Emerging Thoughts on Emergent

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Posted by: eigerdreamer Original: 3/1/2008 12:35 PM Views: 180 Comments: 8 eProps: 8 Read Comments Post a Comment Back to Your Xanga Site

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2 eProps from: Hyphenate shiauman Debbie3 johnjihoonchang

Saturday, March 01, 2008

(This post was originally published at www.kevinclouse.com)

When a friend first clued me in to Rob Bell a few years ago, I was hooked. He was young (like me). He was cool (ok, he’s a little cooler than me). He was on the cutting edge. He was at the helm of one of Michigan’s most exciting churches. When I first moved back here, I drove up to his church 3 or 4 times. Above all, he could preach like nobody’s business. He wasn’t quite a hero, but he was up there.

I’ve read lots of books and listened to lots of of podcasts by many of the cutting edge Emergent front runners. This stuff used to get my blood pumping. Emergent buzz words seemed fresh and alive and full of hope. Conversation. Community. Missional. Authenticity. Ancient-future.

But I’ve become frustrated. I flip open a magazine, I click on a website, I browse the shelves at Barnes and Noble, and I’m bombarded by the hip and cool, the now and cutting edge in Emergent Christianity. I know their haircuts, their quirks of speech, their style. I know who’s hot, who’s relevant, and what conferences (or theaters) they’re speaking at. We’ve got a glut of rock stars. Even Anglican bishop N.T. Wright has acquired superstar status among emergents. These are the ones I should be listening to and talking about, I’m told. And I do listen to them and talk about them, because some of them should be heard. I fully realize that Emergent is not just another fad. It is about a dramatic shift in culture and the church’s response to it. I’ve just gotten tired of all the frenetic hoopla. Rob Bell is a great guy and an awesome preacher, but I’m tired of seeing his face everywhere, even in secular media. Time recently named him the Hipper-Than-Thou Pastor. Brian McLaren has given us some significant insight, but does his name have to be attached to every other book on the subject? Let’s face it, his own writing is torture to read.

The problem, really, is not with them so much as it is with the rest of us who seem to idolize them, need them, depend on them, and expect our own pastors and churches to be like them. When we hold them up as our models, aren’t we bound for disappointment? Most pastors and most churches will never be as exciting or “relevant” or recognized as theirs. Ministry is usually unglamorous, sometimes boring, often frustrating. It feels as though the Emergent cast has forgotten that. Emergent buzz words suddenly don’t seem so exciting, or perhaps even as meaningful, when you close the book and walk out the front door to deal with human beings as they are. Or when you face the realities of your own church.

I’m still chewing on this and may have more to spit out in the future. Any thoughts?

Posted 3/1/2008 12:35 PM - 180 Views - 8 eProps - 8 comments

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8 Comments

GAH! thank YOU for throwing some of these thoughts out there.
after i read donald miller's 2 books, i was so jazzed (no pun intended) that when we were visiting j's sister in portland, we were so stoked to check out imago dei community.

okay.

it was *so* disappointing-- mostly b/c of what you wrote; i had thought,if donald miller is so cool his church must be just as cool. um, yeah, not. it wasn't a bad church-- it was just so....so....so typical, similar to every other evangelical church service, with some cool art montage slideshow and cool praise/rock band thrown in there. i felt like these were merely spiritual stylistic accessories.

the thing i'm frustrated with this whole emergent mov't is just that-- most ppl seem to be jumping on board for the sake of its novelty...hip, "different" way of looking at god, gospel, etc...and if we really examined the emergent message, i think the way we live out our faith would look really different. but instead, it's just another cool, new accessory we're trying on.

i will say, though, that books like dave tomlinson's gave me a language/vocabulary to articulate some of the frustrations i was experiencing with evangelical christianity. so that was...cool. haha.

Posted 3/1/2008 6:44 PM by Hyphenate - reply

Haggai 2:12-13

'If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and touches bread with this fold, or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy?'" And the priests answered, "No."

Then Haggai said, "If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?" And the priests answered, "It will become unclean."'

The focus of our faith is Jesus, the consecrated meat. Only by touching the meat and living out of such a faith can make us holy and pleasing in His sight. All the external 'stuff'(the garment) - gifts, blessings, services, types of worship, fame,trends, etc. cannot make us holy and will only defile our services to Him, if we focus on the garment, not the meat.

Rob Bell or not, it is more important to examine own hearts and focus on the consecrated meat, Jesus Christ. May we Christians be rooted in His Word, the everlasting truth, so that we may gain wisdom and discernment through the work of Holy Spirit.

Posted 3/2/2008 3:57 PM by soiepu - reply

"Ministry is usually unglamorous, sometimes boring, often frustrating. It feels as though the Emergent cast has forgotten that. Emergent buzz words suddenly don’t seem so exciting, or perhaps even as meaningful, when you close the book and walk out the front door to deal with human beings as they are. Or when you face the realities of your own church."

Amen to that. While I do applaud many of the folks of the emerging movement for offering more compelling and relevant images of hope that spring from the Gospel, these too will probably get cliche after a decade or so- or maybe they already are.

On an semi-related note, I came across this blog entry
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/02/15/would-the-real-emerger-please-stand-up/
from Scot McKnight's blog (http://www.jesuscreed.org). Thought it was kind of helpful in trying to define "emerging" or "emergent" (another challenge when thinking/reflecting on all this stuff).

Posted 3/3/2008 1:34 PM by shiauman - reply

Oops... forgot to paste in the second (more helpful) link as well:
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/02/28/from-fundamentalism-to-liberal-spectrum-of-thought-in-the-western-church/

Posted 3/3/2008 1:38 PM by shiauman - reply

I recently read Mark Driscoll's Confessions of a Reformission Rev., and it was encouraging, challenging, and convicting, as well as very funny in some places. If anything, it makes me realize how much this particular pastor is in need of prayer. This "other" Mars Hill Church in Seattle has made lots of mistakes, but God has been blessing them with new converts and church growth. It reminded me of CCFC in a few respects (when it, too, was a fledgling church), but I do wonder if bigger is always better (Mars Hill is huge), if women are indeed not supposed to be senior pastors or elders, etc. Trying to be cool (by welcoming an unbelieving worship team) seemed to get the church into trouble, while at other times being "relevant" to the largely unchurched society/sub-cultures worked for them. I thought one of the church's strengths was to early on train its young members to be healthy and productive members of society, and especially to restore the manhood of their young men. My take on it was that it was great to have vision and strategy, but that any new take on the gospel is just a fresh take on the original. It's cool that Driscoll is quite the theological conservative. It's exciting to see that the gospel is being preached in unexpected places and unexpected ways. Perhaps we don't need more "rock stars," but they have done a great deal of good, have they not?

Posted 3/3/2008 4:02 PM by Debbie3 - reply

I think part of the problem is that believers (and non-believers, as well) hold expectations as to what a church should look like, culturally. When I was at Mosaic last night, our sr. pastor responded to a question about why we don't use traditional Christian worship music, to which he answered that it's not Mosaic--but there are lots of churches out there that do use it and that such attendees should seek a church that culturally fits them.

While I don't fully jive with his answer, the underlying response, I think, is agreeable. Ultimately, church is church. It's a community of believers that gather together to worship God, through loving one another, forgiving one another, and teaching one another through the power of Jesus Christ. Perhaps the problem is that too many Christians are so enraptured by the trappings of the church, not so much the building, but the actual way that church is presented, that they don't realize that the core of the church, while not necessarily ephemerally exciting, is what's critical about its existence.

Different specific churches, I think, serve different purposes. I attend Mosaic primarily because its rather non-traditional trappings and arts-sensitivity makes is probably one of the best places to bring people who don't know Jesus in my industry to. I can also see Mosaic's weaknesses as well, including the need for strong individual initiative to "go deeper" and the fact that there really is a veneer of entertainment-industry glitz on the surface level that can be dissuading to long-time believers.

I personally seek a church that's even more radically departed from the expectation of Christian culture--because I think such a church would be best suited for my mission in the entertainment industry--but I haven't been able to find such a church yet.

Yet, the outer trappings, in the end, aren't what's most important, right? The fundamentals of the church are. What we see today as hip and cool will one day be lame and old school. But even as the surface changes, I think we ought to be most vigilant that the heart remains the same. Always and utterly loving Jesus.

Posted 3/3/2008 5:00 PM by johnjihoonchang

- reply

I think some of what I wrote misses the mark now. You got me interested in reading more about Rob Bell, and in the Wikipedia article on him, it quotes him as saying, "This is not just the same old message with new methods. We're rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life. Legal metaphors for faith don't deliver a way of life. We grew up in churches where people knew the nine verses why we don't speak in tongues, but had never experienced the overwhelming presence of God." I guess he would know having grown up in a traditional Christian environment; on the one hand, at least it makes him seem more "trustworthy" in his assessment of Christianity then and now. (As for me, I wouldn't have become a Christian in the first place if I hadn't had the experience of the Presence.)

Posted 3/5/2008 1:56 AM by Debbie3 - reply

On the other hand, I wonder if Bell is somewhat creatively reactionary (in one of his Nooma videos, he criticized a guy with tracts and bullhorn and asked 'how could the best news in the world be made bad news?' seemingly bypassing how the message of Christ is difficult to accept b/c we *are* sinners). Does he preach the wrath as well as redeeming love of God? I don't know. I'm not very familiar with his preaching. But I agree, there is something very wrong indeed when we become dependent on any such super star.

Posted 3/5/2008 2:50 AM by Debbie3 - reply

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