This post comes directly from the PC(USA) Mid Councils Commission report (28-29). I wrote this for the “Changing Contexts” section of the report. I am posting discrete sections of our report as a means of generating conversation, so please make comments. At the end of this post, I have suggested some questions to stimulate your thinking. For a list of all the posts in this series, please follow this link.
Emerging Church Responses to Our Changing World
In some cases, the church has reacted to these shifts in defensive or fundamentalist ways. In other cases, the church has tried to change and adapt along with the rest of the world, recognizing that these changes are not threatening or challenging, but liberating and life-giving.
Hierarchical and bureaucratic forms of ecclesial structures are giving way to network theory and crowd sourcing. Bounded-set understandings of church membership are being replaced with center-set approaches. Philosophically and theologically, narrative is taking priority over logic. All of these can be understood as Christian adaptations to the changing contexts of our flat, networked, postmodern, post-Christendom world.
Theologian Tony Jones suggests a variety of ways in which the still developing emerging church movement is reconciling Christian faith and practice with the changing world. In descriptive statements that Jones calls “dispatches from the emergent frontier”, one can recognize specific reflections, responses, and adaptations to the changing contexts of our world. Here are some of the dispatches most pertinent to our inquiry, paired with concepts from the changing contexts we have discussed.
|
Dispatch from the Emergent Frontier |
Changing Contexts |
| Emergents find little importance in the discrete differences between the various flavors of Christianity. Instead, they practice a generous orthodoxy that appreciates the contributions of all Christian movements. | Post-denominationalism Differences, Divisions, and Conflicts Multiculturalism
|
| Emergents reject the politics and theologies of left versus right. Seeing both sides as remnant of modernity, they look forward to a more complex reality. | Differences, Divisions, and Conflicts Embrace of complexity, ambiguity, paradox, and plurality Suspicion of certainty |
| The emergent movement is not exclusively North American; it is growing around the globe. | Multiculturalism New global Christianity Post-colonial, post-Christendom |
| Emergents see God’s activity in all aspects of culture and reject the sacred-secular divides. | Post-Christendom Quest for true polarity and anti-clericalism |
| Emergents believe that an envelope of friendship and reconciliation must surround all debates about doctrine and dogma. | Differences, Divisions, and Conflicts Suspicion of certainty Critique of objectivity Relativity |
| Emergents find the biblical call to community more compelling than the democratic call to individual rights. The challenge lies in being faithful to both ideals. | Shift from individualism to community |
| Emergents believe that theology is local, conversational, and temporary. To be faithful to the theological giants of the past, emergents endeavor to continue their theological dialogue. | Challenges to old assumptions and authorities Deconstruction Suspicion of certainty Embrace of complexity, ambiguity, paradox, and plurality |
| Emergents believe that awareness of our relative position—to God, to one another, and to history—breeds biblical humility, not relativistic apathy. | Relativity Critique of objectivity |
| Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings. | Suspicion of certainty Embrace of complexity, ambiguity, paradox, and plurality |
| Emergents embrace paradox, especially those that are core components of the Christian story. | Suspicion of certainty Embrace of complexity, ambiguity, paradox, and plurality |
| Emergents believe that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a hierarchy or bureaucracy. | Globalism and flattening Networking, Web 2.0, and wiki culture Shift from individualism to community |
| Emergents downplay—or outright reject—the differences between clergy and laity. | Quest for true polarity and anti-clericalism Post-Christendom |
What can Presbyterians learn from these innovations? To be sure, in pockets of the PC(USA) the emerging church movement has already taken root and is yielding creative new ways of being church. But how might this movement inform our project of reimagining the structure of our denomination at the mid council level?
Questions for Discussion
- How might the church, its understanding of the gospel, and its organizational structures be adapted in response to the changing contexts of our flat, networked, postmodern, post-Christendom world?
- Which of Jones’ “dispatches from the emergent frontier” are most compelling for you?
- In what ways have you seen aspects of the emerging church movement at work in the PC(USA)?
- Could a flat, relational ecclesiology work for the PC(USA)?
For Further Reading
Landon Whitsitt, Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All (Herndon: Alban Institute, 2011).
Tony Jones, The Church Is Flat: The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church Movement (JoPa Productions: 2011).
Doug Pagitt, Community in the Inventive Age (Minneapolis: Sparkhouse, 2011).
Tony Jones, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).
Wasn’t there a chapter in “An Emergent Manifesto of Hope” about Presbymergent or something about how Presbyterians might connect with these Emergent innovations….hmmm. I think so….
Yes, it was brilliant! It started a whole movement…