Dealing with Emerging Church/Existing Church Relations

One of the important issues facing those of us involved in the emerging church conversation has to do with our relationship with the existing church. In Emergent Manifesto of Hope Tim Condor offers a helpful chapter addressing this issue. Tim is in a unique position, simultaneously pastoring an Emergent community (Emmaus Way), while serving as a standing elder for a more traditional church community (Chapel Hill Bible Church).

Tim points out that both the emerging church and existing church crowds are guilty of glorifying certain aspects of the Church history- while effectively ignoring others. While Emergents tend to focus on Church prior to the Reformation period (where mysticism, monasticism, and “experimental faith practices” were common), the existing Church tends to focus primarily on the Reformation on, as well as the very early church period of the first century. In other words, both groups tend to black-out certain eras of “God’s redemptive history”.

I think Tim is correct in suggesting that, in order to be honest, holistic, and truly catholic (in the literal sense of the word), both groups need to do a better job of understanding- even if not wholly endorsing- the good in all of the Body of Christ's history.

Tim helpfully reminds emergents that it’s easy to fall into the trap of assigning all ecclesial evil to the era immediately preceding the current one. After all, isn’t that precisely what the Protestants did in their post-Catholic era? Too often Protestants “threw the baby out with the bathwater” in their sheer euphoria over the "individual freedom" offered by Protestantism.

We Emergents would do well to remember that we too could very easily fall into the same trap- if we turn our backs on all that the post-Reformation era brought to our collective history. Wherever we go from here, Tim reminds us that “though many of the presuppositions of the Enlightenment-shaped Reformation are waning or being challenged in postmodernity, the church emerging stands squarely on the shoulders of the Reformation church.”

Well said and truly said. You know the expression: “those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it.”

Let’s not fall into that all-too-familiar trap. Let's seek a healthy centeredness where we stand informed by our full history, rather that merely resorting to a reactionistic swing on the pendulum of human history.





Pope Benedict Weighs in on the Creation/Evolution Debate

A new book addressing the evolution debate from a Catholic perspective was released this week. The book, titled, Creation and Evolution, offers the thoughts of Pope Benedict as well as other Catholic scholars who participated in a theological symposium at the papal summer estate in Castel Gandolfo in the fall of last year.

I found Benedict’s comments about the creation/evolution issue actually quite helpful. He said: “The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science."

Well said.

Too often I see people pitch the two sides of the evolution/creation debate as polar opposites. Recently I’ve heard Christians, taking Darwin’s theory in its most extended form, suggest that Evolution is not a viable alternative for Christians because it necessarily presupposes a non-creator. Put more simply, they argue it denies even the possibility of God. Interestingly, these fundamentalists stand side by side with certain atheists- who argue the same thing. But this isn’t theoretical reaching- it’s just bad science. Fundamentalism, it seems, exudes at both sides of the spectrum.

The truth is, as Pope Benedict points out, when you move into the realm of ultimate beginnings you really move beyond scientific inquiry. Science, by its very definition, can only answer scientific questions, not existential ones. And the question of God, or not-God, is not a scientific question.

Pope Benedict is quoted in the book as saying: “I find it important to underline that the theory of evolution implies questions that must be assigned to philosophy and which themselves lead beyond the realms of science."

Overall, the Pope’s perspective seems very even-handed. He is thankful for science and the progress it has offered mankind, and yet he reminds us that science takes us only so far when it comes to the ultimate mysteries. Science may lay out the next set of questions, but according to the very parameters of its own self-understanding, simply cannot answer them.





Morgenthaler on Leadership in a Flattened World

Sally Morgenthaler has a great essay titled, Leadership in a Flattened World: Grassroots Culture and the Demise of the CEO Model, included in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope. She begins her essay by describing the world as it now exists (at least in the West). Interconnected networks, instantaneous communication, the freedom of information all typify the 21st century.

Morgenthaler paints this picture in order to contrast it with the old-school, top down leadership structure that still exists within much of the Evangelical church. Morgenthaler points out that these structures really only serve old-school Christians. Despite all “outreach-speak” to the contrary, these structures, by their very nature, are impermeable to most postmodern individuals. The very structure of these churches effectively speaks a language that appears foreign to the unchurched.

Morgenthaler reminds us that it is Jesus who first flattened the world. Isn’t it ironic then that it is the Church that is the last to really demonstrate this new reality? Morgenthaler also argues- persuasively- not only that women should be released to pursue their God-given gifts within the Church, but also that women are often better equipped to handle the complexity, interdependency and chaos typified by the postmodern era.

I have to agree with Morgenthaler when she demonstrates some real shock and perhaps even- embarrassment- over the I am warrior-man phenomenon existent within much of the Evangelical Church. Morgenthaler writes: “the strong attraction evangelical men have to neo-patriarchal works, such as Jonh Eldridge’s Wild at Heart, may actually be rooted in what Gilligan describes as the socialized amputation of the male relational/intuitive bent.”

She’s not saying that men don’t gravitate towards these kinds of books. She knows they do. She’s just saying that it is an unfortunate cutting-off of the complex self during childhood that creates these kinds of socialized mentalities in men. And there’s plenty of negative carricaturing that Morganthaler identifies in women too. The companion piece to Wild at Heart, written by Eldridge’s wife- completes this shalow, one-dimensional picture of men and women. My wife found almost nothing that resonated with her in this companion book about damsels in distress.

The overall point is that these stereotypes just don’t do justice to the flattened world Jesus came to initiate; nor do they really resonate with unchurched culture. That should give us a two-fold reason to put these outdated conceptions to bed- for good. Don’t you think?





An Emergent Manifesto (circa 2007)

Baker Books kindly sent me a copy of the latest book release from Emergent last week. The book, titled, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, is a collection of essays written by a wide variety of authors involved in various capacities within the Emergent conversation. Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones serve as the editors of the volume.

The book features well known Emergent authors including Brian McLaren, Sally Morgenthaler, and Dan Kimball, as well as a wide variety of others you might be less familiar with. Evangelical, Catholic and Mainline voices are all included in AEMOH.

I plan on posting thoughts about the book as I make my way through it. At this point, almost half way through, I can offer a wholehearted endorsement. I think it’s a wonderful collection of thoughts that place the Emergent conversation on the chronological map of 2007. A wide variety of topics are covered; including everything from theology to sexuality, parenting to imagination, mission to emerging/existing church relations.

Tony Jones offers some insight behind the title of this, the first of several volumes in a planned series. Tony explains that while exploring themes that unite those engaged in the Emerging conversation he found one particular common thread, that being an eschatology of hope. Tony writes: “folks who hang around the emerging church tend to see goodness and light in God’s future; not darkness and gnashing of teeth.” This perspective stands in contrast to what Tony calls the “Evangelical psyche”- defined largely by authors such as LaHaye, Jenkins, and Peretti. Tony finds amongst EC’ers a contrary view, where we’re “caught in the tractor beam of redemption and re-creation…”.

Ah yes, can’t you taste the fresh air?

Stay tuned for more on An Emergent Manifesto of Hope in the days to come…



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