found myself very interested with what they said and about why they aren't using the terms any longer. Jason Clark, a prominent voice from England is indicating his focus of moving "Beyond Emergent and Emerging Church".
The term "emerging church" isn't new, it was used for a book called "The Emerging Church" in 1970 by Bruce Larson and Ralph Osborne. I have read that book and it was mainly about change needed in the church for the advancement of the gospel in the "emerging" world of 1970. When I wrote the book of the same name in 2003, that was pretty much the same thing but 33 years later. There will always be change needed in the church for the mission we are on as different time periods of history emerge and cultures change and develop. Perhaps in 33 more years the term will resurface again and someone who is 5 years old right now will write a book caled "The Emerging Church" about what is "emerging" and changing in the mission of the church in the year 2042.
Whether it is the emerging culture of 1970 or 2003, it is exciting and thrilling to think and pray about what we can do by the power of the Spirit on the mission Jesus sent us on in Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8 etc. That is what the "the emerging church" was about to me and why I got originally involved.
I suppose by the very nature of the word "emerging" it naturally would be expected grow, morph, develop and change. But what it has grown into (in my perspective), is different in its focus than what it was when I first was drawn into it all. Although I will still be talking about "the emerging church" and still using the terms when I speak at conferences (if it is the topic of discussion), I will be using it more retrospectively than futuristically. I have written two books with the word "emerging" in the title and it will be something I will still use in that regard about what I have written.
For those who think terms are nonsense and it it is a waste of time thinking about terminology, I would challenge you to think about it. We all use terms to describe things. We don't just say "music" we describe what music we resonate with by distinctions as in "rockabilly music", "punk music", even breaking into further developed sub-categories such as "psychobilly" etc. It creates a better understanding of what it is and what differences there are between each.
As human beings we need terms. I have heard people say "Can't we just say we are Christians?" and leave it at that. But that is so vague in our world today. A more extreme example of showing the need for distinctions and defintions would be some authors who are part of the Jesus Seminar call themselves "Christians", but from what I understand of their writings, they deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus. It isn't that simple to just say "Christian" without some further definitions and terms to flesh out what "Christian" means when someone says the word. Some people say "Can't we just say we are the church?" But a Mormon would say they are "the church" and that would be a significantly different church than an evangelical church. What kind of church are we talking about? We need further defining terms.
Although I am finding that the term has become so broad now and so confusing, it is very important to know that I am not by any means stopping being involved and pursuing the heart and mission of what the term "emerging church" originally meant. At least in how I was personally using it when I wrote the book 6 years ago. For those just getting into the whole conversation now, it is still a very valid mission we are on - although specific terms may or may not describe it like as adequately as they used to.
Again, for some thinking this is all silly to be speaking about definitions, you need to understand the history. I first heard of the term "emerging church" back in 1997 when Leadership Network was using the phrase "advance scouts for the emerging church". Leadership Network was connecting leaders who were noticing the growing disconnect the church was having with "Generation X" (the term used back at that time). I was serving as high school pastor at a megachurch and we noticed this disconnect with youth and young adults, even in a large church scenario.
In the church I was part of back then, we launched a young adult ministry called "Graceland" and began "rethinking" (another term that was used a lot back then) about what changes were needed in leadership structure, evangelism methods, communication approaches, community, worship gatherings, room set-ups (which sounds petty but we did feel the room set up shouts values and even theology whether we realize it or not) and all types of things. The joke became about the candles and coffee that were used and primarily about the surface things . But to anyone actually in it, it was far more than candles and coffee. Underneath, the reasons for desiring change was an outright passion and desire for seeing emerging generations come to know the saving gospel of Jesus. For them to experience His grace, forgiveness and joy of following and knowing Him in this life and experiencing eternal life here and the life to come. But we knew that church as we knew it needed to change in order to be on a mission to do this.
As we made changes in the church I was in at that time, God was blessing what was happening and Graceland grew to 800 to 1,000 people part of the weekly gatherings on Sunday nights over the years. That was unusual in a smaller community like Santa Cruz, and it was unusual at that time with so many young adults gathered. So this got us in connection with others at conferences and events who were also feeling the same way and experiencing the same things. It also led to me writing the book "The Emerging Church".
It was really a thrilling, thrilling time. Because of the changes we were making in our existing churches (for those who weren't planting new churches) it wasn't always easy. Leading a large and growing young adult ministry ironically caused tension in the leadership of the church, as they didn't know quite what to do with it. The approaches we were using and the ministry culture we developed was quite different than the rest of the church. So it was a huge, huge struggle because I realized even in a thriving megachurch there was "traditions" and ways of looking at things that was taboo to change. Even though what we were trying to change within it for young adults and youth had no bibilcal basis for preserving it. Traditions and ways of looking at "church" was locked in, if the "tradition" was formed in the 1980's.
This is where the emerging church conversation was very critical and life-giving for me. I had others I could talk with and share with about the struggles of trying to make change. I have told a few of the friends that I got to know from other churches or organizations during that time, how they were used by God tremendously in my life. I was close to giving up on being a pastor and even giving up on church if God had not brought them into my life. It was also a thrill with the type of conversations we had. We had great conversations about not only changing forms of church and ministry, but about theology. Things like remembering that Jesus talked about the "Kingdom" a lot and have we really considered what He meant by that? Discussions about whether we reduced how we talked about the gospel to only focusing on the after-life and not about how the gospel matters in this life. It was really, really a great time period.
As I think of the future, I want to focus on the reason I got into the whole emerging church world. It was about evangelism - as in seeing "lost" people (using that word in a healthy way) come to a saving knowledge of Jesus, repenting, experiencing grace and receiving new life by the Spirit and joining in on the mission. Things needed to be "deconstructed" in the church, so there was deconstruction for the sake of evangelism and mission.
My entry into the emerging church world was because of the reality of the increasing amount of people who aren't Christians and weren't experiencing the joy of salvation and knowing Jesus in this life and the reality of eternal heaven and eternal hell in the life-to-come is a reality. I fully know the Kingdom of God is here and now and Jesus' teaching was more focused on how we live life now, not the here-after. But at the same time, hell still exists and if you want to know more about what I think about hell I wrote about it here). This urgency about the Kingdom here and now and about heaven and hell to come (I am fully aware and in alignmnet with N.T. Wright on how we have incorrectly talked about the after-life). But never-the-less, this is exactly what fueled the passion of why Josh Fox, myself and a core team planted Vintage Faith Church in 2004. People who don't know Jesus or experienced the gospel yet. Underneath all the emerging church discussion for me, was evangelism and Jesus' words from Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8.
But...back to what has changed since the 5 or 6 years since The Emerging Church was written.
If you were to have asked me about what the core of the emerging church is, I would have responded with "evangelism and mission in our emerging culture to emerging generations". And from that, other things were of course included, alternative worship, discussions on ecclesiolgy etc. as a means for fruitful growth of disciples of Jesus. But evangelism for me was underneath it all. Today, I certainly sense if you asked someone what is "the emerging church" it would mean a whole lot of of different things than that. In fact, I don't even think the word "evangelism" comes up when I start hearing about "the emerging church" for the most part anymore. It also means so many different things theologically today. I will talk about theology in a later post, but over the 10 years the emerging church world has also become so theologically diverse that it has become understandably confusing. I can't defend or even explain theologically what is now known broadly as "the emerging church" anymore, because it has developed into so many significantly different theological strands. Some I strongly would disagree with (as I assume they would strongly disagree with me). So that has changed as well from my perspective.
So.... the first thing that has changed in the 5 years since the book The Emerging Church came out is that in my opinion, the definition has changed. I am not wedded to any term and I don't think most people are. I, like most others, are wedded to the gospel and to Jesus' command of making new disciples - not a term to describe it. I have gone through the disiullusionment stage about church, and been hurt by the church and the whole deconstruction phase and questioning phase.
So I understand that very deeply. But the urgency of eternity here and the here-after and the people who are not yet Christians who need to hear about experience in this life the saving gospel of Jesus is what enabled me to rise me out of that. I want to focus time, prayer and energy on healthy evangelism and new disciples of Jesus being made who weren't Christians before in our new cultures and new generations. That may involve all varieties of conversations including anything from music and art to justice to leadership to all types of thing. But underneath it is evangelism and the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8 and mission driving it all. So in moving ahead, I don't think using the term "emerging church" as it is generally defined today, describes this like it used to.
I am using "missional" more these days, although that term has different meanings too and knowing human tendencies that will prpbably go through definition changes. (For a good web site about what "missional" is, go here) Defintions come and go. The mission of Jesus doesn't. The urgency of the gospel doesn't (until Jesus returns).
I shall post a couple more times on various things that have changed or stayed the same since The Emerging Church book came out in 2003. I think I will...... but this was a very, very long post...... and I feel guilty even spending time on it as a hurricane once again is going to destroy homes, businesses and hopefully not take any lives and this is all very, very, very, very miniscule and extremely insignificant in that light.
My next entry about what has changed or stayed the same since I wrote The Emerging Church will be about worship gatherings and how I believe things have positively progressed over 5 years in that regard.
