I’m a newbie on the site. I apologize in advance for any liberties I take in this or any other posting I make.
With that said, I’ll be honest in proclaiming that the whole “emerging church” issue is somewhat of a moot point. In truth, there is nothing new under the sun as far as the church goes (even a Christian Internet forum like this is just a more instantaneous version of letters that would have been shuttled from place to place.) All this talk of models, techniques, community, and such are a smokescreen for the one thing lacking in most American Churches and the lives of people who show up in them weekly: a real presence of the Spirit of God.
For so long, evangelical churches (and charismatic “third wave” churches, too) have been doing ministry without the Holy Spirit and without continually presenting Christ. If we were honest with ourselves we would have to admit that the vast majority of people in our meetings simply don’t know Christ - no matter how long they’ve been in the Christian fold. It may be true that they are “saved” by the doctrinal standards of the church, but there is no depth there and may never be as long as we keep ministering without God the way we do.
Cultural relativity and all the baggage that comes with that loaded phrase is really just our attempt to mask the fact that our churches are devoid of much real spirituality. We can’t really show people the Holy Spirit brooding over our gatherings, so we have to substitute something else to bring them in. You give me a Namibian farmer who has spent years shut up before the Lord, learning of Him, praying in humility, anointed of the Spirit and I can promise you that if you put that guy in front of crowd of people who want to see God, despite his complete lack of cultural relevancy that man will have God pouring out of him and into the lives of those assembled. That alone is what people want and it will attract them to our gatherings like nothing else can.
But looking for a shortcut we try to manufacture it. Churches across the country, particularly those attempting to be “cutting edge,” all look remarkably alike - primarily because everyone is trying to mimic whatever the hot model/church is for the week. In the end, though, the one thing that does characterize most of our churches is the profound lack of spiritual depth in them. The percentage of people who truly know the Bible inside and out can usually be counted on one hand and the percentage of those that can put together any consistent doctrinal statement gets cut down to a finger or two, if that. Finding anyone who prays more than an hour a day is as rare.
I never read a message in the Bible that was three points and a conclusion, but don’t all messages resemble this today? Aren’t they mostly some amalgam of pop-psychology (or pomo buzzwords) and a few Bible verses used in support? You really don’t need the one giving the message to have spent days locked away before the Lord waiting for the message to be instilled by the Spirit before it is passed on to the hearers. “Unction” is one of those old-timer words we don’t really need anymore, right? And when did everything become topical? During World War II in Britain, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones spent the entire war preaching through the Book of Romans. Would any preacher today be gutsy enough to do that?
Expediency and quick fixes own us. We’ve let our obsession with culture suck us away from the Lord and drain our valuable time. Whether it’s secular culture or the sanitized “Christian” versions we adopt (in the vacuum left by rejecting secular culture), it still draws us away from face time before God. Any quick perusal of Christian writings prior to this last century shows how shallow faith has become to us. Even all the “pomo” talk becomes its own distraction.
If you don’t have a group of people who have truly died at the foot of the cross, who devour the scriptures, and spend hours on their face daily before God (not doing any ministry until the Spirit comes in power), all the while reproducing that life in others, you will never have any kind of overcoming church. It’s as simple as that. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
I’ve been a Christian for twenty-six years, and I can tell you that we are just moving farther away from what is essential. We circle around what is truly God’s ideal but rarely ever get there, letting all our models and talk distract us because we are too lazy or afraid to get on our faces before the infinite God. We let pastors with book tours and writeups in Newsweek bury us with their supposed wisdom. Frankly it makes me ill when I think how much time we’ve wasted lately. It’s not about revisioning the Church in America - it’s about prostrating ourselves before God, no matter what we gain or lose by doing so, and not letting go of the horns of the altar until He blesses us.
Does anyone comprehend this?
edelen, I appreciate your obv
edelen, I appreciate your obvious passion for the Kingdom, and in some ways I share your perspective. I have a few questions I’d like to ask about your post, but since they are arguably outside the mandate of the OST project, perhaps we could exchange some email? If you’d allow that, please email me at .
Because Christ’s love urges us on…
Difficult to disagree but...
In a way, edelen, it’s difficult to disagree with this sort of analysis, though it may be less relevant for the UK and other parts of the world. However, there is a danger, I think, of reductionism. There is far more to being Christian or being church than either the rare, intensely spiritual individual (your Namibian farmer) or the rare, intensely spiritual moment (encountering your Namibian farmer in a meeting). Collective Christian activity inevitably generates a culture. This culture may serve as an infrastructure by which we are able to make our spiritual experiences publicly significant. But sometimes it just clutters the place up. I think that in principle, at least, emerging church is trying reduce the clutter and make our culture work more honestly and more effectively as an infrastructure - something that mediates between God and the world. There’s nothing unique about what is happening - except that it’s happening now rather than twenty years ago or 200 years ago.
My response, therefore, would be that we need both the revisioning and the presence of the Spirit of God. But, as I say, I don’t disagree with your standpoint.
Culture?
Why? I don’t believe it has to be the rare event we may claim it to be. That we don’t see it every day is no proof it can’t exist with regularity. (In fact, the lack may prove the point that we simply aren’t as serious about our relationship with God as we claim to be. Perhaps being satisfied with that lack is our very problem.) I can’t remember ever being in a meeting where the place we were in was shaken (a la Acts 4:31.)
It depends on what the definition of “culture” is.
I do not believe that creating an alternative culture is a necessary condition of being filled with the Spirit. I know that may be a bold/ludicrous thing to say, but there is a “self-consciousness-less” way of approaching knowing Christ that does NOT ensure that what God makes happen inevitably leads to “WWJD” bumper stickers. A bored culture generates its own numbing junk, not one solely interested in seeing God glorified.
Another way of looking at it is that, ultimately, the “culture” that would arise from abandoning our current bankrupt culture and religiousity for true Christian spirituality is neither new nor entirely different from anything we know. If people take notice that Christians are finally serious about their faith for once and the outgrowth of that is a label for what we are and a cultural trait that is assigned to it, then I guess that can’t be avoided. But when we talk culture, we typically have to tie it into shopping mores, language artifacts, musical ideas, and such. Does it have to always come to that, though? Is it actually possible to drop out of what we consider to be the prevailing culture? By disengaging as much as possible, is that a culture in itself? In other words, does it necessitate us becoming like the Amish and being labeled with that cultural baggage?
I don’t think so. Then again, since so few people are walking in a deep relationship with God, there’s no critical mass to any of these ideas anyway, so perhaps we are back to blowing smoke….
Yes, a culture...
i) I wouldn’t say that ‘creating an alternative culture is a necessary condition of being filled with the Spirit’ but I do think that the collective experience of being church, which is after all the experience of being ‘baptized by one Spirit into one body’, always gives rise to a ‘culture’ in the broadest sense of the word. This would be true even if we were able to sustain a high level of spiritual intensity. This culture in turn (reflexively) inevitably affects how life in the Spirit is perceived and pursued by others.
ii) I’m less concerned about developing an ‘alternative’ culture than about ensuring that how we embody our faith, both individually and corporately, is consistent with the content of that faith. This is a matter of integrity, and in this respect I think that the emerging church movement at its best is grappling with just the issues that you articulated so well in your initial post.
iii) For me an important element in this ‘culture’ is the manner in which we reason and speak about our faith - in other words, the dimension of public discourse. This is really a development of the second point. Cultural integrity also includes intellectual integrity, and here I think we have a responsibility to ensure that the language of faith is coherent and reasonable. Again, I see the emerging church reacting against the pseudo-rationality of a complacent evangelicalism.
So who's blowing smoke? . . . .
Andrew, I disagree that it is difficult to disagree with the points that edelen is making here – and edelen my question is – exactly who is blowing smoke here? I have to say that a lot of the language you use is a good example of the need to engage with the culture in which we find ourselves – so much of what you say, though well meant I’m sure, is in danger of amounting to nothing more than cliché ;
truly know the Bible inside and out
consistent doctrinal statement
prays more than an hour a day
truly died at the foot of the cross
devour the scriptures
spend hours on their face daily before God
overcoming church
these are all statements that amount to very little without serious definition and explanation – for example, exactly what is an ‘overcoming church’? In the sense that I have heard it used (and at very close quarters I would add since I was in full time evangelical, on your face before God, ministry for more than fifteen years) it was always used in reference to some paternal ideal of the prevailing people of God holding sway in the face of a declining cultural environment – to use your illustration of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (who I am familiar with and well aware of both his depth and his cultural blinkeredness, and if you think that he was not then more fool you) who ‘spent the entire war preaching through the Book of Romans’ this too is a good example of the absolute necessity of the need for the church to confront and relate to not only our current culture but our changing culture – while he was preaching piously through Romans the world was irreversibly being changed as millions marched through the gas chambers and hundreds of thousands were thrown in as fodder for a failing cultural ideal – perhaps he would have been better to have searched the scriptures for a way of making sense of the vacuum that the world would wake up in following the war (as men like Jurgen Moltmann were doing).
I mean you no offence edelen and do not wish to sound insulting (although by the tone of your argument it is possible that this would fit nicely with your perspective of the remnant theology that weaves through your comments) but we find ourselves in the 21st century and if you imagine that the complexity of who and what we are is even remotely like that of the 20th, 19th, 18th all the way back to the 1st century then you are failing to face up to the real call of genuine spirituality which is to strive to be truthful in the face of our changing world in our pursuit of God. I have known men who spent days on their faces before god and wouldn’t welcome a woman found pregnant out of wedlock to the communion table (of course I know I could start a tennis match with this comment if you know what I mean) but the simple truth is that the tide rolls on and we have to surf it or be washed away by it – it is a brave new world and we cannot afford the luxury of holding on to a former glory – we have to grasp hold of our tremulous faith in one hand and our changing culture in the other … .
Ps. This is not a defence of trendy attempts at relevance since I agree with you that a few video projections and a drum and bass beat are no substitute for a deep spirituality but it disturbs me that you can make such sweeping judgements as ‘profound lack of spiritual depth’ and ‘so few people are walking in a deep relationship with God’ when referring to emerging church or even contemporary church – you really should know if only from what we can glean from the life of Christ that those closest to God are those who are least aware of it (centurion, Samaritan woman et al) … . .
What is an 'overcoming church'?
Hadge, I appreciate the careful formulation of your response. I want to pick up on your question “what is an ‘overcoming church’?”
I presume the phrase derives from passages in 1 John that speak of overcoming the world and the evil one (2:13-14; 4:4; 5:4-5) and the letters to the churches in Revelation which promise that those who ‘conquer’ will be rewarded. It may help to note that these texts presuppose a context of eschatological opposition to the people of God: the church is urged to overcome the hostility of the world and in that way to imitate / follow / know Christ who likewise overcame the hostility of the world through his resurrection (Rev.3:21 makes this explicit).
I think this has a bearing on the preceding discussion because it highlights the fact that biblical concepts function within particular contexts, particular narratives, and don’t necessarily work properly when you transplant them elsewhere. One of the most consistent failings of ‘modern’ evangelical discourse has been to ignore the historical and theological setting in which biblical statements are made, ideas arise. Most seriously it has failed to grasp the hermeneutical importance of eschatology in the shaping of the central biblical narrative. I do not myself wish to diminish the force of edelen’s call for a deeper spirituality. But I do think that spirituality must be worked out in the context of mission – genuine social and cultural engagement at all levels, as hadge argues – and not within the anachronistic framework of an eschatological crisis. It is one thing to ‘overcome’ through faithfulness in the face of suffering; it is another to ‘overcome’ when the objective is mission. That was the mistake the crusaders made. It is essential that our spirituality is appropriate to circumstances and calling of the church at any particular time. This is what I was aiming for in the post on ‘metro-spirituality’.
what is an 'overcoming church'
I agree partly with edelen’s comments. I also am new to this site, and in glancing through it have thought that the part of the Spirit in things is downplayed a bit. I want to bring this to a different perspective, however. I believe that different individuals within the Church are appointed to different tasks; that some are called primarily to prayer or study or evangelism or interaction with different elements of the culture. If we, as individuals, are obedient to what the Spirit directs us to engage with, then together we will carry out His plans rather than our own. Isn’t that what it’s all about? I’m interested in His agendas rather than my own. And what we are led to will not necessarily make sense to those around us. Jesus drew a few odd looks Himself.
The Spirit and the emerging church
Bob, I think you’re right in your observation that emerging church conversations tend to downplay the activity of the Spirit - at least in the familiar charismatic sense in which many of us would understand that notion. That may point to the problem - we are still reacting against forms of church and of spiritual life with which we have become rather too familiar and which represent for us the worst failings of modern Christianity. I see this on the whole as a necessary development, a transitional phase, but there is no sense in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I do suspect, though, that the language of spiritual gifts needs restructuring to be usable within the emerging church. Let me give a couple of examples.
First, I think we probably need to resist the strongly individualistic bias of much charismatic theology. I may be wrong (if I am, correct me), but it seems to me that your comments lean somewhat in this direction. When you say, ‘I’m interested in His agendas rather than my own,’ you apparently deny self-interest but it sounds as though you as an individual are seeking the Spirit’s agenda over against the group. So I would rephrase your preceding statement as follows: ‘If we, as communities, are obedient to what the Spirit directs us to engage with, then together we will carry out His plans rather than our own.’
Secondly, the gifts of the Spirit are given primarily for the building up of the church, the body of Christ, but how we understand and practise these gifts will inevitably depend on what we think the church is and what its purpose is. These questions are very much under review at the moment, and I think that as we begin to answer them in new ways, we will find that we need to revise some of our standard charismatic assumptions.
Andrew, I consider the Spirit
Andrew, I consider the Spirit’s agenda to be for the group, but against the flesh, whether individual or collective. I am concerned about those called to leadership who seek to lead with their own intelligence and understanding rather than looking to the Lord for guidance.
I strongly desire corporate or collective ministry, and do engage in it; but I believe the path to the collective is found through individual obedience to the Lord. He then leads us into proper relations with others and we receive correction and guidance and spiritual refinements from the Lord through these relationships as well as privately before God. There is certainly a time in our early stages as believers when reliance on the gifts and teachings of others is the stronger emphasis. Adults interact differently with each other than children do with adults. But even between spiritual children and adults, the adults should be led of God in their instruction and care. The Body is not an assembly line; and we need to care for one another with the realization that we are engaging with members that often serve different functions than we do ourselves. Often spiritual leaders seem to be more concerned about filling gaps and numbers and observable results than they are about bringing each person to his or her proper place which is to be revealed by God. And we don’t have definition on every type of individual or type of ministry or gift. The Lord should be allowed to do new things we’ve never seen before. I’m very tired of seeing ministries built around the vision of one individual leader. The Lord may be the same yesterday, today and forever; but His work is in constant motion and development. You can see it in the creation.
Further, I believe that leaders are supposed to study needs and forms of ministry, and that the Lord is quite willing to direct them and take from what they study various elements and show them other things that can be added to the mix. He gives particular light for different localities and situations and types of people. Different things and approaches are intended for different times and places.
The Church is to be built with the gifts and the giving of our lives, but the point of it all is the Giver. Our thoughts should be subject to His. The best leader is one who knows how and who to follow. Jesus didn’t decide what to do for ministry. He was told and obeyed what He was told… selah.