Emerge or Submerge
In similar fashion, Rogier Bos (1998), founding editor of Next Wave of the Ooze writes an article where he considers what a church for TV personalities Dharma and Greg might look like. Bos writes, “So what kind of church do postmodern people need? What style of ministry is going to be effective in reaching a postmodern people? Where will Dharma and Greg feel at home? What type of church will speak a message that they can understand, and that will appeal to them.” These questions have value but they begin at the same pragmatic staring point that has been ubiquitous in the American evangelical church for the last 30 years. Starting there is certain to continue our bathos place in culture.
Bos’ continues with speculating about the Early Church. He writes, “I often wonder about the first Christians. They formed a church unencumbered by historical forms and traditions.” Really?! I don’t think so. The first Jewish believers saw themselves as a reform movement within Judaism. “They retained many Jewish beliefs and practices and quickly spread to distant regions of the Roman Empire…It is not surprising that Peter and John went to the temple at the “hour of prayer” (Acts 3.1), taught and preached in its precincts (Acts 2.46; 3.8; 5.20-21, 42; Luke 24.53) and continued to live as Jews in every way” (Patzia 2001, pp 187-88).
Bos goes on to state, “With the memory of Jesus’ words and life so fresh in their minds, and with theological giants like Paul and Peter in their presence, they experienced a level of ecclesiological purity that we probably have never seen again.” Again, I must differ with Bos’ assumptions here. This “big bang theory of church origins” is a myth that has been exposed by many credible New Testament scholars (Wright 1992). “For those who wish to ‘get back to the New Testament Church,’ who feel that the first church is somehow better, more pure, and the like, I propose that there was no normative church in the first century” (Patzia 2001, p. 14).
Finally, Bos concludes, “Where the [Early Church’s] ecclesiological understanding didn’t direct them, they were free to create new forms and traditions as they saw fit, and probably as their culture inspired them. Thus they became a church that had a tremendous appeal to the world that was relevant, and, in time, subsumed the whole Roman Empire.” Yeah right! Take a look at Rome or Ephesus in the 1st Century. How did the emperor worship and the crucifixion of believers who refused to bow to an emperor inspire them to create relevant, cutting-edge forms to draw in other would-be martyrs? Was relevance really at the core of the First Century Church’s revolutionary impact?
Again, there is clearly a tension here. I would agree that the 1st Century Churches took on the indigenous flavor of their cultures to some degree. The Jerusalem church looked very different from the Roman Church and that was largely due to appropriate contextualization or what some might be referring to as cultural relevance. But we have not been called first and foremost to embrace and emulate culture. We have been called to transform culture with the power of Christ and to form a kingdom culture (Niebuhr 1951). If the emergent movement follows the obsession with cultural relevance, I have little hope for its transformational impact on local communities, much less the world.
There are some clear examples of emergent churches that are charting a different course by being countercultural, such as Imago Dei Church in Portland, Oregon. Rick McKinley, founder and pastor of Imago Dei asserts that the demise of the Western church lies in our misunderstanding of the Gospel and the inability to fully integrate truth with everyday life. Imago Dei began with a deep commitment to the Gospel and its transformational impact upon culture.
McKinley calls church members to understand that truth is the starting point for everything that happens at Imago Dei. He says, “This is radically different from people’s opinions, what we like or even want to do but rather we seek to obey God and trust him in faith to glorify Himself through us no matter what the outcome” (McKinley R., personal conversation, 06 January 2004). The congregation at Imago Dei lives out their church values in a very countercultural way. Their church is in a downtrodden part of Portland and church members do life with homeless people, drug pushers, prostitutes and more. It’s not that they enjoy the smell of an unbathed drunk any more than the typical American. But they share a commitment to living the Gospel in an embodied way rather than simply finding trendy, edgy ways to market the Gospel.
Just a few hours north, Mark Driscoll, founder and pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle says, “Mars is not a typical church defined by culture.” He is concerned that the emergent movement as a whole is primarily driven by culture rather than by theology. He intends for Mars Hill and Acts 29, the emergent church-planting network he leads, to be diametrically opposed to a culturally driven approach (Clem B., personal conversation, April 2004).
Bill Clem, who was also part of that coffee-shop discussion with which I began, is leading a church planting movement in Seattle called Centrifuge. Bill talks about Centrifuge’s ruthless conviction of expressing their countercultural presence in a relevant way. His emphasis is most upon the “presence” part of being a countercultural presence. Bill describes this as living in the radical middle—wherein new wineskins and methods that relate to where people live are used but as a way to call people to the countercultural values and ethics of the kingdom. Centrifuge places far more energy upon calling people to approach the “relevance” side of the middle through incarnational relationships that embody Jesus than they do upon trendy programming and marketing as the driving sense of relevance.
Category: Ministry, Winter 2007
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