Throughout my life, I have always had an affinity for things "evangelical". Perhaps it is the fact that the majority of my extended family and friends from childhood are not Catholic, and come from fundamentalist, pentecostal and evangelical backgrounds.
While the evangelical movement has its own problems, their adaptability to the mood of the culture is really pretty amazing. At its heart, I believe their effort to be flexible springs from an earnest desire to "accomodate" the message of the Gospel to the aspirations of the contemporary milieu. Sometimes, however, they can engage in an almost slavish effort to be relevant, seeking the latest trend in ministry, worship, leadership - even church structure.
One movement that has caught my interest of late, given a growing interest in the part of our churches in evangelization, is the post-modern
Emerging Church Movement.
Here is a Wikkipedia entry that helps to explain this movement:
Emerging Church The emerging church or emergent church is a diverse movement within Christianity that arose in the late 20th century as a reaction to the influence of modernism in Western Christianity. The movement is usually called a "conversation" by its proponents to emphasize its diffuse nature with contributions from many people and no explicitly defined leadership or direction. The emerging church seeks to deconstruct and reconstruct Christianity as its mainly Western members live in a postmodern culture. While practices and even core doctrine vary, most emergents can be recognized by the following values:
Missional Living - Christians go out into the world to serve God rather than isolate themselves within communities of like-minded individuals.
Narrative Theology - Teaching focuses on narrative presentations of faith and the Bible rather than systematic theology or biblical reductionism.
Christ-Likeness - While not neglecting the study of scripture or the love of the church, Christians focus their lives on the worship and emulation of the person of Jesus Christ.
Authenticity - People in the postmodern culture seek real and authentic experiences in preference over scripted or superficial experiences. Emerging churches strive to be relevant to today's culture and daily life, whether it be through worship or service opportunities. The core Christian message is unchanged but emerging churches attempt, as the church has throughout the centuries, to find ways to reach God's people where they are to hear God's message of unconditional love.
The article continues:
Historical Context During recent centuries Western Christianity, like all of Western civilization, has been influenced significantly by modernism. In the 19th century modernist Protestant theologians sought to examine the individual narratives of the Bible and from them extract a set of underlying truths or "meta-narratives". By using methods borrowed from scientific reductionism it was hoped that a grand truth and worldview would be attained. In practice, however, the modernist approach led to additional schism within the Church (cf. liberal Christianity, Christian fundamentalism).
Postmodern church expression, on the other hand, encourages followers to deconstruct each element of their faith experience and reassemble the pieces according to his or her own unique journey of deconstruction.
One definition of the Emerging Church is that it is the collective term for the individuals who are emerging from this process of deconstruction and reconstruction of Christianity or for those who have joined groups/churches being led by such individuals.
[edit]
An alternate perspective
Alternatively, the Emerging Church may be seen as both a reaction to, and a continuation of the Saddleback/Willow Creek movement, which achieved such great success in the 1990s using a "seeker-friendly" approach. The "seeker-friendly" approach practiced ‘come-to-church’ evangelism while the emergent church thesis is ‘discover church’ evangelism, in which the powerful (and often challenging) symbols and practices of the early church are poured into the modern church .
Both models are marked by their goal of evangelism and by their willingness to retool the church experience as necessary to meet their goal. However, the resulting church experiences can be quite different. The Saddleback/Willow Creek movement sought to forego the "irrelevant trappings" of the traditional church, such as stained glass, liturgy and candles, while the Emerging Church movement tends to value these same symbols as sacred expressions of faith and creativity.
The Saddleback/Willow Creek movement is comfortable applying the tools of modern American marketing (focus groups, advertising, polling, etc.), to deliver a highly polished product to a baby boomer target demographic. In contrast, the emerging church movement recognizes that their own target audience -- post-baby boomers -- has already been bombarded and over-saturated with advertising and thus places a higher value on authentic personal interactions and a de-emphasis on "timeless truths".
While there is no co-ordinated organization behind the Emerging Church and no guarantee that the Emerging Church will mature into a coherent movement at all, the term is becoming increasingly common among leaders of Emerging Church groups and Emerging Church thinkers. Many of these leaders and thinkers have written books, articles and/or blogs on the subject using a shared terminology.
Emerging Church groups are typically observed to emphasize the following elements:
* Highly creative approaches to worship and spiritual reflection. This can involve everything from the use of contemporary music and films to liturgy, as well as more ancient customs, with a goal of making the church more appealing to the unchurched, and those within the church.
* A minimalist and decentralized organizational structure.
* A flexible approach to theology wherein individual differences in belief and morality are accepted within reason.
* A holistic view of the role of the church in society. This can mean anything from greater emphasis on fellowship in the structure of the group to a higher degree of emphasis on social action, community building or Christian outreach.
* A desire to reanalyze the Bible within varying contexts with the goal of revealing a multiplicity of valid perspectives rather than a single valid interpretation.
* A continual re-examination of theology.
* A high value placed on creating communities built out of the creativity of those who are a part of each local body.
* A belief in the journey of faith, both as individual and community.
The Emerging Church movement shares with the house church movement the willingness to challenge the structure and organization that have become traditional for the Church over many centuries. Many emerging churches are in fact also house churches.
Reflecting its decentralized and local nature, the emerging church does not maintain a mutually agreed-on ecclesiology, or set of beliefs defining the specific role and nature of the church. Eschewing doctrine, the emerging church instead seeks merely to continue the mission of Christ, while deeply respecting the different expressions that the body of Christ may bring to that mission.
Now, while there are elements to this movement that we would regard as suspect (especially the tendencies to eschew doctrine - we would see a direct connection between the mystical and the magisterial in our encounter with Christ the Teacher and Good Shepherd - as well as the spiritual authority of the clergy), are there not points to be considered from this movement which may help revitalize our own churches to fulfill our apostolic mandate?
Several points stand out to me:
1.
Missional Living - Modern Eastern churches are notorious for their lack of an apostolic mindset. The ethnic enclave mentality is a security blanket in a burning building. Where eatern churches have begun to adopt a more evangelical posture, fully embracing the implications of their Chrismation as "priests, prophets and kings" of the Kingdom of God, the transformation is remarkable.
2.
Narrative Theology - Is this not the sheer SPIRITUAL POWER of the iconic, liturgical and patristic exegesis of Sacred Scripture? The problem is that we have forgotten the fundamental narrative/story of the Gospel/Kerygma and thus we do not:
a. experience a personal assimilation of its full meaning in our lives, or
b. know how (or even IF) we fit into the metanarrative of the history of God's salvation.
If we return to our Biblical and Patristic roots and rediscover the earthly and spiritual meanings of the sacred texts - seeing the Bible through historical, allegorical, moral/personal and liturgical lenses - we find that we do have a story to tell - the greatest story ever told.
3.
Theosis and Christ-Likeness We must rediscover the truth that our relationship to the church IS our relationship to Christ - it is our personal and inter-personal communion through, with and in Him - and by virtue of this communion, we are brought into the tri-Personal communion of the Most Holy Trinity. The truth that Christianity is fundamentally relational has not really dawned on many of our members...I think it is at best tolerated and at worst, denied outright. Since through Christ we are immersed in the perichoresis of Trinitarian life which is both infinite and diffusive, are we not called to pour out ourselves in an act of Christ-like kenosis so that the world will know whose disciples we are and desire to join the only authentic "full (pleroma) Gospel" movement? And how will they know unless someone tells them?
I would also include in this our rich tradition of the doctrine of
theosis, not seen purely as an individualistic exercise, but rather in its fuller ecclesial and inter-personal context.
4.
Authenticity - I think back to the experience of the pilgrims of the Rus who entered Haga Sophia and did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth. The Divine Liturgy is more than the
sine qua non of our ecclesial life - it is our fundamental
raison d'etre! ( I know - pirogies are a close second!
) I believe - especially on the Catholic side of the Eastern aisle of the Church - we have forgotten how to worship. Sure - we follow the rubrics (sometimes) but many churches have lost touch with our authentic ethos, which is fully experiential, oriental and catholic. Oddly enough, contrary to the intuitions of our Byzantine heritage, we seem to have become liturgical minimalists. Perhaps this is due to the spirit of uniatism that still colors our existence. If we compare ourselves to the Latins with their liturgical deconstructionism and iconoclasm - not to mention bad taste - we appear to be maximalists! (Hey - we still have icons, incense and chanting!) All an EC need due to drop by a local OCA parish to see how far we've fallen away from autheticity in our worship. The Latins should ABSOLUTELY NOT be our point of reference.
A return to authenticity includes more than a return to our traditions of worship: it also includes a rediscovery of our authentic spiritual and theological patrimony in our ecclesical, personal and domestic lives.
5.
Diakonia We need a rediscovery of the
diakonia of church life that tries to address the social implications of the Gospel (aka the works of mercy) - this is also an expression of authenticity and "Christ-likeness".
6.
Collaboration We need to set aside our individual interests and biases to collaborate in a pan-Byzantine manner, while respecting our fundamental unity and diversity and trying to realize more fully the catholic implications of Acts 2:42. Why not aspire to build a single Byzantine Catholic jurisdiction in North America?
7.
Cultivating the Mustard Seed We need to find ways of being creative and organic (a "roots and wings" approach) in our missionary tactics (this has nothing to do with bringing in Casio keyboards and drumkits to worship, BTW)...our "mustard seed" smallness can also be a point to leverage, since can help us to be flexible and mobile. Without challenging the essential ecclesial and authoritative structure of the church, should we not start see ourselves as a "frontier" church in a post-Christian culture, rather than a "fortress" church? Christ sought out the lost. Should not we, who are His diciples, do the same? Do we expect people to seek us out, or are we seeking them out and inviting them into communion with us?
8.
Servant-Leadership We need to open ourselves to "servant-leadership" in its many manifestations - both lay and clerical. The "clergy and the people" should see themselves fundamentally as co-workers in the vineyard, respecting their own unique contribution to eschataological realization of the kingdom of God. Just as it is in Christology, unity without confusion is the operative principle here. An aspect of the role of the clergy is to animate the charisms of the laity - to help them more fully realize the charisms given in Holy Baptism and Chrismation. My sense is that this represents one of the key functions of the diaconate, and a key to our transformation from a "fortress" to "frontier" church will be the ordination of host of deacons who understand this as a primary aspect of their role.
Anyway, I'm curious if others have thoughts on this. The "Emerging Church" movement reflects many of the fundamental aspirations of the broader Christian community as well as our society. If our Church truly bears within herself the "fullness of truth" and the "seed" of the Holy Spirit which can bring about authentic and radical renewal, can we not seek new and prophetic ways to reach out and offer the eschatological bread of our common life in Christ? Or will we allow ourselves to be hard-hearted to His call to make disciples of all nations?
Just something to chew on this Holy Saturday...
Peace!
Gordo
Previous Topic
Index