Emergent Church Class

Response to Out of Bounds Church Posts

2006-03-12T21:29:00.000-08:00

In response to Eric S.’s comments on the Out of Bounds Church, I too thought a lot about the ‘mixing’ metaphor in dealing with culture. In what specific ways do you think Foothill could sample more elements of the surrounding culture in order to make the worship more contextualized? I also thought the idea of take-aways or souvenirs was interesting. This could potentially take a lot of time and money if done very often though. However, I suppose if we are creative, and do things that are simple yet meaningful, these could allow participants to remember the worship experience they had.

I agree with Mark's commentary about the brilliance of Franco Zeffarelli’s Romeo and Juliet. He used the same story line and, amazingly, the same text, yet portrayed the story in a very contemporary setting. I know it made Romeo and Juliet much more relevant to me. It is a timeless tale. And if those outside the Church can do that with Shakespeare, then how much more so should Christians strive to do that with the story of Jesus? I like how Mark points out that the gospel was more relevant to the drug addicts and sex workers than to many of the middle class. It is sad to think that as the church became more ‘emergent’ it seemed to become less relevant to those original members. I do not think that is the heart of emergent. It seems the trailer park ended up contextualizing a little too much to the middle class kids who were moving in.

2006-03-07T21:23:00.000-08:00

In The Out of Bounds Church, Steve Taylor analyzes different aspects of a number of Emerging Churches all over the world. Taylor examines how culture is changing and how it is on the edges of culture that new things arise. In his chapter on Koru Theology he argues that something must die in order for something to be born. In this birthing process there is a need for midwives, or older wiser leaders to help birth the new movement among the next generation. Taylor also looks at the creativity of God and how to incorporate that creativity into a church’s spiritual life. Mission is looked at as a sort of tourism, a journey, that the Church must seek to market its spiritual product well in order to draw others in. Taylor is clear that he is not advocating consumerism, but that in a consumerist society we must be able to create sign posts to point people in the right direction. Taylor also urges us in Chapter 11 not to lose touch with the spiritual roots of the past. In Missional Interface Taylor examines how different types of communities can successfully create intimacy and commitment and yet still be open to outsiders. Finally, Taylor compares the role of the Church in culture to that of a DJ. We use aspects of culture to communicate the message, and yet at times we come against other aspects. However, even in speaking out against those negative aspects of culture, we do so within given cultural forms. We practice Christianity through culture. It does not have to be the gospel or culture (138).

Cross Roads Church was very committed to community. The questions that Taylor poses at the beginning of his missional interface chapter could well be applied to the Cross Roads Community. They were challenged by the tension of how to create stability for committed community members and yet still be open towards outsiders. I, and others, found Cross Roads a difficult community to get truly plugged into. There were no weekly small groups, which would have provided a consistent place for people to get to know new comers. Instead, they had what they called House to House. This meant that different people opened up their houses for people to come over on different nights of the week. It was not the same house on each weeknight. These meetings were supposed to be posted on the web site but usually were not. They also did not post phone numbers. Thus it was very difficult to figure out where people were actually meeting on a given night. Once one did get to know people, Cross Roads was very committed to its membership. They were very vocal about this. However, as an outsider it was hard to get in. I often thought how difficult it would be for a non-Christian to become involved. It was difficult for me as a believer and I had a lot of motivation to want to get involved in a church. I think most unchurched people would simply have given up. Cross Roads was a community that was very dedicated to those in the community, and in that, they made it hard for outsiders to become insiders.

Responses to Church ReImagined

2006-03-05T21:46:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed Eric S.'s comparison of Foothills Church to Doug Pagitt's Church Re-imagined. I also think it is good to see what some of this theory looks like in practice. I realize though that it will be different in every community. I was encouraged to hear how, although Foothills does not look like Solomon's Porch in many ways, they are at least talking about starting more outreach to the community. The movie night and child care sound like cool ways to be involved in their neighborhood. I hope and pray that it does not stop with just talk. I was encouraged to hear about the coffeehouse sundays. They seem much more oriented to the community of the church. These actually sound quite emergent. I am wondering if they are done as the main service once a month or if they are done on a Sunday evening. I would think most regular church attenders would really be shaken up by something like that.

I agree totally with the two concerns regarding SP that Mark pointed out in his post on Church Re-Imagined and ninthour. Solomon's Porch does do a lot of outreach and is very emergent in many ways, but it is attractional. It does try to draw people to the building. I also remember the comment about SP without Doug Pagitt being 'like a sitcom without the star (62).' That is not a good sign. One of the values of emerging churches is shared leadership and it looks too much of SP's success is based on Pagitt. I guess looking at this book, as Mark notes, the first one we have read that is by a practitioner, reminds us that real life never works out exactly like the theories, and that is not always necessarily a bad thing.

Church Re-Imagined and Cross Roads

2006-03-01T21:56:00.000-08:00

In Church Re-imagined, Doug Pagitt and other members of his community, recount the ways in which Solomon’s Porch practices Christianity. On the right side of the pages, Pagitt, and at times other members, describe different aspects of their community’s spiritual formation. The left sides of the pages were journal entries of seven different members on each of the spiritual formation topics. In the introduction, Pagitt warns us that the journal entries sometimes show a tension between what was written in the chapter itself. It was interesting to see this played out at times. The first two chapters discuss some of SP’s values and some of the journey it took to birth this community. Each chapter is ended with a song written by someone in the community. The next seven chapters take us through seven spiritual formations of the community, as in a week at Solomon’s Porch. The first spiritual formation examined is worship. SP meets in a room filled with couches that is made to look more like a living room. They are committed to taking communion every week. They allow their children to be part of the worship experience. They incorporate traditions of the past and focus on the fact that we are part of a larger story. Pagitt states that they are emphatic on which word they use for things and what those words mean (63). However, Dustin appears a little annoyed in his journal as to how perfectionistic the community is about this. (I can relate). Monday (Chapter Four) looks at the role of the human body in spiritual formation. What we eat, the positions we take when we pray, communion and other things are all part of the physicality aspect of spiritual formation. Tuesday’s chapter examines the role and necessity of dialogue. Solomon’s Porch has Bible discussions and allows all to voice their perspective and to learn from each other. Hospitality is discussed in Wednesday’s chapter. SP attempts to practice openness and hospitality through meals and through the way their place of worship is decorated, among other things. The importance of belief in spiritual formation, and the dynamics of how faith and belief work, are examined in the Thursday chapter. The importance of imagination, creativity and ‘making things new’ is illustrated in Friday and Saturday looks at the role of acts of service to the community.

Cross Roads practiced some of these formations and did not practice others. It did value creativity, and was creative in the way it approached its Sunday meetings. I remember one Sunday that the person in charge had done the whole lesson through filming a series of members being interviewed on forgiveness and the Sermon on the Mount. On Sunday mornings Cross Roads did at times have dialogue. Hospitality was very important to the community. After the Sunday service every week someone would open their house for people to come and eat. Also, one night of every week a different person would open their home to whoever wanted to come by for a ‘House to House.’ There was some attempt to practice service to the community, although this could have been carried much further. Physicality was not something I saw a lot of at Cross Roads. Although I am sure there were some that focused on that aspect of their spirituality, I would not say it was a community-held value. Words and their meanings were important at Cross Roads, and I can relate to Dustin in his annoyance over this. I had been living in a foreign country for the three years before I was involved in Cross Roads and had not kept up with the new US emergent church lingo. I felt my inability to use this lingo at first annoyed people.

Response to Shaping of Things to Come Posts

2006-02-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

I liked Eric S.’s analysis of Frost and Hirsch’s, The Shaping of Things to Come. His comments on his church’s not creating too many programs to be involved in were good. I think most committed Christians are so involved in their church’s programs that they do not have time to develop relationships with pre-Christians. I certainly was in that situation until going to the mission field. Cross Roads actually had no programs, so for the first time in my life in the States, I had time to build relationships with non-Christians, and I did it. I realized this was part of the reason I was able to do so. One aspect of being missional must be that we actually have time to spend with those outside of our Christian community.

Mark’s comparison between the APEPT ministry model illustrated in The Shaping of Things to Come, and the particular ministry model of ninthour was very interesting. The ‘pastor’ figure was not very pastoral. It also seems that she did not cultivate an indigenous leadership that could follow her after she left. Perhaps she was more of an apostolic type and was trying to fill what needed to be a pastoral roll. Whatever the case was, the APEPT model was not followed. It was not only not followed in that the church lacked people properly functioning in their proper rolls of leadership that God had shaped them for, but it also did not have the whole congregation in at least one of those rolls. That is the genius of the missional APEPT model of leadership. There are leaders, but all Christians are expected to fall into one of those roles, whether they are leaders in the church or not. This is the part it seems that ninthour most lost out on. They did not raise up new leadership to replace the apostolic leadership when it left. The church members were not taught how do live out the APEPT model, and thus it looks like they will die out now that the official leaders have left.

Cross Roads and The Shaping of Things to Come

2006-02-22T18:32:00.000-08:00

The main thrust of Frost and Hirsch's The Shaping of Things to Come is that of the necessity of the Church to become missional and ways in which she might do that. It takes a hard look at the Church's inability to adapt to postmodern culture and thus reach a postmodern people. Frost and Hirsch examine this in the light of 1,700 years of Christendom. They look at how, although we are no longer living in an age in which the Church is dominant in society and culture, we continue to behave as if we were. The authors contrast the Christendom, attractional model of church with the missional/incarnational model. In the attractional model, we expect those outside of the Church to be attracted enough to it to come to the church (usually the church building) . In the incarnational model, the Church (meaning a body of believers) goes to the people and dwells among them, imitating Jesus in this manner. In Part Two of the book, the authors discuss specific ways in which the Church can be incarnational. They look at the five-fold ministry of Ephesians 4:11-13, ways in which the Church can be relevant to culture and yet still follow the principles of Scripture, and new perspectives on evangelism. In the next section, Messianic Spirituality, Hirsch and Frost analyze how the loss of a Jewish perspective on spirituality, and the over emphasis of a Hellenistic interpretation, led to an unhealthy Christianity. I might point out that, although at points they seem to claim otherwise, it seems that the authors over-idealize Jewish spirituality. Any flawed human culture, Jewish, Hellenistic or other, will distort the truths of God if taken too far. Taking a closer look at the Jewish perspective of spirituality will definitely bring out rich truths, but so would taking a Chinese perspective. The authors do try to state this, but I still feel they get away from the incarnating power of the gospel a little bit in their emphasis on Jewish Spirituality. I also disagree with their statement that we should read all Scripture through the light of the Gospels (113). We should read all Scripture in light of all Scripture. The authors’ take on action as a sacrament, a conduit of God’s grace was fascinating and inspiring. It also makes a lot of sense and just feels right to me. The book goes on to speak of the importance of the medium of the message, a new kind of five-fold structure for leadership (and non-leadership) in the Church. It looks at the nature of organizations and movements and closes with an analysis of how the Emergent Missional Church can pull off this revolution.

Cross Roads Church considered itself a missional church. It was relevant to postmodern culture in many ways. It had many parties and other non-program-like activities that were conducive to bringing the unchurched. It also did not have a building but met in a Christian community center. The teaching emphasized being salt and light through our actions in everyday life. It was a relationally based community. If people became part of the community, churched or unchurched people, it was not going to be because of the Sunday morning service. Although many people there were extremely talented in music and other arts, the service was purposefully non-descript. In that way it was not an attractional church. Those who joined the community did so because of organic relationships. Cross Roads also did acts of social justice. They helped with art classes in the inner city community center that they met in. They also were planning on painting a mural for the center. About the time I left, there was a group of us meeting to discuss ways in which our community could strategically work in some area of social justice. These things were all characteristic of being a missional church. However, only a small portion of people were involved in these ministries. Some did works of social justice through other agencies, but I think the majority did not. I think also the Church was so focused on being relevant, and so reactive to traditional pushy forms of evangelism, that there seemed to be no passion for seeing others come into Christian community and come to know Christ. However, when the Church split, the leadership started saying all they wanted to do was follow Jesus and help the unchurched come to know Him. Strangely enough, that time of crisis was the only time I heard them talk that way. I do not know why.

Response to Churchless Faith Posts

2006-02-19T16:50:00.000-08:00

I think Eric S. had a good analysis of Jamieson’s A Churchless Faith. I also was impressed that Jamieson did not seem to criticize those who were leaving churches, rather to seek to understand them. I would almost go so far as to say he has more respect for many leavers than he does for a lot of faithful Church attenders. He does, however, emphasize the biblical emphasis of doing faith in some sort of a community. I thought he was quite balanced on doing this. I also thought Jamieson’s comments on the church’s lack of wisdom in not trying to understand why people were leaving were insightful. Why is that so often the outside world is so much wiser than the Church? Eric’s post was good but I would have like to hear how A Churchless Faith compared to his particular church community.

In response to Mark’s analysis of A Churchless Faith, I would first like to say that I tried to post a comment to his commentary on my analysis, but could find no way to do it on his blog, so I will do so here. Mark, you are exactly right, it was not ABOUT believers’ baptism. It was about the way it was handled. They took no stand on it in the beginning and then changed the rules half way through the game. The way it was handled was the issue. I actually stand fairly strongly on the side of believers’ baptism as well. Theologically on that issue I agreed with the leadership. As far as emergent goes, I would prefer a community that did not take strong stands on disputable issues, however, I would not go so far as to say that a community is not emergent if it does not do this. Not at all. I would say that any church, organization, business, school, anything should make the rules clear at the outset and if they decide to change them half way through the game they had better be pretty careful about the way they handle that.

In response to Mark’s commentary on A Churchless Faith, I would like to say that I really appreciate his bringing in other materials he’s read. I appreciated his insight from Revolution by George Barna as well as his personal experience. He is right, there are a surprising amount of Fuller students who either do not go to church at all, or are not really tied into a church community. At another seminary I attended before Fuller, this was not the case. We were required to have a statement signed by a local church that said we were attending. I would like to point out one thing that I am not sure Mark understood from the reading. I do not believe that the leavers Jamieson interviewed include those who left to immediately join house churches. I think Jamieson, as well as myself, would count house church as a valid form of church and that those who moved on directly to house churches would not be labeled ‘leavers.’ If I recall correctly, there were leavers involved in ‘post church groups’ that Jamieson interviewed, but they did not consider these groups a church. House churches generally do consider themselves a valid church in and of themselves.

2006-02-13T23:30:00.000-08:00

Good Morning! Camping in January...

2006-02-13T22:49:00.000-08:00

Me @ home in Dallas

Cross Roads in light of A Churchless Faith

2006-02-13T19:32:00.000-08:00

Alan Jamieson’s book, A Churchless Faith, looks at the reasons why committed Christians are leaving Evangelical Pentecostal Churches (EPC) and what their lives can look like after they become ‘leavers.’ Many of the leavers Jamieson interviewed were leaders in their churches, often having undergone some form of formal theological education. For several reasons, these leavers started to feel they could not grow in their faith if they stayed in their churches. They often felt that their churches were inauthentic and overly authoritarian, not allowing them to be honest about doubts and struggles they went through with their faith. It is important to note that most of the people whom Jaimeson interviewed did not lose their faith when they left the church. The leavers that Jaimeson interviewed ended up in different places spiritually. Some maintain their faith and although they leave the church, they still depend on it for what they believe. Others reject the Church and most of its teachings. Others, those Jamieson labels as ‘transitional explorers,’ start to reconstruct their faith after breaking off from their church, thus making it more their own. As leavers move further on in the process, some reach the point where they are able to integrate their past form of faith with other forms, and in this process make their faith fully their own.

One of the most interesting things to me that Jamieson examines in his book is that of faith stages and the EPC’s treatment of those stages of faith. Not all people reach higher stages of faith, but those who do go through these stages go through times of doubt, questioning and self-discovery. They question the world views of their communities and come to appreciate faith practices of other streams of Christianity. They are not afraid of mystery and tend to see truth as multi-faceted. Most EPC churches’ structures and cultures discourage movement into these later stages of faith. However, the postmodern culture at large is open to mystery, questions and a multi-faceted truth. Postmoderns are also more open to relational leadership and networking rather than hierarchical structures. Thus the cultural shift is pushing against the values of the EPC church (Jamieson 122).

Looking at Cross Roads Church in light of Jamieson’s analysis, although it seemed to embrace postmodern culture in many ways, it looks like in the end this turned out to be an illusion. Cross Roads had a shared leadership structure, but when crisis hit, the senior pastor’s word was law. This was made very clear to the whole congregation. It was stated over and over again that this was 'not a democracy.' Cross Roads also preached that they would major on the majors. They took a stand against dividing over disputable matters. This seemed to indicate that they would be open to members questioning certain aspects of their faith. It also seemed that they would be open to various patterns of historical Christian practice. However, when one couple who had been in the leadership team for two years did not agree with the senior pastor’s convictions on believers' baptism, the couple was asked to step out of the leadership team, at least for a season. The decisions on how to deal with this issue were not made as a group. The couple left the church and were rebuked from the pulpit their last Sunday there for having gossiped against the pastor. The next Sunday the seminary students were specifically rebuked for having had discussions regarding the concept of infant baptism as a viable faith practice. We were told that if we had something against believers' baptism, we had something against not the leadership of the church, but Christ Himself. I did not stick around to see what would happen the next week. In light of A Churchless Faith, this community was not open to letting its members doubt aspects of their faith, or incorporate practices from other traditions. The community also proved to have a very hierarchical leadership structure. The last Sunday I was there, we were told several times from the pulpit that our leaders were like our parents, and we just needed to trust what they said, as would little children. I felt like I had moved on in my faith to a point where, although I still needed the counsel of others, I could think on my own spiritually. The parent/child metaphor did not resonate well with me, especially in light of how they were handling crisis. According to Jaimeson, this lack of allowing members to think on their own and criticize their particular church practices, causes many postmoderns to leave the church.

Emerging Churches and Cross Roads

2006-02-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

In this posting I will analyze Cross Roads in light of the nine practices outlined in the book, Emerging Churches. Cross Roads is a small community of about fifty people in which I was involved from September 2004 to June of 2005. It seems to be intentional about being Emergent and follows many of the nine practices outlined in Emerging Churches.

Emerging churches identify with Jesus through their emphasis on the Kingdom of God. Jesus preached the coming of the Kingdom which was not only about salvation after death, but salvation in the here and now. Emergent churches also emphasize Christ’s salvation in terms of community, trying not to reduce the gospel to an individual, private experience. In identifying with Jesus, like Christ, they join in God’s mission to the world, the Missio Dei (Gibbs 63-64).

Cross Roads Church seemed to identify with Jesus in several ways. They emphasized how we lived our lives in the here and now by going through a several month teaching series on the Sermon on the Mount. They participated in acts of social justice and helping the poor. By doing this they were attempting to show God’s redemption here and now, in every day life. There was also a strong community emphasis. This showed that salvation was experienced not only on an individual level but as a community as well.

The Modern Age was the first age in history in which the culture created sacred and secular spaces, relegating God to one corner of life. Emergent churches seek to overcome this divide by sacralization. Instead of believing that things from the outside profaning the Church, the Church seeks to make those things holy. The Emergent Church seeks to be relevant to the culture around it and also to practice a spirituality that impacts every aspect of our lives (Gibbs 88).

Cross Roads is a community that did try to erase the secular/sacred divide in a few ways. The church had a party after every Sunday service in which we would eat together and spend time just hanging out. This was an integral part of the community. I am not sure if it was supposed to be considered part of the worship experience or not, but it was an integral part of our Sundays as a community. It helped make the church experience more relevant to our culture. Their teaching also had an emphasis on how we would apply what we were learning to our every day lives.

Emerging Churches place a huge emphasis on living as a community. The church is supposed to function more as a family than an institution. For Emerging churches, the church is not about a meeting or a building, but a group of people. These churches are usually small and emphasize participation of all of their members. (Gibbs 115).

Cross Roads was also a small church that placed a lot of emphasis on community. Relationships among community members were very important. They were not program based. The only real weekly planned activity was the Sunday church service. The people were very friendly, but it was hard to get plugged into the community. There were no small groups and the weeknight meetings were at a different place every week. Often it was difficult to find out where they were meeting.

Hospitality is another important practice of the Emerging Church. Emergent Churches value embracing and making welcome those who are different from them. They attempt to dialogue and live life in community with those of other faiths, instead of trying to bring them to Christ through apologetic arguments. This does not mean that these communities are not orthodox, it simply means they try to take a much more humble approach in evangelism (Gibbs 134).

Cross Roads also tried to be open to any one who came in contact with their community. They seemed to be open to dialogue and open to learning from people of other faiths. However, from what I saw it was rare that unchurched people would visit the community. In fact, on occasion I would be out with a non-Christian friend and run into someone from the church. They usually asked if this friend of mine, who is Muslim, was a Fuller student. I do not think it bothered her, but it bothered me. They assumed if members of the community were with someone else, that person was a Christian. It was also rare to hear them talk about a desire to bring others into the community to become disciples. However, when conflict hit the church, they did suddenly start talking about that.

Serving with Generosity is another practice outlined in Emerging Churches. Emerging Churches help those in need in a way that does not make them into objects. They also do not use their service only as something to draw people into a hearing of the gospel. However, this is not the social gospel. They are not silent about the name of Jesus (Gibbs 152).

While I was a part of Cross Roads, they were meeting in a Christian Community center in what had once been a crime-ridden part of town. Through the ministry of this center, the area had much improved. A few people from Cross Roads would help teach art to children who were part of a school that met in the center. Some other members of the community helped with other social justice activities, but most of the community was not involved in these types of community outreaches.

Another practice typical of Emergent Churches is that of participation of all the members in the service and decision-making. They try to live out the principle of the priesthood of all believers. Everyone is given a chance to give their gift. In this, Emergent Churches are reacting against a consumerist society that teaches members to passively receive (Gibbs 172).

Cross Roads allowed a number of people to be involved in the ministries and worship services of the community; however, it was not open to everyone. I always felt that if I had wanted to start some type of ministry there, they would not have let me. It generally took people a long time to work their way up into being trusted with participation in the worship service or the planning of some sort of an outreach. I did not feel it was a church where I could give my gift.

Emergent Churches highly value creativity in worship. They believe that as creations of a Creative God, we all have the ability to create. We should use this ability to worship God. God’s followers should be able to be creative and use their imaginations. They value beauty and utilize it in worship (Gibbs 190).

Cross Roads community had a number of extremely creative members. The majority of the community was involved in arts or entertainment in some way. However, in their desire not to be showy and consumerist, they left a lot of creativity behind. In general, people did not use their creative gifts in the community. Imagination and beauty may have been valued but I rarely saw them embraced.

‘Leading as a body’ is another practice analyzed in Emerging Churches. Emergent Church leaders lead by network and consensus rather than hierarchy. They seek to be servant leaders. Leaders arise based on the context of what the community is doing at a given time and leadership is not limited to only a few (Gibbs 215).

This practice is possibly where Cross Roads differed the most from other emerging churches. The leadership structure was set up as a team and in the beginning it seemed that decisions were made by the leadership team. However, when crisis hit, the ultimate decision was made by the pastor, even if it went against part of the leadership team and most of the rest of the body. We were told that this church was not a democracy.

The final practice of emergent churches analyzed by Gibbs and Bolger is that of ‘merging ancient and contemporary spiritualities.’ One characteristic of this practice is that communities combine aspects of several traditions into a mixture. Much of this involves reaching back to ancient, pre-reformation practices of spirituality. Emergent churches also realize that there is no easy formula to quick spiritual growth, but that true spirituality requires perseverance in spiritual disciplines (Gibbs 234).

Cross Roads Church did not mix ancient and contemporary spiritual practices very frequently. The worship was basically contemporary. There was no liturgy. We did practice the discipline of fasting at one point. Cross Roads did not try to sell a simple secret formula to easy spiritual growth. I appreciated this about them, as I had been a part of churches who did do this. It therefore had some spiritual practices of the emergent church and lacked others.
In conclusion, Cross Roads Church did follow most of the practices of Emerging Churches. However, some practices, that of leadership by consensus in particular, were followed for a season but they were unable to practice this when it became too difficult. The practices that they were most consistent about not aligning with emergent churches on were any of those that involved participation of the whole group, whether that meant decision-making, planning the worship service, or anything else.