Emerging from where? (part 2)

HT to ASBO Jesus

Recap of part 1

In part 1 of this 3 part series, institutional church - R.I.P?', I explored something of how we in the emerging church are often in reaction to the institutional church, not as some concrete reality but out of our own experiences, frustrations and pains.  It's one of the reasons I like Jon's cartoon that heads up this post - who of these people do you identify with and want to hang with?

We're emerging from as well as to...

In this part 2 I want to explore a little bit more with you how the emerging church has come to me.  We have not sprung magically out the ground or been created as the one true church after many false starts but are part of the global, sociological, historical and cultural background of our time.  Or to use my favourite leaf metaphor, a person who does not know their history [or cultural story] is a like a leaf who never knew they were part of a tree. 

Whilst it is important for the emerging story to engage with what God is doing now we also need to be informed of how we are all part of God's story, just as we are all parts of the body of Christ.  So whilst we can critique the institutional church we must also be open to being critiqued, whilst we can contribute and bring out new things we are also able to learn from what has gone before.  More of that in part 3 [contribution of the emerging church and contributions to the emerging church].

I'd like to hear your thoughts on some ideas put forward by Luke Bretherton in Chapter 2 of Remembering our future, in which he locates the emerging church as part of the Pentecostal/charismatic movement (PCM) based on these two key similarities [drawing on the work of Bolger and Gibbs in terms of identifying characteristics of the emerging church (EC)].  Luke is writing from the perspective of someone involved within the EC conversation rather than as an outright critic of it.

Similarity 1: anti-institutional style

Bretherton highlights that the EC like the PCM is a movement that is suspicious of institutions and focuses of Jesus/the kingdom of God over church/denomination.  This is closely linked to the idea of church as a family and the emphasis on personal relationships.

This has some good practice:

• a focus on Jesus is always a very good thing - we become part of his story rather than try and carry him into ours; and
• a reminder that the kingdom of God is bigger than the church.

There are a number of drawbacks that we are prone to fall into, particularly when we start to set these up in opposition to each other, so it becomes about the kingdom of God vs church or historical Jesus vs church history.  As Bretherton poignantly puts it:

"To emphasise the person of  Jesus and the kingdom of God as somehow necessarily in opposition to the history of the church is to fall into a kind of 'Jesusology': an attempt to escape history as if christians can simply copy the primitive church or ask what Jesus would do and ignore 2,000 years of church history.  It is also a refusal to acknowledge the providential and on-going work of Christ and the Spirit in history, thereby separating the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ, so that, in practice, Jesus becomes little more than a historical example of radical ethical conduct."

In part we in the EC are prone to wandering down this path because of our own anti-institutional feelings.  We feel more naturally drawn to statements that the church was not meant to be the dominant religion in society and that somehow when Constantine made christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, that was it.  The church became mainstream and lost its way and it is only now 1700 yrs later as we enter a post-christian age [in the west at any rate] that we are able to recover the true church from the impurity of its reign as supreme social institution.

The church was imperfect before it's promotion to the official religion of the west, was imperfect during that period of dominance and remains imperfect now in this post-christendom age.  What the church is still is an institution, despite our denials and semantics in the EC and maybe our focus then should be not on where we are or not one but rather what sort of institution we are?

The hermeneutic of suspicion towards institution reflects a nagging concern about power and how this power is used in our churches.  Our emphasis on the issue of power again is something that Bretherton identifies as a link to PCM movement.  Power is still central to the EC but it is inverted and becomes "an emphasis on escaping power or powerlessness."

Similarity 2: Engagement with culture and cultural forms

Bretherton identifies 3 areas where the EC and PCM share common ground:

1. entrepreneurial and innovative use of information and communication technology;
2. consumer orientated emphasis on individual creative expression/fulfilment; and
3. mixing of sacred and secular, particularly in worship

1. information and comms tech

The first of these can lead to metaphors for church that have more in common with current web technology [like web 2.0] than with the scripture.  Or to unpack that further we use these creative technologies and then apply metaphors of what we use to our church life.  We need to combine these however with our meditation on scripture, for example, Jason Clark in a sermon on  the Kingdom of God gave the example of the kingdom being like the world wide web where we are connected through nodes, mediation on the scripture combined with a common popular metaphor can be life changing.  As Bretherton comments:

"...the translation is going the wrong way: instead of internet use being transformed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Christian life is being reimagined through the use of the internet."

2. consumer culture

The second reflects an emphasis by both the PCM and EC to be consumers and producers of worship, whether through prayer/healing or acts of creativity the goal is to reconnect with 'our true selves.'  That is healthy in terms of our need for Jesus to restore our humanity through the ongoing work of the Spirit.  It can however lead to a focus on individuals and a me centred faith where my story becomes about me whose life incorporates Jesus story rather than Jesus story holding my own.  Perhaps one of the key emphasises of continuing to meet together is to share communally in God's story as his people, called together to be his image bearers.  A reminder that this story is not just about me and my own personal fulfilment but a cruciform life of loving service?

The hidden danger is that we in the EC continue to be immersed in our own consumer identity, heritage and practices - such that our focus becomes merely on better or more ethical ways for us to consume without ever addressing the practices that shape us to consumer centric - more ethical consumers but still consumers.

Bretherton references Daniel Bell who argues that we are shaped by the practices and disciplines of consumer culture [for instance the regular liturgy of TV advertisements reoccurring every 15 mins] and that church should be a place that provides counter practices such as fasting, serving, giving, communion which helps enable christians to resist the process of commodification and competition.  Indeed some people, such as Catherine Pickstock,argue that it is only christian practices the predate the consumer culture that will be really effective in helping us unplug from it.  This leads Bretherton to comment that:

"From this perspective, emerging churches, far from being sources of radical witness in a postmodern, post-christendom context, are collaborations with the capitalist hegemony, while older, inherited forms of church are sites of radical resistance, deeply relevant precisely in their non-conformity to contemporary culture."

3. mixing sacred and secular

Finally the third area reflects that christianity has been from the beginning a religion that has incorporated material from other religious and cultural contexts but yet does not merge or absorb other religions.  There is an ongoing process, according to Lamin Sanneh, "of contextualising and translation that involves simultaneous affirmation, critique and transformation that results in a point of new departure for both christianity and the culture or religious system that it is interpenetrating."

Bretherton draws out that, for the EC one of the key areas of the conversation is reaching out to those who like Jesus but are unable to participate in an existing form of church as they find it too difficult.  Bretherton makes two great points with regards to this:

• the historic christian witness has a communal space which is dedicated to God which causes disruption to our lives to attend - this inherited church allows us to choose to escape from other gods clamouring for our attention and allows us a space to interpret our context through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; and
• we could give up such dedicated spaces but it is important to remember that people do not simply believe and not belong, as Bretherton puts it...

"they may believe but they also actively belong to non-church places which are not neutral in relation to Christianity.  Many of these non-church places are antithetical to the faithful practice of christianity: for example, to be in a cafe is not to be in a neutral space  but to be in a site of consumer capitalism.    Hence, to claim one is forming a church in one is deeply problematic."

Bretherton suggests that we need to recognise that any church space is contested, particularly of consumption and cultural production - church is both sacred and of the world.  But chrisitan mission has also been about transforming such sites by putting them in the context of worshipping God - such that pagan temples become churches - so the question is how do we distinguish being a church from just going for a coffee?  Bretherton suggest this answer:

"What sets them apart from non church gatherings and places are how a particular time and place is transfigured or translated through orientation of those gathered to the christian tradition of belief and practice and to the work of Christ and the Spirit..."

Your thoughts:

This again has been a detailed piece and I have drawn extensively on the work of Luke Bretherton to do so.   What do you think?

• do you recognise the offshoot of EC as part of the PCM movement [which might help explain why the label charismissional can feel quite comfortable?];
• what struck you in reading this?  Would you draw out any other similarities other than the two suggested here?
• Is there anything you see differently or would maybe express in a different way?

Comments

[Tim]

My only thought is that Bretherton appears to come across as afraid of the church changing it’s appearance (becoming, in this case part of consumer culture). Isn’t this just another excuse for a measuring point? You can just imagine someone asking – is this truly church? Well, yes, didn’t you know, it used to be a brothel?

I like though his referral to our repeated mistakes from PCM. I’ve thought that for a while, it was nice to hear someone else say it.

Oh, and I didn’t like his ‘changing the face of the internet’ metaphor – to think that you can is to misinterpret what it is – for it isn’t a thing at all. I think it’s an interesting conecpt to re-interpret our connections to one another.

[Paul]

Thanks Tim - it is probaly my poor hack summary job that gives that impression. I think rather than measurement it is about being aware of the continuity and discontinuity - that we are part of the consumer culture because us as people in the church are immersed in it. If we are taking that honest critique and awareness it becomes more than just how can we be better/more ethical consumers to how can we also be about transforming ourselves so that we are replacing that consumer identity with god's one, being counter cultural, transforming and transcending our environment.

Do you still see that as a measuring point and are measuring points a bad thing?

As a man far more aware of the net than me i respect what you say - how do you see christianity in respect of the internet?

[tim]

But don't all measuring points become sticks to beat the faithful with? IE: PCM 'requiring' baptism of the holy spirit...

[Mike Pelechaty]

EC and PCM
In my own experience, I have been in the PCM since my teenage years (now I am 49.) Much of the discussion concerning the EC is new to me. I am afraid that the PCM is turning introspective and becoming culturally irrelevent. The underlying historical force resulting in its isolational stance, in my opinion, is its lack of the understanding of the principles of the Kingdom of God. Yet in reading the last post, I find much of it so cerebral. Forgive my ignorance or shallowness, but how does the contempoary work of the Holy Spirit influence the discussion concerning church structure? Along with this question, I often ask myself, is the church (and its structure) for man's benefit or is it for God? It seems to me that the answer to that question is pivotal in terms of the direction the discussion proceeds.

Mike Pelechaty

[Paul]

it's a good point Tim, i think what helps us is looking at the wider history/traditions of the church - maybe to be that type of pentecostal you do have to speak in tongues, fair enough but to be a christian, what does the wider tradition say/guide us?

Do you think that helps with our critique of ourselves by looking beyond ourselves and our own measuring hobby horse sticks

[Paul]

Hi Mike

they are great thoughts and questions. I apologise for the excess cerebral in the above - this is a series of posts where what i am seeing is that we as christians stay in a cycle of reaction shaped church, where we write off the last lot cos we didn't like it but one day we too become old churches and find that the next gen writes us off in turn... or we abandon critique and our place in the history and tradition of the church, wondering after awhile why the new shiny things that we started off with have now got tarnished with age... or we abandon church all together...

I'd like to propose instead something called deep church, to help us both to face what the Spirit is sayign today in the ongoing work of Jesus in his church and in our shared past history - to me this has to be a be a two way conversation that helps us see that church is more than just my collective experience, that opens us all to both the new/renewal and the old, wisedom, treasures, practices etc that can help us.

Does that help at all?

You can read more about deep church at www.deepchurch.org.uk