I
tell that story for three reasons: 1) it’s a good story;
2) I’m hoping the search engines will draw Chuck Norris
fans to this site; and 3) it underscores the fact that you never
know who will show up at CBA. Norris was there promoting his
autobiography, Against All Odds, which releases in September.
Last year, Mel Gibson made an appearance, for obvious reasons.
Though
I attend the event as a journalist—or in a good year, as
an author—I also identify with evangelical
Christianity, a diverse segment of the church that adheres to
certain essentials,
such as belief in the Bible as the inspired Word of God, the
Trinity, and the deity of Jesus. Though
the distinction is often difficult for outsiders to recognize, evangelicals are not the
same as fundamentalists, who apply a literal interpretation to
the Bible, sometimes demand that church members use the King
James Version only, and dictate stringent lifestyle rules on
matters like dress and entertainment. The evangelical segment
enjoys greater latitude when it comes to belief
and greater freedom in lifestyle choices.
Even
so, I am among those who have grown increasingly disenchanted
with evangelicalism. Don’t get me wrong—I
could sign, and have signed, any basic statement of faith issued
by most evangelical ministries and companies. It’s not
a problem of doctrine; it’s a problem of practice. And
that problem is often evident at CBA International, where evangelical
practices can sometimes appear to be, well, odd.
This
year, I asked a fellow Episcopalian, a book editor who could
have easily sat out the event, why he bothered to attend. “Are
you kidding?” he said. “I love CBA—it’s
so bizarre!” Amen to that. Display cases in the lobby of
the Georgia World Congress Center, where the event was held,
exhibited such items as Actual Brimstone from Sodom and Gomorrah
and canvas sandals featuring an embroidered scripture reference
and American flag, for those who feel the need to wear their
faith and their patriotism on their feet. More than a few groups
of journalists hold annual contests to see who can come up with
the best example of “Jesus junk” from the trade floor.
All
that aside, I returned home from CBA feeling more hopeful than
I have in years past, thanks to the postmodern-friendly movement
known as the “emerging church.” Since the 1990s,
leaders and authors in the movement have made their influence
felt at CBA, but never as much as they did this year. In fact,
their influence extended to USA Today, CNN, MTV, and other secular
media outlets that gave them ink and airtime before, during,
and after the convention.
Bear
with me now as I engage in a bit of keyboard stammering, because
this is the point where I need to define the emerging church.
I’ll start by explaining what it is not: It’s not
an organization, a denomination, or an association of churches;
that kind of structure runs counter to the thinking of its adherents.
(Even the word “adherents” is suspect, but let’s
not get sidetracked.) It’s not an entity with a single
doctrinal stance, though most in the movement could, like me,
sign any standard evangelical statement of faith. It’s
not—thank God!—another regimented program for the
church to follow. And although it emerged as a reaction to church
as usual, its leaders take care not to criticize or disparage
people who are quite content with the usual church.
What
the emerging church offers and encourages is a new way of doing
church and being the church, one that resonates not only with
the 18-to-34-year-old demographic—the first fully postmodern
generation—but also with people who think like those in
the younger demographic but are older in age. Or way older, like
me. If you came to faith in Christ during the Jesus Movement
of the 1970s as I did, you should readily understand the emerging
church. Remember how we tried to create a whole new model based
on Luke’s description of the early church in the book of
Acts? Well, the emerging church is succeeding where we failed,
for reasons I can only speculate about. Sometimes I think we
just gave up too soon. We ended up with some decent alternatives
for that time (think Vineyard Fellowship and Calvary Chapel),
but that’s not what we really wanted. What we really wanted
then is what they’re actually doing now.
So
where can you find examples of the emerging church? Some postmodern-friendly
churches have sprung from an intentional and interdenominational
effort, such as Brian McLaren’s Cedar Ridge Community Church
near Washington, D.C. Pretty much everyone in the emerging church
recognizes McLaren as the movement’s elder statesman; his
books, with titles like A New Kind of Christian and Adventures
in Missing the Point (the latter with Tony Campolo), have
helped define the emerging church.
Sometimes,
the name of a particular church is a dead giveaway that it’s
part of the movement, such as Scum of the Earth in Denver. Little
question that it’s not, say, a Southern Baptist congregation.
Many, like Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, which meets
in a living room setting in an industrial building, see themselves
as an experimental community. Still others aren’t really
churches but ministries affiliated with traditional congregations,
like The Crucible, a postmodern outreach of the huge Belmont
Church in Nashville. Vintage Faith in Santa Cruz, California,
Apex in Las Vegas, and Holy Joe’s in London are but a few
others.
What
all these groups have in common is this: They believe Jesus intended
his followers to interact with the culture around them, not become
an alien subculture. They adhere to the ancient creeds of the
church. They emphasize the visual and performing arts and acknowledge
the enormous influence pop culture has on society. As much as
anything else, they believe in the communal and missional aspects
of the church—the responsibility Jesus-followers have to
each other and to those outside the faith. And they believe that
as we draw closer to God, we draw closer to each other, despite
the denominational boundaries that divide us. Emerging church
evangelicals comfortably draw on the rich traditions and practices
of the diverse streams of Christianity, believing that by genuinely
living where our common faith intersects, we can surpass the
efforts of even the most successful ecumenical programs.
Beyond
that, there’s not always uniformity among the beliefs and
practices in the emerging church, and its adherents would have
it no other way. They believe faith is a journey rather than
a destination, and each community of Christians needs to find
its own way of continuing on that journey. Underscoring that
idea are books like Doug Pagitt’s Reimagining Spiritual
Formation: A Week in the Life of an Experimental Church—in
this case, Solomon’s Porch. Like other leaders in the movement,
Pagitt’s intention is to bring readers along on one church’s
journey, not provide a rigid model for others to follow.
Among
the many authors to pay attention to are Vintage Faith pastor
Dan Kimball, author of The Emerging Church and Emerging
Worship; Drew University professor Leonard Sweet (Postmodern
Pilgrims; A Is for Abductive); youth pastor Tony
Jones (Postmodern Youth Ministry; Read, Think, Pray, Live);
Robert E. Webber, author of The Younger Evangelicals and Ancient-Future
Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World;
Spencer Burke, Sally Morgenthaler—the list is far too extensive
to include all the recommended authors here. For the most thorough
collection of postmodern resources that I know of, go to www.agts.edu,
click on “Free Resources,” and then click on the
folder labeled “Emerging Culture/Emerging Church.” That
will give you access to a PDF file of 1,700-plus resources amassed
by Assemblies of God professor Earl Creps, a man for whom many
in the emerging church movement give thanks daily.
As
you discover more books and authors, you’ll see that the
movement receives strong support from several publishing houses—Zondervan,
particularly its emergentYS imprint;
Relevant Books; Jossey-Bass; NavPress; and to some extent, Thomas
Nelson, Baker Books, and Paraclete Press. Some of those publishers
sponsored emerging church events at CBA, including a Zondervan/Relevant
panel discussion designed to help booksellers discover what they
need to do to reach the postmodern demographic.
Web
sites to visit include www.emergentvillage.com and www.theooze.com,
both of which provide links to partner ministries. Or simply
enter “emerging church” into a good search engine
like Google; once you start seeking information on the movement,
you’ll discover that there’s a wealth of information
available on the Internet. Enter the same term into the Amazon
search function (on the main Christianity page, to narrow your
choices), and you’ll find numerous books on postmodern
ministry.
The
emerging church is clearly in its infancy, with some leaders
suggesting that it’s in the earliest stages of what could
prove to be a 100-year-plus shift in our thinking about church.
But no matter where it is on an unknown timeline, it’s
a welcome relief for those of us who have longed for evangelicalism
to become what we hoped and prayed and believed it could be—an
authentic expression of our “ancient-future” faith.
Copyright
©2004 Marcia Ford
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