e~mergent kiwi

counting sheep (if you must)

"Is the emerging church a sell-out to contemporary culture?" was the moot for a 60 minute debate I spoke at today. (Using the wonders of technology, I spoke in Christchurch, while my sparring partner was in the city of Auckland). An audience question at the end asked about conversion rates. If I'd had time, I would have named the following:

- If you must count, it is interesting to do the stats on the reported baptisms at Mark Driscoll's church last year, to divide the number reportedly baptised (200) against their attendance (7000). It was about the same percentage (2.8%) as the average of all the Baptist churches here in New Zealand, and 2007 wasn't a flash year for NZ baptists (1040 divided by 42,000 attenders = 2.5%).

- In a similar vein from David Fitch: "Missional churches are so much smaller. 6 conversions from a group of 25 over ten years would match (or exceed) the percentage growth of a typical mega church."

- and some wisdom from a shepherd "I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. Luke 15:3-7

its about power

I flew back with someone from my congregation today. She was on a surprise trip home. As we flew, we talked about her work. It's a new job, working not within a large hospital, but instead visiting homes in the community.

Her eyes sparkled as she talked about being in the home of another. She's now a guest, dependant on hospitality of another. She loses power. And she loves it.

I told her about my day with the Salvation Army leadership. How I used Luke 10:-12, to encourage the church out of the institution and into the community. And the text encourages hospitality.

Last week Prodigal and I talked back and forth about the relationship between mission and worship (see the comments especially). And Paul has blogged more here.

The airplane/workplace conversation today helped me clarify things. For centuries the church has been in a place of power. Worship and spiritual formation are so easily placed within that place of power. People come to us, and we remain at the center of the conversations.

When you start with mission, in the homes of another, worship and formation are much more likely to emerge from places of powerlessness. Which to me seems to be what the way of Jesus was about.

I am not suggesting in any what that by going, sitting, dwelling, our gospel is diluted. I am rather drawing attention to the hidden power that so insidiously corrupts our imagination.

emerging church as countercultural

Is the emerging church a sellout to current culture? I am addressing this question at a BCNZ forum next Thursday.

Today, as part of my research, I am surfing the web and scouring the literature, looking for examples of emerging church as countercultural, as swimming against postmodern tides, as offering prophetic critique to the whims and whimsy of our world.

If you know of any examples, I'd love to hear them.

Update: In response to helpful comments, here is my basic framework.
1 - some stories of cross-cultural sell-out
2 - what is emerging church
3 - the missiology of Luke 10:1-12
4 - encouragements to the emerging church from Luke 10:1-12
5 - challenges to the emerging church from Luke 10:1-12
6 - so, is the emerging church a sell-out ....?
(If you want the paper, let me know and I will see what happens to it post-delivery).

labelling emerging and emergent

Tony Jones, head of USEmergent, has expressed concern about those who draw lines between emerging and emergent. To which I made the following comment:

Frankly, I think it's cheeky that you [Tony Jones] can co-edit a book, titled "Emergent Manifesto", written by Americans only, and now tell us that there is no difference between the terms [emergent and emerging].

Or perhaps it's more to do with Doug wanting to draw authorial lines around the book brand?

If Emergent wants to speak for the world, then they have a lot of work to do, and it doesn't start by saying "oh, we're all really the same aren't we!"

hunting hindu idols

Update I have closed comments due to sp*m problems.

How many emerging church gatherings have you attended?
Of those gatherings, how many times have you seen a hindu idol present?
Of those gatherings, how many times have you seen the Bible used?
Of those gatherings, how many times has Jesus been mentioned?

I need to know, because I nearly lost it in front of strangers yesterday. I have been attending the Vision New Zealand Congress, probably New Zealand's broadest gathering of church leaders. In preparation, I had been asked to write a 5,000 word chapter (A Kiwi emerging church. Yeah right?) for the congress book, tracing the development of emerging church in Aotearoa New Zealand. And I am down to do a 75 minute workshop on the emerging church.

All is trucking along in the workshop reasonably smoothly until the word "absolute truth" is mentioned. And at this point, dialogue between myself and the audience goes up a notch. And one punter tells me that if you deny absolute truth, you end up worshipping Hindi idols. I am sure he said other things and I am in danger of misrepresenting the dialogue, but at this point I had lost it. I was absolutely gob smacked.

Stunned. Trying to work out the logic. Mentally flicking through my powerpoint images and presentation, hunting for hindu idols.

Hence this internet survey. I need to know from all of my readers:
1. How many emerging church gatherings have you attended?
2. Of those gatherings, how many times have you seen a hindu idol present?
3. Of those gatherings, how many times have you seen the Bible used?
4. Of those gatherings, how many times has Jesus been mentioned?

(I would also love to know where in the Bible "absolute truth" is mentioned, but that's another whole arena.)

I am serious folks. I need to know .... has the questioning of the modernist understanding of truth as "absolute" led to hindu idols in emerging church worship?

phd interview

"I was tired of reading abstract surveys of cultural change followed by a few generalised comments. I wanted to explore what was actually happening on the ground, with people..."

I was interviewed recently for emergingchurch.info about my PhD; titled "A Case Study Approach to Cityside Baptist Church as Christian Faith "making do" in a Postmodern World. You can read the whole interview here. (And I still have not got around to a 2nd print run, so if anyone wants to buy a copy of the PhD, leave a comment here.)

What is absolutely unbelievable is that they have written that I come from the USA, despite the fact that I talk in the interview about living in New Zealand. Oh well, just goes to show I guess that the emerging church really is born in the USA.

communitas and mission revisited: updated

Way back in the day (well, November 2005), I posted, questioning the application of communitas to mission.

I think applying communitas to the emerging church will only serve to keep us in our juvenile adolesence. Isn't it time the emerging church got beyond it's adolesence and got on with the task of mature Christian discipleship and living.

I was deliberately being a bit provocative, but wanting to raise some questions about what seemed to me to be a pretty shallow reading of the literature. What followed in the comments was a good conversation between Ben Edson and myself, which I appreciated and which forced me to keep thinking.

So I'm fascinated to see Ben post on the subject again recently:

As the years progress I'm getting less convinced of the missiological significance of communitas, i think that is maybe as ineffective as short term mission, and that the focus should be more on aggregation than communitas. For the whole post go here

Ben notes how communitas can be dualised and glamorised and in reality is an abnormal occurrence that only has value as it is integrated back into everyday rhythms. Which sounds to me like my original plea for discipleship and mature living.

I think there are also deeper issues at work here; including does God through evolution or revolution and the need to value a spirituality of the ordinary and everyday.

Updated:
Just dug out some reading notes from my PhD (yes, yet another example of my legendary filing system!) In Turner, "The Centre out There: Pilgrim's Goal." History of Religions 12 (1973): 191-230, the notion of communitas and liminality are applied to contemporary pilgrimage. Turner argues that in our "age of aquarius" pilgrimage is booming. He analyses it as separation; into a margin, liminal, space in which "communitas" in exhibited. Upon return re-aggregation occurs.

In M.J. Sallnow, "Communitas Reconsidered: The Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage." Man 16 (1981): 163-182, Turner's notion of pilgrimage as an example of "communitas" is critiqued. Participation in pilgrimage is a short term and loosely structured grouping. Clear distinctions between groups remain and the intensity of communitas was never visible. "From a sociological viewpoint, then, group pilgrimage in the Andes is a complex mosaic of egalitarianism, nepotism and factionalism, of brotherhood, competition and conflict ... Indeed, it would be more appropriate in such circumstances to see community, not communitas, as the hallmark of pilgrimage." (176, 177).

Further reading:
For more of my writing on communitas, liminality and the emerging church, excerpts from my PhD are here.

kiwi emerging church

I'm flying up to Auckland (80 minute flight) and back tomorrow, to speak on Kiwi emerging church at St John's the residential Theological College of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia

When I was training for ministry, I did some papers on Christology and Galatians in the Greek and Theological method and Mission history in New Zealand at St Johns. Never, ever, in my wildest dreams, did I ever imagine I would be back guest lecturing. I'm a Baptist, for goodness sake. And yet in the strange twists and turns of life and denominational streams, I am invited to speak on the emerging church in New Zealand as part of a class on evangelism and mission.

I'm taking one of my Christchurch students with me, Spanky Moore, who is planting the Kitchen. It is an Anglican expression of emerging church, so I suspect his emerging Anglican story should fit quite subversively into my audience of Anglican ordinands.

Can you talk in nice voices please?

How many of us have said this to our kids? If we ask it of our kids, can we ask it of each other as we talk about the emerging church?

I am in Auckland teaching a masters course on the emerging church. Titled Critical missional issues it uses the emerging church as a case study to reflect on mission in Western Culture. I taught the first week in April. It is my argument that there is no such thing as the emerging church, only emerging churches and an emerging conversation. So to study the emerging church, you have to put aside McLaren and actually study the practices of living communities - what they are doing.

So we spent our first week in April exploring how to read a living theology, the Word enfleshed in a body of Christ. And the students went away to put this into practice, to study the worship and ethos of an emerging church.

This second week we are due to spend discerning the missional lessons that can be learnt from the emerging church. What might the emerging church learn from Scripture, from how Jesus treated those outside the church (the wise men, the Samaritan woman, Canaanite woman), or how the early church engaged with culture (the Ethiopian Enuch, the preaching of Paul in Lystra and Derbe)? What might the emerging church learn from reading mission history.

And we also as a class need to listen to contemporary critical voices. But how could we go about talking in nice voices please. How could we listen fairly to a critic like Don Carson?

And so a few weeks ago I was given a gift. A Christchurch pastor came to me. He has a PhD in Biblical studies, is a pastor, has been reading Carson,whom he respects. And now he has some questions about the emerging church. And could we talk. Can you see why this is a gift! Not hissing over the internet, but face to face. Nice voices.

And I asked him if we could video the conversation. Could I show it in my Masters class this week? It would be so easy for me in my small classroom to conduct a monologue, to summarise a critic like Carson and then trash a critic like Carson.

But a conversation. That would be different. Allowing diverse voices into the classroom. Face to face. And allowing the critic, in this case Carson, to have the right of reply and even the last word. 55 minutes later we have a video, and what I hope will be a great gift to the class.

But whatever the case, I am trying to learn to talk in nice voices. Anyone out there want to join me? What could happen if we all try to use nice voices (as we talk to each other about faith and ministry today)?

Update: This post wasn't a video distribution plug, but a reflection on how I am processing what it means for me to engage in constructive talking, how we might build bridges and treat those who have different ideas that we do. I'm trying a more conversational approach. What are you trying?

an emerging Bible according to Peter, Paul and John MacArthur

I came across John MacArthur waxing erudite about the emerging church on youtube here

Hermeneutics ... to interpret .. It's really not that hard. It's not brain surgery ... We are talking simply about how we discern what it means by what it says.

Which I couldn't help contrasting with the apostle Peter: Paul's letters contain some things that are hard to understand. 2 Peter 3:16

Or am I simply misusing proof texts and quoting people out of context?

the emerging church is liberal

It's news to me, but that's the word according to The emerging Christian Way

(I hate books with the word "The" in them. They just sound so arrogant. The simple use of the word "A" would leave room for other voices).

Anyhow, chapter one paints church history as belonging to two camps: an earlier Christian way and an emerging Christian way. The author, Marcus Borg, places himself in the later, and he also includes Brian McLaren in his camp. "Emerging" in this definition refers to time, as it comes after "earlier". There is no mention of postmodernism or cultural change, which is a unique departure from much emerging church literature. There is also no mention of communities of practice, which so often characterise other emerging church books. Instead we have a focus on theology.

It's a good discipline to read people who might see things differently, so I hope to review some of the other chapters in the weeks ahead.

emerging church course in a local church

A friend rang, wondering how he, a rural worker, could engage with my emerging church course that I teach here at BCNZ. I put some information about the course and how it might work in a local church, together for him. Then I thought it might interest some other blog readers, so here it is.

Emerging church: contemporary ways of being the people of God

Introduction: What’s Going On Out There? From the way people meet, to the way people worship, it’s clear that the church around the world is changing. So what’s happening on the edges of the church? Is there a place for labyrinths or multi-media creativity or spirituality2go in Christian worship? In what ways might internet church or Christian festivals change the future of Christian faith?

Emerging church as contemporary Ways of Being the People of God is a short course that takes trips to the edge of the church envelope and reports back on the emerging church around the globe. Topics include: leadership, the Bible, spiritual formation; worship and mission. The course is interactive and multi-media, mixing theology and practical outworkings for churches today.

Course content:
Lecture 1: New soil = new plants = new church shapes
Lecture 2: What is the new “soil” that is “postmodern cultures”?
Lecture 3: A missionary for a postmodern soil
Lecture 4: Identifying with the life of Jesus:
Lecture 5: Spiritual formation and the emerging church
Lecture 6: Transforming secular space
Lecture 7: Spirituality to go: Worship and the emerging church
Lecture 8: Living as a community: New forms of contemporary Christian community
Lecture 9: Leadership and the emerging church
Lecture 10: Evaluation of the emerging church OR
A mixed economy: the place of emerging church in established church

Details: Taught by Steve Taylor, drawing on his book, The Out of Bounds Church? Learning to Create a Community of Faith in a Culture of Change. Steve teaches this course every two years at BCNZ Christchurch.

He is also available to teach it to groups of more than 10 people in a local church. The course takes 10 hours and could be taught over consecutive Saturday’s. The course can be taken for audit, or assignment work could be completed for BCNZ credit (BCNZ credit fees would then be required to be paid).

Participants also receive a pre-course DVD with five 7-minute long video clips of emerging church leaders around the world describing their vision, passion, leadership and community.

For more information, contact Steve on steve at emergentkiwi dot org dot nz or 027 252 8227

emerging church CD-Rom teaching resource

Recently, I have been working on this ...

.. an emerging church teaching resource.

It's a CD ROM that includes 5 video clips, each about 5 minutes long, plus my emerging church research database. I use each of the video clips (stories of various emerging church leaders talking about their communities) for my 2 day intensive course on the emerging church. The emerging church research database is a list of about 80 web articles and blog posts that I have found helpful in describing the emerging church.

So, the plan is that each participant will get the CD ROM about 10 days before a course. The CD cover includes various emerging church pics, plus a list of questions. This will help the participant interact with the video material pre-class. It means that when we come to class, students will already have done some processing and be better able to engage the material.

If they want to do further research, they just use the database, which is hyperlinked, to take them to various articles. A lot of the best emerging church stuff is on-line, so this sort of guide should be really helpful for students.

There is also something in this about the medium being the message. To teach the emerging church by doing a monologue from the front so goes against the ethos of participation and cultural connectivity. Wheras I hope that to have a CD which invites you to participate more meaningfully in community, and which also acts as a jumping off point for further research, sends another message all together.

I am teaching the emerging church course in early May in Christchurch, then mid-May in Adelaide, then again in early July in Auckland, so am looking forward to beta-testing it with participants.

critical missional issues in the emerging church

I am flying up to Auckland tomorrow to lecture a Masters intensive course titled Critical Missional issues: Emerging church. I am doing 3 days this week, and 4 days in October. (More info about the course is here.)

In the course I will be asking students to read the emerging church by analysing the everyday practices of local emerging church communities, rather than relying on the books and the blogs. I am then flagging what I think are some critical missional issues facing the emerging church.

Now, if you were teaching this course, what issues would you raise? What do you think are the critical missional issues facing the emerging church? (So as not to spoil your fun, I'll wait until later in the week before telling you what I raised.)

an American manifesto

Just browsing my way through my nice, new, shiny, hardbacked copy of An Emergent Manifesto of Hope.

It includes the following quote from Brian McLaren: "So I am hereby giving notice that I'm not interested in arguing with anyone about modernity and postmodernity, but I would very much like to engage in honest conversation about colonialism and postcolonialism." (143).

Well said Brian. One of 25 chapters, written by 25 different authors. Oh. All American. Yahoo. 25 American voices starting an "honest conversation about colonialism and postcolonialism."

Update: I have just realised the Easter irony. I write this on Easter Monday, the day after the Easter story was first encountered, and first told, by a Middle Eastern peasant woman. How truly post-colonial.

emerging, missiology and the mainline

Can emerging be anglican|lutheran|mainline? Yes, according to Ian Mobsby, who is self-publishing his Masters research under the title: Emerging & Fresh Expressions of Church. This does not wave around abstract theories on the emerging church. Instead it draws on narrative data, the real live stories of Sanctus 1, Moot, B1 and the Church of the Apostles. Not content with sociology, it then trawls the deep waters of theology and ecclesiology. It uses a reframed understanding of Trinitarian theology and arguing that the emerging church is using a synthetic model of contextual theology, seeking to reframe what it means to be Christian in post-modern post-secular contexts. The book concludes that the Emerging Church is reframing a new approach to ecclesiology and missiology.

Buy it here. All sales are ploughed back into the Moot community.

the place of emerging church in theology, critique and seminary

I am in Auckland for the next 24 hours, delivering a paper at a Bible College of New Zealand Curricular Conference. I have been asked to speak to the topic: how to express emerging church in a seminary curriculum.

In my paper I attempt the following:
a) to define the emerging church. I use Luke 10:1-12 to highlight themes of missiology and contextualisation.
b) to outline a model which integrates context, Biblical text and community mission action.
c) to apply this to three papers I teach - Emerging Church; Missional Church Leadership and Gospel in a post-Christian Society - explaining how and why I teach and reflect the way I do.

The paper, if you are interested, is here (208KB). It might be of interest to anyone wanting to critically engage with the emerging church and to those teaching in seminaries.

imagination, leadership and humming Mary's song in the emerging church

Update: I have added below a somewhat excellent conversational email response to this post from Alan Roxburgh - reflecting further on imagination, leadership, emerging church and Mary's song

"There is then a twofold work for those projects involved in developing transformative practices of hope: the work of generating new imaginary significations and the work of forming institutions that mark such significations." (Ward, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice, 2005, 146.

This captures so much of the pain around the emerging church movement. The emerging church movement is gift as it embraces the work of generating new imaginative acts of church and worship. This is what drew me to the alternative worship movement back in 1995. I saw a picture of Visions in York in worship, projecting multiple slide images on church walls. Their imagination allowed my eyes to catch a glimpse of what it might mean to worship God body, mind and soul. Time and again I have seen in the emerging church glimpses of new ways of being church, renewed missional practices, Incarnational worship.

At the same time, I have seen emerging church groups remain profoundly distrustful of institution forming. Leadership and structures are often a dirty word. Listen closely and you hear stories of abuse. Yet Ward reminds us that our imaginative task is always two-fold. We need the breathe of new life and generative power for institutional life.

Equally, I have seen the emerging photocopied. The challenge is not to reproduce Visions worship on your wall. Instead it is to worship God body, mind and soul, Incarnationally in your context.

Creativity is never formless and void. It always looks for the containers of time and space that will mark day from night, form from void. Such institutions are never timeless, but rather contextual markers that best fit the new imaginations. Such is the hard work of the church emerging. It is easier to despise the church of your fathers and mothers than to hoe the hard yards that are the forming of contextual containers for a new day.

I have been working on Mary's song in Luke 1 this week. At base it is a song. It is a creative response to the generative and birthing work of God. As the Spirit of God hovers over the waters in Genesis 1, so the Spirit of God hovers over Mary's womb. The Christmas story in Luke offers 3 other new imaginations, the songs of Zechariah and Simeon and the angels, that hum into life around the birth of Jesus. Mary walks in a long line of Biblical woman, like Miriam and Deborah and Hannah, who sing in creative response to the work of God. Mary's song invites us to respond to the generative work of the spirit with new imaginary significations.

Mary's song offers a theological imagination. Mary seems little interested in singing in a song in response to sociological observations of church practice and church decline. Instead her song emerges from her personal narrative of excluded woman and young teenage. So must all our songs, for God dwells among the stories of the poor and dispossessed. But Mary's song refuses to remain stuck in her moment. Instead it becomes a form, a contextual hum, that will shape a movement toward God for the poor and marginalised. Such is the task of mission today. To sing Mary's song for our day, bounded by our context, listening to the stories of God in life, in response to the hovering work of the Spirit. May the power of God's Spirit be twofold this Advent, to breathe new imagination and generate institutional life, for the sake of the poor we pray, Amen.

Update: A somewhat excellent conversational email response to this post from Alan Roxburgh - reflecting further on imagination, leadership, emerging church and Mary's song

Thanks for the gift of these reflections. I have been working through Ward's wonderfully rich book - it provides us with generative materials for framing the work we are about. I look forward to continued conversations around its content.

The lines you pick and connect with Mary's song connect me with a conversation I had this week with three people from down the valley who've been planting an 'emergent' church for the past few years. One teaches philosophy at a nearby university, another is a counsellor and teaches psych and the third is the relatively new 'pastor' of this group of 150ish people. Like a lot of emergent experiments they began several years back out of an awareness that many of the people they knew had left the church bruised, hurt and abused by the seven-day-week, programmatic and propositional nature of their experiences. They sensed there was something more to Christianity but could no longer sustain life in an existing congregation. You know the story as well as I. What strikes me about these stories is the depth of murmuring around loss and longing that hangs in the air. So many out there sense something is wrong with the story of Christian life they've been given. Week by week they come out of church services with a murmuring inside shaped by a grief and hurt which, I think, is a whole lot about hunger to know God in the midst of a people. It is less and less likely they find it in busy churches shaped by arguments and preaching that have little to do with their lives - so they leave.

The philosopher and psychologist sensed all of this. They set up a Sunday night meeting built around theological conversations coming out of people's lived questions. People came, they kept meeting and grew. Their narrative background is a fairly conservative denomination formed in and by modernity.

These folk were meeting with me for a couple of reasons. First, they just felt lonely after three years. Their own denomination doesn't get what they're about. The conversations they have scare the modernist propositionalist views of Scripture and truth in that denomination so these folk feel like orphans and are searching for places to connect and belong. It was poignant to here them describe this desire to be connected, understood and blessed. Second, they were trying to figure out what to do next. They had so reacted to their church experience that, as you indicate in your note, they are deeply distrustful of institutions, programs and organization. This distrust goes down deep - so much so that they really are struggling to know how to form and organize themselves as a church rather than a dialogue and happening on a Sunday night.

Obviously, other issues are at work. But here is an example of Ward's point. These folk have been experimenting with whatever practices of hope they've been able to figure out (inside their narratives this has to do with creating spaces for dialogue around people's lived questions) and in so doing generated hope and expectation. At the same time they are so burned by and suspicious of institutions that they have no idea how to give form to the hope and imagination. I have a lot of time for these kinds of folk.

I find it fascinating that many emergent folk speak of 'institutions' in quite Platonic ways as if there is this reified thing out there that is just objectively destructive of creatively and imagination. This is modernity deeply embedded in imagination even when its considered 'postmodern' to be anti-structure (when, in acts, its very modern). But it is also an illustration of how good people with a deep hunger for God's future are struggling to break out of the systems that have shaped them - because we're in a place where it is hard to articulate alternatives most of the time these folk kick against what has shaped them. But then there is this murmuring going on. The kicking and critique is also this other song that seems unable to find form. You talk about humming and breathing as you reflect upon Mary's song. I wonder about Mary and Zechariah and Simeon. They lived in a geography and time when each knew that the narratives were broken and destructive to life. And there was this other song going on under the surface, this background murmuring of God's past promise of a future that was not now. In the midst of their 'making do' with life they must have felt this song in some way but it did not have form or voice, it was murmur and humming. When I hum its because I'm not sure about the song. I was never trained in music and have no ear for tunes yet inside me is this hunger to sing out loud. But I dare not because all that would come out is noise. So I hum and in the humming I'm listening and longing to find someone who knows the tune and can lead me in the song. Mary, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon and so many of my emergent and non emergent friends today are in this experience. When I can only hum I mostly can name what isn't the song but just can't find inside the way to blast out the song that's rumbling somewhere in the universe. Don't you think that's what's going on all over the place in so many people and so many churches?

Then there is Mary and her song - a song that comes forth from her womb. "My soul magnifies the Lord..." I love those words! She knows, in her humble estate (what an understatement of poetic form and power), that the humming has been given form and voice by He who is being formed within her womb. Her breathing has now found words because the blessed Spirit has filled her womb with God. So now she sings with words no young peasant girl in rural Palestine could utter (our social science makes singing this song an impossibility in this situation) but her womb is full and it is the Lord who has done this thing. What am I going on about? In the midst of all the murmuring and humming of people who know something is wrong and kick against their inherited structures the Spirit is at work. How might we be poets and midwives to the murmuring and humming? This is what I see you doing so well, Steve, in your context. As I listened to you talk a few weeks ago in Christchurch I was so moved because this is what you're doing. How do we midwife others into this vocation?

Mary's womb is the place of God's creativity and life. Ordinary Mary - a young girl who becomes the handmaiden of the Lord! I can't imagine God's Spirit just invaded Mary's womb. We call that rape; minimally it would be the denial of human choice and freedom. So I can only imagine that this girl said Yes to God. What could that have meant to her in that culture? What a massive risk of hope! In Mary I see God's future so much more clearly than in the power brokers and elites of culture. In the ordinary, insignificant life of this girl God's future is born. So, in this little gathering of people down the valley with no idea about how to be a church is God's future. But in these seven day a week congregations where pastors have grand plans for big futures there sit ordinary men and women who sense its all so artificial and long for God - there too is God's future shaping itself in the womb of their lives.

Mary's womb is the place of God's life for the world. Within her, beginning as simple undifferentiated cells and emerging into greater and greater hierarchies of complexity, is Jesus. Wow! The emergent creative future of God, the hope of the world formed through delicate and intricate structures of organiztional development and the complex formation of cellular hierarchies. In each womb, in every place, the form taken is always new, always different, always the place of God's future. The womb is the location of Ward's both/and - the new imaginary of God and the formed institutions that mark the particular signification.

God's great joy to you and your community in this time of Advent. Thanks for the conversations and the partnership on this journey.

what is theology?

I am currently enjoy Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice by Graham Ward, in preparation for teaching my 2007 Masters course: Critical Missional Issues and the Emerging Church. He defines theology as having three functions:

"First, with respect to interpreting the Scriptures; secondly with respect to the teaching of the Church; and thirdly, with a discernment of the contemporary work of Christ in the context of any activity undertaken."

All 3 are distinct. All 3 are important.

Today on the way in the car, one of my daughters entered an existing conversation late. She had been reading her book, and popped her head up. Her entry into the conversation simply blurred, and confused us all.

I wonder how many confusions and arguments about the emerging church occur because conversational categories simply get blurred. For instance; is there not a blurring when:
Steve Chalk's writing on Christ and our contemporary context is butted hard against Carson's way of interpreting Scriptures; or
Reformed theology (a historic and contextual teaching of the Church) is butted against the 7 Jesus's as McLaren tries to make sense of Christ in our contemporary context.

I found Ward's categories helpful and it left me wondering what would happen if these 3 categories were used to guide our conversations?

what is church

After almost 3 years at Opawa Baptist I finally found some time to put up some posters. Here is my favourite, a mix of advertising poster and a quote that for me sums up a Biblical ecclesiology.

"The story of Acts is the story of a community inspired to make a continual series of creative experiments by the Pentecostal Spirit." Quote by Fison in Fire Upon the Earth, 79.

Any chance of these being used as criteria for evaluation of emerging churches:
1. Where are the Biblical narratives shaping the journey of the church?
2. How much is the future the participatory work of a community?
3. Where are the signs of creative and innovative partnership with the Spirit?

See also my recent post on emerging church is local church.

emerging churches are local churches

"The people I talked to at [Jacobs Well] had never heard of Emergent or of McLaren." Great quote from an excellent article in Christian Century about Jacobs Well, an emerging church in Kansas City.

It takes a good hard look at a local church; their love of arts and home grown music, their love of place and awareness of context, their breadth of ecumenical relationships and commitment to authenticity.

We need lots and lots of stories like this - stories of local churches doing local mission. That is emerging church. I contrast this with yet another email, sent to me overnight by an American fundamentalist, bagging some abstract category called "emerging church."

What a waste of his time. "Emerging" will never be found in books or blogs or conferences. It is found as local Christians seek to Incarnate Christ in their local neighbourhoods.

Hat tip to Coops

wanting to really get your teeth into the emerging and missional church

Looks like I am teaching 2 new papers around the area of emerging and missional church in 2007.

ONE: Critical missional issues: Emerging Church as part of Tyndale Graduate School Master of Theological Studies. Auckland, 11-13 April and 2-5 October. The course description is as follows: This course will explore critical issues in the missional church, with particular attention to the emerging church. Students will consider the emerging church in relation to themes of cultural analysis, practices, ecclesiological innovation and contemporary missiology. They will further consider major criticism of the emerging church in relation to the bible, doctrine and ecclesiology. By taking this case study approach to the emerging church, the paper will teach two theological skills. Firstly, that of reading a living theology; and the skills of being able to situate contemporary church practices within a multiple set of contexts. Secondly, that of faithful discernment; and the skills of being able to discern contemporary church practices in relation to faithfulness to the trajectories of Christianity.

TWO: Leadership in the Missional church. By taking this paper, students will learn to read a context, discern theological themes in lived experience, describe a missional project, appreciate missional literature and integrate it into church life today. The paper will be taught over a year, with a mix of on-line access and monthly coaching and is best suited to those in existing church ministry.

THREE: I am also pencilled in to teach an Introduction to the emerging church in Christchurch, May 4, 5 2007.

Should be a fun year.

the diversity of Sydney Anglicans

Recently I expressed my sadness over an article flaming the emerging church, written in a Sydney Anglican newspaper. I wrote to the reporter and was granted a cordial and thoughtful reply. Hat tip to the reporter, Madeleine Collins.

The article took another turn when it became apparent that the reporting had included the taking of a web-based April fools joke as fact. The rather earnest Anglican error was duly lampooned on Australian TV. Which seemed to illicit a certain schadenfreude (enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others) in a number of blog circles. (Always wanted to use that word schadenfreude in a blog post:))

Anyhow, I am fascinated to find yet a further step in the saga. Here are excerpts of a letter in reponse to the article (June 2006);

I'm writing in response to your recent article "True Confession of the Emerging Church" (SC May'06) to ask the question why is Southern Cross so negative and quick to criticise fellow (evangelical) Christians? ...

Peter Brain, Bishop of Armidale

Link

So there you are. A bishop of Brain no less. My impression of Sydney Anglicans has just been deepened.

emerging church course ver 2.0

I am currently reworking my two-day Introduction to the Emerging Church course. I taught it for the first time last year. A second draft (2.0) will be unveiled at BCNZ Christchurch over the next two Saturday's (16th and 23rd). The feedback on the course last year was very positive. Nevertheless, I have still made significant changes.

Introduction to the emerging church (ver 2.0) includes
- a tighter missional theology, drawing specifically on Luke 10:1-12, which offers a fascinating twist on themes of Trinity and Incarnation.
- using 5 minute video interviews (some still in the process of being shot, so HOT off the press!) from Al Roxburgh; espresso; Sanctus1; Safe Space and Freeway;
- tying these lived community narratives into Gibbs and Bolgers typology of emerging churches as identifying with the life of Jesus, transforming secular space, living as a community
- a greater focus on offering a wide range of concrete practices of spiritual formation, Biblical engagement, worship and community
- more of a deliberate encouragement of emerging churches as a mixed economy, with wide variety and in a range of relationship with established churches.

With the revamp done, bring on Saturday.

looking in an emerging mirror

Anthony Stiffs has produced an incredibly helpful reflection on the emerging church.

Part 1 - What is the emerging church?; Part 2 - Missiological contours of the emerging church; Part 3 - Missiological praxis of the emerging church; Part 4 - Missiological trajectories of the emerging church.

I have some minor quibbles.
1. He claims D. A Carson is one who has studied the emerging church movement by participating in it. I certainly don't see that in Carson's writing and I would love to see Anthony's evidence for this claim.
2. He asserts the following quote to Andrew Jones; A postmodern monastery - Combining authentic, low-budget group creativity with the task of preserving technical knowledge within the rhythms of prayer in order to cross the digital divide and catalyse open source spirituality; when in fact Andrew is quoting me!
3. I don't think he fully appreciates what I am saying when he quotes my A-Z of the Emerging Church. When I say "W = white and western. Sorry but we are. It’s a sociological reality. But let’s not stay here. It is a journey. It’s time for genuine partnership" I am expressing the same concern he is; that the emerging church needs to be more ethnically diverse.

Anthony has still to post Part 5 - his critique of the emerging church. I am looking forward to that.

Why? Why do I find myself listening to Anthony and not others?

I appreciate the fact he seems to start with an open hand and not preconceived prejudice. I love that he proceeds from a missiological perspective. I appreciate that he uses a wide range of sources - blogs, books and actual communities - and that adds depth to his analysis. I sense a good amount of people caring, wise listening and discernment. And perhaps most important, I sense that he is not pushing idealisms. I might be wrong, but I sense that he too "still has not found what he is looking for." He comes as a fellow pilgrim, not a finger pointing expert.

writing for mission

I have been posting less frequently in the last 10 days because I have been doing some other writing for print media, who have different deadlines and different rules on copyright.

1. A 3,000 word piece of Ministry Today, a UK journal. I have been asked to reflect on emerging church within traditional church, so I have been playing with my recent ministry journey, God as Trinity and a multi-congregational model. In many ways it is a Postcard 10, another chapter, for my Out of Bounds Church? book.

2. A 1,000 word piece for the New Zealand Baptist magazine. I contrast the mission of the Great Commission with the mission of Luke 10:1-12. 3 themes; mission as God’s idea (not our idea), central (not an extra for the mature), changing us (before we think about changing them). I am wondering if our changing world means we find Biblical resources in fresh places.

This is another step in the Mission Reader and emerging AD:missions projects (see here and here). I am also bouncing off David Bosch's Transforming Mission. (IMHO no-one should be allowed to talk about emerging church until they have read this book. It is such an essential missionary text). Bosch suggests six periods in mission history; Jesus and early church [added in thanks to vigilant comment of Dave]; primitive; patristic; reformation; enlightenment; ecumenical (or postmodern).

He argues that each mission period is shaped by a different Biblical text which indicates a different overall frame of reference and way of understanding God, humans and the world.

John 3:16 in the patristic Period (the love of God, seen in the sending of Jesus, is extended by God’s messengers);

Luke 14:23 in the Middle Ages (compel them to come in!);

Romans 1:16 in the Reformation (God's rightliving means grace and mercy, not punishment);

The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) in the Enlightenment period.

"The transition from one paradigm to another is not abrupt … This produces a kind of theological schizophrenia, which we just have to put up with while at the same time groping our way toward greater clarity … The point is simply that the Christian church in general and the Christian mission in particular are today confronted with issues they have never even dreamt of and which are crying out for responses that are both relevant to the times and in harmony with the essence of the Christian faith …. The point I am making is simply that, quite literally, we live in a world fundamentally different … The contemporary world challenges us to practice a "transformational hermeneutics", a theological response which transforms us first before we involve ourselves in mission to the world." (Bosch, pages 188, 189).

Bosch suggests the immense challenges of our contemporary world are signs of a transition into a new period. He notes 13 trajectories. I am wondering aloud in this Baptist article if Luke 10:1-12 might need to be our new dominant mission text.

emerging and anglo-catholics

Some fascinating discussion going on in the post "How exclusive is the emerging church?" I pulled out this comment from big bulky anglican because I think it's worthy of further discussion: I think that emerging churches tended to be populated by evangelicals discovering what anglo-catholics have known for decades - symbolism, faith in daily life, ritual and variety, daily offices.

1. Does the comment resonnate with you ie are you an "emerging church evangelical who is discovering symbolism, faith in daily life, ritual, daily offices"?

2. If you answered yes to (1), why are you finding them (symbolism, faith in daily life, ritual, daily offices) helpful?

3. What (if any) changes or appropriations have you made to how symbolism, faith in daily life, ritual, daily offices have been traditionally practiced?

4. Why might some sections of the church have lost/ignored these practices? What might we learn from this about the use and re-use of symbolism, faith in daily life, ritual, daily offices?

how exclusive is the emerging church?

The emerging church is regularly charged with the crime of exclusivity. This nameless entity which exists only in the conversational relationships between interested parties; earns cartoon fame for its homegenity and causes practioners to consider whether they are institutional racists!

This week at Opawa we have welcomed Nigel and family, to do a workplace "internship" with us. All week I have marvelled at the irony of an English Anglican ordinand from a historically Anglo-Catholic theological institution, doing time with a historically conservative New Zealand Baptist Church.

An outsider, a local Anglican, someone with sharp powers of observation, made the comment; "wow, the emerging church certainly creates interesting partnerships."

And so I lay this comment alongside the charges of exclusivity. Is the emerging church exclusive, or might it be that there is a simultaneous loosening of old networks and the forming of new networks?

This should not be an excuse for exclusivity or a lack of hospitality. Nevertheless, I will self-flagellate myself less this week with the ropes of post-colonial guilt.

contemporary ways of being the people of God

The church around the world is changing. This course charts emerging church trends and evaluates their potential for Christian life today. Topics will include:
the Bible and spiritual formation
worship and mission
new forms of emerging church.

A course I am teaching, Saturday, September 16 and September 23, 2006. For more info go here

there is no such thing as emerging church

Given that I don't have a Mac, a goatee or sunglasses, I find this cartoon hilariously funny.

Link

It also names a personal wondering of mine over the last few weeks: is there is any such thing as emerging church?

I wrote this a few weeks ago: The emerging church seems (IMHO) to be a shared conversation among people, groups and churches, about life and faith in a changing contemporary context. But it is so easy to objectify the stories and to read the conversation as monolithic, as "this is the emerging church." In doing so, the stories have been stripped of context. They are then in danger of commodification, as books, websites, podcasts etc. (A few sentences buried in a jet-lagged post about place and cross-cultural storytellinghere).

In other words; there is a conversation between various people about mission, faith, God, church in a postmodern context. This conversation has become commodified and homogenised into a universalist label "emerging church."

The result
- the focus has become the conversation rather than the work of missional communities
- like any good conversation, it has no "leader." Thus it has very few mechanism to respond to critics. (This infuriates critics even more.)
- words and labels can so easily be used to exclude and include
- we are in danger of homogenising voices and contexts and in so doing, obscure difference.

reviewing carson

Beth Dickson has a very clever review of Don Carson's Becoming Conversant with Emergent Church in Partnership Perspectives January 2006 (not online). Here are some quotes:

Carson believes strongly in the power of argument to persuade people. In reading his book what struck me most strongly was not so much the content of his arguments but the way in which he conducted them

Carson seems to have no awareness of how such an unkind manner of arguing is likely to prejudice people against the argument, even if they generally share his point of view."

Note to self: How I say things can be more important in communication than what I say.

flamed for Spirit as fire

Graceway, the church I was part of planting, just got flamed by the Sydney Anglicans. It was a worship service I was part of leading (come on Graceway when are you going to update the website that I built. It's so 90's :)!), so I'm in the firing line.

Graceway, a church in Auckland, New Zealand, encouraged its members to 'pray with your hand around a cup of coffee' as a way of experiencing the Spirit ‘as warmth in your spirituality' ... According to prominent evangelical church leaders, all are symptomatic of a dangerous protest against biblical orthodoxy ... "This is not biblical theology," says Canon Jim Ramsay, Director of Sydney Diocese’s Evangelism Ministries. "It's a shaking of Christian orthodoxy."

I presume they were cutting one fragment out of this service of worship, in which we focused on the Spirit as fire.

Can I point out that the service order also describes the reading out of 6 different lots of Scripture (Exodus 3/1 Corinthians 3/Jeremiah 20:8/Matthew 3:11/John 21/Isaiah 6:6-7). This was never mentioned in the article. 6 lots of Scripture. And it's not Biblical theology! 6 lots of Scripture!

Full article here.

alt.worship and mission

I don't think you can separate worship and community and mission. Perhaps it's because I'm a realist and when I see someone come to faith, I suspect that the two of us will want to worship together; ie worship and community and mission. Perhaps it's because I'm a Baptist and when I think church I think gathered and community; ie worship and community and mission. Perhaps it's because I believe in the Trinity, that God is found in relationships, that this Triune God so loved that world that God opened Godself to gather the world in relationship; ie worship and community and mission.

All of this by way of introduction to what I think is a great example of worship and community and mission. It comes via Jo Wall; who blogs here. They took their worship, their Easter art. They went to local shops in their community and asked them to host their art, and thus created a Easter Art Hunt that led back to the church, where they had turned the church into an Art Gallery for a week. It sounded a great example of worship and community and mission, so I interviewed Jo this week.

Jo, it sounds great. Tell me more. Each Art spot had an art piece connected to the theme of Easter and what it means to Kiwis. So in the local travel shop (Holiday Shoppe) we had a kiwi beach scene. In the library (where we have our annual Christmas memorial tree) we had a scrapbook grief meditation. In local supermarket (New World) we had "Easter in Godzone" which was a painting taken from the Baptist Maori ministries kowhaiwhai. The other spots had Easter "cross" type art pieces in different mediums and Fragments of Grace had a small statue of Mary in mid flight in front of a series of paintings of the empty tomb.

At the Gallery (back at church) we had a large Narnia display complete with 20 live trees and a wardrobe to go through. Together with more art works including an Easter DIY scene "Dad I have finished the work you gave me to do."

So tell us about the Easter Art Hunt part of the project. Well, it included a booklet of activities for kids. Find the card with Easter bunny on it for preschoolers. For older children there was a trail of activities based around John 3:16 including drawing around their hand and drawing their faces on posters. If they wanted to come on to the Gallery there was an easter egg waiting. We invited the children from local schools to provide some of the art work by running a colouring competition.

Now on your blog, you mentioned how the out of bounds church book helped shape what you did? I'm curious as to how? I like the metaphor of spiritual tourists (from Postcard 5 in the out of bounds church book) and wanted to apply that to everyday life in the community of Kaiapoi. Trusting that God has people in our community on a journey we hoped to put things in their everyday path that they would stumble upon and ponder what Easter is all about. The Gallery (back at the church) was open all week and follows the idea of a "navigable space" (discussed again in Postcard 5 of the book). There were interactive exhibits including a place to wash your hands and to scrub dirt from the world. There were songs to listen to on a listening tree and background music that wasn’t churchy. I think it was in your book (again Postcard 5) that I read about a church that rented a shop and had an image of Jesus and a place to wash your hands.

When we started planning our Easter project we looked for a shop to rent to set up a small gallery. We were'’t able to rent any of the empty shops in Kaiapoi so the plan evolved into using a small space in various shops. We hoped this in fact increased the "stumble upon" factor. The gallery was an attempt at a cross between a peg community and an Easter festival.

What other influences shaped it? The planning started Easter 2005 when I walked into our church and saw one of our Easter art pieces. I wanted to drag it out into the streets so we could share it with the community. Each Easter for the last few year the people at KBC have contributed Easter themed art to our Easter celebrations. Josephine Mallinson who had made the piece I saw in 2005 this year did the Easter DIY piece, which provoked much discussion. I have greatly appreciated Opawa’s Easter Journey over the last few years too and wanted to do something that reflected the interactivity of that and similar events. Spreydon’s Christmas grotto was also an influence with the progression from Santa to Christ’s birth as a journey for people.

In reflection, what pleased you about the Easter Egg Hunt? The willingness of the shops to be involved was great. Some we had relationship with and others we just approached. No one said no and we didn't have enough art pieces for all the shops we could have used. The effect for the shops was good too as Kaiapoi’s layout makes lack of foot traffic an issue and there were reports of new customers. A blessing both ways.

I was very encouraged by the team that gathered to put together the project. Lots of our church community was involved and many people took up their part and exceeded my dreams with their results.

We told the Easter story and our stories well and for an inaugural project we were thrilled with how it looked. We don't know what seeds were planted but we could see growth in some visitors to the gallery.

More about Jo's community here.
More photos of the Easter Art Hunt here.
Out of bounds book here;
Out of bounds book blog here;
More on spiritual tourism here.

on being emergent

Paul McMahon has an absolutely excellent post on being emergent. Paul comes from a political science background and sort of stumbled onto Opawa about a year now. (I might be wrong, but I don't think Paul would have known what emerging was pre-Opawa so his is a fascinating take). He (and his wife Ann) have helped us pioneer one of our emerging congregations at Opawa called espresso. He recounts his own spiritual journey and concludes:

At its best the emergent church brings people into community and back to Scripture to read it in the context of the overarching Biblical story of God’s love for His Creation, to listen together and share their stories in pursuit of truth and the Spirit’s guidance in their lives. It is not an abandonment of absolute truth, but instead a rebalancing and embracing of the relational nature of truth. At its best the emergent church is the essence of the three golden rules of biblical interpretation: Context, context, context.

passionate practices in Next Wave Magazine

The latest edition of Next Wave magazine includes an article based on a blog post I did back in February, on how we are applying passionate practices here at Opawa, on how we are trying to make the doing of our faith a community activity around which we shape our worship.

The Next Wave article is here.

mclaren weekend: updated

Things are falling into place nicely for Brian McLaren, this weekend (for more details, go here and it's still not too late to register ).

- Registrations are update: finished with near 100, which means a good conversation. Update: with a real diversity of church backgrounds which will also greatly "salt" the conversation
- The coffee maker is booked.
- We are having a number of panelists who respond to Brian on the Saturday, as part of the discerning and contextualising process. The panelists have gelled into a really nice mix that includes young, women, lay, alongside the usual respected leader names.

Here is an outline of some of the workshops for the Sunday afternoon;

How much Spirit has the emerging church got? (Steve Graham): A look at the questions Pentecostal/Charismatic churches and the emerging church might have for each other over what it means to be people of the Spirit eg the place of congregational singing in worship, ecstatic gifts in services, divine creativity, seekers' 'initiation' into the dynamics of the Spirit

The Art of Curating Worship (Mark Pierson): seeing worship as an art form to be curated rather than a list of boxes to be filled.

A café church spirituality (Lynne Taylor): two stories of emergence, of different groups engaging with our world in different ways... with common themes.

Update: Spirited Exchanges (Jenny McIntosh and Elizabeth Taylor): Spirited Exchanges is something for people who are struggling to find a "place" at church - who have been wounded or hurt by church or it's leaders, who are asking questions but not necessarily finding answers. We want to create a regular place where people can come and air their doubts, share their story, and find acceptance, not judgement. This is a double workshop that includes exploration and then the running of an actual Spirited Exchanges. Ideally people would attend both.

Update: Emerging Workplace Spirituality (Alistair McKenzie): Emerging church can easily just focus on doing things differently when we gather together. If we continue to think that church is something we come to, then we will fail to realise our potential for being the church God sends out into the world to work in partnership there. What sort of spirituality will support the ministry of all God's people the other six days?

Other workshops include public artistic mission and a book club discussion of McLaren’s "a generous orthodoxy" and Taylor's "out of bounds church?" (authors not necessarily present).

emerging church in australia

There is a superb exploration of emerging church in Australia in the latest (Summer 2006) Zadok magazine.

Highlights for me where;

Stephen Said's historical narrative around the emerging church in Australia;

Barb Daws, who discerns the links between emerging church values and new ways of education and learning;

Matthew Stone's plea for a missiological understanding of New Age spiritual search to be entwined with expressions of emerging church;

Dan McCredden's answering the question; "Can an existing denominational church be emerging?"

Anne Wilkinson-Hayes plea that 'new missional churches' seek a more authentic, gospel-centred approach to living our the faith in our society today. (For those interested, there's an interview with Ann here (scroll down to bottom of page 2) as part of research for my out of bounds church? book) which also interleaves with the question of denominations and emerging church.)

Plus there's a nice review of my book, both by Dan McCreeden and Darren Cronshaw, who has written an introductory reading guide to the emerging church phenomenon, covering 50 books, a number of internet links and blogs.

If Zadok is any guide, there is a rich breadth in the emerging church conversation in Australia. The edition would sit as a more popular companion to the International Journal For the Study of the Christian Church;

.

emerging church postcard update

The emerging church postcard series is still open. So far I have had postcards from New Zealand, Australia, UK, Scandanavia, and enthusiastic conversation with Canada and South America. I will be blogging the postcards I have got from 1 January, and will run them until I run out (or the end of January), whichever is sooner. So if you're non-US and emerging then read on ...

I am collecting a series of postcards from the edge. To qualify just send me at steve at emergentkiwi dot org dot nz;
a) 1 photo of your emerging community this year;
plus a paragraph answer to these 4 questions;
b) how were you as an emerging community birthed?;
c) what do you as an emerging community value?;
d) what music track sums up your year;
e) what was your best mission moment in 05?

During January I will be post your image and responses as a series of postcards05 on my blog. Feel free to use the image and spread the word.

Oh, I nearly forgot. You need to be an emerging church outside the US. Sorry but I'm tired of the UScentrism of the emerging church blog world. Postcards05 is not for Americans. It's a blog-stake in the ground; a visual reminder that God is active outside the bounds of America.

Why postcards05? Darren interviewed me last week in relation to my out of bounds church? book. (He reviewed the book in May here). My book is based on a series of 8 postcards, posted from around the Western world. I write "postcards" from emerging churches around the Western world, and then seek in the chapter following the "postcard" to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by the emerging church.

The last chapter of the book, completed in May 04, postcard 9, invited people to write their own "emerging church" postcards. So during Darren's interview he asked me where I would like to be writing postcards from today. I replied from here; here and here. Darren then asked me where I would like to receive emerging church postcards from. I said France, because I'd love to see the emerging church turn back the tide of secularity in Europe, and a mixed ethnic church plant in Serbia, because I'd love to see the emerging church embrace mission in a country riven by religious and racial tensions, like Serbia.

This morning I thought, wow, maybe it could actually happen. Hence postcards05.

a southern response to a southern response

John Hammett, Professor of Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has offered An ecclesiological assessment of the emerging church. I glanced through it (just wish Carson was as easy to glance through) and have made about 10 brief responses.

Update: I emailed John Hammett to inform him that I had made this response to his paper on my blog and I've just had a warm email response, full of the intention to continue dialogue and a desire to keep it cordial and gracious. Hoorah for nice Southern baptists!

1. (Reading the footnotes). Every single reference is US-based. Surely it's time every US emerging church organisation and website added two letters (US) to their names, because it's obvious that people are not getting the "oh, we really are global" rhetoric. (Here on my blog is a list of some non-US emerging church research.)

2. (Reading page 3). Heck it's hard to criticise the emerging church. We don't like to define ourselves. We produce diverse characteristics and emphases. When we catch flak we just define ourselves as local church pastors and ask for academic backup.

3. (Reading page 5). I like Hammett's point about the diversity of culture and the fact that not overyone is postmodern. When I arrived at Opawa Baptist I showed the first minute of Zeffareli's Romeo and Juliet and the first 2 minutes of Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. Some people liked Zeffareli's 1968, other people like Luhrmann's 1996. (There's cultural analysis of these movies in my out of bounds church? book if you want more.) Instantly we could all see that mission would have to variegated, both/and not either/or. That's helped us formulate our multi-congregational model, and allow us to use different ways to reach different people.

4. (Reading page 5) I don't like the automatic equation of lots of young people with the assumption that a church is effective at "winning postmoderns." To make that claim you need to research firstly the religious background of those young people and secondly, the cultural background of those people. (Such research requires some work and it's what I did for my PhD study of an "emerging church.") It might just be that Manhattan's Redeemer Presbyterian Church is full of rural US people, already Christian, who have moved to Manhattan. I don't know. I'm just questioning the assumption that "lots of young people" = "effective in winning postmodern."

5. (Reading page 6). The research John draws on regarding attitudes of young people is in such striking contrast to that produced by OMG! How Generation Y is Redefining Faith In The iPod Era, (PDF can be downloaded from here).
"[A] generation who are seekers far more than drifters … They are actively considering questions of identity, community, and meaning – negotiating how important their religious identities will ultimately be – but doing so with their own friends, in their own homes, and in their own ways. We are fascinated by the majority who hunger for episodic religious experiences, preferring the informal and expressive to the ritualistic and institutional."

Perhaps we are again seeing the variegated nature of our mission context.

6. Definitions of postmodernism/ity are so slippery and I think both John and Carson are slip-sliding all over the place. Here is one definitional attempt I made a while ago.

7. In all humility, John needs to read Postcard 8 of my out of bounds church?book. In the book I suggest that our models of gospel and culture are now unhelpful, as they so easily slide into either/or; if you are emerging you are culturally accomodating cf if you are non-emerging you are gospel faithful. The dualisms are easy but dead wrong. I argue in the book that at it's best the emerging church is DJing. A DJ can subvert, amplify, juxtapose. I argue that our culture is so "variegated" that we need multiple responses. At times we applaud (amplify), at times we subvert and juxtapose (challenge). The authority for this is "two or three gathered together", the wisdom of Christ present in the community. (I draw on Miroslav Volf at this point, especially this article: Soft Difference). It's a caricature to define the emerging church as culturally accomodating, just as it is a caricature for the emerging church to define the mega-church as accommodating of suburbia. The future is what I am now calling the "micro-poetics of the everday"; everyday lifestyle discipleship.

9. (Reading page 10). I'm uneasy about the simple comparison of culture against Scripture. It oversimplifies our mission task and it oversimplifies Scripture. I doubt any Christian is prepared to literally read Psalm 137:8-9 and not want to suggest some cultural influences might shape how we respond to that Scripture.

10. (Reading page 11). I like John's ending. There is warmth and wisdom. It reminds me of the famous quote by Dean Inge; that the church which "marries the spirit of the age becomes a widow in the next." That is not a licence to embrace modernity or postmodernity. Rather, it is a challenge to be a faithful Jesus follower in the culture that is now. To use the Eugene Peterson quote I blogged yesterday;
God's great love and purposes for us are all worked out in messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, the daily work and dreams of our common loves. God works with us as we are and not as we should be or think we should be. God deals with us where we are and not where we would like to be. (Christ plays in ten thousand places, 75).

Dang (to use a tallskinnyism) that's a long post. Perhaps I should have given the paper, not John Hammet. I am after all, more Southern Baptist than him, because I am a Baptist Pastor down (South) under! :)

More thoughtful responses here and here.

the chasm continues?

Just doing some surfing and noticed that EmergentUS have announced a deal with Abingdon to publish a Theology for the Emerging Church line. This follows a deal with Baker to publish a line of books for pastors and church leaders.

Thus the chasm of modernity continues. On my left, in the Abingdon corner, serious theology and theory. On my right, the Baker corner, practioners and church.

Ken Archer's insightful review of Carson's Becoming Conversant with Emergent (which I still have not got around to reading) makes the following comment:
In fact, most of those involved in the Emerging Church are pastors, not professors of philosophy or theology ... A refined art of pastoral writing as I hope is being initiated by McLaren would then achieve its own legitimacy separate from theological writing, as a writing that is particularly attuned to the consequences of theological ideas.
It is a perceptive comment but it worries me. It makes it easier for the emerging church to thus dodge the theologically hard questions. "We are practioners, not theologians."

A strange drift, given the fact that:
a) Contemporary practical theology suggests that the practices of the people of God are valid place for theological reflection. (see my PhD New Ways of Being Church and the occasional blogs of Tony Jones)
b) One of the chief urgings of much emerging thought is the priority of community as the place for theological reflection. (I'm thinking hear of Grenz and Franke's Beyond Foundationalism)

Such approaches refuse to accept the chasm of theology and theory on one hand and ministry practise on the other. I worry that emerging book deals could continue to perpetuate the chasms of modernity.

communitas is only useful if you want to keep the emerging church adolescent

I made this blog comment on signposts. It's noted here, sort of like a gravestone! Fire away:)

The notion of communitas as applied to church is a nonsense. It was first used by Turner to describe initiation rites in tribal cultures. Communitas is that in-between stage, between childhood and maturity. It is an artificially induced transitional stage. But you don't live there. You can't. That's its whole point. It's a transition stage.

I think applying communitas to the emerging church will only serve to keep us in our juvenile adolesence. Isn't it time the emerging church got beyond it's adolesence and got on with the task of mature Christian discipleship and living.

Update:

I read Turner for my PhD, specifically the following;
Turner, Victor Witter. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1969.
Turner, Victor, Witter. "The Centre out There: Pilgrim's Goal." History of Religions 12 (1973): 191-230.

The idea of communitas had some initial appeal for me. In the end I felt it could be applied most profitably to some ritual practices of the emerging church. Turner describes pilgrimage as an a liminal experience which produces communitas. This has parrallels in the use of labyrinths in the emerging church. But as Turner notes, pilgrims generally return home. They don't stay in communitas.

Turner's use of it is helpfully explained in his book structure and anti-structure, with liminality and communitas as an in-between phase. In the end, I felt that the most accurate terms to describe the emerging church was not a one-off liminality but more of an ongoing experience of being "de-centred" (both by postmodern culture and from existing ways of being church). And that this was leading to the development of "soteriological entrepreneurs"; innovative practioners.

A further point is that the experience of communitas is highly manipulative. Men take boys from their parents into the bush. They manipulate the environments and often deliberately frighten them. I don't think manipulation should have much to do with creation of healthy communities.

For those who like PhD thinking; here are the excerpts. Download

stories of emergence

Updated:

Stories of emergence. The recent history of Opawa Baptist is one of the decline, transition and growth. Steve Taylor will reflect on the missional thinking that has underpinned the development of growth coaching, café church, 24/7 prayer roms and "Take a Kid to Faith services."

I'm doing 2 workshops at Baptist Assembly next Saturday (12th November) in Hamilton. I've been asked to share something of the Opawa story, around the title stories of emergence. I am going to try to frame it up around the out of bounds church? book. Because I've been reflecting on the Opawa journey and I actually think those postcards from the book:
:midwiving
:creativity
:journey/spiritual tourism
:community
have actually been at play at Opawa. From church plant to 96 year old church, from cafe style to established auditorium, it's been the same underlying missiology. So I'm going to try to link
:midwiving with the planting of the espresso congregation and Take a Kid to Faith services
:creativity with 24/7 prayer room
:journey/spiritual tourism with evangelism-as-process and growth coaching
:community with leadership.

More links and ideas to follow. Might actually be a good 10th postcard for a reprint of the out of bounds church? book. (Or at least a page on the out of bounds church? book blogsite:)

tolerance, hospitality and the future of the church

A thought provoking series of posts over at heretics corner; here, here and here, on the extent of hospitality offered at the emergent table. (Link from maggi dawn). The posts are glad of the emergent conversation, but critical of how truly hospitable it really is. "Wearing a white wrist band is easy. Practicing radical inclusion of all the people of God in our communities is harder."

I'm linking to the conversation, having just spent a week at the futurechurch conference and hoping to capture some thoughts swirling through my head. The conference was both an incredibly hospitable place - with voice given to women, gay, and lesbian - yet also at times quite an inhospitable place, in which I was stereotyped as "Baptist, male, clergy" rather than Steve Taylor, person.

1. All people, evangelical and liberal, can be intolerant.

2. I wonder if the emerging church and the progressive liberal church share a common dialogue around feelings of marginalisation from the church. The marginalisation might be for different reasons, but it has created some shared dialogue.

3. Marginalisation is not automatically missional. In fact marginalisation (and I am naming my experience of the post-evangelical discussion at this point) can be negative and cynical, which is not always healthy for those seeking a life-giving spirituality. I wonder if, and how, narratives of exclusion need to engage and draw energy from the Jesus story, to turn them from marginal to hospitably inclusive.

4. Such missional engagement is not easy for groups (whether post-evangelical or gay/lesbian) who start by feeling excluded from a conversation.

5. Perhaps paradoxically, it is the energy of this discomfort that helps hold me in such conversations. Debates around right and left, evangelical and liberal, don't hold much energy for me. Nor do stereotypes. But open dialogue with discomforting people is hard, disconcerting, but something worth hanging out for.

journal articles on emerging church

Matthew Guest & Steve Taylor, The Post-Evangelical Emerging Church: Innovations in New Zealand and the UK. A journal article I have co-authored has just been accepted for the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church.

The entire edition (Volume 6, Number 3) is dedicated to the Emerging Church. That says something quite significant about the place of the emerging church in contemporary Christian thought. There are 9 articles under headings of Introductory overview, Contextual studies, Joining and Leaving and Theological reflection. The editorial by John Drane explores an underlying question about the nature of ‘emerging church’, namely ‘emerging from what?’ (eg from post-modern culture, or from the Christian tradition – or a mix of the two – highlighting issues of how the Gospel should be contextualized, Christian attitudes to cultural change, etc).

Due out December 2005. You can order it here (scroll down a bit).

Further:
A list of emerging church post-graduate research (masters and PhD) is here.

kickoff tomorrow

Tomorrow I lecture for two days at the (first ever BCNZ) emerging church block course. 26 students are enrolled, including 2 from Hamilton and 1 from Nelson. It will not be a content based course as much as an interactive mix of storytelling, video, group work, online experience, stations, food and tactile spiritual resources.

Hopefully amid that mix students will reflect on contemporary ways of being church. It is not just a "description" course but together we will be asking
What in the culture is producing the emerging church?
What Christian resources sustain and critique the emerging church?
What does this mean for our following of Jesus tomorrow?

It is always madly stressful working toward a speaking deadline. Even more so when it is 10 hours of lecturing in 2 days, and I also had to lecture today. I still have the visuals to set up and the videos to cue, but I am greatly relieved to hear the lecture notes currently being bound.

cafe church planter wanted in sydney

This looks a great opportunity in inner-city Sydney. Hope Street (cool tagline: Innovating Christian Community, Empowering the marginalised) is seeking a ministry team leader for its church planting and community development work in Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. You'll need to have leadership experience in Christian ministry and an aptitude for working on the margins of church and society.

It seems they have sold a church and are wanting a cafe church planter. I spent a few days with them in 2001 and really like them. You can download full information and application process from here:

postgraduate emerging church research

Bryan has emailed, asking for research citations (ie postgraduate research, not some lightweight fluff) regarding the emerging church, as he begins to prepare for his Ph.D. This is what I am aware of. Have I missed anything?

Baker, Jonny, "The Labyrinth. Ritualisation as Strategic Practice in Postmodern Times." MA thesis, Kings College, 2000.

Flores, Aaron, "An exploration of the Emerging Church in the United States." MA thesis, Vanguard University, 2005.

Guest, Matthew. “Negotiating Community: An Ethnographic Study of an Evangelical Church.” PhD thesis, Lancaster University, 2002.

Taylor, Steve. "A New Way of Being Church." PhD thesis, Otago University, 2004.

Note of clarification: Thanks for the comments already. I too am aware of lots of books and journal articles, but in this post I am looking only for post-graduate primary research. Not to be elitist, but because this was the context of the email request.

note to self: perhaps i'm not mad

I’m noticing this kind of discussion happening over at Steve’s blog since he questioned the APEPT model of leadership as the only model portrayed by Paul in his ministry and letters. After his post Alan commented with:

Perhaps he’s asking questions in much the same way that a Prophet would in the APEPT model? The Prophet is rarely liked, because they ask questions that the others don’t like.

[ironic musing: arguing against the APEPT model by using the APEPT categories?]

Link

a foreign language day

Today I
: finished an article on the emerging church for the september/october edition of a magazine called australian christian women!
: received confirmation that an article I wrote on artist Sieger Koder for a German publisher has just been printed.

Yep, translated into two foreign cultures in one day!

I also did a re-write of a co-authored piece (The Post-Evangelical Emerging Church: Global Innovations in New Zealand and the UK) I am doing with Matthew Guest for the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church (who are doing a themed issue on the topic of the Emerging Church).

I'm now meant to be on holiday for the next few days, apart from being part of the first ever Holy-wood Free Film Festival, with spiritual films, film church and film debate. So I might not be around my blog much.