Re-Emerging Church
I love the church. Not the building, mind you, but the beautiful reflection of Jesus that occurs when I see love within the local body of believers. A dignity restored, a life transformed from oppression to hope, these are the expressions that move me. She is beautiful and always leaves me with a realization of why I choose to gather in the fellowship of believers in the first place. We have the capacity to transform and restore the world around us in such a unique way. And this desire for restoration is why I find myself drawn to the emerging expression of the church.
But it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I was just frustrated at what I saw within the church.
The Dissonance
If you read enough blog posts on the emerging church, it is highly likely that you’ll get a distinct impression of the dissonance that exists within those who identify with the emerging church. We’re always deconstructing something, asking questions and wondering what is wrong within the body that we are part of. But we do so because there are so few alternatives. You see most people don’t go to an emerging church. We go to a traditional church because this is all that is around us. And so we engage the community, hoping to discover something deeper, something we hope the church can be.
At some point in the process, if we’re looking to follow Jesus in an active, missional way, we encounter a dissonance in the process that is striking. We encounter what Willow Creek recently found in their Reveal campaign. The church we are part of is not really structured to develop us in a deeper way. Discipleship is something most church organizations just haven’t figured out. The deeper restoration Jesus engaged in seems distant and removed.
Church is primarily structured to bring people into a building and participate in church related activities. Our primary activity resembles an entertainment medium. We all arrive at the same time, sing a few songs and sit in the same direction while listening to someone speak for an hour. If we’re entertained, we leave a little something to say thank you. We learn primarily what to believe, how to live right, and receive a challenge each week to believe it.
We learn that mission is for people on the other side of the world. We even give them money so we don’t have to go. Rarely do we encounter any kind of mentorship, or process for restoring our hearts, for learning forgiveness and reconciliation, or for restoring the world around us. Without mission, we learn to serve as an usher and in the nursery because this is where the needs are.
As Willow found, those who have been there for a while are the one’s most likely to leave. We don’t really want to leave but at some point we begin to recognize that there has to be more to what we’re doing. We begin to ask our self if this is what Jesus really meant when we said, “Come follow me.”
The Question Of Leaving
The idea of leaving the church is actually a dramatic and even life altering decision. We ask ourselves what it would mean to leave the local community we have been part of for how ever long? What would it mean to separate our selves from the relationships we have established? Because it is likely not the people we relate to, but the structure of the community that creates the dissonance in the first place. At some point we realize we are no longer growing.
It is easy to some extent to just blame the pastor for the problem. He is, after all, the leader. He is the one who stands at the front and supposedly leads the charge. But to blame the pastor is to miss the bigger picture. The pastor is likely following what he has learned over the years, at seminary, at conferences and from his fellow pastors. This is the way its been done forever, hasn’t it?
And as we sit in the pew and contemplate the questions our minds will not forget, we often realize there is a deeper question to leaving. Am I saying the church is broken? Am I saying something is not quite right? What does it all mean? These questions haunt us because we know in our souls that God is real and what we currently are experiencing is not the fullest expression of what is possible.
Permission
To leave requires permission. We have to come to a place where the dissonance outweighs the fruit of what we are experiencing. This moment of coming to a place where we give ourselves permission is often a long enduring process. We hold out hope amidst the questions, and yet the problem proves it will not resolve it self. And so we wake up one morning and realize that we must give our selves permission to say no.
Just saying the word is weird and wonderful. It feels strangely empowering, as if we’re taking part in our own restoration. We need more for our own hearts. We need to know that the many hours spent enduring the dissonance were not for naught. We need to know that the there has to be more. We just can’t settle anymore.
The first morning we wake up and it feels strange. The patterns that we have lived for most of our life have, and the stories that have gone with it, are now left behind. And we almost don’t know what to do with ourselves. By nine AM we should be showered and sitting down for breakfast, yet we’re still in our pajamas. At ten AM we should be walking down the aisle to our traditional seat, yet were walking to the frig for another glass of juice. By ten-thirty we should be singing a worship song, yet we’re wondering if it’s okay to turn on the television set and watch something. These are the emotions and they don’t sit well at first. By noon the feelings pass as we recognize we can now settle back into our traditional patterns. By the fourth week, we’re sitting on our porch reading the Sunday paper and enjoying our favorite Arabica bean coffee.
Over the weeks and months that follow, we feel like a long lost family member that has chosen to miss Christmas dinner. We wonder what it would be like but have grown accustomed to our alternative choice. This emotional journey, like a peculiar treadmill that starts and stops, fades over time.
A New Responsibility
This strange sense of wilderness has a way of clarifying the entire process. Not having to endure the dissonance feels good in a “just got off a long, bad flight” kind of way. With our feet on the ground we can now begin to listen to God on our own, without a denominational, transactional filter. We can listen to His voice. But this freedom also comes with a responsibility to stand on our own two feet. We must chart our own course and get real in our faith. We read new books and listen to new voices, ones that challenge and push us to think outside the box we’ve left.
We learn the words discipleship and authentic community, journey and trust. And it all feels so ridiculously good. We have three hour conversations with people we run into at the bookstore about seeing God in the simplest of things. Our faith isn’t manufacturing on stand up, sit down pew dances but real intimate encounters with Jesus in the margins.
We begin to realize that our conversations between our next door neighbor are just as empowering as the ones we had at church. We now know his name because we’re not at a church functional three nights a week and twice on Sunday. This new chunk of time allows us to be present to those around us. These new meetings, which are more about loving our neighbor, feel quite stirring. And then it hits us. We’re not called to be part of the local church. We’re called to be part of His church. And the pastor isn’t our leader. The Holy Spirit is.
Coming Back
And as we begin to listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit, we begin to listen to where He’s calling us. We begin to connect to a mission, instead of a program. We begin to see that within the four walls of our traditional church are individuals who are just like us, struggling with the same questions we had a long the way. And that’s when we realize that God is likely calling us to be love within the body of Christ.
Yet how could we return? Will it be much the same? Maybe. But we won’t be the same people.
The idea of returning takes about as long as it did to leave. But we’re not returning to solve any problem, but to be a different solution: to love. The moment we do enter, it is into His church. It’s a broken, beautiful, messy, amazing, sloppy, hope for the world. Our expectations are different. Our hopes are different, because now we realize that it is not us who will transform the world, but God himself through us. We’re no longer expecting the church to be everything for us. All we’re looking for is to meet God where He’s already working.
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This post is part of the Revolutionary’s Synchroblog. List of participants:
Alan Knox: A Revolutionary? Who? Me?
Erin Word: Are We There Yet, Papa Smurf?
Jane: Onward Christian Soldier
Jeff Greathouse: So, You Want To Change
Jeff McQuilken: The Great Shift–and My Unwitting Part In It
Jeromy Johnson: A Safe Place To Experiment
Jonathan Brink: Re-Emerging Church
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