Relational Ministry is Not a Strategy

Scot McKnight writes a good summary/review of Andrew Root's book The Relational Pastor: Sharing in Christ by Sharing Ourselves.

I think that to the extent that emerging and missional models of ministry failed and are failing, it is due precisely to leaders wanting a relational strategy rather than relationships with others for their own sake. It comes down to the same personal kingdom building (not Jesus' Kingdom building) that they think they're rejecting from the old Evangelical models.

Postmodernism, Truth, Bob Robinson, and John MacArthur

Bob Robinson reviews and critiques John MacArthur's book, The Truth War, in a five-part series on the Vanguard Church blog. To be fair, I haven't read MacArthur's book, and I'm no particular admirer or detractor of MacArthur. But Robinson's review highlights the problems that someone such as myself--a relative newcomer to postmodern thought--has with critiques by the emerging movement of more traditional, or "modernist," if it must be termed that way, views of truth.

In the first post of the series, Robinson focuses on MacArthur's view of truth:

MacArthur defines it in a philosophical manner that reflects his modernist, post-Enlightenment mindset. Truth is objective reality; something we can know through objective scientific observation that can be articulated with words that correspond to that objective reality.

Already there is room for objection: MacArthur certainly does label truth as "objective reality," but in the section quoted, there is nothing about "objective scientific observation," and I doubt that MacArthur says anything about scientific observation at all. So why is such a view attributed to MacArthur? Well, speaking from a postmodernist frame of reference, I might suspect Robinson of using "word games" to manipulate his readers into an a priori rejection of MacArthur's point of view. For Robinson, MacArthur is a modernist, modernists think in terms of scientific observation, therefore MacArthur is thinking in terms of scientific observation. QED.

When Robinson gets around to quoting MacArthur's own definition of truth, in part three of his critique, he finds it agreeable, in his opinion, even to "most of those in the Emerging Church conversation." So why mischaracterize and take issue with MacArthur's view of truth in part one? Don't those in the emerging movement often complain that they are not allowed to define themselves, but rather are wrongly defined by others?

Back in part one, Robinson is arguing that biblical references to "truth" come from a pre-Enlightenment view that is "less tied to propositional statements and more tied to relational witness." I'm not sure how postmoderns know this about premoderns, but the example that Robinson offers is less than compelling. Citing John 8:31-32, Robinson argues that "To MacArthur's modern enlightenment mind, the truth of the teachings is what sets you free," and argues instead that premoderns would have understood rather that "Jesus is the one who sets people free," and concludes that "MacArthur's modernist approach to "truth" disconnects the person of Jesus from his teachings." But has MacArthur ever argued that Jesus' teachings, apart from trusting in Jesus himself, is what sets people free? Is it MacArthur who disconnects the person of Jesus from his teachings, or is it Robinson who does so, attributing the result to MacArthur and his fellow "moderns"?

In part two, Robinson takes MacArthur to task for associating emerging movement figures like Rob Bell and Brian McLaren with the heretics condemned in the book of Jude. Robinson probably has a strong point here; it appears that MacArthur is trying to make an analogy between the situation in Jude and the present-day postmodern controversy, an analogy for which there seems to be little support in the actual text of Jude itself. I am, however, a little dubious of Robinson's citation of a number of passages in which Rob Bell makes reference to "truth," as though that settled the issue, or his horror at the suggestion that false teaching within the church, an issue dealt with all over the New Testament, could be attributed to a contemporary figure or movement.

In part three, Robinson offers the oft-cited objection that postmodernism isn't really about the rejection of objective truth and certainty after all, and so modernist critiques along those lines are misdirected. It seems odd to me that Robinson first and most strongly levels an attack against MacArthur's view of truth, then sidesteps the issue of the problematic postmodern view of truth. Robinson helpfully discusses the postmodern view on its own terms; his points boil down to these:

• Those who claim absolute truth often use violence to foist that truth upon others;
• Those who claim absolute truth often change that truth over time;
• Modernity deified reason, and thus sought to prove faith claims by way of logic, thus making faith subservient to reason.

While there may be validity to these claims, it doesn't address the possibility that postmoderns, especially in less guarded moments, haven't swung too far in the other direction. Which leads to part four, in which Robinson contends that "MacArthur’s presumption is that the Emerging Church is filled with hard postmodernists." Once again, I wonder whether MacArthur ever actually said as much. It seems more likely that he is failing to differentiate between "hard" and "soft" postmodernists, as well as "chastened foundationalists," a failure that is easier to comprehend given that those within the emerging movement seem seldom to make such distinctions except in response to criticisms like MacArthur's. Robinson asks,

Why does MacArthur insist that the Emerging Church is full of hard postmodernists? Is it because if he builds a straw man out of the Emerging Church by labeling them hard postmodernists, he can easily burn them down?

It would seem as reasonable to ask, "Why does Robinson insist that the traditional church is full of hard modernists--i.e., those who think objective reality is to be discovered solely by scientific observation, use violence to foist their vision of truth on others, divorce the teachings from the person of Jesus, and make faith subservient to reason? Perhaps most of us are soft modernists, or even chastened subjectivists. If there is a failure to apply distinctions, it is a failure to which we are all subject.

In the last section of Robinson's series, he attempts to apply MacArthur's reasoning to MacArthur himself, essentially claiming that by MacArthur's standards, he himself would also be a heretic because he adheres to dispensationalism, a relatively new form of biblical interpretation. Robinson later retracted much of what he wrote in this final section, but it is worth commenting that Robinson's critique is quite simply predicated on the assumption that dispensationalism is wrong. Truth may be relational and non-propositional, but falsehood is evidently objective and objectively knowable.

I will repeat what I said at the beginning: I haven't read MacArthur's book, and there may be more to Robinson's critique than appears warranted, based on his quotes of the book. Moreover, as an Arminian Pentecostal, I'm not likely to be especially interested in defending MacArthur. I guess my objective is to show how the emerging critique appears to those outside it, and to show that many of the emerging criticisms can profitably be turned on themselves.

Technorati Tags: Bob Robinson, John MacArthur, Postmodernism, Truth, The Truth War

Egalitarianism, Complementarianism, and Ministry

I've been following discussions of women in ministry on such forums as Jesus Creed, and Better Bibles Blog. It's rather a tangential issue for me: my fellowship doesn't prevent women from ministerial licensing or ordination; on the other hand, there are not a lot of women who are in positions of senior leadership in my fellowship either. Having watched this debate in as close to a position of objectivity as is possible, it seems to me that the debate is framed in terms of a significant misunderstanding of one another's positions, and a significant misunderstanding on the part of both sides of what ministry is.

The two primary terms in this debate are complementarianism and egalitarianism. The egalitarian position asserts that it is part of God's overall plan to erase distinctions of status and authority among the people of God. The key verse here would probably be Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The argument here would be that what God has accomplished ontologically, as a spiritual reality, He also would want to make a visible reality in the lives, relationships, and organization of those who compose His Body.

The complementarian position acknowledges that with regard to our status before God, we are indeed equally sinners and equally saved by the mercy of God and the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. Nonetheless, complementarians would argue that there remain positions of authority and submission, even within the Godhead, and our human relationships reflect that. There is no one passage that epitomizes this point of view, but a good contender would be 1 Corinthians 11:3: "Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." Without getting into the thorny issues regarding what headship means in this verse, it seems to imply some sort of relationship other than mere side-by-side equality. Complementarians would argue that the relationship between Jesus and the Father was, among other things, one of authority and submission, and that that same relationship would exist among men and women, or at least among husbands and wives specifically. The central idea is that we do not image God as mere individuals, but in relationship with one another, and the relationships that image God are, once again, not merely those of side-by-side equality.

The reason why I say that the debate is framed largely in terms of a significant misunderstanding of one another's positions is this: egalitarians do not seem to be able to conceive of the complementarian position as describing any relationship other than authoritarian domination and abject submission, and complementarians do not seem to be able to conceive of the egalitarian position as anything other than radical individualism, an insistence that there cannot and must not be any differentiation between any two persons, and that each person has an equal right to any position and any measure of authority. Both views are mischaracterizations.

One thing that the Bible focuses on very strongly is our mutual interdependence. That's precisely what the metaphor of the "body" of Christ is used for. We are not pennies in a roll, equal and undifferentiated; we are various "members" with differing gifts, gifts which make us interdependent, since no one person has them all. That is God's design for His people; quite frankly, He wants to force us to be dependent on one another. The odd thing about that is that it is mostly egalitarians who emphasize this mutual interdependence, even though it implies something of a complementarian position. Because the main point of complementarianism is (or should be) not dominance and subservience, but the fact that we complement one another to form a whole that none of us can fill on our own.

Egalitarians will respond: "We agree that all this is true. What we deny is that God does not give the gifts that imply authority only to one gender." And they may be right. I happen to think that they are right. But they are not necessarily right; that is to say, gifts are gifts, and God can give them to whomever He pleases, for whatever reasons He sees fit. Nobody has a right to a gift; the two terms are mutually exclusive. Egalitarians commonly argue, regarding 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent," that Paul is dealing with a local issue involving women at Ephesus. What this implicitly acknowledges is that under certain circumstances, God may in fact rightly place restrictions on one group that He does not on another. Because after all, they are His gifts to give, His ministries to fill.

And this is where I think that both sides misunderstand what ministry is. Ministry isn't about authority; it's about service--that's what the word means. And it's not about the right to self-expression on the part of the one ministering; it's about meeting the needs of those who are being ministered to. As someone who has been in and out of a few different types of formal ministry, I hardly know what those who are agitating for their "right" to minister are after. The best medicine might well be for them to get what they want. The slings and arrows of ministry--the second-guessing, the opposition, the pettiness, the politics--fall on anyone who ministers.

I find it an odd little contradiction that those in the emerging movement tend both toward affirming women in formalized positions of ministry and being skeptical of formal ministry itself. Perhaps we need to stop focusing on formal ministry and simply focus on service. Serve however we can, wherever we can, whatever our individual circumstances. I know that this doesn't answer all the questions people have, and they're worthwhile questions to explore. But it seems to me that whether Junia was an apostle or what exactly head coverings meant might be less important than asking myself the question, "What can I do, here and now, today, to represent Jesus to my world?"

Come to think of it, Jesus never had a position of formal ministry. And He managed to accomplish a few things.

Technorati Tags: Egalitarianism, Complementarianism, Egalitarian, Complementarian, Women in Ministry

The Ghettoization of American Evangelicalism

Just adding collapsible post functionality and a pull quote. No new content. First line is a pull quote.
We've identified the gospel with a political and social perspective that few people can identify with who haven't been raised in it. Scot McKnight passes on a letter he's received in his most recent Letters to Emerging Christians segment. The complaint of the letter-writer essentially involves the fact that being an "evangelical" has become too identified with a particular brand of conservative American politics. A few quotes:

• Conservative Christians [frequently] conflate Christianity with American patriotism and/or the Republican party. One commentator says Jim Wallis can’t call himself an Evangelical because he’s a “left- leaning socialist” who made a speech on the Democrats’ weekly radio address!
• Dobson & company, attacking a member of the NAE for daring to suggest that global warming might actually be a problem.
• I read the quote from D. James Kennedy, a pastor and seminary leader in Florida: “The publication and promulgation of the 1599 Geneva Bible will help restore America’s rich Christian heritage and reclaim the culture for Christ.” What!? A 1599 Bible which, incidentally, comes with a middle-English glossary to help you understand what the heck they were saying, is the answer that will reclaim the culture for Christ???

Now, I've long been conservative in terms of my politics, although I am beginning to wonder... But regardless of one's political stripe, it should be deeply troubling that the Christian faith is so identified with a particular political position, especially on issues regarding which the Bible either doesn't speak or quite arguably speaks in the opposite direction. It should be disturbing that the mandate of the Church seems not to be to make disciples of all nations, but rather to "restore America’s rich Christian heritage."

And then I read Dan Kimball's excellent post, "Hope, depression, hope." He cites a sociologist and student of church growth and leadership:

He shared that the reason church statistics regarding attendance may be staying around the same level is because those in the churches are living longer. There are now a ton of old churches with elderly folks living longer which keeps that statistic up. He also shared how the already Christians in churches who have babies also keeps the percentage leveled out.

What isn't happening however, is the growth of the church from people outside the church coming in. We aren't keeping up on the population growth at large. I was reading that the church has leveled out in attendance over the past 15 years but at the same time our national population has grown by around 50 million people. So we can celebrate that churches are remaining relatively the same attendance-wise, but now there are more than 50 million people who aren't part of the church.

I don't think it's a great leap of logic to see these two issues as being related. We've identified the gospel with a political and social perspective that few people can identify with who haven't been raised in it. We've essentially said, "You can't join our club unless you're willing to subscribe to all twenty-six points of our worldview." And then we wonder why our churches stagnate, growing, if at all, through transfers from other churches. We are relevant only to one another. Welcome to the Christian ghetto.

Can't we see the wisdom of the Apostle Paul, who "resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2)? Paul wasn't a "culture warrior" in the modern sense. His aim was not to "take a stand" and then have his already-convinced buddies pat him on the back for not backing down. His aim was to reach as many people as possible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Period.

The tension between the standards of the already-converted and the imperative of reaching the larger culture is nothing new. Jesus was accused of being "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and 'sinners'" (Luke 7:34; cf. Matt. 11:19). Peter became the first to take the gospel to a Gentile audience. What was the response from the Christian community? "So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, 'You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them'" (Acts 11:2-3). Peter himself compromised his own principles and broke off fellowship with Gentile believers in order to satisfy "the circumcision group"; he had to be publicly rebuked by Paul because his "hypocrisy" had infected even Barnabas (Gal. 2:12-13). The pressure to conform to so-called "higher standards"--even at the cost of ostracizing some for whom Christ died--is intense.

Kimball continues with words that should be of particular interest to some who regularly read this blog, "It will be horribly sad if in 30 years or 40 years the church of America is a tiny thing, and we are still fighting each other about whether one is a Calvinist or Arminian or whether you preach verse by verse or preach topically etc." Obviously, I think divine election is a worthwhile thing to discuss, but it must be kept in its proper place. There's a lost and dying world out there. We have answers, but we're fading into irrelevance. We're squabbling with one another instead of trying to reach that world. We're telling people that they must oppose abortion and homosexuality, that they must support Israel and capitalism and lower taxes, that we must win the War on Terror and support our president, oppose the environmentalist wackos, and stand up for God and Country. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that these are all noble and worthy goals. I just have one question.

Where did the gospel go?



If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

Dangerous Thoughts on Holy Saturday

I can't even imagine what Jesus' disciples were feeling the day after his crucifixion. Their greatest hopes had died with him the day before, and the new hope beyond all their dreams was yet to be realized. They must have felt completely desperate. So it's not such a bad day to indulge some dangerous ideas.

It's in that mood that I came across John Frye's "The People Formerly Known as 'The Pastor'." It's more strongly worded than I would ever dare, but seriously, it reflects a lot of how I sometimes feel as a refugee from formal ministry. It's a response to another piece by Bill Kinnon, called "The People Formerly Known as the Congregation," which seems to me more strident and more typical in its complaints against the established church. This one is more the view from a disillusioned insider. But another piece, "Underlying Issues," kind of unpacks it and deals with the issues raised in more measured tones.

And they're issues that need to be dealt with. There may be much inchoate anger in some of the emerging movement; there may be youthful idealism and unrealistic expectations; there may be too much throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. But there are reasons--real, justified, even biblical reasons--why people engaging in the emerging conversation are rejecting the institutionalized church. We need to listen to these voices. We need to ask if what we are doing is what Jesus intended, what he wants from us now. We need to fight the perennial temptation to substitute the traditions of men for the glories of the life God wants to give us.


Technorati Tags: John Frye, Bill Kinnon, Emerging Church

Interesting New Directions with Earl Creps

I'd gotten away from reading Earl Creps on a regular basis, and decided to check him out again today. Turns out he's starting a church plant in Berkeley, California. (Yeah, the one with the legendary 60s college campus.) He also has some interesting posts on contrarian explanations of the emerging church movement and what he calls the X factor, the factor that differentiates a growing, dynamic church from a stagnating, lifeless one. The scary thing is that even he doesn't know what this X factor is: "Consulting with faith communities has left me in some ways feeling like I now know less than I ever have."



Anyway, stuff well worth reading. Check it out.

I'm Not Dead Yet!*

Just a quick note to let anyone who cares know that I haven't been abducted by aliens and I haven't discarded this blog. Just been busy. I'm trying to get a post on John 10 rolling, I've got an old paper on the theory of a Wednesday crucifixion that I need to put into bloggable form, and I've also been doing some thinking about contextualization.



It seems to me that "traditional" church (whatever that means) has been deemed irrelevant to our culture (I guess I'm talking USA specifically, and perhaps Western culture as a whole), and that both the "seeker sensitive" and some aspects of the "emerging" movements are intended to make church more relevant. In most cases, the attempt is to make church (and by extension, our view of Jesus) more similar to the lives of the people we're trying to reach. In essence, put Jesus into a polo shirt, or give him some funky tattoos. But is that what is really going to reach people? Maybe people don't want more of the same; maybe they want something different. Or maybe that's what God wants for them. It doesn't seem to me that most revival movements have occurred because people have been given a more palatable Jesus; rather, people have been challenged and responded in a life-changing manner.



So anyway, that's as far as I've gotten. Maybe I need to think more like a blogger (as Joe Carter recently wrote) in order to keep things going. Or maybe if I toss out my half-baked ideas, some of you will come along to fully-bake them. Any takers?



*For anyone who recognizes my Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference in the title, this is one of those famous movie sayings that never happened, like "Play it again, Sam" from Casablanca. Just thought I'd share. For no particular reason.

How Similar Is the Emerging Movement to the Jesus Movement?

Scot McKnight asks a very interesting question on Jesus Creed: "Is Emergence the 60s all over again?" Here's a sampling of the variety of responses that he's received:


Brad Boydston writes:

“Is Emergence the 60s all over again?” The answer is YES — but with more tattoos. I suppose that’s why some boomer types get annoyed with the whole thing. In hindsight they know how full of crap they were in the 60’s and then along comes a bunch of guys (mostly) who think they’ve just discovered the key to real Christianity — genuine community and “question authority.” And the growing-greyhair (or in the case of some, no-longer-growing-hair) realizes that the emerging crowd is as full of crap as they were. That realization is compounded by the fact that they know deep inside that they’re still processing all the pain they went through when their own 60’s style house church disbanded in 1976 — if it lasted that long. It’s all mostly the same old, same old stuff.

But that’s okay. Each generation in its youth seems to have to reinvent things. Then when they reach middle age they’re embarrassed by how arrogant they were back then. And it’s at that point that they have a fresh epiphany of the vastness of God’s grace and mercy. And they realize that all of the things which we hash and re-hash, while important, pale in significance to the generosity and forbearance of God.

So, my advice to the emerging generation (which is very very soon the post-emerging generation) is truck on with Jesus! You’re doing fine — and who knows, perhaps God will use you as he unfolds his kingdom. If nothing else you’ll be in a great position to extend grace to the next arrogant and crap-filled generation.

Julie Clawson writes:

My cynical response…



So what if it’s like the 60’s (or any other reform/visionary period)? If it makes some people feel okay about selling out to consumerism instead of trying to transform the world with God’s love by labeling (read dismissing) others that’s their issue. One of my biggest pet peeves is being told by some baby boomer that I’ll grow out of my idealistic passion. That I’ll live real life and be forced to return to self-centered conservative American evangelicalism I grew up in. They think that by telling me that others in history have tried to passionately pursue Christ but rightly let the love of comfort and money dissuade them of that passion will dissuade me as well. They tell me that I’m the one who needs to grow up and give up my passion for Christ because it just isn’t normal/mainstream. And I’m expected to accept the wisdom of their years and revert to whatever box they want to shove me into. That’s called growing up and being responsible…

And finally, Matthew Wilcoxen writes:

There are quite a few substantial differences that I see between the Jesus People movement of the 70’s and the Emergent movement of now. First of all, the Jesus People movement was, if I understand it correctly, largely “anti-intellectual.” Seminary became a Cemetery to these hippies. The Bible was all you needed and anything else was dead, putrefying “religion” or “tradition.” The Emergents on the other hand, while perhaps loathing systematic theology and the seminaries of what they see as a bygone era, are anything but anti-intellectual. They load up blogs and discuss scholarly works in their free time. Rather than dismiss everything from the past as “tradition” that kills, these emerging Christians welcome anything from the past as long as it isn’t in any way connected with the movements and institutions which spawned them.



The second difference I see is that the Jesus People Movement did not really push the envelope doctrinally at all. The one exception being, perhaps, that some of them loosened up and actually believed the parts about the Bible that talk about the Holy Spirit. For the most part, they took the doctrines that had been handed down to them, and took them to the streets and preached them with vigour. On the other hand, the Emergents are, some more than others, shoving the envelope quite radically. McLaren says that “..our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves…” (A New Kind of Christian, p. 50). The Emergent movement seems to be questioning, largely, whether or not understanding theology in any definitive way is even possible. For this reason, we are seeing much in the theological realm that is more reactionary than it is revolutionary. (I hope this doesn’t seem vitriolic, please correct me if I’m wrong.) In sum on this point, the Jesus People turned out to be fundamentalists in hippie garb; the Emergents are willfully shaking any fundamentalism out of themselves as quickly as possible.



For my last point (I think that I could go on forever!), I will say that the Jesus People were proclamational and definitely “missional.” Their strong emphasis was preaching the gospel. If you meant someone who was part of this movement, chances are, you had been confronted with the truth of the gospel of their Jesus. They were strongly committed to being “witnesses” in the sense that they verbally told and retold the story of how God, in Jesus, had reconciled sinners to himself through the cross and “commands all men everywhere to repent.” What they wanted was a conversion of the heart and of the priorities and they would ask you to accept that converting work of God. Conversion was, to them, a sharp break with one’s past life. They were all about being “born again.” The Emergents, while committed to being “missional”, are not committed to evangelism, at least not in the same way. Since orthopraxy has taken over for orthodoxy, most Emergents are not as concerned wtih proclamational evangelism. Instead, they seek to model inclusion before conversion (something many Jesus People undoubtedly did as well). Conversion in the sense of a radical godward reorientation, a “born again” experience, is not the aim of Emergent missions. I could continue, but I think most will further recognize the contrast betweent the Jesus People Movement’s strong proclamation (understand: verbal) of Christ and the Emergent’s aversion to such proclamation.



In sum, I think the Emergent movement is a whole different type of movement when we compare the beliefs, convictions, and practices of it with the Jesus People movement of the 70’s.

I could find points of commonality with both Brad and Matthew. And I remember thinking like Julie. What do you think?

Scot McKnight's "What Is the Emerging Church?" 2

This is the second part of a series summarizing and reflecting on Scot McKnight's "What is the Emerging Church?", a talk given at Westminster Theological Seminary on October 26, 2006. The first part is available here.

At this point of the talk, Dr. McKnight is using Lake Emerging as a metaphor for discussing the emerging movement, with four rivers flowing into it: Postmodernism, Praxis, Postevangelicalism, and Politics.

The second river Dr. McKnight discusses as flowing into Lake Emerging is that of praxis. Emerging types are more interested in what believers do than the minutia of what they believe. Orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy (living right as opposed to believing right) is what is focused on, largely because no two theologians have perfectly agreed on every point of doctrine, and Jesus didn't call us to a doctrinal position but to a way of life. The emerging movement is focused on "living the way of Jesus." Scot makes clear at this point that emerging leaders don't think that our relationship to God is established by what we do, or that it doesn't matter what we believe; they simply see how we live as being more important, on balance, than has been regarded previously.

Another current in the praxis river involves worship. Those in the emerging movement are interested in exploring different ways of worship, and recognizing that aesthetics matters in how one experiences God. They regard praxis as influencing theology, as well as the reverse, and wonder if the very layout of the places in which we worship influences the content of that worship and what we believe about God and His people. A third current is that of social justice. The emerging movement places great emphasis on justice, defined largely as eradication (or at least ameleoration) of poverty, racism, and social inequality. The main issue is engagement and involvement with the world: Christians are not to remove themselves from the world and hope for the return of Christ, but rather work for justice in the here and now.

What Scot regards as the heart of the praxis river is the missional element. This might best be described as being involved in God's redemptive work in the world. Whereas Evangelicalism was concerned with reaching people in the world and drawing them out of it and into the church, the emerging movement is concerned with the church itself moving into the world and participating in God's redemption of it. This involves more than just the spiritual aspect of people getting saved; it involves the whole person--physical, emotional, social, as well as spiritual.

The Post-evangelical River

The emerging conversation is also something of a protest movemet against evangelicalism--not to say that it rejects evangelicalism in toto, but that it views itself as rejecting what it sees as some of evangelicalism's flaws and limitations and going beyond evangelicalism. The emerging movement regards evangelicalism as reflecting a "Bible study piety," concerned more with doctrinal precision and condemning those who disagree than it is with living out the command to love. The goal of the Christian life is not to master the Gospel, but to be mastered by it and to exhibit it by living it out.

For something of the same reason, the emerging movement is rather suspicious of systematic theology, at least in terms of trying to formulate a definitive statement of the Gospel. The definitive statement of the gospel should be the lives of its adherents, not a linguistic formulation. The emerging movement is also suspicious of the "in vs. out" mentality of Evangelicalism--they're less sure that we can know with any confidence who is truly in the family of God and who isn't. For this reason, they prefer to view everyone as in or moving into the family of God, and trust that showing God's love to them will continue to draw them in. Scot offers a warning at this point: the good news is not just to be lived out, but also to be proclaimed, and our efforts at "living missionally" still need to have as their goal the redemption of everyone possible through Christ.

The Political River

The final river flowing into Lake Emerging is political (this aspect is largely on the American scene). Although emerging leaders sometimes talk about a bipartisan or non-partisan political involvement, they are largely on the political left. This comes from the social justice element of the praxis river: emerging believers tend to believe that part of working toward social justice in the world is prodding the government to do the same. Essentially, the emerging movement rejects the dichotomy between evangelism (how conservative Evangelicals relate to the world) and the social gospel (how the mainline churches relate to the world), drawing both together in its missional emphasis.

It appears to me that this "political river" is really little more than an outgrowth of the social justice aspect of the praxis river; perhaps not best described as a "river" in its own right at all. Scot's division may be valuable, however, because I think a number of people who consider themselves emerging in the US are basically Evangelicals with liberal political sympathies.

This short blog series has been less concise than I would have hoped (it was intended as one post) , and also more of a simple synopsis as opposed to a synopsis and reflection. I would welcome two things: if any of my readers haven't read Scot's paper for themselves by this time, please do download and read it. And I would appreciate any responses you might have to these ideas--either corrections to my understanding of what Scot has presented, or your impressions on any aspect of the subject matter itself.

Scot McKnight's "What Is the Emerging Church?" 1

I've discussed before my gratitude to Scot McKnight for presenting the emerging movement in a way that is comprehensible to those who are just discovering and learning about it. On October 26, 2006, Scot spoke at Westminster Theological Seminary on the topic, "What is the Emerging Church?" The full text of Scot's talk is available at the Sacred Journey blog in PDF format for easy download and printing. I really recommend anyone interested in the emerging movement to check it out: it is highly readable, written with humor and grace, and appears to get to the heart of the component aspects of the emerging movement in a way that both makes sense and is very challenging.

I'm going to do Dr. McKnight an injustice now and summarize his summary, which I'm sure he already considered shorter and less nuanced than he would have liked. My hope is not to replace his work with a condensed version, but to give people a taste in hopes that they will check out the whole thing.

Scot makes a plea to allow people from within the emerging movement define themselves, rather than be defined by outsiders. This is a reasonable request, although my experience has been that most people from within that movement have a strong resistance to defining themselves, leaving the rest of us to our own devices in trying to get a handle on them. There's a bit of a private lingo going on (similar, I'd say, to the churchspeak that many emerging types find so exclusive among traditional evangelicals), and a sense that, "If you don't get it, you're simply not one of the 'in' crowd." Hence my gratitude to Dr. McKnight, once again, for being willing to bridge the gap and communicate to those of us who really want to know.

McKnight's Response to Carson's Response to Emerging

Scot's plea for the movement to be allowed to describe itself is proffered in response to D. A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, the best-known critique of the movement. Scot argues that Carson boils the emerging movement largely down to Brian McLaren and postmodern epistemology. Although Carson recognizes the nuances that distinguish "hard" and "soft" postmodernism, he doesn't apply these nuances to the differing currents within the emerging movement. Essentially, Carson equates emerging with postmodern epistemology, postmodern epistemology with a denial of truth, and then discusses at length what the Bible has to say about truth--which of course amounts to a categorical rejection of emerging. By contrast, Scot argues that in two years of close conversations with and prodding questions of leaders in the emerging movement, he has "never once heard any of them deny the truthfulness of the gospel or deny that there is truth in a hard postmodernist way" (the above-referenced pdf document, page 3; hereafter, "McKnight 3").

Far from being a theological movement based on a denial of truth, Dr. McKnight argues that emerging is an ecclesiological movement--an attempt to think about and "do" church in a different way. He recommends the book, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures by Gibbs and Bolger, as an introduction and analysis of the movement from within, and which defines the emerging movement in this way:

Emerging churches are communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures. This definition encompasses the nine practices. Emerging churches (1) identify with the life of Jesus, (2) transform the secular realm, and (3) live highly communal lives. Because of these three activities, they (4) welcome the stranger, (5) serve with generosity, (6) participate as producers, (7) create as created beings, (8) lead as a body, and (9) take part in spiritual activities. (Quoted in McKnight 7; italics in original.)

So emerging tends to look at itself based on what it is doing, as opposed to defining itself based on a particular theological position. It's also important to note that the emerging movement is broader and more diverse than Emergent, which properly refers to Emergent Village, a website and clearinghouse for a subset of emerging leaders who officially associate themselves with it.

Lake Emerging

In the heart of his address, Scot describes the emerging movement as "Lake Emerging," into which are flowing four rivers: postmodern, praxis, postevangelical, and politics. Various emerging types favor one or more of these rivers more than others; some are just dipping a toe into one or two, while others are paddling about in the middle of the lake itself. So even a description of these four won't completely describe every emerging person, but it will at least give a description of the various aspects of the movement.

River Postmodern may be the most controversial of the four, as well as the most difficult to pin down. While the flat denial of truth embraced by the harder postmodern philosophers is simply incompatable with Christianity, some aspects of postmodern thought are proving congenial to some Christians. In essence, the postmodern perspective simply recognizes that all individuals exist within a place, time, and culture, that to some extent defines what appears reasonable to them; getting outside the cultural circumstances of one's existence is impossible, so a body of objective, universal knowledge (e.g., a definitive systematic theology) is impossible to construct.

Scot distinguishes between three different types of "postmoderns" represented by the emerging movement. There are those who minister to postmoderns--i.e., viewing postmodernity as a part of the contemporary human condition that Christians need to reach into in order to rescue others from it. There are those who minister with postmoderns--i.e., they accept postmodernity as an inevitable fact of life in contemporary society, and so therefore that is the "world" in which we now are called to live out the Gospel. This would, in a sense, be a "seeker sensitive" model: adapting to the world in order to reach it. Most emerging Christians and churches, according to Dr. McKnight, fit into these two categories. The third kind are those who minister as postmoderns. What this means is not that they categorically deny truth, but they will say that only God Himself is Absolute Truth, and that truth can be experienced and lived out, but not known as a logical chain of propositions. Trying to pin God down in language and claiming that that language is the truth is called by some "linguistic idolotry" (LeRon Shults, quoted in McKnight 14).

Next up: the Praxis, Postevangelical, and Politics rivers

The Problem of Subculture and Missional Living

Rich Tatum wrote, as a comment to his own piece on the Robert Duvall movie, The Apostle,

After watching The Apostle I walked out of the theater amazed that Duvall, an admitted outsider, had worked so hard to get our culture right–and he very nearly succeeded.

This comment made me begin thinking about the problem of subculture. Like it or not, American Christians live in a subculture that is getting increasingly marginalized. (I can't speak for believers elsewhere in the world. Sorry, this post is going to be rather USA-centric.) When we address this topic at all, it is either with dismissive contempt--the speaker imagines that he is not a part of this subculture, and is usually referring to a branch of the church that appears to him to be exasperatingly "out of touch" with the surrounding culture--or with a sort of righteous indignation--the speaker views the surrounding culture as increasingly hostile, and retreat into one's own cultural norms is defended as "taking a stand" for moral uprightness. Both views are oversimplifications of a problematic issue.

Subcultures are merely homogeneous groups that exist within a larger culture and share various cultural norms that can include specialized knowledge, terminology, dress, rituals, customs, and expectations. They exist throughout society, among ethnic groups, professional vocations, aficionados of various sports or types of entertainment, as well as other groupings. Get a group of engineers or doctors or political junkies or comic book fans or football fans together, and the commonalities will come out pretty quickly. Someone may think it ridiculous to go to a convention wearing fake pointy ears, but perfectly normal to go shirtless with a painted chest to a football game. Subcultures are a necessary component of any larger culture that isn't monolithic. It's rather pointless to argue that a Christian subculture shouldn't exist; that would be equivalent to arguing that people with common experiences and interests should pretend as though they didn't have anything in common. It defies human nature.

In some ways, the Christian subculture is a remnant of what the larger American culture used to be. I once read a comparison of Franklin Roosevelt's and Ronald Reagan's first inaugural addresses; it's astonishing how much more biblical quotations and allusions were in the "liberal" Roosevelt's address as compared with Reagan's. Despite the fact that Reagan was the darling of the religious right, American culture had shifted dramatically in forty-eight years, and the shared biblical frame of reference that had existed in the larger culture was virtually gone. I am not here subscribing to the notion of a golden age of "Christian America." When would that have existed--during the days of slavery? I am simply acknowledging that there was once a shared cultural heritage that included a great deal more biblical knowledge than is common today. Whether people believed in them or not, or lived according to biblical tenets or not, Bible stories provided much of the content for an American shared cultural heritage. In large measure, the modern Christian subculture is merely a holdover of that earlier heritage; and so there is truth in the charge that the Christian subculture is merely a response to a larger culture that is by turns indifferent and hostile.

Nonetheless, it's hardly a positive response to huddle together in defensive fashion. Scripture calls us to remain in the world, even as we resist the temptation to become a part of it. Light in the darkness; salt on a tasteless meal: Jesus' metaphors for who we are imply that we are supposed to make a difference in the world around us, which implies both that we are engaged in that world and yet form a perceptible contrast to it. Be involved, but be different. That's our mandate.

Unfortunately, this is part of the problem: even if we have a shared vocabulary, social expectations, and rituals, we are tending not to be very different from the surrounding culture in ways that really matter--the behaviors that are supposed to mark Christian faith. We get divorced at about the same rate as non-Christians; we are influenced to almost the same degree by mass media; and practice of such spiritual disciplines as prayer and Bible study are embarrassingly modest. Often, we've got it exactly backwards. We know how to dress, talk, and behave when we gather together as Christians or happen to meet one another, but our lives too often don't witness to the power of a transforming relationship with the infinite and holy creator of the universe. We're the same as everybody else, except for the secret handshake. That's an overstatement--but by how much?

One of the emphases of the emerging church movement is something called "missional living." I'll be honest: I know about this much more from reading about it than from experiencing it firsthand. But the concept is based on what missionaries have long understood: that to reach a people group different from yourself, you have to adopt as much as possible the customs and behavior of the group you're trying to reach, for the purpose of securing a hearing for the gospel. People who attempt to live missionally specifically try to avoid the look and manner of "church people"--the things that tend to separate us from the world at large--while actively engaging unbelievers and offering a genuine difference.

I don't know how much of this is real, how much is wishful thinking, and how much is simply motivated by a desire to get out from under traditional taboos within evangelicalism. I've known too many people spouting anti-legalistic jargon who, at bottom, simply wanted to live more worldly. And yet something in my soul longs for this. The prophetic voice of the Church has collapsed into the "culture wars," which themselves have largely become little more than a mandate to vote Republican. I can't help but feel that we were supposed to be... something else.

What do you think about missional living? Anyone have personal experience in this area? Is it something only single twentysomethings can glom onto, or can we middle-aged people also do it (in a way that wouldn't be ridiculous)? Any thoughts?


If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

Some good reasons to click away from this blog

Scot McKnight discusses the various "impulses" driving the emerging movement, which functions for me as a (finally!) much-needed explanation of what it's all about. It probably helps that he acknowledges not speaking for anyone else - he can let the cat out of the bag, but it's only his "opinion." Oh, and he discusses the relationship between the emerging movement and creedal orthodoxy.

In related news, Earl Creps takes a look at whether EmChurch is a sectarian movement or the Reformational movement that was hoped for a few years ago. Among other things, Earl discusses "the drag of the practical" - that it's harder to implement ideas than it is to theorize in the abstract. So "postmodern vs. modern" may largely boil down to "youthful idealism vs. mature realism." I remember my days of thinking I was going to reform the Church as well.

Just in case there's someone here who doesn'talready read Pastor Bob's blog, he's currently doing a series on the will of God. So far it's been mainly Bible, Bible, Bible, but I'm hoping at some point he'll give us Seven Surefire Steps, which will include donating to his ministry for a blessed Magic 8 Ball.

Also, for those of you who use blog services (like Blogger) that don't use trackback, there's a Manual Trackback Pinger that will let you leave trackbacks on sites that do use trackback. I use this frequently.

Emerging Creedalism?

Scot McKnight makes an appeal for use of the historic creeds of Christendom as a means of defining the faith. The purpose is ecumenical--to unite behind what the church has always believed and what all Christians can affirm, rather than to make a more narrow sectarian definition that defines other believers out. He compares the Nicene Creed, a fundamentalist church statement of faith, an evangelical church statement of faith, and the statement of faith of the church founded by Brian McLaren.

I applaud the impulse behind this appeal. It is good for us to find something in our history which we can agree on and by which we can identify other Christians, regardless of theological differences. On an individual level, and even in informal community life, this may be positive and even sufficient. Unfortunately, I think Scot ignores the realities of creedal development, of subsequent history, and of the purpose and use of church statements of faith.

Scot puts forward the Nicene Creed as a model of simplicity and a statement of basic orthodoxy. He also acknowledges that it is the earliest of the classical creeds he would choose, others being Chalcedon or Nicean-Constantinopolitan. This implicitly acknowledges that even in the church of that time, the Nicene creed was not felt to be sufficient. Creedal development could and did go on, because the impetus behind all the creeds--theological developments that were felt by some to be outside the bounds of scriptural warrant--continued to occur. The creeds were always about "defining others out," whether those others were Docetists or Arians or Monophysites or whatever. Even the choice of which creed to use is a choice regarding

The attempt to go back to a historic creed also seems to ignore or deny all further theological development. If issues have not yet been raised in the church, then of course they need not be addressed in our statements of faith. Once they have been raised, however, there is a tendency to want to bury our heads in the sand and ignore them. Can't we all just get along? We need to be clear about what we are doing here. If we are saying, "This is the core of the faith. I hold this in common with all other believers," then I am in full agreement. But if we are saying, "This is what I believe and all I believe; everything else is irrelevant," then I can't buy it. We all hold opinions about theological issues that have divided Christians throughout history (even if we hold them unconsciously, having been only exposed to one view). Leaving opinions unarticulated leads to a lack of self-awareness at best and dishonesty at worst.

This also touches on the purpose and use of local church and denominational statements of faith. Most of these statements do not presume to say, "One must believe this in order to be a Christian." Most of them, rather, exist to make clear the position and reason for existence of a particular body of believers. "This is who we are, this is where we are at, this is why we worship the way we worship and teach the way we teach." The splintering of the Church Universal is, of course, a Bad Thing, but it is a fait accompli at this point, and the one positive element in it is allowing Christians of differing points of view to coexist as Christians - albeit with much less unity than one would like - rather than the earlier case of excommunicating one another when we understand scripture differently. So differerent groups should be able to explain what their differences are - in fact, I'd argue, have a duty to do so, so that someone coming into the group can avoid being blindsided by hidden presuppositions.

So, again, the creeds are good to identify how we can accept one another in the Faith, but not good as an expression of full 21st century theological understanding. Some have argued that we shouldn't be wedded to a 16th century theology; it doesn't help to be wedded to a 4th century theology instead.

Emerging Pentecostalism?

Earl Creps weighs in on why Pentecostals haven't been much a part of the emerging "conversation," and whether they can be, in this interesting post.

At least as interesting, however, is the response he invited from sociologist Adam Long. Long appears to be somewhat skeptical of the EmChurch movement, or at least the claims of some of its leaders regarding its origins and purpose. His point #4 is particularly interesting--in this day and age, is pretending not to market the best marketing tool of all?

Is There Any There There? Modernism and Postmodernism

[There was a time when] the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and when it was proved they really believed it. . . . But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. . . . Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous--that it is the philosophy of the future.

--Screwtape

I first came across the terms modernism and postmodernism while in pursuit of a degree in English literature at a secular university. That, it seems to me, should have been a reasonably good introduction, considering the fact that these terms originated in the study of literature, and one of the major proponents of a postmodern approach to the church--Brian McLaren--appeals to his literature background in his views and interpretations of Scripture. I write "should have been," because in reencountering these terms twenty years later in the context of the emerging church movement, I barely recognize them.

In literature, "modernism" was a literary movement characterized by people like James Joyce, T S Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and later, William Faulkner. It was characterized by experimentation with literary forms and conventions, multiple points of view, nonchronological development, and lack of transitional or explanatory matter to clarify what is going on. Some of these are among my favorite writers; I love this kind of literary experimentation--finding a way to tell a story in a new and fresh way. There are, of course, other points of view; I believe it was Graham Greene who simply thought that James Joyce had gone stark raving mad halfway through Ulysses.

Postmodernism was simply a catch-all term for the writers who had come after the Modernists, most of whom in some way responded to or built upon what the Modernists had done. Some like John Barth went further and abandoned any sort of pretense to narrative storytelling at all. Many were influenced by French Existentialism, with its rejection of objective truth--meaning is something for individuals to construct for themselves out of an absurd universe. Other, more philosophical issues entered into the study of literature (this is distinct from the production of literature itself), culminating with Jacques Derrida and deconstruction theory, which in a nutshell, meant that there could be no inherent meaning to any text, only the meanings that arose from the encounter of the reader's matrix of understanding with the text. (It may be argued here that I have only a superficial and faulty understanding of the issues involved with literary postmodernism. This may be so--I am much more interested in literature itself than in various theories on its interpretation--but as will be seen, that actually should not matter in the discussion of the emerging church.)

When I read these terms in the context of the emerging church, they take on entirely different meanings. Modernism and postmodernism are supposed to be two different cultures, the first waning, the second taking shape in reaction to the first. Those who identify with postmodern culture are resolutely against defining the characteristics of that culture (the attempt to do so being dismissed as "modern"). They don't appear to have any problem defining the culture they are rejecting, however. "Modernism" is used synonymously with "modernity" and appears to be associated with rational and logical thought; it's sometimes characterized as "Enlightenment thinking," as though Aristotle knew nothing of logic and Plato's dialogues had nothing to do with reason. This is not to say that postmodern thought is irrational, but there is much more focus on understanding through narrative, as opposed to understanding through propositions and syllogistic reasoning. "Modernism" is also viewed as individualistic and associated with a consumer mentality. Postmodernism, by contrast, is supposed to be more relational, more interested in community, and opposed to consumerism. It has some relationship to youth culture, which is why it shouldn't matter whether I have a perfect understanding of Derrida, literary postmodernism, or deconstruction: most of those who identify with the postmodern movement don't, either.

What is my point? (How modernist of you to ask!) Only this: I think there is something going on among those who view themselves as emerging or postmodern, but I don't know if it's anything nearly so earth-shattering as its proponents want to make out. As a matter of fact, I think we've seen something like this before. Wasn't the '60s counterculture supposed to be a new way of life, emerging from the ashes of the surrounding larger culture? Wasn't it supposed to be a rejection of the money grubbing rat race? A new Age of Aquarius, full of peace and harmony? While the '60s have had a significant impact on culture--largely in terms of music and social/sexual mores--much of the more radical aspects of the movement petered out. So let's be careful before we abandon too much in the race to be "relevant" to the brave new postmodern world. Especially, let's be careful in the area of Biblical interpretation. Liberal theology was predicated on the perceived necessity to make the Bible "relevant to modern man." The result: the denominations that adopted that theological approach have withered. Let's not make that mistake again.

Turtles All the Way Down Scot McKnight's Critique of Heretic's Guide to Eternity

I knew I loved Scot McKnight for a reason.

Scot has been doing one of his many book review series, this one on A Heretic's Guide to Eternity by Spencer Burke of TheOoze.com. The series is worth reading throughout. My own reason for linking to it and commenting at this time has less to do with the actual critique of the book than what Scot writes about the emerging movement as a whole. Scot is associated with the movement, links to many of its leaders, and has a "friend of Emergent" button on his blog, so he's anything but a knee-jerk, uncomprehending rejector of the movement. I have wanted to write about postmodernism and the emerging movement for a while, but haven't felt that I understood it enough to comment. Scot is, however, not in that position. This is what he says--and it's worth noting that he prefaces his comments in this way he does:

I have to say the following — and I don’t do so with anything but sadness.

The emerging movement is proud of creating a safe environment for people to think and to express their doubts. Partly because of what I do for a living (teach college students), I am sympathetic to the need for such safe environments. But, having said that, the emerging movement has also been criticized over and over for not having any boundaries. Frankly, some of the criticism is justified. I want to express my dismay today over what I think is crossing the boundaries.

What Scot means by "boundaries" is a defining limit to how far one can go and still remain within Christianity. Burke rejects the personhood of God and the necessity of coming to God through Christ; he also argues essentially that everyone is born saved, although it is possible to "opt out" and send yourself to hell. People whose native culture is centered on another religion do not have to convert to Christianity to be saved. (Burke told Scot on the phone that he believes that it is because of Jesus' death and resurrection that people are included in God's grace from birth, but he doesn't say so in the book.)

The issue here is simply, how far may one go in expressing one's doubts, and still claim to be a Christian? Is there a "bottom line" to what it means to be a Christian, or, as the old joke goes, is it "turtles all the way down"? It seems to me to be self-evident that if there is no basic core of belief that is necessary to orthodoxy, then there is no such thing as Christianity at all.

Andrew Jackson on SmartChristian.com correctly observes that "No one should use Burke to condemn everyone in the Emergent movement." However, I don't see Scot as doing that. One of the problems that outsiders like me have in trying to comprehend the movement is that people who critique the movement (e.g., Donald Carson) are dismissed as not understanding it; when people ask questions to try to understand it, people in the movement refuse to "define themselves"; and when individuals within the movement are quoted in order to discuss their ideas, it is responded that "they don't speak for the whole movement." So how is one supposed to grasp or interact with it?

The emerging "conversation" is said to be a "safe environment for people to think and to express their doubts." All well and good; my own experience tells me that if you are free to doubt--honestly doubt--you can come back with a stronger faith than ever. But my suspicion is that "doubt" is all too often merely a code-word to mean rejection. Is the emerging conversation also a safe environment for people to think and express their beliefs? Is there any positive content to the emerging conversation? Or is it all simply rejection? Enquiring minds want to know.