“Five Streams of the Emerging Church”
Key elements of the most controversial and misunderstood movement in the church
today.
Scot McKnight (Christianity Today, February 2007, 35–39).
It is said that emerging Christians confess their faith like mainliners — meaning
they say things publicly they don’t really believe. They drink like Southern
Baptists — meaning, to adapt some words from Mark Twain, they are teetotalers
when it is judicious. They talk like Catholics — meaning they cuss and
use naughty words. They evangelize and theologize like the Reformed — meaning
they rarely evangelize, yet theologize all the time. They worship like charismatics — meaning
with their whole bodies, some parts tattooed. They vote like Episcopalians — meaning
they eat, drink, and sleep on their left side. And, they deny the truth — meaning
they’ve got a
latte-soaked copy of Derrida in their smoke- and beer-stained backpacks.
Along with unfair stereotypes of other traditions, such are the urban legends
surrounding the emerging church — one of the most controversial and misunderstood
movements today. As a theologian, I have studied the movement and interacted
with its key leaders for years — even more, I happily consider myself part
of this movement or “conversation.” As an evangelical, I’ve
had my concerns, but overall I think what emerging Christians bring to the
table is vital for the overall health of the church.
In this article, I want to undermine the urban legends and provide a more
accurate description of the emerging movement. Though the movement has an international
dimension, I will focus on the North American scene.
To define a movement, we must, as a courtesy, let it say what it is. Eddie Gibbs
and Ryan Bolger, in their book, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community
in Postmodern Cultures (Baker Academic, 2005) define emerging in this way:
Emerging churches are communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures. This definition encompasses nine practices. Emerging churches (1) identify with the life of Jesus, (2) transform the secular realm, and (3) live highly communal lives. Because of these three activities, they (4) welcome the stranger, (5) serve with generosity, (6) participate as producers, (7) create as created beings, (8) lead as a body, and (9) take part in spiritual activities.
This definition is both descriptive and analytical. D. A. Carson’s Becoming
Conversant with the Emerging Church (Zondervan, 2005) is not alone in pointing
to the problems in the emerging movement, and I shall point out a few myself
in what follows. But as a description of the movement, Carson’s book lacks
firsthand awareness and suffers from an overly narrow focus — on Brian
McLaren and postmodern epistemology.
To prevent confusion, a distinction needs to be made between “emerging” and “Emergent.” Emerging
is the wider, informal, global, ecclesial (church-centered) focus of the movement,
while Emergent is an official organization in the U.S. and the U.K. Emergent
Village, the organization, is directed by Tony Jones, a Ph.D. student at Princeton
Theological Seminary and a world traveler on behalf of all things both Emergent
and emerging. Other names connected with Emergent Village include Doug Pagitt,
Chris Seay, Tim Keel, Karen Ward, Ivy Beckwith, Brian McLaren, and Mark Oestreicher.
Emergent U.K. is directed by Jason Clark. While Emergent is the intellectual
and philosophical network of the emerging movement, it is a mistake to narrow
all of emerging to the Emergent Village.
Emerging catches into one term the global reshaping of how to “do church” in
postmodern culture. It has no central offices, and it is as varied as evangelicalism
itself. If I were to point to one centrist expression of the emerging movement
in the U.S., it would be Dan Kimball’s Vintage Church in Santa Cruz,
California. His U.K. counterpart is Andrew Jones, known on the internet as
Tall Skinny Kiwi.
Jones is a world-traveling speaker, teacher, and activist for simple churches,
house churches, and churches without worship service.
Following are five themes that characterize the emerging movement. I see them
as streams flowing into the emerging lake. No one says the emerging movement
is the only group of Christians doing these things, but together they crystallize
into the emerging movement.
One: PROPHETIC (OR AT LEAST PROVOCATIVE)
One of the streams flowing into the emerging lake is prophetic rhetoric.The emerging
movement is consciously and deliberately provocative. Emerging Christians believe
the church needs to change, and they are beginning to live as if that change
had already occurred. Since I swim in the emerging lake, I can self-critically
admit that we sometimes exaggerate.
Our language frequently borrows the kind of rhetoric found in Old Testament
prophets like Hosea: “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God
rather than burnt offerings” (6:6). Hosea engages here in deliberate overstatement,
for God never forbids Temple worship. In a similar way, none in the emerging
crowd is more rhetorically effective than Brian McLaren in Generous Orthodoxy: “Often
I don’t think Jesus would be caught dead as a Christian, were he physically
here today…. Generally, I dont’ think Christians would like Jesus
if he showed up today as he did 2,000 years ago. In fact, I think we’d
call him a heretic and plot to kill him, too.” McLaren, on the very next
page, calls this statement an exaggeration. Still the rhetoric is in place.
Consider this quote from an Irish emerging Christian, Peter Rollins, author
of How (Not) to Speak of God (Paraclete, 2006): “Thus orthodoxy is no longer
(mis)understood as the opposite of heresy but rather is understood as a term
that signals a way of being in the world rather than a means of believing things
about the world.” The age-old canard [unfounded rumor] of orthodoxy verses
orthopraxy plays itself out once again.
Such rhetoric makes its point, but it sometimes divides. I hope those of
us who use it (and this critique can’t be restricted to the emerging
movement) will learn when to avoid such language.
Two: POSTMODERN
Mark Twain said the mistake God made was in not forbidding Adam to eat the
serpent. Had God forbidden the serpent, Adam would certainly have eaten him.
When the
evangelical world prohibited postmodernity, as if it were fruit from the forbidden
tree, the postmodern “fallen” among us — like F. LeRon Shults,
Jamie Smith, Kevin Vanhoozer, John Franke, and Peter Rollins — chose
to eat it to see what it might taste like. We found that it tasted good, even
if
at times we found ourselves spitting out hard chunks of nonsense. A second
stream of emerging water is postmodernism.
Postmodernity cannot be reduced to the denial of truth. Instead, it is the collapse
of inherited metanarratives (over-arching explanations of life) like those of
science or Marxism. Why have they collapsed? Because of the impossibility of
getting outside their assumptions.
While there are good as well as naughty consequences of opting for a postmodern
stance (and not all in the emerging movement are as careful as they should
be), evangelical Christians can rightfully embrace certain elements of postmodernity.
Jamie Smith, a professor at Calvin College, argues in Who’s Afraid of
Postmodernity? (Baker Academic, 2006) that such thinking is compatible, in
some ways, with classical
Augustinian epistemology. No one points the way forward in this regard more
carefully than longtime missionary to India Lesslie Newbigin, especially in
his book Proper
Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Eerdmans,
1995). Emerging upholds faith seeking understanding, and trust preceding the
apprehension or comprehension of gospel truths.
Living as a Christian in a postmodern context means different things to different
people. Some — to borrow categories I first heard from Doug Pagitt, pastor
at Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis — will minister to postmoderns,
others with postmoderns, and still others as postmoderns.
David Wells at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary falls into the to category,
seeing postmoderns as trapped in moral relativism and epistemological bankruptcy
out of which they must be rescued.
Others minister with postmoderns. That is, they live with, work with, and converse
with postmoderns, accepting their postmodernity as a fact of life in our world.
Such Christians view postmodernity as a present condition into which we are called
to proclaim and live out the gospel.
The vast majority of emerging Christians and churches fit these first two
categories. They don’t deny truth, they don’t deny that Jesus Christ is truth,
and they don’t deny the Bible is truth.
The third kind of emerging postmodernity attracts all the attention. Some
have chosen to minister as postmoderns. That is, they embrace the idea that
we cannot
know absolute truth, or, at least, that we cannot know truth absolutely. They
speak of the end of metanarratives and the importance of social location in
shaping one’s view of truth. They frequently express nervousness about
propositional truth. LeRon Shults, former a professor of theology at Bethel
Theological Seminary,
writes:
From a theological perspective, this fixation with propositions can easily lead to the attempt to use the finite tool of language on an absolute Presence that transcends and embraces all finite reality. Languages are culturally constructed symbol systems that enable humans to communicate by designating one finite reality in distinction from another. The truly infinite God of Christian faith is beyond all our lingusitic grasping, as all the great theologians from Irenaeus to Calvin have insisted, and so the struggle to capture God in our finite propositional structures is nothing short of linguistic idolatry.
Three: PRAXIS-ORIENTED
The emerging movement’s connection to postmodernity may grab attention
and garner criticism, but what most characterizes emerging is the stream best
called praxis — how the faith is lived out. At its core, the emerging
movement is an attempt to fashion a new ecclesiology (doctrine of the church).
Its distinctive
emphasis can be seen in its worship, its concern with orthopraxy, and its missional
orientation.
Worship: I’ve heard folks describe the emerging movement
as “funky
worship” or “candles and incense” or “smells and bells.” It’s
true; many in the emerging movement are creative, experiential, and sensory
in their worship gatherings.
Evangelicals sometimes forget that God cares about sacred space and ritual — he
told Moses how to design the tabernacle and gave detailed directions to Solomon
for building a majestic Temple. Neither Jesus nor Paul said much about aesthetics,
but the author of Hebrews [Paul?—Joseph Smith] did. And we should not
forget that some Reformers, knowing the power of aesthetics, stripped churches
clean
of all artwork.
Some emerging Christians see churches with pulpits in the center of a hall-like
room with hard, wooden pews lined up in neat rows, and they wonder if there
is another way to express — theologically, aesthetically, and anthropologically — what
we do when we gather. They ask these sorts of questions. Is the sermon the
most important thing on Sunday mornings? If we sat in a circle would we foster
a different
theology and praxis [practice, not theory]? If we lit incense, would we practice
our prayers differently? If we put the preacher on the same level as the congregation,
would we create a clearer sense of the priesthood of all believers? If we acted
out what we believe, would we encounter more emphatically the Incarnation?
Orthopraxy: A notable emphasis of the emerging movement
is orthopraxy, that is, right living. The contention is that how a person lives
is more important
than
what he or she believes. [Thought is the seat of action; doctrine, correctly
understood, changes behavior more than a knowledge of behavior changes behavior—LDS
perspective.] Many will immediately claim that we need both or that orthopraxy
flows from orthodoxy. Most in the emerging movement agree we need both, but
they contest the second claim: Experience does not prove that those who believe
the
right things live the right way. No matter how much sense the traditional connection
makes, it does not necessarily work itself out in practice. Public scandals
in the church — along with those not made public — prove this point
time and again.
Here is an emerging, provocative way of saying it: “By their fruits [not
their theology] {sic—brackets in original} you will know them.” As
Jesus’ brother James said, “Faith without works is dead.” Rhetorical
exaggerations aside, I know of no one in the emerging movement who believes that
one’s relationship with God is established by how one lives. Nor do I know
anyone who thinks that it doesn’t matter what one believes about Jesus
Christ. But the focus is shifted. Gibbs and Bolger define emerging churches as
those who practice “the way of Jesus” in the postmodern era.
Jesus declared that we will be judged according to how we treat the least
of these (Matt. 25:31–46) and that the wise man is the one who practices the
words of Jesus (Matt. 7:24–27). In addition, every judgment scene in
the Bible is portrayed as a judgment based on works; no judgment scene looks
like
a theological articulation test.
Missional: The foremost concern of the praxis stream is being missional.
What does this mean? First, the emerging movement becomes missional by participating,
with God, in the redemptive work of God in this world. In essence, it joins
with the apostle Paul in saying that God has given us “the ministry of reconciliation” (2
Cor. 5:18).
Second, it seeks to become missional by participating in the community where
God’s redemptive work occurs. The church is the community through which
God works and in which God manifests the credibility of the gospel.
Third, becoming missional means participating in the holistic redemptive
work of God in this world. The Spirit groans, the creation groans, and we groan
for the redemption of God (see Rom. 8:18–27).
This holistic emphasis finds perfect expression in the ministry of Jesus,
who went about doing good to bodies, spirits, families, and societies. He picked
the marginalized up from the floor and put them back in their seats at the
table; he attracted harlots and tax collectors; he made the lame walk and opened
the ears of the deaf. He cared, in
other words, not just about lost souls, but also about whole persons and whole
societies.
Four: POST-EVANGELICAL
A fourth stream flowing into the emerging lake is characterized by the term post-evangelical.
The emerging movement is a protest against much of evangelicalism as currently
practiced. It is post-evangelical in the way that neo-evangelicalism (in the
1950s) was post-fundamentalist. It would not be unfair to call it postmodern
evangelicalism. This stream flows from the conviction that the church must always
be reforming itself.
The vast majority of emerging Christians are evangelical theologically. But they
are post-evangelical in at least two ways.
Post-systematic theology: The emerging movement tends to be suspicious of systematic
theology. Why? Not
because we don’t read systematics, but because the diversity of theologies
alarms us, no genuine consensus has been achieved. God didn’t reveal a
systematic theology but a storied narrative, and no language is capable of capturing
the Absolute Truth who alone is God. Frankly, the emerging movement loves ideas
and theology. It just doesn’t have an airtight system or statement of faith.
We believe the Great Tradition offers various ways for telling the truth about
God’s redemption in Christ, but we don’t believe any one theology
gets it absolutely right.
Hence, a trademark feature of the emerging movement is that we believe all
theology will remain a conversation about the Truth who is God in Christ through
the Spirit,
and about God’s story of redemption at work in the church. No systematic
theology can be final. In this sense, the emerging movement is radically Reformed.
It turns its chastened epistemology against itself, saying, “This is what
I believe, but I could be wrong. What do you think? Let’s talk.”
In versus out: An admittedly controversial element of post-evangelicalism
is that many in the emerging movement are skeptical about the “in versus out” mentality
of much of evangelicalism. Even if one is an exclusivist (believing that there
is a dividing line between Christians and non-Christians), the issue of who
is in and who is out pains the emerging generation.
Some emerging Christians point to the words of Jesus: “Whoever is not against
us is for us” (Mark 9:40). Others, borrowing the words of the old hymn,
point to a “wideness in God’s mercy.” Still others take postmodernity’s
crushing of metanarratives and extend that to master theological narratives — like
Christianity. They say what really matters is orthopraxy and that it doesn’t
matter which religion one belongs to, as long as one loves God and one’s
neighbors as one’s self. Some even accept Spencer Burke’s unbiblical
contention in A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity (Jossey-Bass, 2006) that all
are born “in” and only some “opt out.”
This emerging ambivalence about who is in and who is out creates a serious
problem for evangelism. The emerging movement is not known for it, but I wish
it were.
Unless you proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, there is no good news at
all — and
if there is no Good News, then there is no Christianity, emerging or evangelical.
Personally, I’m an evangelist. Not so much the tract-toting, door-knocking
kind, but the Jesus-talking and Jesus-teaching kind. I spend time praying in
my office before class and pondering about how to teach in order to bring home
the message of the gospel.
So I offer here a warning to the emerging movement: Any movement that is not
evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe, and
we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitments clear, but we must
always keep the proper goal in mind: summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ
and to discover
the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.
Five: POLITICAL
A final stream flowing into the emerging lake is politics. Tony Jones is
regularly told that the emerging movement is a latte-drinking, backpack-lugging,
Birkenstock-wearing
group of 21st-century, left-wing, hippie wannabes. Put directly, they are Democrats.
And that spells “post” for conservative-evangelical-politics-as-usual.
I have publicly aligned myself with the emerging movement. What attracts
me is its soft postmodernism (or critical realism) and its praxis/missional
focus.
I also lean left in politics. I tell my friends that I have voted Democratic
for years for all the wrong reasons. I don’t think the Democratic Party
is worth a hoot, but its historic commitment to the poor [?] and to centralizing
government for social justice [?] is what I think government should do [in contrast
to what the Constitution says?]. I don’t support abortion — in fact,
I think it is immoral. I believe in civil rights, but I don’t believe homosexuality
is God’s design. And, like many in the emerging movement, I think the Religious
Right doesn’t see what it is doing. Books like Randy Balmer’s Thy
Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America:
An Evangelical’s Lament (Basic Books, 2006) and David Kuo’s Tempting
Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction (Free Press, 2006) make their
rounds in emerging circles because they say things we think need to be said.
Sometimes, however, when I look at emerging politics, I see Walter Rauschenbusch,
the architect of the social gospel. Without trying to deny the spiritual gospel,
he led his followers into the social gospel. The results were devastating for
mainline Christianity’s ability to summon sinners to personal conversion.
The results were also devastating for evangelical Christianity, which has itself
struggled to maintain a proper balance.
I ask my fellow emerging Christians to maintain their missional and ecclesial
focus, just as I urge my fellow evangelicals to engage in the social as well.
All in all, it is unlikely that the emerging movement will disappear anytime soon. If I were a prophet, I’d say that it will influence most of evangelicalism in its chastened epistemology (if it hasn’t already), its emphasis on praxis, and its missional orientation. I see the emerging movement much like Jesus and charismatic movements of the 1960s, which undoubtedly have found a place in the quilt called evangelicalism.Scot
McNight is professor of religious studies at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. He is author of The Jesus Creed (Paraclete, 2004) and, most recently, The Real Mary: Why Evangelicals Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus (Paraclete, 2006). This article is condensed and adapted from a lecture given at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, in October 2006. See the blog JesusCreed.org for more of McKnight’s emerging musings.